Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

neighbors stopped speaking, lawsuits were threatened, at least
one dog was suspected of being poisoned... and all for what, Kelly demanded laughing, all for what: dirt roads!
    The
Senator laughed but well, yes, he supposed he understood, you have to know the
human heart, the cherished trivia of the human heart, there is nothing not political as Thomas Mann said no matter how
petty how selfish how ignorant it seems to neutral observers, Kelly was too
young to understand, maybe.
    "Young? I'm not young at all. I don't feel young at all."
    The
words sudden and fierce, and her laughter rather fierce, so that the others
looked at her; he looked at her.
     
    She
was determined not to say Senator I wrote my senior honors thesis on you unless the statement could be supremely casual, amusing.

 

    She
was pulling herself up using the steering wheel as a lever.
    She
was trembling with the effort, whimpering like a small sick frightened child.
    Like a child
pleading Help me. Don't forget me. I'm
here.
    How
many minutes had passed since the car ran off the road, was it fifteen minutes ?— forty minutes?—she could not gauge for some of this time
she had not been fully conscious waking suddenly in terror as something
snakelike rushed across her face, her neck, soaking her hair, not a snake and
not anything truly alive but a gushing coil of black water as the car which had
been apparently precariously balanced on its side shifted with the pressure of
the current to overturn completely.
    Now
trapped in here, not knowing where here was, not knowing how far away he was, upside down in utter blackness
squirming and panting trying to get free groping for—what?— the steering
wheel—her stiff fingers grasping the broken wheel to use as a lever as he had used it as a lever working himself free.
    The
steering wheel positioned her at least. She could not see but she could
calculate: how far to the driver's door that would open for her, she was
certain it would, it must, open for her as
it had opened for him, not wanting to think that perhaps the
door had been flung open partly by the collision with the guardrail and had
subsequently been shut by the force of the current, the rapid churning water
she could not see but feel, hear, smell, sense with every pore of her being:
her enemy, it was: a predator, it was: her Death.
    Not
wanting to think. To acknowledge.
    You're not an optimist, you're dead.
    She
was telling her mother she was a good girl but her mother seemed not to hear,
speaking quickly, as if embarrassed, her grave gray eyes Kelly had always
thought so lovely fixed on a spot behind Kelly's shoulder, "that sort of
love is just a"—Kelly could not hear but thought it might be a fever in the blood —"it doesn't last, it can't last.
Darling, I don't even remember when your father and I... the last time... like that... that..."—now
profoundly embarrassed but pressing bravely onward for this was the
conversation they had had, Kelly remembered suddenly, when, aged sixteen, at
that time in her third year at the Bronxville Academy, she had fallen
desperately in love with a boy and they had made love awkwardly and miserably
Kelly for the first time and subsequently the boy avoided her and Kelly had
wanted to die, could not sleep could not eat could not endure she was certain,
like one of her friends at the school who had made in fact a serious suicide
attempt swallowing a full container of barbiturates washed down with a pint of
whiskey and taken by ambulance to the emergency room of Bronxville General
she'd had her stomach pumped out, her frail life saved, and Kelly Kelleher did
not want to die really, crying in Mother's arms she swore she did not want to
die she was a good girl really, she was not a bad girl really, she did not want
to take the birth-control pill like the other girls, and Mother was comforting
her, Mother was there to comfort her, even now though not seeming to hear her
(because of the rushing of the water perhaps, the