The Son of a Certain Woman

by Wayne Johnston

  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:

  “How much is that Mommy in the window,

  The one who’s a great piece of tail?

  How much is that Mommy in the window?

  I do hope that Mommy’s for sale.”

  “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. “He
al 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.

  “McHugh says Percy has ordained himself,” Pops said. “He said he pretends to say the Mass on the Torbay bus every afternoon. McHugh says there’s nothing he can do because the buses are off limits to him and all the other teachers on the Mount. The bus drivers are supposed to keep order but all they do is drive the buses and ignore the children, whom Percy has goaded into calling him all kinds of things: Percy of the Parking Lot, Saint Percival the Merciful.”

  “Percy, why can’t you stop telling lies?” my mother said.

  I shrugged. “They’re not really lies. They’re just jokes.”

  “You’re making a joke of yourself,” she said. “Making up stupid lies to impress children who aren’t half as smart as you.”

  Still, I couldn’t stay away from the buses. I told the children I’d written a letter to the Pope, Pope Paul VI, and included with it a picture of myself, which had prompted the Pope to write me back to tell me that my stained face was part of God’s plan and that one day the purpose of it would be revealed to me. I said he joked that I should take heart from the very fact that someone with a nose the size of his had been so successful. I said we were now writing each other about once a month and plans were being put in place for me to visit him one day and for him to be the first Pope to visit Newfoundland, where, if he had time, he would have dinner with the Joyces.

  “Percy is pen pals with the Pope,” Sully announced loudly. “What do you and the Pope say in your letters?” I said it was mostly small talk because the Pope’s English wasn’t very good. I said my name in Italian was Percifico and his was Paolo, though I never called him that.

  McHugh called my mother again and complained I was an even more compulsive liar than I had shown myself to be by my mistreatment of Francine. Now, however, I was lying almost exclusively about things related to the Catholic Church, which would not be countenanced.

  My mother and McHugh had a conversation by phone that my mother recounted like this:

  “His Grace still wonders if Percy might not benefit from professional help.”

  “No. You know, His Grace seems to do more than his share of wondering, especially in front of you. Or is it really you who does the wondering? Is it part of your job to wonder for His Grace?”

  “I can assure you that when I say I am quoting His Grace, I am quoting His Grace.”

  “Quoting what he says in reaction to what you say, which, for all he knows, may not be entirely true.”

  “You’re accusing me of lying?”

  “It’s quite a life you’ve made for yourself, isn’t it, Brother McHugh? You never have to worry about getting the old pink slip some Friday afternoon. You’ve never in your life had to support yourself and you never will. Let alone support yourself and a child. You’ve never been faced with having to do something about as pleasant as swallowing thumbtacks to keep your child from going hungry. I’d like to see you in the winter on a picket line, shouting ‘scabs’ at replacement priests and nuns and Brothers and singing, ‘We don’t mind a bit of snow, But Uncle Paddy’s got to go,’ while you tried to keep warm around a barrel of burning picket signs.”

  “You think I have it easy.”

  “I think that, if not for confession, the only thing between you and damnation would be a coma that lasted from cradle to grave.”

  “You believe in confession?”

  “There was a time when a woman would have been burnt at the stake for having a baby with a face like Percy’s, and the baby would have had its brains dashed out on the ground. And the Church would have presided over the proceedings. Did you enjoy the Classics Illustrated version of the Spanish Inquisition as much as I did when you were growing up? Maybe you’re just suffering from a bad case of historical nostalgia, Brother Those-Must-Have-Been-the-Days McHugh.”

  Pops said, “McHugh says it’s the same in all the schools, all the grades. Anarchy. They’re all repeating Percy stories, Percy lies, Percy Joyce tall tales, all making fun of the Bible and Catholicism.”

  I stood in the parking lot, in front of the fleet of buses, extended my arms and shouted, “Gentlemen, start your buses.” I was overjoyed that the drivers, even Cyril, now played along for a while, starting their buses at more or less the same time, grinning at me, cocking their heads in amusement at each other. I knew that I was playing the very sort of role my mother feared I would end up playing. But I felt that I wasn’t really playing it, just pretending to, doing a kind of send-up of it: the poor disfigured boy who had found a place for himself in the hearts of at least some of the students on the Mount, cheerful in spite of an allotment at birth that would have embittered most, the irrepressible, inspiring Percy Joyce, who believed that there was goodness at the core of every heart.

  “Bless the bus, Percy, bless the bus,” the children chanted. “Bless the brakes, bless the steering wheel, bless the tires. Perform a miracle. Make Cyril sober.” One moment I was Christ, the next I was a priest, the next I was the Pope, the next I was Saint John the Baptist.

  The Torbay children cheered, laughed, shouted. “Bless the other buses, Percy, bless the other buses.” I went from bus to bus as the children on each of the buses took up and modified the chant. “Bless us, bless the bus, bless us, bless the bus.”

  I found a discarded tin can, filled it with ditchwater and, dipping a stick into the water, blessed the buses as I remembered Father Bill doing when he blessed our house. I made my way among the buses, blessing each of them, shaking water from the stick with a snap of my wrist, gaped at and for this sometimes rebuked by the drivers, in spite of whom I carried on. “Dear God,” I said, “banish the Evil One from the tires of this bus, and from the brakes and from the steering wheel as well. Dear Lord, don’t let this bus break down before it gets to Kelligrews. Banish the Evil One from the driver of this bus and from the boys of Brother Rice and the girls of Holy Heart, and save them from the agonies of Hell.”

  “Bless us, bless the bus.” I became so caught up in their chanting exhortations I hardly knew what I was doing. I did and said whatever came to mind.

  One of the boys shouted, “Go out on the street and bless the fleet, go out on the street and bless the fleet.”

  Soon everyone was chanting it.

  When there was a pause in the traffic, I went out to the icy middle of Bonaventure to the spot where the traffic cop stood each afternoon. He had yet to arrive, so I faced the parking lot, the fleet of buses, the red facade of Holy Heart behind them, raised my sceptre-like stick, benedictory fashion, and began repeatedly to bless the fleet, flinging drops of water from the stick, which set the children on the buses and those still standing in the parking lot to cheering. Several drivers who were standing about in front of the buses, smoking, yelled at me. I dimly heard, “Get off the street before you’re killed by a car.”

  “I baptize you all,” I shouted. “I baptize you all. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

  Behind me I heard
a woman shout from what sounded like the distance of the sidewalk, “You stop doing that, that’s a sin for you, Percy Joyce.”

  I put aside the can and stick, clasped my hands, fell to my knees, then bent over and kissed the ground as if thereby to confer sacredness upon it as I had seen the Pope do on TV when arriving by plane in a foreign country. I wound up with a lump of road salt in my mouth and spat it out, and continued to spit to rid myself of the acrid taste. The motorists seemed to think I was spitting out of contempt for the Pope whom I had just imitated; they honked their horns and shouted in protest. I stood.

  “Hey, get off the road,” a man said, stepping partway out of his gleaming green car, one foot inside, one on the street. Jubilant at the sound of the cheering, chanting children, I blessed him and gave him silent absolution, then genuflected in the middle of Bonaventure as if Holy Heart were a giant tabernacle. Suddenly I felt as much as saw that some boys had joined me in the space between the cars. I turned around. They knelt behind me on the pavement like some grade school congregation, blessing themselves, clasping their hands and bowing their heads. I had moved them to imitate me, to choose me, Percy Joyce.

  “You little bastards,” the man said, but he stood behind the open door of his green car as if thereby to shield himself from us or to make possible a quick escape. “Stop it,” he yelled. He wore a fur hat and a long black overcoat. He was as red-faced as if he had spent his entire life protesting the very kind of blasphemy that he was witnessing. Behind me, the boys stood and snowballs sailed past me as they threw them at him and at the cars, the snowballs spattering across windshields, hoods and hood ornaments, grilles and blinking headlights.

  As I stood on the double white line in the middle of the street—the traffic on either side of me stalled, my newly acquired followers behind me, chanting my name—I looked up at the sky and held out my arms as if to embrace the end-of-time Rapture brought on by me, by my blasphemies and exhortations. From the corner of my eye I glimpsed one of the bus drivers start to run toward me. I managed to lower my arms before he slammed into me with the fervour and force of a man determined to head off the very conflagration I was trying to invoke. Slipping and skidding on the icy street, I got up, made for the far sidewalk, and started sprinting and sliding down Bonaventure on my clown’s feet to the renewed cheers of the children on the buses, some of whom blew the bus horns and noisily opened and closed the doors. I looked behind to see if anyone was chasing me and saw that the driver had slipped on the sidewalk and fallen down, arms out in front of him as he lay with his face pressed to the pavement. He slowly rose and limped back up the hill. Gasping for breath, I walked slowly down Bonaventure, wondering how long it would be before a phone call was made from Holy Heart to Brother Rice, and another from Brother Rice to 44. The faster the better, it seemed to me, for I couldn’t wait for everyone to learn of the mass subversion I had engineered, winning over to my side dozens, perhaps hundreds of children of whose lives I had made myself the focal point, the centre of attention, the object, it might even be, of their friendship and their loyalty.