Somewhere I Belong Read online

  Back home, some of the older guys would walk straight up to a girl, say something smart, and slide those books right out of her arms. Simple—nothing to it. So I decided I’d do just that. I’d wait until Maggie got close to the road, then I’d look her straight in the eye and say, “I’ll take those for you.” Then I’d slip them from her arms and carry them to school like it was a perfectly normal thing to do. But I’d make sure to keep a good distance so no one got any ideas about me getting fresh with her. Because I wasn’t. Maggie MacIntyre was just a skinny, pale-faced girl who walked to school in what looked to be her mother’s coat and couldn’t afford a satchel.

  As she approached the road, I ran the one simple sentence through my head. I took a deep breath and stepped toward her. “Could I…um…I mean…”

  But Larry sauntered right up to her. “Those books look heavy, Maggie,” he said. And before she could protest, he slipped them from her hands and tucked them under an arm.

  I stood there and watched as he resumed his long, confident stride down the road.

  Helen took Maggie’s arm and marched the two of them straight past me. “P.J.’s sweet on you,” she whispered, loud enough for everybody to hear.

  I scooped snow off the ground and biffed it at her, spraying it down her back. “Am not!”

  “I’m telling Ma,” Helen hollered.

  “Go ahead, blabbermouth—see if I care.”

  It seems like Friday is always test day at school. Northbridge Road was no different.

  “Ol’ Dunphy always gives a math test Friday mornin’,” Pat Jr. said. “Then he writes the answers on the board and gets us to switch papers and mark ’em. That way he don’t gotta do it himself.”

  “He doesn’t tell you before?” I said. “You don’t get a review sheet or nothin’?”

  “Ol’ Dunphy likes his surprises,” Pat Jr. said. “Only, every Friday’s the same, so you always know.

  “In the afternoon there’s composition,” he continued. “That’s when you got to write for a whole hour on stuff you’re supposed to have read in the Guardian for homework. Sometimes Ol’ Dunphy picks the topic. Sometimes you get to pick your own. Depends on his mood. One thing’s for sure—you got to read the newspaper and remember at least one thing or you’re in for it.”

  “Looks like we’re in for it.” Larry laughed.

  As we entered the schoolroom, Curtis Murphy, a boy in ninth grade, was making his way down the aisle with the empty water pail. It was his turn to fill it. Mr. Dunphy had divided the blackboard into three sections and was scribbling math problems in each one. A long piece of foolscap sat on every desk. We hung our jackets along the back wall. Helen, Larry, and I opened our lunch tins and retrieved the tin cups Ma had packed for us that morning. Then we emptied our satchels, took our seats, and everybody waited for Curtis to return with the water. We said the Lord’s Prayer, pledged allegiance to the king, and sat down again. Mr. Dunphy opened his ledger and marked attendance, shaking his head as he glanced along the back row. Besides Larry, Curtis and Connor Murphy were the only boys present in ninth grade. He slammed his ledger shut, grabbed his pointer, and slapped it across the first section of the blackboard.

  “Grades one to three, try the first five sums. Anything more and it’s a bonus. The rest of you, solve everything in your section.” He glanced up at the clock. “You have thirty minutes—now get to it. And don’t forget to check your work.”

  A muffled cough sounded from the back row, followed by a loud moan.

  “That will be enough, Mr. Murphy,” Mr. Dunphy said.

  “I’m thirsty, sir.” It was Connor Murphy, Curtis’s twin brother. “Can I get a drink?”

  “May I,” Mr. Dunphy replied.

  “May I, sir?”

  “Go ahead. And be quick about it—you’re writing a test.”

  Mr. Dunphy sat at his desk, then opened his thermos and poured himself a cup of tea. He put his feet up, heaving the lame leg over the good one. Then he watched as Connor Murphy slouched up the aisle, mounted the platform, grabbed a tin cup from the only clean corner of Mr. Dunphy’s desk, dunked it into the bucket, and took a long, leisurely drink. He dropped the cup back onto the desk and returned down the aisle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  The math test was easy as I had already covered everything back home. I quickly finished it and checked it over. Beside me, Maggie MacIntyre chewed on a thumbnail and stared at the frost-covered window. Except for the problems Mr. Dunphy had told us to copy from the board, her foolscap was blank. I glanced toward the platform and found Old Dunphy absently staring across the room. Thinking the coast was clear, I slid my test across my desk and nudged Maggie. She glanced at me, her grey eyes wide with fear. Then she turned away and concentrated on her blank test.

  When the half-hour ended, Old Dunphy sat up and said, “Pencils down, switch tests.” Then he scribbled the answers on the board.

  Maggie’s test was a mess of smudged graphite. Her attempted calculations filled the margins. It felt bad marking an X next to each of her answers while she wrote check marks next to mine. I thought about changing some of them, but Old Dunphy was quick. He scribbled down the last solution, turned, and scanned the room. He grabbed his pointer and hobbled down the centre aisle, never once taking his eyes off us.

  In the afternoon, we came in to find him standing at the centre of the platform, pointer in hand. A single sentence had been written across the blackboard. It said “Living in rural Prince Edward Island during hard times.” Before we were even seated, he slapped his pointer onto an open palm.

  “There’s been plenty in the newspaper on this topic,” he said. “Of course, we all know about this first-hand, so this one should be easy. The upper grades are to quote from the Guardian to support their discussion. You don’t have to get it dead-on; something close would suffice. But I want to see that you’ve been reading the newspaper this week.”

  He stepped down from the platform, moved along the centre aisle, and stopped in front of my desk. “The Kavanaughs will, no doubt, have something to say about this. After all, if things were better where they came from, they wouldn’t be here, would they?” It sounded like a question, like Mr. Dunphy was expecting an answer.

  A hot rush of humiliation washed over me as the whole room shifted and stared. I re-read the single sentence, written in large, neat cursive across the board. What was I supposed to say? “Yes, I’m so glad I’m here” and “No, I’m never going back”? If he wanted the truth, things were better in America; we had so much more down there than I imagined we ever would on the Island. And I couldn’t wait to go home. One thing I knew for certain was that we were only here because Ma brought us. It’s not like we had a choice.

  Back home, my dad read the newspaper every evening. He helped us with our homework at the kitchen table, then we followed him into the parlor, where he settled into his favourite wingback chair by the fireplace. He tapped his pipe empty, then stuffed it with new tobacco, patting the tobacco down with a finger. He struck a match and puffed. Then he picked up The Everett Leader-Herald. There was lots of news in The Herald. Dad read us stuff he thought we should know about, like President Roosevelt’s New Deal and the money the United States government was pouring into poor states like West Virginia and Tennessee. “Governor Curly’s holding out,” he said. “He says Massachusetts can look after itself.” He told us about the work projects in Everett and how Mayor Roche made certain that men with families were first in line for the jobs. He said, “Sure, things are hard, but anywhere you see a half-starved man selling cigars on a street corner, there are others cleaning up a park or fixing up a building and taking home a paycheck.” Then he reminded us of how lucky he was to be a foreman at the Beacon Oil Refining Plant, where the work was steady and the pay was good. “I see friends getting laid off every day, and I thank the good Lord I have a steady job to go to.”

  Nobod
y read us the newspaper at Granny’s. After supper, while Larry, Helen, and I were supposed to be doing our homework, Uncle Jim opened the Guardian to the back section and ran a finger down columns of numbers. All he ever talked about were potato prices and farmers leaving their crops in the fields.

  “You grade ’em, you wash ’em, you buy bags and tags, then you cart the whole works into Montague to ship out to New England. At a dollar fifty the hundred-pound bag, a fella’d be better off feedin’ ’em to the pigs.”

  According to Uncle Jim, it didn’t matter how low potato prices went—nobody had the money to buy them anyhow. The only thing I got from it all was why we ate so many potatoes at Granny’s. We ate them baked, boiled, and mashed. And scalloped on Sundays, provided there was cheese.

  Nobody had said anything about us kids reading the Guardian. And all I knew about Prince Edward Island was what I had seen and experienced at Granny’s during my first week there. There wasn’t anything I’d heard or seen that told me it was better here than it was back home. And if Mr. Dunphy wanted me to write about something I got from the newspaper, then I was determined to write about what I had learned from my dad. The problem was how to make it sound local—how to fake it so Mr. Dunphy wouldn’t find another excuse to pick on me.

  I tore a piece of scrap paper from my scribbler and placed it on my desktop. Across the room, Helen buried her head in her hands and stared at her own scribbler. I couldn’t imagine Larry was doing any better in the back row. Beside me, Maggie MacIntyre had completed a five-point outline and was now writing at a feverish pace.

  I stared hard at my blank page, trying to think of something to write about, and couldn’t. To me, Prince Edward Island was nothing but early mornings shovelling manure in a stinky old barn, going to school in a rotten old schoolhouse, and putting up with a bunch of bossy old adults the rest of the day. But I knew if I wrote what I really thought about the place, Mr. Dunphy would get riled up for sure.

  I gripped my pen and strained to find something good to say about the place while Mr. Dunphy’s leg brace rattled around the room. Soon the rattling stopped and a shadow fell over me. Then Mr. Dunphy laid his pointer across my desk.

  “Have we no ideas, Mr. Kavanaugh?”

  I stared up at him and searched for an answer.

  “Surely you must have some opinion on the subject.”

  If I said no, there’d be trouble. If I said yes, he’d want to hear it.

  Except for muted coughing on the other side of the room, everybody went quiet.

  Connor Murphy broke the silence. “What’s rural mean, sir?”

  Mr. Dunphy turned and heaved a sigh. “You never listen, do you, Mr. Murphy? I don’t know why you bother coming to school.” His body tensed; thin red veins broke over his face. He looked like an overripe plum. “It means in the countryside; it’s where people tend the land, raise crops and livestock…it’s where people farm. Northbridge Road is rural; Charlottetown is urban. Are you getting enough sleep at home, Mr. Murphy?”

  “Yes, sir. Why, sir?”

  “Well, you’re getting far too much of it here.”

  Still glaring across the room at Connor, he asked, “Have you read the Guardian this week, Mr. Kavanaugh?”

  “No, sir, I haven’t.” It felt way easier talking to the side of his head than dealing with the man dead-on.

  He turned to me. “Were you not aware you were to do so?” He was calmer now, but his face was still puffy and red.

  “No, sir, I wasn’t,” I replied. “Sorry, sir.” I didn’t know what I was apologizing for; I only hoped it would cool him down.

  “Well then, it’s hardly fair, is it?”

  I breathed out a sigh and looked up at him, unsure of the answer.

  “Perhaps you could tell us something about America. Larry and Helen could do likewise. We’d be interested to—”

  Beside me, Maggie pulled a hankie from her sleeve and coughed. Her pen rolled off her desktop and onto the floor.

  Mr. Dunphy bent over and picked it up. “Are you all right, Miss MacIntyre? Can I get you a drink?”

  Before she could answer, he was already rolling up his shirtsleeve and hobbling up the aisle toward the platform. He heaved himself up the steps, grabbed the same tin cup Connor Murphy had used that morning, and plunged it into the pail. Water splashed over the floor as he returned with it and handed it to Maggie.

  Maggie took the cup. “Thank you, sir.” She hesitated, then drained it and handed it back to Mr. Dunphy. He smiled at her. Then he turned to me.

  “I see you’ve got that pencil in your left hand again.” The cup still in his hand, he threw out an arm and pointed toward the student desk on the platform. “We’ve half an hour left. Up you go, then. You can finish your assignment up there.” He grabbed my pencil and empty foolscap and clobbered up the aisle behind me. I slid into the seat, feeling the sweat break out on my forehead despite the chill air.

  Mr. Dunphy placed my pencil and foolscap on the desktop. He leaned his bulging paunch over me, and said, “You’re going to get very used to it up here, young man. It’s where we keep our slow learners.”

  Helen hadn’t seen her newfound friend since Friday. The MacIntyres didn’t own a telephone and they weren’t at Sunday Mass. So Helen couldn’t talk to Maggie over the weekend. On Monday morning, my sister flew out the back door ahead of us, forcing Ma to chase her across the yard with her lunch tin. Helen raced out onto Northbridge Road and past Pat Jr. and Thomas. Soon she became a speck in the distance, arms pumping, satchel swaying, boots slipping over icy ruts. Even Larry had trouble keeping up with her. When she reached the MacIntyres’, she stopped and stared forlornly up the drive. Then she slowly picked her way along the narrow path toward the house.

  Everything about the place seemed eerily quiet. Smoke drifted from the chimney and blew in an easterly direction. The curtains over the downstairs window parted and Maggie peered out. Her face looked ashen above the rolled-up collar of her pale pink bathrobe. She smiled weakly, brushed a strand of hair off her face, and waved. Then she disappeared into the gloom behind her. Helen slowly returned to where we waited on the road.

  “Maggie misses school a lot,” Pat Jr. said. “It’s mostly ’cause of her mom.”

  “Her mother makes her stay home?” Helen asked.

  Pat Jr. nudged the chunks of snow that lay around his boots and spoke in a low voice. “She needs Maggie to help out. She ain’t so good…I mean…”

  “Maggie’s mom gots the TB,” Thomas said.

  “Hush up, Thomas,” Pat Jr. said. “Nobody knows that for sure.”

  I didn’t know anyone with TB back home. That was something poor people got from being cold all the time and from not having enough to eat. That’s what Ma told us, anyhow. She said they got put away in a room with the windows wide open, even in winter. Everything they touched got tossed into paper bags and burned in a stove. Most people were too scared to visit. The ones that did had to wear a mask so they wouldn’t get sick too. There was no medicine for TB, just fresh air, rest, and a ton of food. Most people died.

  “How’d she get that?” Helen’s voice hit a decibel so high it hurt my ears.

  “I don’t know,” Pat Jr. replied. “Alls I know is you can tell when Mrs. MacIntyre’s feelin’ poorly ’cause Maggie ain’t in school.”

  “Where’s her dad?” I asked. “Why doesn’t he look after her?”

  “He’s workin’ over to the shipyard in Nova Scotia,” Pat Jr. replied. “He’s with my dad and Mr. Daley.”

  It seemed like everybody’s dad was in Nova Scotia except mine. Talking about other people’s dads made me miss mine more. It made my chest ache and my throat go dry. I stared up at the clouds and searched for him. But the sun cast such an odd light across the morning sky, they seemed to thin out and blend right into it. Still, I wondered if he had taken on the shape of one of those clouds, wh
ether I would see him later, drifting over us, keeping an eye out.

  “Mine ain’t,” Thomas said, swinging his lunch tin out in a half twirl. “He gots a gov’ment job.”

  “No he don’t, Thomas,” Pat Jr. said. “He’s over to Charlottetown pavin’ the friggin’ Hillsborough Bridge.”

  “That’s a gov’ment job,” Thomas insisted.

  “It’s a project, Thomas,” Pat Jr. said. “The government made it up so fellas got work. Your dad’s just lucky; mine had to go to Nova Scotia.”

  The moment I entered the schoolroom, I noticed the near-hushed silence. Everybody tiptoed around, slid into their seats, and sat with their hands folded. Tension hung in the air. It felt like church on Sunday, only in church there wasn’t the fear. Even Patrick Daley refrained from clicking his dirty fingernails on his desktop.

  I eased the door closed, stood in the cloakroom, and slipped off my jacket. One of the older boys crept up to the platform and grabbed the water pail. Then he hurried back down the aisle, treading lightly, trying to quiet his boots on the uneven floorboards. The only other sound was from crackling sparks in the stovepipe above the pot-bellied stove.

  Mr. Dunphy sat behind his desk staring aimlessly across the room. His glasses were perched on top of his head. His eyelids drooped and his cheeks were a roadmap of purple over slate grey. The way he held his head and draped a hand across his face reminded me of Alfred when he had the flu and was holding back a barf.

  “Looks like Ol’ Dunphy’s had a rough weekend,” Pat Jr. whispered.

  “What was that, Mr. Giddings?” Mr. Dunphy’s voice sounded deep and raspy.

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Get to your seats—the lot of you!”

  Mr. Dunphy picked his thermos off the floor and poured himself a steaming mug of tea. He cupped his mug in both hands and sipped from it. When we were all seated and quiet, he put down his mug. “We’ll say the Our Father to ourselves this morning—quietly.” He pushed back his chair and bowed his head. Several seconds later, he took his glasses off and tucked the frame into the V of his V-neck vest. Then he got up and moved toward the bookshelf. He pulled down our readers and stacked them in piles at the edge of the platform. “Silent reading ’til recess. No partners. And I don’t want to hear a peep.” He shuffled back to his desk, pulling out his chair and easing into it. Then he watched us scurry toward the platform and retrieve our readers. He adjusted his glasses, opened a book, and sank into it.