The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “…for me? But why…”

  Several of the bills were ten-dollar bills. One was a twenty. Others were five-dollar bills, one-dollar bills. And there came another twenty. In all, there might have been twenty bills.

  Tignor laughed at the expression in Rebecca’s face.

  “Told you there was a surprise waiting in Beardstown, didn’t I?”

  “But…why?”

  Rebecca was trying again to smile. She would recall how important it had seemed to her, at this moment, as at the crucial moment when her father Jacob Schwart was trying to maneuver the shotgun around to fire at her, to smile.

  Tignor said, expansively, “’Cause somebody is thinking of you, I guess. Feels guilty about you maybe.”

  “Tignor, I don’t understand.”

  “Baby, I was up in Quebec last week. In Montreal on business. Saw your brother there.”

  “My brother? Which brother?”

  Tignor paused as if he hadn’t known that Rebecca had two brothers.

  “Herschel.”

  “Herschel!”

  Rebecca was stunned. She had not heard her brother’s name spoken in a very long time and had come half-consciously to think that Herschel might be dead.

  “Herschel sent this money for you, see. ’Cause he ain’t coming back to the States, ever. They’d arrest him at the border. It ain’t a helluva lot of money but he wants you to have it, Rebecca. So I told him I’d give it to you.”

  It did not occur to Rebecca to doubt any of this. Tignor spoke so persuasively, it was always easier to give in than to doubt him.

  “But�how is Herschel? Is he all right?”

  “Looked all right to me. But like I said, he ain’t gonna come back to the States. One day, maybe you can see him in Canada. Might be we could go together.”

  Anxiously Rebecca asked what was Herschel doing? how was he getting along? was he working? and Tignor shrugged affably, his pale eyes becoming evasive. “Must be working, he’s sending you this money.”

  Rebecca persisted, “Why doesn’t Herschel call me, if he’s thinking of me? You told him I work at the General Washington, did you? And you have my telephone number, did you give it to him? He could call me, then.”

  “Sure.”

  Rebecca stared at the bills scattered on the bed. She was reluctant to touch them for what would that mean? What did any of this mean? She could not bear to take up the bills, to count them.

  “Herschel went away and left me, I hated him for a long time.”

  Her words sounded so harsh. Tignor frowned, uncertain.

  “I’m not so sure I will see Herschel again. He might be moving on,” he said.

  “Moving on�where?”

  “Somewhere out west. What they call ‘prairie provinces.’ There’s jobs opening up in Canada.”

  Rebecca was trying to think. The bourbon had gone swiftly to her head, her thoughts came to her in slow floating amber-tinted shapes like clouds. Yet she was anxious, for something was wrong here. And she should not be here, in the Beardstown Inn with Niles Tignor.

  She wondered why Tignor had surprised her in this way? Scattering dollar bills on a hotel bed. Her chest ached, as if a nerve were pinching her heart.

  With renewed energy, Tignor said, “But this ain’t my surprise for you, Rebecca. That’s Herschel, now there’s me.”

  Tignor stood, went to rummage through the pockets of his tossed-down coat, and returned with a small package wrapped in glittery paper: not a box, only just wrapping paper clumsily taped to enclose a very small item.

  At once Rebecca thought A ring. He is giving me a ring.

  It was absurd to think so. Greedily, Rebecca’s eyes fastened on the small glittery package that Tignor was presenting to her with a flourish, in the way he shuffled and dealt out cards.

  “Oh, Tignor. What is it…”

  Her hands shook, she could barely open the wrapping paper. Inside was a ring: a milky-pale stone, not transparent but opaque, oval-shaped, of about the size of a pumpkin seed. The setting was silver, and appeared just slightly tarnished.

  Still, the ring was beautiful. Rebecca had never been given a ring.

  “Oh, Tignor.”

  Rebecca felt weak. This was what she had wished for, and now she was frightened of it. Fumbling with the beautiful little ring, fearful of dropping it.

  “Go on, girl. Try it. See if it fits.”

  Seeing that Rebecca was blinded by tears, Tignor, with his clumsy fingers, took the ring from her and tried to push it onto the third finger of her right hand. Almost, the ring fit. If he had wanted to push harder, it would fit.

  Faintly Rebecca said, “It’s so beautiful. Tignor, thank you…”

  She was nearly overcome with emotion. Yet a part of her mind remained detached, mocking. It’s that ring. He stole it from that room. That man he almost killed. He’s waiting for you to recognize it, to accuse him.

  Rebecca took the ring from Tignor and slipped it onto a smaller finger, where it fit loosely.

  She kissed Tignor. She heard herself laughing gaily.

  “Tignor, does this mean we’re engaged?”

  Tignor snorted in derision. “Hell it does, girl. What it means is I gave you a damn pretty ring, that’s what it means.” He was very pleased with himself.

  Beyond the tall gaunt window framed by heavy velvet drapes the winter sun had nearly disappeared below the treeline. The snow was glowering a somber shadowy white, the myriad dog tracks that had troubled Rebecca’s eye had vanished. Rebecca laughed again, the rich flamey bourbon was making her laugh. So many surprises in this room, that had gone to her head. She was short of breath as if she’d been running.

  She was in Tignor’s arms, and kissing him recklessly. Like one throwing herself from a height, falling, diving into water below, blindly trusting that the water would receive her and not crush her.

  “Tignor! I love you. Don’t leave me, Tignor…”

  She spoke fiercely, she was half-sobbing. Clutching at him, the fatty-muscled flesh of his shoulders. Tignor kissed her, his mouth was unexpectedly soft. Now Rebecca had come to him, now he was startled by her passion, almost hesitant himself, holding back. Always in their lovemaking it was Rebecca who stiffened, who held back. Now she was kissing him hard, in a kind of frenzy, her eyes shut hard seeing the brilliant glittering ice on the river, blue-tinted in the sun, that hardness she wished for herself. She tightened her arms around his neck in triumph. If she was afraid of him now, his maleness, she would give no sign. If he had stolen the ring he had stolen it for her, it would be hers now. She opened her mouth to his. She would have him now, she would give herself over to him. She hated it, her soul so exposed. The man’s eyes seeing her, that had seen so many other women naked. She could not bear it, such exposure, yet she would have him now. Her body, that was a woman’s body now, the heavy breasts, the belly, the patch of wiry black pubic hair that trailed upward to her navel, like seaweed, that filled her with angry shame.

  Like tossing a lighted match onto dried kindling, Rebecca kissing Niles Tignor in this way.

  Hurriedly he pulled off their clothing. He took no care that the neck of the angora sweater was stretched and soiled, he had no more awareness of Rebecca’s clothing than he had of the floral-print wallpaper surrounding them. Where he could not unbutton or unfasten, he yanked. And his own clothes, too, he would open partway, fumbling in haste. He dragged back the heavy bedspread, throwing it onto the floor, scattering the dollar bills another time, onto the carpet. Some of these bills would be lost, hidden inside the folds of the brocade bedspread, for a chambermaid to discover. He was impatient to make love to Rebecca yet Tignor was an experienced lover of inexperienced girls, he had presence of mind enough to bring out from the bathroom not one but three towels, the very towels Rebecca had been too shy to soil with her wetted hands, and these towels he folded deftly, and lay on the opened bed, beneath Rebecca’s hips.

  Rebecca wondered why, why such precaution. Then she knew.


  33

  And then he was gone again. On the road, and gone again. A day and a night after they returned from Beardstown and he was gone with just Goodbye! And she had no word from him, or of him. Until one day at the end of February she forced herself to speak with Mulingar, there was Mulingar lazily swabbing the Tap Room bar with a rag and Rebecca Schwart in her white maid’s uniform and her hair plaited and coiled around her head quietly asking when he thought Tignor would be back in Milburn; and Mulingar smiled insolently at Rebecca and said, “Who wants to know, baby? You?”

  Even then, quickly walking away, not glancing back at the man leaning over the bar observing her retreating body, her hips and muscled legs, not thinking I knew this, I deserve this humiliation but no less adamant than before He will marry me, he loves me! Here is proof running her finger over the smooth pale-purple stone in the setting that was just slightly tarnished, she believed to be genuine silver.

  34

  First time I saw you, girl. I knew.

  He was gone, and he would return. Rebecca knew: for he had promised.

  At work, Rebecca removed the ring for safekeeping. She wrapped it in tissue and carried it close to her heart, in a pocket of her white rayon uniform. When she removed the uniform at the end of her shift, she replaced the silver ring on the smallest finger of her left hand.

  Now, it fit perfectly. Katy had showed her how to tighten the ring with a narrow strip of transparent tape.

  It was generally known, in Rebecca’s small circle of acquaintances, that Niles Tignor had given her this ring. Are you engaged? You spent the night with him�didn’t you? But Rebecca would not speak of Tignor. She was not one to speak casually of her personal life. She was not one to laugh and joke about men, as other women did. Her feeling for Tignor went too deep.

  She hated it, the levity with which women spoke of men, when no men were near. Vulgar remarks, mocking, meant to be funny: as if women were not in awe of male power, the authority of a man like Tignor. The very carelessness of the male who might spread his seed with the abandon of milkweed or maple seeds swirling madly in gusty spring winds. Female mockery was merely defensive, desperate.

  So Rebecca would not speak of Tignor, though her friends persisted in asking her. Was she engaged? And when would he be back in Milburn? She protested, “He isn’t the man you think you know. He is…” Behind her back she knew they laughed at her, and pitied her.

  In the old stone cottage in the cemetery there had been many words but these had been the words of Death. Now, Rebecca did not trust words. Certainly there were no adequate words to speak of what had passed between her and Tignor, in Beardstown.

  We are lovers now. We have made love together. We love each other…

  Ugly words scrawled by boys on walls and pavement in Milburn. On Hallowe’en morning, invariably fuck fuk you waxed in foot-high letters on store windows, school windows.

  It was so, Rebecca thought. Words lie.

  She felt confident that Tignor would return to her, for he had promised. There was the ring. There was their lovemaking, the way Tignor had loved her with his body, that could not have been false.

  No erotic event exists in isolation, to be experienced merely once, and forgotten. The erotic exists solely in memory: recalled, re-imagined, relived, and re-lived in a ceaseless present. So Rebecca understood, now. She was haunted by the memory of those hours in Beardstown that seemed to be taking place in a ceaseless present to which she alone had access. No matter if she was working, in the General Washington Hotel, or in the company of others, talking with them and seemingly alert, engaged: yet she was with Tignor, in the Beardstown Inn. In their bed, in that room.

  Their bed it had come to seem, in her memory. Not merely the bed.

  “Tignor! Pour me some bourbon.”

  This Tignor would do, happily. For Tignor too needed a drink.

  Lifting the glass to Rebecca’s chafed lips as she lay in the churned soiled sheets. Her hair was sticking to her sweaty face and neck, her breasts and belly were slick with sweat, her own and Tignor’s. He had made her bleed, the folded towels had only just been adequate to absorb the bleeding.

  Making love to her, Tignor had been heedless of her muffled cries. Moving upon her massive and obliterating as a landslide. The weight of him! The bulk, and the heat! Rebecca had never experienced anything like it. So shocked, her eyes flew open. The man pumping himself into her, as if this action were his very life, he could not control its urgency that ran through him flame-like, catastrophic. He had scarcely known her, he could not have been aware of her attempts to caress him, to kiss him, to speak his name.

  Afterward, she’d tried to hide the bleeding. But Tignor saw, and whistled through his teeth. “God damn.”

  Rebecca was all right, though. If there was pain, throbbing pain, not only between her legs where she was raw, lacerated, as if he’d shoved his fist up inside her, but her backbone, and the reddened chafed skin of her breasts, and the marks of his teeth on her neck, yet she would not cry, God damn she refused to cry. She understood that Tignor was feeling some repentance. Now the flame-like urgency had passed, now he’d pumped his life into her, he was feeling a male shame, and a dread of her breaking into helpless sobs for then he must console her, and his sexual nature was not one comfortable with consolation. Guilt would madden Niles Tignor, like a horse beset by horseflies.

  He hadn’t taken caution as he called it, either. This he had certainly meant to do.

  Rebecca knew, by instinct, that she must not make Tignor feel guilty, or remorseful. He would dislike her, then. He would not want to make love to her again. He would not love her, and he would not marry her.

  Ah, how good the bourbon tasted, going down! They drank from the same glass. Rebecca closed her fingers around Tignor’s big fingers, on the glass. She loved it, that his hand was so much larger than her own. The knuckles were pronounced, nickel-colored hairs grew lavish as pelt on the backs of his hands.

  She was naked, and the man was naked. In this room in their bed at the Beardstown Inn, where they were spending the night together.

  Abruptly now, they were intimate. The shock of nakedness had passed over into something so very strange: this intimacy, and the sweaty closeness of their flesh. If they kissed now, the kiss was one of this new intimacy. They were lovers and this fact could not be altered.

  Rebecca smiled, greedy in this knowledge. What Tignor had done to her, to her body, was like a shotgun blast, irrevocable.

  “You love me, Tignor, don’t you? Say you do.”

  “‘You do.’”

  She laughed, and swatted him. In play, in this new dazzling intimacy where she, Rebecca Schwart, had the right now to lightly chastise her lover.

  “Tignor! Say you do.”

  “Sure, baby.”

  In the sticky smelly sheets they lay dazed, exhausted. Like swimmers who have exerted themselves and lay now panting on the sand. What they had done would seem to matter less than that they’d done it, and had survived.

  Tignor drifted by quick degrees into sleep. His body twitched, and quivered, with its powerful inner life. Rebecca marveled at him, the fact of him. Awkwardly in her arms, the weight of his left shoulder crushing her right arm. What does this mean, that we have done together? She felt the angry hurt throbbing between her legs and yet: the pain was distant, it could be endured. The flamey bourbon coursed through her veins, she too would sleep.

  Waking later, in the night. And the bedside lamp was still on.

  Her throat burned from the bourbon, she was very thirsty. And the seeping of blood in her loins, that had not ceased. Almost, she felt panic. Almost, she could not think of the man’s name.

  She peered at him, from a distance of mere inches. So close, it’s difficult to see. His skin was ruddy and coarse and still very warm. He was a man who normally sweated when he slept, for his sleep was twitchy, restless. He grunted in his sleep, moaned and whimpered in surprise like a child. His metallic hair that lifted from his forehea
d, in damp spikes…His eyebrows were of that same glinting hue, and the beard pushing through the skin of his jaws. He had turned onto his back, sprawled luxuriantly across the bed, his left arm flung over Rebecca. She lay in its shelter, beneath its numbing weight.

  How hard the man breathed, in his sleep! He half-snored, a wet clicking sound rhythmic in his throat like the cries of a nocturnal insect.

  Rebecca slipped from the bed, that was unusually high from the floor. She winced, the pain in her groin was knife-like. And still she was bleeding, and had better take a towel with her, to prevent bloodstains on the carpet.

  “So ashamed. Oh, Christ.”

  Yet it was only natural wasn’t it: she knew.

  Katy and the others would be eager to know, what had happened in Beardstown. They knew, or thought they knew, that Rebecca had never been with a man before. Now they would be ravenous to know, and would interrogate her. Though she would tell them nothing yet they would talk of her behind her back, they would wonder.

  Niles Tignor! That was the man’s name.

  Rebecca made her way stiffly into the bathroom, and shut the door. What relief, to be alone!

  With shaky fingers Rebecca washed between the legs, using wetted toilet paper. She would not flush it down the toilet until she was certain the bleeding had stopped, for she dreaded waking Tignor. It was 3:20 A.M. The hotel was silent. The plumbing was antique, and noisy. She was dismayed to see that, yes there was fresh blood seeping from her, though more slowly than before.

  “You will be all right. You will not bleed to death.”

  In the mirror above the sink she was surprised to see: her flushed face, her wild disheveled hair. No lipstick remained on her mouth that looked raw, swollen. Her eyes appeared cracked, with tiny red threads. Her nose shone, oily. How ugly she was, how could any man love her!

  Still, she smiled. She was Niles Tignor’s girl, this blood was proof.

  The bleeding would cease by morning. This wasn’t menstrual blood that would continue for days. It wasn’t dark as that blood, and not clotted. Its odor was different. She would wash, wash, wash herself clean and the man would think no more of it.