My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  God the Father.

  God of her father, the Reverend Thaddeus L. Hirshfield of Rackham, Pennsylvania, whom she betrayed (and is betraying still, if he lives) by eloping with Abraham Licht . . . and vowing to love him forever, and to follow him wherever he wishes to go, and to be a true Christian mother to his children.

  So mother instructs daughter.

  So mother catechizes daughter as they kneel together in prayer.

  “ . . . ‘And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.’ Do you understand these words, Millicent?” the laughing woman asks, gripping Millie’s tiny shoulders, shaking her, “—do you understand? Or are you too young?”

  Yet there are reconciliations. There are unexpected hours of happiness, even of calm. For Abraham Licht cannot be resisted—when he chooses not to be resisted. When he chooses to court his Morna again, to adore her again (his narrow-cheeked golden-blond Siennese madonna), to ignore the evidence of her thinning hair and tense mouth. She can be made to weep again in his arms, as he weeps in hers, for he is her husband, she is his wife . . . when he so chooses.

  And between them, supremely of them, is pretty little Millicent.

  Who learns early the value of being pretty and little.

  Who learns early the need to keep secrets.

  MILLICENT, MY CHILD, where are we?

  Is this Hell?

  A kingdom at the bottom of the world, where no one can follow.

  Yet, here is a steeple—blessed by God!

  And a churchyard ripe and rotting with the anointed dead.

  In the drafty kitchen Katrina lights the wood-burning stove, coughing so that her eyes fill with tears. Is it possible—stiff-backed Katrina, of all women, has become humbled by want? Losing pride, her stubborn country-bred strength? Telling the children tales of the marsh to frighten them; tales of the miller’s son who fell in love with a demon and lost his soul, and of Miss Mina Harwood the Governor’s daughter who lost her soul as well . . . and disappeared into the marsh. And, oldest of all, young Sarah Wilcox, or was she Sarah Hood? Not a Londoner by birth, very likely not even English by birth, you could hear it in her voice. The princess who died (yet lives still) in old Muirkirk.

  In the marsh. Deep, deep in the interior of the marsh.

  Where you would not wish to follow. Would you?

  For now it is summer and the air so damp, so warm, as an exhaled breath, moisture gathers itself in clumps like gnats brushing against one’s face. Mother whispers to daughter, Morna to Millicent, she cannot breathe and fears she will suffocate, Oh my child, my darling little girl, shall I bring you with me, Millicent?—or are you too much his?

  If Mother had a rowboat with a bottom not rotted she would row them to safety across the broad weedy pond, the pond large as a lake, past tall nodding pampas grass and whispering scrub willow, past part-submerged fallen logs, past a glittering scrim of dragonflies into the hidden heart of the marsh. Daughter and not-daughter, will you come with me? To that place where no one from the other world dare follow?

  Is this Hell? Or our salvation?

  Where no one dares follow.

  AND THEN SUDDENLY, overnight, the wind shifts. A harsh cleansing wind out of the northeast. The sky opens to torrential rain, and all is changed.

  Business flourishes! There is a much-heralded “boom” in the economy!

  One flurried day Father moves them again to the city—but which city?—not Vanderpoel, not back to elegant Stuyvesant Square, where, it seems, certain debts remain unpaid—but they have a carriage and a hired driver, Thurston and Harwood find themselves enrolled in a private school for boys “of good family” and Elisha is being tutored by a young Irish seminarian and Millie, vivacious Millie, daughter and not-daughter, has a French governess and a charming little silk-and-organdy sunshade and the Licht family attends church services in a massive whitely gleaming Episcopal church where the angelic choir sings with such passion Millie must crouch and press her hands against her tender ears Is this Heaven?—their Heaven?—I hate it!—even as she’s smiling, laughing, like her vivacious glittery-eyed Mother in the company of new friends, Father’s new friends and business associates and in an emerald-green dogcart pulled by two handsome grinning German shepherds across the mayor’s sloping lawn little Millie and the mayor’s nine-year-old son bask in the adoration of their elders knowing how they are beloved, and blessed. And yet—hardly a day later, Father rouses the family at dawn, out in the street a carriage awaits, they must hurry, they must flee, ask no questions, no tears, please!—for they are returning to Muirkirk to the old stone church to Katrina who greets them with no discernible emotion save irony inquiring how long this time will they be staying?

  And what has happened to Father’s boisterous good humor? And why does Mother weep, bitter tears etching her cheeks?—she will only make herself ill, Katrina warns her, and die before her time.

  And Mother says, calmly How is it possible to die before one’s time? God ordains; ripeness is all.

  AND NOW BEGINS the God-season, for Abraham Licht has gone away again from Muirkirk. This frantic God-season Millie will remember with dread for the remainder of her life.

  For she, who is Morna’s daughter, that’s to say Miss Hirshfield’s daughter, is the one to be disciplined, and not her rowdy wayward brothers who are not Miss Hirshfield’s sons. Millie’s crinkly-wavy hair braided up so tightly (by Mother herself, not trusting Katrina) that the very corners of her eyes pull upward, and ‘Lisha teases her she has Chinee blood; her tender skin must be scrubbed, or chafed, cleansed of all impurities; her private parts must be especially cleansed, with harsh lye soap, a necessary procedure, Miss Hirshfield has decreed, where there is the likelihood of sin.

  And Millicent alone of the children must kneel in prayer, being daughter. Being so pretty, so charming, so crafty; a daughter of the Devil’s, indeed.

  Now Millicent who has been given no food but watery oatmeal since yesterday morning must kneel in the drafty old church without squirming and without tears, overseen by agitated Miss Hirshfield she must recite verse from Saint Matthew, a water-stained Bible held in the woman’s trembling hands, held close to her glassy blinking eyes,

  And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down . . . .

  And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

  And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

  For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

  And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that you be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

  For nation must rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes . . . .

  And all these are the beginning of sorrows.

  Her bare knees numbed with pain against the hardwood floor, her head ringing with hunger and fatigue and wonderment. Is that the hickory cross floating before her?—is that contorted piteous figure her Savior, Jesus Christ?—but what is a “savior,” and who is “Jesus Christ”?—she dares not ask for there is Mother, there is Miss Hirshfield close beside her, always close beside her, whispering urgently to God to save them both.

  For this is Mother, and this is Daughter, and this is the consequence of sin.

  For this is the consequence of turning away from God, to follow an earthly, carnal love.

  FATHER IS ANGRY. Father is furious. Learning from ’Lisha of Millie’s religious “conversion”—Millie’s enforced “indoctrination”—for that woman Morna has done it to spite him, knowing how he fears and loathes all fanatics of Holy Writ. Taking the child forcibly from the embittered mother, lifting her into his
arms, Father carries her into his study and kisses away her tears and gives her delicious “tar-balls” to eat, molasses and ground almonds, perching her on his knee and assuring her there is no God, there is no Savior, there is no Hell, or Heaven, or Sin; yet she might consider herself fortunate that her mother forced her to learn Bible verses, for one day, when she is independent and moving about in the world, such verses will surely be of use. “For it is impossible, dear, to overestimate the value of Holy Writ as it comes rolling and artless off the tongue, as if from the very heart of the speaker,” Father says with a smile, and years later Millie discovers this to be true; for when she’s away at school, or assisting Father with a business venture, it’s often very helpful to quote the Bible; and to speak with reverent familiarity of Our Savior Jesus Christ.

  “And so my poor deranged mother prepared me for life after all,” Millie thinks, “never knowing whom she served when she imagined she served God.”

  4.

  . . . sometime in the early autumn of 1898 . . . when daughter was six years old . . . and Father was away . . . and a heat-haze lay over Muirkirk for days on end and would not lift . . . and Mother complained to Katrina that she could not breathe . . . pressing her bony hand to her chest, her eye sockets enormous but her eyes small, narrow, moist, watchful, blinking . . . that gaze fixed upon daughter . . . the dry lips blistered, the voice nearly inaudible, cannot breathe, cannot breathe . . . when Father was away, had been away for weeks (in love again? preparing, like a young bridegroom, to wed again? but no one in Muirkirk knew of Miss Sophie Hume yet!) . . . and Katrina said it was hopeless to summon Dr. Deerfield because the townspeople hated Abraham Licht and his household and wished them ill . . . and Katrina knew . . . and a day and a night passed, and the heat-haze did not lift . . . and in the morning daughter was told: “Your mother has left us. She has walked away and left us.”

  . . . leaving behind her worn frayed clothing, her much-laundered bed linen, her books, her Bible . . .

  . . . leaving behind daughter who did not grieve and who promptly, at Katrina’s urging, began to forget.

  “For he will quickly forget, I assure you,” Katrina said.

  AND SO MISS Morna Hirshfield betrayed them all by disappearing.

  And leaving no note behind.

  And leaving no regret behind.

  (Unless, thinks Millie, she died. And is buried in the Nazarene cemetery; or in the marsh. Does it matter?)

  For she was easily supplanted in Muirkirk by Father’s new young wife: so very new to them all, and so very young and lovely . . . .

  (DOES MILLIE, NOW a young woman of eighteen, dwell upon such matters?—she does not.

  Except: that windy excitable May morning, when, having risen before dawn, “Miss Mina Raumlicht” cunningly strapped the pillow to her stomach, securing it tight against her pelvic bones, that it might not be jostled loose when she walked, or sat down abruptly, or, perhaps, fainted away . . . she was struck by a sudden vision (though why? for there was no connection) of the doomed woman who had been, in another lifetime, her mother . . . that is, little Millicent’s mother: doomed mother to a doomed daughter.

  Mina’s small childish teeth bared themselves in a sudden smile.

  For now she had no mother, and could come to no grief; but was herself (in a comical manner of speaking) a mother-to-be.

  For none of it mattered.

  For nothing, nothing mattered: only The Game, never to be played as if it were but a game.)

  5.

  “Millie!—don’t be sad any longer!—I am a dead man!”

  So Thurston murmurs, smiling happily, his frank boyish gaze precisely as Millie remembers, the grip of his fingers, warmly squeezing hers, and suddenly, though they are in the courtroom, under the very eyes of the Law, there is no harm in acknowledging that they are brother and sister: children of Abraham Licht.

  SHE WAKES, AND her heart hammers in terror, and the voice yet sounds, gentle, comforting, the very voice of her tall fair brother: “Millie!—don’t be sad any longer!—I am a dead man.”

  6.

  For on the morning of 22 March Thurston’s appeal was denied by the New Jersey State Supreme Court; and on the morning of 23 March Gordon Bullock was angrily dismissed by Father.

  And that night Millie dreams she is back in the courtroom again, attending her brother’s trial which is (evidently) still in session . . . and, suddenly, to her astonishment, Thurston rises to his feet and approaches her; takes her hands warmly in his; his smile Thurston’s smile; his manner of stooping to kiss her cheek, Thurston’s; his eyes as she delights to recall, and his brotherly joy in her. His wrists are unmanacled, his head is high, he is so transported with the ecstasy of his secret he comes very close to lifting Millie in his arms, as, in childhood, he had frequently done.

  But his words, ah! his words!—these, Thurston would never say.

  And equally upsetting is Elisha’s stiff response when Millie tells him of the dream.

  Indeed, is this Elisha?—’Lisha who has always been so charmed by her, and so patient with her moods and spells and premonitions? Not meeting her eye, nor taking her trembling proffered hand, he says: “You know that dreams rarely mean anything, Millie. Why trouble to repeat this one? Father would not like it.”

  “But Elisha,” Millie says, hurt, “it was so very real. Thurston stood before me, as close as you—closer than you—”

  “Nonetheless it was only a dream,” Elisha says, “by definition a fancy of the dreamer’s, and not to be taken seriously by anyone else.”

  “But if it is true—if his words are true—”

  “Of course it cannot be true,” says Elisha impatiently, baring his teeth in a smile, “—since it is only a dream.”

  “But like no other dream I have ever had.”

  “Well! As to that—‘like no other dream,’ indeed!” he says. “That has the ring of mere rhetoric.”

  Poor Millie stares, perplexed. Can it be? Elisha has turned against her?—as indifferent to her, now, as the brute Harwood? And when she glanced at her mirrored reflection, before running to him, her beauty had fairly blazed out at her . . . or so it had seemed. “Rhetoric? Mere rhetoric?” she says faintly. “What do you mean?” But Elisha will not meet her eye. He stands in a patch of mottled sunlight, his skin exuding cold, it seems, and no hint of the old brotherly warmth to which Millie has been accustomed.

  “What you say strikes the ear as false,” Elisha says with a shrug of his shoulders. “And in any case it is only a dream.”

  “But why are we quarreling? I had come to you for—”

  “‘We’ are not quarreling, Millie,” Elisha says. “There is no ‘we’ in this matter.” Then, seeing her look of childish injury, he says, more reasonably: “Dreams cannot be intelligently discussed because they cannot be shared. They are nothing but vapor, after all—mere wisps of idle thought.”

  “But if that were true!—I am a dead man!—poor Thurston!” Millie whispers.

  Elisha makes a gesture as if to silence her; but freezes, and does not touch her at all.

  Now passes a long strained moment, during which the two agitated young people stand, unspeaking, staring at each other, scarcely knowing where they are, or what has arisen between them. Millie, greatly distressed, sees in Elisha’s eyes that curious startled look she saw there, or imagined she saw, some months before . . . when, in Contracoeur, in the midst of a crowd of pedestrians on Commerce Street, he appeared suddenly, miraculously, alongside her . . . Elisha, her brother, yet so very wonderfully not Elisha! . . . but a stranger, a Negro, in eyeglasses, bowler hat, and prim dark clothing . . . powdered-gray hair and somber whiskers that do not disguise the fact that the man is hardly middle-aged, but bold, brash, defiant . . . and secretly exulting in the subtleties of The Game, to which only he and she, in all of Contracoeur, are privy.

  Why, it is Elisha, her tall dark-skinned brother, her ’Lisha, yet not hers at all, but a dashing stranger of the “black” race: just as she
is Millicent, yet not Millicent, in a dusty traveling cloak, and demure braided hair, her expression yet sickly and pious, and her eyes reddened from weeping.

  And what it is that passes between them at that moment—Millie is to remember only haphazardly afterward.

  Now, months later, they find themselves alone together in the parlor as they were alone together on Commerce Street. Unexpectedly, secretly alone. From an adjoining room come the bright sharp persistent notes of Darian’s spinet, a brilliant cascade of arpeggios. From somewhere outside, the less melodious, rougher sound of Harwood’s whistling punctuated by the rhythmic thwack! of his ax as, for sport as much as practicality, he splits logs. Elisha says coolly, “Why do you stare at me, Millie? Is something wrong?”

  And Millie licks her numbed lips and whispers, “Only my dream.”

  “NIGGER!”

  It was seven weeks to the day before Christopher Schoenlicht was scheduled to be hanged, on a raw windy April morning in Muirkirk, that Elisha and Harwood had their terrible quarrel, never to be satisfactorily explained.

  Seven weeks to 29 May; and Thurston languishing in prison, and Father away, and the entire household under the strain—Is he to die?—He cannot die!—and it was winter still, snow on the ground in pocked and stubbled patches, and the marsh still frozen over, and the sky still a hard cold winter sky, so fierce a cobalt-blue one’s eyes were pierced with light. Will nothing ever change? Will we be locked in winter forever?

  EXCEPT: ELISHA OBSERVES his brother Harwood packing his valises, bound for Leadville, Colorado, where Father is sending him for six months; whistling thinly under his breath; his soiled golfing cap set sportily on his head, hair in lank greasy quills, a clumsily knotted tie bulging out of his vest coat. Elisha observes in silence, drawing his thumbnail slowly across his plump lower lip: Harwood, his brother whom he does not love and who has never loved him, bound for the West and a new career (but the Lichts are always beginning new careers, there is nothing remarkable about that), Harwood dapper and sly with his new pencil-thin moustache, his air of watchful gravity, his sense of purpose (but the Lichts have always been fired by purpose, there is nothing remarkable about that), yet alternating with his old “nervy” “prickly” manner, so that the household is never quite settled when he’s home: and everyone, even Father, has been waiting for him to leave.