The Gravedigger's Daughter Part 3

"Mommy loves you too, honey. Not so loud, now!"

"He's been like that all day, Rebecca. Wouldn't settle down for a nap. Wouldn't hardly eat. We were outside in the garden, and what'd he want but the radio on the porch railing, turned up high so he could hear it." Mrs. Meltzer shook her head, laughing.

The child believed that certain radio broadcasters might be his father, their voices sounded like Tignor's voice. Rebecca had tried to explain to him that this was not so, but Niley had his own ideas.

"I'm sorry," Rebecca said, embarra.s.sed. She was confused, and could not think what to say.

"Oh, it's nothing," Mrs. Meltzer said quickly. "You know what children are like, these things they 'believe in,' they don't really. Just like us."

Preparing to take Niley home, Rebecca heard herself ask casually if Mrs. Meltzer had ever heard of a person named Hazel Jones.

"Somebody lives around here? That's who she is?"

"She lives in Chautauqua Falls, I think."

But was that right? The man in the panama hat had possibly said that Hazel Jones had once lived in Chautauqua Falls, as a girl.

"Why're you asking? Who is she?"

"Oh, someone asked if that was my name."

But this, too, was inaccurate. The man who was Dr. Hendricks's son had asked if Rebecca was Hazel Jones. There was a significant difference.

"Asked if that was your name? Why'd anybody ask such a question?"

Edna Meltzer screwed up her broad fattish face, and laughed.

It was the response to anything out-of-the-ordinary by local standards: a derisive laugh.

Niley ran outside, letting the screen door slam. Rebecca would have followed him except Mrs. Meltzer touched her arm, to speak with her in a lowered voice. The younger woman felt a pang of revulsion for that touch, and for the forced intimacy between them. "Is Tignor expected home sometime soon, Rebecca? It's been a while."

Rebecca felt her face throb with heat.

"Has it!"

But Mrs. Meltzer persisted. "I think it has, yes. Weeks. And the child"

Rebecca said, in her bright, blithe way, to forestall such intimacy, "My husband is a businessman, Edna. He travels, he's on the road. He owns property."

Rebecca pushed out the screen door blindly, and let it fall back. There was Niley running in the gra.s.s, flailing his hands and screeching in childish excitement. How healthy the little boy was, how like a self-possessed little animal! Rebecca resented this woman speaking to her, the child's mother, in such a tone. Inside the kitchen Mrs. Meltzer was saying, in her patient, prodding, maddening voice, "Niley keeps asking about 'Daddy,' and I don't know what to tell him."

"That's right, Edna," Rebecca said coldly. "You don't know. Good night."

Back in their place, a small two-storey farmhouse Tignor rented for them at the end of a dirt lane off the Poor Farm Road, Rebecca printed out the new word for Niley: T E T A N U S.

Even before she removed her sweaty clothes and washed the grime of Niagara Tubing off her body, and out of her matted hair, she looked up the word in her dictionary. A battered old Webster's it was, from the time when she'd lived in Milburn and gone to the grammar school there; she'd won it in a spelling bee, sponsored by a local newspaper. Niley was fascinated by the bookplate inside: SPELLING CHAMPION MILBURN DISRICT #3.

*** 1946 ***

REBECCA ESHTER SCHWART.

For in that place and in that time she'd been her parents' daughter, bearing the name her father had taken in the New World: Schwart.

(Rebecca had not wanted to correct the misspelling of "Esther." She had not wanted to defile the handsome printed bookplate.) From the time Niley was two, Rebecca began to look up words in the dictionary to spell out for him. She herself had not been encouraged to spell, to read, even to think until she'd been much older, but she did not intend to emulate her parents in the raising of her child. First, Rebecca carefully printed the word onto a sheet of stiff paper. Then Niley tried to imitate her. Gripping a crayon in his stubby child-fingers, and moving it with a fierce and unswerving concentration across the paper. Rebecca was struck by the child's deep mortification when his laboriously printed word failed to resemble Mommy's; as Niley was deeply mortified by other mishaps of hisspilling food, wetting his bed. Sometimes he burst into tears, and sometimes he was furious, kicking and whining. With his baby fists he struck out at Mommy. He struck his own face.

Rebecca quickly embraced him at such times. Held him tight!

She loved him pa.s.sionately, as she loved his father. Yet she feared for him, he was developing something of his father's temper. But he was avid to learn, and in that way different from Tignor. In the past several months he'd astonished her, he'd become so captivated by alphabet letters and the way they connected into "words" and were meant to represent "things."

She'd been poorly educated herself. She'd never graduated from high school, her life had been interrupted. Sometimes she felt faint with shame, to think of all that she did not know and could not know and could not even fathom not-knowing for the very scope of her ignorance was beyond her ability to imagine. She saw herself stuck in a bog, quicksand to the ankles, to the knees.

This earth is a s.h.i.+t hole. Ignorance!stupidity!cruelty!confusion! And madness over all, be sure.

Rebecca shuddered, remembering. His voice. The levity of his bitterness.

"Mom-my? Look."

Niley had printed, with excruciating slowness, T E T A N U S on a sheet of paper. He squinted up at her, anxious. He looked nothing like his father, certainly nothing like Rebecca's father. He had fine, fair-brown hair; his skin was fair as well, susceptible to rashes; his features were rather small, pinched. His eyes were like Rebecca's, deep-set and intense.

As usual Niley had slanted his letters oddly downward so that he ran out of s.p.a.ce, the final letters had had to be crowded togetherNUS. Rebecca smiled, Niley was so funny. As an infant he'd reminded her of a little monkey, wizen-faced, intense.

Running out of s.p.a.ce on the sheet of paper might set off a temper tantrum, though. Rebecca quickly took away the paper, and provided another.

"O.K., sweetie! Let's both do 'teta.n.u.s' again."

Eagerly Niley took up the red crayon. This time, he would do better.

Rebecca vowed: she would not make mistakes with her son at this time in his life. So young, before he began school. When a child is at the mercy of his parents almost exclusively. That was why Rebecca looked up words in the dictionary. And she had high school textbooks, too. To get things right. To get those things right that you could, amid so much that you could not.

3.

A voice in Rebecca's ear harsh and urgent: "Jesus, watch out!"

She woke from her trance. She laughed nervously. Her right hand, bulky in the safety glove, had been trailing dangerously near the stamping machine.

She thanked whoever it was. Her face flushed with embarra.s.sment, indignation. G.o.d d.a.m.n it had been like this most of the morning: her mind trailing off, losing her concentration. Taking risks, like she'd just begun the job and didn't know by now how dangerous it could be.

Clamoring machines. Airless air. Heat tasting of singed rubber. Sweat inside her work clothes. And mixed with the noise was a new urgent sound she could not decode, was it hopeful, was it seductive, was it mocking. HAZEL JONES HAZEL JONES HAZEL JONES.

The foreman came by. Not to speak with Rebecca but to let her see him: his presence. Son of a b.i.t.c.h, she saw.

No one at Niagara Tubing knew much about her. Even Rita, who was her friend. They might have known that she was married, and some of them might have known to whom she was married, the name Niles Tignor was known in some quarters in Chautauqua Falls. All they knew of Rebecca was that she kept to herself. She had a stubborn manner, a certain stiff-backed dignity. She wouldn't take bulls.h.i.+t from anybody.

Even when she was tired to the point of dazedness. Unsteady on her feet and needing to use the lavatory, to splash tepid water on her face. It wasn't just the few women workers who became light-headed at Niagara Tubing but men, too. Veterans of many years on the line.

The first week she'd begun in the a.s.sembly room, Rebecca had been nauseated by the smell, the rapid pace, the noise. Noise-noise-noise. At such a decibel, noise isn't just sound but something physical, visceral, like electric current pumping through your body. It frightens you, it winds you tight, and tighter. Your heart is racing to keep pace. Your brain is racing but going nowhere. You can't keep a coherent thought. Thoughts spill like beads from a broken string...

She'd been terrified, she might go crazy. Her brain would break into pieces. You had to shout to be heard, shout in somebody's ear and people shouted in your ear, in your face. It was the raw, pulsing, primal life. There were no personalities here, no subtleties of the soul. The delicate soul of the child, like Niley, would be destroyed here. In the machines, in the h.e.l.lhole of the factory, there was a strange primal life that mimicked the pulse-beat of natural life. And the living heart, the living brain, were overcome by this mock-life. The machines had their rhythm, their beat-beat-beat. Their noises overlapped with the noises of other machines and obliterated all natural sound. The machines had no words, only just noise. And this noise overwhelmed. There was a chaos inside it, though there was the mechanical repet.i.tion, a mock-orderliness, rhythm. There was the mimicry of a natural pulse-beat. And some of the machines, the more complicated, mimicked a crude sort of human thought.

Rebecca had told herself she could not bear it!

More calmly telling herself she had no choice.

Tignor had promised Rebecca she would not have to work, as his wife. He was a man of pride, easily offended. He did not approve of his wife working in a factory and yet: he no longer provided her with enough money, she had no choice.

Since summer, Rebecca was better adjusted. But, Christ she would never be adjusted.

It was only temporary work of course. Until...

He had looked at her with such certainty! HAZEL JONES.

Seeming to know her. Not Rebecca in her filth-stiffened work clothes but another individual, beneath.

He'd known her heart. HAZEL JONES HAZEL ARE YOU HAZEL JONES YOU ARE HAZEL JONES ARE YOU. In the long morning hours HAZEL JONES HAZEL JONES lulling, seductive as a murmurous voice in Rebecca's ear and in the afternoon HAZEL JONES HAZEL JONES had become a jeering din.

"No. I am not. G.o.d d.a.m.n you leave me alone."

Him removing his gla.s.ses. Prissy tinted gla.s.ses. So she could see his eyes. How sincere he was, and pleading. The injured iris of one eye, like something burnt-out. Possibly he was blind in that eye. Smiling at her, hopeful.

"Like I was somebody special. 'Hazel Jones.'"

She had no wish to think about Hazel Jones. Still less did she want to think about the man in the panama hat. She'd have liked to scream into his face. Seeing again his shock, when she'd torn up his card. That gesture, she'd done right.

But why: why did she detest him?

She had to concede, he was a civilized man. A gentleman. A man who'd been educated, who had money. Like no one else she knew, or had ever known. And he'd made such an appeal to her.

He was kind-hearted, he meant to do right.

"Was it just I'm 'Hazel Jones' ormaybe, it was me."

Remembered you. In his will.

Legacy.

"See, I am not her. The one you think I am."

Must remember me, Dr. Hendricks's son.

"I told you, I don't."

G.o.d d.a.m.n she'd told him no, she'd been truthful from the start. But he'd kept on and on like a three-year-old insisting what could not be, was. He'd continued to speak to her as if he had heard yes where she'd been saying no. Like he was seeing into her soul, he knew her in some way she didn't know herself.

"Mister, I told you. I'm not her."

So tired. Late afternoon is when you're susceptible to accidents. Even the old-timers. You get slack, fatigued. SAFETY FIRST!posters n.o.body glanced at anymore, so familiar. 10 SAFETY REMINDERS. One of them was KEEP YOUR EYES ON YOUR WORK AT ALL TIMES.

When Rebecca's vision began to waver inside the goggles, and she saw things as if underwater, that was the warning sign: falling asleep on her feet. But it was so...It was so lulling. Like Niley falling asleep, his eyelids closing. A wonderment in it, how human beings fall asleep same as animals. What is the person in personality and where does it go when you fall asleep. Niley's father Tignor sleeping so deeply, and sometimes his breath came in strange erratic surges she worried he might cease breathing, his big heart would cease pumping and then: what? He had married her in a "civil ceremony" in Niagara Falls. She'd been seventeen at the time. Somewhere, lost amid his things, was the Certificate of Marriage.

"I am. I am Mrs. Niles Tignor. The wedding was real."

Rebecca jerked her head up, quickly. Where'd she been...?

She poked her fingers inside the goggles, wiping her eyes. But had to take off her safety gloves first. So awkward! She wanted to cry in frustration.... hurt. Or were told you were. I don't judge. He was watching her from the doorway, he was speaking about her with one of the bosses. She saw him, in the corner of her eye; she would not stare, and allow them to know that she was aware of them. He wore cream-colored clothes, and the panama hat. Others would glance at him, quizzically. Obviously, he was one of the owners. Investors. Not a manager, not dressed for an office. Yet he was a doctor, too...

Why'd Rebecca rip up his card! The meanness in her, taking after her gravedigger father. She was ashamed of herself, thinking of how he'd been shocked by her, and hurt.

Yet: he did not judge.

"Wake up. Girl, you better wake up."

Again Rebecca had almost fallen asleep. Almost got her hand mangled, left hand this time.

Smiled thinking crazily: the fingers on the left hand you would not miss so much. She was right-handed.

She knew: the man in the panama hat wasn't in the factory. She must have seen, in the blurry corner of her eye, the plant manager. A man of about that height and age who wore a short-sleeved white s.h.i.+rt, most days. No bow tie, and for sure no panama hat.

After work she would almost-see him again. Across the street, beneath the shoe repair awning. Quickly she turned away, walked away not looking back.

"He isn't there. Not Tignor, and now not him."

No one saw: she made sure.

Looking for pieces of Hendricks's card she'd ripped up. On the towpath she found a few very small sc.r.a.ps. Not certain what they were. Whatever was printed on them was blurred, lost.

"Just as well. I don't want to know."

This time, disgusted with herself, she squeezed the pieces into a pellet and tossed it out onto the ca.n.a.l where it bobbed and floated on the dark water like a water bug.