Son of the Morning

by Joyce Carol Oates

  So she knew it was wrong to harbor mean thoughts against Sarah Grace, who had been her closest friend since first grade, but why did Sarah Grace sing under her breath some bumpy monotonous unrecognizable tune over and over and over, like a mechanical doll, pretending she didn’t know how exasperated Elsa was, and only glancing across the table at Elsa when Elsa did something wrong—like dropping a lump of paste onto the unused olive-green crepe paper just now. “Oh Elsa,” she said, smiling an insufferable superior smile that was meant to be impatient and forgiving and affectionate all at once, as if Elsa were a baby who had soiled her diapers too soon . . . Elsa blushed and cleaned up the mess with a tissue and said nothing. She had vowed she wouldn’t get drawn into a quarrel with Sarah Grace since the last quarrel back in August had been so upsetting, both girls had wept for days, and their mothers had had to get together (though ordinarily Mrs. Vickery and Mrs. Renfrew had nothing to say to each other), and it had been terrible, lonely and terrible, and people had laughed at them, and Gina had carried stories back and forth, and . . . The first night, Elsa had been too upset to eat, even; she’d sat at the dining-room table with tears glistening on her soft babyish cheeks; asked to explain the circumstances of the quarrel, she could only shake her head mutely, as if her heart were broken. Ashton paid no attention at all, Elsa’s mother comforted her in a vague not-very-serious way, but Dr. Vickery was the cruelest. “Have you girls quarreled again?” he asked. And then, raising his bushy tangled eyebrows so that his forehead furrowed, and pursing his lips as if he were blowing on a horn or a mouth organ, he sang in a maudlin mocking voice right there at the dinner table—

  I won’t holler down your rain barrel

  I won’t climb your apple tree

  I don’t want to play in your yard

  If you won’t be good to me—!

  —until Mrs. Vickery quieted him, saying he shouldn’t tease Elsa because she was really very upset. Elsa herself didn’t know whether to be angry at her father, or embarrassed, or whether to give in and laugh with the others, so she just sat there feeling lumpish and cowlike and hot and miserable. But next morning she and Sarah Grace were friends again and couldn’t even remember very clearly what they had quarreled about.

  Suddenly Elsa saw that Sarah Grace had been making two flowers to her one. How was it possible? Sarah Grace’s thin skillful fingers, Elsa’s pudgy clumsy fingers. But two flowers to her one! Daffodils and jonquils and a small bunch of Shasta daisies, really very lifelike, very pretty, Reverend Sisley would admire them, and Mrs. Sisley too, and everyone would want to buy them, and . . . Of course it was possible for Elsa to work longer and harder on the project. She could stay up every night till midnight in her room, and her parents wouldn’t know, and she could make a vow to Jesus to turn in more flowers than any of the other girls, and to make some water lilies too, though the water lilies were awfully tricky and even Sarah Grace had failed with them, and . . . But maybe it was wrong, it was small-minded and sinful, to pray to Jesus behind Sarah Grace’s back? Though it was entirely possible that Sarah Grace had prayed to Jesus on this very same issue and felt no guilt at all. Maybe she had prayed for extra skill, which was why she worked so quickly and made Elsa appear so slowed-down . . . Thinking such thoughts distracted Elsa, who could only deal with one thing at a time, and before she knew it the paste-saucer fell to the floor; how had her elbow brushed against it when it was nowhere near it—! The saucer fell to the floor and cracked in three pieces and Sarah Grace said, “See, what did I tell you?” and giggled her thin, mean giggle. Elsa stooped to pick up the pieces. Her face went hot and must have been beet red. Well, the saucer was a Vickery saucer, wasn’t it, an inexpensive five-and-dime saucer, it was none of Sarah Grace’s business, was it? Seeing that the girls were always at the Vickerys’ house (so Mrs. Vickery said) and Sarah Grace thought nothing of accepting hospitality from them and helping herself to anything that was offered—date-nut fudge, molasses cookies, cold ham; seeing that Sarah Grace was really a guest of Elsa’s this afternoon, sitting in the warm lovely sunshine on the Vickerys’ side porch—she had no right to be critical and catty, did she? “It was an accident,” Elsa said. Sarah Grace bent over the jonquil she was fashioning, trying not to giggle but at the same time not trying to keep Elsa from seeing, she bit her lips and pretended to be very absorbed in the tiny fluted calyx and said nothing. “It was just an accident,” Elsa repeated, trying to force the pieces together again. It was almost possible, the pieces were so big. And the flour-and-water made a nice paste to hold the pieces together, didn’t it? Elsa believed she could repair the saucer so that no one would ever know it had been broken.

  She hadn’t been a clumsy child all along, evidently. So the family indicated. A plump slow-moving baby, an adorable little girl, always pink-cheeked and healthy, and her hair—honey-hued, naturally curly, a little too fine, perhaps, to hold any complicated curls, but very pretty—very pretty. And then around the age of eleven she’d gotten ungainly almost overnight: grew to her present height of five feet one, put on weight around her hips and thighs and breasts, became unaccountably heavy-footed and clumsy. And tearful. Helping Mrs. Vickery with the dishes, she sometimes stared in amazement as a plate slipped out of her hands and crashed to the floor or, worse yet, as a cup came apart in her fingers—the cup itself in one hand, the handle in the other. Just the other day, Sunday, after the morning service, she had somehow walked into the glass door of the sunporch and cracked three panes, somehow that had happened though she knew the door was there as well as anyone in the family . . . “Daydreaming,” Mrs. Vickery said irritably. But it wasn’t true: Elsa never daydreamed. (Fortunately Mrs. Vickery was never very critical of her daughter, being big-boned and not exactly graceful herself, and she didn’t take housekeeping nearly as seriously as most women, which was a blessing. Elsa had once overheard her mother on the phone talking to Aunt Hannah, Ewell’s wife, saying, “Well, the poor girl’s at that age, you know, it would only make it worse for anyone to pick on her—I figure she’ll grow out of it in a few years!”)

  Grow out of—?

  “Damn,” Elsa whispered. She had been twisting the little tube of paper that was to be a daffodil stamen so hard that it came apart in her fingers.

  “I heard that,” Sarah Grace said softly without looking up from her work.

  Elsa threw the stamen down and let the rest of the flower fall.

  “I said damn and I’ll say it all I want and I don’t care who hears me,” Elsa cried.

  “I heard that,” Sarah Grace said.

  “I’ll say it all I want! I don’t care who hears me! I don’t care!”

  Sarah Grace looked up at her, astonished, as Elsa began to cry.

  SHE LAY WHERE they had dragged her on the riverbank. At first she thought Sarah Grace was still with her. She was crying, and Sarah Grace was staring at her, not knowing what to say. After services she had helped Mrs. Sisley and Mrs. Fifield with the apple cider and the little paper cups and though she hadn’t done a thing wrong she had felt very self-conscious. Her breasts were too big, she stood round-shouldered to disguise them, and it occurred to her after she’d been walking around for five minutes that maybe her skirt was stuck to the back of her legs and, worse yet, to her buttocks, but it was too late to pull it away, everyone would see.

  She was crying before she woke, a faint frail babyish sound, a wailing deep inside her body. In her sleep she was crying and when she woke her eyes stung with tears and her face was already wet and she could not determine where she was—thrown onto her back in a chilly field, thrown onto the damp trampled grass so that she could stare into the sky, into the strong pale circle of the moon. It was exactly like a light somehow shaded over with pearl.

  At services that evening Reverend Sisley had talked to them about Jesus of Nazareth as their closest friend, a friend who was always near them, always close by, listening and sharing and giving strength. Elsa tried to whisper Jesus but her lips were swollen and parched. It hurt to move
them. She must have hurt her mouth somehow, and the pit of her belly, and deep between her legs, and the smallest finger of her left hand throbbed with pain. Jesus. Dear God. Who do you tell your secrets to, Reverend Sisley had asked, peering at them, who is your closest, dearest friend? Who gives you everything you have—food clothing shelter loved ones protection from all harm? The shepherd will provide for his sheep: never doubt: never doubt.

  “Jesus . . . ,” Elsa whispered.

  At the social hour two of the boys had drifted near, unwilling to sit down but evidently wanting to talk; the four or five girls Elsa sat with giggled and kept interrupting one another. There was talk of a new gelding Mr. Ackerson had bought, and Ralph Preston told them about his cousin Enoch who had run away to Canada to join the Air Force, saying there was a war to get to and Marsena couldn’t hold him; and there was talk of Miss Fenner who had been their seventh-grade teacher who had quit and moved away last year who was evidently married and a mother—which was rather fast, wasn’t it, one of the girls murmured and the others giggled furiously, Elsa among them. (Though she had liked Miss Fenner well enough—very well, in fact. Had adored her for an entire year.) And there was talk of . . . And . . .

  There was talk of . . .

  Elsa heard the voices, heard her friends’ giggling, but could not get to them. Where were they hiding? She tried to raise her head but the effort made her dizzy . . . The night sky looked very cold. The moon, and the scattered stars, and Elsa Vickery. “Jesus,” she said aloud. Her voice was a disappointment: so babyish!

  She had helped clean up in the church hall and then she and Sarah Grace and Rosemary Preston and her younger sister walked home together. It was just nine o’clock. It was quite cold. The Preston girls lived closest, just off the Marsena Road, and at old Mrs. Druillard’s house Elsa and Sarah Grace said good night and went in different directions, and Elsa decided to cross the Druillard lot to save steps though she was somewhat afraid of the dark, weedy, jumbled field—thinking there might be snakes, maybe, or rats. In fact she did scare up a rabbit. When she saw his white tail she said aloud: “I won’t hurt you, don’t be so silly!” But the rabbit bounded away, disappeared.

  She rose on one elbow slowly and painfully. The others were gone—Sarah Grace and the Preston girls. She could no longer hear their voices. Why did her finger ache so? She stared at it; it hung loose from her hand at an odd angle.

  “Mamma? Daddy?”

  Her mouth tasted of dirt and salt. Her lips were puffy and very dry. She saw Reverend Sisley holding the Bible shut tight in one hand, his eyes half-closed with emotion, tears streaming down his cheeks. When he wept Elsa squirmed with shame; she wished he would not get so upset. It was worse in the evenings than on Sunday morning; worst of all was Wednesday night. No one knew why. Christ’s sufferings swept over him, and the sinfulness of mankind saddened him, and no matter how hard he worked there were members of his church who back-slid and would not support him . . . From time to time he questioned Elsa about her father, but never very intensely; nor did he say much to Mrs. Vickery when she came to church on Sunday morning. Dr. Vickery did not accept Jesus Christ as his Saviour: he didn’t think of Jesus Christ at all. So he said. It was shocking, it was disheartening, but there you were—nobody could hope to change Dr. Vickery’s mind. Dear Jesus, Elsa prayed every night when she went to bed, please help my father, please guide him to You, please enter his heart so he will be saved . . .

  Above, the river bats were flying in broken, spasmodic circles. They were like scraps of paper, like bits of rubber. Elsa stared at them, hoping they would keep their distance. What if one got into her hair—!

  Mrs. Vickery claimed that a bat had tried to get into her hair once when she was a girl, long ago. A nasty flapping fluttering thing that brushed against her face—can you imagine?

  Elsa began to shiver convulsively.

  She was alone: the others had run away.

  She was alone, so no one could hear if she sobbed, if she made a fool of herself.

  She got unsteadily to her feet and something ran down her legs, the insides of her legs. Her head swam. She touched herself—her underpants were gone. Her skirt was ripped. Something wet and warm ran down the insides of her legs, unloosed, free. She stood in one place for a while, not daring to move. It was blood, she knew it was blood. That blood.

  The moon was somewhere else in the sky; it must have shifted. Cold rose from the earth in waves. Elsa looked down at herself but could see very little. She touched herself gingerly. Why was she trembling so? It was like a shivering fit—she sometimes had shivering fits in the winter and everyone felt sorry for her. Her belly was wet, her thighs and her legs. One of her shoes was off. The smallest finger of her left hand hung at a crazy angle. “Mamma,” she whimpered. “Daddy . . . ?”

  She held her right hand up and saw that it was wet with something dark. It was sticky. The fingers darkly stained: blood. It was that kind of blood. She heard herself whimpering; she was so ashamed, everyone would know, everyone would see. The back of her skirt would be stained.

  The campfire had gone out. Or they had doused it with water.

  It was painful to walk. Moving her legs was dangerous: it made her bleed more. Her mouth still tasted of salt and grit and sweat. Someone’s hand. The palm of someone’s hand pressed tight against her mouth.

  Dear God, she prayed, dear Jesus please hear me: please enter my father’s heart and bring him to You.

  She found herself walking back toward Mrs. Druillard’s house. That way she could take the Marsena Road to the road she lived on and avoid the riverbank and the worst of the darkness and be home in five minutes and no one would know.

  The back of her head hurt where it had struck against the ground. There was a torn, raw, throbbing sensation between her legs and in the pit of her belly. Her breasts ached. She staggered, her head swam, she almost fell, she knew she was being silly and everyone would laugh. Where were her underpants—! And the back of her skirt would be stained.

  She had whipped her head from side to side but the hand remained hard against her mouth, pressing against her teeth. Her mouth had bled, was bleeding still. Why had they laughed and jeered, why had they crowded about her, staring, grinning? A voice rose, teasing and cruel; it might have been addressed to a child or a dog.

  “Where are you going?—Nowhere.”

  She had fainted, she had fallen from a considerable height, which was why her body ached. Why she was bleeding. Her knees had gone limp; perhaps that angered them.

  She had not wanted to anger them.

  Out on the Marsena Road she could see better: she could see the dark rivulets of blood on her legs and the dark stain on her hand. One shoe on, one shoe off. She hobbled along. If anyone saw—! If one of the Bells was looking out their front window—!

  Her loins ached. Deep inside her something was torn. And her little finger: she saw that it must be sprained or broken, yanked out of its socket. By now she was nearly home so it didn’t matter if she began to cry louder. She heard a baby’s wail, and then a low guttural gasping sob.

  They had run away: had left her there on the trampled grass and run away.

  One of them crouched above her. She could not see his eyes, she could see only shadows. He wore a neck-scarf; he was no one she knew. Nor did he know her. The others ran away hooting to one another and the man with the scarf crouched above her and muttered “Here” and tossed her own sweater onto her—it fell partly on her chest, partly on the grass, but she could not move to adjust it.

  They had shoved her legs apart.

  They had yanked at her, snatched at her, crowding and jostling one another. Between her legs it had hurt very, very badly: did they know?