Mudwoman by Joyce Carol Oates

Author:Joyce Carol Oates [Oates, Joyce Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780062095640
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

. . . mummified remains believed to be those of three-year-old Jedina Kraeck, who disappeared in April 1965 from the Star Lake residence where she had lived with her mother Marit Kraeck and older sister Jewell.

Warrants had been issued for the arrest of Marit Kraeck in April 1965 on charges of child neglect, child abuse, and attempted homicide but these warrants had never been served.

A resident of Star Lake and his son fishing on the Black Snake River discovered the “mummified remains” in the refrigerator and reported the discovery to the Beechum County sheriff’s department.

Detectives with the sheriff’s department report that their investigation into the disappearance of Marit Kraeck is “ongoing.”

Another time, several years later.

When Meredith Ruth Neukirchen was named “outstanding girl” in her seventh grade class at Carthage Middle School.

For often it happened in those years, Meredith made her adoptive parents proud of her, and happy for her.

Not that it was difficult to make the Neukirchens happy.

Never did they urge their daughter to study hard—never did they coerce her into behaving in any way other than the way she wished to behave. It was marvelous to them yet somehow not so very surprising for the miracle of their lives was that “Merry” had been returned to them—this was the profound miracle, beside which the child’s high grades and sweet disposition were a secondary matter.

Very smart, and very sweet! From Konrad she seemed to have acquired a sharply inquisitive mind, if not a propensity to speak at length; from Agatha, a slight propensity for physical clumsiness. She was a quiet girl, everyone agreed—an “inward” sort of girl—“mature” for her age.

She did not want to hurt or offend her parents who so doted on her and so she never shut the door to her room quite all the way—but nearly so—spending time alone at the child-sized desk which within a few years she outgrew as she outgrew the child-bed with the white headboard and the handsewn clothes Agatha sewed for her with the cycle of seasons. There entered into her life at unpredictable times fugues of forgetfulness and entrancement when she appeared to be, to her adoptive parents, a mysterious being in their household as a fairy elf or luminescent light might appear in the most ordinary setting inviting you to touch it—to pass your hand through it. “She is God’s gift to us, we have not deserved,” Agatha said, with a shiver; provoking Konrad to say in reproach, “If God has given us this daughter, you can be sure we deserve her. God has never yet made a mistake—as Einstein noted: ‘God does not play dice with the universe.’ ”

What seemed most fascinating to Meredith were books: printed pages: words. These were not mere school-texts or pastimes but might have been doorways into unknown regions. As the child seemed to have learned to read precociously with little conscious effort so she seemed to memorize with no effort—entire pages, long passages of texts were retained in her brain, vividly, thrillingly.

She was a good athlete, too—or usually; once she learned to mimic others.

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