Riddance

by Shelley Jackson

  Readings

  from “A Visitor’s Observations”

  A Private Conversation

  For all the time that I had spent studying the daily affairs of the Vocational School, I had had only the most fleeting encounters with the Headmistress herself. Still, I saw nothing to shake my conviction that she, with all she had wrought, was the supreme exemplar of my thesis. If the ostensible purpose of the school was to equip the halt of tongue with the marketable skill of Spirit Mediumship, it was obvious that much of this activity contributed but indirectly to that end. If I was correct, an archeological survey of the school’s extraordinary activities would unearth, at their core, a corpse. Or better, a mummy, though I risk being styled a punster. For it had not taken me long to confirm what I had already guessed, that the braided hair in the old-fashioned memorial brooch the Headmistress wore was her mother’s. Many and varied were the phenomena that had piled out of that ring of hair, but every one carried the sign—like an apostrophe—of an elision. In all those gaps, holes, hollows, and tubes (particularly the throat—I am told her mother was strangled) she recapitulated that original loss. She held it close. And in this way made a mother figure of the absence of her mother, and of loss its own recompense.

  I do not mean that the Headmistress was trying to bring her mother back from the dead. Certainly not! Indeed her mother could not return in any literal sense, because her return was already symbolically accomplished in the practice of channeling itself. Using a symbolic form of return to effect a literal one could only result in the collapse of the entire program. Which would be a tragedy in its own right, for what a work of memorial architecture it was—what a Giza, what a Taj Mahal!

  One day, however, I came across her in the gardens (by design, I confess—I spied her setting out and after a seemly interval, strolled after her), crouching beside a bush. Rather than rising, she beckoned me closer and, delicately rotating a leaf to expose its underside, showed me a tiny snail already recovering its poise so far as to extend its eyestalks in our direction. After a cordial discussion of the beauty of that tentative yet persevering creature—“Aspiration in the pure form!” she exclaimed—I found her in an unusually voluble mood, and strolling back to the school with me, she spoke frankly and movingly about how her ideas about death had evolved since certain ghastly experiences in her childhood (she did not tell me what they were, but I had heard).

  So far, so gratifying; everything she said was harmonious with my thesis. As she spoke on, however, I realized that she was describing, not a life spent in mourning, but the course of a seduction, progressing through a series of deliciously slow transgressions: from the gross forms death assumes in our everyday world—obscene caricature, grisly joke—to the ambiguous flutings of voices—to the spatial and ontological paradoxes of the land of the dead—to the mute and inexplicable castings of the mouth objects. This was the story that mattered, the story of becoming strange, one minim at a time. Even to hear of it was to glimpse, in what had appeared to be a dead end, a hidden door, a little ajar, and beyond it, deep green gardens . . .

  I have always maintained that the true movements of our lives are these purposeless and undramatic ones, as calm and motiveless as tides, compounded of myriad minute, alien domesticities. The muddy bank flickers with the feeding claws of crabs, serving themselves invisible morsels behind the awkward pontoons of their other, oversized ones. Longing, grief, anger are real enough, but only briefly interrupt these slow sidereal revolutions, these migrations, tides, weather systems of our lives. Which is to say that what is most important at bottom is not love, or loss, or any of the ordinary emotions, but something more like gravity or time, a deepening involvement with being that these more emphatic emotions cannot interrupt for long.

  Some, stirred by these tides, make music, or art, or aeroplanes; she died. Was she the one artist whose work is not interrupted but fulfilled by death? This can be so, I think, if you accept that one of the forms that fulfillment can take is a perfect dissatisfaction, that one kind of answer is to identify yourself so perfectly with the question that there is no longer any difference between yourself and it.

  Some emotion rippled across her usually impassive features. I would not call it happiness, but neither would I call it grief. It might have been—bliss?

  Letters to Dead Authors, #16

  Dear Mr. Bartleby,

  The story may have already reached you, even in your Plutonian realms. It has certainly reached everyone else.

  The article that our friendly newsman finally published, in a disreputable but widely distributed news organ, was inflammatory in tone and rife with the kind of sensationalist exaggerations on which public outrage loves to batten. It attracted the attention of the parents of one of our students. They sent me a letter informing me that clippings of the article were already winging their way to our board of trustees, the Office of Educational Oversight, and the police. (That the lost children were recovered unharmed seems to have gone completely unremarked.) To date I have received fifteen queries from rival news sources, telegrams from three of our more exciteable trustees, and a notice that we are to enjoy the attentions of a Regional School Inspector, news I greeted with tranquility until I discovered that the title had passed from pliable Mr. Benson to a certain Mr. Edwards, unknown to me. The Society of Psychic Research and the Institute of Mediumistic Studies have denounced me as a fraud and the Stage Actors Guild has requested further information about our Spectacle in order to determine whether we may be held responsible for the membership dues of dead actors. We have padlocked the gates; nonetheless I have chased, to date, twenty-four curious intruders off the grounds, some of them bearing picnic baskets. So far only the local constabulary has resisted joining this Salem Witch Hunt but I am sure Detective Munch will soon treat us to his pleasant company.

  Tomorrow the Regional School Inspector arrives, no doubt primed for his job by sheaves of indignant letters from the concerned public (and one small sheaf of reassuring ones issuing entirely—under false names, of course—from these premises, for I set everyone imaginable to writing them). I look forward with some trepidation to his visit. In retrospect it strikes me as remarkable that the show seemed to refer, with its talk of a “he” who “is coming,” to an event that will only take place after and because of it. I have quizzed Mr. Lenore about it and he cannot explain it, saying only that he thought, he cannot now remember why, that a play in which all personae await the arrival of someone who never turns up was quite a good idea. If only our own drama could enjoy the same lack of denouement.

  However, the previous School Inspector was not an unreasonable man, especially when a contribution to personal expenses was pressed into his soft, clammy, not unwilling hands. Perhaps this one will be the same.

  I must not lose the school. It is all—all to me.

  Meanwhile I seem to tilt out of myself, farther and farther, like someone leaning out of a window, trying to make out something very far away. That faraway thing: What is it?

  If I knew, I would not be hanging out the window of myself. But would I be going on about my business? Or jumping?

  Yours,

  Headmistress Joines

  17. The Final Dispatch, contd.

  The inspector set his hat on the spindly legged occasional table by the door. You accepted his cane and leaned it against the wall, then waited for instructions, your hands clasped behind you. I stood before the stove, one hand on the mantel above it. I had the sudden impulse to retreat behind my desk, but I mastered it.

  “Headmistress Joines, a word in private.” At my nod, you left, closing the door behind you. “I will be as direct and clear as I know how to be.” His voice was not unkind, but he did not hesitate as he went on. “Naturally, the contretemps I witnessed earlier gave me the gravest misgivings about your stewardship and even, I might say, your sanity. However, I did not wish to depart without finding out whether you were successful in retrieving the child”—my silence was
answer enough—“or acquainting myself better with the school, and so I have allowed myself to be led hither and yon and subjected to a great deal of incomprehensible folderol, that I might satisfy myself that I do you no injustice in what I am about to say.

  “Your school has offered a needed service in providing a home and an education to children with this strangest and saddest of afflictions, the spasmodic, ah, indocility of the organs of speech, but we have standards in this state”—I opened my mouth—“Standards of health—safety—and adherence to modern educational principles! The Sybil Joines Vocational School does not come close to meeting them in more than a handful of our seventeen categories. Indeed I cannot understand how it passed its previous reviews, conducted by my predecessor at the inspection board. That your safety precautions, in particular, are far from adequate, recent events have vividly illustrated.”

  I shifted my weight; he raised his voice a little. “You will say—I anticipate you—that changes will be made, et cetera, but I am afraid the matter has gone too far for that.” He held a green ledger—my ledger—and now shook it slightly for emphasis. “In fact I am not sure that it is not a matter for the police! There are records in this book of the disappearance or death of three children and one faculty member in the course of the last year alone. And there have been, one must assume, many lesser injuries that were simply left unrecorded. No, no, I’m afraid I cannot countenance extending your license.” He set the book down firmly, rapping its cover for emphasis.

  Heat swept up my neck. Suddenly my ears were ringing. “If the board will grant me an extenshh—shh—[sic]—extension,” I said, “I am sure we can address these issues to the board’s satis—”

  He was shaking his head. “I consider your establishment to present a clear and present danger to its students. I cannot in conscience let it remain open another day. The children will be taken under jurisdiction by the state until provision can be made for them.”

  He turned away, perhaps to give me privacy to master my feelings, though ostensibly to pick up his hat from the table by the door where he had placed it on arrival. His back still turned, he cleared his throat and added. “There is one alternative.”

  “Yes?”

  “That we place the school under new administration, effective immediately. Indeed this may be the solution that is best for the children, the school, and yourself.”

  “New administration?” I suppose I gaped. “A new headmistress?” He did not reply. “Or . . . headmaster. You?” I stepped closer, my hands lost in my skirts. “You want my school.” I was actually perfectly calm. “You’re taking my school.”

  He turned back. I saw that his collar pinched his neck; his pink face was perplexed, distressed. “If you consent to this arrangement, I would see my way clear to giving the school a favorable evaluation, so that no scandal attaches to the change of administration. You might stay on in an advisory capacity, if you wish. And as proprietor you would continue to draw any revenues in excess of operating costs.” He looked down at his hat, embarrassed. He and I saw at the same moment that a bird had insulted it, and he began scratching at the white patch with his forefinger. That this soft, ordinary person should stand between me and my work! It was wrong, disgusting even, as when a worm eats a man, or a spider a bird—a low thing boosted up to fasten its jaws on a more princely one.

  There was a feeling as of a wind rushing through my limbs. I felt very light. It seemed that in a moment I would do something—weep, or strike the desk, or dance like Durga on the fellow’s body. Carefully, I did nothing. I drew into myself, tightening to a minute beady intelligence, localized in my braincase. My movements became deliberate. I smoothed my skirts, examined one fingernail. My reptile gaze assessed a torn cuticle, slightly inflamed, while through the pineal eye in the top of my inclined head I stared uninterruptedly at the Regional School Inspector, now twirling his hat in his hands. I had discomfited him.

  “You may, of course, appeal the decision before the entire board. Though I believe”—he dared to simper—“I have the deciding vote.”

  No, he didn’t simper, that was a lie, and I scorn a lie. He simply stated the facts. He was a competent, dull, dignified man without a grain of imagination, and I am sure he was very surprised when, having fumbled his hat and bent to retrieve it, he received the coal scuttle on the back of his head. The metal edge bit deep into his neck; he dropped to his knees and let out a snorting sigh. Half-turning toward me, he stared at me in hurt and confusion, then sucked in his breath as if to yell. I struck him again on the side of the head. He slid sideways, landing on the carpet with a gentle thump. He was not after all very big. His head was an almost hairless pink animal, a baby rabbit or a pig, with sleepy eyes. I hesitated, then smashed it again, decisively. It was now a rather peculiar shape and I supposed that I had dashed part of the skull in. All in all I was relieved that the decision had been made and could not be reversed, though as I reflected belatedly it would have been wiser, if I had intended to murder him, to lie in wait for him on the road or follow him home.

  I slipped his coat under the part of his head that was leaking and sat down in my desk chair to think. I had not intended to murder him. And I had not exactly murdered him, I felt, though I had certainly killed him and indeed intended to kill him when I struck him with the coal scuttle. I was very angry indeed and there it was, the scuttle, and there it was, his head—so. It happened. A true murder, though . . . That is something else, I have reason to think. Slower. More calculated.

  But the important question was what to do with him now. In my office, a Regional School Inspector who would do no more inspecting would soon give himself away, but in the basement or the oubliette he might remain for some time without attracting notice, while I figured out what to do with him. I had to take him downstairs. But clearly I could not drag him down the hall and bump, bump, bump down the stairs, for everyone to hear and some, no doubt, to see. I saw that I would have to employ the dumbwaiter.

  I wrapped the coat around his head to prevent anything more running out of the latter onto the carpet, and, taking him by the armpits, dragged him over to the hatch. Having opened it as far as it would go I attempted to hoist him in. He had grown bigger again, and heavier, and I could barely lift him, but I managed to wrestle his head and shoulders up to the level of the dumbwaiter before he tore himself free and went slithering and thumping down again. In any case I had already seen that if I laid him on his back as I had been trying to do, I would have to lift almost his whole weight at once to feed him in, whereas if I rolled him over onto his front before lifting him, I might be able to prop first his arms on the edge, then his head and shoulders, whereupon he could probably support himself, as it were, folded over the edge of the dumbwaiter, his lower half waiting outside for me to catch my breath.

  This plan I carried out with fair success, while the dumbwaiter rattled and banged. The Regional School Inspector almost appeared to be standing, looking into the shaft. I rested, leaning against the body to keep it from backsliding. It was warm and solid. When I felt restored, I planted my legs, took the Regional School Inspector by the belt and hoisted him up, simultaneously sliding him further in, so that only his legs now dangled out of the hole in the wall.

  By then, however, his head was bumping the back of the dumbwaiter, and I saw that I could not bundle in his legs without rolling him onto his side and folding him up like a jointed yardstick at the hip and the knee. After a considerable struggle during which I found myself giggling in a wet-eyed, not quite sensible way, I concluded that I would not be able to do this without getting into the dumbwaiter with him. So that is what I did, inserting myself on his right side. Bracing myself against the walls, I dug my fingers under the far shoulder and attempted to pull it toward me. His shoulder lifted a few inches, but the rest of his mass stayed where it was.

  It had always been my position that a person was an insubstantial thing, a sort of wind, or a hole through which a wind passes, but I w
as beginning to acquaint myself with a different viewpoint. A man, if one could call this still a man, was a heavy thing, like a rolled carpet or a sandbag. The Regional School Inspector, so quick to make his move, was not now moving anywhere. I dropped the shoulder, then pulled it up again, and thus began rocking his body, until finally, as if some heavy cargo had shifted inside him, his whole weight surged up from the floor of the dumbwaiter and flung itself onto me. Now I was on my back in the dumbwaiter, my legs dangling out the door, with a dead man on top of me.

  A lesser woman might have been discomposed.

  I lifted the near arm, which had fallen over me, and slung it across his body, lifted the near leg and succeeded in crossing it over the other at the knee, where it dangled out of the dumbwaiter—a twisting, languid, sensuous pose, like that of a Florentine Christ in a Renaissance painting. Then I heaved the Regional School Inspector back onto his side. Pulling in at his waist, while thrusting my knees forward and up against his thighs, I attempted to force the body into a S, to the hindward curve of which I was pressed. I had never been so intimate with a man in my life.

  “Monster,” said the corpse, in a conversational tone. “Banshee.” I unbundled his head from the coat to see if by chance he lived. It seemed unlikely, what with one thing and another. He was silent and had the preoccupied look of those whose circumstances have just changed beyond comprehension. Maybe I had misheard him. I swaddled him again and got to my knees, straddling the body, having perceived that he needed to be slid to the right, into the space I myself had been occupying, if there was to be room on the left for his knees. The dumbwaiter bucked in its channel, its tackle straining and clanking. I could only hope that no one was listening at the opening below.