Free The Gravedigger’S Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

breasts loose and flaccid inside what looked to be a dingy nightgown. And there was the baby on her lap, partly hidden in the filthy blanket, mouth agape, eyes watery crescents in the doll-face, unmoving as if in a coma. And he, the husband and the father, he, Jacob Schwart, trembling above them not daring to ask what was wrong, why in hell was she here, what was she hiding from now, had something happened, had someone knocked at the door of the cottage, what had she done to their daughter, had she smothered her ?
    For he was frightened, yet also he was furious. He could not believe that the woman was collapsing like this, after all they had endured.
    “Anna! Explain yourself.”
    By degrees Anna became aware of him. She had been asleep, or in one of her trances. You could snap your fingers in Anna’s face at such times and out of stubbornness she would scarcely hear you.
    Her eyes shifted in their sockets. In this place called Milburn amid the crosses and stone angels and those others staring after her in the street she’d become furtive as a feral cat.
    “Anna. I said…”
    She licked her lips but did not speak. Hunched beneath the filthy blanket as if she could hide from him.
    He would yank the blanket from her, to expose her.
    Ridiculous woman!
    “Give me the little one, then. Would you like me to strangle her?”
    This was a jest of course. An angry jest, of the kind Anna could drive a man to.
    It was not Jacob Schwart speaking but�who? The cemetery man. Gravedigger. A troll in work clothes and boots stuffed with rags grinning at her, clenching his fists. Not the man who’d adored her and begged her to marry him and promised to protect her forever.
    It was not the baby’s father, obviously. Hunched above them panting like a winded bull.
    Yet, without a word, Anna lifted the baby to him.

6
    In America. Surrounded by crosses.
    He’d brought his family across the Atlantic Ocean to this: a graveyard of stone crosses.
    “What a joke! Joke-on-Jay-cob.”
    He laughed, there was genuine merriment in his laughter. His fingers scratching his underarms, his belly, his crotch for God is a joker. Weak with laughter sometimes, snorting with merriment leaning on his shovel until tears streamed down his whiskery cheeks and dribbled the shovel with rust.
    “Jay-cob rubs his eyes, this is a dream! I have shat in my pants, this is my dream! Am-er-i-ka . Every morning the identical dream, eh? Jay-cob a ghost wandering this place tending the Christian dead.”
    Talk to yourself, there’s no one else. Could not talk to Anna. Could not talk to his children. Saw in their eyes how they feared him. Saw in the eyes of those others how they pitied him.
    But there was the little one . He had not wanted to love her for he had expected her to die. Yet she had not died of the bronchial infection, she had not died of the measles.
    “Rebecca.”
    He was coming to speak that name, slowly. For a long time he had not dared.
    One day, Rebecca was old enough to walk unassisted! Old enough to play Not-See with her father. First inside the house, and then outside in the cemetery.
    Oh! oh! where is the little one hiding!
    Behind that grave marker, is she? He would Not-See her.
    She would giggle, and squeal in excitement, peeking out. And still Pa would Not-See.
    Eyes squinted and pinched for he’d lost his damn glasses somewhere. Taken from him and snapped in two.
    The owl of Minerva soars only at dusk .
    That was Hegel: the very priest of philosophy admitting the failure of human reason.
    Oh! Pa’s eyes scraped over the little one without seeing her!
    It was a wild tickle of a game. So funny!
    Not a large man but in his cunning he’d become strong. He was a short stocky man with the hands and feet, shameful to him, of a woman. Yet he wore the previous caretaker’s boots, cleverly fitted out with rags.
    To the Milburn officials he had presented himself with such courtesy, for a common laborer, they had had to be impressed, yes?
    “Gentlemen,