Joyce Oates - The Gravedigger’s Daughter

Tignor returned regularly to Milburn, of course. He continued to stay at the General Washington Hotel. But at these times he left Rebecca in another town, for she could not bear returning to Milburn.

To the hotel, she’d told Tignor. Not that!

In fact it was Milburn itself. Where she was the gravedigger’s daughter and where, if she cared to seek it out, she could visit her parents’ weedy grave sites in a shabby corner of the Milburn Township Cemetery.

She had never returned to Ferry Street to pick up the remainder of her things. In such haste she’d left, on that first, astonishing morning of her new life.

But, months later, she’d written to Katy and LaVerne. Her mood was repentant, nostalgia. She worried that her friends had come to dislike her out of jealousy. I miss you! I am very happy as a married woman, Tignor & I travel all the time on business staying in the best hotels but I miss you both, & Leora . I am hoping to have a baby …What was this: this girlish-gushing tone? Was this the voice of Mrs. Niles Tignor? Rebecca felt a thrill of sheer revulsion, for the voice emerging from her, writing rapidly as she could propel a pen across a sheet of Schroon Lake Inn stationery, in the eerie stillness of the hotel room. I am sending some money here, please buy something nice for the apartment, new curtains? a lamp? Oh I miss us together staying up late, laughing; I miss Leora dropping by; I would call you but Tignor would not like it, I am afraid . Husbands are jealous of their wives! I should not be surprised, I suppose . Especially, Tignor is jealous of other men of course . He says he knows what men are “in their hearts” & does not trust his wife with any of them . Rebecca paused, for a moment unable to continue. She could not allow herself to read what she’d written. She could not allow herself to imagine what Tignor would say, should he read what she’d written. May I ask a favor? If you would please send me some of the things I left behind there, my dictionary especially? I know this is a big favor, for you to wrap & mail something so heavy, I guess that I could buy a new dictionary, for Tignor is very generous giving me money to spend as his wife . But that dictionary is special to me . Rebecca paused, blinking away tears. Her battered old dictionary: and her name misspelled inside. But it was her dictionary, Pa had not tossed it into the stove but had relented, as if, in that instant, that flooded back upon her now with the power of hallucination, Pa had loved her after all. Please send to Mrs. Niles Tignor c/o P.O. Box 91 , Hammondsville, NY (which is where Tignor receives mail, as it is central to his travels in NY State). Here is $ 3 . Thank you! Give Leora a hug & kiss for me will you? I miss our old days playing rummy after school Katy don’t you? Your friend Rebecca. How tired she was, suddenly. How stricken with unease. For this voice was not hers; no word was hers; as Rebecca, she had no words; as Mrs. Niles Tignor, each word that escaped from her was somehow false. Hurriedly she reread the letter, and wondered if she should rip it up; yet, the point of the letter was to ask for her dictionary to be sent to her. How tired she was feeling, her head ached with anxiety: Tignor would be returning to the room, she dared not allow him to see her writing a letter.

Hastily she added a P.S., that made her smile:

Tell Leora to pass on to that asshole Amos Hrube I DO NOT MISS HIS UGLY FACE.

Each month she was ever closer to becoming pregnant, Rebecca believed. For less frequently now did Tignor take caution . Especially if he’d been drinking, and there just wasn’t time. Even as they made love Rebecca rehearsed telling him Tignor? I have news . Or, Tignor! Guess what you’re going to be, darling . And me, too . Brushing aside as you’d brush aside an annoying fly any memory of those rumors of Niles Tignor she’d heard back in Milburn that the man had children of all ages scattered across the state, that his young wives came to harm, that even now he had at least one wife and young children, he’d only recently abandoned.

Some months, she would swear she was . Just had to be .

Her breasts felt heavy, the nipples so sensitive she winced when Tignor sucked them. And her belly hard and round and tight as a drum. Tignor was crazy for her, said it was like a drug to him, her and him together he couldn’t get enough of. And not taking caution signaled to Rebecca he wanted a baby just as she did.

Rebecca had not wished to ask Tignor straight out if he wanted children, nor would Tignor have asked Rebecca for there was a curious reticence between them in such matters. Tignor spoke crudely and casually using such words as fuck , screw , suck , shit but he would have been deeply embarrassed to utter such an expression as having sexual intercourse . No more could Tignor have spoken of making love to Rebecca than he could have spoken in a foreign language.

It was all right for Rebecca to become emotional, such behavior was expected of a woman. “You love me, Tignor, don’t you? A little?” Rebecca would ask, plaintive as a kitten, and Tignor would mutter, “Sure.” Laughing, on the edge of being annoyed, “Why’d I marry you, sweetheart, if I didn’t?”

Her reward was, and would be: the man’s weight upon her.

How big Tignor was, and how heavy! It was like the sky falling on you. Panting and spent and his skin that was coarse and mismatched-looking glowed with an uncanny sort of beauty.

Rebecca believed that her love for Niles Tignor would endure for a lifetime, always she would be grateful to him. He had not needed to marry her, she knew. He might have tossed her away like a used tissue, for perhaps that was what she deserved.

Somewhere amid his things it existed: the Certificate of Marriage. Rebecca had seen it, her hand had even signed it.

Without Tignor’s weight holding her fixed, fast, she would be broken and scattered like dried leaves blown by the wind. And of no more account than dried leaves blown by the wind.

She was coming to love him, sexually. She would take from him a fleeting sexual pleasure. It was not the powerful sensation Tignor seemed to feel, that so annihilated him. Rebecca did not want to feel any sensation so extreme. She did not want to shatter in his arms, she did not want to scream like a wounded creature. It was the weight of the man she wanted, that was all. And Tignor’s sudden tenderness in the drift to sleep in her arms.

The first baby would be a boy, Rebecca hoped. Niles, Jr. they would call him.

If a girl…Rebecca had no idea.

On the move! For the brewery business was cutthroat competitive . As an agent Tignor earned a base salary but his real money came from commissions.

What Tignor’s yearly income was, Rebecca had no idea. She would no more have asked him than she would have asked her father what his income was. Certainly if she’d asked, Tignor would not have told her. He would have laughed in her face.

Possibly, if she’d misjudged his mood, he’d slap her in the face.

For getting out of line he might slap her. For smart-mouthing him.

Tignor never hit her hard, and not with a closed fist. Tignor spoke with contempt of men who hit women in such a way.

Once, Rebecca naively asked when would she meet his family?-and Tignor, lighting a cigar, laughed at her, genially, and said, “Tignors don’t have no family, honey.” He fell silent then, and a few minutes later, abruptly he turned on her and slapped her with the back of his hand demanding to know who she’d been talking to?