Deep in the Heart of Me (5 page)

I refuse to say ow. I have two different ears, and it used to be a story, and I got made fun of, but not anymore. I beat the last one who dared to call me mutt-ears good and solid. But both of them—my ears, for all they are different, both of them hurt like hell when twisted by Mom.

At breakfast next morning we are hastening to down eggs and sidemeat and Granma's bread fried in the grease and covered with real maple syrup. We barely talk now that we're trying to get chores done and look halfway decent enough to get to school. Especially me, though it's my business only. I'm taking pains is all I mean.

"Miss Charlotte won't let us stay in class if there's manure on our boots," Ebbie says sopping his bread in the syrup.

"Well, I don't like manure," my youngest sister Colleen says wrinkling her tiny nose.

That must mean the rest of us like it.

I am taking care not to get food on my shirt. I'm not wearing bibs today so my shirt has nothing to hide behind.

"Father, did you tell our children the news?" Mom says looking mostly at me.

We all stop eating at once. And just like that, I know. And my appetite is gone. I put down the fork, and I wipe over my mouth.

She's going to have a baby. Another.

"You are going to have a brother or sister come spring," Dad says. He also looks mostly at me.

She nearly died having Pee-Wee.

He promised me then there would be no more. We nearly lost her. Our mother.

"You said we wouldn't take a million dollars for Pee-Wee, but wouldn't give a sawbuck for another," I say. And everyone laughs when he says it, but it was a promise.

"Well, 'another' is here," Dad says with the voice that means there is no discussion.

"But…." I don't know what to say. I look at Mom.

"It's all right. Eat your breakfast Antonio," she says. When I just keep staring, she says, "I'm healthy as a horse."

"You were last time," I say. I've no wish to worry the girls, but the trouble comes later when she gives birth. That's how it was with Peter.

"Tonio," Dad says, and it's a rebuke.

I push back my chair. All of their eyes are on me. I'm the leader. When I say it's time to go, we go. All of their chairs scoot back, and they are off for books and lunch bags.

She is pregnant. I do not kiss her cheek before leaving the house today.

I stomp across the yard, and they all keep their distance from me.

I'm nearly blind to the morning, nearly blind to the land.

Deaf to the birds and their songs.

"Antonio," Mom calls me.

I don't want to see her, talk to her. But I stop in my tracks, and I wait, and she shoos the others forward, and I groan knowing she will want to walk with me and dig in my thoughts.

She catches up and threads her arm through mine. I move with her, but I won't look her in the face.

"From the time you were born, your father would carry you over our land. It got in you that way. You tried to eat it when you were young. Dad called you mud grubber," she says.

I do not smile, but I am listening. I have so many memories of my father doing this, speaking to me in a low voice as we stumble along, and I ride in his arms or on his shoulders.

"He's mud grubber," I say.

"My Tony, my beautiful son," she says, and it is something I can only bow to when she says it. I am her Tony, but not over this.

"He promised," I say. I stop now. I'm ready to break. "You nearly died…." I can't finish. She knows how it was. Like Shaun’s wife, Peg. Her in a grave with the baby…and Shaun…we all see the pieces of that one.

And that young woman west of Halona Creek, who died and left twins with no mother. Mom and grandma cried over that story and sent baby clothes. And I'm not supposed to worry on this?

"Shhh now," she says holding to my arm. "Look at those trees," she says pointing to the gully that runs along our house.

Dad put a stand of pecan trees there when I was born. They are almost fourteen years, and I harvest big burlap bags of nuts from them every year with enough to give and sell. He has done that for each of us, planted something or made something that is ours.

I know this place, the sounds of it, the hum, and how it has a memory. Dad says it has kept us alive and tried, more than once, to kill us. The land is his battle, but he is hers. That's how I see it. He would kill her for his own selfish ends. There aren't enough sons, and there isn't enough land to fill him.

"Tony," she says, and she touches my cheek, "this is a blessing. A child is always a blessing."

I swallow and refuse to let tears show. "If you die, I'll never forgive him," I say.

I know it hurts her. I don't want that, but she is hurting me, hurting all of us.

I've made her mad now. Maman is very beautiful for all the children and toil she is the most beautiful mother in these parts. But she has a temper, my mother, and when she is angry, like now, like last night when I quit school, and she found out about her sons and the picture of nakedness, her eyes go dark, and her mouth goes into a line, and she twists something or digs her fingers somewhere. "You listen to me Mr. High-hat, you will love your father and your family, or you are not my son, you are the devil's son."

We stare eye to eye as she has pulled me down to her level with a hand on the back of my cap.

It is hard to hold her look, but not impossible.

She moves her hand enough to thunk the back of my head.

"Yes, Ma'am." She has jarred that out of me. I had no plan to say it.

"You are my oldest son but you are still my child, and I am your maman, and I do not ask your permission to have babies."

I don't bring up the promise.

She withdraws her hands. "Now go to school."

I'm trying. But I don't say that either.

"Oh come here," she says, once again embracing me. "My Tony. My sweet boy."

I am bent over, my hands holding my books and my lunch, but I allow her to hug me though my patience is thin as the pastry dough Granma stretches over the top of our table.

She finally lets go and pinches my cheek. "Look at this fuzz on my little boy's cheeks," she says meaning the beard that is not thick enough to shave every day but in the sun, it's like a downy invasion.

"Maman," I say, embarrassed.

Finally, I can go, the gaggle way ahead on the road and the herd out of sight. And I…I am a big fat sissy trying to find the man that my mother has just chased into hiding.

By the time I near school I have a wet patch on the back of my shirt.

It's not fall yet, still, the highest heat we've had all summer like someone left hell's gate open. The grasses seed and the trees start to pale, and the leaves fade while their limbs lighten and groan in the wind.

It's a big sky here, made for swelling whatever it is I'm already feeling, making it run all over. Even today with clouds the color of milk spilled on the barn's floor, even today it's endless, this rumbling sky.

God's yoke, Dad says, is to live with nature, it's his easy burden, to walk the land and see your humble place in the kingdom.

Take care of the land, take care of the family, take care of your neighbor. There are things Dad says, all my life, parts of this same conversation I know as well as the Our Father. And my answers are equally the same.

"When I'm gone you will carry it...this land…this family," Dad says.

I don't like it when he talks of being gone. I hate that.

"You won't get old," I say, already worried he is ancient.

He laughs at this.

How many times I have studied his face, his lips, and whiskers and the crowded teeth beyond and the way his chin moves when he smiles.

I'm mad at him. And I love him fiercely.

But what I told Maman is true. If she dies, I'll never forgive him.

I finally reach school, and I step into the classroom, and I see her—Sobe. Then I see the rest but nothing as important as her. She has a new dress each day, not like my sisters who must wear the same dresses as many days as they can.

"Good morning Tonio," Sobe says to me as I near her desk. Now this blue color in the dress and a bow in her hair, it's very pretty—the effect.

Matter of fact just seeing her, it's like a spring floodgate has opened in me. I feel the rush in my chest. But I nod like I am barely giving her a thought in this world. Yet I see her in that one look, down to her fingernails as she holds a book she'd been reading.

I want to study her, but I can't do that until I'm in my desk. How I do it is, I take one look and then I think about it. That worked most of yesterday and the day before. One glance is all I need. One glance at a time for the album in my head.

"Tonio," Miss Charlotte says hurrying into the room. "You and Sobe."

Now, what? She stands then I do, and we go forward. I fold my arms and stand tall. I am taller than Sobe. A man feels this way. I think.

"You are moving into the small room with the tenth graders and up."

"Why?" I say. I've no inclination to go in there, always planned to quit before I had to. When our schools consolidated, we got the Smiths and a new teacher, Mr. Halloran. He looks more suited to knitting doilies than wrangling buffs. Elsie says the Smiths get going sometimes and run right over Halloran. Dad says he's a good man and he'll figure it out.

We're related to some around here. If not by blood by the past. Mom's parents came in a group to work in the coal mines.

Dad's came for the land. But we're not related to the Smiths. I refuse to be related to those cafflers.

"It is better this way. Gather your things," Miss Charlotte says.

Joseph eyes me. He won't like this. But he is in eighth so he needs to stay put. I gather my things with the eagerness of someone going into the arena to fight jackals with a toothpick.

But here's my consolation and my worry all rolled into one--Sobe moves with me.

Miss Charlotte herds us over to the new paddock like we'd lose our way. I wish Sobe would look at me, and right as I wish it, she does, quickly, behind Miss Charlotte's back. She gives me a smile that goes inside me. I have smiled back without thinking about whether or not I want to.

And right then we have arrived at the new room. Mr. Halloran gets on his feet. He seems delighted over Sobe, and equally so over me. He waves his hand toward two desks, one behind the other, in the row nearest the window.

Coyote sounds come from the Smiths in the back of the room as Sobe crosses the floor. I give them a look I'm fully willing to back up as I follow her. She chooses desk four, I move to five. I'm dizzy to sit so near. The Smiths are laughing, and Mr. Halloran says, "Silence Class."

The Smiths ignore him. He speaks over their noises and introduces Sobe, then me.

I need no introducing. My own sister sits up front near Halloran's desk, and all in here know who I am, many have worked at our farm and times I've worked at theirs with Dad. So there's Elsie sitting up front. She's our brilliant one, promoted here to be challenged she's that wickedly smart. Our family prizes that as if she's proof there might be hope for the rest of us. Well, I know there is for me.

So there I sit, and Sobe is so near, so near and one of her braids is an inch from my fingers, and I think to touch it, just a light touch so she won't know.

The first spitball lands on my shoulder. I get on my feet and turn to the Smiths. I'm holding the disgusting thing in my fingers, but I know better than to throw it in here.

Halloran says very tiredly, "Take your seat, Mr. Clannan."

I turn to the front of the room and take my seat.

In a couple of seconds, I feel another, this time behind my ear, the round ear that sticks out, as they are different like I said. Mr. Halloran is taking attendance, and the Smiths are laughing behind their hands and grinning at me. I flick the paper from behind my ear. "Don't do it again," I say outright.

"Mr. Clannan," Halloran says.

I stand. "Yes, Teacher?"

"We do not speak out in this classroom," he says, a red flush in his neck and cheeks.

"Yes, Sir."

"Sit down and be still."

I sit then. And Halloran finishes the roll, and I feel another hit my neck and the boys back there are all laughing now. I peel the large wad off my neck and throw it on the floor and decide to handle it like Dad would. I raise my hand.

"Yes, Mr. Clannan?" Halloran says.

I stand. "Sir, the ceiling is falling in."

They break out in raucous laughter.

"The ceiling?" Halloran looks up at the board and battens ceiling over our heads. It's pretty well peppered with spitballs. "I don't see anything amiss Mr. Clannan. Sit down at once."

The boys in the back crack up all over then.

So that's how it is. He looks at the evidence and says he sees nothing amiss.

I sit, and two more spitballs hit me, one on my shoulder another on my head. Now those boys want me to make a show.

Sobe turns and looks at me. A spitball lands on the top of my shoulder, another in my hair.

Sobe turns to the front of the room and raises her hand.