The Son of a Certain Woman (28 page)

The boys and girls of Bonaventure lined the street, which made me feel like the sole attraction in a miniature parade. There were a few shouted remarks from deep in the pack. “Nice bodyguards, Percy. One nice one, anyway. Nice new face too.” There were wolf whistles and shouts of “Penelope.” I couldn’t help but identify with the boys who merely groaned, as if to themselves, “Jesus, will you look at that piece of ass.”

Just outside the gates of St. Bon’s, my mother looked around at all the boys and girls until they fell silent. My mother, her fists clenched at her sides, rose slightly on the balls of her feet. “LISTEN TO ME,” she shouted, “every last one of you little snotbags. What Brother McHugh does to you is not Percy’s fault. Percy Joyce is not a tattletale. It wasn’t because of Percy that Brother McHugh beat up Stevie Coffin. Tell your older brothers and sisters, tell your fathers and your mothers. It is not open season on Percy Joyce. Buddy Coffin will get what’s coming to him. The next person who harms a hair on my son’s head will end up with a broken nose.”

“Who’s going to break
my
nose? You and her?” one of the older boys from Brother Rice laughed. “Who’s gonna take on Buddy Coffin? You?” He pointed to Medina.

My mother pointed back at him. “Would you like me to demonstrate? If I have to make an example of someone, it might as well be you.” The boy grinned. My mother walked straight up to him and slapped him in the face so hard he almost fell over backward.

“Jesus,” one of the boys whispered. “Did you see that?”

“You can’t just go around hitting people,” one of the older Heart girls declared, but she did not step forward. My mother pointed at the boy she’d struck. “Ask him what I can or cannot do. I live at 44 Bonaventure Avenue. I’m not hiding out like Buddy Coffin.”

The boy moved off, his hand to his face, into the mass of tunics and blazers that parted for him, no one saying a word.

“Let’s hope
he
doesn’t have an older brother with nothing to lose,” Medina said.

“In you go, Percy, into school,” my mother said as she walked back toward me and Medina, her face as scarlet as if she was the one who had been slapped. “Now!”

I ran across the field in front of St. Bon’s, unsure if I was being pursued or if any of the Brothers had witnessed what had happened on the street. “Slut,” I heard some girl say. The word was taken up in a half-hearted staccato, ringing out like the word “here” during the taking of attendance in my homeroom. “You’re a slut and Percy’s a bastard,” some boy shouted. I wondered what they meant,
really
meant, by “slut”—perhaps not, or not just, that she had been knocked up. Perhaps there were rumours spread by some growing minority who suspected the truth, who were able to
see
the truth, piece it together from what was commonly known and the way my mother and my aunt couldn’t help but look at one another or stand side by side, a little too close, their shoulders sometimes touching, lingering just that tiny bit that didn’t seem quite right. Perhaps they were giving themselves away by furtive eye contact, the briefest exchanges of conspiring smiles. Was anyone on the Mount watching them
that
closely, as closely as, for other reasons, I did? On the school steps, I looked back.
All I could see were students, students who sounded as if they were exhorting two combatants to tear each other limb from limb. But then the first bells rang out more or less at once from all of the Seven Schools, and the boys and girls resolved into streams of like-coloured uniforms and went their separate ways. I couldn’t see my mother or Medina.

I hurried inside and sat by myself in my homeroom until the other boys poured in, whooping and laughing. “Your mother knocked O’Keefe into last week,” the boy who sat behind me said. “Penny Joyce could take on all the Coffins at once,” another ambiguously said. I stared at my desk, still unable to credit what I had seen my mother do.

M
Y
homeroom teacher, Brother Hogan, said that Brother McHugh wanted to have a word with me. I was escorted by a monitor to Brother Hogan’s little office, where Brother McHugh, still wearing his overcoat and gloves, was sitting side on to a desk as if to impress upon anyone who saw him that he had long ago outgrown such meagre accommodations.

“Percy Joyce,” McHugh said, turning about in his chair to face me.

“Yes, Brother.” I sat in the chair opposite his. Both chairs were like the armless wooden ones we used for assembly in the gym.

“You seem fine,” he said. “No major damage?”

“No, Brother.”

He said he bet he was the first person I’d ever met who regarded me with neither mockery nor pity. “I’ve respected you,” he said. “Everyone deserves respect. But I’m told that your mother has been making threats against my students. Making threats is against the law. And it will only make things worse for you. If something else
happens to you, it will be because she provoked it. There is only so much that I can do to protect you. I keep telling the Archbishop that. His Grace is most distressed about what happened to you, but even more distressed about what your mother did today. It took him a while to convince the parents of the student she struck not to have her charged for assaulting their son. Tell your mother that God helps those who help themselves, not those who strike boys and make threats. Violence solves nothing. Those to whom evil is done do evil in return. It is one thing for
me
to discipline a student, another altogether for
her
to take matters into her own hands. And still another to say in public that I beat up a student.”

He went on to say that I needed to be disabused of the notion that I was exceptional, a notion so many people in my life had indulged that I took it for granted everyone would do so, now and in the future, here and elsewhere. Did I think he had fallen in line with all the others and was catering to my “sulking sense of grievance against all people and all things”? Those who set themselves above others would be brought down—not as Buddy Coffin had brought me down, but more profoundly. “I know you have no idea what it is like to be laid so low, to have not a single thing in the world to rely on but yourself, to feel as if even God no longer cares about your fate. You revel in your so-called loneliness. I can’t stand boys who use their allotment at birth as a crutch, a way of begging sympathy from others. Such a person might as well go cap in hand through the streets.” He leaned across the desk and put his face close to mine. “You’ve seen how dangerous it can be to assume that someone is always looking out for you. My life’s purpose is to lead the Christian Brothers of the Mount, not to play guardian angel to some prideful misfit. I was asked by His Grace himself to keep you out of trouble. But you’re a far cry from being one of my primary concerns. You are a nuisance, nothing more. And you and your mother have done nothing to make my task the least bit easier. Tell her I said so. Tell her the two of you have to do your
part as well. Now don’t go back to class. I told your teacher you’d be going straight home. It’s best you leave before the other boys. There’s no telling how worked up they are because of what your mother did and said this morning.”

The end-of-class bell rang. As if that was his cue, McHugh stood, came round to my side of the desk and grabbed me by the upper left arm, which still hurt from whatever Buddy Coffin had done to it. “
Ow
,” I shouted.

“You know what? I’ve changed my mind. I have an idea.”

“What do you mean?” I managed in a quavering voice. I knew he hadn’t changed his mind, that he’d all along been planning whatever he was about to do and only told me I was free to go to give me an unwarranted sense of relief that, when he broke it, would terrify me that much more.

“Get up,” he ordered. So scared I thought my legs would give way, I managed to stand. He all but dragged me out into the hallway, which was thronged with boys rummaging through their lockers and heading to their next class. At first, the boys nearest us fell silent, they were so surprised to see me in the clutch of McHugh, who was so vigorously chewing his gum it might have been me he was gnashing between his teeth. Then the boys erupted in scorn and derision: “Looks like the little Joyce boy broke up with His Grace.” “It’s tunnel time, Percy, time for the long march to Brother Rice.” “Percy, Percy, what
did
you do? Mom and Pops can’t help you now.”

“
Shut up
,” McHugh roared, shoving boys out of the way with his free arm, sending one of them flying headfirst into an open locker door.

“I can take him for you, Brother McHugh,” one of the hall monitors said, but McHugh ignored him.

“
Make way
,” McHugh shouted. “Make way unless you want to come with us.”

The blue blazer–wearing boys of St. Bon’s made way as best they could, though McHugh all but trampled some of them, while
others did their best to incite him further by sticking out their feet to trip me.

“Don’t make me drag you,” McHugh warned.

We reached the two steps that led down to the iron tunnel door. McHugh, who must have had the key in his hand all along, shoved it in the lock, leaning down from the top step and pulling the door open.

“So long, Percy,” a boy behind us called out. “Not everyone comes back. Ask Stevie Coffin.”

“In you go.” McHugh flung me inside.

For a second I thought he planned to close the door but stay on the St. Bon’s side of it, leaving me locked in the tunnel by myself. But he stepped inside, relocked the door behind us and put the key in the pocket of his black slacks. To our left was another door, on which there was a sign that said: “To Holy Heart High School. Please lock the door behind you.”

“Follow me,” he muttered, setting off down the tunnel at such a clip I stumbled to keep up. Water pipes painted white ran through the tunnel at the juncture of the ceiling and the walls. The air was chilly, the tunnel dimly lit by flickering fluorescent lamps spaced far apart on the ceiling; the walls, floors and ceilings were made of concrete and had that oily basement smell that I remembered from the night I found the Vat Rat in the sump pump hole. They were stained with what looked like sweat marks, water seeping slowly in through cracks too small to see. In places, water dripped in greater volume from the ceiling and collected in small puddles on the floor. On the walls were hung framed, glass-encased photographs and portraits of the Christian Brothers, the first of whom came from Ireland to Newfoundland in 1875.

“Are you going to strap me?” I called, but I kept losing ground on him and he didn’t turn around. I couldn’t help but picture my oversized hands as they would look when McHugh was done stropping them, my oversized fingers bloodied and broken, gory
stumps such as Pops had once described. “You’re not allowed to strap me. The Archbishop said!”

“That’s right.” McHugh’s voice echoed between the tunnel walls. “Maybe he’ll send you a Get Well Soon card. But I’m in charge of all the schools on the Mount. That means I’m in charge of you.”

“No!” My voice sounded thin, even to me. “My mother and the Archbishop are in charge of me.”

“Maybe. But he said he wants someone to do
something
about you. He says you and your mother are out of control. You can’t control yourself, and she can’t control herself or you. Spouting filth on her back steps late at night. Uttering threats. Slapping a mere boy in the face.”

I wanted to turn and run back to the tunnel door, though I knew I couldn’t open it and McHugh would likely enjoy dragging me back again toward the Brother Rice end while I struggled to escape. Unexpectedly, at that moment, a young Presentation nun, her shoes echoing as loudly as ours in the empty tunnel, appeared around a turn in the distance, her arms pressing books to her habit. “Sister,” McHugh said, sounding quite matter-of-fact. “Brother McHugh,” the nun answered. They passed each other without another word. As the nun drew closer to me, she slowed almost to a stop. I knew she recognized me and was surprised to see me in the tunnel, following McHugh to Brother Rice. “Sister?” I implored, hoping she might make some sort of objection to McHugh on my behalf. “Keep following Brother McHugh,” she said, and sped up, rounding the turn out of sight.

Ahead of me, McHugh stopped and leaned his back against the wall of the tunnel. As I caught up with him, he reached into the pocket of his slacks and withdrew a stick of spearmint gum that he slowly unwrapped, then rolled the paper and tinfoil into a tight ball that he slipped into the chest pocket of my blazer. He put the gum in his mouth and chewed it with his front teeth. He patted the
wall to indicate that I should lean against it as he was doing. Soon we were standing side by side, our backs against the cold concrete of the tunnel wall, like two people who, having met while going in opposite directions, had stopped to talk. He turned toward me, leaning his shoulder against the wall and putting his hands in the pockets of his slacks. I looked up at him and he smiled with his mouth closed, still working the gum with his front teeth, his white hair a touch dishevelled, his clerical collar askew. I waited for him to speak, but he said nothing, only regarded me for so long that I couldn’t hold his stare and looked at the floor.

“It doesn’t show any signs of clearing up, does it, that face of yours? Not from Buddy Coffin, I mean, but from the mess you came into the world with. We’re all so tired of it. Everyone must make allowances for Percy Joyce. Because of his face, because his father ran away and left his mother holding something like a baby. Because of the Archbishop. What would you do if His Grace wasn’t in your corner? He has himself convinced that you were born on June 24 for some divine purpose, that your face and hands and feet are therefore signs of that divine purpose. I know several people who were born on June 24 and each of them is far more likely than you to accomplish something of note in the name of God.

“His Grace sees a fatherless only child whose face looks like a leper’s, whose mother lives in the past, hoping her lost love will come back for her and who, until he does, will go on blaming God and never set foot inside a church.