Joyce Oates - The Gravedigger’s Daughter

“”Give birth.“ That’s how a man would talk, I guess! Like ”birth‘ was something it was up to you, to “give.” My God.“

So dazed and happy now that she was home from the hospital and had her baby it was like the buzz you got drinking draft beer mixed with bourbon. Loving to nurse the hot-skinned little monkey that was hungry every few hours and as he sucked-sucked-sucked greedily at one fat breast and then the other, she, the new Momma, just wanted to talk-talk-talk. Oh, she had so much to say! Oh, she loved this little monkey! All this was so-wild-and-strange!

Edna brought the girl a copy of the Chautauqua Falls Weekly . Turned to the back pages, obituaries, weddings, and birth announcements. There were photos of the newly deceased and the newly wed but none of the new mothers who were identified as their husband’s wives. Rebecca read aloud, “”Mrs. Niles Tignor of Poor Farm Road, Four Corners, gave birth to an eight-pound three-ounce boy, Niles Tignor, Jr. at the Chautauqua Falls General Hospital, November 29.“” She laughed, her bright harsh laugh that grated against the ear, and tears leaked from her eyes. Going on and on about giving birth as Edna would report like she was drunk, or worse.

To her credit, this girl Rebecca had not been badly prepared for a new baby, Edna had to concede. She had a good supply of diapers, a few baby clothes. A crib and a baby-bath. She’d been studying some baby pamphlet a doctor had given her. There was food, mostly canned things, in the kitchen. And for sure Edna had castoff baby things at their house, to donate. And Elsie Drott had, too. And other women neighbors, if it came to that. Within a circumference of as many as four miles, women knew of Rebecca Tignor, some of them without knowing her actual name. A new mother, just a girl . No family, it looks like . The father of the baby just ain’t around . Seems like he’s abandoned her, out in the country . That old Wertenbacher house that’s practically falling down .

If the girl was worried about the future, she wasn’t showing it, yet. This, Edna Meltzer found annoying.

“He left you some money, I guess?”

“Oh, yes! Sure he did.”

Edna frowned, as if needing to be convinced.

Oh, Rebecca had had enough of Mrs. Meltzer for right now! Baby had ceased nursing and was drowsing slack-mouthed in her arms, here was a rare opportunity for Momma to nap, too.

Sweet delicious sleep like a stone well you could fall into, and fall and fall.

On an evening in early December, twelve days after their baby was born, there stood Tignor in the doorway of their bedroom, staring. Rebecca heard a faint breathy whistle-“Jesus!” Tignor’s face was in shadow, she could not see his expression. He stood very still, wary. For a tense moment Rebecca halfway expected him to turn away. “Tignor. Here.” Rebecca lifted the baby to Tignor, smiling. Here was a perfect baby, Tignor would see. It had only just awakened from its nap, staring and blinking at the stranger in the doorway. It began to make its comical blowing noises, bubbles of spittle on its lips. It kicked, flailed its tiny fists. Slowly Tignor came to the bedside, to take the baby from Rebecca. In infant astonishment the baby gaped at Tignor’s face, that must have seemed gigantic and luminous as a moon. Gingerly, Tignor held the baby. Rebecca saw that he knew to cup the small head on its delicate neck. Before entering the house he’d tossed away his cigar yet still he smelled of smoke, the baby began to fret. With his nicotine-stained thumb he stroked the baby’s forehead. “It’s mine, is it?”

Hey you night-owl folks this is Buffalo Radio Wonderful WBEN broadcasting the best in jazz through the wee hours . You are listening to Zack Zacharias your all-night host bringing you up-next vintage Thelonious Monk …She was lying awake in the dark, hands clasped behind her head. Thinking of her life strung out behind her like beads of myriad shapes, in memory crowded, confusing as in life each had been singular, and had defined itself with the slowness of the sun’s trajectory across the sky. You knew the sun was moving yet you never saw it move.

In the room adjoining Rebecca’s bedroom, Niley was sleeping. At least she hoped he was sleeping. In his sleep listening to the radio desperate to be not-alone even in his sleep and desperate to hear his father’s voice amid the voices of strangers. Rebecca was thinking how she’d given birth to Niley without knowing who Niley would be, she’d opened her body to pain so excruciating it could not be recalled in consciousness and so it was exactly as Edna Meltzer had predicted Once it’s out you won’t give a damn what led up to it .

She smiled, yes this was so. That was the one true fact of her life.

She’d opened her body, too, to Niles Tignor. Without knowing in the slightest who Niles Tignor was. Except for Niley, this had perhaps been a mistake. And yet, Niley was no mistake.

What she knew of Tignor now, she would never have dared approach the man. Yet she could not leave him, he would never allow it. She could not leave him, her heart clenched in anticipation simply of seeing him again.

Hey girl: love me?

Christ you know I’m crazy about you .

At the end of the lane, out on the Poor Farm Road, there was a tin mailbox on a rotted wooden post with the faded black letters WERTENBACHER still visible. No mail ever came for Niles Tignor or his wife except advertisements, flyers stuffed into the mailbox. But one day back in March, soon after Rebecca had started working at Niagara Tubing (was there some connection? had to be!), she went to empty the mailbox, and discovered amid the trash mail a neatly folded front page from the Port Oriskany Journal . Fascinated, Rebecca read an article with the headline TWO MEN SLAIN, ONE WOUNDED IN LAKESIDE “AMBUSH”: two men had died of gunshot wounds and a third wounded, in the parking lot of a popular Port Oriskany tavern and marina, police had made no arrests yet but had taken into custody one Niles Tignor, forty-two, a resident of Buffalo, as a material witness. The attack was believed by police to be related to extortion and racketeering in the Niagara lakeside area.

Rebecca read and reread the article. Her heart beat hard, she worried she might faint. Niley, who’d come with her to empty the mailbox, fretted and nudged against her legs.

Taken into custody! Forty-two years old! Resident of Buffalo!

“Material witness”: what did that mean?

At this time Tignor had been away for a week, in the Catskill area. At least, Rebecca believed that Tignor was in that part of the state: he’d called her, once. The ambush had taken place in late February, three weeks before. So whatever had happened, Tignor had been released.

He had told her nothing about this, of course. Nor could Rebecca remember anything unusual in his manner, his mood.

Maybe in fact Tignor had been in an unusually good mood recently.

He’d driven home in a new car: silver-green Pontiac sedan with gleaming chrome fixtures. Taken his little family, as he called them, for a Sunday outing up at Lake Shaheen…

Rebecca would make inquiries, and learned what “material witness” meant: an individual who police had reason to believe might be helpful in an investigation. In the Chautauqua Falls library she searched through back issues of the Port Oriskany newspaper but could find no further information about the shootings. She called the Port Oriskany police to inquire, and was told that the investigation was still under way, and was confidential-“And who are you, ma’am? And why do you want to know?”

Rebecca said, “No one. I’m no one. Thank you.”