Joyce Oates - The Gravedigger’s Daughter

And so she knew. Before even that morning in October when the sun had only just appeared behind a bank of clouds at the tree line and Niley was still sleeping in the next room and she dared to follow him outside, and to the road, and across the road to the canal; before she hid watching him from a distance of about thirty feet, how he walked slowly along the towpath and then paused, and lit a cigarette and smoked, and brooded; a solitary masculine figure of some mysterious distinction of whom it is reasonable to ask Who is he? Rebecca watched from behind a thicket of brambles, saw Tignor at last glance casually over his shoulder, and in both directions along the flat dark glittering waterway (it was deserted, no barges in sight, no human activity on the towpath), then remove from his coat pocket an awkward-sized object she knew at once to be, though it was wrapped in canvas, the revolver. He weighed the object in his hand. He hesitated, with an air of regret. Then, as Tignor did most things, he tossed it indifferently into the canal where it sank at once.

Rebecca thought He has used that gun, he has killed someone . But he won’t kill me .

When they’d first been married Tignor had taught Rebecca to drive. Often he’d promised to buy her a car-“Nice little coupe for my girl. Convertible, maybe.” Tignor had seemed sincere and yet he’d never gotten around to buying the car.

There was Tignor’s Pontiac in the driveway, she dared not ask to drive. Even to shop in Chautauqua Falls, or to drive to work. Some mornings, if he was awake that early, or if he’d only just come home from the previous night, Tignor drove Rebecca to Niagara Tubing; some afternoons, if he was in the vicinity, he picked her up at the end of her shift. But Rebecca could not rely upon him. Most of the time she continued to walk the mile and a half along the towpath as she always had.

It wasn’t so clear what to do with Niley. Tignor objected to Edna Meltzer looking after his son-the old bag sticking her nose in Tignor’s business!-and yet, Tignor could hardly be expected to stay in the house and look after a three-year-old himself. If Rebecca left Niley with Tignor, she might return to discover the Pontiac gone and the child wandering outside in disheveled soiled clothes, if not part-naked. She might discover Niley barefoot in pajamas trying to pull his shiny red wagon along the rutted driveway, or playing at the thirty-foot well where the plank coverings were rotted, or prowling in the dilapidated hay barn amid the filthy encrustrations of decades of bird droppings. Once, he’d made his way to Ike’s Food Store.

Edna Meltzer said, “But I don’t mind! Niley is like my own grandson. And any time Tignor wants him back, he comes over and takes him.”

At first, Tignor had been interested in Niley’s childish drawings and scribblings. His attempts at spelling, under Rebecca’s guidance. Tignor hadn’t the patience to read to Niley, the very act of reading aloud bored him, but he would lie sprawled on the sofa smoking and sipping ale and listening to Rebecca read to Niley, who insisted that Rebecca move her finger along beneath the words she was reading, that he could repeat them after her. Tignor said, amused, “This kid! He’s smart, I guess. For his age.” Rebecca smiled, wondering if Tignor knew his son’s age. Or what the average three-year-old was like. She said, yes she thought Niley was very smart for his age. And he had musical talent, too.

“”Musical talent‘? Since when?“

Anytime there was music on the radio, Rebecca said, he stopped whatever he was doing to listen. He seemed excited by music. He tried to sing, dance. Tignor said, “No kid of mine is going to be a dancer, for sure. Some tap-dancing darkie.” Tignor spoke with the teasing exaggeration of one who means to be funny, but Rebecca saw his face tighten.

“Not a dancer but a pianist, maybe.”

“”Pianist‘-what’s that? Piano player?“

Tignor sneered, he was coming to dislike his wife’s big words and pretensions. Yet he was sometimes touched by these, too, as he was touched by his son’s clumsy crayon drawings and attempts at walking-fast-like-Daddy.

Tignor came upon the sheet of paper with Niley’s crayon-printed T E T A N U S . And others: A I R P L A N E , P U R P L E , S K U N K . Tignor laughed, shaking his head. “Jesus. You could teach the kid every word in the damn dictionary, like this.”

“Niley loves words. He loves the feeling of ”spelling‘ even if he doesn’t know the alphabet yet.“

“Why doesn’t he know the alphabet?”

“He knows some of it. But it’s a little long for him, twenty-six letters.”

Tignor frowned, considering. Rebecca hoped he wouldn’t ask Niley to recite the alphabet, this would end in a paroxysm of tears. Though she suspected that Tignor didn’t know the alphabet, either. Not all twenty-six letters!

“This is more like you’d expect, from a kid.” Tignor was looking at Niley’s banana hat drawing. A figure meant to be Daddy (but Tignor didn’t know this clumsily drawn fattish cartoon figure was meant to be Daddy) with a yellow banana sticking from its head, half the figure’s size.

Later, restless and prowling the old house, upstairs where Rebecca kept her private things, Tignor found her word sheets and scribbled doodlings. She was stricken with embarrassment.

Mostly these were lists comprised from her dictionary. And from discarded public school textbooks in biology, math, history. Tignor read aloud, amused: “ gymnosperms - angiosperms . What the hell’s this- sperms ?” He glared at her in mock disdain. “ Chlorophyll - chloroplast - photosynthesis .” He was having difficulty pronouncing the words, his face reddened. “ Cranium - vertebra - pelvis - femur -”

Femur he uttered in a growl of disgust as feeeemur .

Rebecca took the pages from him, her face smarting.

Tignor laughed. “Like some high school kid, eh? How the hell old are you, anyway?”

Rebecca said nothing. She was confused, thinking he’d taken the dictionary from her too, and thrown it into the stove.

Her dictionary! It was her most secret possession.

Grunting, Tignor stooped to pick something fallen onto the floor. This was a sheet of paper upon which Rebecca had written, in a lazy sloping script floating down the page-

“Who’re these? Friends of yours?”

Now Rebecca was stricken with fear. The way Tignor was glaring at her.

“No. They’re no one, Tignor. Just…names.”

Tignor snorted in derision, crumpled the page and tossed it at Rebecca, striking her chest. It was a harmless blow with no weight behind it yet it left her breathless as if he’d punched her.

Yet he wasn’t in a really mean mood. Rebecca heard him laughing to himself, whistling on the stairs.

“Mommy, what’s wrong?”

Niley saw her pressing both her fists against her forehead. Her eyes reddened, shut tight.

“Mommy is ashamed.”

“”Shamed‘…?“

Niley came to stroke Mommy’s heated forehead. Niley was frowning, that old-young look to his face.

God damn why hadn’t she hidden her papers from Tignor! Better yet, thrown them away.

Now that Tignor was home, she needed to keep the run-down old house clean and neat and “sparkly” as possible. As much like the rooms of a good hotel as she could manage.

No mess. No clothes tossed about. (Tignor’s clothes and things, Rebecca put away without a word.)

The irony was, she’d stopped thinking about Hazel Jones. The man in the panama hat. The look of urgency in his face. All that seemed long ago now, remote and improbable as something in one of Niley’s picture books.