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Jenny Lemke sat close to Jim Westford on a stiff wooden bench in the entrance–way at the convent in Pensacola, waiting for Mary Sebastian to call them in for a conversation with the nurse. The afternoon light was brilliant and clear. It broke through a swaying palm outside and lit up a stained glass Virgin across from them like ocean water, flooding their faces with purple and green. For the moment, all was deathly, deep quiet in the hall.

Was there really a school next door? Nuns living upstairs? You wouldn't have known. Jenny was thinking of the last time she'd been here, when she came to adopt her son. The sisters gave them a party with ginger ale and red velvet cake. Then she walked with him past this same little bench, holding his hand, and they opened the big oak doors onto the Florida sun.

Jim groaned, interrupting her reverie.

"What is it?" she asked.

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

"Oh, I was thinking that if this woman doesn't calm down, we might have to take a tougher line."

She sat quietly for a second, and then laughed.

"Sibyl will gladly break her thumbs if she talks."

"Yeah, Sibyl!" he said. "She'd have made a good hitman."

"Well, she wants a revolution. You and me, Jim, we're the ones holding it back."

"That's definitely how she sees it."

"I think sometimes I should just hand it all over to her."

"I don't know. If she were in charge of the League, I could never be a part of it. She has no judgment."

"But she has the passion," said Jenny. "I've talked myself into a kind of blandness. I feel blank. Meanwhile nothing changes."

"That's bull. Plenty's changed."

"Like what? Three percentage points on an opinion poll? Does that count for anything in human lives?"

"Listen, if people don't choose to care, we can't make them. We can only argue our case. The rest is up to God and the courts."

"So what happens if the courts don't see things our way, Jim? Do we ever give up?"

"I don't know. I can't answer for you."

"What about for yourself?"

"I need to keep fighting abortion, that's all I know." He sounded tired. "But definitely not with my sister in charge."

"How about your feelings? Do you get moved any more?"

"No," he said, "not often. Not really."

"Millions of babies dead," she said. "I don't even feel it."

" 'Baby' is just a word, Jenny. And the numbers don't matter. I don't know why, but the numbers don't matter. You can't expect to be moved all the time. You just have to keep going."

"Maybe I was making up for my past. It's so far away, now. It seems like another life."

"Stop trying to feel it if you can't. You're tired, that's all."

They sat in silence for a moment. She could hear him swallow.

"Did you ever think about doing something revolutionary?" he asked in a low voice.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean whether you'd be capable of it. I don't mean shooting a doctor. Just a little butyric acid in a clinic, something more than what we're doing."

She shook her head.

"Do you? What good would it serve? Giving the other side free martyrs. Great."

"I used to think about it, before I cooled off. I mean like maybe if I got a terminal illness, and I was going to die anyway. I'd go do some damage, you know? With nothing to lose."

"You'd never hurt people, Jim."

"You mean I'm too much of a coward?"

"I mean it's against God. Against natural law."

The Bible's full of violence. And this is to save innocent life, anyway. So it's different."

She shook her head.

"You Protestants. You have to figure everything out for yourselves." She crossed herself with a skinny purple hand and stretched out her lime green legs. "So anyway, what happens if the nurse does go to the police?"

He shrugged.

"I think we win either way. If we can get names from her, great. If she goes to the police and it comes out that we saved a live baby, we get some free publicity."

"You'd be disbarred. We'd probably both go to prison."

He scratched the back of his head.

"We're always saying that we need victims. God gives us one, a living child. Everything's turned rightside up. No more abortion doctors acting like lambs to the slaughter. The child's the victim."

She shuddered.

"I don't want to go to jail."

"So maybe next time we better take the baby straight to family services. If we're willing to risk what they'll do with it."

She sat up and folded her arms.

"Anyway," she said, "it wouldn't be fair to Clara or the baby. It's bad enough what we have to do to save them; we're not going to use them for publicity, too."

"Yeah, yeah." He sighed, and then nodded. "Jenny, I've been thinking about Rose Merriman. What if we get her to take pictures of some of the older victims—the girl that's been on TV already, or that boy in Canada? He has to be six or seven by now. Maybe Theresa, if I can talk her into it."

"Do you think Rose would do it? Did you get to know her very well?"

"I almost told her about the baby."

"Good Lord." She put her head against the palm of her hand. "Jim, what gets into you?"

"I was pretty sure she'd honor a confidence."

"You didn't mention the network, the doctors—"

"Of course not!" He sat up. "But she's not the FBI after all. She's looking for a story. I told her a little about Theresa and the case. Not much, but a little."

Jenny stretched her left arm behind his back and poked a finger into his shoulder.

"I like Rose. I like her a lot. But I don't think she should hear too much. You understand?"

"Why not?"

"I know you have your weak spots. Did she tell you she had an abortion once?"

"You're not saying that you hold that against her?"

"It means she's confused. If you introduce her to anyone, for now let it be Theresa. Theresa's strong." Jenny paused, thinking. "Also I think we should let this nurse see the baby. Not because of good strategy or bad strategy or politics. Not because she might give us some information. Just because she did save a life, I think we should respect that."

He nodded and she looked straight into his eyes. She'd known him for a very long time, now. He was almost like a son to her. Sometimes she even felt the hint of a crush; but it made her smile at herself. "I'm an old bat," she thought. "Just a lonely old bat." A door closed down the hall.

"I hear the sister coming," she said softly. "Why don't you talk to the nurse by yourself, first? I'll come after a few minutes."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

Jim stood up, staring at the floor. He rose above the ocean colors and floated in the pale yellow of the Virgin's nimbus. She smiled.

"And I'm sorry for that comment about your weak spot."

"You're not really sorry at all."

"No, I guess I'm not. You're no priest, after all. I think you should get a girlfriend."

He might have answered, but Sister Mary swished around a corner just then. Her face looked brown and drawn against the white frame of the habit. She let out a deep sigh.

"Theresa's done her best, but we'll be lucky if this doesn't ruin everything."

The nun motioned for Jim and then turned; he ambled slowly after her. Jenny got up and walked the other way down the hall, to a high door that opened on a courtyard outside. She hadn't realized how sleepy she was. The sun blinded her as she stepped out to the brick porch. She smoothed the jacket of her suit. A pair of seabirds were making circles in the sky, but she couldn't look up at them; she had only an impression of their motion.

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture Magazine.
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