I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The instructor’s nightmare epiphany. This has all been a game. He doesn’t respect me at all. Do any of them…?

  Erma’s face burned. She must have looked like a slapped, publicly humiliated child. Eldridge, having gone too far, realized his blunder and began to make amends. Others, who hadn’t taken part in the noisy discussion, looked on like observers at an auto wreck. Some were shocked, a few hid smiles and smirks. Arno Kethy had risen partway from his desk, peering over heads. His stitched-looking Caucasian face shone with indignation. Eldridge was apologizing profusely, having reverted to his usual benevolence. Erma said, smiling, “It’s quite all right, Reverend Eldridge. I stand corrected.” She meant to turn the unpleasant confrontation into a good-natured joke, though Eldridge’s hard round face gleamed with oily beads of sweat, and Erma was still trembling. Lorett said with pursed, pouty lips, “See, Miz S’heg’off, what we women got to contend with? The black male ego revealed.” Eldridge managed to laugh at this remark, barely, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief. Erma guided the class onto another, safer essay. She didn’t glance back at Arno Kethy. Everyone would be on good behavior for the remainder of the class and of course, at the end, Reverend Eldridge would hurry forward to further apologize. He’s worried. He showed me his true face. He’d been hoping for a high grade. Erma was disillusioned, but behaved graciously with Eldridge. She wasn’t upset with him in the least, she said; in fact, she was pleased that their discussion had been so animated. “That’s the aim of strong writing, isn’t it? To provoke thought.”

  By this time Kethy had vanished by the rear exit. Erma had wanted to hand back his “Arguement” and ask him to speak with her about it, but when she looked up, exhausted and demoralized, Kethy was gone.

  NEXT CLASS MEETING, and the next, E. G. Eldridge was absent. Erma felt the sting of a public rebuke. She wondered if Eldridge had dropped the course, or was just staying away temporarily to punish her. She wanted the man back, to make amends; though she’d been disgusted with him, she couldn’t bear it that he might be disgusted with her. She made inquiries in the dean’s office and was told only that Eldridge’s wife had called to say he was hospitalized, and would probably not be returning to school. Erma was astonished. “But he seemed to be in good health. He’s a strong, vigorous man…”

  She wondered guiltily if, in any way, she was to blame.

  ASSIGNMENT #4: OBSEVATION AND ANYLSIS

  The house is two floors, brown shinglewood with a

  look of soft rotted wood. There is a front porch

  and a side porch. The roof is black tarpaper.

  It is just an ordinary house you would think

  from the outside. It is near the hospital.

  Her place she lives in, is on the second floor.

  The stairs are squeezed in. There is a smell

  of cooking from the downstairs. There is linolum

  tile on the floor. The mailboxes are downstairs.

  The lock on the front door is not a serious lock.

  Her skin was very white even in the shadow.

  There was radio music playing, very soft.

  She has wrapped a white towel around her hair.

  When she brushes it out, it is strange to her,

  it has become shorter. It makes her younger.

  There is a swatch of bush-hair, a lighter color

  between her legs. It is curly and if you

  sallowed a hair, it would tickle!

  There are only three rooms in the apartment,

  this is a surprise. Not what a college teacher

  deserves. Except for the blue bureau

  and some pictures of trees she has taped to her walls

  there is not enough beauty in this place.

  The blinds are drawn but you can see through.

  Maybe they are not drawn to the window ledge.

  The lock on the door is the same lock as downstairs.

  From the hospital, there are sirens.

  She came out from the steamed bathroom drying

  her hair, and another towel wrapped around her.

  His hands helped her. He was holding the big towel,

  she felt his hands through the clothe and shivered.

  She would look up though she did not SEE him then.

  Yet she smiled. For she knew he was there.

  Hed painted the bureau for her. A little wood bureau

  with pink rosebuds and the knobs made of glass.

  He explained to her he would like to marry

  and have children except they have tired to discorage

  him. Its their hope to discorage you from life.

  They laugh if you try to hang yourself, they provide

  the clothes. They pretend they dont see spoons,

  for you to sharpen. They hope for the lower class

  to die out like dogs.

  Before he knew her name ERMA SCHEGLOFF

  he was granted knowledge of her face.

  If you love somebody that is all there is.

  If you anylise it you will fail.

  You knew each other before it happened.

  Always he would recall her face

  that brought him hope.

  For you cant live without hope.

  He would protect her from all enemies.

  He would cut away their faces and their hearts.

  To protect her he would not be afraid

  to use all his strength.

  He would not live without her, he felt.

  “ ‘BORDERLINE. ’ BUT ‘BORDE RLINE’ to what?”

  She had a vision of a single, isolated nation-state floating in darkness, its borders touching upon nothing.

  IN THE ALL-but-deserted reference room of the downtown public library there was Erma Schegloff scrolling through back editions of the city newspaper on microfilm. Anxious, dreading what she might find in these rows upon rows of shimmering print. Headlines of national and international crisis juxtaposed with area news and all of it reduced to history. Time past. The extraordinary set beside the commonplace. It was County News she focused upon, the second section of the paper. Scrolling through weeks of campaign and election coverage, photos of smiling politicians, town meetings, sewer bond issues, school board debates, schoolbus safety, fires, arson, arrests for robbery, theft, drunken driving, armed assault. Ladies’ charity bazaars, church news, archbishop dies, scholarship winners, lottery winners, arson suspected, arson-suspect arrested, embezzlement of bank funds, school superintendent dies, dean of business school at the university retires, honorary degrees conferred upon, arrests in drug raids, and suddenly there was

  EDGARSTOWN DEATH ROW PRISONER, 39

  FREED AFTER 8-YEAR ORDEAL

  The date was December 2 of the previous year. She’d been staring at a photo of Arno Kethy aged thirty-one, young-looking, with hurt narrowed eyes and the shadow of a beard and brutally short-trimmed hair, without recognizing him.

  Kethy had been convicted of raping and murdering a woman and her thirteen-year-old daughter in a state park in July 1990; he’d been identified by witnesses as being near the scene of the crime, there was “evidence” linking him to the crime site, he’d made a confession to police, a police informant testified at his trial he’d boasted of committing the crimes. Kethy had subsequently recanted the confession, alleging he’d been beaten by police. He had a “drug history.” He’d spent time in rehabilitation, in Iowa. He’d also spent time in Iowa State Penitentiary on a charge of armed robbery. At his trial he’d taken the witness stand but became “catatonic” and could not testify. During his two-week trial he became violent and had to be placed under restraint in the courtroom. A jury found him guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of rape, and he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. His case was automatically appealed. His conviction was overturned when a county man, arrested by police for drug dealing, told police that the rape-murders had been committed by another man, not Kethy; subsequent DNA evidence proved that Kethy had not been the rapist,
and linked the other suspect to the crimes. When Kethy was released after eight years on Death Row TV reporters had asked him to comment on his ordeal but Kethy “shook his head wordlessly and walked away.”

  Erma wiped at her eyes. Shook his head, walked away. What more manly gesture!

  It was when Erma was returning the rolls of microfilm to the librarian that she happened to see, on a table, scattered pages of the city paper. Immediately her eye leapt to a photo of a familiar face. Reverend E. G. Eldridge. And the headline MINISTER BRUTALLY ATTACKED IN ROBBERY ATTEMPT.

  Appalled, Erma read that E. G. Eldridge, fifty-one years old, had been attacked with a razor while getting into his car in the parking lot behind his church, the Disciples of Jesus Christ, on Friday of the previous week. The attack had occurred at 7 P.M., after dark but in a lighted area. Eldridge had not seen his assailant. He’d been severely lacerated in the face and hands and was in stable condition in the hospital. The unknown assailant had removed Eldridge’s wallet from his coat pocket but dropped it near him without taking money or credit cards. Police believed he’d been frightened off by someone on the street, but no witnesses to the crime had yet come forward.

  “For me. He did it, for me.”

  For several minutes she sat stunned. Then she folded up the newspaper carefully, inserting pages in their proper order, and returned it to the librarian’s desk where current issues of the local paper were kept.

  SHE LIFTED THE telephone receiver. She would call the police, she would say carefully: “I think I know who might have assaulted Reverend Eldridge. His name is…”

  So long she held the receiver in her sweaty hand, the dial tone turned to an irritated mechanical squawking in her ear. Somewhere close by, a siren wailed. It had begun to snow again, windborne sleet. Not yet March, this winter of Erma’s life seemed to have gone on forever with the fascination of one of those mad works of adoration The Faerie Queene, The Romance of the Rose… By the time she replaced the receiver the mechanical squawking had ceased. There was no dial tone, no sound, as if the line had been cut.

  This can’t be happening can it? I am not truly here.

  Through the ice-stippled side window of her car Erma saw the dimly lighted windows of 81 Bridge Street. A shabby red-brick town-house in a neighborhood of similar run-down rowhouses near the ramp of the enormous bridge. Human life was dwarfed here, human habitations like caves, hives. Though close by, the polluted river was invisible.

  She wondered if Kethy was home. If he was alone.

  I can’t love you. You mustn’t love me. You don’t know me: my face is not me.

  You must not hurt others on my account…

  Yet their connection was forged too deep for such words, now.

  No words Erma uttered would matter to Kethy, no words could deflect his adoration.

  He’d stayed away from class. He wouldn’t come again, Erma understood. So she must go to him, if they were ever to meet again. He would injure and even kill on her account but he believed himself unworthy of her.

  Uncertain what to do, Erma drove on. She was morbidly excited, exhilarated. She’d brought Kethy’s last composition with her, to give to him personally. What madness! Yet she would do it, if she could force herself. She’d become, she believed, a stronger person: willful, resolute. Like the man who adored her, reckless.

  The last time she’d called home, for instance. The duty-bound daughter. Gentle all-forgiving never-judging daughter. Her mother was saying in a hurt whining voice why are you so far from us Erma, why have you left us in our old age, like your brothers, no better than your brothers, why do you imagine you can “teach,” you’re not the type, never were, you’re shy, you used to stammer so badly remember how you came home crying, the other children teased you so—and Erma quietly hung up the receiver on her mother’s voice. Smiling, thinking The connection was broken. No one’s fault.

  Within the hour she’d arranged for her telephone number to be changed, unlisted.

  She would tell Kethy, maybe. They’d laugh together. She would tell Kethy such things she’d never told anyone in this raw new life of hers in the Midwest or in the old lost life back east. She would tell him None of them ever knew me, I’m so lonely.

  Erma was circling the block, evidently. She perceived that that was what she was doing. One-way streets, and narrow. And vehicles were parked on the streets, some of them abandoned. There was trash dumped on the pavement, overturned trash cans. In this setting Kethy’s “Obsevation and Anylsis” acquired a touching, comical significance. Remedial English, taught to inhabitants of such a world. The strategies of prose, persuasive prose, prose to save one’s life, taught to Death Row prisoners. Erma hadn’t graded Kethy’s compositions, out of respect. Out of fear for him, yes; but out of respect, too. She would return the composition to him in person as an act of homage but she hadn’t committed herself to any action beyond that. She was one who wished to believe that human motives precede actions for she was (she had always been) a rational individual yet clearly there were times (was this one of those times?) when actions might precede motives and even render them useless.

  The one-way streets made this part of the city a maze. Erma had been forced to drive several blocks out of her way. Go home! Continue on home, no one will ever know you’ve been here. She passed beneath another ramp of the old ugly Victorian-era bridge. In warmer weather it would be dangerous for Erma to drive in this part of the city, a lone white woman in a compact car, but tonight no one was on the street. Though her heart was pounding, she knew the symptoms of anxiety. Exhilaration! She saw that she was driving again on Bridge Street, heading south. Street numbers were diminishing: 231, 184, 101…She approached Kethy’s house another time. She was fairly certain someone was home. That bluish undersea TV glimmering. She braked her car at the curb: a shadowy figure was passing by the window, behind the carelessly drawn shade. I drive my car at night, for I am lonely. Could toss a bomb through any lighted window. Erma turned off the ignition. She saw that, while the porches of other rowhouses on the street were cluttered with objects, chairs, bicycles, trash cans, the porch at 81 Bridge was empty except for a single trash can.

  He lived alone. He was in there, alone.

  Carefully, Erma walked up the icy sidewalk. Stepped onto the porch. Through the thin, cracked shade she had the impression of a male figure moving swiftly toward the door by the time she pressed the bell. The door was opened within seconds like an inhalation of breath: Arno Kethy stood there, staring at her.

  He wore a clean black T-shirt. Work pants, hiker’s boots. A long spidery blue tattoo covered much of his left forearm. His eyes were deep-set, shocked. As if he’d been expecting a visitor he’d shaved so recently that tiny beads of blood shone on the underside of his jaw. And he’d cut his hair with a scissors, now the gingery-graying hair fell just below his ears, newly washed, limp and thin.

  Erma heard her prepared words. “Mr. Kethy, may I speak with you? Arno.”

  Part Three

  The Skull: A Love Story

  THEY BROUGHT HIM the skull in a plastic bag, in pieces. Like broken crockery it was. A human skull smashed into approximately two hundred fragments, a few large enough to be immediately identified (a three-inch section of the lower jaw containing several teeth, a portion of the largest bone of the cranium), and the smallest about the size of his smallest fingernail. Contrary to popular belief, the human cranium isn’t a single helmet-shaped bone but eight bones fused together, and the facial mask is fourteen bones fused together, and these, in the victim, had been smashed with a blunt object, smashed, dented, and pierced, as if the unknown killer had wanted not merely to kill his victim but to obliterate her very being. There was the almost palpable wish here that the dead should cease to exist even as matter: should never have existed. No hair remained on any skull fragments, for no scalp remained to contain hair, but swaths of sun-bleached brown hair had been found with the skeleton, and had been brought to him in a separate plastic bag. Since rotted clot
hing found at the scene was a female’s clothing, the victim had been identified as female. A woman, or an older adolescent girl.

  “A jigsaw puzzle. In three dimensions.”

  He smiled. Since boyhood he’d been one to love puzzles.

  He was not old. Didn’t look old, didn’t behave old, didn’t perceive of himself as old. Yet he knew that others, envious of him, wished to perceive him as old, and this infuriated him. He was a stylish dresser. Often he was seen in dark turtleneck sweaters, a wine-colored leather coat that fell below his knees. In warm weather he wore shirts open at the throat, sometimes T-shirts that showed to advantage his well-developed arm and shoulder muscles. When his hair began to thin in his mid-fifties he simply shaved his head, that tended to be olive-hued, veined, with a look of an upright male organ throbbing with vigor, belligerence, good humor. You couldn’t help but notice and react to Kyle Cassity: to label such a man a “senior citizen” was absurd and de-meaning.