I Am No One You Know (23 page)
Read I Am No One You Know Online
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
N
EXT DAY,
she made inquiries after
Kethy, Arno C.
in the registrar’s office. But Kethy had no transcripts predating that semester when he’d enrolled, as a special student in the Night Division, in Composition 101 and Accounting 101. No high school transcripts or letters of recommendation seem to have been required. Erma went to the office of the dean of the Night Division and was allowed to look through a similarly meager file for Kethy there. (Aluminum filing cabinets filled most of a room, containing thousands of students’ files, since 1947! It was a daunting vision, like looking into a vast mortuary.) Here there was a poorly photocopied letter dated September 1989 from a county parole officer attesting vaguely to Arno C. Kethy’s punctuality, willingness to cooperate with authorities, and “adoptive nature,” which Erma supposed must mean “adaptive nature.” Yet the letter was only a form letter addressed to To Whom It May Concern; it concluded with a disclaimer—
Arno C. Kethy is of above average intelligence it is believed, but not easy to communicate with. The report of the court psychiatrist is that he is a “borderline” personality capable of knowing right from wrong and therefore sane under the law. He has always claimed total innocence for his actions even those of which he has been found guilty on the testimony of witnesses and circumstantial evidence.
Whatever Kethy had done, or had been convicted of doing, in this instance, had been before 1989. And 1989 was a long time ago.
Erma saw that Kethy’s address was 81 Bridge Street.
But how is he borderline? Dangerous?
He reveals himself in words like a poet.
M
AYBE
(E
RMA CONCEDED!
) she’d regret it. But she showed Kethy’s most recent, most disturbing composition to no one. She lay the single, much-folded sheet of tablet paper on top of the bureau in her bedroom, a primitive piece of Shaker furniture painted robin’s egg blue and decorated with tiny pink rosebuds, a girl’s bureau with a romantically fogged oval mirror in which Erma’s own face, girlish, rather pale, somber yet often smiling, floated; and after a week she’d read and
reread it so many times, it no longer seemed threatening. It was a poem in prose. She could hear Kethy’s anguished voice reciting it. And it was written for her, Kethy’s instructor.
I was not born a beast, that is my arguement.
Erma thought of Shakeseare’s Caliban. Milton’s rebellious Satan in
Paradise Lost.
She still hadn’t attempted to grade him for how could she grade a man’s soul?
He reveals himself to me. Alone.
T
HERE CAME
T
HURSDAY
evening, their next class. When Erma hurried into the room breathless and invigorated from the cold, already Kethy was hidden in his corner, remote and downlooking. Among so many other individuals, Kethy might be ignored even as the instructor was sharply aware of him; his searching eyes. She knew he would be struck by her hair. The thick braid between her shoulder blades, suddenly missing.
Now it was late February in this snowswept Midwestern city and the winter term was beginning to wear. Flu was locally rampant; nine students were absent. Erma had looked forward to teaching Zora Neale Hurston’s self-portrait “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”—a choice she assumed would meet with enthusiasm since it was zestfully written yet a serious glimpse into the soul of a brilliant black woman writer; but to her surprise and chagrin, Reverend E. G. Eldridge loudly objected on the grounds of Hurston’s “mocking tone” and “ignorance of the place of Jesus Christ” in the lives of black Americans. In turn, others objected to the reverend’s bold, blustery statements. Students who’d been silent all term joined in. But Eldridge dominated, clearly accustomed to being the authority in any gathering. Erma found herself in the instructor’s perilous position of disagreeing strongly with a student yet wanting to respect his opinion and wishing to be, or to appear to be, neutral. As others, mostly women, black and Caucasian, defended Hurston, and the Reverend and a few others attacked her, Erma stood uncertainly before them, no longer in control. She might have been observing, from a few yards away, a suddenly raging brushfire. When a black woman said to Eldridge with withering scorn, “This Hurston a genius, man, and you a sorry asshole,” Erma was shocked, stammering, “Oh, Lorett! That isn’t very—polite.” Eldridge shot back, baring his teeth in fury, “
You,
woman, are just plain
ig-nor-ant.
” Erma said, trying to regain their attention, “Mr. Eldridge, please—” Eldridge turned to the young woman instructor to whom, for weeks, he’d been excessively courteous, his usually benign face creased with disdain, “Ma’am! Ex-cuse me! You are not qualified to speak on this subject!”
The instructor’s nightmare epiphany.
This has all been a game. He doesn’t respect me at all. Do any of them…?
Erma’s face burned. She must have looked like a slapped, publicly humiliated child. Eldridge, having gone too far, realized his blunder and began to make amends. Others, who hadn’t taken part in the noisy discussion, looked on like observers at an auto wreck. Some were shocked, a few hid smiles and smirks. Arno Kethy had risen partway from his desk, peering over heads. His stitched-looking Caucasian face shone with indignation. Eldridge was apologizing profusely, having reverted to his usual benevolence. Erma said, smiling, “It’s quite all right, Reverend Eldridge. I stand corrected.” She meant to turn the unpleasant confrontation into a good-natured joke, though Eldridge’s hard round face gleamed with oily beads of sweat, and Erma was still trembling. Lorett said with pursed, pouty lips, “See, Miz S’heg’off, what we women got to contend with? The black male ego revealed.” Eldridge managed to laugh at this remark, barely, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief. Erma guided the class onto another, safer essay. She didn’t glance back at Arno Kethy. Everyone would be on good behavior for the remainder of the class and of course, at the end, Reverend Eldridge would hurry forward to further apologize.
He’s worried. He showed me his true face. He’d been hoping for a high grade.
Erma was disillusioned, but behaved graciously with Eldridge. She wasn’t upset with him in the least, she said; in fact, she was pleased that their discussion had been so animated. “That’s the aim of strong writing, isn’t it? To provoke thought.”
By this time Kethy had vanished by the rear exit. Erma had wanted to hand back his “Arguement” and ask him to speak with her about it, but when she looked up, exhausted and demoralized, Kethy was gone.
N
EXT CLASS MEETING,
and the next, E. G. Eldridge was absent. Erma felt the sting of a public rebuke. She wondered if Eldridge had
dropped the course, or was just staying away temporarily to punish her. She wanted the man back, to make amends; though she’d been disgusted with him, she couldn’t bear it that he might be disgusted with her. She made inquiries in the dean’s office and was told only that Eldridge’s wife had called to say he was hospitalized, and would probably not be returning to school. Erma was astonished. “But he seemed to be in good health. He’s a strong, vigorous man…”
She wondered guiltily if, in any way, she was to blame.
ASSIGNMENT #4: OBSEVATION AND ANYLSIS
The house is two floors, brown shinglewood with a
look of soft rotted wood. There is a front porch
and a side porch. The roof is black tarpaper.
It is just an ordinary house you would think
from the outside. It is near the hospital.
Her place she lives in, is on the second floor.
The stairs are squeezed in. There is a smell
of cooking from the downstairs. There is linolum
tile on the floor. The mailboxes are downstairs.
The lock on the front door is not a serious lock.
Her skin was very white even in the shadow.
There was radio music playing, very soft.
She has wrapped a white towel around her hair.
When she brushes it out, it is strange to her,
it has become shorter. It makes her younger.
There is a swatch of bush-hair, a lighter color
between her legs. It is curly and if you
sallowed a hair, it would tickle!
There are only three rooms in the apartment,
this is a surprise. Not what a college teacher
deserves. Except for the blue bureau
and some pictures of trees she has taped to her walls
there is not enough beauty in this place.
The blinds are drawn but you can see through.
Maybe they are not drawn to the window ledge.
The lock on the door is the same lock as downstairs.
From the hospital, there are sirens.
She came out from the steamed bathroom drying
her hair, and another towel wrapped around her.
His hands helped her. He was holding the big towel,
she felt his hands through the clothe and shivered.
She would look up though she did not SEE him then.
Yet she smiled. For she knew he was there.
Hed painted the bureau for her. A little wood bureau
with pink rosebuds and the knobs made of glass.
He explained to her he would like to marry
and have children except they have tired to discorage
him. Its their hope to discorage you from life.
They laugh if you try to hang yourself, they provide
the clothes. They pretend they dont see spoons,
for you to sharpen. They hope for the lower class
to die out like dogs.
Before he knew her name ERMA SCHEGLOFF
he was granted knowledge of her face.
If you love somebody that is all there is.
If you anylise it you will fail.
You knew each other before it happened.
Always he would recall her face
that brought him hope.
For you cant live without hope.
He would protect her from all enemies.
He would cut away their faces and their hearts.
To protect her he would not be afraid
to use all his strength.
He would not live without her, he felt.
“ ‘B
ORDERLINE.
’ B
UT ‘BORDE RLINE
’ to
what?
”
She had a vision of a single, isolated nation-state floating in darkness, its borders touching upon nothing.
I
N THE ALL
-but-deserted reference room of the downtown public library there was Erma Schegloff scrolling through back editions of the city newspaper on microfilm. Anxious, dreading what she might find in these rows upon rows of shimmering print. Headlines of national and international crisis juxtaposed with area news and all of it reduced to history. Time past. The extraordinary set beside the commonplace. It was
County News
she focused upon, the second section of the paper. Scrolling through weeks of campaign and election coverage, photos of smiling politicians, town meetings, sewer bond issues, school board debates, schoolbus safety, fires, arson, arrests for robbery, theft, drunken driving, armed assault. Ladies’ charity bazaars, church news, archbishop dies, scholarship winners, lottery winners, arson suspected, arson-suspect arrested, embezzlement of bank funds, school superintendent dies, dean of business school at the university retires, honorary degrees conferred upon, arrests in drug raids, and suddenly there was
EDGARSTOWN DEATH ROW PRISONER, 39
FREED AFTER 8-YEAR ORDEAL
The date was December 2 of the previous year. She’d been staring at a photo of Arno Kethy aged thirty-one, young-looking, with hurt narrowed eyes and the shadow of a beard and brutally short-trimmed hair, without recognizing him.
Kethy had been convicted of raping and murdering a woman and her thirteen-year-old daughter in a state park in July 1990; he’d been identified by witnesses as being near the scene of the crime, there was “evidence” linking him to the crime site, he’d made a confession to police, a police informant testified at his trial he’d boasted of committing the crimes. Kethy had subsequently recanted the confession, alleging he’d been beaten by police. He had a “drug history.” He’d spent time in rehabilitation, in Iowa. He’d also spent time in Iowa State Penitentiary on a charge of armed robbery. At his trial he’d taken the
witness stand but became “catatonic” and could not testify. During his two-week trial he became violent and had to be placed under restraint in the courtroom. A jury found him guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of rape, and he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. His case was automatically appealed. His conviction was overturned when a county man, arrested by police for drug dealing, told police that the rape-murders had been committed by another man, not Kethy; subsequent DNA evidence proved that Kethy had not been the rapist, and linked the other suspect to the crimes. When Kethy was released after eight years on Death Row TV reporters had asked him to comment on his ordeal but Kethy “shook his head wordlessly and walked away.”