Son of a Critch

by Mark Critch

  “Do you know what is in that envelope?”

  Please God, don’t let me throw up on him. “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t want to open that envelope, but I will open it. Do you understand?”

  Please just be some mail he hasn’t gotten around to. Maybe the Sears Christmas Wish Book is thicker than usual this year? “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, I need you to tell me which bad word you said during prayers today.” His fingers drummed hungrily on the envelope. My shirt collar was choking me and it wasn’t even buttoned up. My mouth was as dry as a Pentecostal at Happy Hour on St. Patrick’s Day. I could feel all the water in my body collecting inside my bladder. What would happen if I vomited and peed myself at the same time? Would I die? “Last chance,” he said, interrupting my self-diagnosis.

  “Fuck.” What the hell did I just say? I’d never spoken that word aloud in my life! The small part of my brain that wasn’t focused on keeping me from peeing myself had been hard at work devising a solution. It had accessed all knowledge I had of swear words and cross-referenced this intel with the probability that saying such a word would get you strapped. It had made a Hail Mary pass, blessed be the fruit of her womb. The vice-principal weighed my vice against his principles. He looked at me in stunned silence. Then he carefully unfolded the nun’s note, reread it, and folded it in three again—the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

  “Sister says you said something else, too. What was that?” Idiot! I’d confessed to the wrong sin. The F-word was the worst swear word on earth. What the hell had that foul-mouthed nun written down? I knew only one other curse word. It had to be that one!

  “Shit!” I said, a little too enthusiastically, as if I were buzzing in on Family Feud. Judging by the man’s expression, the survey said that was the wrong answer. I could hear the buzzer as I received my second red X. He unravelled the red string that held the sleeping giant in the envelope. My hands began to burn in anticipation. He pulled Excalibur from its sheath and held it aloft.

  “Stand up and put out your hands,” he commanded. Resigned to my fate, I approached my crucible and presented my palms. He lifted the strap over his shoulder, the free end bending toward me like a dog’s tongue ready to lick its master. The black leather whipped through the air and I pulled back my hand, making it miss its target. “Don’t move your hand,” he said. He wound up a second time and again I somehow felt the irresistible urge to pull away from a grown man trying to hit me with a leather belt. This time his downswing was excellent, good alignment on the backswing, but his moving target threw off his balance and he didn’t follow through.

  He must have been disappointed in his takeaway because he gripped my hand by the wrist and unleashed three short bursts of fire on each of my palms. I stared at my reddened hands, relieved that it was all over and surprising myself by not crying. He sat down at his desk, his breathing slightly laboured, unfolded the note a third time and added some writing of his own to it. Then he folded it up again and passed it to me. “Get back to class and give this to Sister,” he said. I took the note with a shaking hand, and as I did he looked down at his desk, slightly ashamed. My hands really started to sting now. I pushed the note into my pocket. I would not blow on them until I was alone in the hallway.

  I walked back with my hands outstretched, zombie style. I felt my lip trembling and the tears rising to my eyes. I started to sob. My palms grew hotter with each step as if someone was fiddling with my internal thermostat. But there was something else burning inside me: the desire to read that note. I ducked into the stairwell that led to the junior high classrooms and reached into my pocket, the rough corduroy further irritating my tingling hands. I unfolded it carefully and studied the careful loops and twirls of each letter the old bat had crafted with her talons. “Sir, the boy I am sending you was caught talking during prayers. He was asking another boy to look at his ‘dicky-bird.’ Thank you, Sister Bernadette.” The vice-principal had added, “Would not come clean. Three straps to each hand.”

  I did not see that one coming. The ponytail girl had overhead me asking Mickey if he’d seen Dickie on television and assumed I was trying to show him my penis? Who thinks like that? I could no longer feel my hands. I abruptly stopped crying. I balled the note up in my fist. I’d been wrongfully accused and falsely convicted. At least I’d gotten to say two words that were far worse than dicky-bird. Let’s see Fox drop an F-bomb in front of the vice-principal. I walked into my classroom and straight up to the desk. Sister was writing on the blackboard with her back turned to the class. I deposited the wrinkled note on her desk and sat back down without her ever noticing me. I stared at the ponytail girl with the burning intensity of a thousand suns. She kept her head down, refusing to meet my gaze. Traitors and liars surrounded me. These people took the kind out of kindergarten. This was a cruelergarten.

  * * *

  —

  I immediately declared war on St. Teresa’s, swearing never to return. Mornings at my house turned into a melodrama that rivalled any on the American soaps. I coughed. I wheezed. I had headaches. My scarlet fever raged on despite the telling lines embedded on my forehead from the drop-in floor heater. I’d even vomit on occasion in an Oscar-worthy performance of “What If I Die There?” I didn’t need to stick my finger down my throat; the thought of going to school could make me nauseated enough to turn any blanket into a Jackson Pollock work. Eventually the old man had enough. One morning he dragged me down to the bus himself.

  “The cold air! It burns my lungs,” I warned, but he was not as easy to manipulate. He’d grown up during the Depression. Half the kids he’d played with had polio. The other children grew silent at the sight of a father dropping his son off at the bus. “Poor Mark,” they must have thought, “his mother died.” That day I was the talk of the classroom as the kids took their seats. They surrounded me and asked where I’d been. Was it true that I was in the hospital? Had I been kicked out of school for swearing? Was I going to beat up the ponytail girl on the Lego mat? I ignored them all. They were not important. I would find a way out of this hellhole if it killed me.

  The bell rang and Mrs. Fowler broke up the circle of tiny bodies. “Welcome back, Mark,” she said as I handed her my note. I’d read and reread this one. There was no call for strappings, hangings, or placing me inside the Iron Lady. It read “Please excuse Mark for missing school. He was sick.” Both notes I’d carried inside these walls had been nothing but a patchwork quilt of lies. There was no truth. There was no justice. God was dead. Mrs. Fowler stood in front of her desk and started the day as I stared at the ponytail girl, looking for any weakness, any slight sign of misbehaviour that I could exploit for my revenge.

  “Today, boys and girls, we will be picking parts for our school play,” my teacher began. What’s that? A play? “The school is having a show for parents, and Sister Margaret has asked this class to perform a piece in it.” This was my chance, my way out. I would gain fame as a child star. I’d be a manlier Shirley Temple. All I needed was a breakout role. What kind of a show would this be? Comedy? A drama? “We will be playing the colours. Who would like to be a colour?” Colours? What sort of experimental hippie crap was this? What kind of lines would colours have? Colours can’t speak. “There will be a song for you to dance to,” she continued. A musical number, eh? Well, it had been a while, but I could give them the what-for with the old soft shoe. I didn’t call myself a hoofer, exactly, but I knew a few Jolson numbers. I pictured myself on the Broadway stage dropping to one knee, arms out, singing the last line of “Sonny Boy.”

  And the angels grew lonely

  Took you because they were lonely

  I’m lonely too, Sonny Boy

  Big finish. Perhaps I could die on stage at the very end. I clutch my chest, collapse, and the curtain closes. The house would erupt. “Is he okay?” they would wonder. “Did he truly give his all? Did that performance kill him?” Then, just before ambulances were called, the curtain would rise to reveal me standing there, bouq
uet in hand, to receive the ovation.

  I was willing to take the role upon me. Mrs. Fowler took a record out of a well-worn sleeve and placed it on the portable phonograph. “This is the song we will be dancing to.” The familiar scratchy sound of the needle finding its groove filled me with excitement. Each revolution felt as long as an orbit around the sun. Finally, the music began.

  If you are wearing red

  If you are wearing red

  Stand up tall and turn around

  And then sit right back down!

  The singer was using the sing-song voice of a dog owner asking her pet, “Who’s a good boy?” The musical accompaniment was juvenile. And the lyrics! There was no story, no human drama. The singer repeated herself over and over, the only change being the substitution of a new colour in each verse. So how would this number be choreographed? There simply wasn’t time to change my costume between each verse. Unless! I could wear multiple layers, quickly shedding each one between verses to reveal a new colour underneath. Yes! It would be spellbinding.

  “Each of you will play a colour, and when your colour is mentioned you’ll jump up, turn around, and then sit back down again,” our director said, sharing her nearsighted vision. Well, that’s about as literal an interpretation as you can get. And everyone gets a colour? What was this, communist Russia? Why don’t we all just wear red? What were we trying to say here? Couldn’t we expand on the theme at least? What if brown, yellow, red, and black were not permitted to stand? Make it political. If we were refusing to entertain people then we could at least give the piece a strong social justice message. The play would be “important,” and the audience wouldn’t dare complain about being bored.

  “I will also need someone to give a short speech at the start of the assembly to welcome everyone. Would anyone like to do that?” Now we were talking. I shot up my hand to project the confidence and vigour required to host a show. “Only two volunteers?” she said. Two? Who the hell is the Tesla to my Edison? I turned to see a freckled boy with his arm half-raised. Billy Samson. His mother, it was said, was a teacher at our school. He looked as though he’d been pressured into it. I had the feeling she’d been tipped off and had forced her son to volunteer so she could gain the glory. But I needed this role, and was willing to do anything to get it. I’ll see you in hell, Billy.

  “Why don’t you each take a turn saying the lines and the class will choose the person to welcome the parents on their behalf?” Da, comrade. Let’s do that. I didn’t have to be asked to go first. The siren call of the stage was an irresistible temptress. If there was a show to do, I was the man to do it. I felt like Mickey Rooney in some old musical. “Sure, we can put on a show and raise enough money to buy back the farm. I’ll host and you girls can dance, and Ma, you can sing that song you sang at Sis’s wedding. Heck, the cowboys can perform rope tricks and we can do it right here in the barn! We can sew some sheets together to make a curtain. But what about lighting? Gee whiz! Get the tractor in here and turn the headlights toward the stage! That’ll be swell, gang!”

  Mrs. Fowler picked up a sheet from her desk. “Now, you’ll have to recite this from memory, Mark. You think you can do that?” Well, I happen to know all the lines to “Lord It’s Hard to Be Humble.” I think I can handle it. Plus, you’ve forced us to memorize a hundred different prayers of forgiveness, so yeah, I got this.

  “Yes, miss.” I didn’t want to give Billy an edge. Mrs. Fowler read out the passage without giving it any life. There was no drama. She said the words but she didn’t believe them, and as a consequence, they held no truth. Her voice was loud enough to be heard in the back of the room, but perhaps she was too loud. Not a soul leaned forward in their chair, curious to know what was coming next. With text like this to work with, the performer should be able to make their audience desperate to hear more. I wanted claw marks on the desktops as the kids surged forward, mad with a love of theatre. The last two syllables left her lips like drips from a leaky faucet. It was my turn. Lights, camera, action—magic!

  Mrs. Fowler handed me the sheet. “Archbishop,” I began, as if addressing the great man himself. This was God’s representative in St. John’s, and I tipped my head reverently in his imagined direction. I’m sure many of the students turned around to see if the Archbishop had secretly been in the room the whole time. “Bishop,” I continued, giving the man his lesser due but somehow not taking anything away from his superiority. This was a delicate tightrope walk and I didn’t have a net. “Fathers, Brothers, Sisters…” These I grouped together. They were not outsiders. They were our clerical family, and the familiarity showed that, though respected, they were not feared. In fact, I treated them with such an intimacy that I was sure to create some confusion. Was I referring to priests and nuns or to parents and siblings? I wanted my audience to reflect on the duality of the names, and in doing so, better understand the role of faith in the community. Eventually they’d note the absence of the word “mother” and realize whom I meant. Perhaps they would chuckle at their confusion, looking at each other and nodding. They’d realize then that their neighbours were just like them and maybe they weren’t alone in the world after all.

  “Teachers,” I said, snapping them out of their reverie. I resisted the impulse to acknowledge Mrs. Fowler. No favourites here. I didn’t want to seem needy no matter how badly I wanted the role. “Parents, friends…” This was a nice touch by the author. It acknowledged the common man, the everyday Joe. It would play well in a pinko school like this.

  The next word was an enigma. I stared at the letters and they made no sense to me. I’d never seen or heard this word before. “Pupils.” Perhaps this was some form of medication for a small dog? I confidently skipped the word rather than risk looking like an amateur. “Welcome.” I raised my outstretched hands, the universal sign of welcome. If I were performing for a tribe of native Colombians who’d never encountered the outside world before, they would recognize the gesture. “This fellow seems very welcoming,” they’d say. “We shouldn’t attack him. We should bring him to El Dorado.” I became the word. I was welcoming to all and would kill anyone who said otherwise. I finished, confident that I’d wrung every stain of nuance, shade, and texture from the script.

  The class offered a spattering of applause. I bowed with a flourish. Cretins. Many of them had never even seen live theatre before. They were used to staring impassively at a TV set. No matter. I’d given it my all and, exhausted, I retired to my dressing room, which also happened to be my desk.

  Billy took to the stage next. He’d lost the critical element of surprise. Mrs. Fowler had read out the script. Then I performed it. Now he had to win over thirty bored five-year-olds with a revival of a show they’d already seen twice. He was a nostalgia act at best; at worst, a tribute act. An audience can smell fear. When you stand in front of a group of people, seeing the whites of their eyes, the fight-or-flight response kicks in. The entire nervous system craps its pants. You experience tunnel vision and a sudden drop in hearing. Sphincters tighten. The heart beats faster and emotions intensify. At that moment, Billy wanted to fly more than the Wright brothers had.

  “Archbishop, Bishop, Fathers, Brothers, Sisters, parents, teachers, friends, pupils—welcome.” He zoomed through the text with a close-eyed, machine-gun delivery. It had a lightning pace that pleased his audience, relieved as they were that it had ended so soon and hoping they could get back to colouring. He got a much bigger round of applause. I sat fuming. He had clearly been coached! He had the speech memorized. This was fixed! Mrs. Fowler and his mother were co-workers. In some behind-closed-doors-teachers’-lounge smoke break a scheme had been hatched. I could feel my whole career slipping away from me.

  “Good job, boys,” Mrs. Fowler said, lying to half of us. “You certainly made my job tough. Luckily, there will be two shows: one of you can do it for the students in the assembly and the other for the parents and guests at night.” Yes, Mrs. Stalin, that all sounds good. But wouldn’t the speech need to be r
ewritten for the students? A much shorter “Welcome, students and teachers” would be all that was required. And what good would the kid over by the wall who spent his day letting clumps of Elmer’s Glue dry on paper before eating them do for my career? I needed to be seen. Maybe the Archbishop was scouting for future priests? This could be my big break. I could end up playing the big rooms, like the Basilica of St. John the Baptist. I needed to ensure it would be me on stage that night.

  Later that day, rehearsals began in earnest. We were each assigned a colour. A handful of boys, including Fox, were given blue, earning huge shouts of approval. The luckiest of girls were given pink. Their friends congratulated them as if they’d won a beauty pageant and every other kid was a runner-up. I was assigned yellow. From the back of the class I could hear Fox laugh. Yellow was the colour of buttercups, lemons, and cowardice. I preferred to think of it as the colour of the sun, macaroni, and margarine—the givers of life. The record began and we were instructed to walk around in a circle as the overture played. Once we were in costume, we would shake pom-poms to the music. I don’t know what we were supposed to be cheering for, but it kept the hands busy, preventing nose picking and crotch adjustment on stage. As promised, when our colour was mentioned, we would step forward and then turn around. This wasn’t Bob Fosse–level choreography, but people were clearly having trouble with it.

  Some kids would walk against the flow of the rest of the class, like salmon fighting their way upstream. Others would stand in one place and stare out the window or at the ceiling. A few of us took it seriously, though, shaking our fists to the music as we imagined the swish of shaken pom-poms. After a couple of run-throughs, the whole cast dropped to the floor, spent.