The Son of a Certain Woman

by Wayne Johnston

  Every day after I got home from school my mother sent me to Collins’s store at the top of the hill, well off Bonaventure, to buy her two packs of cigarettes. She couldn’t spare the near hour it would take to get the cigarettes herself and she never had enough money to buy a carton or more at a time once a week. She declined when Pops offered to give her the money and walk with her to Collins’s store on Saturdays to get the cigarettes. “And besides,” she said, “the more I have in the house, the more I smoke.” She said she figured she would probably go through four packs a day if she could afford it. But she didn’t want me to carry her cigarette money about all day at school, where I might lose it or be relieved of it by some boys who, even knowing what their punishment would be, would be unable to resist, so she’d have me walk home, where she’d give me the money and send me back up the hill to the store.

  She gave me a dollar bill. I bought two packages of Rothmans at forty-five cents a package and kept the remaining dime. Children weren’t allowed to buy cigarettes, but my mother would phone ahead to let Mrs. Collins know I was coming. In my blue blazer that bore on one chest pocket the yellow crest of St. Bon’s, I had to walk back up the hill past Brother Rice, past our rival school St. Pat’s, take a left off Bonaventure just before St. Bon’s, walk another half-dozen blocks, buy the cigarettes and ten cents’ worth of something for myself, and return home.

  I set out every day after school for my mother’s cigarettes, regarding with dread the maroon-blue-green-blazer-lined sidewalk of Bonaventure, the black-tunic-and-white-blouse-lined sidewalk of the street across from Holy Heart.

  For a while, with the dollar bill balled up in a fist that I kept in my pocket, I walked among the students of the Mount, protected by the ever-newly-toughened terms of my immunity, but never entirely convinced that I was safe. I walked above the fray all because of Uncle Paddy. It was like walking among a swarm of muzzled dogs who, though restrained from biting me or even barking, looked at me in a way that made it all too clear what they would do if one day they couldn’t help themselves.

  Pops kept assuring my mother that no boy who knew what was good for him would lay a hand on me, but it was the boys who didn’t know what was good for them who worried me. What if some soon-to-drop-out bully with nothing to lose, with no intention of ever going back to Brother Rice, decided to take out his frustrations on me?

  Students, boys especially, tried to find ways of circumventing Uncle Paddy’s edict. They stopped using my name in remarks, which therefore seemed they might be directed at anyone. They made pacts not to tattle on each other. They shouted from so far back in the pack, their hands cupping their mouths, that no one was sure who had shouted. “Let’s get him and hold him down and put a clothespin on his dick.”

  Pops told me: “Don’t think you have less to fear from the girls, Percy. If Brother McHugh hadn’t spoken to Sister Celestine, her crowd would set upon you and leave your bones to bleach in the parking lot of Holy Heart.”

  I walked twice daily—up the hill, down the hill—through a gauntlet of threats that didn’t sound as empty as my mother thought they were. Despite Pops’ generosity, a dime was more than my mother could afford, more than the daily allowance of even the better-off boys. I’d usually buy candy or chocolate bars with my dimes, things that could be easily hidden and that I could delay eating until I got home. But sometimes I couldn’t resist a lemon square or raisin square, or some kind of ice cream treat. Or even a small, warm-from-the-oven blueberry pie. I’d leave Collins’s store devouring the pie before it got cold or the ice cream before it melted, watched by hordes of boys and girls, covetously by some but outright hungrily by others, especially the youngest ones, a pack of Rothmans in each of my jacket pockets as I licked an ice cream cone, or ate a square sandwich-fashion, or played hot potato with a blueberry pie as juice the colour of my face and hands spilled down my front.

  One day, an older boy decided that, Archbishop or no Archbishop, he would have his say in front of witnesses.

  “There’s better pie at home, Percy,” a chubby, flushed boy named Coffin said. He smacked and licked his lips until they glistened. “Believe me. I’ve tasted it lots of times.” The Coffin Brothers. There were four of them, as well as a network of parents, aunts and uncles whose names were forever appearing in the paper on the occasion of their arrest or conviction for some crime—the Coffin Clan. No family name was more often spoken in the courts of St. John’s.

  “Bullshitter,” another named Galway said. Galway was in the habit of scorning all claims of sexual conquest, perhaps because his acne-riddled face disgusted girls almost as much as my stained one did. “You’ve never had your face in Penny Joyce’s juicy pie. I had my fingers in it last night. Here, Percy, have a whiff. You can still smell your mother’s pie on my fingers.”

  He put two of his fingers under my nose. There was laughter and the girls from Heart sang: “Can you smell your mother’s pie, Percy boy, Percy boy, can you smell your mother’s pie, charming Percy? He can smell his mother’s pie just as well as you or I, but he’s a young boy who cannot eat his mother.” I wondered why I’d never heard them sing that rhyme before—they couldn’t have just made it up.

  I knew what they meant by pie. “Shut up,” I said, and threw away what was left of mine.

  “You should never turn up your nose at a good piece of pie,” Coffin said. “I bet you Pops MacDougal never does.”

  The girls from Heart chanted: “Pops and Pen up in a tree / f-u-c-k-i-n-g / first comes money / then comes Pops / then comes Pen until Pops flops.”

  “My mother hates Pops,” I cried.

  “Not what I heard,” Coffin said. “Besides, Percy, look at it this way, if they do have a kid, it might not have a face like yours. I’m sure your mother would like to have one normal-looking kid even if she has to do it with Pops to get it.”

  I ran down the hill as a chorus of scorn erupted behind me, my big shoes loudly flapping on the sidewalk as I fought to keep from slipping, my hands working uselessly as if they dangled from my wrists by bits of string. I said nothing to my mother that day or the next about what had happened. I had the feeling, absurd as it seemed, that what Coffin had said was true. Some of it anyway. I felt sick at the idea that she had done something with one or both of the boys, even as I told myself that their boasts were absurd. But even worse—because more plausible—was what Coffin had said about her and Pops.

  BETTER TO BE A PROSTITUTE THAN DESTITUTE

  POPS had to go away later in the week for three days for a teachers’ conference. I couldn’t remember him ever having spent a night away from the house.

  I took the opportunity to confront my mother before Medina arrived. She was setting the kitchen table for their card game, laying out the cribbage board and some potato chips and two beer glasses. I sat at the table when she did.

  “Why don’t you get rid of Pops?”

  “He pays more than any other boarder would.”

  “Why?”

  “He likes to live here. It’s close to where he works.”

  “He makes enough money to have his own house.”

  “I doubt he makes that much.”

  “He likes you.”

  “Yeah, he does. He likes me. He likes you too.”

  “No he doesn’t. He doesn’t like anyone but you. And no one likes him, not even you. But you do it with him anyway.”

  “What?” She grabbed me by the wrist. “Did Pops say something to you?” she shouted so loudly the lamp overhead made a pinging sound.

  It was true. I knew she wouldn’t have reacted that way if it wasn’t. I knew she would have thrown her head back, opened her mouth and laughed until I could see her back teeth. She let go of my wrist and began to check the deck of cards, her face scarlet.

  “Pops didn’t say anything.”

  “Then where did you get that idea? At school, no doubt.”

  “You do it with him,” I all but screamed. “Everybody knows. I bet McHugh knows.” I began to cry.


  “Off to bed before Medina gets here. Off to bed. Now.”

  “You do it with him because he pays you money,” I said, sobbing. “You do it for money.”

  She stood up and leaned her hands on the table, her head just inches from mine. I smelled her perfumed hair and looked down her blouse, sneaking a peak at the first inch of her cleavage.

  “Yes, that’s right. I do it with him because he pays me money.”

  “That’s what whores like Sister Mary Aggie do.”

  “No. It’s not. But I’ll always remember this day as the one you called me a whore.”

  “I’m not sorry,” I said, wiping my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Pops is not my father.”

  “Having a mark on your face—”

  “Stain. The right word is stain. And it’s all over my fucking face, not on it.”

  “Well listen here, Mr. Purple Pimpernel. It’s no picnic curling up with Pops, let me tell you.”

  “Then don’t do it.”

  “I do it for you. If I didn’t, we’d be living in some one-room dump.”

  “With the Dark Martians on Dark Marsh Road.”

  “That’s right.”

  “In a house like Medina’s.”

  “No, in a room like Medina’s. That’s all she has, as you well know, a room.”

  “She doesn’t seem to mind. And there’s no such thing as a Dark Martian. There’s no such place as Dark Marsh Road. You’re full of shit.”

  “If not for Pops and Uncle Paddy, you’d be spending every day beating off the savages on Barter’s Hill. And maybe then you wouldn’t be such a selfish little cunt.”

  Even as the vehemence of her words hit me, I couldn’t help feeling a faint titillation—my mother had said cunt to me. She looked as if she wished she hadn’t.

  “Pops pays more of the mortgage than I do. He pays for the upkeep of this place, for your upkeep. If not for Pops, we wouldn’t have a pot to piss in.”

  “You wouldn’t have your Rothmans.”

  “So now you’re begrudging me my smokes? Most people would be human chimneys if they were in my shoes, if they had to put up with—” She paused, bit her lip, shook her head. “What else do I have, Percy? You tell me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re goddamned right you don’t.” She started poking me in the chest to emphasize each word. “You—don’t—know—anything.”

  By this time I was outright really bawling, feeling certain I was right but knowing I would lose no matter what I said. She was doing it with Pops. Even if she never did it again, she’d done it with him. She had crossed the Rubicon of doing it with VP MacD and now there was no going back.

  “Pops—” I started, but she cut me off.

  “Don’t blame Pops. It’s not as if he ever makes the first move. And it’s only now and then. Just often enough.”

  “For what?”

  “I’ve had enough of you humiliating me. You wouldn’t even be able to survive in this neighbourhood or the best one on planet Earth if not for me and Pops and Uncle Paddy and McHugh. You hate us all, but you’d be crucified if not for us.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “All right then. I’ll tell Pops to hit the road. I’ll tell Uncle Paddy we don’t want his protection anymore. I’ll tell McHugh to treat you like he treats the other boys. Who do you think will care about what happens to you then? Do you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now.” She grabbed me by the shoulders. “You’re not going to say a word about this to anyone. Not Medina. Not Pops, especially. He has himself convinced that it’s not about the money. And not to anybody else. It could get Pops fired.”

  “Everybody knows already.”

  “Everybody suspects. There’s a big difference.”

  I stopped crying and glared at her.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. But this time her voice quavered. “A few times. Now and then. Jesus. Better I be a prostitute than we all be destitute.” It sounded like something she had rehearsed. She lit up a cigarette.

  “You’re not a prostitute,” I said.

  “The word you used was whore.”

  “You’re not a whore.”

  “You have no idea, squirt. Go to bed. Now.”

  “It’s only four-thirty.”

  “It’s a small price to pay for calling me a whore.”

  “A few times.” “Now and then.” I wondered how many, how often Pops got more from her for his money than room and board. How strange that what people made jokes about but didn’t really believe had turned out to be true. She did it with Pops for money. But not like the women called whores who did it with the fishermen from Spain and Portugal, waving to their ships from the waterfront and shouting “Mario.” The White Fleet. A joke I had lately heard at school. But still, she did it for money. With Pops. Pops sneaking into her room after I had gone to bed. Or maybe she snuck into his—the room with the poster of the Periodic Table on the wall, stuck to it with Scotch tape so old it had gone brown and curled up so that the poster had looked for years as if it was soon to fall. The room whose window faced Brother Rice. Pops on top of her as he stared out the window above the bed.

  What if Pops made my mother pregnant? Pregnant. I had never said the word out loud and had only rarely heard it said. To me the word called up an incongruously swollen belly attached to a normal-sized woman. Unconcealable. Undisguisable. More conspicuously there than anything on earth. I thought of my mother’s belly, my mother, her body spoiled, looking like that because of Pops. My mother would have a part-Pops baby. A child of Pops would be my half-brother or half-sister. Unless Pops and my mother got married, he’d get fired. Unless they lied and said the baby wasn’t his, Pops would be my father. Maybe Pops was too old to make her pregnant. I pictured all of us walking with the baby carriage along the sidewalk, people crowding round to see if the baby’s face and hands and feet looked like mine. If they did, everyone would know that my FSS was my mother’s fault, not Jim Joyce’s. I would know.

  I was not to tell Medina. So Medina didn’t know.

  I waited an hour after I heard Medina come into the house, then went out to the kitchen where they were playing cards.

  “Jesus, Perse,” Medina said. “Your eyes look like two pissholes in the snow. Been crying?”

  My mother smiled when Medina winked at her. That wink—Medina knew. Medina had always known.

  I looked at my mother, whose face gave evidence that she’d been crying too. I was about to object that she had lied to me, but she spoke first. “Yes, Percy, Medina knows. She’s more on your side than on mine. That’s because she’s not a whore like me.”

  “I’m not really on your side, Perse,” Medina said. “Mothers have done worse to keep their boys in jelly beans.”

  “I changed my mind and said she wasn’t a whore.”

  “I think you only pardoned me for being one.”

  Medina sniffed. “Your mother thinks she leads him on, but I think Pops-a-Doodle-do is blackmailing her. He’s not quite the dork we all like to think he is.”

  “I hate him,” I said. I turned to my mother. “I’ll bring back the dime every day.”

  “A dime a day won’t keep Pops away,” Medina said.

  “I hate Pops.”

  “Hamlet to my Gertrude.”

  “Penny,” Medina sniffed. “You’re the only one here who knows what that means.”

  “Pardon my education.”

  Medina sniffed again.

  “Did Jim Joyce go away because of Pops?” I asked.

  Medina laughed and smacked the table with her hand so hard the big green ashtray jumped. “That’s a good one.”

  “The two of them never met,” my mother said. “This is my fault. Talk about an Oedipus complex.”

  Medina waved her hand. “I already told you, Pen, you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd for that kind of material.”

  “Well then, I’ll have to find a new crowd, won
’t I?”

  “Like Pops? I bet Pops understands your every word. Is that how you two talk? After, I mean. I can see you lying side by side, Pops puffing on his pipe, you blowing smoke at the ceiling. I guess you don’t talk a lot about Jim Joyce—”

  “That’s enough, Medina. Off to bed, Percy,” my mother said.

  “I’ll be good,” Medina said. “Really, I will.”

  “Bed for you, Perse.

  “He could make you have a baby,” I shouted.

  “No one can make me have a baby.”

  “He’s right, though,” Medina said. “No matter how careful you are, you could get pregnant.”

  “I won’t have a baby.”

  “Is Pops too old?” I asked.

  “I doubt it. Men are never too old.”

  “They think they’re never too old,” Medina said.

  “I really didn’t set out to use him. The very first time—well, I just asked him afterward for a top-up to meet the mortgage payment. I said I was looking for a loan, nothing else, but he insisted. He gave me the money. I thought that would be it—but it wasn’t. Neither of us wanted it to be. New habits are easy to acquire. It’s the kind of thing that would never work if you set out with a plan.”

  “Pops MacDougal.” Medina shook her head in apparent disbelief.

  “Don’t you start. He doesn’t just give me a little extra every month. We couldn’t afford nearly as nice a place without Pops. I’m not sure we could afford any place. Pops carries all three of us. Some of the money I give you comes from him.”