We Were the Mulvaneys. Joyce Carol Oates

this was quite a coup.

      In the junior high, where Della Rae Duncan was a student, the girls knew even less. The smartest girls, the leaders, the most popular girls—Marianne Mulvaney, Suzi Quigley, Trisha LaPorte, Bonnie Sherman and their clique. These were cheerleaders, class officers (Marianne Mulvaney was secretary), members of the Drama Club, the French Club, the Quill and Scroll Literary Society, the school chorus. They were Honors Students. They were active in the Christian Youth Conference. Because they were good-girl girls they believed they were not snobbish and they competed with one another in being friendly, being nice, to the most obscure students; the most pathetic losers; like Della Rae Duncan, and other “trailer-village” kids. Their smiles were golden coins scattered carelessly in the school corridors, their Hi’s! and H’lo’s! and How are you’s! were melodic as the cries of spring birds.

      It wasn’t until after the Christmas holiday, when school resumed again in January, that Marianne Mulvaney turned a corner in the girls’ locker room and saw, to her discomfort—Della Rae Duncan. Just sitting there, slump-shouldered, on a bench in front of her opened locker. Staring at the floor. Della Rae’s face was puffy and embittered like a grown woman’s. Her lips appeared to be moving. Her oily hair lifted from her head in stiff coils. Gym class had begun ten minutes before, and at roll call Della Rae had been marked absent, but she was in no hurry now, just slouched there in a kind of torpor. Marianne, so fastidious in her personal grooming, saw in dismay that Della Rae was partly undressed, in baggy gym shorts that ballooned about her hips and a frayed, grimy-gray bra (what heavy breasts!) held together by safety pins. Her flesh that looked stained, with its oily glisten, and a smell of talcumy sweat, seemed on the verge of spilling from her clothes.

      For all her social poise at the age of fourteen, Marianne was a shy girl; physically shy; never comfortable in the locker room undressing with the other girls, still less in the communal showers. At church, Reverend Appleby spoke in his flushed, impassioned, somewhat tongue-tied way of sins of the flesh as temptations to us all but Marianne could see little temptation. At home, she would have been mortified with embarrassment had even her mother glimpsed her in just underwear.

      Too late to retreat, Della Rae had seen her. Marianne’s pretty face lit up in its customary dazzling smile. “Hi, Della Rae!”—the very voice, a lilting soprano, of Caucasian privilege. The girls’ eyes locked. Sharp as a blade was Della Rae’s black stare: Marianne felt her face burn at once, and her heart kicked as if she’d been shot, like a bird in flight, yet like a wounded bird carried forward by sheer momentum, scarcely faltering in her stride. Marianne had returned to the locker room to get a packet of Kleenex from her locker but she couldn’t remain in the other girl’s presence, not a moment longer! She retreated, still smiling, her face aching with the effort, as Della Rae Duncan stared at her with undisguised hatred.

      But why me? What have I ever done to you? Whatever has been done to you—how is it my fault?

      In a daze, as if she’d been slapped—she, Marianne Mulvaney!—Marianne returned to gym class, where a volleyball game was just beginning. Miss Deltz, the gym instructor, asked Marianne if she’d seen Della Rae Duncan, and Marianne nodded yes. Miss Deltz, a short, wiry, white-blond woman of about thirty, regarded Marianne, one of her favorites, with a look of cautious confidentiality. “Those people, they cause more trouble … That kind of a girl. Sad!” It was a murmur, more like thinking out loud than actual speech. Marianne stared at her gym shoes, cleanly white, with white laces perfectly tied, white-ribbed woollen socks. She could not think of a word to say.

      Della Rae never did show up for gym that day and if any of the girls missed her, not a word was said.

       PROVIDENCE

      Well then! Don’t believe if you choose not to. I know what happened and I know what truth is and God’s purpose is not altered whether such as you believe, or not. And we’d laugh, protesting. Oh Mom.

      It was December 1938, between Christmas and New Year’s. Corinne was seven years old. Ida Hausmann, her mother, was driving the family car with just Corinne as a passenger, that car that was a battered old 1931 Dodge like a sunk submarine gray and speckled with rust like pimples. They were at about the midpoint returning home from the village of Ransomville, about four miles yet to go, and a storm was blowing up, rain and sleet and then sleet and snow, the sky above the mountain-rim of the Valley a frightening bluish black roiling with clouds like those fleeting distorted faces you see as you’re beginning to fall asleep, and the sun a smoldering red eye at the horizon like the last coal in the smithy engorged with flame by the blacksmith’s bellows. (Corinne’s grandfather Hausmann was a blacksmith, as well as a farmer.) And you could hear a strange sound like the hoarse-breathing suck! suck! suck! of the bellows that was the wind sucking at the struggling car wanting to pluck it from the road.

      Against her husband’s wishes (Mr. Hausmann was parsimonious regarding gasoline and the general upkeep of the family car and did not approve of “jaunts” to town except for practical purposes like shopping) Mrs. Hausmann had driven backcountry crudely plowed roads to visit a sickly older sister who lived in Ransomville; now on the return trip she was beginning to panic, the way the snow was coming down, an unexpected blizzard. Corinne’s mother was one of those women susceptible to “nerves”—“agitations”—of unknown origin, and in emergency situations she either took control completely, as when Corinne’s twelve-year-old brother lost several fingers in a threshing accident, or broke down completely, talking and moaning to herself, praying aloud, shaking her head as she was now, oh! they’d never make it home, if they were stuck in snow she’d never be able to shovel out (there was a snow shovel kept in the car trunk for such purposes), why had she gone to visit her sister oh why, why! Her eyes began to glisten, she was blinking rapidly. It was Corinne’s task to keep the inside of the driver’s windshield clean where it steamed up, swiping at it with mittened hands, but the steam kept coming back, and snow and ice particles were sticking to the outside, and Mrs. Hausmann wept and scolded as if it were Corinne’s fault.

      Corinne was a big girl in her own eyes, not a scaredy-baby, and she didn’t cry easily, but the way the wind rocked the car! and sucked at it! and snow was swirling and rushing toward them like a tunnel they had no choice but to drive into, for there was no turning back. And the windshield wipers were going slower and slower, encrusted with ice. And Mrs. Hausmann cried I can’t see, Corinne keep the window clear I told you! And Corinne wiped frantically at the glass, leaning across the steering wheel, but what could she do?—the ice was on the outside. And Mrs. Hausmann could drive only ten miles an hour, or less. And at a plank bridge over a creek invisible in a haze of seething white there was a ramp so icy-steep the Dodge’s tires even with their chains began to spin, and slip, and the Dodge began to slide backward and Mrs. Hausmann gunned the motor and still the car was sliding, then the motor sputtered and died, Mrs. Hausmann screamed as the car tilted off the ramp entirely, the most sickening sensation Corinne would remember all her life as they fell, overturning into a twelve-foot culvert beside the road. God help us! Mrs. Hausmann screamed. God help my baby and me, don’t let us die!

      It might have been that God heard, and took mercy: lucky for mother and daughter, the culvert was solid ice at its base, not water. The car upended and came slowly to rest and there was silence save for the wind and the sifting-hissing sound of the snow that was like something alive, and malevolent. Corinne saw that her mother’s mouth was bleeding, and her black wool cloche hat, her only good hat, was crooked over one eye, its sprig of shiny red holly berries askew. Later, Mrs. Hausmann would discover that two of her front teeth had loosened, where she’d been thrown against the steering wheel, but she didn’t notice now, she had no time. She panted, grunted like a man forcing the driver’s door open, and outward, then crawling out, with much difficulty into the freezing snow, her heavy skirt hiking up revealing lardy-pale thighs and thick-mesh beige stockings in such a way Corinne had never seen before. Corinne! Take my hand! Hurry! she cried. Corinne grabbed her mother’s gloved hand and climbed, for all the terror of the situation, monkey-nimble out of the car into a roaring of snowflakes so