Little Bird of Heaven. Joyce Carol Oates
mother was speaking to me, sharply. I wasn’t able to concentrate. As I stood on one of the lower steps of the stairs, my mother stepped up to stand beside me. This was so weird! This was not right. At school, you’d be nudged away, standing so close; even a best friend.
In my confusion it seemed almost that my mother had slapped me, or—someone had slapped me. Or—had someone kissed me hard at the edge of my mouth? A man’s whiskery-scratchy kiss that had stung.
What I wanted was: to get away from this woman, to contemplate that kiss. To draw strength from that kiss. To observe my heated face in a mirror, seeing if that kiss had left a mark.
Love ya, Puss! You know that eh?
Your old man has let you down, you and your brother, but your old man will make it up, sweetie. You know that eh?
Yes it was so, Daddy “drank.” But what man did not drink? No man of my acquaintance in Sparta, no man among my father’s relatives, did not drink except one or two who’d been forbidden alcohol since alcohol would now kill them.
Tell your mother I love her. That will never change.
“—I have now, you and your brother. Don’t roll your eyes at me, Krista, it’s so. You are my family—you are precious to me. He doesn’t love you, he’s just using you to get back at me. ‘Vengeance is mine, saieth the Lord’—this was some old joke of your father’s, he and his brothers would laugh about. The Diehls are all good haters. They’re good enemies. They aren’t trustworthy husbands, fathers, friends—but they’re very good enemies.” My mother paused, having made this familiar declaration: many times I’d heard it, from both my mother and from her (female) relatives. “He picked you up at school, yes? It’s dangerous to drive with a drinker, Krista. You know he’s been arrested for DUI—I wish they’d revoked his license forever. He has hurt others terribly, he will hurt you. He has hurt you, but you pretend not. Can’t you understand, Krista, the man is an adulterer. It wasn’t just me he betrayed, he betrayed all of us. And you know—he hurt that woman. He is a—”
I pushed free of her, with a little cry. I would not let her utter that terrible word murderer.
As I dared to push past my mother she lost control and slapped me: twice, hard, on the side of my head. It was rare that Lucille behaved like this—rare in recent years—for she wasn’t “Mrs. Edward Diehl” any longer but had reverted to “Lucille Bauer” which was her prim girlhood name, a name of which she appeared to be proud; and Lucille Bauer, like all the Bauers, disapproved of displays of weakness in herself, as in others.
Yet her coppery eyes were fierce, she was trying to hug me in an iron grip, pin my arms against my sides. You hear of out-of-control children, autistic children, being “hugged” in such vises, for their own good. The sensation was terrible to me, terrifying. I could not bear it. I could not bear my mother’s sour breath. A smell of her intimate flesh, her powdery-talcumy-plump body, the feeling of her large soft breasts nudging against me, her surprisingly strong fingers…“Let me go! I hate you.” Terrified I ran up the stairs, stumbling and near-falling; and then I did fall, and scraped my knee, pushed myself up again immediately like a panicked animal, running from a predator. It is said that a panicked animal’s strength increases double—or triple-fold and so panic-strength coursed through me, an adrenaline kick to the heart.
To be touched—claimed—by my mother in one of her moods of possession! I knew that I was expected to be passive, meek and childlike in her embrace, this had once been peace between us, this had once been love, Mommy’s little Krissie who has been naughty but now forgiven and safe in Mommy’s arms protected from Daddy’s loud voice and heavy footsteps and Daddy’s unpredictable ways, all that is unknowable and unpredictable in maleness, but I was resisting her now, I would not ever be meek and childlike in this woman’s arms, never again.
It was wounding to us both, lacerating. I would feel that my heart had been torn. Yet I was resolute, unyielding. I would not call back to her, not the most careless words of apology. Stumbling into my darkened room I slammed the door. Behind me on the stairs was the furious aggrieved voice:
“You disgust me, Krista! You’re deceitful, you will turn out like him—betraying those who love you.”
For there is nothing worse than betrayal, is there? Not even murder.
HE WOULD SAY I am innocent you know that don’t you?
And I would say Yes Daddy.
But it was never enough of course. The fervent belief, the unquestioning love of a child for her father—this may be precious to the father but it can’t ever be enough for him.
To claim—to claim repeatedly—that you are innocent of what it is claimed by others that you have done, or might have done, or are in some quarters strongly suspected of having done, is never enough unless others, numerous others, will say it for you.
Unless you are publicly vindicated of whatever it is you have been strongly suspected of doing, it can’t be enough.
…you know that darling don’t you? You and your brother? You and your brother and your mother have got to know that don’t you?
Yes Daddy.
“HEY SORRY BABE, fuckin’ sorry sweetheart you got in my face.”
And they laughed, that I’d been knocked onto my skinny ass on the basketball court and tears sprang from my widened eyes like cartoon-eyes, not for the first time this afternoon.
And my nose leaking blood from a mean girl’s swift elbow before the referee could blow her ear-shattering whistle.
“Poor baby. Poor li’l white-gal. Man, I am sor-ry!”
After-school basketball at Sparta High. To play with these girls you had to be tall, strong, tough, quick on your feet. Or reckless.
There were other girls I could have played with, if I’d wanted to. Girls my own age, my own size and not so athletic as I was so I’d have been the star player in their midst as I’d been in eighth and ninth grades at the junior high. But I wanted to play with these girls: Billie, Swansea, Kiki, Dolores. They were older, and bigger. They were sixteen, seventeen years old. Dolores may have been eighteen. She and Kiki lived on the Seneca Indian reservation a few miles north of Sparta—they had sleek black straight hair that lashed and swung about their shoulders heads like scimitars, their black eyes shone with malice and merriment. Driving out into the countryside north of the city—the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains—you were made to see the wreckage of long-ago glaciers in their slow violence causing the rocky landscape to contort like something forced through a meat grinder. You were made to see how, being given such untillable and near-uninhabitable land by the U.S. government in treaties they had no choice but to sign generations ago, the descendants of the original Six Tribes of upstate New York might wish to exact some sort of revenge upon their Caucasian benefactors whenever the opportunity arose.
My classmates thought that I was crazy to play with these older girls. I was the youngest, in tenth grade, slender-boned and wily as a snake weaving and darting unpredictably and my silky-blond ponytail flying behind me as if to provoke; more than once as I’d leapt to shoot a basket, I’d felt a sharp little tug on my ponytail to throw me off-stride. I weighed no more than one hundred six pounds and if I was hit—and often, you can be sure, I was hit—by one of the larger girls, I fell to the polished hardwood floor so stunned sometimes I couldn’t get up for several seconds.
“Krista sweetie—you O.K.? C’mon girl, get up.”
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