The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  And so she knew. Before even that morning in October when the sun had only just appeared behind a bank of clouds at the tree line and Niley was still sleeping in the next room and she dared to follow him outside, and to the road, and across the road to the canal; before she hid watching him from a distance of about thirty feet, how he walked slowly along the towpath and then paused, and lit a cigarette and smoked, and brooded; a solitary masculine figure of some mysterious distinction of whom it is reasonable to ask Who is he? Rebecca watched from behind a thicket of brambles, saw Tignor at last glance casually over his shoulder, and in both directions along the flat dark glittering waterway (it was deserted, no barges in sight, no human activity on the towpath), then remove from his coat pocket an awkward-sized object she knew at once to be, though it was wrapped in canvas, the revolver. He weighed the object in his hand. He hesitated, with an air of regret. Then, as Tignor did most things, he tossed it indifferently into the canal where it sank at once.

  Rebecca thought He has used that gun, he has killed someone. But he won’t kill me.

  When they’d first been married Tignor had taught Rebecca to drive. Often he’d promised to buy her a car�“Nice little coupe for my girl. Convertible, maybe.” Tignor had seemed sincere and yet he’d never gotten around to buying the car.

  There was Tignor’s Pontiac in the driveway, she dared not ask to drive. Even to shop in Chautauqua Falls, or to drive to work. Some mornings, if he was awake that early, or if he’d only just come home from the previous night, Tignor drove Rebecca to Niagara Tubing; some afternoons, if he was in the vicinity, he picked her up at the end of her shift. But Rebecca could not rely upon him. Most of the time she continued to walk the mile and a half along the towpath as she always had.

  It wasn’t so clear what to do with Niley. Tignor objected to Edna Meltzer looking after his son�the old bag sticking her nose in Tignor’s business!�and yet, Tignor could hardly be expected to stay in the house and look after a three-year-old himself. If Rebecca left Niley with Tignor, she might return to discover the Pontiac gone and the child wandering outside in disheveled soiled clothes, if not part-naked. She might discover Niley barefoot in pajamas trying to pull his shiny red wagon along the rutted driveway, or playing at the thirty-foot well where the plank coverings were rotted, or prowling in the dilapidated hay barn amid the filthy encrustrations of decades of bird droppings. Once, he’d made his way to Ike’s Food Store.

  Edna Meltzer said, “But I don’t mind! Niley is like my own grandson. And any time Tignor wants him back, he comes over and takes him.”

  At first, Tignor had been interested in Niley’s childish drawings and scribblings. His attempts at spelling, under Rebecca’s guidance. Tignor hadn’t the patience to read to Niley, the very act of reading aloud bored him, but he would lie sprawled on the sofa smoking and sipping ale and listening to Rebecca read to Niley, who insisted that Rebecca move her finger along beneath the words she was reading, that he could repeat them after her. Tignor said, amused, “This kid! He’s smart, I guess. For his age.” Rebecca smiled, wondering if Tignor knew his son’s age. Or what the average three-year-old was like. She said, yes she thought Niley was very smart for his age. And he had musical talent, too.

  “‘Musical talent’? Since when?”

  Anytime there was music on the radio, Rebecca said, he stopped whatever he was doing to listen. He seemed excited by music. He tried to sing, dance. Tignor said, “No kid of mine is going to be a dancer, for sure. Some tap-dancing darkie.” Tignor spoke with the teasing exaggeration of one who means to be funny, but Rebecca saw his face tighten.

  “Not a dancer but a pianist, maybe.”

  “‘Pianist’�what’s that? Piano player?”

  Tignor sneered, he was coming to dislike his wife’s big words and pretensions. Yet he was sometimes touched by these, too, as he was touched by his son’s clumsy crayon drawings and attempts at walking-fast-like-Daddy.

  Tignor came upon the sheet of paper with Niley’s crayon-printed T E T A N U S. And others: A I R P L A N E, P U R P L E, S K U N K. Tignor laughed, shaking his head. “Jesus. You could teach the kid every word in the damn dictionary, like this.”

  “Niley loves words. He loves the feeling of ‘spelling’ even if he doesn’t know the alphabet yet.”

  “Why doesn’t he know the alphabet?”

  “He knows some of it. But it’s a little long for him, twenty-six letters.”

  Tignor frowned, considering. Rebecca hoped he wouldn’t ask Niley to recite the alphabet, this would end in a paroxysm of tears. Though she suspected that Tignor didn’t know the alphabet, either. Not all twenty-six letters!

  “This is more like you’d expect, from a kid.” Tignor was looking at Niley’s banana hat drawing. A figure meant to be Daddy (but Tignor didn’t know this clumsily drawn fattish cartoon figure was meant to be Daddy) with a yellow banana sticking from its head, half the figure’s size.

  Later, restless and prowling the old house, upstairs where Rebecca kept her private things, Tignor found her word sheets and scribbled doodlings. She was stricken with embarrassment.

  Mostly these were lists comprised from her dictionary. And from discarded public school textbooks in biology, math, history. Tignor read aloud, amused: “gymnosperms�angiosperms. What the hell’s this�sperms?” He glared at her in mock disdain. “Chlorophyll�chloroplast�photosynthesis.” He was having difficulty pronouncing the words, his face reddened. “Cranium�vertebra�pelvis�femur�”

  Femur he uttered in a growl of disgust as feeeemur.

  Rebecca took the pages from him, her face smarting.

  Tignor laughed. “Like some high school kid, eh? How the hell old are you, anyway?”

  Rebecca said nothing. She was confused, thinking he’d taken the dictionary from her too, and thrown it into the stove.

  Her dictionary! It was her most secret possession.

  Grunting, Tignor stooped to pick something fallen onto the floor. This was a sheet of paper upon which Rebecca had written, in a lazy sloping script floating down the page�

  “Who’re these? Friends of yours?”

  Now Rebecca was stricken with fear. The way Tignor was glaring at her.

  “No. They’re no one, Tignor. Just…names.”

  Tignor snorted in derision, crumpled the page and tossed it at Rebecca, striking her chest. It was a harmless blow with no weight behind it yet it left her breathless as if he’d punched her.

  Yet he wasn’t in a really mean mood. Rebecca heard him laughing to himself, whistling on the stairs.

  “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

  Niley saw her pressing both her fists against her forehead. Her eyes reddened, shut tight.

  “Mommy is ashamed.”

  “‘Shamed’…?”

  Niley came to stroke Mommy’s heated forehead. Niley was frowning, that old-young look to his face.

  God damn why hadn’t she hidden her papers from Tignor! Better yet, thrown them away.

  Now that Tignor was home, she needed to keep the run-down old house clean and neat and “sparkly” as possible. As much like the rooms of a good hotel as she could manage.

  No mess. No clothes tossed about. (Tignor’s clothes and things, Rebecca put away without a word.)

  The irony was, she’d stopped thinking about Hazel Jones. The man in the panama hat. The look of urgency in his face. All that seemed long ago now, remote and improbable as something in one of Niley’s picture books.

  Why’d anybody give a shit about you, girl!

  A man’s scornful voice. She wasn’t sure whose.

  Niley was sick. A bad cold, and now flu.

  Rebecca tried to take his temperature: 101° F?

  Her hand trembled, holding the thermometer to the light.

  “Tignor? Niley needs to see a doctor.”

  “A doctor where?”

  It was a question that made no sense. Tignor seemed confused, shaken.

  Yet he carried Niley, wrapped in a blanke
t, out to his car. He drove Niley and Rebecca into Chautauqua Falls and waited in the car in the parking lot outside the doctor’s office, smoking. He’d given Rebecca a fifty-dollar bill for the doctor but had not offered to come inside. Rebecca thought He’s afraid. Of sickness, of any kind of weakness.

  She was angry with him, in that instant. Shoving a fifty-dollar bill at her, the mother of the sick child. She would not give him change from the fifty dollars, she would hide it away in her closet.

  Tignor was away from home often. But never more than two or three days at a stretch. Rebecca was coming to see he’d lost his job with the brewery. Yet she could not ask him, he’d have been furious with her. She could not plead with him What has happened to you? Why can’t you talk to me?

  When Rebecca returned to the car with Niley, an hour later, she saw Tignor on his feet, leaning against a front fender, smoking. In the instant before he glanced up at her she thought That man! He is no one I know.

  Quickly she said, “Niley just has a touch of the flu, Tignor. The doctor says not to worry. He says�”

  “Did he give you a prescription?”

  “He says just to give Niley some children’s aspirin. I have some at home, I’ve been giving him.”

  Tignor frowned. “Nothing stronger?”

  “It’s just flu, Tignor. This aspirin is supposed to be strong enough.”

  “It better be, honey. If it ain’t, this ‘peedy-trician’ is gonna get his head broke.”

  Tignor spoke with defiance, bravado. Rebecca stooped to kiss Niley’s warm forehead in consolation.

  They drove back to Four Corners. Rebecca held Niley on her lap in the passenger’s seat, beside Tignor who was silent and brooding as if he’d been obscurely insulted. “I’d think you would be relieved, Tignor, like me. The doctor was very nice.”

  Rebecca leaned against Tignor, just slightly. The contact with the man’s warm, somehow aggrieved skin gave her pleasure. A small jolt of pleasure she hadn’t felt in some time.

  “The doctor says that Niley is very healthy, overall. His growth. His ‘reflexes.’ Listening through a stethoscope to his heart and lungs.” She paused, knowing that Tignor was listening, and that this was good news.

  Tignor drove for another few minutes in silence but he was softening, melting. Glancing down at Rebecca, his girl. His Gypsy-girl. At last he squeezed Rebecca’s thigh, hard enough to hurt. He reached over to tousle Niley’s damp hair.

  “Hey you two: love ya.”

  Love ya. It was the first time Tignor had ever said such a thing to them.

  And so she thought I will never leave him.

  “He loves us. He loves his son. He would never hurt us. He is only just…Sometimes…”

  Waiting? Was Tignor waiting?

  But for what was Tignor waiting?

  He’d ceased to shave every day. His clothes were not so stylish as they’d been. He no longer had his hair trimmed regularly by a hotel barber. He no longer had his clothes laundered and dry cleaned in hotels. He’d spent money to look good though he’d never been overly fastidious, fussy. Now he wore the same shirt for several days in a row. He slept in his underwear. Kicked dirty socks into a corner of the bedroom for his wife to discover.

  Of course, Rebecca was expected to launder and iron most of Tignor’s clothes now. What required dry cleaning, he didn’t trouble to have cleaned.

  The damned old washing machine Rebecca was expected to use�! Almost as bad as her mother’s had been. It broke down often, spilling soapy water onto the linoleum floor of the washroom. And then Rebecca had to iron, or try to iron, Tignor’s white cotton shirts.

  The iron was heavy, her wrist ached. Bad as Niagara Tubing except the smells weren’t so sickening. Ma had taught her to iron but only just flat things, sheets, towels. Pa’s few shirts she’d ironed herself taking care frowning over the ironing board as if all of her life, her female yearning, had been bound up in a man’s shirt spread out before her.

  “Jesus. A blind cripple could do better than this.”

  It was Tignor, examining one of his shirts. The iron had made creases at the collar. Ma had told her The collar is the hardest part, next are the shoulders. Front, back, and sleeves are easy.

  “Oh, Tignor. I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t wear this shit! You’ll have to wash it again, and iron it again.”

  Rebecca took the shirt from him. It was a white cotton dress shirt with long sleeves. Still warm from the iron. She would not re-wash it, only just soak it and hang it to dry and try ironing it again in the morning.

  In fact she stood mute, sullen. After Tignor went away. God damn she worked eight hours five days a week at fucking Niagara Tubing, did all the housework, took care of Niley and him and why wasn’t that enough?

  “This factory job. What’s it pay?”

  Out of nowhere came Tignor’s question. But Rebecca had the idea Tignor had wanted to ask for a long time.

  She hesitated. Then told him.

  ( If she lied, and he found out. He would know then that she was trying to save money out of the salary.)

  “That little? For a forty-hour week? Christ.”

  Tignor was personally hurt, insulted.

  “Tignor, it’s just the machine shop. I didn’t have any experience. They don’t want women.”

  It was nearing the end of October. The sky was a hard steely knife-blade-blue. By midday the air was still cold, begrudging. Rebecca had not wished to think How will we endure the winter together in this old house!

  She’d missed Tignor, in his absences. Now that Tignor was living with them, she missed her old loneliness.

  And she was frightened of him: his physical presence, the swerve of his emotions, his eyes like the eyes of a blind man who has suddenly been gifted with sight, and doesn’t like what he sees.

  Tignor’s new habit was running both his hands through his ravaged hair in a gesture of impatience. His hair had grown back slowly, was no longer thick. It was the hair of an ordinary man now: thin, lank, faded brown. Beneath, his skull was bony to the touch.

  Tignor was ashamed for Rebecca and of her and of himself as her husband, for a long trembling moment he could not speak. Then he said, spitting the words, “I told you, Rebecca. You wouldn’t have to work anymore, that day we drove to Niagara Falls I told you. Didn’t I?”

  He was almost pleading. Rebecca felt a stab of love for him, she knew she must console him. Yet she said:

  “You said I didn’t have to work at the hotel. That’s all you said.”

  “God damn, I meant any kind of job. That’s what I meant and you fucking know it.”

  He was becoming angry. She knew, she knew!�she must not provoke him. Yet she said:

  “I only took the job at Niagara Tubing because I needed money for Niley and me. A young child needs clothes, Tignor. And food. And you were away, Tignor, I hadn’t heard from you…”

  “Bullshit. I sent you money. In the U.S. mail, I sent it.”

  No. You did not.

  You are remembering wrongly. You are lying.

  Rebecca knew the warning signals, she must say nothing more.

  Tignor went away, furious. She heard his footsteps. Vibrations of footsteps pulsing in her head. So Jacob Schwart in his righteous anger had walked heavily, on the heels of his boots. That after his shotgun-death had had to be cut from his feet like hooves grown into the flesh.

  Jacob Schwart: a man, in his home. A man, head of his family. Heavily on his heels he walks signaling displeasure.

  “At the factory, is he? This guy?”

  Rebecca opened her eyes, confused. Tignor was standing before her, hadn’t he walked away?

  “Foreman, is he? Some local big shot? Boss?”

  Rebecca tried to smile. She believed that Tignor was only taunting, he wasn’t serious. Yet he could be dangerous.

  Saying, “Hell no, not a boss. One of those assholes drives a Caddie. Not you. Look at you. Used to be damned good-looking. Used to have a real happy smile
like a girl. Where’s it now? Anybody fucking you now, he’s got to be on the floor. I smell him on you: that burnt-rubbery stink and sweat like a nigger.”

  Rebecca backed away.

  “Tignor, please. Don’t say such ugly things, Niley might hear.”

  “Let the kid hear! He’s got to know, his hot-shit mommy is a w-h-o-r-e.”

  “Tignor, you don’t mean that.”

  “Don’t, eh? Don’t ‘mean’ what, baby?”

  “What you’re saying.”

  “Exactly what’m I saying? You tell me.”

  Rebecca said, trying not to stammer, “I love you, Tignor. I don’t know any man except you. There has never been any other man except you. You must know that! I have never�”

  There was Niley crouched beside the sofa, listening. Niley who should have been in bed by now.

  The previous night Tignor had been playing poker with friends in Chautauqua Falls. Exactly where, Rebecca didn’t know. He’d hinted it had been a “damn worthwhile” night and he was in a generous mood, in his soul.

  He was! Fuck it, his mood wasn’t going to be ruined.

  Tignor sank onto the sofa, heavily. Pulled Niley onto his lap. He seemed not to notice, unless it amused him, how the boy winced at his rough strong fingers.

  Tignor hadn’t shaved today. His stubbled jaws glinted gray. He looked like a giant predator fish in an illustrated book: Niley stared. Daddy’s eyes were bloodshot, he’d rolled his shirtsleeves up tight over his biceps. Droplets of perspiration gleamed on his skin that looked like myriad skins, stitched together, just perceptibly mismatched.

  “Niley, my boy! Tell Daddy does a man come to the house here to see Mommy?”

  Niley stared as if not hearing. Tignor gave him a shake.