Mudwoman

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The doll! Jewell had loved her gift-doll! Even as she’d known that no love for the blond doll could keep the blond doll from being snatched from her by one of the older girls—Bobbie, or Ginny—or maybe it had been mean-hearted Lizbeth jealous of Mrs. Skedd fussing over Mudgirl when Mrs. Skedd had better have been fussing over her.

  The mountain-man with the skimpy beard and beautiful dark-damp eyes M.R. could see so vividly, at the dining-room table in Charters House leaving her weak with desire, yearning—all that she’d lost, that had been taken from her; as the blond doll she had not dared name, knowing instinctively that she had better not name it, was stolen from her within a week, and she’d never seen it again; whether one of the girls had taken it, or one of the boys, she’d never known; out of pure spite it must have been taken, since she’d never glimpsed anyone playing with it. Her child-heart had beat hard in hurt and resentment that Mrs. Skedd hadn’t seemed to care much that Jewell’s doll had been taken from her, finding Jewell in tears and saying, shrugging, Hell kid—easy come, easy go.

  This was a favored remark of both the Skedds. And of their Carthage neighbors. Growing up, M.R. had heard it often. Easy come, easy go.

  What is easily acquired is easily lost.

  What is easily acquired you deserve to lose.

  “Ms. Neukirchen? Shall I take your plate away?”

  Plates were being cleared away. M.R. stared down at her plate—Chilean sea bass, barely touched—startled that she was here and not there.

  “Ms. Neukirchen—?”

  The server—a sweet-faced Hispanic girl whose name M.R. seemed not to recall—regarded M.R. with concerned eyes. (Was it beginning to be known, among the Charters House staff, that M.R. wasn’t eating much, lately? And wasn’t taking time to talk with them much, lately? When she’d been so very friendly, when she’d first come to live in Charters House, the staff had all adored her.)

  “Yes. Please. Thank you.”

  Here was the irony: all that M.R. had accomplished, all that the world perceived as her achievements, had not been easily acquired. She had worked, worked. She had worked fiercely, single-mindedly, with an idealism born of desperation. Yet, it could be taken from her so easily—as if she hadn’t worked, had not earned her position, at all.

  “There is American poverty, too—and not just economic. A poverty of the spirit . . .”

  So quietly M.R. spoke, amid the buzz and hum of talk at the table, few heard.

  One of the stronger personalities at the table was the economist/philosopher E___ from Cambridge, currently a visiting professor at the University, whose (controversial) specialty was the “ethics” of killing; that afternoon, M.R. had rearranged several meetings so that she could attend a panel E___ had chaired—“The Ethics of Killing: Military Combat, Euthanasia, Abortion.” Remarks E___ had made on the panel had offended K___, the young woman filmmaker, and now E___ and K___ were energetically discussing the distinction between “killing” and “abortion” which the filmmaker believed to be crucial and considerable while the economist/philosopher believed it to be “essentially a matter of vocabulary.”

  Around the table, other conversations subsided. For E___ was as strong-willed as K___, and K___ would not defer to E___. There followed now a vigorous general discussion of the specific/legal meanings of fetus—infant—infanticide. This would seem to be the sole issue about which there didn’t appear to be near-unanimous agreement among the conferees, who were, on the whole, political liberals.

  At what point does a fetus become a human being; does a fetus have legal status?

  Such avid discussions had become, in contemporary America, the equivalent of the medieval Thomist quarrels about angels dancing on the “heads of pins”—except more emotion was involved.

  In her head like a beating pulse M.R. heard the mocking rhyme in an insolently familiar boy’s voice—

  Free choice is a lie

  Nobody’s baby wants to die

  FREE CHOICE IS A LIE

  NOBODY’S BABY WANTS TO DIE

  No one of the conferees had asked about, spoken of, nor even alluded to the Stirk case, that M.R. knew. Very likely, in their highly specialized worlds, this sort of news—verging upon the tabloid, though reported zealously in the New York Times—did not qualify as significant. For that, M.R. was grateful!

  Of course, M.R. had inherited from the previous president several drawn-out lawsuits against the University, on contractual/tenure issues, which were not of vital concern to M.R., and did not involve her personally; unlike the Stirk case, these were of little interest to the media.

  Some of the University faculty had been interviewed on the subject—this was unavoidable. High-profile conservatives like Oliver Kroll and G. Leddy Heidemann who were often on cable news. M.R. had been relieved to read in the New York Times that Oliver Kroll had said that the University had behaved responsibly, in fact “admirably”; in the same article, Heidemann had said that the University with its “liberal bigotry” had behaved irresponsibly, allowing an “emotionally disturbed” young person to attempt suicide.

  If only Heidemann would depart the University for another, more conservative institution! Or, if only the University could fire him.

  How painful it was, to think of Alexander Stirk!—a subject of great distress to M.R.—for Stirk was said to be in an “unvarying” comatose state, neither alive nor dead on a life-support machine in Philadelphia.

  The University was being sued by the Stirk family. Mr. Stirk had engaged a very expensive high-profile litigator to argue his charge of “criminal negligence” against the University and several administrators including the president Neukirchen. (M.R. thought it a blessing, Alexander Stirk hadn’t singled her out as a particular enemy in his frantic blogs.) It would be months before the lawsuits erupted into public consciousness and during this interregnum M.R. was advised by the University’s attorneys not only not to speak of it but not to think of it—for there was virtually nothing she could do, in any case.

  Except, of course, in weak moments, she found herself thinking of Stirk. And when not consciously thinking of the comatose boy, yet she was thinking of him.

  But I am not guilty—how am I guilty? Why am I guilty?

  Stirk had hated her. Stirk had stuck his tongue out at her.

  Yet: she could see his eyes. The woundedness in those eyes. The yearning in those eyes. Beautiful thick-lashed eyes glistening with hurt, fury. M.R. had failed Stirk, somehow. M.R. had failed to convince him to trust her.

  Failed to convince him, to love her.

  Suttis Coldham: that was the name.

  He had looked at Jewell with eyes of—love? Such tenderness, in the whiskery mountain-man! Suttis Coldham who would love her to no purpose, in the way of the most pure and ineffable love—whom M.R. had rejected.

  Would Coldham know her now? Would he recognize her—now?

  A trickle on M.R.’s forehead—something coolly liquid, though it was blood. Unobtrusively M.R. took from her sleeve a folded tissue, to quickly dab against the cut. No one saw—she was sure.

  By now, M.R.’s face should have healed. It was at least two weeks since she’d fallen so idiotically on the back stairs, and injured herself. (And no one knew. That was the sole consolation.) Yet still the ugly blood-sac bruise throbbed in her cheek, if she touched it; she was confident that with makeup she’d disguised the bruise; with makeup, her face was restored to some semblance of conventional attractiveness.

  Without lipstick, M.R.’s mouth was pale, and doughy. Her eyebrows were heavy, brooding. She’d seen—(she’d thought she had seen)—quizzical glances in her direction, that evening. Her assistant Audrey, and another young woman-staffer named Felice. And S___.

  If these individuals saw something amiss in M.R.’s face they did not dare speak of it.

  For in recent weeks you could not speak lightly to the University presiden
t. Where once M.R. had been quick to laugh, in the interstices of her intense and protracted administrative work at Salvager Hall, now she was likely to be distracted, somber. She was likely to be impatient.

  More distressing, the woman who’d once astonished her staff with her quite remarkable memory was beginning to forget or to muddle names.

  Even swaggering Evander with his dreadlocked hair and his thrilling high-pitched laugh did not invariably capture the president’s attention as he once had.

  You could see the strain, in M.R.’s face. And how awkwardly—inexpertly—she’d applied makeup to her face, as a child might have done: uneven layers of beige foundation covered with loose powder.

  If I can get through this evening. Just this.

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

  “What do you think, President Neukirchen? What’s the consensus at this university?”

  The question was put to her by a genial visitor from the University of Toronto whom M.R. knew only through his work in political theory; her thoughts had been so adrift, and so morbidly fascinating, she had no idea what the subject was, though reasoning that it had surely moved on from whatever it had been a few minutes previously. With a disarming smile, and not the slightest hint that she’d been thinking of other, far other things at the president’s own dinner table, M.R. said, “ ‘Consensus’? Here? I wouldn’t presume to say.”

  M.R. should have been embarrassed to realize, a moment later, that the Canadian political scientist had been asking about the Iraqi War—what sort of “public debate” had it stirred in the University community.

  “And ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’—your quaintly named military action in Afghanistan.”

  Quickly this subject was taken up, like a ball tossed into the air—everyone leapt for it, eager to speak. Of all the individuals at the table only one—or two—might have favored the wars, or some aspect of the wars, but remained silent in the face of others’ vehemence.

  M.R. said yes, they’d had several public debates on the subject. The largest had been attended by a standing-room-only crowd in a lecture hall seating eight hundred people, many from the community.

  As soon as M.R. uttered these words—which seemed to her entirely reasonable, admirable words—she heard them as in an echo chamber, boastful, vain, and absurd; and Mrs. Skedd’s jeering aside Don’t we think well of ourselves! Hot shit eh?

  From this subject, conversation moved to “bellicosity”—“irrationality.” For without the irrational, there can’t be the bellicose; bellicosity was irrationality. M.R. was moved to quote Nietzsche, as very likely she’d done often lately, since the start of the ill-advised Iraqi War—“ ‘Madness is rare in individuals, in nations—commonplace.’ ”

  One of the guests objected, cleverly: “Except—madness in individuals isn’t so rare, really. Individuals en masse are nations.”

  “Yes, but—there is certainly a ‘crowd mentality.’ A ‘crowd hysteria.’ A crowd is something more, and something less, than the sum of its individuals.”

  “It’s sanity in individuals, as in nations, that is rare.”

  Everyone laughed. This was witty, and very likely true. M.R. thought, how good it is we can laugh together, secure in the knowledge that we are all sane.

  For a while then, suicide bombings were discussed: 9/11, and after.

  Then, suicide itself: the “pure, unmitigated and unpoliticized act.”

  Coolly it was debated: the ethical status of “self-murder” in its relationship to “murder”; how was it possible that such radically different values accrue to each?

  Out of nowhere this disturbing subject seemed to have sprung. M.R. felt some resentment, it seemed so coolly—impersonally—debated.

  The economist/philosopher from Cambridge said that suicide is volitional while murder, for the victim, is never volitional—“It isn’t a helpful term, ‘self-murder.’ ”

  “Certainly it’s a helpful term. Suicide is ‘self-murder.’ ”

  “But what is ‘suicide’? There are degrees of volition—there are degrees of action. Suicide isn’t always accomplished in a single act, but possibly in a series—a succession—over a period of time. . . .”

  Like a volleyball game, this brisk discussion. The participants were so articulate, their opinions so glibly tossed into the air—you would not guess what it was, in the most literal sense, they were speaking.

  “It’s often been observed that very few people commit suicide in a state of civil unrest. Misery keeps us alive, if it’s collective. We are engaged in a drama, and we want to see how the drama ends.”

  “Yes! In the Nazi death-camps, for instance. Individuals who’d been otherwise ‘suicidal’—the most famous example is Primo Levi—are determined to keep alive.”

  M.R. listened, subtly repelled. How very like a game it was—words batted about. Did her guests know how close to the bone their remarks were right now, in this university community? She tried to speak calmly—of course, she had to be fair-minded—even as she was making sharp indentations in the linen tablecloth with the prong of her fork, and staring down at the table.

  “The suicide thinks that he’s in control—exercising ‘volition.’ But as soon as he acts, he has lost his ‘volition.’ He becomes matter—he becomes a body. And if he doesn’t succeed in dying . . .”

  M.R. was aware of her guests looking at her, surprised at her sudden emotion.

  For M.R.’s public persona was such, her voice rarely lifted.

  Rarely did she reveal—betray—what she might be feeling.

  She didn’t prevail. She would not continue. She was grateful that the subject was taken from her.

  For nothing seemed to her more horrible than Alexander Stirk’s fate. To be neither dead nor alive, only just existing.

  In the mudflat, just existing.

  Mud in eyes, nose. Mud in mouth so all speech is lost.

  How many sufferers in the world—tossed away like trash, like living garbage. And so many females, mere chattel.

  The wonder of her life, of which she dared not speak to anyone, was that the angel of the Lord had come for her, after all.

  And in the hospital they had not let her die. Desperately she’d clutched at what she could grasp—If I am Jewell, I will be older. I will be stronger. For the smaller sister Jedina had been the one thrown away like trash.

  There had been no birth certificates for either of the Kraeck girls. As if they had not ever been born, really.

  M.R. thought We must give birth to ourselves! I am strong enough.

  It was a fact, M.R. was strong enough. M.R. was suffused with pride, that she was strong enough. Saying, impulsively, as dessert plates were being cleared, and the subject of the oppression of women and girls in Africa was being taken up again, that she would like to extend to the filmmaker K___ and her associates—and to other filmmakers—and writers—who’d explored this subject—an invitation to a conference at the University on this subject, which might be scheduled for spring 2004.

  “Will you come back? Better yet, will you chair the conference?”

  The filmmaker—a handsome blunt-faced young woman with toffee-colored skin, densely curly hair trimmed to a half-inch on her exquisitely sculpted head—stared at M.R. with a startled smile—for this invitation from the president of the prestigious University, so spontaneously proffered, was certainly flattering, and unexpected. With a stammer of surprise she said yes of course—“What a wonderful idea!”

  And M.R. said, “The University can fund an ambitious conference—we can pay generous fees. You wouldn’t be expected to volunteer your time. In fact, you might consider coming here as a fellow of the Humanities—or maybe, in the Arts. . . . We can work out the details.”

  How boldly M.R. was speaking, as if she and the young woman filmmaker K___ were alone together in a private meeting. The ot
her guests looked on not knowing what to think.

  Pointedly, M.R. didn’t cast a glance to the farther end of the table, where S___, the dean of the faculty, must have been listening to this exchange with surprised disapproval. How irregular this was! How awkward! M.R. wasn’t behaving like a seasoned administrator, who had no right to make so impulsive and unilateral a decision, that would involve, if it were executed, many others at the University. With girlish enthusiasm she asked if K___ had a card—“Or—leave me your name and e-mail address, and we can write to each other.”

  “Yes. Of course . . .”

  “In these matters—of ethics, ‘policy’—it’s most effective if there are striking visual images, I think. Documentary films. To change people’s minds, you have to touch their emotions. Only the arts have that capacity—to touch emotions.”

  As the young woman removed a small notebook from a pocket, to write on, M.R. said, expansively, seeing how everyone was looking at her expectantly, “Please—I hope you will all come back to this conference! It can be a sort of continuation of our meeting this year. And if there aren’t sufficient funds, somehow—which certainly there should be—I could provide it myself—funds for the conference, I mean—out of my salary. It’s a needlessly high salary for a single woman, I never spend more than a fraction of it. . . .”