She laughed saying her mom didn’t like her eating junk food but her mom didn’t know.
Jude said what our moms don’t know don’t hurt them.
The Sacrifice of the Corn Maiden was a ritual of the Onigara Indians, Jude told us. In school we had studied Native Americans as they are called but we had not studied the Onigara Indians, Jude said had been extinct for two hundred years. The Iroquois had wiped out the Onigaras, it was survival of the fittest.
The Corn Maiden would be our secret. Beforehand we seemed to know it would be the most precious of our secrets.
Jude and the Corn Maiden walked ahead alone. Denise and Anita behind. Back of the stores, past the Dumpsters, we ran to catch up.
Jude asked would the Corn Maiden like to visit her house and the Corn Maiden said yes but she could not stay long. Jude said it was just a short walk. Jude pretended not to know where the Corn Maiden lived (but she knew: crummy apartments at 15th Street and Van Buren) and this was a ten-minute walk, approximately.
We climbed the back way. Nobody saw. Old Mrs. Trahern would be watching TV in her room, and would not see.
If she saw she would not seriously see. For at a distance her eyes were too weak.
The guest wing was a newer part of the house. It overlooked a swimming pool. But the pool was covered with a tarpaulin, Jude said nobody had swum in it for years. She could remember wading in the shallow end but it was long ago like the memory belonged to someone else.
The guest wing was never used either, Jude said. Most of the house was never used. She and her grandmother lived in just a few rooms and that was fine with them. Sometimes Mrs. Trahern would not leave the house for weeks. She was angry about something that had happened at church. Or maybe the minister had said something she found offensive. She had had to dismiss the black man who’d driven her “limo-zene.” She had dismissed the black woman who’d been her cook and house cleaner for twenty years. Groceries were delivered to the house. Meals were mostly heat up in the microwave. Mrs. Trahern saw a few of her old friends in town, at the Village Woman’s Club, the Hudson Valley Friends of History, and the Skatskill Garden Club. Her friends were not invited to the house to see her.
Do you love your mom? Jude asked the Corn Maiden.
The Corn Maiden nodded yes. Sort of embarrassed.
Your mom is real pretty. She’s a nurse, I guess?
The Corn Maiden nodded yes. You could see she was proud of her mom but shy to speak of her.
Where is your dad? Jude asked.
The Corn Maiden frowned. She did not know.
Is your dad living?
Did not know.
When did you see your dad last?
Was not sure. She’d been so little...
Did he live around here, or where?
California, the Corn Maiden said. Berkeley.
My mom is in California, Jude said. Los Angeles.
The Corn Maiden smiled, uncertainly.
Maybe your dad is with my dad now, Jude said.
The Corn Maiden looked at Jude in wonderment.
In Hell, Jude said.
Jude laughed. That way she had, her teeth glistening.
Denise and Anita laughed. The Corn Maiden smiled not knowing whether to laugh. Slower and slower the spoon was being lifted to her mouth, her eyelids were drooping.
We would carry the Corn Maiden from Jude’s room. Along a corridor and through a door into what Jude called the guest wing, where the air was colder, and stale. And down a stairway in the guest wing and into a cellar to the storage room.
The Corn Maiden did not weigh much. Three of us, we weighed so much more.
On the outside of the storage room door, a padlock.
Anita and Denise had to leave by 6 P.M., to return to their houses for supper. So boring!
Jude would remain with the Corn Maiden for much of the night. To watch over. A vigil. She was excited by the candle flames, the incense-smell. The pupils of her eyes were dilated, she was highhigh on Ecstasy. She would not bind the Corn Maiden’s wrists and ankles, she said, until it was necessary.
Jude had a Polaroid camera, she would take pictures of the Corn Maiden sleeping on her bier.
As the Corn Maiden was being missed the next morning we would all be at school as usual. For nobody had seen us, and nobody would think of us.
Some pre-vert they’ll think of, Jude said. We can help them with that.
Remember, the Corn Maiden has come as our guest, Jude said. It is not kidnapping.
The Corn Maiden came to Jude on the Thursday before Palm Sunday, in April of the year.
Dial 911 your life is no longer your own.
Dial 911 you become a beggar.
Dial 911 you are stripped naked.
She met them at the curb. Distraught mother awaiting police officers in the rain outside Briarcliff Apts., 15th St., South Skatskill, 8:20 P.M. Approaching officers as they emerged from the patrol car pleading, anxious, trying to remain calm but her voice rising, Help me please help my daughter is missing! I came home from work, my daughter isn’t here, Marissa is eleven years old, I have no idea where she is, nothing like this has ever happened, please help me find her, I’m afraid that someone has taken my daughter! — Caucasian female, early thirties, blond, bare-headed, strong smell of beer on her breath.
They would question her. They would repeat their questions, and she would repeat her answers. She was calm. She tried to be calm. She began to cry. She began to be angry. She knew her words were being recorded, each word she uttered was a matter of public record. She would face TV cameras, interviewers with microphones out-thrust like sceptors. She would see herself performing clumsily and stumbling over her lines in the genre missing child I pleading mother. She would see how skillfully the TV screen leapt from her anxious drawn face and bloodshot eyes to the smiling innocent wide-eyed Marissa, sweet-faced Marissa with gleaming blond hair, eleven years old, sixth grader, the camera lingered upon each of three photos of Marissa provided by her mother; then, as the distraught mother continued to speak, you saw the bland sandstone facade of the “private” — “exclusive” — Skatskill Day School and next you were looking at the sinister nighttime traffic of 15th Street, South Skatskill along which, as a neutral-sounding woman’s voice explained, eleven-year-old Marissa Branty normally walked home to let herself into an empty apartment and begin to prepare supper for her mother (who worked at a Nyack medical clinic, would not be home until 8 P.M.) and herself; then you were looking at the exterior, rear of Briarcliff Apts. squat and ugly as an army barracks in the rain, where a few hardy residents stood curious staring at police officers and camera crews; then you saw again the mother of the missing girl Leah Bantry, thirty-four, obviously a negligent mother, a sick-with-guilt mother publicly pleading If anyone has seen my daughter, if anyone has any idea what might have happened to Marissa...
Next news item, tractor-trailer overturned on the New Jersey Turnpike, pile-up involving eleven vehicles, two drivers killed, eight taken by ambulance to Newark hospital.
So ashamed! But I only want Marissa back.
It was BREAKING NEWS! which means exciting news and by 10 P.M. of that Thursday in April each of four local TV stations was carrying the missing Marissa story, and would carry it at regular intervals for as long as there were developments and as long as local interest remained high. But really it was not “new” news, everyone had seen it before. All that could be “new” were the specific players and certain details to be revealed in time, with the teasing punctuality of a suspense film.