Read Online Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online Page A

darker than Yvette’s hair, and the roots of the hair were brown, and it was all snarled like a cheap wig, and really ugly—and the forehead was so bruised and swollen, and the eyes—you could hardly see the eyes—and the mouth was, like, broken—and swollen, and purple—you could not make sense of the face, almost. It was a face that would need to be straightened out, like with a pliers.
    A face like Hallowe’en. A face hardly female.
    “No. Not Momma.”
    Lisette spoke sharply, decisively. Molina was holding her hand—she was tugging to get free.
    This was the morgue: this was a corpse.
    This was not a woman but a thing —you could not believe really that it had ever been a woman.
    Only just the head and the face were exposed, the rest of the body was covered by a white sheet but you could see the shape of it, the size, and it was not Lisette’s mother—obviously. Older than Momma and something had happened to the body to make it small—smaller. Some sad pathetic broken female-like debris washed up on the shore.
    It was lucky, the sheet was drawn up over the chest. The breasts. And the belly, and pubic hair—fatty-raddled thighs of a woman of such an age, you would not want to look at.
    The guys were quick to laugh, and to show their contempt. Any girl or woman not good-looking, and if her chest was flat, or she was a little heavy—you would walk fast to avoid their eyes—if you were fast enough, you could hide.
    “This is not Momma. This is no one I know.”
    Molina was close beside Lisette instructing her to take her time, this was very important Molina was saying, to make an eiii-dee of the woman was very important, to help the police find who had done these terrible things to her.
    Lisette pulled free of Molina. “I told you—this is not Momma! It is not. ”
    Something hot and acid came up into her mouth—she swallowed it down—she gagged again, and swallowed and she was shivering so hard her teeth chattered like ivory dice shaken. Badly she wanted to run from the damn nasty room which was cold like a refrigerator, and smelly—a faint chemical smell—a smell of something sweet, sickish—like talcum powder and sweat—but Molina detained her.
    They were showing her clothes now, out of the box. Dirty bloodstained clothes like rags. And a coat—a coat that resembled her mother’s red suede coat—but it was filthy, and torn—it was not Momma’s stylish coat she’d bought a year ago, in the January sales at the mall.
    Lisette said she’d never seen any of these things before. She had not. She was breathing funny like her friend Keisha who had asthma and Molina was holding her hand and saying things to comfort her, bullshit things to comfort her, telling her to be calm, it was all right . . . if she did not think that this woman was her mother, it was all right: there were other ways to identify the victim.
    Victim. This was a new word. Like body, drainage ditch.
    Molina led her to a restroom. Lisette had to use the toilet, fast. Like her insides had turned to liquid fire and had to come out. At the sink she was going to vomit but could not. Washed and washed her hands. In the mirror a face hovered—a girl’s face—in dark-purple-tinted glasses and her lips a dark grape color—around the left eye the scarring wasn’t so visible if she didn’t look closely and she had no wish to look closely. There had been three surgeries and after each surgery Momma had promised You’ll be fine! You will look better than new.
    They wanted to take her somewhere—to Family Services. She said she wanted to go back to school. She said she had a right to go back to school. She began to cry, she was resentful and agitated and she wanted to go back to school and so they said all right, all right for now Lisette, and they drove her to the school, and it was just after the bell had rung for lunchtime at 11:45 A.M. —so she went directly to the cafeteria, not waiting in line but into the cafeteria without a