The Gravedigger’S Daughter
Read The Gravedigger’S Daughter Online
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
a novel
for my grandmother Blanche Morgenstern,
the “gravedigger’s daughter”
IN MEMORIAM
and for David Ebershoff,
by a circuitous route
IN THE CHAUTAUQUA VALLEY
“In animal life the weak are quickly disposed of.”
One afternoon in September 1959 a young woman factory worker…
“Mom-my!”
A voice in Rebecca’s ear harsh and urgent: “Jesus, watch…
Gypsy girl. Jewess…
November 1936. By bus the Schwart family arrived in this…
And so Jacob Schwart slept. Twitching and moaning in his…
History has no existence. All that exists are individuals, and…
You saw him at a distance: the gravedigger Schwart.
“Anna?”
In America. Surrounded by crosses.
Herschel growled, Promise you won’t tell ’em?
Schwart! That’s a Jew-name, yes? Or do I mean�He-brew?
Swallow your pride like phlegm Jay-cob.
Not Ma either. You lived in dread of setting Ma…
“We will have to live with it, for now.”
The day Gus came running home from school snot-nosed and…
It was one of the astonishing acts of his life…
Never say it.
Those summer weeks when she was never alone. Always Rebecca…
And so they waited, in the caretaker’s stone cottage just…
Not-to-be-said from that time onward in the stone cottage in…
“‘Rebecca Esther Schwart.’”
A bright summer day. The blinds in the parlor were…
“Pa! Get the hell out here.”
Earnestly he insisted, “My son, he is a good boy!…
Nothing will happen that is not meant to be.
Both his sons were gone. In his fury he would…
As if she’d only just thought of it, Katy Greb…
“Ma? Ma�”
Each of us is a living flame, and Jesus Christ…
And yet: “Jesus has arranged this, Rebecca. We must think…
She would not wait until her sixteenth birthday to quit…
She was free! She would support herself, she would live…
“First time I saw you, girl. I knew.”
“Somebody wants to meet you, Rebecca. If you’re the ‘black-haired…
They would become lovers, in time. For Tignor must have…
And then he was gone again. On the road, and…
First time I saw you, girl. I knew.
Next morning, Rebecca’s face was so bruised and swollen, and…
Mrs. Niles Tignor.
She was waiting to become pregnant. Now she was a…
She was Niles Tignor’s wife, and she was having Niles…
It was so. He kept his promise. She had not…
A woman was shouting at her as if Rebecca was…
Hey you night-owl folks this is Buffalo Radio Wonderful WBEN…
It was the first week of October 1959. Twelve days…
…an hour and twenty minutes late for work next morning.
And so she knew: she would leave him.
Three days later on October 29, 1959, the Pontiac registered…
IN THE WORLD
Even as a small child he was shrewd enough to…
At first it was play. He believed it must be…
“If we haven’t been killed by now, no reason to…
In Horseheads, New York, in late winter/early spring 1962 befriended…
It was an old river city on the St. Lawrence at…
“You don’t look like you’re from around here.”
“Hide most things you know. Like you would hide any…
Now they were no longer keeping-going there was danger. Even…
Stunned. Struck to the heart. Somehow her son had known,…
Fallin’ in love with love.
It was the New Year. Zack was made to understand…
“You have a new friend, Zack! Come meet him.”
In the late winter of 1963 they would move from…
“When you sell music, you are selling beauty.”
“Repeat, child.”
Makes me happy. What makes me happy. O Christ what!
A love ballad, a bluesy number.
A rough wild game! Driving her like a panicked animal…
“Momma? Are we?”
He was saying, reasoning, “Why should it matter so much,…
“The breath of God.”
A man wants to know. A lover wants to know.
Why? Because it was time.
So quickly it happened, he would replay it many times…
Dragging the stunned boy by his arm.As if wanting…
Yet it took her weeks to make the call. In…
“‘Hazel Jones.’ A mysterious name out of the past.”
The wound was such, Gallagher would not speak of it…
Hazel Jones: this will be our secret.
BEYOND
Through the summer and fall of 1974 the house rang…
In San Francisco the streets shone wetly. So steep, as…
Dear Professor Morgenstern,
“In animal life the weak are quickly disposed of.”
He’d been dead for ten years. Buried in his mangled parts for ten years. Unmourned for ten years. You would think that she, his adult daughter, a man’s wife now and the mother of her own child, would be rid of him by now. God damn she had tried! She hated him. His kerosene eyes, his boiled-tomato face. She gnawed her lips raw hating him. Where she was most vulnerable, at work. On the assembly line at Niagara Fiber Tubing where the noise lulled her into a trance she heard him. Where her teeth rattled from the conveyor belt vibrations she heard him. Where her mouth tasted like dried cow shit she heard him. Hated him! Turning in a crouch thinking it might be a joke, a crude trick, one of her asshole co-workers shouting into her ear. Like some guy’s fingers poking her breasts through the coveralls or digging into her crotch and she’s paralyzed unable to turn her attention away from the strips of tubing on the rubber belt moving jerkily along and always faster than you wanted. Damned steamed-up goggles hurting her face. Shutting her eyes breathing the foul dusty air through her mouth which she knew better than to do. An instant of shame, soul-withering, live-or-die-what-the-hell that came over her sometimes in moments of exhaustion or sorrow and she groped for the object on the belt that in that instant had no name, no identity, and no purpose, risking her hand being hooked by the stamping machine and half the fingers smashed before she could shake her head free and clear of him who spoke calmly knowing he would be heard above the machine clatter. “So you must hide your weak ness, Rebecca.” His face close to hers as if they were conspirators. They were not, they had nothing in common. They looked in no way alike. She hated the sour smell of his mouth. That face that was a boiled, burst tomato. She’d seen that face exploding in blood, gristle, brains. She’d wiped that face off her bare forearms. She’d wiped that face off her own damn face! She’d picked that face out of her hair. Ten years ago. Ten years and almost four months to the day. For never would she forget that day. She was not his. She had never been his. Nor had she belonged to her mother. You could discern no resemblance among them. She was an adult woman now twenty-three years old which astonished her, she had lived so long. She had survived them. She was not a terrified child now. She was the wife of a man who was a true man and not a sniveling coward and a murderer, and this man had given her a baby, a son, whom he, her dead father, would never see. What pleasure that gave her, he would never see his grandson. Never utter his poison-words into the child’s ears. Yet still he approached her. He knew her weakness. When she was exhausted, when her soul shrank to the size of a wizened grape. In this clamorous place where his words had acquired a powerful machine rhythm and authority that beat beat beat her into stunned submission.
“In animal life the weak are quickly disposed of. So you must hide your weakness, Rebecca. We must.”
One afternoon in September 1959 a young woman factory worker was walking home on the towpath of the Erie Barge Canal, east of the small city of Chautauqua Falls, when she began to notice that she was being followed, at a distance of about thirty feet, by a man in a panama hat.
A panama hat! And strange light-colored clothes, of a kind not commonly seen in Chautauqua Falls.
The young woman’s name was Rebecca Tignor. She was married, her husband’s name Tignor was one of which she was terribly vain.
“Tignor.”
So in love, and so childish in her vanity, though not a girl any longer, a married woman a mother. Still she uttered “Tignor” a dozen times a day.
Thinking now as she began to walk faster
He better not be following me, Tignor won’t like it
.
To discourage the man in the panama hat from wishing to catch up with her and talk to her as men sometimes, not often but sometimes, did, Rebecca dug the heels of her work shoes into the towpath, gracelessly. She was nerved-up anyway, irritable as a horse tormented by flies.
She’d almost smashed her hand in a press, that day. God damn she’d been distracted!
And now this. This guy! Sent him a mean look over her shoulder, not to be encouraged.
No one she knew?
Didn’t look like he belonged here.
In Chautauqua Falls, men followed her sometimes. At least, with their eyes. Most times Rebecca tried not to notice. She’d lived with brothers, she knew “men.” She wasn’t the shy fearful little-girl type. She was strong, fleshy. Wanting to think she could take care of herself.
But this afternoon felt different, somehow. One of those wan warm sepia-tinted days. A day to make you feel like crying, Christ knew why.
Not that Rebecca Tignor cried. Never.
And: the towpath was deserted. If she shouted for help…
This stretch of towpath she knew like the back of her hand. A forty-minute walk home, little under two miles. Five days a week Rebecca hiked the towpath to Chautauqua Falls, and five days a week she hiked back home. Quick as she could manage in her damn clumsy work shoes.
Sometimes a barge passed her on the canal. Livening things up a little. Exchanging greetings, wisecracks with guys on the barges. Got to know a few of them.
But the canal was empty now, both directions.
God damn she was nervous! Nape of her neck sweating. And inside her clothes, armpits leaking. And her heart beating in that way that hurt like something sharp was caught between her ribs.
“Tignor. Where the hell are
you
.”
She didn’t blame him, really. Oh but hell she blamed him.
Tignor had brought her here to live. In late summer 1956. First thing Rebecca read in the Chautauqua Falls newspaper was so nasty she could not believe it: a local man who’d murdered his wife, beat her and threw her into the canal somewhere along this very-same deserted stretch, and threw rocks at her until she drowned. Rocks! It had taken maybe ten minutes, the man told police. He had not boasted but he had not been ashamed, either.
Bitch was tryin to leave me, he said.
Wantin to take my son.
Such a nasty story, Rebecca wished she’d never read it. The worst thing was, every guy who read it, including Niles Tignor, shook his head, made a sniggering noise with his mouth.
Rebecca asked Tignor what the hell that meant: laughing?
“You make your bed, now lay in it.”
That’s what Tignor said.
Rebecca had a theory, every female in the Chautauqua Valley knew that story, or one like it. What to do if a man throws you into the canal. (Could be the river, too. Same difference.) So when she’d started working in town, hiking the towpath, Rebecca dreamt up a way of saving herself if/when the time came.
Her thoughts were so bright and vivid she’d soon come to imagine it had already happened to her, or almost. Somebody (no face, no name, a guy bigger than she was) shoved her into the muddy-looking water, and she had to struggle to save her life.
Right away pry off your left shoe with the toe of your right shoe then the other quick! And then
�She’d have only a few seconds, the heavy work shoes would sink her like anvils. Once the shoes were off she’d have a chance at least, tearing at her jacket, getting it off before it was soaked through. Damn work pants would be hard to get off, with a fly front, and buttons, and the legs kind of tight at the thighs, Oh shit she’d have to be swimming, too, in the direction the opposite of her murderer…
Christ! Rebecca was beginning to scare herself. This guy behind her, guy in a panama hat, probably it was just coincidence. He wasn’t
following her
only just
behind her
.
Not deliberate
only
just accident
.
Yet: the bastard had to know she was conscious of him, he was scaring her. A man following a woman, a lonely place like this.
God damn she hated to be followed! Hated any man following her with his eyes, even.
Ma had put the fear of the Lord in her, years ago.
You would not want anything to happen to you, Rebecca! A girl by herself, men will follow
.
Even boys you know, you can’t trust
.
Even Rebecca’s big brother Herschel, Ma had worried he might do something to her. Poor Ma!
Nothing had happened to Rebecca, for all Ma’s worrying.
At least, nothing she could remember.
Ma had been wrong about so many damn things…
Rebecca smiled to think of that old life of hers when she’d been a girl in Milburn. Not yet a married woman. A “virgin.” She never thought of it now, all that was past. Niles Tignor had rescued her. Niles Tignor was her hero. He’d taken her from Milburn in his car, they’d eloped to Niagara Falls. Her girlfriends had been envious. Every girl in Milburn adored Niles Tignor from afar. He’d brought his bride Rebecca then to live in the country east and a little north of Chautauqua Falls. Four Corners, it was called.
Their son Niles Tignor, Jr. had been born here. Niley would be three years old, end of November.
She was vain of being Mrs. Tignor, and she was vain of being a mother. Wanting to shout at the man in the panama hat
You have no right to follow me! I can protect myself
.
It was so. Rebecca had a sharp piece of scrap metal in her jacket pocket. In secret, nervously she was fingering it.
If it’s the last thing I do mister I WILL MARK YOU
.
In school in Milburn, Rebecca had had to fight sometimes. She was the town gravedigger’s daughter, other kids taunted her. She had tried to ignore them, best as she could. Her mother had so advised her.
But you must not stoop to their level Rebecca
. She had, though. Frantic flailing and kicking fights, she’d had to defend herself. Damn bastard principal had expelled her, one day.
Of course she had never attacked another. She had never hurt any of her classmates not really, even the ones who’d deserved to be hurt. But she didn’t doubt that if she was desperate enough fighting for her life she could hurt another person, bad.
Ah! the point of the steel was sharp as an ice pick. She would have to stab it deep into the man’s chest, or throat…
“Think I can’t do it, asshole? I can.”
Rebecca wondered if the man in the panama hat, a stranger to her, was someone Tignor knew. Someone who knew Tignor.
Her husband was in the brewery business. He was often on the road for days, even weeks. Usually he appeared to be prospering but sometimes he complained of being short of cash. He spoke of the business of brewing, marketing, and delivering beer and ale to retailers through New York State as
cutthroat competitive
. The way Tignor spoke, with such zest, you were made to think of slashed and bleeding throats. You were made to think that
cutthroat competitive
was a good thing.
There were rivalries in the brewery business. There were unions, there were strikes and layoffs and labor disputes and picketing. The business employed men like Niles Tignor, who could handle themselves in difficult situations. Tignor had told Rebecca that there were enemies of his who would never dare approach him�“But a wife, she’d be different.”
Tignor had told Rebecca that he would murder with his bare hands anyone who approached her.
The man in the panama hat, Rebecca wanted to think, did not really look like a man in the brewery business. His sporty straw hat, tinted glasses, and cream-colored trousers were more appropriate for the lakeshore in summer than the industrial edge of Chautauqua Falls in autumn. A long-sleeved white shirt, probably high-quality cotton or even linen. And a bow tie. A bow tie! No one in Chautauqua Falls wore bow ties, and certainly no one of Tignor’s acquaintance.
It was like seeing Bing Crosby on the street, or that astonishing agile dancer: Fred Astaire. The man in the panama hat was of that type. A man who didn’t look as if he would sweat, a man who might smile if he saw something beautiful, a man not altogether real.
Not a man to track a woman into a desolate place and accost her.
(Was he?)
Rebecca was wishing it wasn’t so late in the afternoon. In full daylight, she would not feel so uneasy.
Each day now in September, dusk was coming earlier. You took notice of the days shortening, once Labor Day was past. Time seemed to speed up. Shadows rose more visibly from the underbrush beside the canal and the snaky-glittery dark water like certain thoughts you try to push away except in a weak time you can’t. The sky was massed with clouds like a fibrous substance that has been squeezed, and then released. There was a strange quivering malevolent
livingness
to it. Through the cloud-mass, the sun appeared like a fierce crazed eye, that glared, and made each grass blade beside the towpath distinct. You saw too vividly, your eyes dazzled. And then, the sun disappeared. What had been distinct became blurred, smudged.
Heavy thunderheads blowing down from Lake Ontario. Such humidity, flies were biting.
Buzzing close to Rebecca’s head, so she gave little cries of disgust and alarm, and tried to brush them away.
At Niagara Tubing, the air had been sultry hot as in midsummer. Stifling at 110° F. Windows opaque with grime were shoved at a slant and half the fans broken or so slow-moving they were useless.
It was only temporary work, at Niagara Tubing. Rebecca could bear it for another few months…
Punching in at 8:58
A
.
M
. Punching out at 5:02
P
.
M
. Eight hours. Five days a week. You had to wear safety goggles, gloves. Sometimes a safety apron: so heavy! hot! And work shoes with reinforced toes. The foreman inspected them, sometimes. The women.
Before the factory, Rebecca had worked in a hotel: maid, she was called. She’d had to wear a uniform, she had hated it.
For eight hours, Rebecca earned $16.80. Before taxes.
“It’s for Niley. I’m doing it for Niley.”
She wasn’t wearing a watch, never wore a watch at Niagara Tubing. The fine dust got into a watch’s mechanism and ruined it. But she knew it was getting on toward 6
P
.
M
. She would pick up Niley at her neighbor’s house just after 6
P
.
M
. No son of a bitch trailing her on the towpath was going to prevent her.
Preparing herself to run. If, suddenly. If he, behind her. She knew of a hiding place somewhere ahead, on the other side of the canal embankment, not visible from the towpath, a foul-smelling culvert: made of corrugated sheet metal, a tunnel about twelve feet in depth, five feet in diameter, she could duck and run through it and into a field, unless it was a marsh, the man in the panama hat would not immediately see where she’d gone and if he did, he might not want to follow her…
Even as Rebecca thought of this escape route, she dismissed it: the culvert opened into a fetid marsh, an open drainage field, if she ran into it she would stumble, fall…
The towpath was an ideal place to track a victim, Rebecca supposed. You could not see beyond the embankments. The horizon was unnaturally close. If you wished to see the sky from the towpath you had to look up. Had to lift your head, crane your neck. On their own, your eyes did not naturally discover the sky.
Rebecca felt the injustice,
he
had followed her here! Where always she was relieved, grateful to be out of the factory. Always she admired the landscape, though it was slovenly, a wilderness. Always she thought of her son, eagerly awaiting her.
She knew: she must not weaken. She must not show her fear.
She would turn and confront him, the man in the panama hat. She would turn, hands on her hips, Tignor-style she would stare him down.
She mouthed the words she would say to him: “You! Are you following me?”
Or, “Hey mister: not following me, are you?”
Or, her heart quickened in hatred, “God damn you, who are you to follow
me
?”
She was not a shy young woman, and she was not weak. Not in her body, or in her instincts. She was not a very feminine woman. There was nothing soft, pliant, melting about her; rather she believed herself hard, sinewy. She had a striking face, large deep-set very dark eyes, with dark brows heavy as a man’s, and something of a man’s stance, in confronting others. In essence, she despised the feminine. Except, there was her attachment to Tignor. She did not wish to be Tignor, but only to be loved by Tignor. Yet Tignor was not an ordinary man, in Rebecca’s judgment. Otherwise, she despised the weakness of women, deep in her soul. She was ashamed, infuriated. For this was the ancient weakness of women, her mother Anna Schwart’s weakness. The weakness of a defeated race.
At the factory, men let her alone, usually. Knowing she was married. Seeing she gave no signals to welcome their interest. She never met their eyes. What thoughts they might have of her, she did not consider.
Yet: the week before she had had to confront a smirking asshole who was always passing close behind her as she stood at the assembly line, a man who eyed her up-and-down to embarrass her, she’d told him to leave her alone God damn she would complain to the foreman but in the midst of the rush of words she had suddenly swallowed and her voice choked and the smirking asshole just grinned at her.
Mmmm baby! I like you
.