Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Was the child lost? Or had she run from a nearby house, or a car? Had she been injured? Had someone been chasing her? There was no one visible in the field; no vehicles parked on the road, except the Audi; no houses in sight. Jess asked the girl where her home was? where had she come from just now? where were her parents? was she hurt in some way? but the girl was too agitated to answer, whimpering, shivering, and wiping at her eyes. So Jess took her hand.

  Afterward explaining he’d had no choice but to take the child’s hand and lead her back to his car, no choice but to urge her to walk with him, assisting her, half lifting her over a ditch and into his car, and yes, Jess was wondering if this was the wisest thing to do yet under the circumstances not knowing what else he might do, what choice he had, for there appeared to be no one in sight, no one to flag for help, and no houses visible from where he stood. He thought, The crucial thing is to help. To help her. To rescue her. That is the crucial thing.

  In the Audi Jess tried to comfort the girl, wiped at her tear-streaked face with a tissue, asking her in the calmest voice he could summon where she lived? had she wandered off from home? had someone brought her here, to this desolate place, and left her? Another time asking her, had she been hurt? For he saw that the little girl’s clothing was stained with something darkish—was it blood? And her hair was clotted with—was it blood? He couldn’t see any visible injuries, but he was hesitant to examine the girl closely, reluctant to lift the skirt of the soiled dress to examine her legs. “Where is your mommy? Your daddy? What has happened to you?” Jess’s heart was pounding rapidly in his chest and his mouth had gone dry. For he knew that there was danger here, even as he knew he had no choice but to seek help for the girl. All his senses were alert, like wires yanked tight. The girl was shivering convulsively, so Jess turned up the heat. He saw that the girl’s eyes were an anguished blue, her nose was reddened and needed blowing. Her small angular face was dirty, the luminous blond hair disheveled and matted as if she’d been sleeping in the woods, or had been held captive in some terrible place, like a cellar.

  All this while Jess had been fumbling with his cell phone, punching in 911, but the calls failed to go through. He could make no sense of the girl’s stammered and incoherent words and so he made the decision to turn the Audi around in the road and drive in the direction of Glasstown, or Glass Lake, though he had no idea how far the town was. He assured the stricken girl that he would get help for her: he’d take her to the police, or to a hospital. He assured her that she would be safe, and taken care of, and no one would hurt her again, but instead of comforting the girl, Jess’s words seemed to upset her, for she became more agitated, protesting, “No—go home. Want go home. Go home!” And Jess said, “But where is your home? Can you tell me? In this direction? Is this the right direction? Or—”

  Jess was driving through icy rain that pelted the windshield and the roof of the Audi like a fusillade of nails while at the same time still trying to call 911 on his cell phone. In the little plastic window barely visible to Jess’s squinting gaze were the discouraging words NO SIGNAL.

  Afterward Jess would explain how reportedly he’d asked the sobbing child where she lived, what had happened to her, had she been injured, what was her name; and the girl answered what sounded like “Dada and Mummy will be mad at me and hurt me worse if they know that I’m not—” but Jess couldn’t make out the girl’s final words, which might have been “at home” or “in bed.” Jess said, “‘Hurt you worse’? Did your parents hurt you?” which seemed to upset the girl even more, so that she kicked and threw herself about in the passenger’s seat, crying, “They will! They will! They will hurt me—worse!” Hoarse guttural sobs racked the small body. The girl’s face was contorted, ugly. Tears leaked from her eyes and mucus from her nose. Jess was driving frantically in the rain, looking for the lighted windows of a house, or another vehicle on the road; he despaired of locating Glasstown, or Glass Lake; possibly he’d taken another wrong turn, or the road had forked and veered off in the wrong direction. Life plus ninety-nine years would be the sentence. No possibility of parole would be the sentence, to be begun shortly after his twenty-third birthday. Though he would try to explain, countless times he would explain the desperation with which he’d sought help for the distraught little girl, trying to reason with her even as he’d begun to see that it was hopeless, he could make no sense of what she was saying, needing to take hold of the girl’s arm to restrain her, for she’d been flailing her hands in a way dangerous to the driver of the Audi; at once the girl gave a sharp little shriek like a cat being tormented, pushed Jess’s hand away with the rude alacrity of a much older girl, she shrank from him and began crying harder, striking the side of her head against the passenger’s window in an inexplicable and maddening reaction, provoking Jess to think, That will leave a mark on the window, that will be evidence unless I wipe it away. Though knowing that, in this nightmare unfolding about him like a deranged film, he would never have the opportunity to wipe the window clean.

  Jess reached for the girl, to restrain her; didn’t want her to injure herself. With unexpected fury the girl pushed at him as if he, Jess Hagadorn, were her attacker, as if Jess hadn’t taken her into his car to find help for her but to attack her, as if Jess Hagadorn had in fact been her attacker, from whom she’d tried to flee. While driving his car at a slow jolt along the graveled road he tried to grip the girl in the crook of his right arm, for he was much stronger than the girl and was losing patience with her. How like a frantic little animal she was, giving off heat, her little body quivering with energy, with the wish to resist him. Suddenly Jess felt a sharp pain in the fleshy part of his right thumb, for the girl had bitten him; swiftly the thought came to him, That will be evidence, they will match her teeth to the bite. Jess cursed the girl, braking the car so that it skidded on the road as he seized the girl’s head in his arm and pried open her jaws, holding her in the crook of his arm like a vise. Telling himself he had to restrain the girl to prevent her from injuring herself, but the truth was, Jess was frightened of the girl. Very possibly this was a dream of such anguish he could scarcely bear it, and yet Jess knew it could not be a dream, for you can determine a dream by its texture. Dreams are soft-edged as watercolors, while waking life is hard-edged as a photograph. Anxiously Jess peered through the rain-splotched windshield: trees, a galaxy of trees, leafless limbs, branches, twigs. So many! There could never be such complexity in a mere dream. And the sky was shot with fissures and cracks like aged skin. In three quarters of the sky it was dusk, a bruised-plum color, while in the west (Jess assumed it must be the west, though in his confused and disheveled state he had no idea where he was) there stretched a horizontal band of orange-red, blood-orange-red, beautiful amid gathering gloom. Jess thought, If this was a dream, I could not see so much. It would be just her and me.

  And so this was not a dream. If not a dream, there could be no escape. Jess was holding the girl tightly, to calm her. For the girl had begun to squirm, writhe, kick. Savagely she kicked at the car dashboard was if she’d have liked to smash it. Kicked at the windshield as if she’d have liked to smash it, but Jess prevented her in time. “Damn you! Goddamn you, stop!” Hot breaths in each other’s faces, they were struggling together. Jess could not comprehend what was happening, why the girl had turned against him. And now suddenly clambering over him, a little wildcat digging her claws into him, laughing, straddling him awkwardly as he sat behind the wheel, her thighs bare beneath the stained dress. To his surprise, he saw that her wax-pale little-girl thighs were smeared with blood. So she had been injured, and had kept her injury from him, bleeding from a secret wound between her legs, and now there were blood smears on his trousers, and on the leather seats of the Audi; the front of the girl’s sweatshirt was smeared with blood, and one of the cuffs soaked in dark blood. Furiously Jess thought, Her blood will be all over me. That will be the most damning evidence. With a part of his mind cunning and furtive and detached from their frantic struggle J
ess calculated how he might clean himself of the girl’s blood, where he might shower, in safety, in utter privacy, if for instance he could arrive home at the house on Fairway Drive overlooking the golf course in North Hills, if he could slip into the rear of the house without anyone noticing and quickly ascend to his room on the second floor; in a swoon of relief and gratitude he would enter his room, his boyhood room, the room he had come to despise by the time he’d left for college but the room that seemed to him now, in retrospect, a place of sanctuary, and if he could shower in his bathroom undetected and undisturbed he would cleanse himself thoroughly of the girl’s blood, dark blood coagulated between his fingernails and in snarls in his hair, a difficult time he would have shampooing his hair and combing the snarls out of his hair but he was determined, and he would take away the soiled clothing, the stained and incriminating clothing including underwear and socks, all of his clothing contaminated by the girl’s blood; he would destroy this evidence, somewhere—unable to calculate, in the exigency of this moment, in the front seat of the Audi, struggling with the uncannily strong girl, exactly how he would destroy it, for his heartbeat had doubled, tripled, as if he were approaching orgasm and helpless to turn back. The girl cried, “Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad!” like a crazed bird, striking at Jess with hard little fists. Or was the girl laughing at Jess? Teasing, taunting? Was this a trick? For as Jess pushed the girl away the girl bobbed back at him, laughing, grinning into his appalled face, pushing boldly into his arms and again straddling his thighs, pressing and wriggling against him where he’d become aroused, helpless to stop her. For Jess didn’t want to hurt her. Jess knew that he must not hurt her. Except to protect himself, he must not use force on the child, though clearly this child was older than he’d originally thought, older than nine years and very likely an adolescent girl, a dwarf female, small and stunted and with a flat chest, rounded little tummy, and no hips, soft-muscled upper arms and thighs, an angular face and those glittering blue eyes. “Bad! Bad!” she was panting. Jess managed to push the girl aside and continued driving, not knowing what else to do; the Audi was weaving on the road, must’ve been that Jess had taken another wrong turn, for the road appeared to be narrowing, the road was deserted and dark except for the Audi’s lurching headlights, yet the girl had lowered the window beside the passenger’s seat to call out, in a plaintive child-voice, “Help! Help me! He hurt me! Bad man hurt me!” Jess protested, reaching for her, had to stop her, wrestled her away from the window, trying to clamp his hand over her mouth, trying to grip her head in the crook of his arm as in a vise, but another time the girl kicked and writhed and bit at his hand, managing to slip from him and open the door and scramble outside. Jess cursed and braked the Audi, left the key in the ignition to follow after the girl, who ran screaming into a field, following a faint path in the direction of a landfill, or a dump; Jess’s nostrils pinched at the smell of something burning, a garbagey-rubbery odor, he entered a clearing to see human shapes, derelicts beneath a makeshift shelter huddling together over a small smoldering fire. The girl ran screaming toward them, with Jess close behind her, a large whiskery man in army fatigues paused in the act of lifting a bottle to his mouth to shout at Jess and lurch to his feet; two other men roused themselves, advancing threateningly against Jess and giving him no opportunity to explain himself or the situation. So abruptly were the men struggling with Jess, cursing, striking, and pummeling him, Jess was taken by surprise, backing away and shielding his head with his arms; one of the derelicts struck Jess repeatedly with a broken umbrella, the skeletal remains of an umbrella, the staves raked his face, Jess snatched it from the man and struck him over the head with it: “Damn you, I’ll kill you!” As Jess struggled with the derelicts, the girl escaped; Jess broke away from the men, stumbling after her; for nothing mattered except the little girl in the bloodstained clothes, who would make such terrible accusations against Jess. The derelicts shouted after him but didn’t pursue him as Jess tramped through a scrubby woods, now it was nearly night and the icy rain had turned to sleet, panting and miserable Jess found himself on a hill above a four-lane highway, the interstate he’d unwisely exited from what seemed like a very long time ago yet could not have been more than an hour ago. The girl was somewhere ahead; Jess had no choice but to follow, now stumbling down a steep hill, and seeing ahead the small furtive figure of the child, the little demon-girl who’d left her blood in his car and on his person, there she was limping in the direction of an enormous tractor-trailer truck parked on the shoulder of the highway with its engine running. The driver would be sleeping inside and the girl was determined to wake him, Jess had to stop her before she got to the truck to scream for help; he managed to catch up with her, grabbing her, clamping a hand over her mouth before she could scream, whispering, “Stop! Please! You know I didn’t hurt you! I am not the one who hurt you!” Jess pleaded but the girl didn’t cease her struggling. He saw that her cotton dress was not only bloodstained but torn, she was naked beneath it, her hairless little vagina was bleeding, her legs sticky with blood, fresh blood leaked from her nose and her mouth where one of her front teeth appeared to be loosened. The girl must have done this to herself, for Jess was not responsible. Jess would plead, I didn’t want to do any of this, I was left no choice.

  Traffic thundered by on the highway, yet no one seemed to notice the struggle at the side of the road. Though it was night, reflected light from the highway made the surrounding area visible as if by moonlight, where Jess was dragging the girl into the underbrush, panting and grunting he managed to drag her into a clearing where he could restrain her, try to reason with her, they were in a picnic area beside the highway, there were tables, benches, the ground was littered, Jess had to press his hand hard over the girl’s mouth to muffle her cries, like a maddened cat she fought him and so Jess had no choice but to straddle her, hold her down with his weight, squeezing her between his knees, Jess must have weighed one hundred pounds more than the girl yet was having trouble restraining her for there was an unearthly strength in her little body. He thought, If there is snow now it will cover her, but he felt little solace, for in the spring, or in another day or two, the snow would melt. In his hand was a chunk of concrete. He lifted it, and he struck with it, and he felt the child-skull crack. The child-skull was composed of soft bones that could not withstand an adult’s blows. Blood rushed from a wound in the girl’s scalp, an alarming cascade of blood. For head wounds are the bloodiest of wounds. The girl kicked more feebly now, shuddered, moaned and went limp. Her angular little doll-face had grown slack, her eyes were open and staring and empty now of their demonic fury. Jess thought of giving the girl artificial respiration for he’d learned the rudiments of first aid in high school but he dared not press his mouth against the girl’s open bloodied mouth as he could not bring himself to lift the girl’s torn and bloodied dress to examine her wound, but instead pulled it down over her thighs as far as it would go. Who had dressed such a small child in such inappropriate clothes, a thin cotton dress, a sweatshirt of some coarse cheap fabric, and no socks, only just sneakers on the child’s bare feet? The girl’s parents were to blame. Jess was not to blame. Jess had wanted to help, and Jess’s help had gone wrong. He was arguing his case, staggering to his feet in utter exhaustion. What now? What came next? He would try to remember: he covered the girl with leaves, lifting leaves in his clumsy hands, and he located a strip of rotted tarpaulin and dragged it to the limp little body and covered it. Jess then stumbled away to search for his car. Trying to retrace his footsteps through the woods. Shrewdly he was drawn by the smell of a smoldering fire, and at the dump there was the derelicts’ makeshift shelter, but the derelicts were nowhere in sight. Jess made his way along a faint path, stumbling and limping and sobbing, and there, as if waiting for him, was a police cruiser, a vehicle with a red light on its roof, parked close by Jess’s Audi, which looked as if it had skidded partway into a ditch; the derelicts were speaking with two uniformed police officers, these were New Jersey state t
roopers examining Jess’s car, already they’d discovered the front seats smeared with blood and one of them was shining a flashlight into the opened trunk; by this time it was too late for Jess to turn and flee back into the woods for the state troopers had seen him and were shouting at him to come forward, lift both hands in the air they were shouting, their guns were drawn, Jess hesitated, wondering if he should try to run anyway, back into the woods where there might be a burrow he could hide in, headfirst in a burrow in some dark sheltering place, even as the state troopers continued to shout at him, advancing upon him with their drawn guns like a TV cop show of the kind Jess never watched any longer, shouting, “On the ground, son. On the ground.”

  Vena Cava

  Love you! they’d said.

  Love you so much! they’d said to him, So happy to have you back with us thank God.

  There were fierce hugs, kisses. Hot searing kisses of the kind to leave scars. He was in the midst of the hugs, choked for breath. He was in the midst of their fierce love, observing himself from a distance of approximately fifteen feet—the far side of the room beside the Christmas tree—noting how salt tears sprang from his mangled eyes and ran down the skin grafts of his cheeks like rainwater in rivulets eroding hard-packed red earth. Love you, Dennie, was said to him, Thank God home from that terrible place those terrible people like animals.

  They did not call him Lance Corporal here. All that was left behind.

  Who they’d hired to play him was winking at him over the heads of—who these were—“family,” their names were known to him as his name was known to them, except in the excitement the names were like coins in his pockets he’d grope for, through holes in fabric they’d fallen down inside the lining of his jacket, not lost exactly but he couldn’t get to the damned coins, not without ripping more fabric.