Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
R
eadied you must be readied. Ma’am.
B
ehind the University gym there was a paved parking area and beyond this a steep hill and—somehow—unrecognizably—beyond this another paved area like a loading dock where the air smelled of creosote and oily water as by a polluted river and now in the astonishment of terror she was seeing others like herself—women—forced by their male captors to walk along a roadway beside the river like refugees pushed and shoved and spoken to harshly and yet with bemusement stumbling forward in dread of falling for to fall in such a place would be to perish—this was no place for weakness, any sort of vulnerability, female “sensitivity.” M.R. saw that in the company of the sleek-seal-headed young man was another young man who resembled Evander—(but was not Evander)—and another, older man who resembled Carlos—(but was surely not Carlos)—and their eyes upon her were bluntly assessing and all but dismissive for she was no longer a young woman.
With the others like staggering cattle M.R. was forced past flares of manic flame along a sunken roadway and across a bridge of rust-corroded girders and beneath the bridge a sound of dark rushing water like the cries of the damned. None of the others were known to her as she was not known to them and none wished to reach out to her, to offer solace—as M.R. herself had no solace to offer, in the extremity of her terror. She seemed to know this place—this bridge—the river—but could not recall their names for the names of places were lost to her and soon too she realized that she was bereft of her name and her identification of which she’d been so ludicrously proud—
M. R. Neukirchen.
No more than a lonely child’s imaginary play-game her life was exposed as the unflattering white-rubber swim cap had been snatched from her head, the straps of the unflattering swimsuit yanked down and torn and tattered and her breasts partly exposed as beneath the bridge the rushing water called to her jeering
Did you think you could escape forever? Did you think you could escape this—forever?
It was meant: her femaleness.
That she was a woman, in the body into which she’d been born.
She had known this—had she? She had not known this, she had cast the knowledge from her, repelled, disbelieving. She had not loved any man, really—she had not had any child nor had she ever been impregnated, the thought had filled her with anxiety, disdain. For that was not
her.
That was not
her wish.
They had come for her and for other women who had been over-cautious of their lives, who had hoarded their bodies as they had hoarded their souls. Now it was time, now all was exposed, the comfort and deceit of their names—“identities”—the pathos of their lives.
For it was the way of nature, women were possessions of men—fathers, brothers, husbands. It was not the way of nature, women were possessors of their selves, their bodies. She would be mated—she would be impregnated—too long had she escaped this life of the (female) body—the profound and inevitable life of the (female) body as at the foster home long ago the boys had forced younger frightened girls to squirm and squeal and kick and flail beneath them but Mudgirl had been spared, it was Mudgirl’s wish to believe that she had been spared, the sharp-elbowed boys, loud-laughing boys, doglike, crude, cruel, blank-eyed—afterward threatening to strangle the girls if they “told”—though maybe it was a joke and not a threat—all that happened, a joke and not a threat—and not real—as much of childhood was (possibly) a joke and not real and in any case lost to memory as when Mrs. Skedd asked if those little fuckers had touched her and she’d shook her head mutely and evasively and Mrs. Skedd chose to believe her or in any case not to further inquire and when she’d hidden—crawled into the smelly dark space beneath the stairs—when the man with the spiky hair pulled her out by the ankles laughing—it was out of instinct as now out of instinct she dared to pull away from the others, crouched and cringing and to her relief she found herself beneath the bridge somehow, or—this was later, farther along the roadway—this was hours later—crouched beneath a road in a drainage pipe, naked, shivering, yet eager with relief—eager to believe that she had escaped, and must now make her way back home—wherever “home” was—by cunning, like a wild animal; by night, that no one would see her; crouched in the filthy drainage pipe for how long until there came a scrabbling, a sudden flash of light, hooting and laughing and she’d been discovered hiding, in the pathos of hiding, but the men had tracked her down of course, hauled her out by the ankles so that her body was scraped, the skin broken and torn and bleeding
Did you think that you could escape—this?
Along the river were warehouses and in one of these she was taken into a large barracks-type room with other staggering stunned exhausted and terrified women, blank-eyed women, broken women, their shame was such they could not bear to acknowledge one another, and she was one of them and not distinct from them or among them and in a place smelling of creosote and dirt she was thrown down and the remains of the ridiculous swimsuit torn from her and a male figure—a stranger—mulish, heavy—without a word forced himself upon her, grunting with effort, forcing her to lie still and her legs apart—with dry, brute force she was entered—her head struck against the floor—
Uh! uh! uh!
Trying to scream but again no sound came from her throat—trying to fight her assailant, her rapist, kicking, squirming, clawing at him until he knelt above her and slapped her, shut his hands into fists like rocks and struck her, the old cuts on her face sliced raw, her face lacerated and bleeding and yet she fought, in a frenzy of terror she fought, in terror of her life she fought, and somehow—later—when he’d finished with her, or had in disgust grunted lifting himself from her, to depart—she was crawling in an open field—she had escaped, had she?—or they had finished with her and so she was alone now crawling like a wounded animal her body racked with pain and her face bleeding yet there came to her ears the excited cries of crows—a flurry of black-feathered wings in the jungle-like trees at the edge of the field—and there, the King of the Crows flying above her flapping his wings in fury—whether protective of her, or punitive, in disgust of her like the others, she didn’t know.
Hurry! Here! This way!
Crouched over making her way like a grotesque broken-backed creature pushing through grasses and into a marshy area where her feet sank into mud and insects hurtled themselves at her exposed face and skin and overhead the King of the Crows continued to shriek
Hurry! This way! This way!
and she came upon an open area near a shallow stream in which countless bird-tracks were tamped into the mud like crazed and deafening languages warring with one another and it was her task to make sense of this, it was her task though the human brain could not make sense of so many languages, such vastness, as overhead birds called and mocked and the King of the Crows shrieked at her but she was too exhausted to continue so slept where she lay in the mud her hair caked with mud, mud in her nostrils, her mouth she thought
I will dream now of God. This is a place only God can redeem
. When she wakened she saw that the sun had a belated look in the sky as if this were a day out of some past-time now lost and recoverable in memory only by the most extreme effort of which in her weakened state she was not capable. And in this open space she was naked, terribly exposed, vulnerable and small and her breasts were aching and sensitive with wounds, bite-wounds, where her rapist had sunk his teeth into her—had he?—the nipples torn as if violently sucked-at, bitten. And in this too she was given to know
Not one thing that has happened to you has not happened to others before you.
In this way even her pain was a rebuke to her.
Yet there was beauty even here, that was a rebuke to her despair. On all sides the mudflats riddled with galaxies of flittering light-puddles—a vast broken mirror reflecting a broken sky.
On this mildly overcast day the sun was unnaturally strong. Even behind a scrim of clouds like half-shut eyes the sun was unnaturally strong.
Waking to the marsh-smell in her nostrils, her hair and mouth and the King of the Crows overhead in a tall spiking conifer bereft of nearly all needles and twisted like a misshapen spine yet here too there was a strange sort of beauty as in the sleek-black-feathered bird with the mad yellow eye and Mudwoman was given to know, she was impregnated; and what would come of the rapist’s seed jammed up inside her, she had no idea.
“O
h. God.”
She must have fallen asleep, the heavy book had fallen from her hands and wakened her with a jolt.
Quickly she stood: what time was it? Where was she?
. . . in the library downstairs at Charters House. Barefoot and but partially dressed and shivering convulsively like an inmate deranged and terrified in some corner of some mental asylum of long-ago in the aftermath of a dream so visceral it would seem to have had no visual or intellectual or even emotional content whatsoever but to have been the equivalent of having been trapped inside a clanging bell or dragged behind a speeding vehicle along a graveled roadway and yet she would not succumb, she would not give in to whatever this was, whatever vision, or whatever failure of vision, for she was strong and determined and she was M. R. Neukirchen—she remembered the name, in triumph—and it was a good strong respected name—it was
her name
—she would bear through this day as through the other days for as long as she was capable and so she would make her way back to the second floor of Charters House and try to sleep until it was time for her to get out of bed with the twittering of the first birds and make her solitary way to the University gym to the cavernous University pool which opened at 5
A.M.
for solitary swimmers like herself and if this day was like M.R.’s other days she would arrive no later than 5:30
A.M.
This is my life now. I will live it!
May–June 1968
O
n the Convent Street bridge they were walking together. Though she was not really a little girl any longer yet Mrs. Neukirchen held her hand firmly and warmly and Mrs. Neukirchen was telling her a story as Mrs. Neukirchen often did at such times when they were alone together in her soft breathy-girlish voice that made Meredith think the story had
really happened
though this story was in fact a fairy tale—one of the happy-ending fairy tales and so fit for a child to hear—“Little Briar-Rose.”
Such happiness! Mrs. Neukirchen and her little daughter walking together close together, on the narrow pedestrian walkway on the Convent Street bridge.
Though Mrs. Neukirchen had to walk slowly because of her swollen legs and ankles. And Meredith had to walk slowly to keep pace with her mother though Mudgirl would have liked to break free and run, run—run across the Convent Street bridge like a restless little mongrel-dog, that wants only to shake off her mistress’s grip and escape.
Escape where?
You have already been there. And there is nowhere.
“Little Briar-Rose” was—almost—a scary story because Little Briar-Rose was cast under a spell by a cruel witch and slept and slept and slept for a very long time until awakened by a king’s son and Mrs. Neukirchen did not seem to comprehend that the story was scary for it ended with the words
And then the wedding of the king’s son with Little Briar-Rose was celebrated with all splendor, and they lived contented to the end of their days.
If you did not hear the ending of the story, it was a scary story. But the ending was meant to change the story as if you could change a story backward.
And uttered in Mrs. Neukirchen’s special storytelling voice and in a trance of concentration Meredith was staring through the bridge railing at the water rushing below whispering and laughing quietly and a shivery sensation rose in her and she heard herself say as if it were the river speaking through her, “Did you find me somewhere—Momma—and bring me home?”
It had been a hard thing to learn, to say
Momma
. As she’d been instructed to say
Momma, Daddy
like a deaf-mute child instructed to mouth sounds she can’t hear. And now, she had said a wrong thing. As Mudgirl should have known. As Mudgirl did know, in the startled and appalled aftermath of her question that so resembled a fairy-tale question naïvely put to a fairy-tale stepmother.
Mrs. Neukirchen stared at her horrified. Her soft raddled-pretty moon face flushed with blood and her eyes were damp with hurt and reproach.
“ ‘Find you!’ ‘Bring you home!’ What on earth are you saying, Merry? You were always ours—God sent you to
us.
Out of all the world—you are our daughter.”
Mrs. Neukirchen’s voice quavered with hurt and indignation. For where a stepmother is hurt, there is indignation as well.
Mrs. Neukirchen did not release Meredith’s fingers but squeezed them harder. Traffic was passing over the Convent Street bridge causing the old wrought-iron bridge to vibrate and shudder and the planks to rattle and beneath the bridge where Meredith was staring the river was swift and purposeful-seeming. Mrs. Neukirchen continued to speak but Meredith heard only these desperate repeated words—“You know that, Merry, don’t you? Out of all of the world—God brought you to Mr. Neukirchen and me—you know that?”
Was this so? Mudgirl could not recall.
Confused with the whispery-laughing river-sound was a memory of—a house that wasn’t the Neukirchens’ house but a smaller house—a woman’s nasal-sharp voice calling
Jew-ell!
But really, this memory was lost. Smudged and faded like a weatherworn billboard. As poor wheezing Puddin’ whose stumpy tail wagged so eagerly even in his last, elderly months had begun to fade—they had loved Puddin’ so, and Puddin’ had loved them so, but one day Puddin’ was gone and it was not good—“healthy”—to brood upon Puddin’.
Tearful Mrs. Neukirchen stooped to hug her little girl. There was no escaping now, Mudgirl must stand still and unresisting in her mother’s anxious arms.
And Mudgirl was a good girl, really. Mudgirl had learned to be a good girl in a trance of smiling terror stammering
Y-yes. Y-yes M-Momma don’t cry.
T
here is a day, an hour. When you understand that the swift-flowing river runs in one direction only, and nothing can reverse it.
“D
id you find me somewhere, Daddy? And bring me home?”
Like little poison toads in a fairy tale these words leapt from the child’s mouth.
Mr. Neukirchen drove—slowly, fussily—over the Convent Street bridge. For this was a narrow rattly old bridge and Daddy took care crossing any bridge as he said with any passenger on board and particularly his dear daughter. And how much nicer it was to drive—to be driven—over this bridge than to walk for inside the car you could shut your eyes and not have to see the slate-colored water rushing below or the iron railing close beside the car. And once they were on the far side of the bridge Meredith opened her eyes and there was no rushing water—no danger.
This day—a Saturday morning in June—was some weeks after the walk with Mrs. Neukirchen across the bridge when Meredith had asked her strange question that had so upset her mother and in this interlude both Mrs. Neukirchen and her daughter had forgotten the words they’d exchanged as if these words had never been and so it was a surprise to Meredith, and unexpected, how these shocking words came to her again when she was with Mr. Neukirchen—
Did you find me somewhere? And bring me home?
For truly she could not recall. Only very faintly the names
Jew-ell
—
Jedina
—sounded in her memory like distant tolling bells.
But Daddy was not upset by his daughter’s question as Momma had been. For Daddy rarely became upset as Momma did—it was his “phlegmatic soul” as Daddy said. For a moment not speaking sucking at his lower lip in a comical expression of hard-thinking and then he laughed and said, evenly, as if the child’s question were the most natural question in the world, “Meredith, of course! Yes! We found you! But not just ‘somewhere’—in a very special place. You wouldn’t remember—you were
too little
—we found you beneath a toadstool in our backyard, by the garden gate—not one of those puny little toadstools that grow everywhere but a big toadstool the size of”—Daddy cast his thoughts about like a loose net, seeing what sweet silly thing he could snag—“a Rhode Island red hen. That big.”
Meredith giggled, Daddy was always so funny. A toadstool! A red hen! Even when you had no idea what Daddy was talking about, Daddy was so very funny.
But Daddy squinched up his face in a frown. “What? What’s so funny? It’s the gospel truth—your mother and I discovered you, a
wee little thing the size of a baby chick,
beneath the toadstool by the garden gate. You wouldn’t remember, you see—and now the toadstool has vanished.”
Meredith knew what a
toadstool
was—a
stool
for a
toad—
Daddy had explained. She had never seen any actual toad sitting on a toadstool but this was the purpose of the strange gray growths that festooned near the garden in the early morning that shattered to powder if you didn’t touch them very gently.
But it was silly—wasn’t it?—to believe that her parents had found her beneath a toadstool. Even a big toadstool.
Daddy insisted, “Oh yes! We did find you there, that’s exactly where you were when we first laid eyes on you.”
Meredith giggled she was
not.
Daddy insisted yes she
was.
“Of course, we’d ordered you. The way we order pizza from Luigi’s—over the phone. Instead of tomato-cheese-pepperoni pizza we ordered a
beautiful little baby girl the size of a baby chick
—wavy brown hair, brown eyes, long narrow feet—
Meredith Ruth—“Merry.”
By now Meredith was giggling so hard, she nearly wet her panties. There was rarely any time when she laughed except when Daddy teased in his funny-Daddy way going on and on—and on—lifting his hands from the steering wheel to gesture and making his beard bristle; there was no way to stop Daddy or even to question him for in such a state Daddy was a vortex sucking everything into it faster and faster so that whatever Meredith had asked him initially was lost and lost even to Meredith who was weak and breathless and jittery from giggling and Daddy, too, was laughing and then abruptly—for it was Daddy’s way to be abrupt in such matters like switching off TV—Daddy was pressing his forefinger against his nose meaning
something secret,
that Momma need not know.
So this was a good ending, too. Meredith would never never never
never
ask her silly question again.