Mudwoman

by Joyce Carol Oates

  This was crucial: the math teacher wasn’t asking her to see him after class, as he often instructed others. But after school, at 3:15 P.M., when he was likely to be alone in his classroom, and Meredith would be his only visitor.

  He wanted to establish some sort of relationship between them, Meredith knew. Since the start of the fall semester of her senior year she’d felt this—there was so distinct a difference between Mr. Schneider’s interest in her and her other teachers’ interest in her; she’d never had Mr. Schneider for any course until now, and was quite mystified by him. That he invariably gave her high grades on her tests—scrawled in his crabbed hand, in red ink—did not seem to shield her from his crudely jovial, coercive manner.

  It was Mr. Schneider’s technique to summon his better students to the blackboard, to work out homework problems for the rest of the class. There were several students he called upon but no one so frequently as “Mere-dith”—at first she’d been stricken with shyness and embarrassment as if she were being exposed naked to the stares of her classmates but gradually, over the weeks, she’d become accustomed to writing on the blackboard as she explained what she was doing. In Hans Schneider’s classroom Meredith learned to “teach”—it was clear to her that Mr. Schneider knew his subject thoroughly but he couldn’t relate to students; he assumed that each student knew more or less what all the others knew, and never took any notice of students left behind in utter bewilderment; he could not see that a student’s sulkiness and resentment had anything to do with him, but only with the deficiencies of the student. Perhaps his habitual sarcasm was a kind of shyness, Meredith thought: a mask to hide behind.

  As Mr. Schneider drawled and mumbled and sometimes spoke with his back to the class, indifferent to his audience, so Meredith learned to speak clearly, so that students in the back row could hear her. She who could not have spoken to a group of classmates with any sort of ease, in the cafeteria for instance, found it easy to speak to her classmates from the front of the room, for their attention, fixed upon her, gave her permission; more than permission, it was a sort of plea, for Meredith was their intermediary in math class, their only hope of understanding. Teaching a classroom of students was really just a way of talking to individuals singly, Meredith thought: you fixed your gaze upon them, you smiled, you spoke matter-of-factly and without any sort of humor or irony, which would only confuse them; if you could, you allowed them to think that what they were learning was only just common sense, and that they already knew it. Imparting knowledge was a pleasure—while Mr. Schneider seemed always to be begrudging students his knowledge of math, which they must extract from him, like squeezing a few drops of moisture from a rag.

  As Meredith went through a typical homework problem, Mr. Schneider stood a few feet away observing her; ready to pounce upon her if she made a mistake; but Meredith did not make a mistake. If Mr. Schneider had given her problems beyond the homework assignments, very likely Meredith would have become confused; but Mr. Schneider never did this. Close by he stood dabbing at his nose with a wadded tissue, or fussing with chalk; he slouched, like a broke-backed crow; in fact, there was something crowlike about him, an uncanny yellow-eyed vigilance, that might have been a solace to Meredith if it had not made her so uneasy.

  “I suppose you know, Mere-dith—among our Carthage students, you are someone special.”

  Was this meant to be a fact, or a kind of question? Was it teasing?

  Meredith’s face grew warm. The sensation was both pleasurable and disturbing.

  A voice warned her Mudgirl is not special! You know this.

  “Of course you have no natural ‘gift’ for math—I mean, a serious gift. You’re a good high school math student—in college, you’ll soon realize your limits. From what I’ve heard about you, you have ‘talents’ for other things—for writing—but math is very special, and few of us can live up to its demands.” Mr. Schneider spoke flatly as if this were a truth that must be uttered though Meredith would surely be hurt, to hear it. “However—in you—quite apart from the ‘math’—there is a kind of—depth”—now Hans Schneider spoke haltingly, blinking behind his oversized eyeglasses, as if he wasn’t sure what he meant to say—“to your soul, that none of your Carthage classmates has. This—depth—is far more valuable than a—a gift—for. . . .” Mr. Schneider’s voice trailed off like the voice of one groping his way in the dark.

  Meredith, deeply embarrassed, stared blinking at the floor, at her feet. She was clutching textbooks and notebooks against her chest. What was this strange crow-man saying to her!

  Depth?—soul? She was sure that Mudgirl had no soul.

  Was he the one who’d pulled her from the mudflat, when she’d been a little little girl? Almost, she could see his face—the face of the one who’d grimaced and grunted, taking hold of her shoulder, tugging at her. Almost—that man had been Hans Schneider—had he?

  “You are an adopted child, I believe. Your birth parents are—unknown?”

  With astonishing matter-of-factness Mr. Schneider was addressing her. Meredith was so taken by surprise, she could not reply.

  “I don’t mean to pry. I would never betray your confidence. The facts of your life—your previous life—are not secret, you know—but a matter of ‘public record.’ Still, I would not—if you’re uncomfortable talking of such things. . . .”

  Meredith shook her head. No.

  “No?—what?”

  “No. That isn’t right.”

  “It—isn’t? You are not adopted?”

  “I am not—‘adopted.’ ”

  “I see.”

  Mr. Schneider frowned. It was not like Meredith Neukirchen—it was not like any of Mr. Schneider’s students—to so directly contradict him. But she would not back down. Her heart beat in anger like the heart of a small enraged creature and calmly she said, “You can ask my parents, Mr. Schneider. They will tell you.”

  “Yes—I see.”

  “I think you’ve met them—they met you—at PTA. You can ask them if I am adopted. . . .”

  It was an awkward moment but Mr. Schneider did not want Meredith to leave, just yet. Clumsily he reverted to his previous subject—and what a “good, if not gifted” student of math Meredith was; in a sudden flurry of praise he told her that in his opinion she should certainly apply to college but not the New York State teachers’ colleges—“Somewhere distinguished, like Cornell.”

  The Neukirchens had attended state schools: Agatha had graduated from the library school at Albany, Konrad from Buffalo State. Cornell was a private university and known to be very expensive and Meredith had no realistic hope of applying there for her parents couldn’t afford the tuition and in any case expected her to attend one of the teachers’ colleges, to train to be a high school teacher and return to Carthage.

  Of course—there is no pressure on you dear Merry!

  You will make your way into the world as you will—you are very very talented we are sure!

  But teaching is natural for you—as the library is natural for me—and you could live on our street—

  —could live in our house—

  —could live right where you are living now—

  —when we’re old and lonely and needing our little girl. Pro-mise?

  It was time for Meredith to leave Mr. Schneider’s classroom with its five rows of desks, its chalk-cloudy blackboard and rancid smells. He hovered about her, uncertainly; in his fingers he fussed with pieces of chalk which in his nervousness he broke, without seeming to know what he did.

  “I—I have basketball practice, Mr. Schneider. I have to leave now.”

  “In a minute! Surely your ridiculous ‘sports teams’ can wait.”

  “Practice begins at—”

  “Look, Meredith: you are not like the others. Even the other good students—I swear, I can see through to the bottoms of their souls. But you . . .”

 
Meredith was becoming anxious. On the wall the clock read 3:49 P.M.—basketball practice had begun at 3:30 P.M. Younger than sixteen she’d become anxious about being late.

  Urgently Mr. Schneider was saying, as if he’d read her thoughts, “You’re sixteen, Meredith—are you? In five years, you’ll be twenty-one. I am twenty-nine and in five years I will be thirty-four. The difference is not so profound. In some cultures, it is non-existent.”

  Twenty-nine! Meredith would have guessed that Hans Schneider was ten years older.

  Numbly she stared at the floor. Her ears were ringing. She could not be certain she’d heard what she had heard.

  “You’re not a shallow girl, Meredith. You’re not a pretty girl—not vain, childish. You did not live a child’s life. Beyond these others, you are mature. You—like me—”

  In Hans Schneider’s face there was the defiant look of one who has spent a lifetime constructing an elaborate structure out of some flimsy material like paper and now, with a reckless gesture, he was intent upon destroying it. His dull-striped tie was loose at his neck as if he’d been tugging at it. His fingers were cloudy with chalk dust and there were chalk-smudges on his face. In a quavering voice he said:

  “You could wait for me. There won’t be other men—boys—not many—who would pursue you. The ‘physical life’ will not be easy for you—you can be sure. We—you and I—could have an agreement like a—contract.”

  If the Neukirchens knew of this exchange! Meredith must protect them.

  “We have an understanding already, I think? From the first day you walked into this classroom? And then, when I sent you to the blackboard to demonstrate the properties of an isosceles triangle . . .”

  Meredith remembered: after he’d met Hans Schneider at a PTA meeting at the school, Mr. Neukirchen had been so intrigued by his daughter’s math teacher—“Such an original personality!”—he’d looked into Schneider’s background and discovered that he’d gone to college in a most unusual place—Scotland! Hans Schneider had a B.A. degree from the University of St. Andrews. Though his grandparents lived in Watertown, less than two hundred miles away from Carthage, his parents lived in Boston, and he’d enrolled in Boston University to earn a master’s degree in math; he’d supplemented these courses with a program at SUNY Albany that certified him as a high school math teacher. He’d come to Carthage in 1973 and during his first year he’d given failing grades to many students and was bitterly complained of by both students and their parents; he’d advised the Math Club whose membership, already small, soon vanished altogether; he had disagreements with colleagues and with the school principal. Yet, he’d remained on the staff, having learned to “adjust” his criteria to Carthage standards; for it was rare that any teacher in the Carthage public school system had a master’s degree from a university as distinguished as Boston University, and the school board had not wanted to lose him.

  Hans Schneider lived alone in a rented apartment on Midland Street, and walked or bicycled to school. He was seen at the local movie theater, always alone. He ate meals at a succession of inexpensive restaurants, always alone. He seemed to have no familial or personal life and when Konrad Neukirchen invited him to dinner one evening he’d seemed utterly “flummoxed”—(Mr. Neukirchen’s description)—and declined.

  There would seem to have been no connection between Mr. Neukirchen’s invitation to Hans Schneider and the math teacher’s interest in Mr. Neukirchen’s daughter. Though in some way, Mr. Schneider might have misunderstood. Meredith recalled the way he’d summoned her to the blackboard on one of the first days of class—“Mere-dith Neu-kirch-en come forward please”—in his arch manner, all but snapping his fingers at her as you’d summon a dog. He had meant the class to laugh—a few students did laugh, uncertainly—but the joke, if it was a joke, had fallen flat. And yet, with each passing class-day, it had seemed as if Mr. Schneider and Meredith Neukirchen did have some connection and it may have been remarked upon, that Mr. Schneider called upon Meredith more often than he called upon other students, and that, within earshot of the others, he frequently asked her to see him after class and after school.

  She thought I can run out of the room. He can’t stop me!

  She thought But that is something only a child would do. I am not a child.

  She was not sixteen, as the records stated: but she was certainly not a child.

  With seeming unconsciousness, a stick of chalk between his twitchy fingers, Hans Schneider had maneuvered himself between his frightened student and the classroom door. He was speaking in a disjointed manner, rambling, yet urgent; his forehead, creased with lines like downward-pointing arrows, was oily with perspiration. Meredith often found herself, in Mr. Schneider’s class, watching his hands, his fingers, with a sort of appalled fascination: the math teacher fussed with chalk-sticks, choosing an unbroken stick at the start of each class and then, as minutes passed, breaking the stick into two; tossing the smaller piece onto his desktop, and continuing to fuss with the larger until it, too, was broken; and so on, through the fifty-minute class period. You could not easily calculate how many pieces of chalk Mr. Schneider broke because each broken piece did not yield two more broken pieces, and so there was no ready equation, that one with Meredith’s limited grasp of mathematics could devise; yet it seemed to her, if Mr. Schneider were allowed to continue, if he were never interrupted by a ringing bell, he might break chalk-pieces to infinity; but if there were no witness to Mr. Schneider breaking chalk-pieces to infinity, was that an accurate description of what Mr. Schneider might do?

  Meredith was intent upon the nervous chalky fingers, long, somehow talonlike, and the nails—discolored, very short, with reddened cuticles as if bitten-at. Mr. Schneider was explaining—as one might explain to an excitable, very young child—that he was “not lonely”—but “yes, alone”—he had “granted himself” six years to become “like the quotidian, outwardly”—and beyond that. . . . Somehow too he was speaking of the rotational movements of the stars and planets that were predictable as clockwork until—one day—some unique comet-incursion rendered them no longer predictable. Forces in equilibrium—centrifugal, centripetal—and the “human” at the core which was the true mystery.

  Meredith could barely hear the math teacher’s voice, through the ringing in her ears. She thought He will never forgive me.

  “The essence of a brute life is—you can live alone, or not alone. If you chose to live alone, you must be far more resilient than some of us suppose. For if you are always alone, you will be thinking non-stop—your brain will never click off. It is not possible to live a life of thought continuously—this, I have discovered in this terrible place—‘Carthage.’ Oh aptly named! If you are amid others their chatter will put you to sleep—but that is not such a bad thing, truly. I could live with my parents of course—but no—that would be stressful for all of us. And I will not beg.”

  By slow almost imperceptible degrees Meredith was trying to ease past Mr. Schneider to the door. But like a tall lanky hyper-vigilant guard on the basketball court Mr. Schneider blocked her way.

  Stupid she’d been, naïve—unseeing. Not wanting to think that the math teacher had been staring at her, thinking of her—so strangely, obsessively. For Meredith had had little experience in attracting the attention of boys, still less men. No one had ever seemed to “desire” her—no one had ever been mean to her. No one scrawled her name or initials in graffiti on the side of the Convent Street bridge, or on the water tower, or at the rear of the school building, as they did the names and initials of other girls. When she was alone and unobserved Meredith paused to examine these crude markings with the anxious hope that she might discover her name amid the others; for even to be insulted would be a sign that Mudgirl’s imposture had not yet been detected.

  As she worried, more generally, about being normal—as Mr. Schneider would say, the quotidian. Her life as a female—an adolescent—was fraught with small
embarrassments and anxieties; what Mrs. Neukirchen called with quaint indirection Your men-strell period did not come to her normally—(every twenty-eight days?)—but at erratic intervals from which no reliable hypothesis could be drawn. And her body didn’t seem to her a female body, exactly. Not as the bodies of her girl-classmates were female.

  Her breasts were small and hard and unyielding unlike the softer, fuller breasts of girls she glimpsed in the locker room; she had virtually no hips, or buttocks; yet her shoulders were wide, her limbs long, her arm- and leg-muscles hard—the body of a skinny boy. In slacks and a windbreaker Meredith was often mistaken for a boy—her face, un-made-up like the faces of her girl-classmates, was shiny-pale, and plain; she hadn’t yet acquired the mysterious word androgynous, that might have comforted her, or roused her to more anxiety. Despite the Neukirchens’ wish to shield their daughter, and despite the spiritual solace of Quakerism, which was a benign-blinding light that swallowed up all shadowy crevices in which hurt, harm, cruelty, sorrow, evil might flourish, Meredith understood that the world was governed by crude raw forces—the striving for territory, and the striving to reproduce one’s kind.

  It was “biology” to which the clumsily drawn penises (“cocks”) and vaginas (“cunts”) of adolescent graffiti made obsessive reference. And how naïve of Mudgirl, to imagine herself in any way among these.

  She did not want to believe that it was “biology” that had drawn her math teacher to her. To Mudgirl! For this had to be a terrible mistake.

  “I—I have to leave now, Mr. Schneider. . . .”

  “Why? Why must you leave?”

  “Because—it’s time.”

  “ ‘Time’ for—what? Who?”

  “B-basketball practice . . .”

  Meredith’s voice faltered like the voice of a guilty child.

  In the math teacher’s talon-fingers a stubby piece of chalk managed to break. Half fell to the floor, unnoticed. Mr. Schneider, now breathing harshly, as if his lungs were shutting down in a fury of distress, was standing less than eighteen inches from Meredith, and leaning forward; she could see oily globules on his forehead, and a fanatic look to his large blinking eyes. Coldly he said: “You know perfectly well that there is an understanding between us. You know this, and you knew it from the first, Mere-dith.”