The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  She wasn’t sure if that had been Port Oriskany, though. But she did recall that the man who’d masqueraded as her husband had taken her to an obstetrician in this city, who had examined her and run a test on her urine and told her the good news that she was going to have a baby in eight months’ time.

  The man who’d masqueraded as her husband had said in his blunt bemused voice You’re pregnant are you, girl. He had not said You’re going to have a baby.

  Years later, with her surviving child, she contemplated these words. The distinction between each statement.

  “Mommy are you sad? Mommy are you crying?”

  She wasn’t, though. She’d swear she was laughing.

  Next morning was brightly cold, invigorating. In the night she’d decided not to try to telephone Byron Hendricks, M.D. She would make her own way, she had no need of him. Nor did she take time to scan the telephone directory for Jones.

  She was in a very good mood. She had slept the sleep of the dead, and so had the child. More than nine hours! He’d wakened only just once, needing to be taken out into the hall to the toilet.

  Shivering with cold. Sleep-dazed. She’d led him by the hand and helped him open his pajamas, afterward guiding his hand to flush the toilet. Kissing him tenderly on the nape of the neck where there was a pear-sized ugly bruise. “Such a big boy! Such a good boy.”

  In hotels like this brownstone walk-up above a shuttered restaurant, as at the glamorous Port Oriskany Statler, it happened that individuals sometimes checked in with or without luggage, safety-locked their doors and pulled their blinds and in some way�clumsy, inspired, calculated, desperate�managed to kill themselves, usually by climbing into the bathtub clothed or naked and slashing their wrists with a razor blade. At the General Washington Hotel such incidents had been spoken of in whispers, though Rebecca had never been a witness to any bloody scene nor had she been asked to help clean up afterward.

  Suicide in hotel rooms was not uncommon, but murder was very rare. Rebecca had never heard of anyone killing a child in any hotel.

  Why do they do it, why check into a hotel, Rebecca had asked someone, possibly Hrube himself at a time when they must’ve been on reasonably good terms, and Hrube had shrugged saying, “To fuck the rest of us up, why else d’you think?” Rebecca had laughed, this was so inspired a reply.

  Couldn’t remember why she was thinking of him now: Hrube? Hadn’t thought of that flat-faced bastard in years.

  Back in the room she’d safety-locked the door, pulled the frayed blind farther down, hoisted the groggy child back into bed and climbed in beside him hugging him.

  Sleep of the dead! Nothing sweeter.

  In the morning using the tiny sink in the cubbyhole-toilet she managed to wash the child, including his hair. He resisted, but not vehemently. Thank God there was soap! She washed his fair fine thin hair and combed out of it the last remaining small snarls of dried blood.

  Her own hair was too thick, too long and matted and snarled with dried blood to be shampooed in any sink. She hated it, suddenly. Heavy greasy rank-smelling dragging at her soul. Like her brother Herschel she was, you’d think was an Iroquois Indian.

  She left the child at the automat instructing him not to move an inch, to wait for her. Hungrily he was eating a second bowl of hot oatmeal lavishly topped with milk and crystalline brown sugar of a kind he’d never before tasted. Rebecca went to have her hair shampooed and cut in Glamore Beauty Salon around the corner from the automat. She’d noticed the beauty salon on their walk the previous night, she’d studied the prices listed in the window.

  How sick she was of Rebecca Schwart’s hair! Her former husband had loved her hair long, heavy, sexy twining in his fingers, burying his face in her hair as he made love to her, moaning and pumping his life into her, between the legs he’d greedily kissed and nuzzled her, the coarse wiry pelt of hair she could hardly bear to touch, herself. But that time was past. The time of her love-delusion was past. She’d come to hate her thick shapeless hair that was always snarled beneath, couldn’t force a comb through it, oily if it wasn’t shampooed every other day and of course it was not shampooed every other day, not any longer. And now the hopeless bits of dried blood snarled in it. She would have it cut off, all but a few inches covering her ears.

  In the Glamore Salon she paged through Hair Styles until she found what she was looking for: Hazel Jones’s breezy short cut, with bangs scissor-cut just above the eyebrows.

  There he sat in the automat, where she’d left him. Very still as if his thoughts had collapsed in upon themselves. His expression was intense, absorbed. He was gripping himself oddly, arms folded across his chest in a tight embrace. She thought He is playing piano, his fingers are making music for him.

  He trusted her utterly. He had no doubt that she would return to him. Seeing her now he glanced upward, blinking.

  “Mommy you’re pretty. Mommy you look nice.”

  It was so. She was pretty, she looked nice. When her bruises and swellings faded, she would look more than nice.

  The new feathery haircut drew eyes to her. Something in her walk, her manner. Purchasing two adult tickets at the Greyhound Bus counter, impulsively choosing a destination (“Jamestown” somewhere to the south of Port Oriskany) because the bus was leaving in twenty minutes and she was wary of lingering in this busy public place where she and the child might be observed. (Zack was wearing a cloth cap on his head. He was sitting where she’d positioned him, on the farther side of the crowded waiting room, his back to the room and to her. They would be seen together only outside at the curb as the bus loaded, and then briefly. And on the bus they would sit together as if by chance, at the very rear.) Rebecca was smiling at the ticket seller, rousing the man from his late-morning torpor. “A beautiful day, so sunny.” The ticket seller, male, youngish, rounded shoulders and morose eyes brightening in turn, seeing a pretty-breezy American girl with shiny dark bangs across her forehead, feathery strands of shiny dark hair lifting about her ears, smiled at her blinking and staring, “Yeah! Man it sure is.”

  The remainder of her life. Maybe it would be easy.

  The Greyhound to Jamestown was loading. She signaled the child to follow her. Made him a gift of two discarded comic books she’d found in the waiting room. Kissing and cuddling in their seat on the bus. “They didn’t find us, sweetie! We’re safe.” It was a game, only Mommy knew the rules and the logic behind the rules. By the time the bus was lumbering into the hilly countryside south of Port Oriskany the child had become absorbed in one of the comic books.

  Cartoon animals! Walking upright, talking and even thinking (in balloons floating over their heads) in the way of human beings. They did not seem to the child any more bizarre or even illogical than the actions of those human beings he’d witnessed.

  Waking later, alone in his seat. Mommy was in the back playing gin rummy with a couple sitting in the rear seat that ran the width of the bus.

  The Fisks, they were. Ed and Bonnie. Ed was a flush-cheeked fattish bald man with sideburns and a genial laugh, Bonnie was big-busted, glamorously made up with flashing fingernails. Across Ed’s spread knees was a cardboard suitcase upon which Ed was dealing cards for himself and the women seated on either side of him.

  It wasn’t like Mommy to behave like this. On the bus trip from Rome she’d kept to herself not meeting anyone’s eye.

  “‘Gypsy-gin-rummy.’ It’s a variation of the other but there are more options. With gypsy, you have ‘wild cards’ and ‘free draw’ if you earn it. I can show you, if you’re interested.”

  The Fisks were interested. Bonnie said she’d heard of gypsy-gin-rummy but had never played.

  Zack watched the game for a while. He liked it that his mother was smiling, laughing in the new way. He liked her pretty new haircut. From time to time she glanced up at him leaning over the back of his seat, and winked. He drifted off to sleep hearing the slap-slap-slap of cards, exclamations and laughter from the players. He took comfort from the immediat
e fact They didn’t find us, we’re safe. It was all he wished to know at this time.

  Later, at another time, there would be other facts to know. He would wait.

  Already Port Oriskany, that had been so exciting to arrive in, was receding into the past. The brownstone hotel with the creaky double bed. The automat! The surprise of Mommy returning to him, her hair so short and shiny, bangs across her forehead to hide the bruises and worry lines. The child was beginning to know the satisfaction of departure. You arrive in a city in order that you might leave that city at a later time. There is a thrill in arrival but there is a greater thrill in departure.

  It was Mommy’s turn to deal. She laughed and joked with her new friends she would never see again after the bus deposited them at a farm just outside Jamestown. It was intoxicating to think that the world was crammed with individuals like the Fisks, good-natured, quick to laugh, ready for a good time. She said, “The world is a card game, see? You can lose but you can win, too.” She was Hazel Jones laughing in the new way, shuffling and dealing cards.

  4

  In Horseheads, New York, in late winter/early spring 1962 befriended Willie James Judd, state-licensed notary public and head clerk, Department of Records, Chemung County Courthouse. At that time waitressing at the Blue Moon Café on Depot Street, Horseheads. A young widow, just her and the little boy. A popular presence at the Blue Moon where most of the customers were men but the men quickly learned to respect the young widow. See, Hazel is like your own sister. You don’t come on to your own damn sister do you?

  Willie James Judd was near to retirement from his longtime county employment. Ate most of his meals at the Blue Moon where he became acquainted with the new waitress Hazel Jones who was also known to him through his younger sister Ethel Sweet who’d married the owner of the ramshackle Horseheads Inn where the young widow and her child rented a room by the week. Ethel Sweet liked publicly to marvel how uncomplaining Hazel Jones was. Not like other boarders. Quiet, kept to herself. Never any visitors. Never wasted towels, linens, hot water, soap. Never went out without switching off all the lights in her room. Nor did she allow the child to run on the stairs, to play noisily even outdoors behind the Inn. Nor did she allow the child to sneak downstairs and watch TV in the parlor with other boarders.

  Almost, Ethel said approvingly, you would not know a child was there.

  And Hazel’s life had not been easy: gradually it was revealed to Ethel Sweet how the young widow had lost both her parents as a child, her father in a house fire when she was four years old, her mother to cancer-of-the-breast when she was nine. Taken in then by relatives up in Port Oriskany who were begrudging to her, never found room for her in their hearts made her quit school at age sixteen to work as a chambermaid till at last at age eighteen she ran away with a man twice her age, married him and realized her mistake afterward learning he’d been married twice before, had children he was not supporting, he was a heavy drinker, beat her and their child and threatened to kill them both so at last unable to bear it she’d run away one night taking the terrified child with her this had been three years now and she had not stopped running out of fear of the man finding her.

  No they had not been divorced. He would never give her a divorce. He would wish to see her dead first. And their son, too.

  Ethel Sweet reported how, telling this, Hazel began to tremble. It was so real to her!

  But now, in Horseheads, she wished to remain. In Horseheads she’d made friends, she was happy. She was content. She wished to enroll Zacharias in the elementary school next fall. He would be almost six years old in September.

  Saying to Ethel maybe she’d noticed, Zacharias is not like other boys? Doesn’t play with other children, he’s shy and fearful of being hurt, his father had beat him so often, only just needed to raise his fist and the child would become terrified so she had to shelter him from the roughness of men and boys, boys’ games and loud shouting, also Zacharias had a musical gift, he would be a concert pianist someday and so he must not injure his hands.

  Ethel Sweet was so touched! That Hazel who had a reputation in Horseheads for keeping to herself and avoiding personal remarks and questions at the Blue Moon by simply smiling and saying not a word should suddenly open her heart to Ethel, whose own daughters were grown and gone and didn’t give a damn for their mother they’d always taken for granted.

  Except Ethel saw that the young woman was nervous and worried-like. Asked what was wrong and Hazel says she don’t have the right papers to enroll Zacharias in school.

  Like what kind of papers, Ethel asked. Birth certificate?

  Hazel said yes. Birth certificate for her son but also one for her, too.

  What had happened was: Hazel’s birth certificate had burned in the house fire when she was four years old. There was no record of her birth anywhere! The fire had been in some town upstate, Hazel did not even know for certain, for her mother had taken her away to live elsewhere in one town after another in the Chautauqua Valley. And her mother had died when Hazel was nine. And her relatives she lived with had no care for her. She had been told she’d been born on a boat from Europe, in New York harbor, her parents had been immigrants from Poland or maybe Hungary but she had not been told which boat, she wasn’t sure when it had crossed, she had seen no record of her birth. It was like they wished to erase me soon as I was born, Hazel told Ethel. But not complaining-like, only just stating a fact.

  And Zacharias’s birth certificate was in the possession of his father unless it too had been lost or willfully destroyed.

  Hearing this Ethel said hotly it was ridiculous, a person is alive in front of you she or him was certainly born. Why you’d need a document to prove this fact made no God-damn sense.

  Saying hotly, What it is is just damn-fool lawyers. The law. Willie over at the Courthouse thirty-eight years could tell you tales to make you laugh like hell, or throw up you’d be so disgusted. And that goes for the judges, too.

  Saying yet more hotly, What it is, Hazel, is men. Shooting off their mouths, and charging for it like you wouldn’t believe�seventy-five dollars an hour some of ’em charge! If it was up to women, you would not need legal documents for any damn thing from buying or selling a henhouse to making out your own will.

  Hazel thanked her for being so understanding. Hazel said she had gone a long time not confiding in another person. It was a thorn in her heart, she had no proof that either Zacharias or her had ever been born. It wasn’t like the old days now, you needed legal documents to make your way. There was no avoiding it. At the Blue Moon she was paid off the books and of course tips are off the books but if she kept on this way she would be retired someday and an old woman with no Social Security payments, not a penny.

  Ethel said without thinking, “Oh honey you got to get married. That’s what you got to do, get married.”

  And Hazel said biting her lower lip, looking like she wanted to cry and Ethel could’ve bit her own tongue speaking as she’d done, “I can’t. I am already married, I can never be married again.”

  Right away then Ethel called her brother Willie. She knew Willie had a generous heart. In Horseheads he had a reputation for being a prickly old bastard liked to boss folks around but that was only toward individuals who rubbed him the wrong way. He was a decent man. Felt sorry for the girl Hazel Jones. And the little boy quiet like a deaf-mute. At the County Hall of Records Willie Judd was the man to see for any kind of document you required. Had access to any kind of document you could name. Birth certificate, wedding certificate, death certificate. Two hundred years of yellowing old wills in faded ink, real estate documents dating back to the 1700s, deeds executed with the Six Nations of the Iroquois. Legal forms of any damn kind you wished. And Willie was a notary public owning his own New York State notary seal.

  In this way in spring 1962 Willie Judd took pity on Hazel Jones. Willie was not a man given to ease with others and very rarely to pity, sympathy. It would have to be secret. Invited the young woman to his off
ice in the basement of the courthouse just at 5 P.M. closing time of a weekday to explain her situation to him which she did, carefully writing down for Willie certain facts. As she wrote these, she paused to wipe at her eyes. Her birth name was “Hazel Jones” but her married name of course was a different last name she did not care to say; Zacharias’s last name was not “Jones” of course but the name of her husband she was in terror would find the boy, if his legal name was revealed. That was why, Hazel said, they had always to keep going, to live in different places where they would not be known. But now in Horseheads they hoped for a permanent residence.

  Willie brushed aside these details as he’d brush aside a swarm of gnats. Head clerk at the Hall of Records for thirty-eight years plus he was a notary public. Had the power of any damn judge in the U.S. almost. Could draw up any document he damn well wished and to anybody’s eye it would be legal.

  So! A few swigs of good malt whiskey and Willie Judd was God-damn inspired.

  Drew up surrogate birth certificates for Hazel Jones and her son. Willie’s imagination in full gear. There was a form, Chemung County Courthouse letterhead, allowed for such documents to replicate documents that had existed but had been lost or destroyed. Only in recent decades did you need “certificate of birth” anyway. Old-timers, nobody gave a damn. Like adoption. You’d take in a kid, any-age kid, he was yours, no formal adoption papers, none of that bullshit. Now it would be a matter of public record, she’d have the documents to prove it: Hazel Esther Jones born May 11,

  1936 New York harbor, New York parentage unknown.