No Safeguards (14 page)

“And what might that be?”

“Ask her. She'd be glad you asked — if you can do it without insulting her.”

A flicker of remorse showed in his drawn face and bowed head. “Jay, you must know that the Islamic-Judaeo-Christian god is the deadliest piece of poetry humans ever invented. Those guys leading congregations — whatever they call themselves — are conmen or fools.” He sighed. “I want to be proud of Ma, the way I'm proud of Grama . . . In a way I'm proud of her — how she speaks, especially at parent-teacher meetings. Then I'm always proud of her. Most of my classmates' mothers never go to parent-teacher meetings. Just as well. The teachers won't understand what they're saying. At least Grama had some influence. And sometimes Ma says things that tell me she has a brain. I know she came here, went back to school, got a profession and all that. But sometimes I think all she did at CEGEP was memorize and regurgitate what the teachers said. Haven't you noticed that she never reads? Not even the newspapers lying around. It was the first thing that struck me about her when I came here. There wasn't a single newspaper in the house and the only books were her CEGEP textbooks. After Grama, it's hard to take her, even now. Grama wanted to know about all the new ideas shaping the world and sent away for books she heard discussed on the BBC, and she read them all, some she gave to the Havre library. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. I used to hear you both reading and discussing. Sometimes I joined in. To come to a mother who never reads, who's always parroting foolishness — Jay it's tough. Tough.”

“She's ashamed of you too, ashamed of your behaviour.”

Frowning, he mulled over that for a while. “Jay,” he said with a serious look, his gaze averted, “I wonder if Ma knows that the bible, the so-called word of God that
can't be wrong,
advises parents to stone their disobedient children to death?”

“That can't be true, Paul.”

“Oh yeah. Deuteronomy chapter 22: 18-21. Go read it for yourself. Know how I know this? I heard about this group in the US that's called Christian Reconstructionists. They want to set up a Christian theocracy in Washington based on Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Jay, they believe that poverty is a punishment from God, that governments should not help the poor, that African nations are underdeveloped because they worship demons, and that developed nations should stop giving them aid. They plan to bring back slavery and to stone adulterers, homosexuals, and disobedient children to death.” He stopped talking, his face stricken. “Don't take my word for it. Go google Christian Reconstructionists. And you better start working on Ma. You better rescue her from their clutches.”

I was stunned. I knew Paul wasn't making this up. Sincere Paul and posturing Paul were distinctly different creatures.

“Jay, you remember when that preacher tried to upbraid Grama for not sending us to church and Sunday school?”

“Which one?”

“Bob Bowles, the Baptist preacher. He told Grama she was raising us without a Christian foundation — ”

“ — and without the fear of God.”

Mrs. Kirton, at the urging of the Holy Spirit, I have come to pull you and your grandsons back from the precipice of damnation. You are raising these boys to be godless.

Mr. Bowles — her hands on her hips, her head wagging slowly
like a boxer about to slug her opponent — on the authority of my understanding, you are a pompous jackass. I don't want my grandsons to fear your god — or you. I want them to be kind, honest, just, and charitable. Your god drowns an entire planet, burns the disobedient eternally in pits of fire, tortures people to win a wager. I am training my grandsons to have minds of their own, Mr. Bowles. I don't tell them what beliefs they can or cannot hold. And now, if you don't mind, please leave my premises.

She didn't usually state her views so publicly. In fact she'd warned us not to tell anyone what her beliefs were. Paul had asked her why, and she'd said: “My customers will stop coming to the shop and I will become poor and won't have money to pay your school fees.”

We fell into a long silence. “Jay,” Paul said, breaking it, “you mustn't encourage Ma in her religious foolishness. You know better. You can influence her. I was leafing through your book
Philosophical Essays.
I read Bertrand Russell's essay on why he's not a Christian, and I agree with his reasons, and Grama would too.”

“Paul, Ma's beliefs make her happy. If they're nonsense, it's harmless nonsense.” But even as I said it, I remembered Nietzsche's point that it's only fools and children who can be happy. And Brother Vanderbilt. He'd come from The States to conduct a revival and was staying at the manse and had given me a chocolate bar for quoting: “Unless ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Quite the parrot!
They clap on the manacles early.
“It's alright, Paul. It's alright, if Ma harms no one. But I'll talk to her about Christian Reconstructionism.”

***

I never did. Yes, there's something childish, bizarre even, about plunging into fountains of blood to be “redeemed,” and dropping out of high school and dressing up in white waiting for Christ to come. I listen to her rattling breath. Yet it was she who'd ended my fear of going to hell. I did read Deuteronomy and Leviticus and I checked out the information Paul mentioned about Christian Reconstructionism. It's quite possible my father's church holds some or all of these beliefs. I remember hearing Caleb say the earth was created about 6,000 years ago.

***

Hardly a week later Paul burst into my bedroom one Saturday morning. “What a fool!”

“Who?”

“Ma. Who else. What a fool!”

I leaped from my desk chair and my fingers were around his throat.

“Go on, choke me.”

A triumphant smile framed his face, and I became aware of what I was doing. My hands fell. I felt ashamed. “Sorry. Sorry. It's just that I've had enough — enough of your insolence. So what are you accusing Ma of now?”

“Why should I tell you? For all I know, you won't choke me afterwards, you'll kill me.”

“Get on with it or get out of my room.”

“She gives her pastor $370 per month.”

“Come on?”

Paul nodded and pulled a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. “See for yourself.”

The sheet listed Anna's income and expenses, and there it was: “tithe: $370.”

“Can you believe this? Can you?”

I remembered my father's harangues to his congregation: “For every dollar you earn, ten cents belong to Lord.”

That Saturday a new caption went up on Paul's door:

PRIESTS ARE TOOLS OF THE WEALTHY

WHO EXTORT THE POOR.

The following Thursday evening, Anna was in the living room watching television, when Paul burst out of his room, breathless, his eyes glowing with mischief. “Ma,” he said, “today I almost rushed home to congratu­late you.”

She frowned. “Congratulate
me
? Why?” She was seated on the sofa. The news was on. He stood half a metre in front of her, blocking the TV.

“You see, Ma, this school friend o' mine, Bertrand. His mother, she drags him to church with her every Sunday like you want to do to us. A deacon in Bertrand's church caught the pastor balling away at a middle-aged, brown-skin sister in the church basement. ‘Oh that must be Ma,' I said. ‘Finally she's getting something for all those tithes she's paying.' Then Bertrand told me the woman was from Guyana. Oh, Ma, I was
so
disappointed.”

Anna exhaled loud, turned off the TV, and went into her bedroom.

I felt uncomfortable. Paul had entered taboo territory. “Why're you so obsessed with Ma's sexuality?”

“‘Cause, I'm concerned about her health.” One hand pulled at his chin, the other caressed the back of his neck. “‘Cause sex is important. We need it. It's why you and Ma are so uptight. You two aren't like getting any.”

“So you've changed your mind about Jonathan and me?”

“Who says I have? That's not sex. That's perversion.” He gave a self-congratulatory chuckle and his eyes glowed.

I wondered where he got
his
sex, remembered his letter to Mrs. Bensemana, and was tempted to say that I'd seen a lot of used tissues in his wastepaper basket. Instead I went into my bedroom and hoped Paul wouldn't follow. He didn't.

The next day I was the target. Paul was lumbering around annoyingly, his torso bare, his hairy chest puffed out, his feet stomping the floor. “A brakeless bulldozer, is that's what you are?” I said.

“You're just jealous because I'm too wide and deep for your measure.”

“Inflated: yes. Deep?” I shook my head. “Stay away from sharp objects.”

“That's just jealousy talking. I'd be a champion sumo wrestler if I were Japanese.”

“You're missing a few ifs.”

“Can't help it: I'm the alpha male in here.” He grinned, his arm raised, fingers wiggling.

“Just don't stake it out with pee.”

“We, the powerful” — he pounded his chest — “that's not how
we
do it. If you were a real historian you'd know that we kill the males — in some cultures we eat them too — take their lands, and put their wives and daughters in our harems.”

“Yeah. After your soldiers raped them. Be careful: the only woman in this house is your mother.”

He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes for a few seconds. “You sicko! I'll let that one pass. What can I say? The weak have always been food for the strong. Antelopes exist to feed lions.”

“And the poor?”

“Fodder for the rich.” He stretched out his hand. “Hand it over, Bro. Your money and your freedom.”

“Useless. In a year or less Nine Lives will take you out. Poor Grama. All that effort only to create a Minotaur.”

“Cockadoodle do! See what the British have in their coat of arms?
The lion and the spear.
See what the American emblem is?
The eagle.
Predators,
man . . . they rule the world. It's no contest, Bro. No contest.” His head moved slowly from left to right; his eyes twinkled. “Nature's law, man.” He grinned. “You're the wimp here, see? I'm the nobleman, see? You're the serf. I am strong, you are weak. Do like animals in the wild. Flee. Yield your territory and your . . . You don't have any women, just pathetic Jonathan.” He parted his arms, gesturing:
Are you going to
?

“Some nobleman who wants his brother to be his serf.”

“What am I supposed to do? You have the character of a serf.” His grin got broader. “Besides I can use a valet. And you'll look lovely in livery.”

“Now
I'll
give
you
a bit of advice: start learning to forgive.”

“In the jungle!
Forgive!
” He wrinkled his nose.

“Then go live in the jungle. Walk on all fours. Get a prehensile tail. Leap from tree to tree. All that hate spilling out of you, it's the price you're paying for refusing to be a decent human being.”

The phone rang for Paul.

While he talked on the phone, I thought of my intro to poli-sci prof, Professor Johnson, whose Ichabod-Crane nose reached out from his face like a gar's spike, his eyes gleaming electric blue, his fist-sized Adam's apple working away as he thundered: “As you've heard me say over and over again” — and some of the students would chorus along: “Power and property are synonymous. Slice it how you can, dice it how you will, in Western democracies the rich ensure that only governments who'll protect their wealth get elected. And if that protection means hordes of homeless, starving people, so be it. And they expect government to put in place the propaganda apparatus to convince the homeless and starving that their plight is the consequence of their incompetence. Two hundred years ago, they'd have said it was ordained by God.” Once he'd left out the last sentence, and Jonathan, his arm raised, said: “Sir, you left out part:
Two hundred years ago, they'd have said it was ordained by God.
The next time he declaimed it, he looked at Jonathan. “Did I leave out anything?” The class laughed.

Paul ended his call and began to rap:

The strong kick ass, get

to the head o' the class.

Good guys come last.

George Bush say:

‘Fuck with the U.S. of A,

Won't get the chance

to eat hay.

We drop daisy cutters

on your sorry ass,

every which way.'

Forgive your enemies,

they take you for a sop,

turn you into pop;

put you in a blender

and drink you like soursop.

He pushed his left hand under his braids and caressed the back of his neck; with his right he kneaded his chin. He winked at me.

I'd kick your ass,

if I thought you'd pass;

show you the ropes,

but you'll hang yourself

when you can't cope.

Man, you get more stupid,

I'll be raking leaves

and be left bereaved.

He stopped, stared at me, and laughed.

“If we were Daddy you'd be raking skin.”

“You admit it! Out finally!” He snorted. “Always wanted to beat me. Know why? ‘Cause I kept the spotlight off you. It's a fact and you can't say boo.” He wriggled his body and bared his teeth. “One time you even wanted to drown me. Don't look so shocked. When I was little you used to say that a mermaid will come and get me because she wanted a husband for her daughter. Always wanted me out of the way. One time I dreamed that you were strangling me. My antenna picked that up.”