Little Bird of Heaven

by Joyce Carol Oates

SO ABRUPTLY MY FATHER was staying with my uncle Earl Diehl who lived in East Sparta. But Daddy’s things remained at home, most of Daddy’s clothes and Daddy’s tools in his basement workshop and Daddy’s 1975 Willys Jeep he’d been thinking about selling, in the garage.

  Each time the phone rang naturally the thought was This is Daddy!

  But Daddy didn’t call until the next evening when we were just sitting down—late—to a meal already delayed and interrupted by phone calls. In a guarded voice my mother answered and waved for Ben and me to leave the kitchen, which we did, hovering nervously in the living room, and after a few minutes my mother called Ben back—“Your father wants to speak with you, Ben! Hurry up”—and Ben took the receiver from her hand shyly and reluctantly; his face flushed red, all he could murmur was O.K., Dad, yeah I guess so in a voice close to tears. Then it was my turn, I was dry-mouthed and anxious and like Ben stricken with shyness for how strange it was, how wrong-seeming, to be speaking with Daddy on the phone! I don’t think that either Ben or I had ever spoken on the phone before with our father; I was unprepared for my father’s voice so close in my ear—“Is that Puss? That’s my li’l Puss? Is it? My sweet Puss—is it?” I was unable to say anything more than Yes Daddy! Yes Daddy for something seemed to be wrong, there was something wrong with Daddy I could not have identified He’s drunk. Couldn’t get up the courage to call his family except drunk. Unexpectedly I began to cry, I was confused and frightened and out of nowhere began to cry, and Daddy said sharply, “Damn, don’t cry. Krista, don’t you cry. No fucking crying, what the fuck’s your mother been telling you, put your mother on the phone, Krista—”

  What happened after that, I don’t remember. My mother must have taken the receiver from me, the rest of the evening is a blank.

  Hadn’t heard my father’s voice very clearly over the phone and so it came to be a time when I couldn’t hear anyone’s voice very clearly. At school I had difficulty hearing Mrs. Bender. A roaring in my ears like distant thunder. Or in the distance, the roar of one of Daddy’s cars on the Huron Pike Road coming home. On the blackboard—in fact, at our school it was a green board—where chalk-words and numerals melted into one another. My eyes swam in tears. My nose ran. Hunched over my desk desperately wiping my nose with my fingers, shiny wet mucus on my fingers I had to let dry in the air, I’d used up the wad of Kleenex my mother had given me. “Krista? Are you crying? You can tell me, dear.”

  Mrs. Bender stooped to peer at me. Mrs. Bender provided me with fresh tissues. Mrs. Bender asked if I would like to step outside into the hall to speak with her—if I had something to say, I might want to say in private—but I shook my head no. My mother had cautioned me Don’t say anything about Daddy. Never say anything about our lives at home. Never anything to be repeated Krista do you understand?

  Faint and reproachful in my ears were my father’s admonitory words Don’t cry! Krista, don’t you cry! No fucking crying.

  I was shivering so hard, my teeth were chattering. Like a stark-wet-eyed little doll set to shaking. Somehow it had happened that a daughter of Lucille Diehl—Lucille, who took such pride in her household and in her children!—had been allowed to leave the house on a freezing February morning in just a cotton pullover and slacks beneath a winter jacket, my fine limp pale-blond hair badly snarled at the nape of my neck and my skin hot.

  Tenderly Mrs. Bender pressed the back of her cool hand against my forehead.

  “Oh, dear! You’re running a fever.”

  Shivering turned to giggling. Running a fever—how could this be?

  In the school infirmary the nurse took my temperature with a thermometer thrust beneath my tongue, making me gag. She examined the scummy interior of my mouth and my throat that throbbed with soreness. She and Mrs. Bender conferred in whispers This girl, you know who she is—Diehl?

  It took much of an hour for the nurse to contact my mother on the phone to tell her please come immediately, take your child home she has a temperature of 102° F and seems to be coming down with the flu.

  Coming down with the flu! This expression was used so frequently in Sparta in the winter, it had acquired something of the lilt and innocence of a popular song. Coming down with the flu explained this sick sad collapsing sensation so it wasn’t scary any longer but a hopeful sign, you were just like everyone else.

  “BULLSHIT.”

  This was what Ben said. Sometimes in disgust, sometimes laughingly. Sometimes in a mutter not meant to be overheard and sometimes rudely loud so that my mother and I had no choice but to hear.

  When Mom wouldn’t let us see the newspaper, watch the six o’clock local news or any TV unless she was in the room with us clutching the remote control.

  When Mom took telephone calls upstairs in the bedroom with the door shut against us. When Mom no longer summoned us to the phone, to speak with Daddy. In desperation I appealed to Ben to say why, why was this happening, and Ben had no answer except a shrug—“Bullshit. That’s all it is.”

  I asked Ben what this had to do with Mrs. Kruller being killed and Ben only just repeated in maddening idiocy—“Bullshit. I told you.”

  “What do you mean—‘bullshit’?”

  “I told you, stupid. ‘Bullshit.’”

  I followed Ben around. I pulled at Ben’s arm. Ben slapped at me, shoved me. I was white-faced in desperation, indignation. I repeated my question and finally Ben relented as if taking pity on me.

  “What they’re saying in the news. That Dad is a ‘suspect.’”

  “‘Suspect’—what’s that?”

  “The police are ‘questioning’ Dad about Mrs. Kruller. He’s ‘in custody’—Eddy Diehl is a ‘suspect.’”

  “But—why?”

  Of course I knew what a suspect was. I knew what it meant when a suspect was in police custody. Yet I could not seem to comprehend what this had to do with our father, or with us. I was feeling anxious, vaguely nauseated. I could not comprehend why my brother suddenly hated me.

  “Why? Because they’re assholes, that’s why. These men she was seeing, one of them did it, ‘strangled’ her—‘murdered’ her—and they’re trying to say that Daddy was one of these men, but everybody knows Aaron’s father is the killer, it’s God-damned fucking bullshit, taking Dad into custody.”

  Ben’s face contorted as if he were about to cry and I was frightened that Ben would cry for if Ben cried and I was a witness, Ben would be furious with me, Ben would never forgive me and would hate me even worse than he hated me now. So I said, in a silly-girl voice, like a girl on a TV comedy whose mere presence evokes expectant titters of laughter in the invisible audience: “Oh, say—know what?—Mrs. Kruller was here, once.”

  Ben stared at me. Ben’s eyes glittered dangerously with tears.

  “Here? Where?”

  “Here. In this house.”

  “Bullshit she was! When?”

  I tried to think. It must have been last year, last spring. At the start of warm weather. But we were still in school—it would have been May, early June. The memory returned to me like a TV scene that, at first, seems unfamiliar but gradually then reveals itself as familiar, comforting. The school bus from Harpwell Elementary had brought me home unexpectedly early—12:30 P.M. It was a half-day Wednesday for a teachers’ meeting had been called for that afternoon. Mom was away, Mom had not known about the meeting and the half-day Wednesday. Mom was away in Chautauqua Falls visiting a relative hospitalized for surgery.

  The back door was unlocked, Mom had told me—Mom had told Ben and me—just to come inside if she wasn’t home by the time we got home, she was sure to be home by 5:00 P.M., she promised.

  It was not unusual, to leave a house unlocked. On the Huron Pike Road in the countryside west of Sparta it was not unusual to leave a house unlocked all day, all night.

  Nor was it unusual that a mother—a “devoted” mother, like Lucille Diehl—might leave her children unattended for an hour or two, in such circumstances.

  And so I walked into the kitche
n humming to myself, and there was Mom at the sink—no: not Mom—there was Zoe Kruller at the sink!—pretty Zoe Kruller from Honeystone’s Dairy except Zoe wasn’t wearing her white cord smock and trousers but silky purple slacks and a snug-fitting lavender sweater, no hairnet on her springy hair, Zoe was whistling as she rinsed coffee mugs at the sink and turning Zoe blinked at me with startled widened eyes and after the merest heartbeat of a pause Zoe said in a low throaty smooth voice like honey, “Why it’s—Krissie! Well, say—Krissie! Thought that was you! What brings you home at this time of day, Krissie?”

  Zoe’s voice was pitched to be heard. Not just by little Krissie but by someone else, in an adjacent room perhaps. At the time I did not quite grasp this fact. At the time I was surprised—I was very surprised—but it was a pleasant surprise, wasn’t it?—to see Zoe Kruller in our kitchen, at our sink? Zoe was smiling so hard at me, her cheeks were all dimpled. Her smile was wide and lustrous baring her pink gums. Against her milky skin freckles and tiny moles quivered. In the other room I heard a man’s voice—a muffled voice—but of course it was Daddy’s voice—I knew it was Daddy of course, I’d seen Daddy’s Jeep in the driveway. I told Zoe that it was a half-day at school, I told Zoe about the teachers’ meeting, and how my mother had driven to Chautauqua Falls to visit a relative in the hospital, and how my mother would be home in a few hours. At the mention of my mother Zoe seemed to brighten even more, Zoe said, “That’s who I dropped by to see, Krissie—your mom. Just wanted to say hello to Lucy but Lucy isn’t home—I guess? Where’d you say she went, Chautauqua Falls?”

  There came Daddy into the kitchen combing his hair—it was strange to see Daddy combing his hair, in the kitchen—Daddy’s bristly red-brown hair that looked newly wetted as if he’d just had a shower; Daddy was combing his hair back from his forehead in a single sweeping movement; Daddy was wearing one of his fresh-ironed short-sleeved white cotton shirts, and in the breast pocket was a plastic ballpoint pen, the kind given out at SPARTA CONSTRUCTION; and Daddy’s face looked ruddy and handsome and Daddy stared at me for a long moment as if he didn’t know who I was, then said, “Krissie. You’re home.”

  Quickly Zoe intervened explaining that I had just a “half-day” at school since there was a teachers’ meeting. Zoe explained that she’d told me she had dropped by to see Lucy—Lucille—“But now I guess I’ll be going, since Lucille isn’t here right now.”

  By this time Zoe had dried both coffee mugs and put them away in the maple wood cabinet in exactly the places where Mom kept them.

  “You don’t have to tell your mother that I was here to visit her,” Zoe said. Zoe stooped to smile at me even harder, and to brush her lips against my forehead. Zoe smelled perfumy and musky and nothing at all like Honeystone’s Dairy. In the hollow of her neck there was a faint glisten of moisture, I’d have liked to touch with my tongue. Around her neck Zoe was wearing a small golden bird—a dove?—on a thin golden chain. “It can be a surprise, Krissie. I’ll come back tomorrow and surprise your mom so don’t spoil the surprise, Krissie, all right? We’ll keep it a secret between you and me, that I was here today.”

  Yes, I said. I liked it that there might be a secret between Zoe Kruller and me; and that Daddy was part of it, too.

  “Well, Puss!—your dad has to leave, too.” Awkwardly Daddy leaned over me and kissed me on the forehead, a wet embarrassed swipe of a kiss at my hairline. “See, I’m going out to a construction site—I just dropped back here to change my shirt. Well—O.K.! See you later, Krissie.”

  If it seemed strange that Zoe Kruller and my father scarcely acknowledged each other—scarcely glanced at each other—somehow it didn’t register on me, at the time. Strange too that Zoe left the kitchen carrying her shoulder bag slung over her shoulder by a strap, with an airy growl “G’bye, you two”—and almost immediately afterward Daddy left the kitchen by the same door; within seconds there came the sound of the Willys Jeep pulling out of the driveway, and surely Zoe Kruller had to be riding with Daddy, in the passenger’s seat—but already by that time I was distracted peering into the refrigerator for a snack, leftover tapioca pudding from the previous evening’s dessert neatly covered in Saran Wrap.

  Never did it occur to me to think at that time Mrs. Kruller was here with Daddy! Mrs. Kruller came to visit Daddy.

  Still less would I have thought Daddy brought Mrs. Kruller here, to be alone with her. While Mommy was away.

  “Mrs. Kruller was here,” I told Ben. “Last year. When the teachers had their meeting, and we were let out of school at noon.”

  “We weren’t! That never happened.”

  “You weren’t. It wasn’t your school.”

  “Bullshit Mrs. Kruller was here. She wasn’t any friend of Mom’s.”

  “She dropped by to see Mom, she said. She called Mom ‘Lucy.’ But Mom wasn’t home so she went away again.”

  Ben said doubtfully, “Why’d she come here? Mom and Mrs. Kruller were not friends.”

  There was something sad and flat in the way Ben spoke the words Mom and Mrs. Kruller were not friends.

  “Daddy was here, too. At the same time.”

  “He was not! You’re making this up.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “Zoe Kruller wouldn’t have come here, Krista. That is such bullshit.”

  “Will you stop saying that! She was, too. And Daddy was here, too.”

  “Krista, he was not.”

  “They went away in Daddy’s Jeep. I had a half-day at school and came home early and they were here.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “They did.”

  Ben struck me in the shoulder, hard. “That never happened, you’re a God-damned liar. You tell anyone about that, I’ll break your scrawny neck.”

  Ben pushed past me and out of the room. I felt a flame of pure hatred ripple over me for my brother who was so crude, and so cruel. Scrawny neck!—I would never forget these words.

  Later, I would come to wonder; maybe Ben was right, and I was wrong. That might be better to think, than the other.

  Had Zoe Kruller really been in our kitchen, rinsing coffee mugs at the sink? Had Zoe Kruller really been here, whistling? And Daddy had come into the kitchen combing his hair back from his face, his left arm bent and part-cradling his head, his right hand gripping the black plastic comb he carried in his rear pants pocket, and Daddy had been limping just slightly, you would have to know that Daddy had a bad knee to register this limp. Maybe I was remembering all of this wrongly?—the way I hadn’t been hearing Mrs. Bender at school, or hadn’t been able to see the smaller chalk markings on the blackboard at school.

  Here was another possibility: Zoe Kruller had come to our house and Mommy had been waiting for her. Maybe it hadn’t been the half-day at my school but another day. Mommy had invited Zoe Kruller to the house because Lucille Diehl and Zoe Kruller were friends, and it wasn’t Daddy who was Zoe Kruller’s friend after all.

  Which would mean: Daddy had not been here. Daddy had not driven Mrs. Kruller away in the black Willys Jeep.

  Daddy hadn’t been here at all. Not at that time.

  11

  BUT I CAN LOVE YOU BEST, Daddy! I can forgive you.

  That would be my secret, not even Daddy would know.

  In the County Line Tavern, in our booth in a farther corner of the barroom Daddy tossed change onto the sticky tabletop—quarters, dimes, wild rolling pennies.

  “Here’s change for the phone, Krista. Call your mother and let her know where you are. Let her know that you are safe”—Daddy twisted his mouth into a sneer of a smile—“and you’re having dinner with me and why doesn’t she come join us?—we’d like that.”

  Would we like that? I wasn’t so sure.

  Daddy winked at me as obediently I slid out of the booth. I laughed uncertain what Daddy’s wink meant.

  As if my mother would want to meet us—in all places, the noisy County Line Tavern which was a country place on the highway five miles north of Sparta and about that fa
r from my home, in another direction. Here the air was dense with men’s uplifted voices, laughter. Loud rock music, country-and-western, blaring from a jukebox. That smell that is so poignant to me—that smell that indicates my father, my father’s world—of beer, tobacco smoke, a just barely perceptible odor of male sweat, maybe male anxiety, anguish. There were a few women in the County Line—young women—some very young-looking girls who had to be at least twenty-one to be served alcohol, seated together in a festive knot at the bar—but predominantly the place was men: local working men, farmers, truckers who left the motors of their enormous rigs running in the parking lot—why, I never knew—wouldn’t they be burning up gasoline, needlessly?—causing the fresh chill air outside to burn blue with exhaust.

  At this hour of early-evening, nearing 6:00 P.M., past dusk and dark as night, the County Line was very popular. Men in no hurry to get to their homes, or men like Eddy Diehl somehow lacking a home, invisibly disfigured and yet determined to be festive, hearty. In my Sparta High jacket which was made of a synthetic fabric that resembled silk, eye-catching deep-purple glancingly-glamorous silk, in my much-laundered jeans and with my luminous-blond ponytail flaring at the back of my head and halfway down my back, I caught the eye of men the way an upright flame drifting through murky shadow would catch the eye. In a gesture of vague paternal protectiveness my father had led me to a booth in the “family” section of the tavern when we’d first entered—he’d seated me with my back to the bar—but seemed heedless now, that to call my mother on the pay phone I would have to make my way through the bustle of the barroom, by myself.

  In my flurry of excitement—the daughter-enchantment of being with the forbidden Daddy—it would not have occurred to me to think Why would Daddy bring me to such a place! Nor was I willing to think Is it to show me off—Eddy Diehl’s daughter, who still adores him?—has faith in him?

  In the cramped corridor outside the restrooms a thick-bodied man with bristling hair stood at the pay phone cursing into the receiver—“Expect me to b’lieve that, fuck you.” It was a furious and yet intimate exchange, I had to wonder at the person—a woman, surely—at the other end: wife? Ex-wife? Girlfriend? Already at fifteen I seemed to know that there would not be, in my life, anything like this sort of blunt matter-of-fact intimacy; anything like such vulnerability.