The Son of a Certain Woman (14 page)

I already knew that to have—or even be rumoured to have—a
big
one was better in the other boys’ eyes than having a small one. But I guessed it wouldn’t do to have an absurdly big one, one the size of your forearm, a long, limp limb that in full arousal would be of no appeal to anyone but the kind of people who paid money to look at circus freaks. Nevertheless, I said it was too big for a blow job and too big for any girl to have any kind of sex with, which meant it might be impossible for me to do it or ever reproduce—but I wasn’t sure. Most of the time, I said, when it wasn’t hard, it was just average, so I couldn’t prove I was telling the truth by showing it to anyone. And I would tell Uncle Paddy if they forced me to show them or ganged up on me and stripped off my slacks and underwear the way they did with some boys just for the fun of it. I said it was no shame to be descended from a man who had swum ashore from a sinking ship of the Spanish Armada and been taken in by an Irish woman who had never had a proper screw until she did it with my Spanish ancestor who survived the sinking of his Armada by the British who sunk it by sheer fluke as anyone who knew the real story would be glad to tell you.

Every day after I got home from school my mother sent me to Collins’s store at the top of the hill, well off Bonaventure, to buy her two packs of cigarettes. She couldn’t spare the near hour it would take to get the cigarettes herself and she never had enough money to buy a carton or more at a time once a week. She declined when Pops offered to give her the money and walk with her to Collins’s store on Saturdays to get the cigarettes. “And besides,” she said, “the more I have in the house, the more I smoke.” She said she figured she would probably go through four packs a day if she could afford it. But she didn’t want me to carry her cigarette money about all day at school, where I might lose it or be
relieved of it by some boys who, even knowing what their punishment would be, would be unable to resist, so she’d have me walk home, where she’d give me the money and send me back up the hill to the store.

She gave me a dollar bill. I bought two packages of Rothmans at forty-five cents a package and kept the remaining dime. Children weren’t allowed to buy cigarettes, but my mother would phone ahead to let Mrs. Collins know I was coming. In my blue blazer that bore on one chest pocket the yellow crest of St. Bon’s, I had to walk back up the hill past Brother Rice, past our rival school St. Pat’s, take a left off Bonaventure just before St. Bon’s, walk another half-dozen blocks, buy the cigarettes and ten cents’ worth of something for myself, and return home.

I set out every day after school for my mother’s cigarettes, regarding with dread the maroon-blue-green-blazer-lined sidewalk of Bonaventure, the black-tunic-and-white-blouse-lined sidewalk of the street across from Holy Heart.

For a while, with the dollar bill balled up in a fist that I kept in my pocket, I walked among the students of the Mount, protected by the ever-newly-toughened terms of my immunity, but never entirely convinced that I was safe. I walked above the fray all because of Uncle Paddy. It was like walking among a swarm of muzzled dogs who, though restrained from biting me or even barking, looked at me in a way that made it all too clear what they would do if one day they couldn’t help themselves.

Pops kept assuring my mother that no boy who knew what was good for him would lay a hand on me, but it was the boys who
didn’t
know what was good for them who worried me. What if some soon-to-drop-out bully with nothing to lose, with no intention of ever going back to Brother Rice, decided to take out his frustrations on me?

Students, boys especially, tried to find ways of circumventing Uncle Paddy’s edict. They stopped using my name in remarks,
which therefore seemed they might be directed at anyone. They made pacts not to tattle on each other. They shouted from so far back in the pack, their hands cupping their mouths, that no one was sure who had shouted. “Let’s get him and hold him down and put a clothespin on his dick.”

Pops told me: “Don’t think you have less to fear from the girls, Percy. If Brother McHugh hadn’t spoken to Sister Celestine, her crowd would set upon you and leave your bones to bleach in the parking lot of Holy Heart.”

I walked twice daily—up the hill, down the hill—through a gauntlet of threats that didn’t sound as empty as my mother thought they were. Despite Pops’ generosity, a dime was more than my mother could afford, more than the daily allowance of even the better-off boys. I’d usually buy candy or chocolate bars with my dimes, things that could be easily hidden and that I could delay eating until I got home. But sometimes I couldn’t resist a lemon square or raisin square, or some kind of ice cream treat. Or even a small, warm-from-the-oven blueberry pie. I’d leave Collins’s store devouring the pie before it got cold or the ice cream before it melted, watched by hordes of boys and girls, covetously by some but outright hungrily by others, especially the youngest ones, a pack of Rothmans in each of my jacket pockets as I licked an ice cream cone, or ate a square sandwich-fashion, or played hot potato with a blueberry pie as juice the colour of my face and hands spilled down my front.

One day, an older boy decided that, Archbishop or no Archbishop, he would have his say in front of witnesses.

“There’s better pie at home, Percy,” a chubby, flushed boy named Coffin said. He smacked and licked his lips until they glistened. “Believe me. I’ve tasted it lots of times.” The Coffin Brothers. There were four of them, as well as a network of parents, aunts and uncles whose names were forever appearing in the paper on the occasion of their arrest or conviction for some crime—the
Coffin Clan. No family name was more often spoken in the courts of St. John’s.

“Bullshitter,” another named Galway said. Galway was in the habit of scorning all claims of sexual conquest, perhaps because his acne-riddled face disgusted girls almost as much as my stained one did. “You’ve never had your face in Penny Joyce’s juicy pie. I had my
fingers
in it last night. Here, Percy, have a whiff. You can still smell your mother’s pie on my fingers.”

He put two of his fingers under my nose. There was laughter and the girls from Heart sang: “Can you smell your mother’s pie, Percy boy, Percy boy, can you smell your mother’s pie, charming Percy? He can smell his mother’s pie just as well as you or I, but he’s a young boy who cannot eat his mother.” I wondered why I’d never heard them sing that rhyme before—they couldn’t have just made it up.

I knew what they meant by pie. “Shut up,” I said, and threw away what was left of mine.

“You should never turn up your nose at a good piece of pie,” Coffin said. “I bet you Pops MacDougal never does.”

The girls from Heart chanted: “Pops and Pen up in a tree / f-u-c-k-i-n-g / first comes money / then comes Pops / then comes Pen until Pops flops.”

“My mother hates Pops,” I cried.

“Not what I heard,” Coffin said. “Besides, Percy, look at it this way, if they do have a kid, it might not have a face like yours. I’m sure your mother would like to have
one
normal-looking kid even if she has to do it with Pops to get it.”

I ran down the hill as a chorus of scorn erupted behind me, my big shoes loudly flapping on the sidewalk as I fought to keep from slipping, my hands working uselessly as if they dangled from my wrists by bits of string. I said nothing to my mother that day or the next about what had happened. I had the feeling, absurd as it seemed, that what Coffin had said was true. Some of it anyway.
I felt sick at the idea that she had done something with one or both of the boys, even as I told myself that their boasts were absurd. But even worse—because more plausible—was what Coffin had said about her and Pops.

P
OPS
had to go away later in the week for three days for a teachers’ conference. I couldn’t remember him ever having spent a night away from the house.

I took the opportunity to confront my mother before Medina arrived. She was setting the kitchen table for their card game, laying out the cribbage board and some potato chips and two beer glasses. I sat at the table when she did.

“Why don’t you get rid of Pops?”

“He pays more than any other boarder would.”

“Why?”

“He likes to live here. It’s close to where he works.”

“He makes enough money to have his own house.”

“I doubt he makes that much.”

“He likes you.”

“Yeah, he does. He likes me. He likes you too.”

“No he doesn’t. He doesn’t like anyone but you. And no one
likes him, not
even
you. But you do it with him anyway.”

“What?” She grabbed me by the wrist. “Did Pops say something to you?” she shouted so loudly the lamp overhead made a pinging sound.

It
was
true. I knew she wouldn’t have reacted that way if it wasn’t. I knew she would have thrown her head back, opened her mouth and laughed until I could see her back teeth. She let go of my wrist and began to check the deck of cards, her face scarlet.

“Pops didn’t say anything.”

“Then where did you get
that
idea? At school, no doubt.”

“You
do
it with him,” I all but screamed. “Everybody knows. I bet McHugh knows.” I began to cry.

“Off to bed before Medina gets here. Off to bed.
Now
.”

“You do it with him because he pays you money,” I said, sobbing. “You do it for money.”

She stood up and leaned her hands on the table, her head just inches from mine. I smelled her perfumed hair and looked down her blouse, sneaking a peak at the first inch of her cleavage.

“Yes, that’s right. I
do
it with him because he
pays
me money.”

“That’s what whores like Sister Mary Aggie do.”

“No. It’s not. But I’ll always remember this day as the one you called me a whore.”

“I’m not sorry,” I said, wiping my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Pops is not my father.”

“Having a mark on your face—”

“Stain. The right word is
stain
. And it’s all over my fucking face, not
on
it.”

“Well listen here, Mr. Purple Pimpernel. It’s no picnic curling up with Pops, let me tell you.”

“Then don’t
do
it.”

“
I do it for you
. If I didn’t, we’d be living in some one-room dump.”

“With the Dark Martians on Dark Marsh Road.”

“That’s right.”

“In a house like Medina’s.”

“No, in a
room
like Medina’s. That’s all she has, as you well know, a room.”

“She doesn’t seem to mind. And there’s no such thing as a Dark Martian. There’s no such place as Dark Marsh Road. You’re full of shit.”

“If not for Pops and Uncle Paddy, you’d be spending every day beating off the savages on Barter’s Hill. And maybe then you wouldn’t be such a selfish little
cunt
.”

Even as the vehemence of her words hit me, I couldn’t help feeling a faint titillation—my mother had said
cunt
to me. She looked as if she wished she hadn’t.

“Pops pays more of the mortgage than I do. He pays for the upkeep of this place, for
your
upkeep. If not for Pops, we wouldn’t have a pot to piss in.”

“
You
wouldn’t have your Rothmans.”

“So now you’re begrudging me my
smokes
? Most people would be human chimneys if they were in my shoes, if they had to put up with—” She paused, bit her lip, shook her head. “What else do I have, Percy?
You
tell
me
.”

“I don’t
know
.”

“You’re goddamned right you don’t.” She started poking me in the chest to emphasize each word. “You—don’t—know—
anything
.”

By this time I was outright
really
bawling, feeling certain I was right but knowing I would lose no matter what I said. She was doing it with Pops. Even if she never did it again, she’d done it with him. She had crossed the Rubicon of doing it with VP MacD and now there was no going back.

“Pops—” I started, but she cut me off.

“Don’t blame Pops. It’s not as if he ever makes the first move. And it’s only now and then. Just often enough.”

“For
what
?”

“I’ve had enough of you humiliating me. You wouldn’t even be
able to survive in this neighbourhood or the best one on planet Earth if not for me and Pops and Uncle Paddy and McHugh. You hate us all, but you’d be
crucified
if not for us.”

“That’s not true.”

“All right then. I’ll tell Pops to hit the road. I’ll tell Uncle Paddy we don’t want his protection anymore. I’ll tell McHugh to treat you like he treats the other boys. Who do you think will care about what happens to you then? Do you
hear
me?”

“
Yes
.”

“Good. Now.” She grabbed me by the shoulders. “You’re not going to say a word about this to anyone. Not Medina. Not Pops, especially. He has himself convinced that it’s not about the money. And not to anybody else. It could get Pops fired.”

“Everybody knows already.”

“Everybody
suspects
. There’s a big difference.”

I stopped crying and glared at her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. But this time her voice quavered. “A few times. Now and then. Jesus. Better I be a prostitute than we all be destitute.” It sounded like something she had rehearsed. She lit up a cigarette.

“You’re not a prostitute,” I said.

“The word you used was
whore
.”

“You’re not a whore.”

“You have no idea, squirt. Go to bed.
Now
.”

“It’s only four-thirty.”

“It’s a small price to pay for calling me a whore.”

“A few times.” “Now and then.” I wondered how many, how often Pops got more from her for his money than room and board. How strange that what people made jokes about but didn’t really believe had turned out to be true. She did it with Pops for money. But not like the women called whores who did it with the fishermen from
Spain and Portugal, waving to their ships from the waterfront and shouting “Mario.” The White Fleet. A joke I had lately heard at school. But still, she did it for money. With Pops. Pops sneaking into her room after I had gone to bed. Or maybe she snuck into his—the room with the poster of the Periodic Table on the wall, stuck to it with Scotch tape so old it had gone brown and curled up so that the poster had looked for years as if it was soon to fall. The room whose window faced Brother Rice. Pops on top of her as he stared out the window above the bed.