Little Bird of Heaven. Joyce Carol Oates
nurse to contact my mother on the phone to tell her please come immediately, take your child home she has a temperature of 102° F and seems to be coming down with the flu.
Coming down with the flu! This expression was used so frequently in Sparta in the winter, it had acquired something of the lilt and innocence of a popular song. Coming down with the flu explained this sick sad collapsing sensation so it wasn’t scary any longer but a hopeful sign, you were just like everyone else.
“BULLSHIT.”
This was what Ben said. Sometimes in disgust, sometimes laughingly. Sometimes in a mutter not meant to be overheard and sometimes rudely loud so that my mother and I had no choice but to hear.
When Mom wouldn’t let us see the newspaper, watch the six o’clock local news or any TV unless she was in the room with us clutching the remote control.
When Mom took telephone calls upstairs in the bedroom with the door shut against us. When Mom no longer summoned us to the phone, to speak with Daddy. In desperation I appealed to Ben to say why, why was this happening, and Ben had no answer except a shrug—“Bullshit. That’s all it is.”
I asked Ben what this had to do with Mrs. Kruller being killed and Ben only just repeated in maddening idiocy—“Bullshit. I told you.”
“What do you mean—‘bullshit’?”
“I told you, stupid. ‘Bullshit.’”
I followed Ben around. I pulled at Ben’s arm. Ben slapped at me, shoved me. I was white-faced in desperation, indignation. I repeated my question and finally Ben relented as if taking pity on me.
“What they’re saying in the news. That Dad is a ‘suspect.’”
“‘Suspect’—what’s that?”
“The police are ‘questioning’ Dad about Mrs. Kruller. He’s ‘in custody’—Eddy Diehl is a ‘suspect.’”
“But—why?”
Of course I knew what a suspect was. I knew what it meant when a suspect was in police custody. Yet I could not seem to comprehend what this had to do with our father, or with us. I was feeling anxious, vaguely nauseated. I could not comprehend why my brother suddenly hated me.
“Why? Because they’re assholes, that’s why. These men she was seeing, one of them did it, ‘strangled’ her—‘murdered’ her—and they’re trying to say that Daddy was one of these men, but everybody knows Aaron’s father is the killer, it’s God-damned fucking bullshit, taking Dad into custody.”
Ben’s face contorted as if he were about to cry and I was frightened that Ben would cry for if Ben cried and I was a witness, Ben would be furious with me, Ben would never forgive me and would hate me even worse than he hated me now. So I said, in a silly-girl voice, like a girl on a TV comedy whose mere presence evokes expectant titters of laughter in the invisible audience: “Oh, say—know what?—Mrs. Kruller was here, once.”
Ben stared at me. Ben’s eyes glittered dangerously with tears.
“Here? Where?”
“Here. In this house.”
“Bullshit she was! When?”
I tried to think. It must have been last year, last spring. At the start of warm weather. But we were still in school—it would have been May, early June. The memory returned to me like a TV scene that, at first, seems unfamiliar but gradually then reveals itself as familiar, comforting. The school bus from Harpwell Elementary had brought me home unexpectedly early—12:30 P.M. It was a half-day Wednesday for a teachers’ meeting had been called for that afternoon. Mom was away, Mom had not known about the meeting and the half-day Wednesday. Mom was away in Chautauqua Falls visiting a relative hospitalized for surgery.
The back door was unlocked, Mom had told me—Mom had told Ben and me—just to come inside if she wasn’t home by the time we got home, she was sure to be home by 5:00 P.M., she promised.
It was not unusual, to leave a house unlocked. On the Huron Pike Road in the countryside west of Sparta it was not unusual to leave a house unlocked all day, all night.
Nor was it unusual that a mother—a “devoted” mother, like Lucille Diehl—might leave her children unattended for an hour or two, in such circumstances.
And so I walked into the kitchen humming to myself, and there was Mom at the sink—no: not Mom—there was Zoe Kruller at the sink!—pretty Zoe Kruller from Honeystone’s Dairy except Zoe wasn’t wearing her white cord smock and trousers but silky purple slacks and a snug-fitting lavender sweater, no hairnet on her springy hair, Zoe was whistling as she rinsed coffee mugs at the sink and turning Zoe blinked at me with startled widened eyes and after the merest heartbeat of a pause Zoe said in a low throaty smooth voice like honey, “Why it’s—Krissie! Well, say—Krissie! Thought that was you! What brings you home at this time of day, Krissie?”
Zoe’s voice was pitched to be heard. Not just by little Krissie but by someone else, in an adjacent room perhaps. At the time I did not quite grasp this fact. At the time I was surprised—I was very surprised—but it was a pleasant surprise, wasn’t it?—to see Zoe Kruller in our kitchen, at our sink? Zoe was smiling so hard at me, her cheeks were all dimpled. Her smile was wide and lustrous baring her pink gums. Against her milky skin freckles and tiny moles quivered. In the other room I heard a man’s voice—a muffled voice—but of course it was Daddy’s voice—I knew it was Daddy of course, I’d seen Daddy’s Jeep in the driveway. I told Zoe that it was a half-day at school, I told Zoe about the teachers’ meeting, and how my mother had driven to Chautauqua Falls to visit a relative in the hospital, and how my mother would be home in a few hours. At the mention of my mother Zoe seemed to brighten even more, Zoe said, “That’s who I dropped by to see, Krissie—your mom. Just wanted to say hello to Lucy but Lucy isn’t home—I guess? Where’d you say she went, Chautauqua Falls?”
There came Daddy into the kitchen combing his hair—it was strange to see Daddy combing his hair, in the kitchen—Daddy’s bristly red-brown hair that looked newly wetted as if he’d just had a shower; Daddy was combing his hair back from his forehead in a single sweeping movement; Daddy was wearing one of his fresh-ironed short-sleeved white cotton shirts, and in the breast pocket was a plastic ballpoint pen, the kind given out at SPARTA CONSTRUCTION; and Daddy’s face looked ruddy and handsome and Daddy stared at me for a long moment as if he didn’t know who I was, then said, “Krissie. You’re home.”
Quickly Zoe intervened explaining that I had just a “half-day” at school since there was a teachers’ meeting. Zoe explained that she’d told me she had dropped by to see Lucy—Lucille—“But now I guess I’ll be going, since Lucille isn’t here right now.”
By this time Zoe had dried both coffee mugs and put them away in the maple wood cabinet in exactly the places where Mom kept them.
“You don’t have to tell your mother that I was here to visit her,” Zoe said. Zoe stooped to smile at me even harder, and to brush her lips against my forehead. Zoe smelled perfumy and musky and nothing at all like Honeystone’s Dairy. In the hollow of her neck there was a faint glisten of moisture, I’d have liked to touch with my tongue. Around her neck Zoe was wearing a small golden bird—a dove?—on a thin golden chain. “It can be a surprise, Krissie. I’ll come back tomorrow and surprise your mom so don’t spoil the surprise, Krissie, all right? We’ll keep it a secret between you and me, that I was here today.”
Yes, I said. I liked it that there might be a secret between Zoe Kruller and me; and that Daddy was part of it, too.
“Well, Puss!—your dad has to leave, too.” Awkwardly Daddy leaned over me and kissed me on the forehead, a wet embarrassed swipe of a kiss at my hairline. “See, I’m going out to a construction site—I just dropped back here to change my shirt. Well—O.K.! See you later, Krissie.”
If it seemed strange that Zoe Kruller and my father scarcely acknowledged each other—scarcely