Mudwoman

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The Stirk case had exhausted Leonard Lockhardt, and had seemed to coarsen him. As he ranted M.R. pressed her fingertips to her temples, hating to hear what the man was saying. He was right of course—Leonard Lockhardt was always right. What excellent legal advice, what common sense the attorney had provided, which M.R. had chosen to ignore—she wasn’t sure why.

  Why her motives, in the face of Stirk’s insolence—disrespect.

  Why her motives, when Stirk so clearly viewed her as an enemy.

  Before leaving M.R.’s office, Lockhardt said, as if casually, but with that look of disdain, that he was thinking of retiring.

  Not immediately, Lockhardt hastened to add. He wouldn’t abandon the University until the Stirk case was resolved—that is, the lawsuit—but soon then afterward.

  M.R. felt as if she’d been kicked—a kick to the belly that wasn’t so painful as she might have expected.

  “Retiring! It will be the end of an era.”

  If Lockhardt had expected M.R. to protest, he must have been disappointed. For M.R. spoke with an air of startled-smiling-stoic resignation—M.R. would not protest at all.

  They shook hands in parting. It was customary for M.R. to shake hands with the University’s chief counsel. But how chill the man’s hand was this morning, how lacking in strength! Usually, you had to steel yourself to shake hands with Leonard Lockhardt.

  “You know that I care for you, Meredith—as a person, I mean. And as an administrator—you’ve had—you have—great promise. . . .”

  Lockhardt’s voice trailed off, he’d turned away even as M.R.’s secretary was approaching her with an air of urgency.

  A tragedy, disguised as a farce. And we are all players in the farce.

  She’d made her way along the dim-lit back hallway and into the chill utilitarian kitchen. Already she was feeling better—stronger. In the kitchen she ran cold water to wash her throbbing face. She rinsed her bloodied mouth and with paper towels staunched the bleeding from her forehead. She brought upstairs an ice bag, to press against her alarmingly swollen mouth.

  For a long time upstairs she showered in water as hot as she could bear until she was satisfied she’d removed all traces of—whatever it was—that had gotten into her hair and in subsequent days she avoided mirrors for the face reflected therein was a reproach and a rebuke to her sense of herself that must be maintained in public at all costs.

  Farce! But we must not let on that we know.

  Several times she called the Stirk family—she tried to call them. On her presidential letterhead she wrote to the Stirks, a handwritten letter, which she didn’t expect the Stirks to answer, as they did not. She understood that she was very likely defying Leonard Lockhardt by trying to contact these individuals who would sue her and the University for “criminal negligence” in the matter of their son’s condition yet she felt almost desperate to contact them.

  I am so sorry. Please accept my sympathy.

  Did this constitute acknowledgment of “criminal liability”?—M.R. didn’t dare to think.

  It would be a matter of attorneys, exclusively. The University president need not be personally involved at all.

  She’d been one of the hundred-odd recipients of course.

  She’d thought it might be a personal message to M. R. Neukirchen but it was not.

  Like a two-line poem, the boy’s departing curse. An unrhyming couplet with the sting of an adder.

  VENGEANCE IS MINE SAITH THE LORD

  JUSTICE WILL PREVAILL

  Was “prevaill” misspelled? She stared at the word, as it seemed to shift its meaning.

  Mudgirl in “Foster Care.” Mudgirl Receives a Gift.

  June 1965

  “You are a very lucky girl, Jew-ell. Hope you know that!”

  Where the Skedds lived at the edge of Carthage was a faraway place from the countryside where Momma had lived with her two little girls in hiding from Satan (as Momma had said). Never could Mudgirl have hoped to retrace those many miles in her memory nor could Mudgirl even recall the circuitous route that had brought her to this squat asphalt-sided house in a rubble-strewn field which was the foster home of the Skedds.

  These were Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Skedd.

  These were strangers of the kind Momma had cursed, and told her daughters they must not speak to, but Momma was not here now to see how Mudgirl disobeyed her.

  Except Mudgirl could not speak at first. In the tight-shut throat was something like a thistle or a thorn and there was something like mud if mud could be sticky and clotty and no sound, no breath could penetrate it. No words could emerge from the child’s throat or through the tight-shut mouth and tight-clenched little jaws.

  Alone, Mudgirl would whisper this word that was strange to her—“Carr-th’ge.”

  Such meager syllables she uttered only when she believed no one could hear.

  It was a word that was exciting to her, mysterious. For it was not a word that Momma would know. (She believed.) As “Skedd” was a new, strange name that Momma would not know.

  And the name that was hers now—“Jewell.” How surprised Momma would be!

  In the way that, seeing a coin on the sidewalk, or a glittery little button that might be a coin, and nobody to claim it, you had the right to stoop down, and snatch it up in your fingers.

  “Jew-elle”—that was, now, her.

  In the hospital at Carthage where they had kept her for more days than she could count there came visitors—men, a woman—to ask her what was her name and many times she whispered Jew-ell before they comprehended. And so next they asked her where is your mother?—where is your sister Jedina?

  These questions, the child could not answer. Or the child would not answer. Though many times she was asked. Where? Where? Did your mother take your sister away somewhere—where?

  When your mother took you to the mudflats did she take your sister, too? Was your sister in the car with you then? Was there a man?

  Often it was not clear if the child could comprehend these questions for the child’s bruised eyelids were so heavy, she could barely keep awake for more than a few minutes soon after waking. Her skin was sallow and sickly as the underbelly of a mud-creature and her poor shaved head was pitiful to see, as fine dark hairs grew back amid a scribble of scratches, scabs, rashes and abrasions.

  Her arms!—her poor arms!—stick-thin and discolored from numberless needles. For fluids came to her through tubes, dripping into her pallid veins.

  The little skeleton pushed against the sallow skin like the wire insides of a doll crudely fashioned of papier-mâché.

  Sharp little wrist-bones, ankle-bones, pelvis-bones, shoulder-bones.

  Bruised and swollen little eyes in which the pupil was likely to be dilated.

  The child’s blood was drawn—many times. The child learned that to flinch or to resist the approaching needle was futile. The child was subjected to neurological tests, CAT scans. X-rays of the brain and spinal cord. There was no discernible reason that the child could not speak nor was her hearing impaired. She did not appear to be mentally retarded or autistic though she would have to relearn certain skills—“motor coordination”—walking, running—climbing stairs—that had faded from her brain like moisture evaporating in the sun.

  After a while, the visitors ceased asking her where is your mother? where is your sister Jedina? It may have been that the original visitors ceased coming to the hospital and were replaced by others and the child could not distinguish between them for they were adults and interchangeable and they were strangers.

  It was enough that not one of them—not one of the women—was Momma. Beyond that, the child had no real concern.

  At this time, Mr. and Mrs. Skedd must have come to see Jewell Kraeck. For this would be explained to her later. Yet she did not remember them, really. Seeing that Mrs. Skedd was not Momma, and Mr. Skedd w
as not one of Momma’s men-friends.

  The nurses—the nice nurses!—who brought her food and coaxed her to eat—at first, just liquids—hot soup, fruit juice—and then mashed food like baby food laced with sweetness—who bathed her battered and bruised little body, changed bedclothes and her soiled nightgowns—were careful never to ask her questions to make her clench and tremble. They did not ever ask her questions she could not answer. Brightly they spoke of Jewell and what a good sweet girl she was, and how she would be well soon, and out of this place and in a new family where no one would hurt her.

  At the rear of the Skedds’ property was a steep drainage ditch.

  The Skedds’ property was two acres of tall slovenly grasses, scrub trees and rusted hulks of abandoned vehicles and farm equipment the foster children were warned not to play in for they could injure themselves. The drainage ditch flooded in heavy rainstorms. In the shivery water windblown clouds were reflected like fleeting thoughts.

  And beyond the ditch, a stretch of marshland where many birds gathered and of these birds the noisiest were crows.

  Early morning you were wakened by shrill scratchy cries that entered your sleep like claws tearing into paper, or crinkly cloth.

  The first morning waking in the new house—in her little bed which was a narrow cot with a flat, smelly mattress in a row of similar cots in the slant-ceiling room called the girls’ room—before opening her eyes Jewell heard—the King of the Crows!

  He had followed her here from the mudflats, to this faraway place amid strangers. He had not forgotten Mudgirl.

  And so in the foster home of the Skedds she had reason to know, the King of the Crows would look after her if but at a distance.

  At the Skedds’ the child was shy in the presence of others.

  The child was slow to speak and slow moving as if under a spell.

  You would see that the child was listening to someone—something—in the distance beyond the house. You would see that the child often did not hear what was said to her from inches away.

  “Jewell! Wake up.”

  Mrs. Skedd—“Livvie”—was determined to make a special effort with the little Kraeck girl. For Mrs. Skedd felt very sorry for poor Mudgirl and had vowed to County Services, she would protect the child from further harm. “You are a very lucky girl, Jewell,” Mrs. Skedd said often. “Very lucky to be found and rescued and brought to live here.”

  Mrs. Skedd was a good-natured woman except easily “frazzled”—as she acknowledged—for the Skedd household was a busy place, especially the Skedd kitchen was a busy place like a wasp-hive at the center of which Mrs. Skedd was obliged to raise her voice frequently. Mrs. Skedd’s habitual expression was one of incredulity and exasperation as if, like a TV housewife, she was being tested and her Christian good nature stretched to the limit by the high-decibel noise of the household of four Skedd children—youngest seven, oldest fifteen—and a shifting number of foster children—youngest three or four, oldest eleven or twelve. And there was Mr. Skedd—“Floyd”—a burly man with oil-stained clothes—T-shirt, work-trousers—always in a rush, always tramping mud onto the God-damned linoleum floor that Livvie and the girls had just mopped—looking for the God-damned keys to the pickup, he’d dropped somewhere—flinging jackets down, kicking off running shoes and boots and barging into the refrigerator to eat whatever he could find by hand, and quickly; Mrs. Skedd had to shout at Mr. Skedd to make him listen to her, and even then Mr. Skedd paid the woman little heed—with a wink at whichever of the children was a witness, and a gat-toothed grin. Mrs. Skedd’s throat was raw with shouting at Mr. Skedd and with shouting up the stairs at a stampede of feet overhead—for if you spoke in a “normal, nice” voice as Mrs. Skedd complained no one would pay the slightest attention.

  In the midst of so much commotion, the younger girls—of whom Jewell was the youngest—cowered together in the kitchen. For in the interstices of the Skedds’ shouts at one another there were moments of sudden calm, even tenderness—Mrs. Skedd liked to surprise her favorite girls with hot little kisses on the tops of their heads, fresh-baked gingerbread cookies, an invitation to ride with her in the pickup to the grocery store—“Just us. Not them.”

  Atop the refrigerator in the Skedds’ kitchen was a red plastic radio which Mrs. Skedd kept on through the day turned up high—music, news, jingly advertisements. Momma too had had a radio—Momma had listened to religious programs predominantly—and so Jewell took comfort in Mrs. Skedd’s radio for the radio voices were never rushed or confused or angry or mumbling—the radio voices were both female and male—clear and confident and sensible-seeming—so it was possible you could talk in that way, too.

  “Jewell! What’re you listening-at, so hard?”

  Mrs. Skedd would recall how the little girl had a look—how to describe it—like someone much older than her age. An expression you don’t see in a child’s face of listening, thinking.

  Mrs. Skedd liked it that, in her household, the little Mudgirl was making a recovery. To the neighbors, and to other foster-family people she knew, or anyone who’d listen—Mrs. Skedd was known to boast quietly what sounded like a fixed formula: “Broke-things not too bad-broke, we can fix. Floyd and me.”

  So it was little Jewell was learning to talk, and learning to eat—not quickly but by degrees. The color was coming back into her sallow face, and fine wavy hair was growing back on her head; she was learning to walk without lurching or scuttling—“like a little crab”; she was shy when the other, older children were present but relaxed and happy-seeming in the kitchen with Mrs. Skedd as “Momma’s little helper”—happiest when Mrs. Skedd gave her small tasks to do that she could do, capably.

  Scouring a heavy iron pan with steel-wool until her fingers stung. With wetted paper towels, wiping the Formica-topped counters that were always sticky.

  Clearing out the old General Electric refrigerator that accumulated leftovers like proliferating mold, and a mix of smells—placing things in order on the shelves—tall bottles (milk, beer), dairy and smaller bottles, plastic containers of leftovers, fresh produce in twin drawers at the bottom. Setting the long table that seated as many as twelve people in a jumble of different sorts of chairs—helping to serve the meal that was brought directly from the stove in pots and frying pans—helping to clear the table—helping to wash dishes—carrying out garbage at the end of the day in a large colander to dump on Mrs. Skedd’s “compost pile” in a field beyond the back door.

  “Jewell! That’s real nice.”

  Newspapers and magazines that came into the house, everything from throwaway flyers to Mr. Skedd’s True: The Man’s Magazine little Jewell examined with that expression of adult intensity—(could Mudgirl read? had she taught herself to read? so young?)—but if you called out, “Jewell! What the hell you reading so hard?” the child would back off as if she’d been caught doing something forbidden.

  Once, Mrs. Skedd pulled a newspaper section out of Jewell’s hand—it was the Carthage Sun-Times. On the front page was a photograph of a young Marine named Dewater Coldham, nineteen, of Keene, New York, who’d been killed “by enemy fire” in Vietnam. Seeing the frightened look in the child’s eyes Mrs. Skedd quickly crumpled the paper saying, “Christ sake, girl, what’s this to do with us?”

  The child could not say. It did not seem that Jewell knew poor “Dewater Coldham” so far as Mrs. Skedd could determine, nor did Jewell seem to know what Vietnam might mean.

  “Sure there’s people in my family—some cousin, or two—that’s over in Veet-nam—but there just ain’t time to think about it, y’know?” Mrs. Skedd said, her voice rising with exasperation. “You get my age you learn there’s more than enough evil in the God-damned world, that you have to deal with firsthand—you don’t need to look out for any God-damned extra.”

  Such sudden vehemence, the child backed off like a frightened mouse and Mrs. Skedd made an involuntary movement as if to s
hove her, or to grab her, or touch her shoulder—Jewell cringed and shielded her head and now Mrs. Skedd was truly exasperated—“Christ! Nobody’s going to fucking hit you—think I’m some crazy mother of yours?”

  In utter silence—Mrs. Skedd would recall afterward, such silence did not seem normal—the child fled the kitchen, out of the house and somewhere into the field behind the house maybe to hide in one of the rusted cast-off vehicles or, though it was forbidden to the younger kids, the damn smelly drainage ditch beyond.

  For she knew: the King of the Crows was watching over her.

  Soon, the King of the Crows would come for her.

  The Skedds—both Livvie and Floyd—were not hesitant to shout—scream—slap—punch—even kick and pummel if required to restore some semblance of order in the household. Especially at mealtimes when the fragile order of the house was most imperiled. For some of their foster children were near full-grown at age twelve and the only way to deal with them was blunt force.

  Two of Floyd Skedd’s brothers were prison guards up at Watertown.

  Ask any prison guard he’ll tell you—to keep peace it’s blunt force that’s required.

  Except if it was getting serious, neither of the Skedds troubled to intervene when the children fought among themselves even when their own children were involved. The ten-year-old Skedd daughter Lizbeth was sulky and sullen and liked to pinch if you got in her way and in the crowded Skedd upstairs, seemed one or another of the younger children was always getting in someone’s way. Mrs. Skedd might scream up the stairs till she was red-faced but suddenly then gave up, for what the hell—“You got to learn, you can’t be a crybaby all your life.”

  It made her vexed as hell, but she couldn’t be flying off the handle a dozen times a day, when older kids picked on younger, with no provocation. Out of meanness or idleness like the same older kids who would torment a frog, or a cat or dog. Like two girls—Ginny, who was eleven; Bobbie, who was twelve—would gang up on little Jewell calling her Mudgirl! Mudgirl! Like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.