The Wives of Bath (19 page)

The only good thing in my life was Jack O’Malley, the boy I’d met at the Kings College luncheon. He’d written me a letter, too.

Two days after his letter arrived Jack called me up. He sounded all out-of-breath and nervous on the phone. To my surprise, I felt pleased and calm when I said I’d go with him, as if I could afford to be confident, although I’d never been out with a boy before and didn’t know what to expect. Would he try to feel me up, like Paulie got me to do with the girl from St. Mary’s? The idea of kissing him was like kissing a star or the top of a pine tree. Not that I was interested in going all the way or anything. Sal liked to say that sex
carne in two forms, hamburgers and lobster dinners, and if you had a choice between great seafood or ground chuck, why go for cheap food when you could have it deluxe? The only problem with Sal’s analogy was that if sex was like food, then wasn’t it better to have a hamburger instead of starving yourself? Why wait until a lobster dinner came along? Naturally, I didn’t want to discuss these problems with Paulie, who was sitting beside me, scowling at the janitors as if she hated their guts.

The digging of the pigeons’ grave looked like a tough job. The earth had already hardened from the cold, and Sergeant and Willy had to jab their spades into the ground as if they were attacking a layer of permafrost. Then, just after the pit was dug and the pigeons dumped into it, Sergeant suddenly lifted up his dog, Spruce, who was wrapped in a Glengarry plaid blanket. Poor little Spruce didn’t move. He must have eaten one of the dead birds and died from poison himself. Sergeant stood there cradling Spruce, tears running down his cheeks. Then Willy touched his shoulder, and Sergeant laid Spruce down beside the birds. I watched sadly as Willy shovelled dirt over Sergeant’s little dog and then did the same for the pigeons. The birds, their small heads as wobbly as Jell-O, made me think of the mass human graves the Allies had uncovered at Auschwitz. Then they were done. Sergeant heaved himself into the little car behind Willy’s tractor, and Willy drove off talking loudly in Czech, as if he were trying to console Sergeant.

“A man shouldn’t break down like that,” Paulie said. “Not that you can call those assholes men.” Personally, I didn’t agree. Men were always breaking down, as far as I could tell. Look at the way Morley acted at hockey games, smashing the fedora of the man next to him (as if he was somebody Sal and I didn’t know at all) and climbing the wire-mesh fence behind the goalie when the referee made a wrong call on Dave Keon.

“Everybody cries sometimes,” I said. My own eyes were a little wet, so I tried to think of something funny, like Miss Phillips in her
curlers, to stop me from imagining how uncomfortable the poison must have made Spruce feel.

Paulie lit up a cigarette and passed it to me. I hesitated.

“Go on,” Paulie said. “Nobody can see us here.”

“I’m in uniform,” I said.

“Be a scaredy-cat, then.” Beside me, Paulie spat one of her expert loads at my shoe, missing me by a fraction of an inch.

I sighed and held out two fingers. “Okay,” I said, hating myself for being afraid. “Give me one.”

“That’s more like it.” Paulie grinned and lit me a cigarette. “Listen, Bradford. I have something important to tell you. We have to finish the test today. Kong’s orders.”

“You mean there are more tests?” I asked, trying to exhale through my nostrils like Paulie.

“We have to cane each other, remember?” Paulie picked up an old blackboard pointer that was lying near the fence. It was just about in splinters.

“I stole this from the physics lab,” Paulie said. “We’ll flip to see who goes first.”

Paulie took off her tunic and pulled down her school bloomers. She was wearing a pair of boy’s boxer shorts underneath. She turned around and pulled down the boxers; then she bent over and touched her toes. “This is how they do it at Kings College, Mouse,” she said. “But the boys keep their trousers on. We’re going one better.”

I stood with the shabby pointer in my hand, staring at her small bare bum. I had no idea what to do.

“Okay, Bradford,” Paulie said. “Let me have it.”

I swung the pointer slowly, as if I were practising a baseball swing for old Hammerhead, and the tip lightly stroked Paulie’s bum. “Christ, Mouse! I can’t feel a thing!” she called. “Hit me harder!” I swung again but drew back at the last minute, afraid I’d hurt her. “Paulie, I can’t do this.” I put the pointer down and, honest to God, I started to giggle. I felt the same way I did when I used to tease Lady, covering her up with sofa cushions and then lying on her for the fun of hearing her growl.

“So you think this is funny, do you?” Paulie whirled around and grabbed the pointer out of my hand. Her boxers were still around her ankles, and I couldn’t help staring at the feathery blur of her pubic hair. I inhaled deep and hard. I guess I believed in Paulie so much, I was expecting to see a penis, for God’s sake.

“Keep your eyes to yourself,” Paulie snarled. “Bend over. I’m going to show you how it’s done.”

Now it was my turn. I took off my tunic and yanked down my bloomers and my cotton underpants. Then I leaned over, and Paulie pushed my head down, because I couldn’t bend over very far on account of Alice. Nothing happened, and I was sure she was going to stop and tell me it was a dopey idea. And then I heard a whooshy sound, and something long and skinny sliced deep into the tops of my thighs, like hundreds of stinging horseflies. My whole body jerked back toward Paulie, and Alice jerked, too, and I gasped. “Paulie, stop!” I yelled, and the next thing I knew the tops of my thighs felt raw and hot. I began to sob; pee was running down my legs.

“Shut up, Bradford!” Paulie yelled. “Show some guts for once!” She put her muscular hand back on my neck and tried to push my head down again, but I wouldn’t bend over, so she whacked Alice hard, and I screamed and toppled, weeping, to my knees. I heard another whistling whoosh behind my head, and this time the pointer cut me across my buttocks, spitefully on target. I shrieked and crawled off on all fours as fast as I could, but Paulie grabbed my hair.
Schwaaak!
She whacked my bum with all her might.

“Paulie! Stop it!” I cried. “Stop it!” I wrapped my hand around my bum to protect myself, and the pointer burned across my knuckles.
Schwaaaaaak!

“It’s for your own good!” Paulie’s screeching voice sounded high and shrill, and I knew now she wasn’t talking to me but to herself, and the hatred I felt rushing out of her was coming from her phantoms, and those spooks had nothing to do with me.

“Liar!” I screamed. “It is not! It is not for my own good!”

“Kong lives! Long live Kong! Kong lives! Long live Kong!” Paulie pushed the side of my face into the ground, grabbed my hair, and yanked my head each time I tried to jerk away.
Schwaaaaaak! Schwwwaaaak!
The pointer cut into my bum and thighs, which were all stingy wet with pee. And then I stopped feeling the fiery pain, even though I could still hear the awful
whistling sounds the pointer made in the air. I curled into a ball and wept noisily into the hard ground, which tasted of minerals and mud, cold and dark and earthwormy. Oh, Mouse, poor Mouse, a small scared voice in my head said from a long way off, nobody can help you now. And then Sal’s shaming voice added cruelly, And you deserve this, Mouse Bradford, you aren’t good enough to get our love. And then the pointer snapped. Paulie raised the broken-off stick to give me another whack, and I caught her eye, and we stared at each other without saying anything. Still glaring at me, she let her arm drop.

“Crybaby,” she said finally, and walked off cursing and smacking what was left of the pointer on every tree she passed. I watched her go in surprise, my cheeks still wet with tears. My backside throbbed, and my legs were stained with pee and blood. But the oddest thing had happened: the more she hit me, the more wicked she became, and the more innocent I was—of everything. Of looking ungainly, of not winning Morley’s love, of my lack of friends.

Why did I go along with Paulie when the tests got more serious? Why did I keep doing what she asked me? It wasn’t just my need for approval that made me do what Paulie said. I was enthralled by her imagination—which the court tried to deny. Especially Miss Whitlaw’s chief defense witness, Dr. Torval. But the Crown had to prove Paulie was
not
insane before she could be found guilty. The old Juvenile Delinquent Act defined a child as somebody under the age of sixteen. So Paulie, who was almost seventeen at the time of the crime, was tried as an adult. That meant the crazier Miss Whitlaw’s defense witnesses could make Paulie look, the better chance Paulie had of avoiding a criminal conviction. I don’t think Miss Whitlaw or the judge liked Dr. Torval any better than I did.

Paulie not capable of abstract thought? Or an act of the imagination? What else, I ask you, was her strange and frightening act if not that?

“Miss Vaughan wants to see you after the show,” Ismay the Terrible said as we ran out to take our places in the school play. She didn’t give me a chance to ask why.

We performed in the gym, which the junior school had decorated for our Christmas party. Ugly crepe Christmas trees on sand-coloured crepe trunks snaked up the wall between the stained-glass windows, and across the huge double doors at the entrance the junior school had hung tennis nets decorated with little snow-covered houses made of construction paper and cotton batting. On one end of the fleecy mural sat a big grey house with a spire—Bath Ladies College. A replica of the Kings College clock tower had been pasted on the opposite side of the mural. In the middle dangled cutout replicas of the baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.