The Tattooed Girl

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Christ: he’d been drinking, too. Not just he’d been in a manic state, which meant a rapid heartbeat and soaring blood pressure, but he’d been drinking, too. Wine, beer, whiskey. Whiskey! Seigl wasn’t a man for hard liquor. And cruising Union Street, picking up hookers . . . He must have been deranged.

  Hey honey? You lookin for a date?

  Hey sugahhh!

  They’d laughed at him. Pouring sweat, his jacket unbuttoned. Looking and sounding like a professor. In some weird needy state beyond words.

  In their streetwise wisdom the hookers had made him use condoms.

  Seigl shuddered to think: he might be HIV-positive now. And he might have infected Sondra. She’d known nothing of her lover’s frantic after-hours life, of course. She’d believed he loved her, she’d trusted him . . .

  Seigl tasted panic just to think of this. He couldn’t allow himself to think of it.

  Madness. Mania. But it was finished now. He would be stone cold sober and sane for the remainder of his life.

  He hadn’t been able to apologize to Alma, he simply couldn’t. He tried not to lose his temper with her, for he needed her so badly. Yet his moods flared up like flash fires, and quickly subsided. I hope to Christ I don’t remind her of someone. Why she looks at me cringing like a kicked dog.

  It was true, as Sondra said, that Seigl’s assistant had made a difference in his life. She’d helped him organize years of accumulated papers, books, galleys, drafts of manuscripts. Seigl had come upon near-completed essays amid the chaos with such titles as “Visions of the Apocalypse in Classic and Contemporary Art” and “Bioethics and Tragedy,” which he’d revised and updated and placed with prestigious journals he hadn’t sent work to in years. In Alma’s presence he was never obliged to feel embarrassment or self-consciousness for she rarely glanced closely at anything that passed through her hands, unless Seigl had instructed her to do so; it intrigued him to witness an individual for whom print had little attraction or charm, which was wholly unlike Seigl or anyone close to him. Though words sometimes puzzled Alma, she never looked up any word in any dictionary; a word was like a pebble to be turned briefly in the hand, and tossed away, with no expectation that it would be encountered again. Early in her employ in his house Seigl had noticed her craning her neck to peer at a row of books on a shelf, books in several languages with Joshua Seigl stamped vertically on the spines, yet she’d showed little further curiosity.

  He’d warned her not to ask about his health, of course. Yet it rather hurt him, she made no inquiries at all. After the visit to Friedman’s office, for instance. Did she even know what a neurologist was? In her tactful mumble she might say, “Mr. Seigl, don’t forget your pills,” for Seigl had a habit of placing pills that had to be ingested with food in strategic locations on the dining room table, and then forgetting them, or she might murmur, “I got your cane, Mr. Seigl,” if Seigl seemed to be forgetting it. But nothing further passed between them on the subject.

  The vacuuming upstairs had ceased temporarily. Seigl called up the stairs, “Alma? When you have a minute, I’d like to speak with you.”

  Within seconds he heard Alma’s footsteps. She walked quickly, heavy on her heels.

  Alma came downstairs, breathless. She’d tied her ashy hair into a kerchief and was wearing a soiled apron over her work clothes. She was beautiful and faintly absurd and touching as a kewpie doll. Seigl resisted the impulse to laugh in delight at her.

  He said, “My friend has gone. But I’ll be having dinner with her tomorrow evening. So you won’t need to prepare anything.”

  Alma nodded stiffly. There was a faint sullen cast to her mouth when the subject of Sondra Blumenthal came up, however casually.

  “Everything looks fine here. Where you’ve vacuumed.”

  This was the kind of praise Alma liked. She smiled and mumbled thanks.

  Walking with his cane, Seigl led Alma toward the rear of the house, through the long living room. She followed unquestioningly. Seigl would have the idea afterward that she’d known what he was going to say. These words he’d been rehearsing for several days.

  “Whatever the condition I have, whether it’s a singular disease or a congeries of symptoms, the doctor has said it seems to be ‘progressing.’ We don’t need to go into details.” Seigl opened a door to the back hall, that connected with the kitchen and the pantry and the back stairs. “But, just as a precaution, I’m thinking of having a wheelchair ramp built, at the back of the house.”

  Seigl avoided looking at Alma. The last thing he wanted to see in her face was pity.

  She didn’t speak. Seigl continued, “I’d like you to make the initial arrangements, please. You can look in the Yellow Pages under ‘construction.’ Get two or three estimates. Don’t trouble me with any of it until you have some figures. Then, we’ll see what comes next.” Seigl paused, feeling very tired suddenly.

  Alma murmured, “Yes, Mr. Seigl. I will do that.”

  She would say nothing further. She would make no inquiries.

  She seemed not surprised. Not in the slightest.

  7

  For I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping.

  In the late winter and spring of the year the Tattooed Girl took heart, at last she would be revenged against her enemies.

  Those that scorn us are our enemies. Those who love us not.

  The Tattooed Girl rejoiced in her wickedness. She would tell her lover See? I told you. You didn’t believe me.

  After the Jew’s death. That death would come soon. The Tattooed Girl could sniff it, in the wind.

  8

  FROM A HIGH WINDOW she’d seen them, the Jew and his Jewess lover.

  On the terrace above the river. Standing close together.

  Seigl was taller than Blumenthal by several inches. His hand moved upon the woman’s shoulders, casually and with affection. You could see. They talked all the time. They had so much to say to each other! Even when the Tattooed Girl tried to overhear, she could not.

  Never would she forgive the Blumenthal woman: speaking to her so bossily on the phone. Calling so many times. Always the subject was Mr. Seigl’s birthday party, or The party. Always an edge to the woman’s voice giving instructions like a schoolteacher. This, that. This, that. Alma this, Alma that. While she, Alma, must call the other woman “Mrs. Blumenthal” for they were not equals. The Tattooed Girl was not an equal of any of them and always she was made to know this.

  And at the birthday party when everybody was so happy, the Tattooed Girl was put in her place like a kicked dog.

  Never would she forget that insult. Like a dull hurting back molar, its roots deep in her jaw.

  Even when her employer noticed her to praise her it was praise of a dog or a retarded child.

  Nice vacuuming, Alma! Floors are so clean.

  Thank you, Al-ma.

  When no one observed she went outside onto the terrace. A harsh wet smell of the river below. The wind whipped her hair, her eyes smarted with tears. There was a fine crusting of snow where the sun hadn’t reached between certain of the flagstones and against a wall. A deck chair had been overturned in the wind and so she set it right. Her employer praised her for such neatness not seeing the rage in it.

  The Jew and his Jewess. The Tattooed Girl had no wish to imagine them in bed together. Fucking! What a laugh. Her lips drew back in a smile of derision. She was so much better-looking and younger than the Blumenthal woman, but she was not a Jew.

  She drew back from the edge of the terrace for the view down to the river below made her dizzy. Like traveling in a car at too fast a speed. A sick excited sensation in the pit of the stomach. You could throw yourself over. They would be sorry then!

  The Tattooed Girl saw her stubby fingers grip the iron railing and gave it a hard shake. She stooped to examine where the railing was secured to a brick wall. Smiling angrily she shook, shook, shook the railing until it loosened. Bits of mortar fell from the wall. Rust from the railing came off
on her fingers.

  Next time they came out here, if they leaned against the railing.

  What they deserve. Fuckers have everything.

  She would loosen other railings, too. Those beside the nineteen stone steps leading to the street, and those at the rear of the house. She would loosen steps with a hammer. Who would know? (For she worked in darkness.) The Jew himself would not know. Only when the Tattooed Girl stood over him gloating would he know, too late.

  IN CHURCH SHE HID her face and prayed and laughed inside her hands. Hymns were sung loudly but the Tattooed Girl did not sing for her voice was nasal and flat. Jesus who had disdained her for years was contemplating her anew. She was cruelly treated in the midst of riches. If thine eye offend thee pluck it out. If the Tattooed Girl was wicked, her enemies had made her so.

  For no one loved her: there was no one to whom the Tattooed Girl was beloved.

  “ALMA? I WONDER if you could help me . . .”

  Yes, Mr. Seigl.

  “Some pages seem to be lost. This writing I’ve been doing in the dining room. I’ve looked everywhere, I can’t understand how these pages could be lost . . .”

  Desperate he was sounding. Pathetic. Why didn’t he summon the Blumenthal woman, needing help?

  Alma murmured Yes, she would look.

  In her heart laughing at the grown man so stricken by the loss of his precious pages! Like he’d shit his pants when he couldn’t find them. Graven images. Those that boast themselves of idols.

  It was the Tattooed Girl who had stolen away the pages. Torn them into shreds. Poetry some of it was. And all of it bullshit. Who gave a fuck for what the Jew was scribbling hour after hour, sweating like a pig in a fever? Printed pages in books, who gives a damn for them? If the books added up to anything there would not be so many of them but only a few. The Tattooed Girl had come to think since becoming Joshua Seigl’s assistant that those who practiced such bullshit knew what its true meaning was. Yet the hypocrites prevailed.

  Strange that a man could be so wounded, in the loss of a dozen sheets of paper. How much more deeply might the man be wounded, a knife in the heart!

  Never would the Tattooed Girl use a knife. The Tattooed Girl was too cunning.

  SHE HELPED WITH the wheelchair. It was to be taken in the car.

  “Just in case” it was needed.

  For Seigl was to stay for three nights at a university. A driver came for him in a limousine. His assistant would not be accompanying him. She stood on the sidewalk hugging herself tightly, her hair whipping in the wind as the elegant long black car drew away from the curb.

  If you loved me I would love you. I would adore you. I would die for you.

  THINGS THE TATTOOED GIRL did in the spring of that year, impulsively. Never thinking that such actions by one so powerless could have any consequences.

  Several times, she mingled his pills. With a nail file shaving away at large white pills to make them of the size of smaller white pills with which they might be easily confused. (In her employer’s medicine cabinet were five prescription medicines now. Five! Two were from the neurologist and two were from a cardiologist and one was from yet a third doctor.) Some of these pills Seigl took in private and some he swallowed down absentmindedly at his meals. The Tattooed Girl felt both a thrill of elation and alarm and lowered her burning eyes from his face that he should not perceive the wickedness in her heart.

  No matter the pills he took, in whatever combinations, Seigl continued to have “good days” and “bad days” as before. This was the pattern of the disease. On the good days he could walk unassisted and on the bad days, he could not. On the best of the good days he was almost as he’d been when healthy. (Except he must not tire himself out!) On the worst of the bad days he remained in bed, unable to walk and complaining of double vision, in his room that was now downstairs at the rear of the house, which had been made over into his bedroom. Almost, Alma felt sorry for him at such times. . . . For on the telephone he talked with a desperate energy making plans for the future and when he hung up the phone, he was stricken with tiredness.

  The wheelchair that had been rented had now been purchased and was kept in a corner of Seigl’s new bedroom. A ramp was being built at the rear of the house, where it would not be visible from the sidewalk.

  Other pages of her employer’s the Tattooed Girl stole away out of meanness. Not daring to take new work, for he might suspect her, but pages from older manuscripts in his study. Books on several occasions including one of the books presented to him at his birthday party she stole away in her shoulder bag. Amid so many books, how could one matter? And a fancy silver fountain pen that had been a gift to Seigl, and a wavy-green-glass paperweight he had said was “Venetian glass”—whatever that was—and small jars and carved figures. These she made gifts of to Dmitri Meatte who thought them of little worth.

  Get the Jew to marry you, babe. That’s the way to go.

  Dmitri was laughing at her, she knew. But one day he would cease laughing.

  IN THE SPRING friends came to visit her employer more often, for he left the house less frequently. Some of these visitors were from New York City and one was from London. But most were local, familiar faces to Alma, who smiled when they greeted her and called her “Alma” as if she was in their hire, too, like a common hooker. She hid her resentment of them even as she spat into the drinks she was obliged to fetch for them or the Peking tea she was obliged to brew in a squat heavy teapot. Often the visitors brought books to Seigl and some of these books were their own, inscribed by them, with their photographs on the back covers, better-looking and younger than in life. There were women of Blumenthal’s age and younger and some of these better-looking than that bitch, and by their manner with Seigl the Tattooed Girl could see that they liked him. Despite his uncertain health they liked him a lot. (Were any of these lovers of Seigl’s? The Tattooed Girl had reason to think they were, or had been.) Several of the chess players came to the house on evenings Alma particularly disliked, for she believed these men recognized her: they had seen her at The Café, in her former life. One day Alma was panicked seeing a fattish bald-headed man ascend the stone steps and ring the doorbell and this man she believed to be one of the crude tricks Dmitri had forced upon her in the motel by the river but this visitor turned out to be somebody different. Maybe!

  One of the chess players was named “John”—an elderly white-haired gentleman with palsied hands. When Alma opened the door to him his amazing blue eyes lit upon her smiling and he spoke so warmly to her, with such kindness, Alma bit her lip to keep from crying. “ ‘Alma.’ A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

  Yet later, when the visitors were gone, the Jew in his abruptly sour mood ruined Alma’s happy mood by speaking sharply to her. He had overheard her answering the phone in the hall. “If you’d learn to clear your throat before you lift the receiver, Alma. Not after. So you don’t sound as if your head is stuffed with glue.” Alma limped away hurt. Seigl had scolded her for this very failing in the past. In her heart cursing I hate you! I will kill you.

  IN A CLOSET off the kitchen were aerosol containers of insecticide, years old. But the nasty smell of the liquid was so strong, even a few drops in Seigl’s food would be detected. There were pellets of rodent, roach, and ant poison she sniffed at . . . But if Seigl died of actual poison, it might be detected. If it was detected, Alma Busch would be arrested. They would check her record in Akron County, PA. They would learn of warrants outstanding in Pittsburgh from which she had fled.

  The following evening Seigl had invited two friends who were New York editors to have dinner with him. It was not to be a formal dinner he instructed Alma but she was to order beef bourguignonne—“beef burgone” as Alma carefully pronounced it over the phone—from Les Amis. Also wild rice, “mixed baby greens,” and a fruit tart dessert. As Alma worked in the kitchen her thoughts were beating like the wings of panicked birds. There was a dull heavy ache in the pit of her belly, her period had begun which alwa
ys she hated, since the age of twelve. A curse it was, men could laugh at and scorn. She watched her hands helplessly. What could she do, she must do something! Bitterly she hated her employer for she could hear him talking and laughing with his visitors. Bitterly she hated him for he insulted her daily, hourly. There came a hot seeping in her loins like a rebuke. Always at the start the menstrual blood was sluggish and thick and black, repulsive to see and to smell. Alma could not bear to think of her brothers’ teasing. Her mother had slapped them, furious with them. But her father had been furious with the three of them making no distinction, if he could catch them. I am filth and abomination, God save me from myself. In a sudden trance of concentration the Tattooed Girl worked her fingers into the crotch of her tight-fitting panties and inside the crevice between her legs where the tampon already soaked with blood was jammed. The fingers came away slick with blood, she wiped onto pieces of tender-cooked beef and stirred the beef into the wine-rich sauce. Again, and another time, she thrust her fingers into her body that was knotted with pain and brought them out in this way, in triumph, in her trance of concentration.

  Red meat is blood-meat, beef is soaked in blood. The Tattooed Girl smiled to herself thinking, who would know?

  “IT’S JUST WHAT happens. What God lets happen.”

  On Easter Sunday, the Tattooed Girl sat alone in a rear pew at the Lutheran church. If she had become a familiar sight to some eyes in the congregation she failed to respond when greeted. Often she hid her face, whispering to God and to Jesus Christ for strength. The world was a place demanding strength. Little was respected except strength. Beside her sat a heavyset middle-aged man who coughed and snuffled and blew his nose noisily through the service distracting the Tattooed Girl from the triumphant words of Jesus as the minister proclaimed them I am the resurrection and the life: he who looks upon me shall be saved so that by the time the final joyous hymn soared the Tattooed Girl was sick with disappointment.