The Corn Maiden: And Other Nightmares

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Of course, finely ground in these foods were powdery-white tranquilizers, to maintain the Rapture.

  The Corn Maiden of the Onigara Sacrifice was to pass into the next world in a Rapture. Not in fear.

  We took turns spooning small portions of food into the Corn Maiden’s mouth that sucked like an infant’s to be fed. So hungry, the Corn Maiden whimpered for more. No, no! There is no more she was told.

  (How hungry we were, after these feedings! Denise and Anita went home to stuff stuff their faces.)

  Jude did not want the Corn Maiden to excrete solid waste she said. Her bowels must be clean and pure for the Sacrifice. Also we had to take her outside the storage room for this, half-carrying her to a bathroom in a corner of the cobwebby cellar that was a “recreation room” of some bygone time Jude said the 1970s that is ancient history now.

  Only two times did we have to take the Corn Maiden to this bathroom, half-carried out, groggy and stumbling and her head lolling on her shoulders. All other times the Corn Maiden used the pot Jude had brought in from one of the abandoned greenhouses. A fancy Mexican ceramic pot, for the Corn Maiden to squat over, as we held her like a clumsy infant.

  The Corn Maiden’s pee! It was hot, bubbly. It had a sharp smell different from our own.

  Like a big infant the Corn Maiden was becoming, weak and trusting in all her bones. Even her crying when she cried saying she wanted to go home, she wanted her mommy, where was her mommy she wanted her mommy was an infant’s crying, with no strength or anger behind it.

  Jude said all our mommies are gone, we must be brave without them. She would be safe with us Jude said stroking her hair. See, we would protect her better than her mommy had protected her.

  Jude took cell-phone pictures of the Corn Maiden sitting up on her bier her face streaked with tears. The Corn Maiden was chalky white and the colors of the bier were so rich and silky. The Corn Maiden was so thin, you could see her collarbone jutting inside the white muslin nightgown Jude had clothed her in. We did not doubt Jude. What Jude meant to do with the Corn Maiden we would not resist.

  In the Onigara ceremony Jude said the Corn Maiden was slowly starved and her bowels cleaned out and purified and she was tied on an altar still living and a priest shot an arrow that had been blessed into her heart. And the heart was scooped out with a knife that had been blessed and touched to the lips of the priest and others of the tribe to bless them. And the heart and the Corn Maiden’s body were then carried out into a field and buried in the earth to honor the Morning Star which is the sun and the Evening Star which is the moon and beg of them their blessing for the corn harvest.

  Will the Corn Maiden be killed we wished to know but we could not ask Jude for Jude would be angered.

  To ourselves we said Jude will kill the Corn Maiden, maybe! We shivered to think so. Denise smiled, and bit at her thumbnail, for she was jealous of the Corn Maiden. Not because the Corn Maiden had such beautiful silky hair but because Jude fussed over the Corn Maiden so, as Jude would not have fussed over Denise.

  The Corn Maiden wept when we left her. When we blew out the candles and left her in darkness. We had to patrol the house we said. We had to look for fires and “gas leakage” we said. For the world as we have known it has come to an end, there were no adults now. We were the adults now.

  We were our own mommies.

  Jude shut the door, and padlocked it. The Corn Maiden’s muffled sobs from inside. Mommy! Mommy! the Corn Maiden wept but there was no one to hear and even on the steps to the first floor you could no longer hear.

  OUT THERE

  HATEHATEHATE you assholes Out There. The Corn Maiden was Jude O’s perfect revenge.

  At Skatskill Day we saw our hatred like scalding-hot lava rushing through the corridors and into the classrooms and cafeteria to burn our enemies alive. Even girls who were okay to us mostly would perish for they would rank us below the rest, wayway below the Hot Shit Cliques that ran the school and also the boys—all the boys. And the teachers, some of them had pissed us off and deserved death. Jude said Mr. Z. had “dissed” her and was the “target enemy” now.

  Sometimes the vision was so fierce it was a rush better than E!

  Out There it was believed that the missing Skatskill girl might have been kidnapped. A ransom note was awaited.

  Or, it was believed the missing girl was the victim of a “sexual predator.”

  On TV came Leah Bantry, the mother, to appeal to whoever had taken her daughter saying, Please don’t hurt Marissa, please release my daughter I love her so, begging please in a hoarse voice that sounded like she’d been crying a lot and her eyes haggard with begging so Jude stared at the woman with scorn.

  Not so hot-shit now, are you Mrs. Brat-tee! Not so pretty-pretty.

  It was surprising to Denise and Anita, that Jude hated Leah Bantry so. We felt sorry for the woman, kind of. Made us think how our mothers would be, if we were gone, though we hated our mothers we were thinking they’d probably miss us, and be crying, too. It was a new way of seeing our moms. But Jude did not have a mom even to hate. Never spoke of her except to say she was Out West in L.A. We wanted to think that Jude’s mom was a movie star under some different name, that was why she’d left Jude with Mrs. Trahern to pursue a film career. But we would never say this to Jude, for sure.

  Sometimes Jude scared us. Like she’d maybe hurt us.

  Wild! On Friday 7 P.M. news came BULLETIN—BREAKING NEWS—SKATSKILL SUSPECT IN CUSTODY. It was Mr. Zallman!

  We shrieked with laughter. Had to press our hands over our mouths so old Mrs. Trahern would not hear.

  Jude is flicking through the channels and there suddenly is Mr. Z. on TV! And some broadcaster saying in an excited voice that this man had been apprehended in Bear Mountain State Park and brought back to Skatskill to be questioned in the disappearance of Marissa Bantry and the shocker is: Mikal Zallman, thirty-one, is on the faculty of the Skatskill Day School.

  Mr. Zallman’s jaws were scruffy like he had not shaved in a while. His eyes were scared and guilty-seeming. He was wearing a T-shirt and khaki shorts like we would never see him at school and this was funny, too. Between two plainclothes detectives being led up the steps into police headquarters and at the top they must’ve jerked him under the arms, he almost turned his ankle.

  We were laughing like hyenas. Jude crouched in front of the TV rocking back and forth, staring.

  “Zallman claims to know nothing of Marissa Bantry. Police and rescue workers are searching the Bear Mountain area and will search through the night if necessary.”

  There was a cut to our school again, and Fifteenth Street traffic at night. “. . . unidentified witness, believed to be a classmate of Marissa Bantry, has told authorities that she witnessed Marissa being pulled into a Honda CR-V at this corner, Thursday after school. This vehicle has been tentatively identified as . . .”

  Unidentified witness. That’s me! Anita cried.

  And a second “student witness” had come forward to tell the school principal that she had seen “the suspect Zallman” fondling Marissa Bantry, stroking her hair and whispering to her in the computer lab when he thought no one was around, only last week.

  That’s me! Denise cried.

  And police had found a mother-of-pearl butterfly barrette on the ground near Zallman’s parking space, behind his condominium residence. This barrette had been “absolutely identified” by Marissa Bantry’s mother as a barrette Marissa had been wearing on Thursday.

  We turned to Jude who was grinning.

  We had not known that Jude had planned this. On her bicycle she must’ve gone to drop the barrette where it would be found.

  We laughed so, we almost wet ourselves. Jude was just so cool.

  But even Jude seemed surprised, kind of. That you could tell the wildest lie your own and every asshole would rush to believe.

  DESPERATE

  Now she knew his name: Mikal Zallman.

  The man who’d taken Marissa. One of Marissa’s teachers a
t the Skatskill Day School.

  It was a nightmare. All that Leah Bantry had done, what exertion of heart and soul, to enroll her daughter in a private school in which a pedophile was allowed to instruct elementary school children.

  She had met Zallman, she believed. At one of the parents’ evenings. Something seemed wrong, though: Zallman was young. You don’t expect a young man to be a pedophile. An attractive man though with a hawkish profile, and not very warm. Not with Leah. Not that she could remember.

  The detectives had shown her Zallman’s photograph. They had not allowed her to speak with Zallman. Vaguely yes she did remember. But not what he’d said to her, if he had said anything. Very likely Leah has asked him about Marissa but what he’d said she could not recall.

  And then, hadn’t Zallman slipped away from the reception, early? By chance she’d seen him, the only male faculty member not wearing a necktie, hair straggling over his collar, disappearing from the noisy brightly lighted room.

  He’d taken a polygraph, at his own request. The results were “inconclusive.”

  If I could speak with him. Please.

  They were telling her no, Mrs. Bantry. Not a good idea.

  This man who took Marissa if I could speak with him please.

  In her waking state she pleaded. She would beg the detectives, she would throw herself on their mercy. Her entire conscious life was now begging, pleading, and bartering. And waiting.

  Zallman is the one, isn’t he? You have him, don’t you? An eyewitness said she saw him. Saw him pull Marissa into a van with him. In broad daylight! And you found Marissa’s barrette by his parking space isn’t that proof !

  To her, the desperate mother, it was certainly proof. The man had taken Marissa, he knew where Marissa was. The truth had to be wrung from him before it was too late.

  On her knees she would beg to see Zallman promising not to become emotional and they told her no, for she would only become emotional in the man’s presence. And Zallman, who had a lawyer now, would only become more adamant in his denial.

  Denial! How could he . . . deny! He had taken Marissa, he knew where Marissa was.

  She would beg him. She would show Zallman pictures of Marissa as a baby. She would plead with this man for her daughter’s life if only if only if only for God’s sake they would allow her.

  Of course, it was impossible. The suspect was being questioned following a procedure, a strategy, to which Leah Bantry had no access. The detectives were professionals, Leah Bantry was an amateur. She was only the mother, an amateur.

  The wheel, turning.

  It was a very long Friday. The longest Friday of Leah’s life.

  Then abruptly it was Friday night, and then it was Saturday morning. And Marissa was still gone.

  Zallman had been captured, yet Marissa was still gone.

  He might have been tortured, in another time. To make him confess. The vicious pedophile, whose “legal rights” had to be honored.

  Leah’s heart beat in fury. Yet she was powerless, she could not intervene.

  Saturday afternoon: approaching the time when Marissa would be missing for forty-eight hours.

  Forty-eight hours! It did not seem possible.

  She has drowned by now, Leah thought. She has suffocated for lack of oxygen.

  She is starving. She has bled to death. Wild creatures on Bear Mountain have mutilated her small body.

  She calculated: it would soon be fifty hours since Leah had last seen Marissa. Kissed her hurriedly good-bye in the car, in front of the school Thursday morning at eight. And (she forced herself to remember, she would not escape remembering) Leah hadn’t troubled to watch her daughter run up the walk, and into the school. Pale gold hair shimmering behind her and just possibly (possibly!) at the door, Marissa had turned to wave good-bye to Mommy but Leah was already driving away.

  And so, she’d had her opportunity. She would confess to her sister Avril I let Marissa slip away.

  The great wheel, turning. And the wheel was Time itself, without pity.

  She saw that now. In her state of heightened awareness bred of terror she saw. She had ceased to give a damn about “Leah Bantry” in the public eye. The distraught/negligent mother. Working mom, single mom, mom-with-a-drinking-problem. She’d been exposed as a liar. She’d been exposed as a female avid to sleep with another woman’s husband and that husband her boss. She knew, the very police who were searching for Marissa’s abductor were investigating her, too. Crude tabloids, TV journalism. Under a guise of sympathy, pity for her “plight.”

  None of this mattered, now. What the jackals said of her, and would say. She was bartering her life for Marissa’s. Appealing to God in whom she was trying in desperation to believe. If You would. Let Marissa be alive. Return Marissa to me. If You would hear my plea. So there was no room to give a damn about herself, she had no scruples now, no shame. Yes she would consent to be interviewed on the cruelest and crudest of the New York City TV stations if that might help Marissa, somehow. Blinking into the blinding TV lights, baring her teeth in a ghastly nervous smile.

  Never would she care again for the pieties of ordinary life. When on the phone her own mother began crying, asking why, why on earth had Leah left Marissa alone for so many hours, Leah had interrupted the older woman coldly, “That doesn’t matter now, Mother. Good-bye.”

  Neither of the elder Bantrys was in good health, they would not fly east to share their daughter’s vigil. But Leah’s older sister Avril flew up immediately from Washington to stay with her.

  For years the sisters had not been close. There was a subtle rivalry between them, in which Leah had always felt belittled.

  Avril, an investment attorney, was brisk and efficient answering the telephone, screening all e-mail. Avril checked the Marissa Web site constantly. Avril was on frank terms with the senior Skatskill detective working the case, who spoke circumspectly and with great awkwardness to Leah.

  Avril called Leah to come listen to a voice-mail message that had come in while they’d been at police headquarters. Leah had told Avril about Davitt Stoop, to a degree.

  It was Davitt, finally calling Leah. In a slow stilted voice that was not the warm intimate voice Leah knew he was saying A terrible thing . . . This is a . . . terrible thing, Leah. We can only pray this madman is caught and that . . . A long pause. You would have thought that Dr. Stoop had hung up but then he continued, more forcibly I’m sorry for this terrible thing but Leah please don’t try to contact me again. Giving my name to the police! The past twenty-four hours have been devastating for me. Our relationship was a mistake and it can’t be continued, I am sure you understand. As for your position at the clinic I am sure you understand the awkwardness among all the staff if . . .

  Leah’s heart beat in fury, she punched erase to extinguish the man’s voice. Grateful that Avril, who’d tactfully left the room, could be relied upon not to ask about Davitt Stoop, nor even to offer sisterly solicitude.

  Take everything from me. If You will leave me Marissa, the way we were.

  EMISSARIES

  “Mommy!”

  It was Marissa’s voice, but muffled, at a distance.

  Marissa was trapped on the far side of a barrier of thick glass, Leah heard her desperate cries only faintly. Marissa was pounding the glass with her fists, smearing her damp face against it. But the glass was too thick to be broken. “Mommy! Help me, Mommy . . .” And Leah could not move to help the child, Leah was paralyzed. Something gripped her legs, quicksand, tangled ropes. If she could break free . . .

  Avril woke her, abruptly. There was someone to see her, friends of Marissa’s they said they were.

  “H-Hello, Mrs. Branty . . . Bantry. My name is . . .”

  Three girls. Three girls from Skatskill Day. One of them, with faded-rust-red hair and glistening stone-colored eyes, was holding out to Leah an astonishing large bouquet of dazzling white flowers: long-stemmed roses, carnations, paperwhites, mums. The sharp astringent fragrance of the paperwhites preva
iled.

  The bouquet must have been expensive, Leah thought. She took it from the girl and tried to smile. “Why, thank you.”

  It was Sunday, midday. She’d sunk into a stupor after twenty hours of wakefulness. Seeing it was a warm, incongruously brightly sunny April day beyond the partly-drawn blinds on the apartment windows.

  She would have to focus on these girls. She’d been expecting, from what Avril had said, younger children, Marissa’s age. But these were adolescents. Thirteen, fourteen. In eighth grade, they’d said. Friends of Marissa’s?

  The visit would not last long. Avril, disapproving, hovered near.

  Possibly Leah had invited them, the girls were seated in her living room. They were clearly excited, edgy. They glanced about like nervous birds. Leah supposed she should offer them Cokes but something in her resisted. Hurriedly she’d washed her face, dragged a comb through her snarled hair that no longer looked blond, but dust-colored. How were these girls Marissa’s friends? Leah had never seen them before in her life.

  Nor did their names mean anything to her. “Jude Trahern,” “Denise . . .” The third name she’d failed to catch.

  The girls were moist-eyed with emotion. So many neighbors had dropped by to express their concern, Leah supposed she had to endure it. The girl who’d given Leah the bouquet, Jude, was saying in a faltering nasal voice how sorry they were for what had happened to Marissa and how much they liked Marissa who was just about the nicest girl at Skatskill Day. If something like this had to happen too bad it couldn’t happen to—well, somebody else.

  The other girls giggled, startled at their friend’s vehemence.

  “But Marissa is so nice, and so sweet. Ma’am, we are praying for her safe return, every minute.”

  Leah stared at the girl. She had no idea how to reply.

  Confused, she lifted the bouquet to her face. Inhaled the almost too rich paperwhite smell. As if the purpose of this visit was to bring Leah . . . What?