Faithless: Tales of Transgression

by Joyce Carol Oates

  THE SCARF

  A turquoise silk scarf, elegantly long, and narrow; so delicately threaded with pale gold and silver butterflies, you might lose yourself in a dream contemplating it imagining you’re gazing into another dimension or another time in which the heraldic butterflies are living creatures with slow, pulsing wings.

  ELEVEN YEARS OLD, I was searching for a birthday present for my mother. Mom she was to me though often in weak moments I’d hear my voice cry Mommy.

  It was a windy grit-borne Saturday in late March, a week before Easter, and cold. Searching through the stores of downtown Strykersville. Not Woolworth’s, not Rexall’s Drugs, not Norban’s Discounts where a gang of girls might prowl after school, but the “better” women’s stores where few of us went except with our mothers, and rarely even then.

  Saved jealously, in secret, for many months in a bunched-up white sock in my bureau drawer was eight dollars and sixty-five cents. Now in my jacket pocket, the bills carefully folded. This sum was sufficient, I believed, for a really nice really special present for my mother. I was excited, nervous; already I could see the surprised pleasure in my mother’s eyes as she unwrapped the box, and this was to be my reward. For there was a delicious way Mom had of squinching up her face which was an unlined, pretty face, a young-woman face still (my parents’ ages were mysteries to me I would not have dared to penetrate but clearly they were “young” compared with most of my friends’ parents—in their early thirties) and saying, in her warm whispery voice, as if this were a secret between us, “Oh, honey, what have you done—!”

  I wanted to strike that match bringing out a warm startled glow in my mother’s face, that glistening in her eyes.

  I wanted to present my mother with, not a mere store-bought item, but a love-offering. A talisman against harm. The perfect gift that is a spell against hurt, fear, aloneness; sorrow, illness, age and death and oblivion. The gift that says I love you, you are life to me.

  Had I eighteen dollars, or eighty, I would have wished to spend every penny on the gift for my mother’s birthday. To hand over every penny I’d earned, to make the transaction sacred. For I believed that this secretly hoarded money had to be surrendered in its entirety to the proper authority, to render the transaction valid; and that this mysterious authority resided in one of the “better” Strykersville stores and nowhere else. So there was a fevered glare in my eyes, a sense of mission; there was an eagerness to my slight body that propelled me forward even as I wanted to recoil in a kind of instinctive physical chagrin.

  Naturally, I aroused suspicion in the primly dressed women who clerked in such stores. They were conspiciously “ladies” and had standards to uphold. The more gracious the salesclerk, the more acute her suspicion of me. I experienced several stores in a haze of blindness and breathlessness; no sooner had I entered one of these stores than I was made to know I’d better leave by a woman’s sharp query: “Yes? May I assist you?”

  At last I found myself amid glittery glass display cases and racks of beautiful leather goods hanging like the slain carcasses of animals. A well-worn parquet floor creaked incriminatingly beneath my feet. How had I dared enter Kenilworth’s Ladies Fashions where mother never shopped? What gusty wind had propelled me inside, like a taunting hand on the flat of my back? The lady salesclerk, tight-corseted with a scratchy steel-wool bun at the nape of her neck and smacking-red downturned mouth, eyed my every movement up and down the dazzling aisles. “May I assist you, miss?” this lady asked in a cold, doubtful voice. I murmured I was just looking. “Did you come to look, miss, or to buy?” My face pounded with blood as if I’d been turned upside-down. This woman didn’t trust me! Though I was, at school, such a good girl; such a diligent student; always an A student; always a favorite of teachers; one of those students who are on a teacher’s side in the fray, thus not to be despised. But here in Kenilworth’s, it seemed I was not trusted. I might have been a little colored girl for my dark hair was suspiciously curly-kinky like moist wires, and inclined to frizz like something demented. You would know, seeing me, that such a specimen could not drag a decent comb through that head of snarly hair. And my skin was olive-dark, not the wholesome buttermilk-pale, like the salesclerk’s powdered skin, that was preferred. Here was a poor girl, an ungainly girl, a shy girl, therefore a dishonest girl, a sneaky little shoplifter, just give her the chance, just turn your back for an instant. You’ve heard of gypsies. There were no gypsies in the small country town of Strykersville, New York, yet had there been gypsies, even a single sprawling family, it was clear I was one of their offspring with my soiled skin, shifty eyes, and run-down rubber boots.

  It was my ill luck that no other customers were in this department of Kenilworth’s at the moment and so the clerk might fiercely concentrate her attention on me. How prized I was, not requiring the usual courtesy and fawning-over with which you must serve a true customer. For I was not a “customer” but an intruder, a trespasser. She expects me to steal—the thought rushed at me with the force of a radio news bulletin. What hurt and resentment I felt, what shame. Yet, how badly I would have liked, at that moment, to steal; to slip something, oh anything! into my pocket—a leather wallet, a small beaded handbag, a lacy white Irish linen handkerchief. But I dared not for I was a “good” girl who never, in the company of my gang of friends, purloined even cheap plastic lipsticks, fake-gold hair barrettes, or key rings adorned with the ecstatic smiling faces of Jane Russell, Linda Darnell, Debra Paget, and Lana Turner from Woolworth’s. So I stood paralyzed in the gaze of the woman salesclerk; caught between the perception of my deepest wish (until that moment unknown to me) and my perception of the futility of that wish. She wants me to steal but I can’t, I won’t.

  In a weak voice I said, “It’s for my mother—a birthday present. How much is—this?” I’d been staring at a display of scarves. The price tags on certain of the items of merchandise—the wallets, the handbags, even gloves and handkerchiefs—were so absurdly high, my eye took them in even as my brain repelled them, as bits of information not to be assimilated. Scarves, I seemed to believe, would be more reasonably priced. And what beautiful scarves were on display—I stared almost without comprehension at these lovely colors, these exquisite fabrics and designs. For these were not coarse, practical, cottony-flannel scarves like the kind I wore most of the winter, that tied tightly beneath the chin; scarves that kept one’s hair from whipping into snarls, kept ears and neck warm; scarves that looked, at their frequent worst, not unlike bandages wrapped around the head. These scarves were works of art. They were made of fine silk, or very light wool; they were extravagantly long, or triangular; some were squares; some were enormous, with fringes—perhaps these were shawls. There were paisley prints, there were floral prints. There were gossamer scarves, gauzy scarves, scarves boldly printed with yellow jonquils and luscious red tulips, scarves wispy as those dreams of surpassing sweetness that, as we wake and yearn to draw them after us, break and disintegrate like strands of cobweb. Blindly I pointed at—I didn’t dare touch—the most beautiful of the scarves, turquoise, a fine delicate silk patterned with small gold and silver figures I couldn’t quite decipher. Through her pinched-looking bifocals the salesclerk peered at me, saying, in a voice of reproach, “That scarf is pure silk, from China. That scarf is—” Pausing then to consider me as if for the first time. Maybe she felt in the air the tremor and heat of my blood. Maybe it was simple pity. This utterly mysterious transaction, one of those unfathomable and incalculable events that mark at rare intervals the inner curve of our lives, gratuitous moments of grace. In a lowered, more kindly voice, though with an edge of adult annoyance, the sales clerk said, “It’s ten dollars. Plus tax.”

  Ten dollars. Like a child in an enchantment I began numbly to remove my savings from my pocket, six wrinkled dollars and nickels, dimes, a single quarter and numerous pennies, counting them with frowning earnestness as if I hadn’t any idea what they might add up to. The sharp-eyed salesclerk said irritably, “—I mean
eight dollars. It’s been marked down to eight dollars for our Easter sale.” Eight dollars! I said, stammering, “I—I’ll take it. Thank you.” Relief so flooded me I might have fainted. I was smiling, triumphant. I couldn’t believe my good luck even as, with childish egotism, I never paused to doubt it.

  Eagerly I handed over my money to the salesclerk, who rang up the purchase with that curious prickly air of impatience, as if I’d embarrassed her; as if I were not an intruder in Kenilworth’s after all, but a child-relative of hers she did not wish to acknowledge. As she briskly wrapped the boxed scarf in glossy pink paper stamped with HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I dared raise my eyes and saw with a mild shock that the woman wasn’t so old as I’d thought—not much older than my mother. Her hair was a thin, graying brown caught in an angry-looking bun, her face was heavily made up yet not pretty, her bright lipstick-mouth downturned. When she handed me the gift-wrapped box in a Kenilworth’s silver-striped bag she said, frowning at me through her eyeglasses, “It’s ready to give to your mother. The price tag is off.”

  MOTHER INSISTS But I have no more use for this, dear. Please take it. Rummaging through closests, bureau drawers of the old house soon to be sold to strangers. In her calm melodic voice that belies the shakiness of her hands saying, If—later—something happens to me—I don’t want it to be lost.

  Each visit back home, Mother has more to give me. Things once precious out of the ever-more remote, receding past. What is the secret meaning of such gift-giving by a woman of eighty-three, don’t inquire.

  Mother speaks often, vaguely, of lost. She fears papers being lost—insurance policies, medical records. Lost is a bottomless ravine into which you might fall, and fall. Into which her several sisters and brothers have disappeared one by one, and a number of her friends. And Father—has it already been a year? So that, for the remainder of her life, Mother’s life grown mysterious to her as a dream that continues ceaselessly without defining itself, without the rude interruption of lucidity, she will wake in the morning wondering where had Dad gone? She reaches out and there’s no one beside her so she tells herself, He’s in the bathroom. And, almost, she can hear him in there. Later she thinks, He must be outside. And, almost, she can hear the lawn mower. Or she thinks, He’s taken the car. And gone—where?

  “Here! Here it is.”

  At the bottom of a drawer in a bedroom bureau Mother has found what she’s been searching for with such concentration. This afternoon she has pressed upon me a square-cut amethyst in an antique setting, a ring once belonging to her mother-in-law, and a handwoven potholder only just perceptibly marred by scorching. And now she opens a long flat box, and there it is, amid tissue paper: the silk turquoise scarf with its pale heraldic butterflies.

  For a moment, I can’t speak. I’ve gone entirely numb.

  Fifty years. Can it have been—fifty years.

  Says Mother, proudly, “Your father gave it to me. When we were just married. It was my favorite scarf but you can see—it was too pretty to wear, and too thin. So I put it away.”

  “But you did wear it, Mother. I remember.”

  “Did I?”

  “With that beige silk suit you had, for Audrey’s wedding? And—well—a few other times.” I can see in Mother’s face that expression of veiled alarm. Any suggestion of her memory failing frightens her; she’s seen, at close range, the ravages of age in others.

  Mother says quickly, “Please take it, dear. It would make me happy if you did.”

  “But, Mother—“

  “I don’t have any use for it, and I don’t want it to get lost.”

  Her voice rises just perceptibly. Somewhere between a plea and a command.

  Staring, I lift the turquoise scarf from the box. Admiring. In fact its label is French, not Chinese. In fact the turquoise isn’t so vivid as I remember. Fifty years ago! The salesclerk at Kenilworth’s who’d seemed to want me to steal; who had (I’d come to this stunning conclusion years later) practically given away an expensive scarf, making up the difference out of her own pocket? And I, a reputedly clever girl of eleven, hadn’t comprehended the nature of the gift? Hadn’t had a clue?

  Fifty years. My mother’s thirty-third birthday. She’d opened my present to her nervously: the luxurious wrappings with ribbons and bows, the embossed silver KENILWORTH’s on the box must have alarmed her. Taking the scarf out of the box, Mother had been speechless for a long moment before saying, “Oh, honey, it’s—beautiful. How did you—” But her voice trailed off. As if words failed her. Or with her subtle sense of tact she believed it would be rude to make such an inquiry even of an eleven-year-old daughter.

  The talisman that says, I love you. You are life to me.

  This luminous silky scarf imprinted with butterflies like ancient heraldic coins. The kind of imported, expensive scarf women are wearing today, flung casually over their shoulders. I ask Mother if she’s absolutely certain she wants to give away the scarf though I know the answer; for Mother has come to an age when she knows exactly what she wants and what she doesn’t want, what she needs and doesn’t need. These encumbrances of life, that bind one to life.

  In reply, Mother loops the scarf around my neck, at first lightly tying the ends, then untying them, beside me at the mirror.

  “Darling, see? It’s beautiful on you.”

  WHAT THEN, MY LIFE?

  Why did Grandma Wolpert hate me? I was asking my mother in a confused dream of churning water, angry wind, and rows of towering cornstalks fluttering like living, convulsing things. I was in the shadowy interior of the kitchen in the old Wolpert farmhouse, and I was running in a cornfield, bladelike leaves and silky tassels brushing against my sweaty face. Your Grandma didn’t hate you! What a thing to say, my mother protests. She’s upset, guilty-eyed. I’m trying to hide against her; I must be a small child to be pressing myself so desperately against her legs, clutching at her. What a terrible, terrible thing to say, my mother says, her hushed voice confused with the churning water and wind, What a terrible girl, to say such a thing.

  THIS IS an old dream, I’m sure. I don’t believe I’ve had it for years, since my grandmother Wolpert died. I don’t believe that I dream much at all any longer. Nor do I sleep through the night.

  Terrible girl. It’s something to be proud of, isn’t it? That I could have sufficient strength, that I could be rebellious, mutinous. I’d like to think it was true. That it wasn’t just a dream.

  1. “Sleep Fugue”

  THIS HAPPENED less than twelve hours ago, in New York City.

  As my name was announced I arose from my seat onstage amid a blaze of TV lights and began to cross to the podium to speak, as we’d rehearsed—and in an instant, as a skilled butcher might cleave a side of raw, muscled meat in two, I was in another place, my grandmother’s old kitchen, and I was running in a cornfield, running as if my heart might burst, and the need for sleep came over me like a dark cloud, as powerfully as if someone had clamped one of those old-fashioned rubber ether-masks over my mouth and nose. NO. NOT HERE. NOT NOW. There was a roaring in my ears as of an angry wind. There was that taste of panic, blackish acid in my mouth. My legs were leaden—what effort was required to move them!—yet I managed somehow to get to the podium, swaying, stumbling like a sleepwalker, forcing myself to smile to acknowledge a wave of courteous applause, trying to keep my eyelids open. I’d crossed a distance of perhaps twelve feet from where I’d been sitting in full view of fifteen hundred people and it was as if I’d been climbing, crawling, on my hands and knees up the side of a jagged rock face. But I didn’t give in.

  That I was in Lincoln Center, that I was the fourth in a succession of “presenters” at an annual awards evening broadcast over network TV, the circumstances of my life at this moment in my career—it’s too complicated to explain. My role in the program wasn’t very important, though of course it was important to me and to the program’s organizers. For such occasions you arrive two hours before the broadcast to rehearse your two-minute spot, which is mainly rea
ding from a prepared script from a TelePrompTer about eighteen inches away at eye level. The TelePrompTer is a remarkable invention, so small that even people seated in the front row of an audience perceive it as little more than a narrow horizontal bar floating in air; others perceive nothing at all. It’s magic, scrolled words, words prepared beforehand, floating in midair for you to speak as if they were your own. If you happened to be watching the program, what you saw of me was a pale, startled-looking woman of young middle age managing a smile, hesitating just a moment before she began to speak, as a stammerer might do, then announcing the winner of the next award, reciting names, titles, facts, dates as if spontaneously, her oddly widened eyes fixed upon you (that is, upon the TelePrompTer positioned an inch or so left of center in front of a TV camera) in your living room. Is there something wrong with that woman? you may have thought uneasily, but the moment passed so swiftly, a brass plaque was being handed to a beaming goateed man in a tux, there was a vigorous handshake, a fanfare of trumpets, and a cut to a film clip of about sixty seconds. When the camera returned to Lincoln Center, to the live broadcast, the pale, startled-looking woman was gone and forgotten.

  I didn’t! Didn’t give in.

  Note: Once you’ve worked from a TelePrompTer you wouldn’t wish to work again from a printed script held in the hand or flat on a podium.

  Note: Once you move from one phase of perception to the next, you wouldn’t ever wish to revert to the earlier phase.