The Gravedigger's Daughter

by Joyce Carol Oates

  For Rebecca had caused the miscarriage, with her reckless behavior. Talking about Tignor to a chambermaid! Helping a chambermaid make up the room! When she was Mrs. Niles Tignor, and should have had dignity.

  In her loneliness on the Poor Farm Road she would come to think that there must have been a logic to it, her behavior. In the way that, as a girl, she’d stayed away from the old stone house in the cemetery and so had saved herself from what might have been done to her on that last day. Couldn’t have known what she was doing and yet�a part of her, with the cunning of a trapped creature gnawing at its own leg to save itself, had known.

  For Niles, Jr. would be born. The other (a girl? in her dreams, a girl) had been sacrificed, that their son would be born.

  Dr. Rice explained: a miscarriage is often “nature’s way of correcting a mistake.” For instance, a “malforming” fetus.

  A blessing in disguise, sometimes.

  Dr. Rice explained: “Of course, the pregnant woman can experience grief almost as if she has lost an actual baby. And grief can linger, into the start of a new pregnancy.”

  Grief! Rebecca wanted to laugh at the know-it-all doctor, an obstetrician, in angry dislike.

  Dr. Rice of Chautauqua Falls. Examining Rebecca like a slab of meat on his examination table, prissy yet crude, fussy yet hurting her with his damn rubber-gloved hands and cold metal instruments like ice picks, she’d had to bite her lip to keep from screaming and kicking him in the belly. Yet afterward in his office, when Rebecca was dressed again, and trying to regain her composure, he offended her worse by telling her this crap.

  “Doctor, I’m not ‘grieving’! I sure am not. I’m not the kind of woman to grieve over the past. See, I look forward to the future like my husband Tignor does. If this new baby is healthy and gets born�that’s all we care about, doctor.”

  Dr. Rice blinked at Rebecca. Had he underestimated Mrs. Niles Tignor, mistaking her for some wishy-washy weepy girl? Quickly saying, “That’s a very wise philosophy, Mrs. Tignor. I wish that more of my patients were so wise.”

  Home! By the time Niles, Jr. was born, in late November 1956, Rebecca would come to love it.

  “It’s beautiful, Tignor. It will be special to us.”

  She’d uttered these words more than once. Like words of a love song, to make Tignor smile and maybe hug her.

  The old Wertenbacher place the farmhouse was called, locally. About two miles north of Chautauqua Falls in a hilly area of small farms, grazing land, open fields and marshes. It was at the western edge of the Chautauqua Mountains, in the foothills. By chance ( Rebecca did not believe in coincidences, she believed in pure chance) Chautauqua Falls was an old canal town like Milburn, eighty miles west of Milburn. Unlike Milburn, it had become a small city: its population was 16,800. It was an industrial city with factories, clothing and canning mills on the Chautauqua River. There was canal traffic. The largest employer was Union Carbide, that had expanded its facilities in the boom years 1955 and 1956. One day, Rebecca would work the assembly line at Niagara Tubing. But it was the countryside outside Chautauqua Falls to which Tignor brought her, a crossroads settlement called Four Corners. Here at the juncture of the Poor Farm Road and the Stuyvesant Road were a small post office, a coal depot, a granary, Ike’s Food Store with a large Sealtest sign in its window, Meltzer’s Gas & Auto Repair. There was a two-room schoolhouse on the grounds of the former poor farm. There was a volunteer firemen’s station. There was a clapboard Methodist church and a cemetery behind the church. Walking sometimes past this church Rebecca heard singing inside, and felt a pang of loss.

  Edna Meltzer attended this church and several times invited Rebecca to come with her. “There’s a joyful feeling in that church, Rebecca! You smile just stepping inside.”

  Rebecca murmured vaguely she would like that, maybe. Someday.

  “When your baby is born? You’ll want it baptized.”

  Rebecca murmured vaguely that would depend upon what the baby’s father wanted.

  “Tignor, he’s religious, is he? Nah!”

  Mrs. Meltzer surprised Rebecca, the familiar way she laughed. As if Tignor was well known to her. Rebecca frowned, uneasy.

  “Your own people, Rebecca: what kind of religion were they?”

  Mrs. Meltzer put this question to Rebecca in a pleasant, casual manner as if she’d only just thought of it. She seemed wholly unconscious of were.

  Why were and not are? Rebecca wondered.

  For a long moment she could not think how to answer this question. And there was the woman waiting for her, Tignor had warned her against.

  They were in Ike’s. Rebecca was just leaving, Mrs. Meltzer was just entering. It was mid-September, dry and very warm. Tignor was away in Lake Shaheen looking at “waterfront property.” Rebecca was seven months’ pregnant and did not want to estimate how many pounds she’d gained beyond twenty. She was all belly, that hummed and quivered with life. Her brain had ceased to function significantly, like a broken radio. Her head was empty as an icebox tossed away in a dump.

  Without saying another word to Edna Meltzer, Rebecca walked out of the store. The bell above the door rang sharply in her wake. She was oblivious of Mrs. Meltzer staring after her and took no heed for how her neighbor would speak of her to Ike’s wife Elsie behind the counter. That girl! She’s a strange one ain’t she! Almost you could feel sorry for her, what’s in store.

  Through the autumn, as the days began to shorten, the air sharpened, it seemed to Rebecca that the farm was more beautiful than previously. Everywhere she walked, everywhere she explored was slovenly and beautiful. The canal: she was drawn to the canal, to the towpath. She liked to watch for the slow-moving barges. Men waving to her. As she stood flat-footed, balancing her weight on her heels, big-bellied and smiling, laughing at how ridiculous she must seem to them, how unalluring. Anna Schwart would not warn her now Something will happen to you for no man would want a woman so visibly pregnant.

  And the sky, that autumn. Marbled clouds, thunderhead clouds, high pale cirrus clouds that dissolved even as you watched. Rebecca stood staring at these for long dreamy minutes, hands clasped over her belly.

  The next one, you can keep.

  …in their bed, in the old Wertenbacher house on the Poor Farm Road. Tignor pressed his face against her hard, hot belly. He kneaded her thighs, her buttocks. He kneaded her breasts. He was jealous of the infant who would suckle those breasts. When he returned to the house he did not wish to speak of where he’d been, he told her he hadn’t married her to be questioned by her. She had asked him only how long he’d been driving, and was he hungry? She felt his dislike of her, the big belly that interfered with lovemaking. Yet he wanted to touch her. He could not keep his hands from her. Kneading her pelvis, the bristling public hair that radiated upward to her navel. Pressing his ear against her belly so hard it hurt, claiming he could hear the baby’s heartbeat. He’d been drinking but he did not appear to be drunk. He said, aggrieved, “They cast me out when I was a baby. I had these thoughts, I would find them someday. I would make them pay.”

  In Troy, in the hotel room where she’d bled into a thick wad of towels, toilet paper, and tissues, Rebecca had been the one to comfort Tignor. It isn’t your fault. It isn’t your fault. She’d peered into his soul, she’d seen what lay broken and shattered there like glittering glass. She believed that she was strong enough to save him, as she had not been strong enough to save Jacob Schwart.

  40

  A woman was shouting at her as if Rebecca was slow-witted.

  “It will come when it’s damn good and ready, hon. And once it’s out, you won’t give a damn what led to it.”

  In the bumpy rear of the Meltzers’ low-slung Chevy sedan Rebecca lay spread-eagled, whimpering with pain. Lightning-flashes of pain. These were contractions, she was supposed to be counting between them yet the surprise of the pain�! She was not so self-assured now. She was not so pleased with herself now. She had intended not even to show Edna Meltzer the ba
by for she feared and disliked the woman and yet here she was in the Meltzers’ car being driven to the hospital in Chautauqua Falls. She’d had to call the Meltzers when the pains began. Tignor had promised her, he would not be away at this time. He had promised her, she would not be alone. She had no number for Tignor and so she’d called the Meltzers. Somehow she was upside-down in the backseat of their car. Seeing the rushing landscape outside the car windows, a strip of white sky, from the bottom up. She would have little memory of this drive except Howie Meltzer in his greasy Esso cap behind the wheel chewing a toothpick and Edna Meltzer grunting as she leaned over the back of the passenger’s seat to grip one of Rebecca’s flailing hands, smiling sternly to show there was no cause for panic.

  “Hon, I told you: it will come when it’s damn good and ready. You just get a hold of yourself, I got you.”

  That hand of Edna Meltzer’s Rebecca squeezed, and squeezed.

  …a druggy delirium in which waves of excruciating pain were confused with a sound as of high-pitched frantic singing. She called for the baby’s father but the man was nowhere near. Called and called until her throat was scraped raw but the man was nowhere near. Oh but he had promised, he would be with her! He had promised, she would not be alone when the baby was born. When the first of the contractions began and she’d sunk to her knees in shock, though she’d prepared beforehand like a diligent schoolgirl reading and underlining and memorizing passages from Your Body, Your Baby & You. She gripped her enormous belly with both hands. She cried for help but there was no one. And no number to call, to reach Niles Tignor. No idea where he was. In her desperation she did what he had not even needed to forbid her ever to do, called Port Oriskany information, the Black Horse Brewery, a disdainful female voice informed her no one by the name of Niles Tignor was employed by the Brewery at the present time.

  But he was! Rebecca protested he’d been working as an agent for the Brewery for years!

  A disdainful female voice informed her no one by the name of Niles Tignor was employed by the Brewery at the present time.

  She would stumble to the Meltzers’ house a quarter-mile away.

  She would plead for help, she was alone and had no one.

  Her nightgown, toiletries were already packed. And a paperback book for reading in the hospital for in her naiveté she had thought there might be leisure time for reading…She would waste precious minutes in a futile search for the Certificate of Marriage in case she had to prove to the Chautauqua Falls Hospital authorities that she was a legally married woman, this birth was legitimate.

  …a druggy delirium afterward to be described as eleven hours’ labor which she, at its center, would recall vaguely as one might recall a film seen long ago in childhood and even at that time not comprehended. As the baby would afterward be described as boy, eight pounds three ounces. Niles Tignor, Jr. who had not yet a name, as he had not yet drawn breath to cry. A fierce thing shoving its head hard and lethal as a bowling ball bizarrely crammed up inside her. And this bowling ball a phenomenon of solid heat inside which, you would wish to believe, a tiny soul translucent as a creek slug dwelled. Something will happen to you, a girl. You would not want. Now that it was too late, she knew what her mother had warned her against.

  …druggy delirium out of which nonetheless she emerged to her astonishment hearing what sounded like a cat’s wail, so strangely in this brightly lighted room. Someone was saying Mrs. Tignor? She blinked to clear her occluded vision. She saw hands placing a naked flailing and kicking infant at first against her flattened, flaccid belly, then up between her breasts. Your baby Mrs. Tignor. Baby boy Mrs. Tignor. Such voices came to her from far away. She scarcely heard. For how hard the infant was crying, that deafening cat-wail! She laughed to see how angry it was, and so small; like its father furious, and dangerous; eyes shut and tiny fists flailing. Puckered monkey-face, soft coconut head covered in coarse black hairs. She laughed, she saw the tiny penis and had to laugh. Oh she’d never seen anything like this baby they were saying was hers! Wanting to joke This one’s daddy must’ve been a monkey! but knowing that such a joke at such a time and place might be misinterpreted.

  And already her breasts were leaking milk, one of the nurses was helping the sucking little mouth find its way.

  “‘Give birth.’ That’s how a man would talk, I guess! Like ‘birth’ was something it was up to you, to ‘give.’ My God.”

  So dazed and happy now that she was home from the hospital and had her baby it was like the buzz you got drinking draft beer mixed with bourbon. Loving to nurse the hot-skinned little monkey that was hungry every few hours and as he sucked-sucked-sucked greedily at one fat breast and then the other, she, the new Momma, just wanted to talk-talk-talk. Oh, she had so much to say! Oh, she loved this little monkey! All this was so�wild-and-strange!

  Edna brought the girl a copy of the Chautauqua Falls Weekly. Turned to the back pages, obituaries, weddings, and birth announcements. There were photos of the newly deceased and the newly wed but none of the new mothers who were identified as their husband’s wives. Rebecca read aloud, “‘Mrs. Niles Tignor of Poor Farm Road, Four Corners, gave birth to an eight-pound three-ounce boy, Niles Tignor, Jr. at the Chautauqua Falls General Hospital, November 29.’” She laughed, her bright harsh laugh that grated against the ear, and tears leaked from her eyes. Going on and on about giving birth as Edna would report like she was drunk, or worse.

  To her credit, this girl Rebecca had not been badly prepared for a new baby, Edna had to concede. She had a good supply of diapers, a few baby clothes. A crib and a baby-bath. She’d been studying some baby pamphlet a doctor had given her. There was food, mostly canned things, in the kitchen. And for sure Edna had castoff baby things at their house, to donate. And Elsie Drott had, too. And other women neighbors, if it came to that. Within a circumference of as many as four miles, women knew of Rebecca Tignor, some of them without knowing her actual name. A new mother, just a girl. No family, it looks like. The father of the baby just ain’t around. Seems like he’s abandoned her, out in the country. That old Wertenbacher house that’s practically falling down.

  If the girl was worried about the future, she wasn’t showing it, yet. This, Edna Meltzer found annoying.

  “He left you some money, I guess?”

  “Oh, yes! Sure he did.”

  Edna frowned, as if needing to be convinced.

  Oh, Rebecca had had enough of Mrs. Meltzer for right now! Baby had ceased nursing and was drowsing slack-mouthed in her arms, here was a rare opportunity for Momma to nap, too.

  Sweet delicious sleep like a stone well you could fall into, and fall and fall.

  On an evening in early December, twelve days after their baby was born, there stood Tignor in the doorway of their bedroom, staring. Rebecca heard a faint breathy whistle�“Jesus!” Tignor’s face was in shadow, she could not see his expression. He stood very still, wary. For a tense moment Rebecca halfway expected him to turn away. “Tignor. Here.” Rebecca lifted the baby to Tignor, smiling. Here was a perfect baby, Tignor would see. It had only just awakened from its nap, staring and blinking at the stranger in the doorway. It began to make its comical blowing noises, bubbles of spittle on its lips. It kicked, flailed its tiny fists. Slowly Tignor came to the bedside, to take the baby from Rebecca. In infant astonishment the baby gaped at Tignor’s face, that must have seemed gigantic and luminous as a moon. Gingerly, Tignor held the baby. Rebecca saw that he knew to cup the small head on its delicate neck. Before entering the house he’d tossed away his cigar yet still he smelled of smoke, the baby began to fret. With his nicotine-stained thumb he stroked the baby’s forehead. “It’s mine, is it?”

  41

  Hey you night-owl folks this is Buffalo Radio Wonderful WBEN broadcasting the best in jazz through the wee hours. You are listening to Zack Zacharias your all-night host bringing you up-next vintage Thelonious Monk…She was lying awake in the dark, hands clasped behind her head. Thinking of her life strung out behind her like be
ads of myriad shapes, in memory crowded, confusing as in life each had been singular, and had defined itself with the slowness of the sun’s trajectory across the sky. You knew the sun was moving yet you never saw it move.

  In the room adjoining Rebecca’s bedroom, Niley was sleeping. At least she hoped he was sleeping. In his sleep listening to the radio desperate to be not-alone even in his sleep and desperate to hear his father’s voice amid the voices of strangers. Rebecca was thinking how she’d given birth to Niley without knowing who Niley would be, she’d opened her body to pain so excruciating it could not be recalled in consciousness and so it was exactly as Edna Meltzer had predicted Once it’s out you won’t give a damn what led up to it.

  She smiled, yes this was so. That was the one true fact of her life.

  She’d opened her body, too, to Niles Tignor. Without knowing in the slightest who Niles Tignor was. Except for Niley, this had perhaps been a mistake. And yet, Niley was no mistake.

  What she knew of Tignor now, she would never have dared approach the man. Yet she could not leave him, he would never allow it. She could not leave him, her heart clenched in anticipation simply of seeing him again.

  Hey girl: love me?

  Christ you know I’m crazy about you.

  At the end of the lane, out on the Poor Farm Road, there was a tin mailbox on a rotted wooden post with the faded black letters WERTENBACHER still visible. No mail ever came for Niles Tignor or his wife except advertisements, flyers stuffed into the mailbox. But one day back in March, soon after Rebecca had started working at Niagara Tubing (was there some connection? had to be!), she went to empty the mailbox, and discovered amid the trash mail a neatly folded front page from the Port Oriskany Journal. Fascinated, Rebecca read an article with the headline TWO MEN SLAIN, ONE WOUNDED IN LAKESIDE “AMBUSH”: two men had died of gunshot wounds and a third wounded, in the parking lot of a popular Port Oriskany tavern and marina, police had made no arrests yet but had taken into custody one Niles Tignor, forty-two, a resident of Buffalo, as a material witness. The attack was believed by police to be related to extortion and racketeering in the Niagara lakeside area.