Mudwoman

by Joyce Carol Oates

  M.R. was speaking rapidly, almost gaily. Her guests were gazing at her with quizzical expressions while her University colleagues, who’d known her for years, were openly staring, speechless.

  At last—dinner was over!

  At last—M.R. could escape from her position at the head of the table, past whom servers moved more or less continuously through the lengthy meal, while a few yards behind M.R. the pantry door swung to, and fro; to, and fro; in a way that made her heartbeat accelerate.

  M.R. rose to her feet. She’d drained her wineglass on a near-empty stomach and the wine had gone to her head but the sensation was a good one, a relief after so much strain.

  Now, a discreet exodus of guests from Charters House. Some were clearly eager to leave—for the day had begun with breakfast at the faculty club, twelve hours before; others gathered around M.R., in the front hall, as if reluctant to depart, thanking her for the evening and shaking her hand. The genial visitor from Toronto observed that Charters House was a beautiful residence—“But it must be like living in a museum—yes?”

  Yes. But no. M.R. considered how to reply.

  “But of course I don’t live . . . I mean, I don’t exactly ‘live’ in these public rooms, but upstairs. There are rooms upstairs set aside for the president’s private use.”

  How pretentious, to speak of herself as the president. Yet it seemed inaccurate to say set aside for my use.

  The dean of the faculty, who knew much of the history of Charters House, said, as if in M.R.’s defense, that previous presidents had often spent time elsewhere, unofficially; when M.R.’s predecessor was president, he and his wife spent most of the time in their private house a mile away. “Leander’s wife never moved in, really. But she assisted him in every ceremonial occasion in Charters House of course. He couldn’t have managed without her.”

  “Couldn’t he!”

  M.R. laughed. This seemed to her very funny. And it was thrilling to her, it filled her with an illicit sort of elation, that she had gotten through the evening so successfully; she had taken up, with her old effortlessness, this skilled imposture; Mudwoman upstairs on the ghastly toilet, tears staining her battered face, and M. R. Neukirchen downstairs, in her proper place.

  “My predecessors—dating back to the founding of the University, in the eighteenth century—had a distinct advantage which, I’m afraid, I don’t have.”

  “What’s that? Being male?”

  “No. Having a wife.”

  There was genial laughter. M.R.’s guests were departing. A flurry of final farewells, and the door was shut.

  Abruptly then M.R. was very tired.

  Abruptly then M.R. could not bear another moment of the strain, of this imposture.

  Saying, to whoever among her household staff was within earshot:

  “Thank you! You’ve all been very—wonderful. And everything went very—very”—searching for a word, as one might search a pocket for a coin, and a very small coin—“well.”

  She hadn’t the energy to go into the kitchen and thank them there. The cook, the servers—she would thank them, and praise them, in the way that M.R. always praised employees—but not right now. Next morning would be early enough.

  Quickly turning, avoiding the (concerned? quizzical?) gazes of whoever might be in the front hallway, M.R. ascended the front stairs. She was determined not to falter on the stairs, not to lose her balance—sliding her hand up the banister. In the sleeve of her jacket that fitted her rather too loosely she’d secreted a wad of tissues that from time to time during dinner she’d pressed unobtrusively, or so she’d hoped, at her eyes that seemed too often to be brimming with moisture, and at her upper lip that felt chafed, cracked, as if the little wound of days before had not healed, and was leaking blood. And the damned cut in her forehead, that had turned out to be unexpectedly deep, and was so slow to heal . . .

  Vigorously shaking hands with the last of her guests and out of her jacket sleeve fell the blood-stippled wad of tissues, onto the foyer floor.

  No one saw. No one seemed to see. M.R. did not herself take note for already she’d turned, to hurry upstairs. The bloodied tissues on the foyer floor would be taken up by one of the household staff, tossed away with the rest of the party debris.

  Waking with a jolt.

  Waking after an hour or so of sleep.

  In the aftermath of the Conference dinner—that aura of excitement, nervous arousal that follows a stimulating exchange with others—with the thought that she’d misplaced the scrap of paper upon which the filmmaker K___ had written her name and e-mail address.

  The promises she’d made to K___, in front of witnesses!

  How unprofessional M.R. had been, and yet—how unrepentant.

  Needing to look for the scrap of paper and in sudden distress that she might have lost it, carelessly—in the distraction of saying good-bye at the front door—and so, barefoot and in a flannel nightgown M.R. descended the stairs another time—the broad, curving front stairs—switching on a hall light—at once, shadows in the large public rooms leapt back—the chandelier in the front hall was massive, a dozen sparkling lights meant to simulate candles—M.R. glanced anxiously about seeing only just the polished surfaces of tables—how perfectly Charters House was preserved, and at what expense to the University!—for the historic old house was a national landmark and a showcase of course—it was not M.R. Neukirchen’s residence except temporarily.

  “I need a home. It’s time—I need a home.”

  To K___ she might have explained this. To a sympathetic stranger, very likely another woman.

  To Andre whom she loved, she could not explain this. She had only to hope that her lover would know, without being told.

  In the long hallway there was nothing—no scrap of paper on any surface. In the library, at the back of the house, where guests had gathered before dinner but had not, M.R. recalled, returned after dinner, there was in fact something on the floor beside the fireplace—only just a cocktail toothpick with red-sauce stains—which M.R. picked up, to dispose of.

  “I can’t have lost it. I must have put it down somewhere. . . .”

  In the library with its part-timbered ceiling there were a number of lights operated by wall switches and these lights M.R. tried to turn on without complete success. And then, on one of the leather chairs that resembled chess pieces, she saw a piece of paper, snatched it up eagerly, brought it to a light and tried to read—

  How frustrating this was, and how strange! M.R. could have wept, she was determined to fulfill her promise to the young woman filmmaker . . .

  In the library in Charters House in the aftermath of the Conference dinner. This would be a night in April 2003. This would be sometime in the week preceding the proclamation of the American president of the official end of combat operations in Iraq even as the Iraqi insurgency continued to grow and combat operations would yield to an abyss of a war. This night, too restless to return upstairs to her bed, M.R. discovered the Dikes Collection of Children’s Literature in an alcove of the library, behind glass—a dozen shelves of rare editions of children’s books that had been donated to Charters House by a well-to-do alum named Simon Dikes in 1959.

  The glass doors had locks, but were not locked.

  On the shelves were very old books—Latin texts that looked as if they might disintegrate if opened—first editions in French, German, English—Aesop’s Fables—Fables of Fontaine—La Barbe bleue—French fairy tales collected by Charles Perrault and German fairy tales collected by the brothers Grimm—Stories of Christian Andersen—several editions of Henrich Hoffmann’s Der Struwwelpeter, Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, Kipling’s Jungle Books—Max Ernst’s Une Semaine de bonté—Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Alice Through the Looking-Glass.

  And there on a shelf amid
American classics—Washington Irving’s Sketch Book, Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Innocents Abroad—was an oversized illustrated book lacking an author’s name, titled The King of the Crows: Tales.

  M.R. pulled this book from the shelf. It was old, and looked weatherworn as if it had been left out in the rain; the pages were brittle and smelled of mildew. Throughout the crudely printed text were illustrations—pen-and-ink, also rather crude—of a child fleeing through a dark forest—in the background shadowy figures of menace—wild animals, hunched human beings, demons. The child was a young girl with long pale hair that caught in thorns and tree-branches. The child’s face was delicate, heart-shaped—a face that betrayed no terror only faint surprise and alarm. The child fell down a stony incline, into a muddy ravine. The child would sink in quicksand except the King of the Crows—a handsome black-feathered bird the size of an eagle, with flamey eyes and outspread talons—flew to her aid.

  Curled up in a window seat, having adjusted a floor lamp so that she could make out the faded and mildewed pages without squinting, M.R. turned the pages of The King of the Crows: Tales in fascination, through the remainder of this night in April 2003.

  Mudgirl Has a New Home.

  Mudgirl Has a New Name.

  September 1965–September 1968

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

  Sideways out of Mrs. Skedd’s mouth came these hissing words for only Jewell to hear.

  It was a surprise to Jewell—these “new parents”—out of nowhere they’d seemed to have stepped into the Skedds’ house: New-kitchens.

  This name was utterly mysterious to Jewell and would remain unpronounceable to her long after it became a name to which Jewell was attached.

  The New-kitchens had been coming to visit Jewell at the Skedds’ house through the summer. Long-ago now it seemed, the mudflats and Momma and the hospital. More recently, the mountain-man who’d come to stand in the Skedds’ driveway staring at her and had brought for her the beautiful blond doll but this memory too was ebbing like water down a drain.

  Even a clotted drain is not sufficient to retain water.

  That is a solace, Mudgirl knew. Already, Mudgirl knew.

  Though the New-kitchens had been coming to the Skedds’ house on Bear Mountain Road for several months, usually on Sundays, and Jewell surely knew this, each time the child was summoned to meet the couple in the Skedds’ living room Mrs. Skedd took the precaution of telling her their names as if for the first time: New-kitchen.

  And their first names: Ag-ath-a, Kon-rad.

  Smiling so you could see what a nice pretty girl she’d been, not so very long ago before she’d become Mrs. Floyd Skedd living out here in a squat old asphalt-sided house on Mountain Bear Road tending to a brood of spoiled brats of which several were not even her own God-damned blood-kin, Mrs. Skedd said, nudging the child, “Of course, you remember—Jewell—yes? You remember Mr. and Mrs. . . .”

  Shyly Jewell nodded yes. For yes was the required answer.

  For yes was the only answer.

  What a kindly smiling couple the New-kitchens were. It was like staring into the sun, the New-kitchens. Though they were not-old they did not appear young, either—Mrs. New-kitchen wore a long full skirt to her ankles like a storybook woman from a long-ago time and Mr. New-kitchen wore a jacket that matched his trousers and a vest with buttons that strained against his middle. Because the New-kitchens were so smiling and so nice and because they asked questions of Jewell which they also answered and because they talked, talked, talked like TV people—not angry-loud TV people but the other kind, who were meant to be kindly, smiling, nice and good and your eyelids grew heavy listening to them, or not-listening to them, and also it was not possible for Jewell at this time to look too closely at these strangers—never would Jewell be a child to look closely at any adult for fear of what she might see—so not-seeing the New-kitchens as well as not-hearing the New-kitchens made her sleepy so it was all that she could do to keep her eyes open, and to keep awake except if Mrs. Skedd pinched her and cast her a sidelong glance like a scissor-flash. God-damn you Jew-elle don’t you fuck this up.

  Mrs. New-kitchen was a plump soft woman shaped like a melon and with a round melon-face and with a smell just slightly sweet like that of a melon that has been cut and left in the air without refrigeration. Often Mrs. New-kitchen was warm and perspiring and short of breath and her eyes were just slightly protuberant, direct and stark and seemingly lashless, if Jewell did glance at these eyes she was stricken with an emotion she could not name, that frightened her.

  Mr. New-kitchen was not much taller than his wife and shaped like a pumpkin hefty and sturdy-fleshed and with a broad squinting stained-looking face like something left outside in the rain and sun and his eyes too were just slightly protuberant, direct and stark and seemingly lashless and these eyes too were startling to Jewell, to see too closely.

  I could not know, it was love in their eyes.

  Love for the little Mudgirl, shining in their eyes.

  I could not bear this love! How could Mudgirl bear this love!

  A strange thing too was that the New-kitchens so resembled each other you would think they were sister-and-brother and not wife-and-husband like the Skedds who were so different from each other, no one could ever mistake them for blood-kin.

  Not just the shapes of their bodies nor their faces and eyes and manner of speaking and little ways in which they moved their mouths, their hands or their facial muscles—nervous little laughs, murmured asides—catches in their breaths—but also, which the Skedds thought was so very funny, the New-kitchens had a dog named Puddin’ that resembled them, a mongrel-Labrador mix with a torso solid as that of a mature pig and a manner both shyly hesitant yet aggressively affectionate—all Puddin’ seemed to require, for happiness, was being allowed to lick your hands, arms, legs with his soft limp damp tongue—and the near-identical lashless eyes, that look of yearning, hope and resolution that left Jewell stricken and confused for it was not a look that was familiar to her.

  To know this love was to know how I had not ever known it, before.

  Like being given food at last. After so long starving.

  Strange, these unfailingly “nice” people! Yet more mysterious their reason for asking to see Jewell Kraeck.

  Of the several foster children in the Skedd household—of the several “adoptable” children—it would not seem that Mudgirl would be the choice of any reasonable couple. Yet, when the Family Services woman first contacted the Skedds about the Neukirchens’ interest in adopting a child it was only the poor little Kraeck girl they wished to see—“The one whose mother abandoned her.”

  (As if, Mrs. Skedd said afterward, incensed, anybody would have to identify Jewell so she’d know who the hell they were talking about!)

  Then came the couple to visit with Jewell through that summer always regarding her with such strange staring smiles—speaking softly to her, and smiling encouragingly; at times squeezing her small limp unresisting hand and asking their familiar questions that were like caresses—“Oh how are you, Jewell?”—that in the next quickened breath they answered—“You’re looking very good, Jewell! Very pretty, very—well . . .” Their voices trailing off in a quivering sort of emotion.

  Mrs. Skedd was edgy and excited knowing that Agatha Neukirchen was a librarian at the Convent Street branch of the Carthage Public Library—(not that Livvie Skedd ever entered any public library, but such a position impressed her)—and Konrad Neukirchen worked at the Beechum County Courthouse. (Anything to do with the courthouse, or with the county, which oversaw Family Services, aroused wariness and apprehension in the Skedds who, like all foster parents, dreaded unannounced home visits from county inspectors or officials.)

  All of the foster children were envious of Mudgirl, now! For the Neukirchens
were known to be special, not like people you’d see in the neighborhood, or mostly anywhere in Carthage. Just to hear them talk—no matter if you could make sense of what they said—was like being in school—where things were meant to be taken seriously.

  Once, when the Neukirchens came to visit Jewell, and Mrs. Skedd had almost to pull Jewell down the stairs, and into the living room to be greeted by the smiling couple, Jewell stared at the floor as if the sight of the couple was blinding, and Mrs. Skedd exclaimed, “Jew-ell is just shy. Maybe just—a little—slow. You wouldn’t want to say retarded, but—”

  Quickly Mrs. Neukirchen said, “Of course not!” even as Mr. Neukirchen objected, “There’s nothing wrong with retarded, Mrs. Skedd. Just so you know.”

  Abashed Mrs. Skedd said, “Oh yes—I know. Of course, I know. In our family we welcome all—any kind of . . . The children we take in are—equally—welcome.” Not knowing what she was saying she paused, biting her lower lip. “And loved.”

  Mrs. Neukirchen said, wiping at her large damp lashless eyes, “We had, once—a long time ago when we were young—a child, a little girl, of our own—she was ‘premature’—she ‘failed to thrive’—her lungs, her heart . . .”

  Mr. Neukirchen touched his wife’s wrist. Side by side on a couch, that sagged beneath their combined weight, the Neukirchens appeared to be sharing a single melancholy thought that, in the next instant, was banished with the husband’s happy smile—“We are all God’s children, in a manner of speaking. And so—retarded—or not—does not matter to us.”

  All this while Jewell was tense with listening: but not to the adults’ speech.

  All that morning an agitation of crows in the marshland beyond the ravine and now the cries were louder at the edge of the Skedds’ property but you could not know if these were cries of jubilation or protest nor could you discern the particular cry of the King of the Crows.

  Is Momma gone away? Is Momma dead?—these were not questions Jewell thought to ask.