Joyce Oates - Little Bird of Heaven

Now words flew between our father and Zoe Kruller swift as Ping-Pong balls. Whatever these words meant—talk of Daddy’s newly acquired car, or Black River Breakdown’s next “gig” in a week or two—talk of respective spouses, families—on their surface these words were innocuous and banal like the smiles of adults as they gaze at you thinking their own faraway private thoughts.

Zoe was teasing but beneath you could see that Zoe was dead-serious.

Fixing Eddy Diehl with her crazed-amber eyes, calculating and ardent; stroking her bared forearm that was freckled and stippled with tiny moles.

I saw how Zoe Kruller’s fingernails flashed crimson. I saw how Daddy would see, and felt my blood quicken.

After what seemed like a long time—though it must have been no more than two or three minutes—Zoe turned her wide-eyed gaze upon Ben and me: “So—Ben? And—Krissie? Daddy’s little guy, and Daddy’s little gal—what can I do you for today?”

We laughed, this was so curious a way of speaking, like a riddle, like tickling. I wasn’t sure that I liked it, words scrambled in such a way. As a little child I’d been anxious about misspeaking, and provoking adult laughter. Saying words in the wrong sequence like wetting my panties, wetting the bed, spilling a glass of milk at supper, dropping a fork laden with mashed potatoes, what a child most dreads is the exasperated laughter of adults when you have done a wrong thing.

Now Zoe Kruller was mouthing funny words Do you for. What can I. Ben? Krissie?

I loved Zoe Kruller, I think. The way Zoe Kruller fixed her eyes on me, and called me by name.

Why was I so frightened of Zoe Kruller!

There was an interlude of teasing-Krissie—Daddy told Zoe that I wanted a coffee ice-cream cone—I protested no, I hated coffee ice cream—and Zoe laughed and said yes, she knew: what I wanted was a doublescoop cone, chocolate on the bottom and strawberry on top.

“Your daddy’s a tease, sweetie. Don’t think I pay your damn ol’ daddy much mind.”

Damn was one of those words adults could use. Depending on the tone and on who was saying it to whom it was soft-sounding as a caress, or it was harsh.

Anything that passed between Zoe Kruller and Eddy Diehl, in Honeystone’s Dairy, was soft-sounding as a caress, and not harsh.

Daddy never bought ice-cream cones or sundaes for himself. Not ever. Daddy hadn’t much taste for sweet things, preferred salty things like pretzels, peanuts, potato chips however stale, eating them by the mouthful as he drank beer, Sundays. And Daddy liked coffee, Daddy was “hooked” on black coffee, so pungent-smelling it made my nostrils shut up, tight. Especially Daddy liked coffee you could get at Honeystone’s which smelled like a different kind of coffee than at home.

Zoe made a show of pouring the steaming liquid into a tall Styrofoam cup. “There you go, Eddy. Hope it’s what you like.”

“Yes. It’s what I like.”

One day, Zoe Kruller would be vanished from Honeystone’s. One day soon and it would be a shock to me, a cruel surprise—my mother was the one to drive Ben and me to the dairy and eagerly we’d run inside looking for Zoe Kruller but there was just old Mrs. Honeystone and fat scowling Audrey and another girl who was a stranger to us and we asked Mrs. Honeystone where was Zoe? Where was Zoe? and Mrs. Honeystone said only that she’d quit, Mrs. Honeystone did not utter the name Zoe but only just she. You could see how Mrs. Honeystone would not smile and did not care to say anything further about Zoe Kruller nor would our mother inquire.

Where is she, she’s gone. Gave notice, and gone.

THAT DAY, that Sunday I am thinking of. When I was eight years old and going into third grade in the fall. And Daddy and Zoe Kruller talked together in their swift Ping-Pong banter as Zoe scooped out ice cream for Ben and me and poured coffee for Daddy, rang up the order and made change and Daddy said in a lowered voice taking the change from Zoe’s slender fingers with the startling crimson nails that Zoe should say hello to Del for him—someone named “Del”—and Zoe laughed and said, “Sure! When I see him.” Which was an answer that possibly took Daddy by surprise, he fumbled the change, dropped a quarter that rolled across the marble-tile floor and Ben swooped to snatch it up; and Zoe said, still with that laugh in her voice like nothing could hurt her, airy and light as any little bird fluttering overhead, “And you say hi to Lucy, will you?”

Outside in the parking lot, in muggy-hot air, oppressive after the milky cool of the dairy, as we approached Daddy’s car parked imprudently in the glaring sun, discovered that the tip of my ice-cream cone was caved in, broken—and then I discovered, horribly, that something was inside the tip of the cone: squirmy black weevils.

I screamed. I dropped the cone onto the ground.

Daddy heard, and came to investigate.

“What the hell, Krissie? What’s wrong?”

Two scoops of ice cream—strawberry, chocolate—on the hot gravel, melting. Looking so silly, there on the ground. Something that was meant to be a treat—something special, delicious—on the ground like garbage. I told Daddy that there were weevils inside the cone, I couldn’t eat it. I was gagging, close to vomiting. Daddy cursed under his breath poking at the cone with the tip of his shoe, as if he could see from his height the half-dozen black insects squirming inside the tip; his manner was skeptical, impatient; he didn’t seem very sympathetic, as if the defiled cone was my fault. Or maybe, a clumsy child, I’d simply dropped it, and was trying to pass on the blame to someone else.

“Well. You’re not getting another one, we’re late and we’re leaving.”

Not another cone? When this wasn’t my fault? I drew breath to protest, to cry, stricken with a child’s sense of injustice, and with the loss of something I’d so craved, but Daddy was heedless, Daddy had made up his mind he wasn’t going back inside the dairy, he wasn’t going to complain to Zoe Kruller or to anyone about his daughter’s ice-cream cone.

When I balked at leaving Daddy took my arm roughly, my thin bare arm, at the elbow, and gave me the kind of tug you don’t resist. “Fuck it Krista, I said come on. ”

Ben, smirking, licking his ice-cream cone, showed little sympathy, too. In the front seat of the car beside Daddy where, being a boy, he insisted upon sitting. In the backseat riding home—the car was an Oldsmobile, I think—some kind of special “Deluxe” model—mauve interior—the leather seat hot from the sun, searing my bare legs—I was whimpering, crying under my breath stunned with the unfairness of what had just happened, if I’d run back inside the dairy of course Zoe Kruller would have given me another ice-cream cone, if Mommy and not Daddy had brought me that day, of course Mommy would have seen to it that I’d gotten another ice-cream cone, inside Honeystone’s the clerks would have been sympathetic, apologetic. But Daddy was driving away, and Daddy was flushed with anger. Daddy was cursing beneath his breath, you wouldn’t want to annoy him. If he’d thought of it, Daddy would have ordered Ben to share his ice-cream cone with me but Daddy wasn’t thinking about any ice-cream cone, or about his stricken daughter, his thoughts were elsewhere. I huddled in the backseat sniffing and panting thinking Not my fault. Not my fault. Why is Daddy mad at me! My eight-year-old heart was broken, it would not be for the first time.

A week or so later when we were taken to Honeystone’s by our mother, on our way home from visiting one of Mommy’s cousins outside East Sparta, Ben was eager for an ice-cream cone but I was not. Instead, I asked for a sundae, in small plastic bowl where you could see what you were eating. Though Zoe Kruller was at the counter, and remembered exactly the kind of ice-cream cone I’d always wanted, winked and called me “Krissie” in the sweetest way, and tried to get me to smile at her, I wouldn’t smile, I was sulky-sullen and not the sweet little Daddy’s girl and I would not lift my eyes to Zoe’s shining face, I would not.