The Gravedigger’S Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

the hairs, between Ma’s legs and up on Ma’s belly like a man’s whiskers, in the bedroom by accident pushing open the damn door and there’s Ma tryin to hide, changin’ her nightgown or tryin’ to wash. You ever seen it? Thick hairs like a squirrel.
    Hey, Herschel said, snapping his fingers in Rebecca’s blank face.
    Hey you think I’m fuckin’ lyin’ or somethin’? Lookin’ at me like that?
    Rebecca tried to smile. There was a roaring like thousands of mosquitoes in her ears.
    You askin for the boa ’stricter , honey, are you?
    Not the boa ’stricter , oh! Please not him.
    Herschel liked to see his sister scared, it calmed him some. Saying she maybe thought he was makin all this up, but he wa’nt. How’d you think you got born, eh? You somebody special? How’d you think anybody gets born? Out of their Ma’s hole. Not her asshole, nah not like a shit, that’s somethin else, there’s this other hole it starts out small then gets bigger, girls and wimmen got ’em, you got one too, want me ta show ya?
    Rebecca shook her head no. No no!
    You’re just a li’l gal so you got one but it’d be real small like pea-size but for sure it’s there inside your legs where you go pee-pee and where you’re gonna get pinched, see? You don’t b’lieve your brother Hershl.
    Quickly Rebecca said, yes she believed him! She did.
    Herschel scratched his chest, frowning. Trying to recall. The shit-hole cabin they was stayin’ in, on the ship. Size of a dog house. No windows. “Bunk beds.” Damn mess of rags, squashed roaches an’ stale puke from Gus being sick, and everywhere stinkin’ of shit. Then, Ma’s blood. Stuff comin out of her layin’ in the bunk bed. At last they was in New York harbor and everybody crazy to leave the stinkin’ boat except them, they had to stay behind, ’cause of her wantin’ to be born. Pa said you wa’nt spost to be born for another month, like he could argue with it. We was all starvin’, Christ sake. Ma got so ’lirious, it was like she wudna h’self but some wild animal-like. Screamin, some muscle or somethin in her throat broke, why she don’t talk right now. An you know she ain’t right in the head neither.
    Some old lady was gonna help Ma get you born, but there we wuz “embarkin” so she had to leave the boat, see. So it was just Pa. Poor Pa out of his head. All along, Pa was goin’ nuts with worry he said. Sayin’ what if they wudna let us land? in the Yoo Ess? what if they send us back to fuckin’ Nazizz they’re gonna kill us like hogs. See, these Nazizz was comin’ after Pa at where he worked, he hadta leave. We hadta leave, where we was livin’. We didn’t always live like animals, see, we wa’nt like this…Shit, I don’t remember too well, I was just a little kid scared all the time. They was tellin us there’s Nazizz submarines�“torpedoes”�tryin to sink us, why we was zigzaggin an took so long to cross. Poor Pa, all the time he’s lookin through this “money-belt” thing he got around his middle checkin the papers, the vissas. God damn you got to have them vissas with all kinds-a stamps an things, you ain’t a Yoo Ess cit’zen, see the fuckers won’t let you in if they can. Fuckers sure didn’t want us lookin at us like we stunk! Like we was worse’n hogs ’cause we cudna speak right. All Pa could worry about on the boat was this papers gonna be stolen. Everybody stealin what they could, see. That’s where I learned, snatchin things. You run, old people ain’t gonna run after you. You’re little enough, you can hide like a rat. A rat is littler than I am, I learned from em. Pa goes around sayin his guts was eat out by rats on that crossin. It’s some joke of Pa’s you got to ’preciate the old man’s sense-humor. My guts was eat out by rats on the ’Lantic Ozean I heard him sayin to some old lady in the cemetery here she’s puttin flowers on some grave an Pa gets to talkin to her, like he says for us never to do, talkin to