Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

cone.
    When I balked at leaving Daddy took my arm roughly, my thin bare arm, at the elbow, and gave me the kind of tug you don’t resist. “Fuck it Krista, I said come on.”
    Ben, smirking, licking his ice-cream cone, showed little sympathy, too. In the front seat of the car beside Daddy where, being a boy, he insisted upon sitting. In the backseat riding home—the car was anOldsmobile, I think—some kind of special “Deluxe” model—mauve interior—the leather seat hot from the sun, searing my bare legs—I was whimpering, crying under my breath stunned with the unfairness of what had just happened, if I’d run back inside the dairy of course Zoe Kruller would have given me another ice-cream cone, if Mommy and not Daddy had brought me that day, of course Mommy would have seen to it that I’d gotten another ice-cream cone, inside Honeystone’s the clerks would have been sympathetic, apologetic. But Daddy was driving away, and Daddy was flushed with anger. Daddy was cursing beneath his breath, you wouldn’t want to annoy him. If he’d thought of it, Daddy would have ordered Ben to share his ice-cream cone with me but Daddy wasn’t thinking about any ice-cream cone, or about his stricken daughter, his thoughts were elsewhere. I huddled in the backseat sniffing and panting thinking Not my fault. Not my fault. Why is Daddy mad at me! My eight-year-old heart was broken, it would not be for the first time.
    A week or so later when we were taken to Honeystone’s by our mother, on our way home from visiting one of Mommy’s cousins outside East Sparta, Ben was eager for an ice-cream cone but I was not. Instead, I asked for a sundae, in small plastic bowl where you could see what you were eating. Though Zoe Kruller was at the counter, and remembered exactly the kind of ice-cream cone I’d always wanted, winked and called me “Krissie” in the sweetest way, and tried to get me to smile at her, I wouldn’t smile, I was sulky-sullen and not the sweet little Daddy’s girl and I would not lift my eyes to Zoe’s shining face, I would not.

8
    T WO YEARS , seven months later on a snow-glaring Sunday morning in February 1983 Zoe Kruller was found dead in a brownstone rental on West Ferry Street, downtown Sparta.
    On the front page of the Sparta Journal it was reported that Zoe Kruller had suffered blunt force trauma to the head as well as manual strangulation and so it was a case of foul play, homicide.
    It was revealed that the murdered woman had been separated from her husband, no longer living with her family. It was revealed that the murdered woman had been discovered in her bed, by—
    “Krista. Give that to me.”
    “No! I’m reading this.”
    “I said —”
    She snatched the pages from me. Such agitation in her face, I surrendered the pages to prevent their being torn.
    Such agitation in her face, I turned away frightened. But I’d seen—
    Discovered in her bed by her fourteen-year-old son Aaron Kruller who ran into the street to summon help.
    At this time, I was eleven years old. No longer a small child to be protected from what my mother called “ugly”—“nasty”—“disgusting” things. No longer a small child to tolerate such protection and so somehow I knew—I came to know—that the glamorous freckled friendly woman who’d waited on us at Honeystone’s was this very woman who’dbeen found strangled in her bed by her own son; I came to know, with a thrill of horror, and of fascination, that at the time of her death Zoe Kruller had not been living with her family, as other wives and mothers lived with their families; at the time of her death Zoe Kruller had been separated from, estranged from her husband Delray Kruller and her son Aaron who was in my brother Ben’s class at the middle school: separated from, estranged from, broken off communication with. Such delicious facts I came to know, that caused a sensation of numbness to pump through me, as if I were wading into a dream; a dream that