Chapter 5 The History of Abortion in America #2
Constance knew the other two would follow the first one.
“Maybe the doctors changed their minds about wanting the job when they realized how many abortions the midwives had been performing. Childbirth is a lot more dangerous than a first-trimester abortion, but the doctors lied about the dangers of performing abortions in order to take midwives off the job. Midwives are still delivering babies!” Thomas called to the departing doctors.
Now the churchwomen were following the offended doctors—all but Mrs. Sweeney, who appeared to have taken root in the floor of the lecture hall.
Constance once more pushed back her chair and stood, calling after all of them.
“The history of how midwives lost the abortion business makes doctors and men look awful!” Constance called.
At that moment, the only remaining members of the audience were a small number of men—a few of Thomas’s colleagues in the English Department.
“Connie doesn’t mean you men—thank you for coming,” Thomas told them.
What the Winslows would remember was how thrilled the men from the English Department were to be there; they’d not seen Thomas fail to hold an audience’s attention before.
“The history of abortion in America is not one of those nineteenth-century novels I love,” Thomas was telling his colleagues, while Mrs. Sweeney just went on standing.
“It has no discernible plot, there are no delineated characters, there is no foreshadowing of an ending—as storytelling, it’s a mess,” Thomas told his colleagues, who were loving every word.
His fellow English teachers found Thomas entertaining, even when he’d failed to hold an audience.
Not Mrs. Sweeney, who stood ramrod straight. Constance knew Mrs. Sweeney was waiting for her turn, a parting shot. “Thank you for coming, Mrs. Sweeney,” Thomas said sincerely.
“Maybe you don’t have a soul, Mr. Winslow—maybe you’re just a blasphemer,” Mrs. Sweeney said.
“Good night, Mrs. Sweeney—no one has a soul,” Constance told her.
So much for improving town-gown relations.
No one walked out of other Town Talks, including the clunkers.
More people showed up at (and stayed for) the geologist’s talk on the rocks of New England.
The biologist’s talk on genetics got bogged down in anecdotes about his students’ botched experiments with fruit flies.
Notwithstanding the fruit flies, no one walked out.
Pennacook Academy was not a school with a religious affiliation.
There was Morning Meeting, not Morning Chapel.
On the weekend, students were required to attend a religious service of some kind—of their own choice.
Many of the boys who weren’t religious chose the Catholic Church because the first Mass of the morning was the quickest. The Jewish students were driven by bus to Temple Israel, a synagogue in Portsmouth.
The school minister was Presbyterian; he taught the academy’s history-of-religion courses.
In his nondenominational way, the school minister gave a Town Talk on comparative religion.
The turnout was of moderate size, both men and women.
The Winslows were impressed that the school minister asked a member of the English Department to stand beside him on the speaker’s platform.
Daniel Rosenthal and his wife, Naomi, were one of the Winslows’ favorite young couples at the academy.
The Winslows saw a lot of the Rosenthals socially.
“Daniel is Jewish—he’s with me to answer any questions you may have about Judaism,” the school minister told the townspeople of Pennacook.
No one asked Daniel Rosenthal a question; the Winslows felt badly for their young friend.
They’d already noticed that Naomi hadn’t come to the Town Talk; she must have known it would be awkward.
The silence of the townspeople aroused the Winslows’ suspicions that many New Englanders were silently anti-Semitic.
Constance sensed that her husband was about to ask Daniel a question; she knew he was having a hard time with what to ask.
Given all the books they’d read, and how well educated the Winslows were, they knew nothing about Judaism.
“Don’t ask, Tommy—poor Daniel will know you’re just feeling sorry for him,” Constance whispered.
If there ever was a Right you are, Connie, situation, Thomas Winslow knew this was one, but he didn’t whisper a word to his wife.
He knew the Jewish people originated from the Israelites and the Hebrews; he scarcely remembered that they came from historical Israel and Judah, and only because Daniel Rosenthal had recently reminded him.
Thomas Winslow knew there’d been a Kingdom of Israel and a Kingdom of Judah, but he couldn’t keep them straight.
Daniel and Naomi were always reminding him that both were destroyed.
From the Jews they knew at Pennacook Academy—both the faculty and the students, all of whom the Winslows liked—the Winslows thought Judaism was a refreshingly secular religion. Daniel and Naomi laughed when Thomas told them this. “The Jews at Pennacook are as secular as we can be!” Naomi said.
“There are very religious Orthodox Jews—Naomi and I don’t have much in common with them,” Daniel Rosenthal had told the Winslows. There’d been some conversation about the apparent lack of proselytizing that Jews do. The Winslows approved of no proselytizing.
“No Jew has ever tried to convert me!” Thomas told the Rosenthals, who laughed.
The Rosenthals weren’t interested in converting someone who wasn’t Jewish to Judaism.
As for the Jewish kids at the academy—all of them were boarding students—the Rosenthals wanted those boys to feel they were part of a family.
The Winslows got the feeling that the Jewish people were most of all a community with a history; they just happened to come from a part of the Levant known as the Land of Israel.
“Even in exile—or just a boy at school, away from home—a Jew feels some solidarity with the Jewish people,” Daniel Rosenthal told the Winslows. As unreligious as they were, the Winslows felt an unaccustomed solidarity with the Jewish people—at least with the Rosenthals.
All these thoughts distracted the Winslows from the school minister’s Town Talk on comparative religion.
The Winslows wouldn’t remember a word. Their thoughts were with what little they knew of Judaism and the Jewish people.
What little the Winslows knew, they liked.
Besides, the talk on comparative religion was the last Town Talk the Winslows would attend before they boarded the train to St. Cloud’s.
The Winslows were already thinking about the orphanage and the orphan they would meet there.
Naturally, they hoped that their last orphan would be the best one.