The Son of a Certain Woman (33 page)

Cyril turned round and roared, “Stop telling him lies or you’ll all be walking to Torbay.” He turned to me. “Go on now. You should have better sense.”

But the next day, when Cyril was stretching his legs and having a smoke, the same boy, Sully, opened his window and said that I should get on the bus while Cyril wasn’t looking and they would smuggle me to Torbay.

“You have to ask your mother, I suppose,” he said.

I shook my head.

“Then get on the bus before Cyril turns around.”

As I scrambled on board and ran down the middle aisle to where the boy was sitting, mine the only blue blazer amidst rows of maroons and dark blue tunics, the whole bus fell silent. I sat beside Sully, who told me to crouch down behind the seat in front of him. Just as I was doing so, I heard a girl up front say, “Cyril, Percy Joyce is on the bus.”

“See ya, Percy,” Sully said, laughing, as I stood up and ran back to the front of the bus, where Cyril grabbed me by the collar and addressed the back of my head as he held me in front of the open door: “Don’t you ever sneak on board this bus again, you ugly little frigger,” he said. He let me go and I tumbled out.

“Cyril the Squirrel,” I yelled up at him.

“What?”

“Cyril the Squirrel!”

I ran down the bus steps, out of the parking lot and onto Bonaventure before I slowed to a walk.

Every day after school, I made my way from St. Bon’s to the parking lot of Holy Heart, a mere few hundred feet, and spoke to Sully. I told him I had Mass cards that I’d had to send away to the Vatican for, and I recounted the story of Saint Drogo, the Patron Saint of Unattractive People, as Sister Mary Aggie had told it to me. I said he was made a saint because he hid himself away for life lest his ugliness not only terrify people but test their belief in a God who could create such a Hellish-looking beast. Sully asked if he could see the cards and I told him I would bring them from home and show them to him the next day. The next day, and the one after that, I told him I’d forgotten the cards. I was certain that whatever I passed in through that bus window I would never see again. He said he bet I was lying about the Saint Drogo cards. “I have three of them,” I said, “but they’re pasted to my wall. They might tear if I try to take them off.”

“I bet you haven’t even got one,” he said. “I bet you a dollar.”

In an effort to divert him, I told him I also had on the wall of my bedroom a “dirty” picture of a woman showing everything. He said he bet I was lying. I shook my head. I didn’t mind losing “Francine.” I was, as my mother said, no less “priapically preoccupied,” but I had grown bored with Francine from having used her for inspiration so many times. I would have liked to replace her with a picture of my mother, just as naked and as wantonly disposed. I asked her to get Medina to take that kind of picture of her so she could give it to me. A pity picture, a compromise—a picture she would never see me use, never be embarrassed by, for I wouldn’t tape it on the wall beside the Mass cards of Saint Drogo but would keep it hidden somewhere in my room.

“And where would I get
that
picture developed?” she said. “Not that I’d give it to you anyway.”

That night, I heard her say to Medina: “I think I’ve lost all sense of just how far from normal he’s become.”

I untaped Francine’s picture from the wall above my bed, folded it in half once so as not to spoil it with too many creases, and snuck it out of the house inside my school shirt. At St. Bon’s, I spent the entire school day with Francine partly tucked inside my pants and partly hidden by my shirt, taking care to avoid contact with anyone who might audibly crumple the paper and discover I was hiding something. I had to restrict my own movements lest I cause the paper to crackle and give away my secret.

After school I went down to the Holy Heart parking lot, slipped Francine out between two buttons on my shirt and handed it in through the back window of the Torbay bus to Sully. Sully, his arms out the window, unfolded the picture.

“Her name is Vivian,” I said. “You can keep her if you want to, but I won the bet, so you owe me a dollar.”

“Holy fuck,” Sully said under his breath as other boys tried to grab the picture from his hands. “You can see
more
than everything in this picture, Percy. Where did you get it?”

“From a
Playboy
magazine,” I said. “Pops has a subscription.”

Sully shook his head. “I’ve seen
Playboy
magazines,” he said. “They don’t look like this.”

Francine is sullied now, I thought. Sullied by Sully.

“My mother gave it to me,” I said, knowing that he would be much less convinced by the truth than by a lie.

“Yeah, right,” he said. “Thanks a lot, Percy.” He raised his window as he was set upon by other boys and even some girls. I heard shrieks and squeals from inside the bus and shouts from Cyril the Squirrel. I really didn’t mind that it was the last I would see of Vivian and smiled up at Sully, who winked at me.

Among the bus children, knowledge of female anatomy exponentially increased for a few days until Sully was caught with
Vivian, strapped by McHugh and suspended for a week. I was apprised of this by one of the boys on the Torbay bus.

“Sully told McHugh he got the picture from you. McHugh called your mother. This might be a good time for you to run away.”

I knew McHugh wouldn’t strap me, but another “snapping” seemed all too likely. I wasn’t sure what he had told my mother or exactly what Sully had told him, but I put off going home for as long as I could, wandering down every street that intersected with the Curve of Bonaventure. It was after five when I turned up at 44. My mother was still at the Helm, squinting at the page she was typing through a pall of cigarette smoke.

“Well, if it isn’t the pornographer of Bonaventure Avenue,” she said.

“
You’re
the pornographer of Bonaventure Avenue,” I said peevishly. “You gave me the picture.”

“And I told you never to take it from the house or to school or to mention it to anyone.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry,” I said, “but how was I supposed to know that Sully would show Vivian to everyone? I thought he would just keep her for himself like I did. Sully said he would give me a dollar, but he didn’t.”

“McHugh said your friend Sully told him that, according to you, I gave you the picture.”

“Sully didn’t believe me.”

“McHugh believed Sully. Or at least he did after I confessed. I thought admitting to giving you the picture might make you seem less delinquent.”

“This is all so tawdry and disgusting,” Pops said from the sunroom. “I told you that you shouldn’t have provided Percy with pornography.”

“You may have been right, Pops. McHugh asked me why I would incite my son on to acts of lewd behaviour.”

“A good question,” Pops said.

My mother said she told McHugh she thought it was better that I get a piece of paper into trouble than some orphan girl from Belvedere. He said that such pictures only incited boys to seek out the real thing. He said that pornography was known to lead to rape, which in my case would be even more likely because, with girls finding me repulsive, I might someday be driven to take by force what other men got through marriage.

“You have no idea how much harm you and Percy may have done,” Pops said. “You especially. You act recklessly, Paynelope. You speak too provocatively.”

“Taking a reasonable tone with unreasonable people can be very wearisome. It’s the heretics against the lunatics. And I’m aware that, historically, the lunatics are way out in front.”

Sully showed me the scabs and red welts on his hands. “You should have seen them a week ago,” he said. “They got infected and swelled up like tomatoes.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Did it
hurt
?” Sully laughed. “Never been strapped?”

I shook my head. I was glad he didn’t know why I’d never been strapped.

Word of Vivian was soon rampant on the Mount, Percy’s paper girlfriend, given to him by his mother, his paper girlfriend whom he had jilted for a dollar he would never get, like father like son, but at least Jim Joyce had made off with the family car in spite of being such a fool as to dump a woman like my mother. The boys of Brother Rice called out to my mother as they were leaving school: “Come out, Miss Cunny Penny. James Bond is here to see you.”

The boys chanted: “Come out, come out, Penelope, And spread your Black Mick legs for me.”

The grown-ups in the houses across from the school—the Conways and the Macnamaras—parents with whom my mother had not exchanged more than a word or two in years, chased the boys away, shouting at them to shut their filthy mouths, then glared at me as I watched them from the front window, as if I was somehow responsible, after which they closed their curtains.

When we next left the house, the corpulent Mrs. Conway came out and accosted my mother. “What kind of woman would give that kind of picture to a child?”

“The kind who didn’t want him knocking up some tart from Holy Heart.”

“You’ve corrupted those boys.”

“Yes, I remember well what angels they used to be. For instance, here’s a little ditty that I remember from my pre-pornographer days, composed and beautifully delivered by your son Danny:

“Apparently,” Pops said, repeating the words of McHugh, who had found out from the monitors what I was up to, “he told them a few days ago that his father was an African missionary and that they adopted him as their leader or witch doctor or something.”

“Ah. Like Lord Jim,” my mother said. “I think I read that book to Perse. Lord Jim. A white man named Jim, running away from his past, winds up as the leader of a tribe in Africa. The tribe calls him Lord Jim. He becomes almost like a god to them. He sacrifices himself in the end, gives up his life.”

Give me myth or give me death. It was painfully fun to incite so many people to such antic jubilation no matter by what means
or at what cost to me. I elaborated, amended my story about Jim Joyce going to Africa. “The tribe calls my father Lord Jim,” I told Sully. “He’s almost like a god to them.” It wasn’t long before word of my latest grandiose story spread through the bus crowd, by whom it was endlessly altered. “Cannibals in Africa think Percy’s father is Jesus Christ.”

“In Africa, they think Percy’s father is God the Father, so Percy calls himself the Son of God. He says his second name is Jesus. Percy Jesus Joyce.”

“Percy says he’s Jesus Christ.”

“Are you the son of God, Percy?”

I had about a year of Sunday masses under my belt. I was well prepared. I grinned and nodded.

“So this is the Second Coming of Christ?” Again I grinned and nodded.

Then why hadn’t I descended in clouds of glory from the sky? I retreated a step and said I was His brother. They insisted Christ had no brothers and sisters. I said He did but that most of them stayed home in Heaven to keep God the Father company because Jesus and the Holy Ghost were on the road a lot. They insisted again—no brothers or sisters—so I again told them I was Christ.

I said God the Father was my father and the Holy Ghost was His brother, making him my uncle.

That means your mother is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Right.

What do God the Father and the Holy Ghost look like?

I shrugged.

You don’t know what they look like?

Yes, I do.

Come on, Percy, you’re one-third of the Holy Trinity, so you should know what the other two-thirds look like.

I shrugged.

How come you can’t heal your own face?

I don’t want to.

You like it the way it is?

I nodded.

Hear that? Percy likes his face the way it is.

You’re supposed to have long hair and a beard, Percy. You’re supposed to wear nothing but a bed sheet and a pair of sandals, even in the winter. Do your feet get cold?

No. Because they’re so big.

You have to be crucified when you grow up.

I know.

Are you afraid?

No.

Hear that? Percy’s not afraid of being crucified.

Good. We need a cross, a hammer, three nails, two thieves and a crown of thorns.

It seemed to me that this was less harmful than telling lies that people were unlikely to believe. These were blatant, outright lies that no one but a fool would tell. It was fine with me if my new role was the fool, for it was better than having no role at all.

“It’s a sin to talk like that,” a short brunette named Daphne said. “It’s a sin for you and it’s a sin for him. Leave him alone. Tell him to go home. Tell him to go away. I’m telling your teachers.”

“You should bless us,” the children chanted before she could utter another syllable. “You should bless us, Percy.” So I did, with the thumb and the index and middle fingers of one hand, I blessed a bus as it began to pull away, blessed it as I had seen Father Bill bless the tabernacle.

“Cure me, cure me, Percy,” the boys and girls on another bus said. “Heal me, heal me.” I kept making the sign of the cross.

Day after day, I took my act to other buses with more or less the same result. I bought a roll of lemon drops and gave Communion to anyone on the Torbay bus who, while Cyril was having a cigarette
or sipping from a bottle of what he said was Coke, closed their eyes and stuck out their tongue.

“The Body of Christ,” I said, as I had so often heard Father Bill say on Sunday mornings in the chapel of the school across the street. I married pairs of boys and girls who sat together. I walked down the aisle, saying over and over, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

The children on all the outport buses got to know me and came to expect me and look forward to my appearance in the parking lot each afternoon. I felt euphoric. I sat all day in class, mentally rehearsing my performances. In the library I excitedly made notes like a priest preparing a sermon.

Nancy has a great big wart that she wants you to heal. I healed it.

There’s a crowd of lepers on the Petty Harbour bus, Percy. Go heal them. I healed them.