Faithless: Tales of Transgression

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Jake laughed, chasing me up the hill. We were scrambling in loosened dirt, pebbles. Luke yelled for him to leave me alone but a minute later he came running after us, through a field, wild rose briars cutting at us like living claws, the boys were shouting and laughing, chasing me into a cornfield, I screamed in excitement, it was like tag, like hide-and-seek in the rows of tall cornstalks, like pom-pom-pull-away when one of the boys grabbed at my arm and the other grabbed at my hair but I managed to wriggle free, laughing, a vein beating in my throat. The boys picked up dried clods of earth and tossed them at me and at each other. They were yelling, laughing. Even Luke. I saw his shirtless figure rushing through the rows of cornstalks, I saw his head turn, he’d sighted me, I half-crawled on my hands and knees to escape, there came Jake almost colliding with Luke, Luke shouted, “Watch your ass, asshole!” giving his brother a shove that made him yelp in pain and stagger backward to fall to the ground landing, hard as a sack of laundry, on his rear. Funny! I was shrieking with laughter, and Luke was shrieking with laughter, turning to chase me, clapping his hands in pursuit—“Shoo! Shoo!” Sharp cornstalk blades cut against my face as I ran, soft-silky tassels of corncobs brushed against my face, between the rows of corn there were tall weeds, and the sky overhead a bright hazy blue in skidding patches, black flapping wings that frightened me rising on all sides and a harsh caw-cawing like angry scolding. I turned and ran to the right, then to the left, zigzagging by instinct, this was a game like tag, a game like hide-and-seek I played with my sister and brothers, an innocent game like pom-pom-pull-away in the schoolyard. My face was burning, bits of dirt and grit stuck to it like ticks. From out of nowhere in front of me, there was my cousin Luke. He’d run ahead of me to cut me off, chunky yellowish teeth bared in a dog’s grin, but I scrambled sideways, I was quick and crazed as a wild, hunted animal, but behind me there was another boy—shirtless, his skinny dark chest sleek with sweat, and for a moment I believed this was a third boy, a stranger, not Jake, my cousin Jake, but of course it was Jake, though his dirty grinning face wasn’t a face I seemed to recognize, and his clownish pop-eyes. And there was Luke’s flushed face, his laughing teeth, his angry teeth, why was he angry, and that sharp frown between his eyebrows like a knife blade the way an adult man might frown, the way my father frowned when one of his children displeased him, that staring frown of wrath. Luke grabbed at me but was able to catch only my T-shirt, the neck and the sleeve of my T-shirt he ripped, I was swinging my fists at his middle, at his chest, we were on the ground wrestling, crashing against the brittle cornstalks, dried corncobs hard and hurting beneath my back, my bottom, Luke grunted, cursing me, straddling me, holding me tight as a vise with his thighs, he was tickling me with something hard and scratchy, something his fingers had closed over, and Jake was crouched over us panting, cursing, yet happy, tugging at one of my ankles, tugging at my shorts which he managed to yank down only a few inches before his way was stopped by Luke’s tight-pressed knee. I smelled the strong animal sweat on their bodies, I smelled my own suddenly released hot pee, I screamed and kicked Jake in the belly, between the legs so he whimpered with pain, Luke was laughing wildly, tickling-poking at me with that hard scratchy object, I didn’t see it, I don’t believe I saw it, only the confused recollection afterward of an object consisting of hundreds of tiny eyes, except the crows had pecked away most of the eyes, there were rows of tiny gouged-out eyes, it was hurting me, under my arms, my tummy, between my legs, between the cheeks of my buttocks where I was tender, where I could bleed, I was kicking, squealing, except Luke had pressed his salty-sweaty palm over my mouth to shut me up, his face was strained like a fist clenched tight, his jaws were clenched tight, I saw his eyes rolling white and I screamed through the hard hurting flat of his hand, and in that instant the earth opened up, it was a black soft-melting pit into which I fell, like falling asleep in church, my head pitching forward suddenly, the cornfield was still bright with light, dazzling and blinding with light, and the patches of sky overhead, but I wasn’t there to see, my boy cousins grunting and cursing but I wasn’t there to hear.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  OF THE FAIRY TALES of my childhood in a brightly illustrated book I read practically to shreds, the one I most feared was “Sleeping Beauty.” I stared with grim fascination at the enchanted princess on her bed in the forest and thought how such a thing could happen to any little girl, it could happen to me. Snow White had fallen asleep in one of the dwarves’ beds but that was all right, she wasn’t under an evil spell, she woke up when the dwarves came home. Goldilocks, too, was wakened when the three bears discovered her in the littlest bear’s bed. But Sleeping Beauty was under a spell cast by an ugly old woman fairy and she slept for years because no one could wake her, and then she was wakened only by a special prince and would never have wakened without him. I hated the story of “Sleeping Beauty.” Yet I read it, and reread it, and stared at the illustration of the beautiful blond-haired princess who looked as if she were floating in her bed in the forest. No other fairy tale was so awful. Because it could happen, I thought. Every time you went to bed at night, or lay down for a nap—it could happen. You could fall asleep and never wake up. For not all girls would attract a prince to wake them. Most of us would sleep, sleep, and sleep forever with no kiss to revive us.

  “HEY. Wake up. C’mon.”

  “Come on.”

  They were hunched over me, and now they weren’t laughing. My boy cousins. Luke was lightly slapping my cheeks, he’d splashed water onto my burning skin, brushed my hair off my forehead. Such comfort I took in those hands. I wanted to cry. I might have been crying. Jake was resting back on his heels, he looked scared, his own face smeared with dirt, sweat, blood from where he’d been wiping it roughly with his arm. I saw the filmy no-color sky behind Luke’s head but I didn’t know where I was. Not in the cornfield, they must have carried me out of the cornfield, down to the creek bank where Luke was muttering to himself, splashing water onto my face, begging me to wake up, wake up. I’d never heard such urgency in a boy’s voice before. Luke was trying clumsily to wash me—face, arms, legs. As if I were a baby, even a doll, lying motionless on her back. The ground was pebbly beneath me and hurt. But much of my body was numb. My belly, between my legs. I had the confused idea they’d gotten big chunks of ice from Grandma’s icebox and pressed them against me so I couldn’t feel anything. Behind Luke, Jake was sniffling and whining, “She’s gonna tell them, what if she tells them, we’re gonna get hell,” and Luke cursed his brother without turning, “Asshole, shut up.” Luke was hunched over me, shaking me gently, the way you’d shake a deep-sleeping child to wake her. “Hey, c’mon, wake up, you’re OK. You fell asleep up there. You got tired running, and the sun—it’s like heatstroke. Your face is all hot. Your skin’s burning. You had a nap. You’re OK now. OK? You just fell asleep.”

  I was trying to wake up. But it was like swimming to the surface of the water, the weight of the water pressing against my chest, and my eyelids heavy.

  How long, I would not know. Probably not more than ten or fifteen minutes. She’s gonna tell the one voice intoned and the other Wake up, hey, c’mon, you’re OK. My shirt was damp and smeared with dirt from the cornfield, my shorts and panties—I’d wet my panties, and Luke didn’t act disgusted but splashed water onto me there, to disguise the smell. For otherwise I would be so ashamed. Ten years old, wetting my panties. I would say I’d fallen into the creek, I’d been wading, following after my cousins, and I’d fallen into the creek, that was why I was so wet, and maybe I’d hurt myself on the rocks, the sharp edges of rocks in the creek bed. And the boys would say yes, that was what happened. I should not have been following after them as they checked their trapline, that was what happened.

  I was sitting up, I was confused and dazed but I was awake, and I was all right. Luke grinned at me, as if he’d performed a miracle. I wasn’t crying, and I wasn’t bleeding. Or if I’d been crying, now I’d stopped. For I still wanted them to like me—I wanted thes
e older boys not to hate me. If I’d been bleeding, now I’d stopped. It was a sharp rock I’d fallen on, those outcroppings of slate like knife blades. But I might not have been bleeding, it might have been blood from the dead or dying animal that Jake had gotten onto his hands and wiped on me. Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.

  4. The Bull Jumps the Fence

  Why did Grandma Wolpert hate me? I was thirty-nine years old and my mother was saying, her eyes fixed on mine with a look of utter sincerity, “Why, it wasn’t you that woman hated; where did you get that idea? It was your grandfather. Your grandfather was so fond of you, so to get back at him, rankle him, the way those two were forever poking and prodding each other, Grandma Wolpert was sometimes a little—mean, maybe—harsh with you. Sometimes. And you did so well in school, all A’s, and she couldn’t even read—you know, she never learned. None of the girls in her family learned to read, can you imagine? At first it was ignorance, simple backcountry ignorance, then it was her pride. That woman was proud. But you’re exaggerating, I think. The way you do. That ‘social psychology’ work of yours—you take an idea and fuss with it instead of some other idea, and emphasize it so—but of course what do I know, listen to me. Except about Grandma: yes, she could be sort of sarcastic, mean, I suppose, but not just to you, to all of us, even Dad she was so partial to. But see, hon—” my mother was saying, smiling, in a sudden glow of an idea, “—it was never anything personal directed against you. Not ever.”

  I smiled at my mother. I was grateful that my father was out of the room. “Well. That’s good to know.”

  My mother. At the edge of elderly. In her eighth decade. Yet seated poised on the sofa like someone at the edge of a stream of rushing, churning, noisy water, foam-flecked water, water that will bear her away to oblivion, smiling as she advances a toe to test its temperature, as if she’ll have the choice to step into that stream or remain safe on the bank. Saying, “It is good to know, I think. But I’ve been telling you all along, haven’t I? Like the other night, on the phone. Scaring us half to death, the way you looked on TV. All that ‘back there’ is ancient history. Nobody ever talks of those days anymore. Not around here. We’ve got plenty to talk about, your dad and me! The grandchildren—our property tax being hiked up again—”

  “But why was Grandma Wolpert so angry? At Grandpa, I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” my mother said evasively, with a hurt, pouty expression as if she were about to cry. “Why always ask me? That woman has been dead for twenty years. That woman wasn’t my mother, thank God.”

  I might have wished to say, No. You were my mother.

  A strange logic. A riddle. But what point to such a riddle, after so many years?

  This was in the old house in Ransomville, following Aunt Dell’s funeral. The old house actually looks rather new from the road, matte-white aluminum siding, a six-foot plate-glass window overlooking the enormous front lawn, a new carport my father built himself. The suburban lawn he keeps neatly trimmed on his deafening John Deere mower ridden high in the saddle like a tractor. As soon as we returned to the house, my mother removed her purplish-black silk jacket and kicked off her black patent leather pumps with a sigh while Dad went to change into old, comfortable work clothes that fitted him like pajamas. As if to say Well, that’s it. Another funeral. Till the next one.

  I hadn’t intended to come home for Aunt Dell’s funeral, of course; the timing was coincidental.

  After the incident at Lincoln Center, when I seem to have upset my parents, I thought I’d better come home for a few days. I’d felt a powerful, childish urge to come home. For just a few days.

  Tell me you love me. Always, you’d loved me.

  You didn’t know. If you’d known . . .

  . . . you would have protected me. You and dad.

  Not that I was anxious or unwell. I’d immediately returned to work the following day. Work has always been my strategy. For the sleep fugue, the incident backstage, was nothing, really nothing; I’d already forgotten it. My agitated night and the incoherent journal entry I’d scribbled for hours and a few days later tossed out in bemused disgust—I’d already forgotten.

  I visit my parents two or three times a year. They never leave Ransomville. In their generation, in the Chautauqua Valley, no one is comfortable traveling more than short distances by car. Airports are too confusing, airplanes too “dangerous.” Things are “nice and quiet, peaceful” right at home.

  Mom had assured me that Dad and his older sister Dell had “made it up” at the end, but that seemed doubtful to me judging from Dad’s stiffness with Dell’s family. And the slow grudging greetings they’d bestowed on me. The mood of the funeral had been leaden and melancholy, tinged with bitterness rather than grieving. For Aunt Dell had been a difficult woman in her old age and she’d been sick for a long time. Seventy-seven at the time of her death, she’d looked (as relatives murmured pityingly) “so much older, poor thing.” It was perceived to be a “blessing at last” that she’d died, and was at peace.

  At the margins of such funerals there are invariably certain individuals, usually young people, in-laws, or older, disaffected male relatives, in whose strained or expressionless faces you can detect an air of resentment simply at having to be there, at a depressing church service, in a dripping-wet cemetery, at all. I took note of these individuals but I did not align myself with them, I was the Wolpert daughter who’d left the valley, gone away, and made what you’d call a career for herself somehow. The Wolpert girl whose parents complained they rarely saw her but of whom they were proud nonetheless. She has her own life, she always has. Always independent. Who she takes after, we don’t know.

  At the reception at the funeral home yesterday evening, Dad had surprised me, and unsettled me a little, with his blustery, grimly humorous manner. Maybe he hadn’t hated Dell, maybe he’d loved Dell, or a girl he remembered as Dell a lifetime ago when they’d both been young, sassy, and good-looking. Dad had been drinking and was working his mouth wetly in that way he’s developed; possibly it has to do with imperfectly fitting dentures, possibly it’s just a mannerism—I must take care not to imitate it for I’m susceptible to such contagion from people with whom I’m close. There he was nudging the funeral director, a man of youngish middle-age, saying in a lowered voice, “You sizing me up for one of these, eh, friend?”—meaning the shiny black casket containing his sister’s body. “Well, not just yet, friend, I’m still kickin’.” And he laughed, a startled wheezing laugh at the look on the younger man’s face.

  There was my cousin Joe whom I hadn’t seen in decades, a bulky, balding, aging man with a cane who’d once looked like Eddie Fisher. He shook my hand in a way that indicated he wasn’t accustomed to shaking women’s hands, with a quizzical half-smile—“Saw your name and photo in some magazine a while back, maybe Time? In the doctor’s office.” Luke wasn’t there. Nor was Jake, who’d died in a gun accident (in Alaska, where he’d moved in his late twenties). Where was Luke, people were inquiring, and it wasn’t certain: he’d been living in Pittsburgh for a while but might’ve moved after his divorce, it was hard on Dell that he’d lost contact with the family. It was Joe who had the most recent news of him, but that was three years ago at least when he “hadn’t been well, had some health complications.” What these complications were, I didn’t learn. I perceived in my Wolpert relatives’ eyes an eagerness to change the subject.

  “Luke was always my favorite cousin of the boys,” I said. “He was quiet. He didn’t tease. He—” But I couldn’t say, His touch had been gentle, not rough, waking me. I couldn’t say, The other one, Jake, might’ve killed me, I think. Maybe I’m exaggerating. But that’s what I’ve always thought. But not Luke. Never Luke.

  Of course, over the years, visiting Ransomville, I’d made inquiries about my cousins, as one might expect of me. Al
ways discreetly, circuitously asking after the girls first and then after Joe, Luke, and Jake, equal emphasis upon all, in a casual tone. Once, a dozen years ago, my father remarked philosophically that Luke had done pretty well for himself considering, and immediately I asked what did that mean, considering, and my father said vaguely, “Well, you know he’d gotten in some trouble after he was discharged from the navy. Before he married that girl from Watertown. You remember that.” “No, Daddy,” I said casually, “I didn’t know. What kind of trouble?” Sucking at his lips, not meeting my eye, Dad said, “Well, I don’t know, exactly. Old Dell and me, we don’t exactly communicate.” I let this remark pass; as if there weren’t plenty of Wolperts and others to circulate news, particularly bad news. I just smiled at Dad, innocently perplexed. And then, later during that visit, Dad said, as if just remembering, “Your cousin Luke, you know—he got in some trouble with a young girl, it was said. At Olcott Beach. Not that there was a trial, or anything in the paper.” “How young was the girl?” I asked. Dad sucked at his lips, seeming not to know, and Mother in the kitchen leaned out and said, “They can make any kind of accusation, you know. High school girls. There’d been one right here in Ransomville, remember? I had my doubts about that.” “A girl accusing Luke?” I asked. “When was this?” Annoyed, Dad said, “He was just in high school himself, for God’s sake.” Mother said, “What difference does that make? You never know who to believe, you can’t trust a certain kind of girl.” “Yes, but Luke did pretty well for himself, I always say,” Dad said, raising his voice to discourage Mother from arguing, “the only boy of that family I ever liked. Give him credit. He’d been a good husband and father, people said.” Mother disappeared back into the kitchen, and Dad winked at me good-naturedly, saying, “Of course people will say any kind of bullshit, and some of it even true, you’ve got to suppose. Sometimes.” The wink was to assure me that he and I had an understanding that excluded poor Mother, yes?