Little Bird of Heaven

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Krista Diehl

  So ridiculous! Embarrassing.

  If he’d received such a letter Aaron Kruller would have torn it into pieces. Aaron Kruller’s coarse-skinned face screwed up as if he were smelling a bad smell.

  June 12, 1985

  Dear Aaron—

  I need to try again. I can’t find the words. I will never forget your kindness to me. You and your aunt who took care of me that night. You were ashamed, I think. What you’d done to me. The sex part of it. Things I do now to myself thinking of you Aaron. Squeezing my hands around my throat till almost I can’t breathe. My vision is splotched, I can’t see. The sex is so strong. The sex is so sweet. You said This is how he did it, strangled my mother but that is not right, Aaron. You are thinking that my father was the one who strangled your mother Aaron but that is not right. I know this.

  Krista

  This and other letters to Aaron Kruller I would tear into pieces, in disgust. Of course I never sent any letter to Aaron Kruller in even the weakest and most lovelorn of hours but I remember his address to this day: 1138 Quarry Road.

  After that time I never bicycled past Kruller Auto Repair. I never bicycled on Quarry Road again.

  After that night in April 1985 I didn’t speak to Aaron Kruller for seventeen years.

  24

  DEEP-THROATED CAME THE GROWL, caressing and scary like the scrape of a knife blade: “Hey babe! Are you hot!”

  Deafening whistles. Teasing catcalls. With a snaky twist of my torso, a quick grab of my hands I’d wrested the basketball from one of the big busty girls from the Seneca reservation, now fierce-eyed Irene Griggs charged into me both elbows cocked knocking me to the floor—wham! The referee blew her whistle. Girls on both teams were laughing at me. Must’ve seemed comical to them—what the hell had gotten into Krista Diehl? Three or four times this game I’d gone for the ball, as if my life depended upon it weaving beneath a guard’s arm, rapidly dribbling the ball down the court in the direction of the basket as if I might have a chance to score, the most remote chance to score, before being stopped by a girl like Kiki, or Dolores, or spiky-haired Irene Griggs knocking me down hard on my ass.

  The referee was our gym coach, we called Mz. Ritsos. Her first name was Marian which sometimes the older girls called her, who were her special friends.

  “Krista! You’ll be hurt, you play reckless like that.”

  Mz. Ritsos was protective of me but disapproving: why didn’t I play basketball with girls in my tenth grade class instead of these older girls, juniors and seniors? I was the youngest and smallest player, always being fouled. Knocked down and picked myself up flushed and embarrassed and limping but eager to get back into the game.

  Need to be more aggressive he’d said. He’d chided me Meaner, take more chances.

  If you don’t want to be hurt Krissie maybe you shouldn’t be playing at all.

  I was laughing. Wiped my hot face in my Sparta High T-shirt. I liked it that I had two foul shots coming: I missed the first but scored with the second. My teammates cheered: “Krissie is fuckin’ hot.”

  What impressed them, even as they laughed at me, was I wasn’t afraid to be hurt. I wasn’t afraid to be reckless.

  Playing basketball gave me a rush, a harder rush each time there was risk. Since Daddy had seen me, and chided me. Since Daddy had discerned what was flawed in me, and needed fixing. Now something white-hot stabbed in my belly, the excitement of risk, of being hurt if I wasn’t fast enough or skillful enough. In the corner of my eye imagining it was Daddy I saw by the gym doors where some guys were standing, several older guys watching their girlfriends on the court, preferring to lean against the doors and not sit on the brightly-lit bleachers. He said he’d be in Sparta this week. Staying at the Days Inn. He’d come into the gym unobtrusively, suddenly he’d just be there. He’d be impressed, seeing how much more aggressively I was playing now. Holding my own, or almost, against these big hulking girls.

  One of the guards on my team passed me the ball. Almost I fumbled it but no!—got it!—ducked and turned and dribbled the ball down-court so swiftly the guard looming over me was taken by surprise, lost me as I rushed down-court, leapt and tossed the ball and sank the basket—

  Whistles, cheers for Krissie Diehl. Except spiky-haired Irene who was guarding me was seriously pissed, tripped me and elbowed me in the back for good measure, like a love tap. Sent me sprawling for the second time in five minutes and again Mz. Ritsos blew her whistle this time angry and exasperated standing over me, “Krista? You O.K.?” and I told her yes rising to my knees though my head was pounding and there was a ringing in both my ears. A circle of girls staring down at me, a long hushed moment when I wasn’t sure that in fact I was O.K., the right side of my head had struck the hardwood floor, my right ankle felt as if it had been caught in a vise and my back was throbbing with pain from Irene’s sharp elbow and—Jesus!—blood dripping onto the floor, a cut in my right eyebrow.

  Mz. Ritsos said, “C’mon Krissie, let’s get you to the infirmary”—but I resisted her, wanting to return to the game, two foul shots were owed me and I was determined to score except the gym walls were tilting and the ceiling high above shimmered with a glowering gassy light and it seemed to me that Daddy was here observing me, proud of Krista now, his daughter was not a quitter. Tears spilled from my eyes Daddy come get me take me away, I am so lonely.

  That was the last time I would play basketball with those girls, in fact with any girls, at Sparta High.

  CALLED THE DAYS INN. Asked to speak with “Edward Diehl” and the desk clerk told me that no one with that name was registered there.

  I protested no, that couldn’t be right. That man was my father and he’d promised he would be there.

  The woman checked again, or pretended to. Repeating “No one named ‘Edward Diehl’ is registered here.”

  “Maybe another name? He might be registered under another name.”

  “Well. I can’t help you with that, miss.”

  “I have to speak to him, it’s urgent. He’s…”

  My father. He is my father.

  Help me to find my father.

  I hung up the phone. I was upset! I was hurt for hadn’t my father said he would be in Sparta for several days; it was only just Thursday today. The bond between us was so strong, I couldn’t believe that Daddy would have left Sparta without saying good-bye to me.

  Such desperation I felt for him, I could not have explained. By this time he’d been gone from our lives for years. And yet, I wanted him so badly. Help me to find my father.

  The right side of my face was bruised from striking the basketball court, there was a thin cut in my eyebrow. It would heal and leave no scar, unlike Aaron Kruller’s fishhook-scar. My right ankle ached, I walked with a wincing little limp. On the stairs at school I stumbled. My father did this I would claim. My father is responsible.

  Yet when my mother noticed my injuries and asked me what had happened I told her: basketball.

  She said, “Basketball! I didn’t think it was such a rough game for girls.”

  “Anything you play hard at, it’s rough.”

  I spoke with a shrug. It was a remark my father would make.

  My mother drew in her breath sharply. She’d heard my father’s intonation in my words, she’d felt the rebuke.

  Later she said, as if she’d been preparing this announcement with care, and meant to deliver it calmly, “If that man tries to see you again, Krista. If he turns up where he’s forbidden to. You will not go with him, Krista. You will not.”

  I said nothing. I did not meet my mother’s eyes.

  She told me she’d called the high school. She’d spoken with the principal, and the vice principal, and the guidance counselor who was a former high school friend of hers. She said, “I’ve alerted them, and warned them. They know about the court order. If my daughter is abducted from school property by her father, in violation of that order, they will be held legally responsible.”

 
; I wondered if that could be. I smiled hesitantly, as if I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly.

  “Yes! They will be held legally responsible. And he will be arrested. Do you understand?”

  Bitterly my heart beat in opposition to this woman. Yet I said nothing.

  My mother’s skin looked like putty. Vertical striations in the flesh beneath her eyes as if tears had worn rivulets there.

  I thought Yes I know he has wounded you. He has betrayed you. Yes I know you are hurting but I don’t care, I am my father’s daughter and not yours.

  Was this true? Or did I just want to think it could be true?

  “Krista, are you listening?”

  “Yes.”

  When my mother was frightened—threatened—she had a way of speaking in short gusts of words like broken-off breaths. I saw how her hands yearned to snatch at me. Those hands that were more familiar to me than my own. I saw my mother’s hands yearning to touch me, to caress me, to poke, pinch, hold me as they’d done when I was a little girl but dared not, now.

  I was too young and heedless to understand Love must be touch, a mother must have that right. Otherwise she is bereft. Otherwise she has no idea who she is.

  “…need to know that I can trust you, Krista! After all we’ve endured in this family because of your father. You must know, your father is…is not…a stable person. Of course he is ‘attractive’…in the eyes of some people. But he is destructive, and…”

  Her mouth moved. Her words stung in the small way of such insects as gnats, midges. I saw her hands seek each other in that gesture I’d come to dread, for I had begun unconsciously to imitate it: a clasping, a wringing of the hands as if a cloth were being rung. To protect myself from feeling sympathy for her I recalled the angry words that had spilled from that mouth the other night You disgust me Krista! Deceitful going to turn out like your father a betrayer….

  “…will you? Promise me…?”

  “Yes, Mom. I promise.”

  “Because it’s over, you know. No matter what he tells you, what he begs from you, it’s over. There’s no more.”

  I thought I will warn him. But there was no way that I could make contact with him, to tell him not to step onto school property. Anxiously waiting through Thursday—and then Friday—and he hadn’t returned, and a new anxiety came to me Maybe he has left Sparta. He has left without saying good-bye.

  The weekend passed in a haze. I knew that my father would never come to the house from which he’d been expelled. He knew that my mother would call the police and have him arrested and to stop her he’d have had to hurt her and he wasn’t that desperate, yet.

  Ben said, “Did you see him? What the hell does he want?”

  I said I hadn’t seen him.

  “You’re a liar. I heard Mom talking to you. What’s he want—to come back here? Fuck him.”

  I said nothing. I was thinking that Monday would be the crucial day: he would find me at school. It was the logical place to find me, away from this house.

  But Monday!—Monday was a disappointment. No basketball practice and so I had no reason to remain after school lingering at the rear doors as my classmates pushed through into the cold air and buses pulled away from the curb in spewing exhaust. Nothing nastier than freezing air fouled by school bus exhaust. Alone I stood as if waiting—waiting for what?—for whom?—as others pushed past me without taking much notice of me, or glancing at me in annoyance, or bemusement, I understood how I did not belong here, I did not belong with these strangers, even Ben had become a stranger to me, I could not trust him. Sending my thoughts to my father who must have been thinking of me for I was thinking so intensely of him promising Daddy I will take risks, I am not a quitter!

  The bus that would have taken me home pulled away, with the others. Foolishly I remained behind and waited, waited just inside the rear doors too unsettled and anxious to find an empty classroom where I could work on my homework, stood there at the door pressing my forehead against the pane until after an hour the late-bus appeared at the curb, I would take this bus home with the others.

  And the next day: sleepwalking through the crowded halls buzzing like the interior of a hornet’s hive trying not to be touched. Trying not to be collided-with, nudged. There were boys who deliberately careened into girls—solitary girls, like Krista Diehl—and I had to avoid these boys while giving no sign that I was aware of them. Even those teachers who’d seemed always to like me and who smiled at me were somber with pity for me Diehl? Isn’t her father the man who killed that woman a few years ago….

  Or Poor Krista. Her father is in Attica isn’t he….

  I wondered how Ben endured this. For certainly Ben knew. And Ben’s resentment would be so much stronger than my own.

  Like one of the school druggies, I hid away in a girls’ lavatory on the first floor. Missed my English class which was my favorite class knowing the teacher would peer at my empty desk, say Is Krista Diehl absent today? There’s no record that Krista is absent. How many times at Sparta High I could not bear being seen and had to hide in a lavatory in one or another toilet stall with its sides defaced by scrawls and scratches, crudely drawn hearts and initials as in a secret code of desire. At such times as often in my bed at home my hands moved to close about my throat. Gently, tentatively—then a little harder—as Aaron Kruller had closed his hands around my throat. Experimentally I squeezed until I felt the pulses quicken. Squeezing into my vision erupted in pinpricks of light. The fierce life of the blood, the fat artery that thrummed with life. The body has its own life, that the mind can’t control. This is how he did it? Like this? This? I smelled Aaron Kruller’s body, heated with desire. I felt that I would faint with yearning.

  I had not seen Aaron since that night. At this time, it had been more than a year ago. A full year! I accepted it as part of my punishment for being Edward Diehl’s daughter, whom Aaron Kruller wanted never to see again.

  And there was Daddy who loved me, and would come for me. I was confident of this. I could not not believe this. Daddy’s love for me was pure and not like Aaron Kruller’s for Daddy wanted only to protect me, he would not have left Sparta without me, I was certain.

  Tried to remember if he’d actually promised he would see me again on this visit to Sparta. I thought I’d heard him say so but maybe not. I thought Yes of course! Like this? This? Fingers on my throat, teasing, tightening. Aaron believed that my father had strangled his mother but Aaron had to be mistaken, I knew.

  Like this.

  Those zombie-days when I was waiting for my father to return.

  To come for me. To protect and love me.

  Later I would learn—it would be revealed publicly—that during this period of time Edward Diehl made more than thirty telephone calls from his room at the Days Inn, some of them repeatedly to the same number: demanding to speak with the Sparta PD detectives Martineau and Brescia and the police chief Schnagel; demanding to speak with the Herkimer County district attorney, a man named Decker; demanding to speak with the editor in chief of the Sparta Journal, and several county judges who’d had nothing to do with his “case.”…My father was demanding the release of all “confidential”—“classified”—documents pertaining to the Sparta PD investigation into Zoe Kruller’s murder, among other things; when his phone calls led nowhere, he tried to speak with these individuals in person, at their offices, and was rebuffed; the following day he tried again, and was again rebuffed. In a state of “extreme emotional distress” as eyewitnesses would testify, Edward Diehl turned up on Friday morning at the Sparta Journal, demanding to speak with the editor, this was in fact an old demand my father was reviving that the Journal publish a front-page retraction of the numerous articles that had appeared in the paper since February 1983 defaming Edward Diehl as a “prime suspect” in Zoe Kruller’s murder and now he had a new idea: the Journal should publish an interview with him as an “innocent man” who’d been persecuted by Sparta police and had never been arrested and never formally charged
with any crime and consequently never cleared of suspicion and his life—his life as a husband, father, citizen—ruined. He had lost his family, and he had lost his job. He had lost his house. He had lost his life. Now he wanted justice and this was justice—wasn’t it? Why was justice being denied him? Did a man have to be a millionaire, to afford high-priced lawyers, just to clear his name? Was there some sort of cover-up here? Were the detectives and the police chief and the district attorney covering for someone? Had they accepted bribes? Was there a network of bribery, police corruption? Was the Herkimer county sheriff involved, too? Was the Sparta Journal involved?

  When nothing came of these repeated demands, my father drove to the Sparta TV station WWSP-TV demanding “airtime”—and was turned away by a frightened office manager. Driving then to the office of a lawyer in downtown Sparta whose name he’d found in the yellow pages, insisted upon speaking with this lawyer, a man named Schell, hoping to interest him in taking on his case in lawsuits charging “slander”—“libel”—“defamation of character”—“loss of income”—against the Sparta police, the district attorney, and the Journal and other newspapers through the state that had defamed him, but his excited and belligerent manner as well as his lack of money didn’t encourage Schell to take him on as a client.

  Even on a “contingency fee” basis?—Edward Diehl would gladly have signed over 90 percent of the money the lawsuits brought him, which, he believed, would be “millions of dollars”—but no, Schell declined.

  Nor would Schell recommend another lawyer.

  Saying afterward, “Jesus, the poor bastard! Looking at me like a drowning rat—that’s just realized he isn’t going to be hauled up and saved from drowning.”

  And so, my father Edward Diehl came at last to see that these men, seemingly unlinked to one another, were secretly allied. Far from feeling sympathy for him, as some of them pretended, the men were in fact contacting one another and laughing at him, in his misery.