Mudwoman

by Joyce Carol Oates

  At this, Mrs. Skedd did intervene if she was close by.

  “Damn brats shut your mouths and keep them shut. Don’t know what the God-damn hell you are talking about, fuckin brats.”

  It was so: Ginny and Bobbie didn’t really know why Mudgirl was Mudgirl. Neither could have said where the strange, ugly name had come from.

  In the Skedd household, nobody had last names except Floyd and Livvie. The children were just first names—Lizbeth, Ginny, Bobbie, Arlen, Mickey, Darren, Steve, Cheryl Ann and Jewell. And one of these—ten-year-old Darren—left a few weeks after Jewell arrived when some (male, middle-aged) relative arranged with the Beechum County Family Services to take Darren home with him to Nettle, Alaska.

  Alaska! So far away, the road trip would require days, maybe weeks.

  On the front porch of the Skedds’ asphalt-sided house on Bear Mountain Road the entire family stood waving good-bye to Darren as uncle and nephew drove off in a minivan with Alaska plates. Jewell waved as she was instructed not sure why the others were so boisterous and cheery—for what did it mean really, to be taken away to Alaska?

  The Skedds were feeling good about the uncle or whoever it was showing up, to “adopt” Darren.

  “See? If you’re God-damn good kids, good things will happen.”

  “ ‘Good things happen to good people.’ That’s a fact.”

  Whichever of the Skedds had uttered this cheery pronouncement, the other snorted in cheery derision.

  “Fuck that’s a fact. That’s fuckin hearsay.”

  Sharp-eyed Mrs. Skedd observed that when the older children crept up behind Jewell to scare her by clapping their hands close beside her head, to make her jump, the little girl was learning to interpret their cruelty as just teasing, or as a joke—Jewell was learning the right response which was to giggle.

  Not to run away in fright nor even to cringe and shield her head but just to giggle.

  “See, sweetie-pie? Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you cry alone.”

  Mrs. Skedd pronounced these words as if she’d just now invented them. So far as Jewell knew, Mrs. Skedd had.

  Laugh you can laugh. Why cry if you can laugh.

  Laugh, laugh! The God-damn face feels the same.

  Though the Skedd house on Bear Mountain Road at the outskirts of Carthage was so faraway from Star Lake which was the last place they’d lived yet in the night sometimes there stood Momma at the foot of the cot staring at her so hard it was this that wakened Mudgirl from sleep. And the mouthing of her disgust. In all that is done trust Him. You have not trusted Him. Very still scarcely daring to breathe the child lay beneath the bedclothes until at last at dawn the crows in the marshland began their harsh jeering cries in ancient bemusement at the folly and futility of humankind. And Mudgirl listened for the King of the Crows amid the others. These are sent by Satan the mother said in raging disgust but the child kept her eyes shut and heard the mother’s words less clearly as the morning light emerged. You will be taken by Satan the mother warned but the child lay cunning in stillness in relief that the mother did not seem to have the power to touch her as once she had had the power and now as the sun like a fiery eye slowly opened the only sound was the sound of crows in the marshland and in their midst louder than all the rest, shriller and more savage in triumph the King of the Crows.

  One day in a faraway time which Mudgirl could have fathomed no more than Mudgirl could have fathomed any galaxy, any constellation in the night sky above the marshland she would confide in the Astronomer—My life was saved by the King of the Crows. Don’t laugh at me, I know that I am lucky. I am one of the lucky ones to be born and not to die after I was born.

  Out of the Skedds’ kitchen one day she was summoned.

  On the side stoop were Ginny and Bobbie yelling and laughing—

  “Jew-ell! JEW-ELL!”

  Jewell had not ever been summoned like this for any reason. Not ever her name shouted with such fervor.

  And so she was in terror that (somehow) Momma had come for her after all.

  Instead, in the driveway she saw a gangly-limbed young man in khaki jacket, work trousers and mud-splotched boots and a wool knit cap pulled low onto his forehead that was crisscrossed with lines like the forehead of an older man. A skimpy beard like thistles hid just part of his jaws.

  Ginny and Bobbie leaned in the door pretending to be speaking in lowered voices—“There’s a mountain-man out here! Hey Jewell—a mountain-man come to see you!”

  You could not ever tell if these girls were serious, or teasing. Like Lizbeth too they had high wild laughs like screams and anything could set them off so they laughed like they were being tickled or killed. Jewell came to the door in deep embarrassment for the girls were so careless in their speech the man in the driveway had to hear them. Then they went whistling and moaning in shameless hilarity—“In’t he cute! Ohhhh man!”

  Jewell had no choice but to step outside. A roaring came up in her ears like distant thunder.

  “Here she is, mister! ‘Jew-ell.’ ”

  Giggling Bobbie pushed Jewell down the steps in the direction of the young man who was staring at Jewell, his soft-dark eyes snatching at her, as Jewell’s snatched at him.

  Did she know him? Did he know her?

  The young man resembled a boy who has been made to grow up too fast—his skin was coarsened from sun, wind, cold and had a leathery look. He was slight-bodied with wiry arms and foreshortened legs and straggling hair to his shoulders. His facial features appeared just slightly mismatched but were not ugly, or alarming—his chin seemed to have melted away beneath the thistle-whiskers, and his mouth showed many small stained teeth like the teeth of a mink or a fox.

  “Hi. H’lo . . .”

  The straggle-haired young man and Jewell were of a similar shyness you could say like two creatures of the same litter though altogether different-looking and uncertain of each other. Though the rude girls on the door stoop snickered and snorted in explosive giggles neither the young man nor Jewell took notice.

  “Guess you don’t r-remember me. . . . I was the one who. . . .”

  Staring at Jewell in a kind of startled wonder making an effort to smile with those stained little teeth. Saying his name which Jewell failed to hear in the way that children fail to hear adult-names as adult-faces too are likely to blend, blur, coalesce in a child’s memory. And there was the roaring in Jewell’s ears that drowned out all sound except the percussive and thrilling cries of crows on the far side of the drainage ditch.

  “Guess you are ‘Jew-ell’—I saw in the paper. . . .”

  Sweating and tongue-tied the straggly-haired young man thrust at Jewell an object in a paper bag.

  This ordinary brown-paper bag of the size that Mr. Skedd brought home his six-packs of beer in, or Mrs. Skedd brought home some small purchases from the store.

  Unwitting Jewell took the paper bag from the young man. As soon as she accepted it the young man backed off relieved—“O.K. now. Take it easy.”

  Within minutes of arriving at the asphalt-sided house on Bear Mountain Road, the straggly-haired young man had departed.

  He was driving a run-down pickup truck. Quickly he climbed back into the cab and backed out of the driveway and was gone up Bear Mountain Road before Jewell could remove what was inside the paper bag.

  “What’s it? A doll? Why’d the mountain-man give you a doll?”

  “A doll? And Jew-ell’s too damn dumb to say thank you.”

  Astonished Jewell stared at the doll. She had not ever had a doll—a nice doll—of her own. This was a blond doll of soft rubber colored to resemble flesh, just the size for a child to cradle in the crook of her arm.

  It had a rosebud mouth and rosy circles on its cheeks and thick eyelashes framing wide-open plastic-blue eyes of the kind that shut when you lean the doll back to sleep.

 
Vividly Jewell recalled a naked rubber doll spinning arms and legs like a crazed wheel flying through the air then dropping into the marshy black muck.

  The new doll was not naked but clothed in a pink satin party dress with lace collar, sequins and spangles. The new doll had not just painted-on ripply-rubber hair but soft silky pale-blond hair.

  Ginny and Bobbie were curious, resentful. Plucking at the doll clutched in Jewell’s hands.

  “Why’d the mountain-man give you that? Why’d anybody give you a doll? Who’s he s’posed to be—your daddy?”

  “Mudgirl got a daddy! Mudgirl got a daddy!”

  Jewell tried to run from the girls gripping the doll in both hands. She had not ever had a gift before except from the spiky-haired man and she had not ever really had a doll of her own before—the rubber doll tossed into the mud had not belonged to her but to her older sister, Jewell.

  Mrs. Skedd had come outside, to see what the ruckus was.

  “Jewell? What the hell? What’s that? Who in hell gave you that?”

  Mrs. Skedd snatched the doll from Jewell to examine. Weeks before when Jewell had come to live with her foster family they’d been given a box of secondhand clothing and a few toys from County Services, plus a few items from Goodwill, but Mrs. Skedd could see that this fancy blond doll hadn’t come from any charity—it wasn’t even slightly soiled, it looked brand-new.

  Excitedly Ginny and Bobbie told Mrs. Skedd that a weird-looking mountain-man had parked in the driveway and asked for Jewell so he could give her something. “Why’n’t you call me?” Mrs. Skedd asked, incensed. “I’m the adult on the premises.”

  All this while Mrs. Skedd was turning the doll in her hand, suspiciously. Jewell halfway expected her to sniff it. Jewell waited not daring to speak nor even to breathe until at last Mrs. Skedd handed the doll back to her with a faint wistful sneer—“Somebody who read about you in the paper, or saw you on TV. Somebody feels sorry for you and don’t think we can provide enough, Floyd and me. Too bad the asshole didn’t leave his name, maybe he’s got other things he’d like to give away, too.”

  Mudwoman Makes a Promise.

  And Mudwoman Makes a Discovery.

  April 2003

  The sink! She had never seen any sink so—sunken.

  It was a scallop-shaped hollow in the old worn faded-salmon marble counter. And the counter was far too high and too deep—to use the sink, so impracticably sunken, you had to stand on your toes, lean forward on your elbows and lift yourself, brace yourself, to bend above the sink, at a broken-backed crouch; then you had to reach for the faucets which were antiquated and grotesquely large claw-shaped brass fixtures at least six inches apart so that, having managed to grip the left-hand faucet—(which emitted hot water)—you could not then very readily grip the right-hand faucet—(which emitted cold water)—for you needed the support of at least one arm/elbow in order to maintain your balance, and not slip back down from the counter.

  “This God-damn sink.”

  It was Livvie Skedd’s voice of utter contempt mixed with bemusement, incredulity.

  There appeared to be no chair, no stool to drag into the high-ceilinged old bathroom, to kneel upon. Underfoot the floor was a duller salmon-marble dimmed with the grime of decades.

  Was the hour day, or night? Dawn, or twilight? The single window was so narrow and its panes so opaque with dust no light was emitted nor did there appear to be a light in the bathroom, above the sink for instance, or recessed in the ceiling.

  Yet there was light in the bathroom, of a kind. The pale-glowering light of a sunless day when a grudging sort of illumination seems to lift from all sides, sourceless.

  “This God-damn sink.”

  Mrs. Skedd would have laughed at the “historic” marble sink in the oldest wing of Charters House, with her air of breathless snorting derision.

  Though Mrs. Skedd would have been impressed, too—Got to hand it to poor little Mudgirl come pretty God-damn far.

  At last, M.R. managed to turn the left-hand faucet on. She was panting, the effort had been considerable. Half-sprawled onto the marble countertop, her midriff aching from the strain. Hot water splashed into the deep-sunken sink but almost immediately it was scalding water, far too hot for her to use and so she had to grip the right-hand faucet to modulate the temperature which necessitated a good deal of strain as water—scalding-hot, splashing—continued to pour into the sink with maniacal abandon.

  She was too short for the sink—was that the problem? Barefoot, straining to reach the faucets. Her legs were too short. The tendons in her knees ached with strain. And her hands trying to grip the claw-shaped faucets, too small.

  From two floors below, at the foot of the front staircase there came the faint terrible words, that froze her heart:

  “Ms. Neukirchen? Your guests are arriving. . . .”

  One of the president’s trusted staffers. One of the band of young women who adored M. R. Neukirchen even as they had begun to fear for her, and to fear her.

  She’d asked them please to call her M.R. Why for God’s sake could they not call her M.R.!

  Of course, she knew—she was late. Somehow it had happened, though M.R. was never late, tonight she was late. In her own residence, late! For a social gathering she herself was hosting, she was late.

  Nothing so terrible—so desperate!—as to be late.

  To know that people are awaiting you—looking for you.

  She could hear the doorbell ringing, downstairs. Horribly, she could hear it—ringing.

  She could hear the door being opened. She could hear muffled greetings. Since M.R. wasn’t yet present, very likely the dean of the faculty had taken up the role of host in her place.

  When the president of the University was absent, other administrative officers would take her place. At this evening’s dinner there was, in addition to the Dean of the Faculty, the University vice-provost in charge of research.

  Both were prestigious administrative positions. Both were highly capable individuals, both men.

  “God damn.”

  Mrs. Skedd’s epithet halfway a curse, and a prayer for help.

  Mudwoman could not go downstairs until she was ready to be seen. Mudwoman could not appear in public until she was readied.

  So difficult to wash her face at this sink where she could barely reach the damned faucets!

  A smell of drains lifted from the stained-porcelain toilet, and from the stained-porcelain claw-footed tub with its grimy urine-colored shower curtain. For some reason her private bathroom wasn’t available and so she’d found her desperate way to the third floor of Charters House, up the spiral staircase at the rear to the airless upper floor of closed-off guest rooms, empty closets and alcoves where no one ventured for weeks, or months, at a time; where once, when Charters House had been a lived-in residence, in the days of University presidents with large families and numerous visiting relatives, these rooms had been in use.

  Children had lived in Charters House, until recent times. Now, not even ghost-children trailed about the upper floors. Forlorn cries and calls were but the groans of antiquated plumbing, most distinct at night.

  “God help me.”

  M.R. stared at her face in dismay. There appeared to be something wrong with the mirror above the sink—the glass was so old, it distorted all that was reflected therein, as if underwater. M.R.’s eyes were bloodshot, her lips appeared chafed, cracked. Above her right eyebrow was a prim little vertical wound that didn’t appear to be entirely healed—red moisture gleamed at its edges. And the ugly bruise above the eyebrow had become unmoored, a lumpy little blood-sac that had been drifting down the right side of M.R.’s face for the past two weeks and was lodged now in her right cheek, below her eye.

  Her face was still sore from the fall. Her shoulder, ribs, ankle and her skull at the right temple still throbbed with a reproachful p
ain.

  “For once, help me.”

  In the rising steam her face had become luridly flushed. She managed to shut off the left-hand faucet and to turn the right-hand faucet on as far as she could—no hot water at all, only cold—so that she could lower her burning face into this water, to cool it.

  However, the brass fixture was broken, that shut the drain. So as water splashed into the sink, which was an uncommonly large, low sink, water was draining out.

  With the cunning of desperation M.R. fashioned a plug of tight-wadded tissues which she forced into the drain. So as water splashed into the sink it didn’t drain out nearly so rapidly. Slowly then the deep sink filled with cold water until at last M.R. could lean over, and lower her face into it—what a relief!

  She would be all right now, she believed. The lurid flush would fade from her face. And then with cosmetics, she would try to improve her appearance. All that was required was a few minutes.

  Except downstairs, the voice lifted, polite, yet pleading:

  “Ms. Neukirchen? Your guests are arriving. . . .”

  Ms. Neukirchen! She was Ms. Neukirchen!

  Faintly mocking the name seemed to her, and the title—President.

  At the Skedds’ long plank kitchen table that lurched and tilted at crowded mealtimes, an outburst of derisive merriment.

  President Neukirchen! Who’n hell is Mudgirl kidding!

  Blindly her fingers groped for the little jar of makeup on the sink counter. It was a putty-paste of a hue she’d thought would disguise her sallow skin and its deformities—Honeyrose blush.

  Inexpertly, hurriedly, M.R. spread the putty-paste on her face. There was something so shameful in her desperation, she could not bring herself to observe the procedure closely, and could only hope that the makeup was more or less evenly spread, and would appear natural.