The Son of a Certain Woman

by Wayne Johnston

  The teasing and name-calling continued. My mother asked Pops to speak to Brother McHugh about my treatment at school, which, she said, seemed to fly in the face of at least the spirit of Uncle Paddy’s Sermon on the Mount. Soon, the boys of all the schools on the Mount had it made known to them that to say an unkind word to Percy Joyce, on or off school property, would earn them the legendary wrath of Brother Rice Principal McHugh. It was said the Archbishop had intervened again and had personally charged Brother McHugh with looking out for the little Joyce boy. Pops said that every boy at Rice and at the other schools on the Mount was justifiably terrified of Brother McHugh. No one wanted to be caught staring at me or even looking at me lest I think they were staring at me. I wondered if it would have been better just to get beat up from time to time.

  “Thank God for Uncle Paddy,” my mother said. “I mean His Grace.”

  Pops said it was common knowledge that, at a word from Brother McHugh, boys from any of the schools could be called to his office. He said there were boys who stayed home for months after a session with McHugh, waiting for the broken bones in their hands to heal. So it was under the aegis of His Grace/Pops/Brother McHugh that I would flourish. Hopefully.

  “Pops is exaggerating,” my mother assured me, but Pops shook his head. “I’m not exaggerating in the least.” He said that the Director’s strap was actually a “strop,” a piece of leather on which barbers sharpened their straight-blade razors.

  Brother McHugh, by his own edict, was the only Brother allowed to mete out corporal punishment to boys from any of the schools on the Mount. The other Brothers sent misbehaving boys to him. It was said that he kept a record of all the boys who were sent to his office and meticulously kept track of the number of straps or other kinds of blows that they received, the repeat offenders, those who had been suspended and expelled, those who had cried, those who had vowed not to and had kept their vow, those who had vowed not to but had broken down. And so McHugh was what my mother called “the one-man retribution show,” the lone “corrections officer” who shouldered the entire load, primarily, he said, because he wished to spare his fellow Brothers the unpleasantness of punishing young boys, was willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of those who worked beneath him.

  But I alone, of all the boys, past and present on the Mount, had a free pass.

  I learned at school that, as a child, McHugh had gone by the name of Gus and still did to those who knew him personally, and that Gloomy Gus was his nickname among the students. McHugh was said to have hated the short form of his name all his life. As with Saint Augustine’s mother, McHugh’s mother’s name was Monica. Saint Monica. My son the saint. He takes after me. “I actually like the name Gus,” my mother said. “But he doesn’t seem like a Gus, does he? What’s Gus short for? Angus? Surely not. I don’t think that man’s parents would name him after a breed of cattle. Augustine, more likely. Saint Augustine. One of the super saints. So McHugh’s name is Augustine. A very august name. Augustine McHugh. I can just see little Augustine on his tricycle. A hard name to live up to. A name for a boy for whom his parents had high hopes.”

  My mother asked Pops what he knew about McHugh’s background. Pops said he was from Grand Falls, had three sisters, all of them Presentation nuns who taught school in various places on the Mainland. His working-class parents were still living in Grand Falls.

  “The only boy,” my mother said. “The hope of the family.” She wondered how his parents felt about having no grandchildren. The end of their bloodline. To his parents, my mother speculated, McHugh not getting married was a gamble that they may have hoped would have a bigger payoff. Their son the priest. Instead, it was their son the Brother. The Brother, but still. “I might be way wide of the mark,” my mother said. “Maybe the only person disappointed in Gus is Gus. Or maybe he’s come further than he ever dreamed.”

  Students overheard using the name Gus by a nun, Brother, teacher, staff member or student tattletale were soon, if they were boys, sent to Gus for punishment, or if they were girls, to Sister Celestine of Holy Heart. Sister C, the use of whose nickname was permitted because she was fond of it, also had a monopoly on discipline, being the sole punisher of all students who misbehaved in the girls’ schools of the Mount.

  Of course, the extreme ban on the use of “Gus” made the boys all the more inclined to use it, to gleefully, often blasphemously, defy the ban. “You’ll be called before Gus” if you do this or that, boys would warn each other. Gus will get you for that. Gus will smite you down for that. Gus knows all your secret thoughts, words and deeds. Almighty Gus; Holy Mary, Mother of Gus; Gus the Father, Gus the Son and Gus the Holy Gust.

  My mother said she was not sure she wanted to be beholden to such a man. But she soon stopped voicing her worries when the teasing and taunting all but disappeared.

  “He’ll be fine,” Medina said. “He’ll probably be the first boy on the Mount to get to grade seven without a black eye. Even if a bit of name-calling was the worst he had to put up with, he’d be luckier than most.”

  But that’s what I was afraid of, being perceived as being luckier than most, an undeservedly special boy, a pet who, because of the Archbishop, Gus and Pops, was spared even what trials the most popular of boys endured—and who rubbed all that in their faces with his effortless perfection in academics. They mocked me as if I fancied I was Uncle Paddy, as if I was His Grace. “Your Face,” boys said to me, and fell to one knee as if to kiss my ring.

  I was excused from religion class. I was deemed to be physically “too frail” for gym class but about that I didn’t care—I knew I’d be the weak link in any sport because of my oversized hands and feet and didn’t want there to be yet one more thing for which I alone could be excused. And I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to shower with the other boys, wouldn’t have to let them see what was hidden by my clothes. I had an “evaluation” session with the guidance counsellor, a well-meaning but painfully embarrassed young woman who divided her time between all the schools on the Mount. Reading from a laminated list, she asked me about various things having to do with what she referred to as my “specialness.”

  “Is there anything you want to ask about your specialness? Have you ever been teased about your specialness? What words do other students use when referring to your specialness? Do you sometimes wish that your specialness would go away? Do you feel that your teachers understand your specialness? Have you ever felt embarrassed by your specialness? I stared at the desk and said I didn’t mind my specialness. My evaluation session ended when she got to the bottom of the list. I never set eyes on her again.

  I told my mother about my appointment when I got home. She began to refer to me as “Your Specialness.” “What would Your Specialness like for dinner? Is the macaroni to the liking of Your Specialness?”

  During my mother and Medina’s card game that night, every other word was “specialness.” “So tell me, Penelope,” Medina said, “how do you feel about your specialness?”

  “How do you feel about yours?” my mother said.

  “Do you feel that I understand your specialness?” Medina said.

  “Have you ever thought about playing with your specialness?” my mother said.

  “I believe I have thoroughly explored my specialness.”

  “There aren’t many sports that require you to cover every inch of yourself. It’s a pity the school doesn’t have a fencing team,” my mother said wistfully.

  And I imagined it: the world’s first never-defeated fencer, his identity unknown because he was never seen without a mask.

  There was a network of underground tunnels that connected most of the schools on the Mount. They were necessary partly because the Brothers who taught at St. Bon’s and St. Pat’s lived in the Brothers’ Quarters attached to Brother Rice, a tower of modest height. There was no room for Brothers’ Quarters on the grounds of the other six schools, and the walk from Brother Rice to them could be a daunting one if done outdoors given that, as Pops
said, most of the school year was winter, a cold, windy, snowy winter that made it all but impossible on many days for a Brother encumbered with textbooks, exercise books and exams to make his way up the slippery slope of the Curve of Bonaventure.

  The tunnels were essential for the older nuns and Brothers, and for McHugh, who, as the Director of all the Brothers and the supervisor of all the schools, had to make his way several times a day from Brother Rice to the top of the Mount. The Main Tunnel connected Brother Rice to Holy Heart, St. Pat’s and St. Bon’s, while narrower tunnels branched off to Belvedere, Mercy and Presentation. I had no idea what the tunnels were like, but the way the other boys darkly referred to “the tunnels” made me think of scenes from old movies I had seen on TV, tunnels lit by flickering torches, rat-teeming passages that would have unnerved even such a beast as Lon Chaney always seemed to play. Most of the boys who had been inside the tunnels had only been there to be led from St. Bon’s and St. Pat’s to Brother Rice to be punished by McHugh—led by older, junior high students who were known among the boys as the MPs, the Military Police, hall monitors who wore white arm bands. “Honour bands,” as the teachers called them. It was rumoured that some MPs were undercover, their identities known to no one but McHugh. Rats, finks, squealers could be anywhere, so you had to be careful what you said and did even when there were no white arm bands to be seen.

  McHugh’s hair was said to have been white since he was in his early twenties. He combed it to the right in a wave that ended in a crescent that hid half his forehead. He was in his mid-forties now, of average height, neither muscular nor fat, but large, soft-looking, with a small double chin that quivered when he spoke. It was easy to spot him from a distance, especially outdoors when it was windy, for his hair went up in a flickering mass of what might have been white flame. He had a smooth, pink complexion; he looked as if he never shaved because he never had to. His neck and hands and wrists were of the same hairless, pink complexion, almost faded versions of my own. These features, combined with his bright blue eyes and his habit of almost always smiling, gave him the jocular, plump look of an easygoing, all-understanding bishop who, you might imagine, was given to merrily making the sign of the cross over everyone and everything. But he had a deep-timbred, flawless, far-projecting voice that alone of all his features seemed to match his reputation. He could, at conversational volume, silence a school hallway at lunchtime, his voice clear and unmistakably his. McHugh visited St. Bon’s and St. Pat’s at lunchtime via the tunnels when the halls were full of boys, among whom he strolled, hands in the pockets of his slacks, shouting out the last names of skylarking boys in a tone that made it clear they would get no second warning. It was said that he not only knew the first and last names of every boy on the Mount but also knew their academic standing and their attendance and detention records. He had an infallible eye for family resemblance and was forever telling boys they would never measure up to their older brothers who had graduated high school under him.

  McHugh would stop and look down at me as he had done in the chem lab and the boys would look expectantly at him. McHugh, chewing his gum, would smile as if he was savouring some devastating witticism which, but for the Archbishop’s edict, he would say aloud and send the boys into derisive fits of unprecedented hilarity. But the smile would abruptly vanish, be replaced by a look of ironic amusement, as if it had occurred to him that, protected or not by the Archbishop, I was not worth toying with.

  The boys at St. Bon’s tried to goad me into misbehaving—into skipping class when I felt like it, talking back to the Brothers, smoking on the school grounds, starting fights in the hallways. “Tell Brother Hogan to go fuck himself, Percy. Come on. Detention is the worst you’ll get, if you even get that. Come on. Do it. He can’t send you to McHugh. McHugh can’t lay a finger on you. No one can.”

  They seemed fascinated by the question of just how much I could get away with, just how far my amnesty might extend. I was intrigued by the question as well. Could I do anything and get away with it? Could I steal candy, bubble gum, cigarettes from Collins’s store and give them to boys as bribes in return for friendship? Had Uncle Paddy conferred upon me absolute clemency for offences committed anywhere on earth?

  “You got it made, Percy,” the St. Bon’s boys said, shaking their heads at my refusal to take advantage of having it made. “Come on, Percy, you won’t get into trouble. If Uncle Paddy told everyone to leave me alone, I’d kick you in the balls.”

  But my mother warned me that the “hands off Percy Joyce” edict could be revoked at any time if someone like McHugh convinced the Archbishop that I was abusing it, and then where would I be? Surrounded by Brothers and boys I had made enemies of when they were forbidden to lay a finger on me. She said that Uncle Paddy, being so old, might pass away and be replaced by someone less interested in my health. Uncle Paddy might be made a cardinal and appointed to the Vatican, where he was unlikely to spend much of his time pondering the fate of Percy Joyce. “Don’t push your luck,” my mother said. “I can just imagine the field day McHugh would have with you if Uncle Paddy ever changed his mind.” She told me to behave as if the Archbishop had never heard of me.

  “The boys of St. Bon’s seem to think, Medina, that sin won’t register on Percy’s soul. When the time comes, he’ll simply bypass death and Purgatory and ascend directly into Heaven like Christ and the Blessed Virgin. Remember,” she said to me, “you can’t complain to Uncle Paddy if I smack your arse.” Medina smiled and winked at me and Pops said he was sure I would never warrant a smacked arse.

  “They’re right,” my mother said. “I wouldn’t smack you. I would never hit you.”

  I knew it was true. She would never hit me. Neither at school nor at home would I be punished, at least not in that way. I vowed that I would never take advantage of her love and concern for me. I believed it at the time. But I might as well have made that vow with my fingers crossed behind my back.

  HERE COMES PERCY JOYCE

  MY hands hung heavy from my forearms, drooping when I raised them as if my wrists were made not of bone but of cartilage, swaying slightly like those of a marionette or someone hypnotized. When I couldn’t avoid raising my hand in class, I supported the elbow of my raised arm with my free hand, self-conscious of that bearpaw-like appendage hovering above the other, smaller, proportionate hands. I was thankful my hands were hairless or else God knows what I would have been likened to. My feet, at least, were always covered in public, but my skinny legs struggled to shuffle them along so that I scuffed somewhat with every step, especially in winter, when my balance on the ice and snow was less sure than that of other children. Whatever the season, the approach or retreat of Percy Joyce was as audible, as unmistakable as the voice of Gus McHugh. “Here comes Percy Joyce,” I heard boys shout from inside the classroom as I made my way to it down the hallway.

  In grade three, when I was eight, I started “blabbing,” as Pops put it, about my local gigantism at school. I said, not in a boasting but in a confiding, merely informative sort of way, that my thing was affected by local gigantism. I started rumours that spread to the grown-ups on the Mount, and those who believed the rumours jumped to the further, and not entirely inaccurate, conclusion that I was hyper-sexed, precociously horny, pathologically infatuated with sex, possessed of a sexual appetite as out of all proportion as my thing. To me, gigantism was mostly just a joke, one more thing that I lied about and was teased about, but the rumour was given more credence than others I’d tried to start. Those who believed, feared, worried, fretted about it to any degree assumed that my oversized thing was as discoloured and misshapen as my face, my lips, my hands and feet, an unpredictably dangerous, sinister thing, as liable to go off or to have some perverse, irresistible appeal to girls as all ugly things in God’s creation seemed to have.

  In bed at night, I examined my normal, unobjectionable, average but hyperbolized thing. I wagged it back and forth as if to prove to myself that no harm would come my way or to anyone els
e from so innocuous a penis.

  I asked my mother: Could things not locally gigantic now become so as I grew older? No, the doctors had told her that my hands and feet would continue to overgrow but their degree of disproportion to the rest of me would not change, and they would stop growing when the rest of me did. The stains would not spread but would enlarge as I enlarged. No new stains would develop. Nothing else would spontaneously sprout at some abnormal rate as I grew older. That the source of this information was the doctor who had told her I would vegetate until my early teens then perish peacefully didn’t reassure me. I reminded her that she had told me years ago that the doctors had told her of certain complications that might “manifest” as I grew older, but she said they would have done so by now if they were ever going to.

  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.