Joyce Oates - The Gravedigger’s Daughter

Yet Tignor frowned, his question seemed sincere: “What race is that, Rebecca?”

“The human race.”

These words were so fiercely uttered, both Tignor and Colleen burst into laughter. And Rebecca laughed, seeing this was meant to be playful-was it? She liked it that she could make Niles Tignor laugh. She had a gift for beguiling men, if she wished to. Catching their eyes, making them want her. The outside of her, that they could see. Since Tignor had greeted her she’d been intensely aware of him, the sexual heat that exuded from him. For of course Tignor wanted sex with her: he wanted sex from her. God damn if she would go upstairs with him to his hotel room, or out into his car for a nightime drive along the river…She felt the thrill of her will in opposition to his. She felt almost faint, exulting in her opposition.

Tignor was dealing. More flashing cards. Tignor’s fingers, the sphinxring on his right hand, snaky rivulet of sweat running down his forehead, and those big horsey teeth grinning at her. “Don’t need to be hit, eh? So show us your cards, girl.”

Rebecca spread her cards on the sticky tabletop: king, queen, jack, ten, seven, ace…all diamonds.

Unexpectedly then Rebecca began to cry. Tears spilled down her warm cheeks, stinging as acid.

They would become lovers, in time. For Tignor must have her. He would marry her if there was no other way.

He went away from Milburn, and he returned. In the winter of 1953 to 1954 he was sometimes gone for a month, sometimes two. Yet in January, he unexpectedly returned after only two weeks. There was no pattern in his schedule that Rebecca could discern. He never told her when he might be back or even whether he would be back and out of pride she refused to ask him. For Rebecca, too, was stubborn telling the man only goodbye calmly and maddeningly as if each time she accepted it, this might be the last time she saw him.

She kissed his cheek. He seized her head, and kissed her mouth hurting her.

Teasing, “Don’t you love me, girl?”

And, “Ain’t you curious what it might be, to love me?”

And, “You ain’t gonna make me marry you, girl? That’s it?”

She kept Tignor at a little distance from her, she would not sleep with him. It was painful to her, yet she would not.

For Rebecca knew: Tignor would use her and discard her like Kleenex. He would not love her in return-would he?

It was a risk. Like slapping down a playing card, irrevocably.

“You don’t want to fall in love with that man, Rebecca. That would be a damn sorry mistake for a girl like you.”

This was Leora Greb. But others were jealous of her, too. It riled them that Niles Tignor should seek out Rebecca Schwart who was so young, scarcely half his age. Rebecca Schwart who was graceless in their eyes, not-pretty and headstrong.

Rebecca asked Leora, “What’s that, Leora-”a girl like you‘?“

Leora said, “A young girl. A girl who doesn’t know shit about men. A girl who…” Leora paused, frowning. About to say A girl with no mother, no father but thinking better of it.

Rebecca said hotly, “Why would I fall in love with Tignor, or with any man! I don’t trust any damn man.”

She knew: when Tignor was away from Milburn, he forgot her, she simply ceased to exist for him. And yet she could not forget him.

When he was in Milburn, at the General Washington, always he wanted to see her. Somehow, at some time. He had “business appointments” through much of the day and often for dinner and so he must fit Rebecca in, late in the evening. Was she available? Did she want to see him? She’d given him her telephone number, at the Ferry Street apartment. Out of nowhere he would call her. His voice was always a shock to her, so intimate in her ear.

Rebecca tried to manage a light, bantering tone when he called. Often Katy and LaVerne were close by, listening. She would ask Tignor where he was, and Tignor would say, “A block up, on Ferry Street at a pay phone. Fact is, I can see your windows. Where’d you think I was, girl?”

Girl he called her, teasing. Sometimes Gypsy-girl .

Rebecca told him she was not a Gypsy! Told him she had been born in the United States just like him.

I won’t sleep with him . But I will marry him .

It was ridiculous, truly she didn’t believe. Any more than years before she had believed truly that Jesus Christ was her savior: that Jesus Christ had any awareness of Rebecca Schwart at all.

She hadn’t wanted to fall in love with Niles Tignor or any man. Love was the poisoned bait, she knew! Sexual love, the love of the senses. Though she could not recall her parents ever having touched each other with affection, yet she had to suppose that they had been in love , once. They had been young, they had loved each other and they had married. Long ago, in what Anna Schwart had called the old country. For hadn’t Herschel astonished Rebecca by telling her Pa would sing some, and Ma would sing back, an they’d laugh, like . And Herschel had told her that Pa had kissed him ! Love was the trap, that drew you into the cave. And once in that cave, you could not escape.

Sexual love. That meant wanting. Wanting bad, so it ached between the legs. Rebecca knew what this was (she guessed) and knew it was stronger in men, not to be trifled with. Recalling her brother Herschel looming over her grunting and whimpering wanting to rub himself against her behind when she’d been a little girl: the raw wet need in the boy’s eyes, an anguish in his face you might mistake (if you saw just the face, the uprolled glistening eyes) for a spiritual longing. Herschel, whom Ma had had to drag away from his little sister slapping the big gangling boy about the head.

Yet Rebecca thought constantly of Tignor. When he was away from Milburn which was most of the time. She recalled with excruciating embarrassment how she had fled the Tap Room that night, desperate to escape. Why she’d burst into tears she didn’t know. A hand of shining cards, all diamonds…Colleen had tried to follow Rebecca but Rebecca had hidden from her in a back stairway of the hotel.

She’d had too much to drink, that must have been it. Unaccustomed to alcohol. Unaccustomed to such close physical proximity with a man, and knowing he wants you. And such shining cards…

Rebecca had supposed in her shame that Niles Tignor would never have wanted to see her again. But he had.

Her trance-like hours of work at the hotel were invaded by Tignor. Especially when she pushed her cart along the fifth-floor corridor. Unlocking the door to room 557, stepping inside. As in a waking dream she saw Tignor another time striding to the bed, a tall man with nickel-colored hair and a face flushed with anger; she heard Tignor’s furious words Let the girl go as he grabbed hold of Baumgarten and began to beat him.

For Rebecca’s sake, Tignor had risked arrest. He had not known her at the time: he’d heard only her cries for help.

They drove along the Chautauqua River. Westward out of Milburn, toward Beardstown. Where fine, powdery, new-fallen snow had not drifted on the ice, the frozen river was scintillant, blue-tinged in the sun. It was February 1954. Rebecca had not seen Tignor for several weeks. He’d arrived in Milburn driving a new-model Studebaker, robin’s-egg-blue, a sedan with the widest windows, front and rear, Rebecca had ever seen on any vehicle. “D’you like it? Want to come for a ride?”

She did. Of course, she did.

Tignor had an opened bottle of Black Horse ale snug between his knees as he drove. From time to time he lifted it to his mouth and drank, and passed it to Rebecca who drank sparingly though she’d grown not to dislike the strong acrid taste of ale. Only in Tignor’s company did Rebecca drink and so she associated drinking, the smell of beer or ale, the warm buzzing at the base of her skull, with the anxious happiness she felt with Tignor.