Chapter 12

The protestors wake him. Their chants, rhythmic and agitating, shake him into consciousness. Idiots, he thinks. Surely they have better things to do than torture these poor women. Folks like these should be otherwise engaged. Walt stumbles out of bed, drowsy to the point of being uncoordinated, and into the classroom with every intent of going outside to confront them, but that’s when he hears the students in the dissection room, and he follows their voices instead.

He finds them standing around Lena Stowe’s half-dissected corpse, their cutting instruments to bear, their instructor monitoring their every move. “Careful as you cut,” Elizabeth Blackwell says. “The muscle tissue needs tension as you peel it back. Then make a buttonhole in the muscle, yes, right there.” Around them, jars and buckets line the counters and shelves, mixed with stacks of paper and publications: Outlines of Anatomy and Physiology, issues of The People’s Medical Journal and Home Doctor, and William MacKenzie’s An Appeal to the Public and to the Legislature on the Necessity of Affording Dead Bodies to the Schools of Anatomy. “Put your finger in the buttonhole,” Miss Blackwell continues, “and it will help you keep the muscle taut as you separate it from the chest cavity with your scalpel.”

Miss Zacky taps Elizabeth’s shoulder.

She turns around, and when she sees Walt, she smiles. “Mr. Whitman, good afternoon.” All the students stop and stare at him now, and he looks down at his own sleeping gown, disheveled, the chest open—

“Pardon me,” Walt says, taking a step toward Miss Blackwell, pulling his gown closed, and this is when Lena Stowe’s body comes into full view: on her back, rib cage visible, skin peeled back like fabric—tendons, cartilage, muscles, and nerve endings sprouting out of her body. Walt has always imagined the inside of the human body as bright red, like the blood from a cut, but instead, he sees shades of gray and faded yellow.

Miss Blackwell anticipates his reaction. “It’s a bit of a shock your first time, isn’t it?”

Whitman feels a bit light-headed. He grasps the table to steady himself, looking at the floor and then the body again. He is speechless. There’s something so awful about what is happening in this room, and yet so beautiful.

Miss Blackwell says, “More than anything else, Lena wanted us to keep this college going. She wanted her body to be used in the manner that we have used the bodies of others. If she had to die, she did not want to die in vain.” She pauses. “She told you so herself.”

A sliver of black pupil shines through the slit of Lena’s left eyelid, and her chapped lips are colorless. It is her hair that stands out to him most, long and flowing, just as it was before the trapdoor dropped out from under her. He reaches out and touches her cheek, which is ice-cold.

He runs his fingers across the front of her face and down her arm until he reaches her fingers, which slip between his own. Dirt lines her fingernails. Red welts around her wrists. On her left ring finger a tiny strip of skin is lighter than the rest.

“What about the baby?”

Elizabeth points to a tiny bundle of cloth on the counter. “The Hathaways will bury her with Lena.”

“Her?”

“The Stowes were going to have a daughter.”

Whitman holds on to this revelation in reverence, giving himself a chance to reflect on its significance. “Had she quickened?”

“The fetus measured almost six inches. There is no doubt.”

The room quiets down at this, acknowledging the second victim, and in the solitude, the protestors’ chants come through.

Whitman breaks the moment. “They’re still out there.”

“They never go away,” Miss Blackwell says.

“They should be otherwise engaged,” he repeats to himself.

“What happened to you, Mr. Whitman? Your face is swollen and bruising, and you have turned pale.”

Miss Zacky approaches from around the table, touches his forehead. “He’s warm too.”

“I’m overtired is all,” Walt says. “I had just fallen asleep when they woke me.”

Miss Zacky pulls him by the arm to a chair back against the wall. “You sit down,” she says. “Rest.”

“We’ll be finished here in a few minutes,” Elizabeth says, “and the Hathaways, Lena’s mother and brothers, will arrive soon after. I could use some help in the meantime—but only if you’re well enough.”

“I’d be happy to,” Whitman says.

From where he sits, Walt watches the students work. He’s impressed with Miss Blackwell’s leadership—she has stepped forward without trepidation, and the students have responded. This is good news. He wipes his forehead, exhausted. He has the sensation that if he stands, he might faint. Walt checks the clock on the counter next to him. Almost one already, which means his article on the sheriff’s murder will have made its way around the city. He wonders what the reaction will be, what folks will make of his suggestion that the Stowe murder was a setup by body snatchers. Whatever the reaction, he will have stirred the pot, which is exactly what he needed to do.

The students are finished now, and Miss Blackwell directs them in the cleanup. Miss Emsbury sweeps the floor. Miss Onderdonk takes out the trash. Miss Perschon wipes the counters. When Whitman says he’s feeling better, she even gives him a job. “Straighten up those books, won’t you?” He does, and when they’ve all finished their assignments, Miss Blackwell gives them more. Miss Zacky will check on Azariah Smith while the other students clean the classroom. Walt and Elizabeth must prepare the body for burial.

“After you put on some proper clothing, of course,” Elizabeth says.

Walt again looks down at his sleeping gown. He had forgotten.

Walt and Elizabeth fold the skin on Lena’s legs and arms, then sew the skin flaps together. To Walt, the dark thread looks like a jagged body tattoo. The chest is next, where the students have diligently investigated her insides. They removed her organs one by one, storing them in pots of water until only an hour ago, when they began readying the college for the Hathaways’ visit. While Walt and Elizabeth prepare the body, the students are in the large furnace room that doubles as a crematorium. Walt can smell the organs burning, a smell difficult to describe, but not at all as unpleasant as he would have thought.

Miss Blackwell reattaches the rib cage and while Whitman holds it in place, she stitches the skin together.

“They’ll be here soon,” she says.

Next, they have to fight Lena’s dead weight to get her dress on. Miss Blackwell works the arms into the sleeves and eases the dress up over the chest, turning the body on its side to fasten the back buttons.

After combing Lena’s hair, Elizabeth applies perfume to her neck and wrists, and Walt puts stockings on her feet, which cover up the sliced tendons. The body looks almost normal, he thinks. A few unnatural bunches remain in the chest, but it is the best they can do.

A banging at the front door jolts them, and they assume it is the protestors.

“I’ve never understood the opposition to dissection,” Miss Blackwell says. “I understand that it makes folks uncomfortable, of course, but it’s the only way to improve upon our knowledge of the human body. If dissection prevents resurrection, what about decomposition?”

Whitman is formulating an answer he hopes will give voice to people like him, who are not necessarily opposed to anatomical dissection but who seem to innately resist it. Before he can get the words out, however, she has moved on.

“In practical terms, what that opposition means is that families cannot bury their loved ones in church graveyards—this, of course, is the church’s fault, but it comes with a real cost to the families of the deceased. If I could speak to the public, without the influence of the church, I know I could convince New Yorkers of both the necessity and benefits of anatomical dissection—and you know me, Mr. Whitman. My faith is central to everything I do.”

She is devout if a tad idiosyncratic, he thinks.

“We learn so much by looking inside the human body. I know that an omnipotent God, the God I believe in, has no objections to dissection. He wants us to understand his creation, and that understanding brings me closer to him.”

Walt interrupts her. “But the theological problem of resurrection is not the only stumbling block,” he says. “And I have to be honest: What you’ve done to Lena’s body has had a great effect on me, and not a positive one.”

“Believe me,” Elizabeth says, “I understand. My first dissection filled me with dread. I can remember being sleepless with worry the night before, and then when Abraham made the first cut, the whole process was remarkably scientific. And beautiful.”

Whitman ponders this, then says: “What about all the accounts of medical students desecrating the bodies?”

“Ah, of course.” Miss Blackwell nods. “Lena herself told me of the time she witnessed a medical student prank. One evening, shortly after they first met, Abraham asked her to meet him in the dissection lab at New York University Medical College. The room was dark, and so she lit a candle. A half dozen half-dissected cadavers came into view, but no Abraham. She shined her light on a corpse dressed like a doctor, his head propped up with a wooden rod. A sign around his neck read Happy Birthday. The Stowes decided that night never to condone the mistreatment of the human body, and made that vow part of the Women’s Medical College of Manhattan’s mission. We will make medical progress through anatomical dissection while respecting the human body.”

“That’s a start,” Walt admits, even while thinking that the war of public opinion might be too lopsided to overcome.

“We must keep at it,” Elizabeth says. “Will you accompany me to a meeting tomorrow with a possible cadaver supplier?”

He’s about to say yes, of course, when a knock at the back door startles them.

Lena’s family has arrived.

Darlene Hathaway is a thin, delicate woman about the same size as Lena. In her early sixties, her dark hair has grayed and her posture stooped. Her skin has that worn quality that comes with years, but she is fit and strong, as her daughter was. She says nothing as she steps past Walt and Elizabeth. Lena’s two brothers, in their forties, follow their mother into the room, with a pine casket on their shoulders. Both wear black pantaloons, white shirts, and dark wool coats, and Walt knows from his conversation with Lena that both her brothers are married, that they each have four or five children, and that they live near Mrs. Hathaway to help her maintain the family farm. Lena’s father died of cholera a decade earlier.

When they see Lena’s body, they let out a groan.

“Mrs. Hathaway.” He holds out his hand. “My name is Walt Whitman. Lena asked me to help run the college in her absence.”

But the woman ignores him.

The brothers set the casket down next to the table and join their mother in front of the body.

“Let us pray.” Darlene Hathaway bows her head and waits for the others to do likewise. Her voice is strong, confident. “To thee, Lord, we commend the soul of your handmaid Lena, and her daughter, that being dead to this world they may live to thee; and whatever sins they have committed in this life through human frailty, do thou in thy most merciful goodness forgive. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“Amen,” Walt says.

Mrs. Hathaway looks at him as if he has just done something horrible. “Jeb, Nathaniel,” she says. “Be careful with your sister.”

Jeb, the taller of the two brothers, takes hold of Lena’s feet. He’s thick and muscular, his hands big and powerful. Nathaniel is short and stocky, his hands pudgy, and he bears little resemblance to Lena, her mother, or Jeb. Must look like his father, Walt thinks. Nathaniel slides his arms underneath Lena’s shoulders, and as they lift the body off the table, it bends at the hips. The pressure pops off the two top buttons in the back, and the dress opens enough to expose the black thread holding the chest together.

Her mother rushes to cover her daughter’s skin. “How could you?” She helps her sons lower the body into the casket, then tucks the loose fabric underneath.

“Her body is material now,” Miss Blackwell says. “Her soul is with God.”

“I wouldn’t talk about God in this room,” Mrs. Hathaway says. “Not if I were you.”

“We loved your daughter, Mrs. Hathaway,” Whitman says. “We wouldn’t do anything to harm her.”

“No church will take her body now.” Mrs. Hathaway lifts her veil. “That’s what you’ve done to her.” She takes a step closer to Walt. In this light, Mrs. Hathaway looks so much like an older Lena, with the same full lips and china-doll face, and Walt knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help himself: He reaches out and touches her cheek. Mrs. Hathaway slaps him so hard he sees tiny flashes of light. “Stay away from me.”

Mrs. Hathaway leans over Lena, rubs her forehead. “My daughter.” Her fingers trace the outline of her nose, eyebrows, and cheeks. Her fingers stop just short of the stitches in her head.

Jeb puts his arm around his mother. “Let’s take her home.”

Nathaniel prepares to lift the casket. “Jeb’s right, Mother. It’s time.”

Jeb slides his hands under the pine box. The brothers nod at one another and lift.

Walt steps in front of them. “I’m going to prove that Lena didn’t kill Abraham.”

“That man.” Mrs. Hathaway hesitates, then covers her face again with the veil.

The brothers carry the coffin around Whitman, then Miss Blackwell, and out of the college. Mrs. Hathaway gently takes the bundled fetus into her arms and follows.

Walt calls out, “It wasn’t easy for us, either.”

The Hathaways don’t turn around.

“We have to press on,” he continues. “Lena understood that.”

The footsteps trail off and the door shuts. From the window, Walt watches them load the body, then drive away. The wagon disappears around the corner, and they are alone again.

An emotional Miss Blackwell excuses herself to her room upstairs, which leaves Walt in the dissection room alone. When he closes his eyes, all he hears are the chants outside. Dissection stops the resurrection. Dissection stops the resurrection.

He has had enough.