A Son Called Gabriel

by Damian McNicholl

  My legs buckled. I watched Uncle John mark another ewe with the blood-colored paint. Charging from the pens, I hurtled down the hill and over the meadow, not stopping until I reached the last gate before my grandmother’s house. My chest was as tight as the skin on an onion. I couldn’t breathe. I forced myself to take a gulp of air before climbing the gate. A stitch started up in my side as I ran across the final pasture. Auntie Celia’s car was parked alongside the rhubarb patch. I wondered if Cousin Martin had come with her, then heard his younger brother, Connor, asking Granny for a glass of orangeade as I opened the door. Even though Martin was nine and Connor only a year older than me, I liked Martin better. We loved to read adventure books and talk about them afterward. Connor didn’t like reading and was sneaky: if Granny said he couldn’t have juice, he’d take it behind her back anyway.

  Martin was in the living room. While happy to see him, it made things tricky on account of Granny had warned me not to tell my cousins she gave me a lamb every year. I sat on the sofa beside Martin and waited for a chance to speak to her alone. The clock’s big black hands jerked and moved, jerked and moved. At last, Connor said we should go to the river and poison some trout with disinfectant.

  “What a good idea,” I said.

  Martin’s eyes widened. We hated killing trout.

  “You can go, provided you don’t go near the deep part,” Auntie Celia said. “Go and make your dam. By that time, I’ll have measured out the disinfectant and one of you can come back and fetch it.”

  “Go on to the river and I’ll wait for Auntie Celia to measure out the stuff,” I said, as soon as we got outside. “That way, I’ll make sure she gives us plenty.”

  “I’ll wait, too,” said Martin.

  “Go and help Connor make the dam.”

  Martin’s fair skin, usually white as my pillowcase, turned patchy red. It turned like that when he was either angry or telling lies, the last thing being something Connor was better than Martin at doing. Connor never looked you in the eye when he talked, which made it hard to judge if he was telling the truth.

  After turning away sharply, Martin started marching down the lane, his arms swinging like a soldier and his stumpy legs moving even faster to keep up with them.

  “Why are you here, Gabriel?” Auntie Celia said, as I came inside.

  “I need to ask Granny something.”

  “Off you go with your cousins.”

  The skin in the middle part of Auntie Celia’s upper lip was cracked and must have been dry all the time, because she was always wetting it with her tongue. Auntie was thin, but had the widest bottom Caroline and I had ever seen. She wore a gold gate bracelet that looked nothing like a gate. It was loose and forever moved up and down her wrist, because she talked with her hands as well as her mouth.

  “It’s important I speak to Granny.”

  Auntie Celia’s nose wrinkled like I’d farted. “Hurry up, then run along and catch up with the boys. She and I wish to talk.”

  I went to my grandmother and put my lips to her ears.

  “No whispering,” said Auntie Celia. “Didn’t your mother tell you that’s extremely rude?”

  “It’s only for her ears.”

  Her tongue paused on her dry cracked lip. “My, but he’s a sneaky one, isn’t he? Wants to keep secrets from his Auntie Celia who’s so good, she’s invited him to stay at her house for part of the summer holiday. I wonder where he gets his sneaky streak. Certainly not from the Harkins, that’s for sure.”

  The big clock’s hour hand was on the twelve.

  “I shan’t have you staying in my house if you’re sneaky. I shan’t, because I don’t want Martin or Connor learning to keep things from their mother like you country boys do.”

  “Say what you need to say in front of your auntie.”

  “It’s okay to say, Granny?”

  She fixed her hairnet as she nodded.

  “Uncle John’s taking my lamb to the aba—to the killing place, to be turned into chops, and he must be stopped.”

  Grandmother’s hands dropped to her lap like a falling hatchet.

  “And what might this be about?” Auntie Celia said. Her smile flew off her face and she stood up like she’d been whacked across the back of the head. She walked up to the range and rested her wide arse on the shiny metal bar running across its front. “You gave him a lamb. Why did you not give Martin a lamb? They’re best friends. Is there a reason only he gets a lamb that escapes me?” She shifted, the metal bar turned, and a tea towel with a brown stain fell to the floor. Auntie Celia stared but didn’t pick it up. “Why don’t you think to give my son—your grandson, I might also add—a wee lamb to go to the abattoir?”

  “I don’t want any more fivers if this is what happens to the lambs you give me each year,” I said. I tightened my mouth and looked at my grandmother. “Please stop Uncle John from taking—”

  “A fiver!” Auntie Celia exclaimed. “You’re spoiling this boy rotten. Sweet Jesus and his mother, a fiver.” As Auntie pointed at me, her bracelet slid to where her thumb joined with her hand. “He’s special, is that it? Just because he’s . . . well . . . just because Harry’s children live out here in the country, you tend to them hand and foot and give them fivers. Mine get nothing. Not a single sausage.”

  “Please save my lamb.”

  “Not a sausage do my boys get from you, from one end of the year to the—”

  “The trailer will soon be leaving with my lamb—”

  “They get enough to do them,” said Granny. “Sure, you’ve got a shop that’s making you cartloads of money.”

  “And I work myself to the bone for every—”

  “Granny, I’m begging you not to let my lamb go to the killing place.”

  “You go now to your cousins,” said Auntie Celia.

  “Stop being so hard on him, Celia.” My grandmother hobbled over to me. “Uncle John will come in for his tea before he leaves for the market. I’ll get him to take your lamb out and put her back in the field.”

  “And take the whole damned can of disinfectant to Martin,” said Auntie Celia.

  I raced to my cousins and told them why I’d wanted them to leave for the river. Martin forgave my slyness and the three of us ran back to the house and hid behind the high ditch by the rhubarb patch. Uncle John and the helper came, parked the trailer, and went inside for tea. The lambs bleated, but I could see only wool puffing out from between the narrow slats.

  I tried opening the door, but the bolt wouldn’t budge. Connor tried, then Martin, but we could not make it move. When Uncle came out, I ordered him to take my lamb out of the trailer.

  “She’s right in at the back.” Uncle didn’t even check. “Don’t worry. I’ll bring her home.”

  “You’re lying, Uncle John. First, you took it away from its parents and now you’re taking it to be killed.”

  “Stop this silly talk, Gabriel. That wee lamb doesn’t know who its parents are.”

  Three

  My mother was still screaming in the bedroom as Nurse Noonan drove into the driveway. She got out quickly, opened the back door of her car, and leaned inside. She took out a chunky black case and ran into the house without closing the car door. We’d been told she was delivering our new baby, though I didn’t think it could be in Nurse’s case; it looked far too small. Twenty minutes later, Auntie Bernie came into the garage, where Jennifer had set up a pretend school, and told us God had appeared in the bedroom and brought us a sister.

  Nuala was trouble from the beginning. She never wanted to sleep. When she did, it was only for small stretches at a time, and Mammy’s heart was broken. She hadn’t had a good night’s rest for weeks. Everyone was given orders to be very quiet when the baby was asleep. We had to be especially quiet in our bedrooms and, because we had no indoor lavatory, if we needed to do more than pee, we had to creep down the hall. Nuala heard the smallest noises.

  Early one morning, I woke up needing to go outside. As I passed Uncle Tommy and Aunti
e Bernie’s bedroom, I heard a great deal of noise, which meant Auntie was disobeying orders and would waken the baby.

  I opened their bedroom door and couldn’t make heads or tails of what they were talking about. My bed’s springs were squeaking louder than James and I could make them squeak. The room was dim, a tiny slice of morning light squeezed past the crack in the curtain, and my top sheet, the one I liked with the pattern of yellow flowers, was half-bunched on the floor. Uncle Tommy was on top of Auntie Bernie, who had her legs wrapped tightly around his very white backside. He was pumping her like a bull I’d once seen pumping a cow in a field. She was also talking as if she was out of breath and whimpering like a puppy badly in need of petting.

  “Why are you pumping Auntie Bernie?”

  They stopped. Everything went in slow motion before my eyes, as their arms and legs moved and they separated from each other. Uncle Tommy rose and walked down the bed, his long dokey jerking up and down. Auntie Bernie had red hair in her private place. She stuck her arm out and tried to grab the sheet, but missed. She tried again, raising her back and turning a bit, and I could see her hanging tummies with brown red knobs. They were exactly like a sow’s tummies, only there were two, not twenty.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here,” she said.

  The slow motion stopped. Uncle Tommy swiped his underpants off the top of the vanity and fell against it as he raised a leg and tried to hop into them.

  “Nuala will wake up because of this noise,” I said.

  “Thank you for reminding us,” Uncle Tommy said. “You just go back to bed now.”

  I turned to leave, but looked back. “Why were you pumping her like a bull?”

  “Don’t ask cheeky questions that only concern grown-ups,” Auntie Bernie said.

  “Why is it cheeky?”

  “Your auntie had a wee puncture.” Uncle Tommy smiled at Auntie Bernie, who looked at him crossly.

  “Does Daddy fix Mammy’s punctures?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who fixes yours?”

  Uncle Tommy laughed. “Men don’t get punctures.”

  “Why not?”

  “Leave my bedroom,” said Auntie Bernie.

  “It’s my bedroom,” I said, and left.

  Later, I overheard Auntie Bernie talking about me in the kitchen.

  “He saw my breasts, but I don’t think he saw anything else. And he saw Tommy’s thing . . . you know . . . a bit stirred up.”

  Mammy giggled.

  “Do you think it could hurt him at his age?” I could tell by her voice that Auntie was worried. “I don’t want him to be damaged by what he saw us doing.”

  “Gabriel’s more sensitive than Caroline or James, but it’ll do him no harm. He’s not the first youngster to have walked in on shenanigans and he’ll not be the last.”

  “All the same, I wish I could be sure.”

  “We’ll watch and see what happens.”

  “I read somewhere that it’s good to give a child a wee shock if they witness anything out of the ordinary and appear troubled by it,” said Auntie Bernie. “It’s supposed to distract or something. Do you think we should try it, if we think he’s troubled?”

  “We could.”

  On the way to school next day, I said to Fergal, “Auntie Bernie wants to give me a ‘wee shock’ to make me forget something I saw.”

  “That’s bad, Gabriel,” he said, after I’d told him what I’d seen. “My brother caught Daddy doing that to my mother, too. He dragged him out to the byre and thrashed him for watching. He was beaten so hard, the marks turned blue. That’s the ‘wee shock.’”

  For the following two days, every time Auntie Bernie came into the living room, I went outside to play or sat as far away from her as I could. I tried not to even speak to her, not until she’d forget I’d seen her getting pumped.

  “Gabriel, why are you always looking under your eyes at me these days?” she asked when I was in the living room with Mammy and her early one evening.

  “I didn’t know I was looking at you under my eyes.”

  “Why do you always sit so far away from me?”

  They were watching Crossroads, their favorite TV program, during which we were never allowed to talk. My mother turned from the screen to look at me. I knew I couldn’t tell a large lie, because I was making my First Confession soon.

  “I’m not staying out of your way.”

  “Why are you lying?” Auntie said.

  My palms were sweaty and I rubbed them against my pant legs.

  “Tell the truth, Gabriel,” my mother said. “First Confession’s coming up.”

  “Because Uncle Tommy pumped you and you’re trying to shock me.”

  Auntie nodded at my mother and they rose from their chairs together. Mammy switched off the TV, told me that she and Auntie were going to the generator shed and I was to knock on its door in exactly one minute. After counting to sixty, I went out. Mammy opened the door. Above the generator, light streamed though tiny holes in the zinc roof that Daddy had been asked to fix but hadn’t. The stink of diesel mixed with Auntie Bernie’s fierce bad perfume and there was a black oily stain on the concrete platform on which the generator sat. My mother stepped out into the sunlight as Auntie came to the door opening.

  “Put out your hands and close your eyes until I say you can open them,” she said. “Don’t even peek.”

  “I don’t want to be hit.”

  “You won’t. I have a present for you, that’s all.”

  “Do as you’re told,” Mammy said.

  I stretched out my hands and felt something light placed in them.

  “Okay, you may open your eyes,” Auntie Bernie said.

  It was a very long, white-pink thing with an angry face, black eyes, and small brown-red horns like knobs. The face was so angry that I was frightened, until I realized it was just a stupid balloon.

  “Aren’t those little horns just like the little horns you saw on Auntie Bernie’s chest a few days ago? She was wearing balloons, and Uncle Tommy was pumping them up that morning. Isn’t that so, Bernie?”

  “Aha.”

  It wasn’t the same, though, and their “wee shock” was just a balloon with an angry face. Why were they trying to frighten me with a worm balloon with tiny brown-red horns and saying Auntie had been wearing one?

  My mother picked up a twig and dug its jagged end into the balloon. It burst into a piece of wet rubber with the brown-red horns still sticking out.

  “Now that you know why Uncle Tommy was helping me in the bedroom, you can forget all about what you saw,” said Auntie Bernie. “Let your mind think about First Confession, instead.”

  “You won’t go into her bedroom again, will you?” said Mammy.

  “No way.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give your auntie a kiss to say you’re sorry and you may leave.”

  I was supposed to be sorry? I didn’t want to kiss her, but I wouldn’t be excused until I did. I put my tightly pursed lips to her cheek and made sure not to breathe in any of her perfume.

  “That’s my best nephew,” Auntie Bernie said. She swept my hair from my eyes. “It’s all out of your mind now, isn’t it?”

  “Can I tell what I saw as a sin when the priest hears my confession?”

  “You cannot indeed.”

  “Say nothing about this to the priest,” my mother added.

  “But if I do, then I’ll really be able to forget, because it’ll be truly forgiven.”

  “Jesus, you will not tell such a thing to the priest,” said Auntie Bernie. “He won’t, will he, Eileen?”

  “He won’t.”

  “Will you be telling him what you were doing when you go to confession?” I asked.

  Auntie looked at my mother. “Yes, that’s it exactly. I’ll tell him. Now remember, Gabriel, if you tell him about my sin, the priest will know . . . and God will not take away the large stain on your soul. In fact, he will add another,
larger—”

  “Bernie!” said Mammy. She turned to me. “Just tell him you’ve disobeyed me, Gabriel . . . or tell him you stole a chocolate bar behind my back, if you can’t come up with a proper sin before then.”

  “But I haven’t.”

  “Just tell him anyway, son.”

  First Holy Communion took place a week after first confession. The headmistress and Father McAtamney had been giving us catechism classes every lunchtime for months and we’d been told we’d receive beautiful white prayer books and rosary beads after the Communion Mass. One day before, the priest visited the school and made the catechism class sit in the front three rows while Miss Murray sat behind us and kept Simple Brian and the infants on their best behavior.

  Father McAtamney sat at the teacher’s desk, removed a circular, silver box from his pocket and took out a large wafer and held it up. “Children, this is a piece of bread which represents the body of Christ. Now, today is just a practice. Our Lord will not be so big tomorrow. I will break pieces of this and after I say ‘Corpus Christi,’ you must respond, ‘Amen.’” He looked at Henry Lynch. “What will you say?”

  “Amen, Father.”

  “That’s correct. Jesus will look after you and guide you after you’ve received Him. One last thing: you must not chew Our Lord. He must be swallowed whole. Why must He be swallowed whole, Gabriel?”

  “Because, Father, our teeth would likely hurt Him.”

  Father McAtamney smiled. “That’s not correct.”

  The boys and girls laughed. My cheeks were on fire. Henry got his question right, I got mine wrong, and now I mightn’t be allowed to receive Our Lord.

  “Your Uncle Brendan is a priest, isn’t he?” Father asked.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Ask him next time he’s home for a visit and he’ll tell you why it’s forbidden. Will you remember to ask?”

  “I won’t be asking, Father.”

  “Why?”

  “He never wants to come home.”

  Father looked over at the teacher sitting near the blackboard. “Why doesn’t he want to come home, do you think?”