Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Lizabeta walked on. She heard one of the horses wicker in the barn; a rooster was crowing querulously. There was storm debris everywhere: broken tree limbs, mud sloughs, a barnyard glittering with reeking puddles. Liquid manure, floating manure, the manure of horses and cows, and the special stench of rain-rotted hay, the stench of rotting flesh, for something must have died, drowned and died and was rotting now somewhere close by. Lizabeta averted her eyes, tried not to breathe until she was past the barnyard.

  Not ever. Would not. Strike a child. I would not.

  It may have been that Mama had slapped fretful little Agnes. In a sudden fit of frustration, despair. Not in dislike of the child. Not in hatred of the child.

  No one had seen. Agnes had cried, screamed, kicked and thrashed in childish rage, but Agnes had already been screaming and thrashing, and no one had seen, and no one would know. Except Agnes, who would learn to respect her mother.

  Discipline was necessary with willful children, the Braams believed. Certainly Walter thought so. Even now Walter sometimes threatened his grown sons with blows, or did in fact hit them, or shove them, if they provoked him; you could see the flush of resentment in the young men’s faces, you could see their clenched fists, but neither ever struck his father in return. They were likely to slink away, abashed and sullen. But they respected their father, Lizabeta knew.

  But not me. Not ever.

  Lizabeta walked hurriedly, stumbling in soft, spongy earth, her hair whipping in the wind. Her heart pounded with a kind of frantic jubilation. The air shone with moisture; everywhere she looked there was a wet, glittery beauty; patches of sumac were beginning to turn, vivid orange, red-orange, assaulting the eye. Only vaguely was she aware of branches slapping at her face, thorns catching at her clothing. Somehow the back of her left hand was threaded with blood; she’d been scratched without noticing. Fear touched her, suffused her. So swift the sensation came and departed, she was left with only its memory, glancing down at herself, the bulky jacket, which reminded her of her swollen belly, the heaviness of her pregnant body.

  Why she’d fled the house: it wasn’t just the children, nor the elderly ailing women, damned leaking ceilings, so much housework to be done, and that evening’s meal to be prepared, but she was in terror that she was pregnant again. And Alistair only thirteen months old!

  For the past week, in a daze of apprehension, Lizabeta had been counting days on the calendar. The lightest of pencil marks, so that no one glancing at the large glossy International Harvester calendar that hung on the kitchen wall would notice. Repeatedly she’d counted, backward and forward. And the days were becoming too many: thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four. Can’t be. No!

  She could not bear it, the moment of telling. Approaching the man, the father. A woman believes that she is pregnant and must inform the man who is the father of the child, and this man, who is the father, will respond visibly to her words. The look in his eyes, the tightening in his jaws.

  “Jesus! Don’t tell me.”

  This time, he might say, “Lizabeta! Goddamn, this can’t be.”

  Walter hadn’t wanted a third child, not at his age. Yet he’d come to love his baby son, it seemed. Not that Walter spent much time with his baby son, or with his young daughters. But he loved them, as Braam men loved their children, at a distance. The care and love of children was women’s work exclusively.

  Your son, isn’t he beautiful?

  You love him, don’t you? And you love me?

  This time, this fourth pregnancy, so soon after the third, Lizabeta could not imagine speaking of, which words she must choose, how Walter would react—she could not.

  Lizabeta walked swiftly away from the house. Hardly knowing where she was going. Only she had to hurry: to run! She had never once resisted Walter’s wish to have sex with her, she would not have imagined for a moment that any wife might resist her husband. Their lovemaking was apt to be abrupt, impulsive. Walter sometimes “took care”—as he called it—but more often, if he’d been drinking and had come home late from Sparta, he did not. To a man like Walter Braam, sex was a weakness: to indulge in it was a concession to weakness, not to love or tenderness. Walter would accept responsibility for this fourth pregnancy in seven years, for Walter Braam was a man to accept responsibility; yet at the same time he would blame Lizabeta. She knew.

  Lizabeta paused to glance about: where was she? Her feet, the lower parts of her legs, were wet; she was chilled, uneasy. The sun that had been so bright a few minutes before was now partly obscured by clouds and had taken on a wan, sullen glare. The autumnal air had turned colder. Lizabeta had been following the partly overgrown path beside the river, away from the house. Away from the farmyard. If this land was still Braam property, it no longer resembled farmable land but, hilly and rocky, with outcroppings of shale or granite in layers like gigantic steps, it had the look of a great, ancient ruin. Close by, the river rushed swollen and mud-colored, the highest Lizabeta had ever seen it. “Black River”—Lizabeta shaped the name aloud. For no one in the Rapids ever called the river by its map name. There was nothing of blackness in it now; after a week of rain the river more resembled a massive flooded ditch. Ahead, just visible through a stand of badly shredded, peeling birch trees, was the series of steep misshapen hills, the rock formations known locally as the Spill. Lizabeta could see rock strata and glittering falling water in a noisy stream, spilling into the river below. Lizabeta smelled the water, she smelled mud. Her nostrils were assailed by a rich, stupefying odor of decay.

  Corpses of dead, drowned creatures in the river. Amid storm debris the swollen and obscene carcasses of dogs, sheep, groundhogs, deer, rushing past as in a lurid pageantry.

  Could die here. No one would know. No one would know why.

  There came a cry: “Aunt Liz’beta!”

  John Henry, breathless and excited. He must have sighted Lizabeta and followed her along the river. Early that morning Walter had sent John Henry out to clear away storm damage in the area around the barns and to begin the work of repairing fences; he’d been gone much of the day. His coveralls were splotched with mud and wet to the knee, his battered boy’s face shone with sweat and seemed flushed as if with sunburn. As a dog is pleasurably excited to unexpectedly discover its master out-of-doors, so John Henry seemed pleasurably excited to see Lizabeta in this unexpected place. Lizabeta felt a stab of dismay—Don’t look at me. Go away and leave me—but of course John Henry was looking at Lizabeta, staring and blinking, his teeth bared in a big smile. His head was bobbing, that shaved head covered in bluish stubble like smudged coal dust.

  John Henry’s shaved head! All of Lizabeta’s repugnance, her despair, her hurt, her frustration, and her rage, her terror at her predicament, seemed to spring at her from the pathetic sight of the retarded boy’s shaved head.

  Years ago Lizabeta had learned why John Henry’s head had to be shaved every few weeks: to prevent John Henry from “catching” head lice. (As a boy in Sparta, John Henry had “caught” lice often and had become terrified of the brutal delousing procedure, with a rough haircut and head shave and kerosene scrubbed into the exposed scalp, followed by a scrubbing with lye soap, which had been performed, Lizabeta could imagine with what fury and disgust, by John Henry’s nurse’s aide mother, Dorothy.) And Lizabeta had soon learned whose task it would be to keep John Henry’s head shaved once he’d moved to the Rapids: hers.

  John Henry’s poor battered head needed shaving now. Somehow, in those days of pelting rain, John Henry’s head had been overlooked.

  John Henry was telling his aunt Lizabeta something about the flooded river, the “angels” in the river, when Lizabeta impatiently interrupted: “Melinda is missing! She ran away—she’s gone to the Spill.”

  John Henry ceased chattering. His mouth came open, slack in astonishment. Like a deaf man straining to hear, John Henry stared and blinked at Lizabeta and was for a moment speechless. Melinda? The Spill?

  For abruptly it came to Lizabeta, how the th
ree-year-old had run from her and was lost to her, not the six-year-old whom she’d shouted at, Mama with an upraised fist, Mama livid with rage, but Melinda, the child who was beloved, whose loss meant something: “She’s got away from me, John Henry. She woke from her nap, she slipped outside, it’s the Spill she headed for, Melinda is gone to the Spill.” Lizabeta spoke rapidly yet with the air of one trying to remain calm, to keep from screaming. As John Henry gaped at her, Lizabeta repeated: “The Spill! Melinda! Your cousin Melinda! John Henry, Melinda is gone to the Spill, we must save her.”

  “M’linda? The Spill? Is?”

  John Henry smiled uncertainly. His teeth were badly discolored, broken. For John Henry could not be taken to Sparta to any dentist, even if his uncle had wished to pay for his dental work, just as John Henry could not be taken to any eye doctor, even if his uncle had wished to pay for prescription glasses for his weak, watery eyes. His low forehead creased like an old man’s: Was Aunt Liz’beta teasing? Was this one of the Braams’ jokes? It was not like any woman to tease John Henry. Aunt Liz’beta, her voice lifting in alarm, a silvery voice, a voice like a bird’s cry, a voice that pierced John Henry’s heart like a knife blade, did not appear to be teasing him, and yet—could you know for sure? So often words were surprises, like nudges in the ribs or slaps against the back of the head. Words were shouts, so loud you couldn’t hear. What was strangest was how close up, or at a distance, inside a house or out-of-doors, wearing different clothes, at different times of day and in different moods, individuals whom John Henry knew the names of and recognized the faces of, he could not be certain that he really knew. Few things scared John Henry (for John Henry was beloved of God, who dwelled in the sky and watched over him, most days), but this scared John Henry, for it had to be a mistake of his own. There was his uncle Walter, who had taken John Henry in to live with him, who was sometimes kind to him and sometimes impatient with him, greeted him with a smile, a nod of his head, Good work, John Henry, and sometimes stared at him in surprise and disgust, Damn clumsy sod, look at this. Done wrong. And John Henry shrank away in shame like a kicked dog. But a kicked dog is called back in time. For a kicked dog is forgiven by those who have taken him in. John Henry’s young aunt Lizabeta seemed to have forgiven him; John Henry was grateful for this. Couldn’t recall what he’d done wrong but so grateful to be forgiven. Aunt Liz’beta was speaking to him, leading him to the Spill, where Melinda had run to only a few minutes before, and so it seemed to John Henry, yes, he’d seen his little cousin running along the path beside the river, running from her mama, who stood now on the bank of the frothy stream where spray was blown into their faces, staring and pointing: “John Henry! Look! There’s Melinda over there—by that big boulder—d’you see her?” John Henry crouched on the bank craning his neck, gaping openmouthed, uncertain what he saw or wasn’t seeing, for his eyes were blurred with moisture, a din of churning water. Faintly he could make out something wedged between rocks, might’ve been a broken tree limb, raw greenish pale wood of a broken willow, or might’ve been a drowned creature, or a live, struggling little girl flailing her arms as John Henry’s aunt Liz’beta cried for him to hurry! hurry! before it was too late, hurry! and John Henry obeyed, stepping into the water, which was colder than he expected, needing to grab onto rocks, desperate to grab onto rocks, anything he could grab onto, managing with effort to pull himself up, sharp-edged shelves of granite like gigantic steps in the earth, on all sides misshapen rocks and boulders flung down from the sky by a furious God and barely visible in the sky thin drifting clouds, angels riding those clouds leaning over to spit on John Henry’s baldie-head and laugh at him though they’d been his friends just that morning, John Henry was hoping that his aunt Liz’beta didn’t hear, how ashamed John Henry would be if any of the Braams knew how his garden angels had turned against him another time. It seemed that only a few days ago John Henry had clambered across the Spill when the streams of water were shallow trickles amid the rocks and he hadn’t been afraid then though he’d slipped once or twice on slimy moss, cut the palm of his hand in a fall, but managed to clamber across the Spill and back again and an angel whistling at him from a tall birch had seemed to be praising him for being light-footed and graceful as a cat, but now the angels were withholding their judgment, now John Henry was crouched, now squatting, making his way with painstaking slowness across the the lower part of the Spill, like a great clumsy cockroach making its way, a great scuttling crab, hunched over, grabbing at rocks to haul himself toward, to reach out for Melinda, to take Melinda’s hand, but the water came so fast, so blinding fast and so cold, John Henry’s hands were becoming numb, John Henry’s hands were bleeding from a dozen cuts, recklessly he lunged forward, he could hear Melinda crying John Henry! John Henry! as the water overcame him, splintered into myriad glittery particles like broken glass and each of these water particles a miniature rainbow, there came an unexpected voice, a harsh voice, a din of harsh accusing voices John Henry don’t touch yourself John Henry you disgust me damn clumsy sod dirty boy freak blow your damn nose in a tissue not your damn fingers don’t stick fingers in your nose keep out of your damn mouth your ears you smell of your body you don’t wipe yourself your father is going to discipline you going to cut off your disgusting thing why don’t you go away why don’t you die nobody wants you he’d swallowed water, coughing, choking, his foot slipped on slimy moss and this time he fell, in astonishment falling, too astonished to cry out in pain, the stubbly head struck a sharp-edged rock and in that instant cracked like an egg, the life pent-up inside the head began to leak from him, how like a broken egg, a messy broken egg cracked in a clumsy hand, stricken in shame John Henry fell, the mad rushing frothy stream took him as he was propelled forward and down falling as if thrown from a height, his neck was broken, the knobby bones of his vertebrae were broken, his left eye gouged out, he wasn’t John Henry now, no one knew his name now, amid a desolation of broken and shredded tree limbs and underbrush he was spinning, taken down, over the edge of the Spill and into the river below, borne away and lost in the swollen rushing mud river below.

  Lizabeta ran.

  In terror of what she’d seen, what she’d caused to happen at the Spill, Lizabeta ran.

  Ran blindly, stumbling in the wet earth. Ran without looking back and without knowledge of what had happened, what had happened to John Henry, where the Spill had taken him. She hadn’t seen, immediately she’d backed away, turned, and ran. Seeing how on the path before her the six-year-old Agnes had dared to follow her, but now Lizabeta seized Agnes in her arms, trying awkwardly to run with the frightened child until her arms gave out, she had to let the struggling Agnes down, and now mother and daughter ran together, white-faced Lizabeta clutching at Agnes’s small hand as they ran away from the Spill and back to the house a half-mile away.

  5.

  Days later the body was found, three miles downstream in the rubble beneath the Constableville bridge. Walter Braam identified the remains of his nephew John Henry Chrisman, and the body was taken away and quickly buried. In local papers there was no explanation for the “storm accident” in the Spill, to be counted as one of several fatalities resulting from the October 1951 flooding in the western Adirondacks.

  In June 1952 Lizabeta Braam had a fourth child, the last of Walter Braam’s six children: a boy named Henry. By this time Lizabeta had become an intensely religious Christian who attended both Sunday morning and Wednesday evening services at the First Methodist Church of Rapids. Though Lizabeta suffered from ill health for the remainder of her life—migraine, lightheadedness, female ailments—everyone who knew her, or knew of her, was emphatic in describing her as a saintly woman like no one else of their acquaintance, utterly selfless, loving, devoted to her family and relatives, and so it seemed she was, in the memories of her numerous grandchildren.

  Grandma Braam, who adored us.

  It was my mother’s older sister, Agnes, who told this story of John Henry Chrisman, in the years after Lizabeta die
d. A story told and retold, so it seemed sometimes that I had known John Henry myself. My mother, Melinda, could not have remembered John Henry very clearly, yet she insisted that she did. Fifty-five years after her cousin John Henry died in the Spill, my mother would say, with an inscrutable expression that might have been tenderness, or merely wonderment: “I can see John Henry plain as day, standing in front of me. His face—his face is a blur. But his shaved head I can see. His hands—his big raw scraped-looking hands that had something in them, for me. John Henry is what we called him.”

  Nowhere

  1.

  My mother, I wish . . .

  The first time no one heard. So softly Miriam spoke. In the din of raised voices, laughter. In the din of high-decibel rock music. She was into the beat, sweating with the percussion. Shaking her head from side to side and her eyes closed. Leaking tears but closed. My mother, I wish someone would . . . At the crowded table no one noticed. It was the Star Lake Inn, the deck above the lake. Music blared from speakers overhead. Had to be the Star Lake Inn, though it didn’t look familiar. The moon was rising in the night sky. She’d lost her sandals somewhere. Couldn’t remember who’d brought her here, six miles from home. Then she remembered: the boy from the marina driving the steel-colored Jeep. Not a local guy. He’d been flirting with her all week. Her heart skidded when she saw him. Big-jawed boy with sun-bleached hair, had to be mid-twenties, father owned one of the sleek white sailboats docked at the marina, but Kevin wasn’t into taking orders from the old man like a damn cabin boy, he said. Anger flared in his pale eyes. He was from downstate: Westchester County. Half the summer residents at Star Lake were from Westchester County. He’d thought Miriam was older than fifteen, maybe. Gripping her wrist, not her hand, helping her up into the Jeep. A stabbing sensation shot through her groin.