Somewhere I Belong Page 8

  Pages rustled as we decided what to read. Then the room settled into an uneasy silence, interrupted only by a turning page or a muffled cough. We were well into our reading when a book smacked to the floor in the back of the room. Then someone hollered out a single, loud, “Peep!”

  Mr. Dunphy looked up. “Who was that?”

  “Larry Kavanaugh, sir.” Patrick Daley pointed a finger at my older brother. “I saw him.”

  Mr. Dunphy peered over his glasses. “Get your jacket on and go home, Mr. Daley. I don’t want to see you for the rest of the week.”

  “Honest, sir, it was Larry.” Of course it wasn’t Larry. The smirk on Patrick’s face said he was lying.

  “Get out before I throw you out.” Mr. Dunphy had started the day out ugly and now he was furious.

  Patrick stormed to the cloakroom and grabbed his jacket. “‘Get out before I throw you out,’” he said in a loud, mocking voice. He disappeared, slamming the door behind him.

  Mr. Dunphy’s bloodshot eyes scanned the room. His jowls sagged. “If anyone else would like to join Mr. Daley, they should do so now.”

  Nobody moved.

  As recess approached, Mr. Dunphy seemed to come around. He picked up his mug, moved to the edge of the platform, and eased himself to a sitting position. His pant legs hitched up, exposing heavy, black shoes and a thick, metal brace. He sipped his tea and then stared across the room.

  “Peter James, have you finished your essay?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. If it weren’t for Larry, I’d be in big trouble just now.

  “Remind me: Which chapter did you do?”

  “Chapter six, sir. Helen and I both did the same one.” I had read the chapter, like he told us to. And then I wrote that stupid essay. I only mentioned Helen because I hoped it would distract him and send him her way. She had written five full pages, while I had only managed to write three. But the man seemed fixated on me—he wouldn’t let go.

  “Tell us what chapter six is about, then. Remind us.”

  Nothing, I thought. Some stupid meeting in Charlottetown. It wasn’t even meant to be about Confederation. I looked up at Old Dunphy, afraid to answer.

  “Give us the title, would you,” he said. “Open your reader.”

  The day had just begun and my hands were already shaking. I opened my desktop and grabbed my reader. I took a breath and steadied my voice. “The Charlottetown Conference, sir.”

  “Right,” Mr. Dunphy said. “Can you tell us why it was organized?”

  I stared down at the page and searched for an answer. I had read the chapter, but I couldn’t remember.

  “Who was there then? Can you tell us that?”

  I found a name. “John Hamilton, sir.”

  “John Hamilton Gray.” Mr. Dunphy replied. “What province did he represent?”

  Mr. Dunphy had given Larry, Helen, and me a week to complete our essays. But, somehow, I had let mine go. The previous evening, I had sat at the kitchen table trying to figure out where to begin. Larry and Helen were re-reading their rough copies and writing their good ones. Larry sat beside me; Helen had moved to the far end of the table so she could spread out her work. Ma was at the kitchen sink, finishing up the dishes.

  Larry glanced up at me. “How’s it going, P.J.?”

  “This is stupid,” I said.

  “No it isn’t,” Helen said.

  “What do you know, Helen?” I said.

  “You got to do it anyhow,” Larry said.

  “Says who?” I slammed my reader shut.

  “I do!” Ma said. “We’ll have none of that nonsense, P.J.”

  Larry opened his reader to chapter six and began to read. “Here, P.J.,” he said. “Why don’t we make a few notes.” For the next hour, my brother sat with me and jotted down names and dates and places. It was all so new to me, nothing sunk in. By morning, I had forgotten most of what I had done.

  I looked up at Mr. Dunphy now. By the way his jaw locked and his lips thinned, I thought for sure there’d be another trip to the dummy desk. Instead, he just heaved out a sigh and asked, “Where are we now, Mr. Kavanaugh?”

  “Prince Edward Island, sir.”

  “That’s your answer.”

  In the afternoon, Mr. Dunphy scribbled a single line across the blackboard: Living in the city during hard times. His hand shook so much his writing was barely legible.

  “Grades one to four, you are to write a list of all the things you do on the farm that help your families. Then draw a picture and colour it in.

  “For the rest of you, we’re following up on last week’s lesson. I want you to imagine what life must be like in a city today. You can write about Charlottetown if you want.” Then he looked over at me. “I would be interested to know what the Kavanaughs have to say on the subject. Based on your own first-hand experience, that is.”

  We got out our scribblers and began to write. Mr. Dunphy grabbed his pointer and moved up and down the aisles. You could always tell where he was from the sound of his brace rattling or his pointer jabbing into the floorboards. Occasionally, he stopped and commented on somebody’s work. If he was satisfied, he grunted and moved on. If he wasn’t, he scowled and stabbed a finger onto a page. I worked feverishly, conscious of how I shaped each letter, of how I joined them together and spaced the words. Making sure I wrote with my right hand, like Mr. Dunphy said. I had always taken pride in my penmanship. I got it from my dad. But as much as I tried, the letters became a scrawl.

  Mr. Dunphy completed his tour of the centre aisle. A board creaked as he circled back toward my row. I heard his pointer jabbing the floor. He leaned over the desk behind me and the foul smell of cider filled the air.

  “What’s this all about, Connor? Have you nothing to say on the subject?”

  “No, sir,” Connor said.

  “Well, you’d better think hard, or you’ll be doing it up there.”

  I pictured Mr. Dunphy aiming his pointer straight at the dummy desk and Connor Murphy cowering beneath him. I shrunk down low and tried to look busy. Hoped he would keep right on going and I’d be in the clear. But before I knew it, he was standing right next to me.

  “What’s this we’re working on, Mr. Kavanaugh?” He jabbed his pointer into the floor and clenched his jaw. “What’s it say? I can’t read it.”

  I put my pencil down and stared up at him. I leaned away from his musty vest and his sour breath. My heart pounded; my stomach churned.

  He bent over my scribbler and ran a finger under each line. He picked it up, separated the pages I had written on, and ripped them out. Then he crumpled them up and nodded toward the platform. “Start again, up there—neater this time. You’re going to get very used to this if you don’t learn.”

  The room fell silent as I stepped into the aisle and moved toward the platform. I caught a glimpse of Helen with her hand to her mouth and her eyes tearing up. I eased into the dummy desk and looked toward the back of the classroom. Larry sat, red-faced, shaking his head.

  At the end of the day, I waited on the platform for the schoolroom to empty. Then I grabbed my jacket and went outside. Larry and Helen waited near the stoop. Thomas and Pat Jr. stood by the gate.

  “You’ll soon beat the Daleys to the dummy desk,” Thomas laughed.

  “Shut up, Thomas,” I said. He was one to talk about being a dummy.

  “It ain’t funny, Thomas,” Pat Jr. said.

  “What got into Old Dunphy?” Larry asked no one in particular.

  “Likely had a rough weekend,” Pat Jr. replied. “But, you can never tell.”

  “I don’t get why he’s making such a big deal over P.J. being left-handed,” Larry said.

  “Nobody cared back home,” I said. “Nobody ever said anything.”

  “You never know what Ol’ Dunphy’s gonna pick at,” Pat Jr. said. “Only thing is, when h
e’s in a mood, you can count on it bein’ something.”

  “That left-handed stuff’s just stupid,” I said. “My favourite baseball player’s left-handed, and he holds the world record for home runs.”

  “Babe Ruth!” Pat Jr. said.

  “You know him?” I said.

  “We listen to the ballgame on the radio sometimes,” Pat Jr. said.

  “P.J. and I saw him at Fenway Park last summer,” Larry said.

  Pat Jr. and Thomas’s mouths fell open. “No!”

  “Sure did,” I said. “He even signed my baseball.”

  “Can I see it?!” Pat Jr. said.

  “Ma packed it away when we moved,” I said. “I’ll ask her where it is.”

  “Someone as famous as Babe Ruth is left-handed and you wonder why Mr. Dunphy’s makin’ such a big deal of it,” Pat Jr. said.

  “That’s what I want to know,” I said.

  Ma waited at the back door as we straggled across the yard. I moved past her, dropping my satchel onto the mudroom floor. I hung my jacket over a hook, pulled off my boots, and walked into the kitchen. Granny and Aunt Gert were sitting at the table, sipping their tea. Uncle Jim was leaning against the counter, cradling a steaming mug. Alfred was kneeling on a chair, stuffing his face with cookies.

  “What’s goin’ on, young fella?” Uncle Jim asked. Somehow, my uncle could tell when things weren’t right.

  “Nothing.” I forced a smile, then slid my lunch tin onto the counter and headed toward the upstairs stairway. I felt so low after what had happened that day, I didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Pius James,” Ma said. “What’s the matter?”

  Ma was the last person I wanted to talk to. I was beginning to feel that everything about the Island was all her fault. I grabbed the banister and took the stairs two at a time.

  “What’s up with P.J.?” Alfred piped in.

  “Mind your own business, Alfred,” I hollered over the upstairs railing. Alfred was always sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong. Sometimes he was even worse than Helen.

  “Mr. Dunphy’s making a big deal over P.J. being left-handed,” Larry said, his deep voice travelling up the stairs. “He makes him write with his right hand. Then he gives him grief when it’s messy and sends him up to the dummy desk.”

  I slumped down on my bed feeling sorry for myself. The conversation continued to drift through the grate in the upstairs hall floor.

  “No one ever made a big deal over P.J. being left-handed back home,” Helen said.

  “It’s just some silly superstition,” Granny said. “It’s nonsense.”

  “Some idiot got it into their head that if you were left-handed you were in cahoots with the devil and you’d go straight to hell,” Uncle Jim said. “Backward thinkin’ in my view.”

  “Is P.J. going to hell, Ma?” Alfred asked.

  “No, Alfred, he isn’t,” Ma said. “Jim, watch your language in front of the children.”

  “Oh, sorry…I only meant….”

  “How that means a thirteen-year-old boy should get punished is beyond me,” Granny said.

  “Charlie likely got into the sauce,” Uncle Jim said. “He gets a few drinks into ’im and he’s foul for days.”

  “Surely he wouldn’t be drinking on a Sunday,” Granny said.

  “The day of the week never stopped Charlie,” Uncle Jim replied. “He’ll say his prayers in the morning and be drunk by the afternoon.”

  There was a pause for several moments, then Aunt Gert said, “If it wasn’t that, it would be something else.”

  “What do you mean?” Ma asked.

  “I don’t suppose you remember when Charlie Dunphy got sick?” Aunt Gert asked.

  “Someone wrote to me about it, in Everett—maybe you did, Mom,” Ma said. “That was years ago.”

  “Charlie and I went to school together,” Uncle Jim said. “Percy and I were in the same grade, William was two years ahead o’ us, and Charlie was a year ahead o’ him. But I remember that he was a good fella back then; treated us younger kids just fine, got on swell with everybody. And he was real popular with the ladies.”

  “He was particularly fond of Ellen McGuigan, if I recall,” Aunt Gert said. “Maggie’s mother.”

  “I remember that,” Uncle Jim said. “He was set on her; followed her ’round like a hound dog. You hardly saw the one without the other. But that was before Charlie got that terrible fever. Started talkin’ jibberish. Got so hot and seized up we thought he was gonna die. I remember him bein’ carried out the front door on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance. Straight off to Charlottetown, he went. Spent the next six months in an iron lung. Then he came home with weak lungs, a shrivelled leg, and an iron brace.

  “Ellen stuck around for a while. Then she up and married Frankie MacIntyre. Charlie moped around for a while. Then he got angry.”

  “I remember that,” Aunt Gert said. “He was only twenty then. Seemed like he blamed the whole world for him being a cripple and for Ellen taking off on him. That’s how he got that terrible temper.”

  “He’s been that way ever since?” Ma asked.

  “Pretty much,” Uncle Jim said. “He has his good days. But from what I see, he has more bad than good. The more he drinks the worse he gets. He takes it out on people he has power over. First he picked on the altar boys when he was deacon at the church. But Father Mullally reported ’im to the bishop and they put the run to ’im. Then he started pickin’ on his pupils—one at a time. He’s right evil to ’em. Starts when they hit sixth grade. Picks on the boys, mostly. They either quit school or hang on ’til ninth grade. Most of ’em don’t hold out—it’s that bad. Then he moves on to his next victim. Seems like he’s feedin’ a need.”

  “And there’ve been rumours,” Aunt Gert said. “You know…people saying things…mostly about how he is around the younger kids.”

  “Be careful with those rumours, Gert,” Granny said. “It’s a small community and you don’t know where they came from.”

  There was silence, and then Ma said, “And he’s teaching school?”

  “Uh-hum.” It was Uncle Jim.

  “The parents don’t complain?” Ma asked. “Nobody says anything?”

  “There’ve been letters and petitions to the superintendent,” Granny said. “But they don’t go anywhere. Jaynie Giddings wrote one herself when he started picking on Pat Jr.”

  “I remember that,” Uncle Jim said. “William raised a real stink.”

  “William?” Ma asked.

  “Trotted right down to the schoolhouse; paid Charlie Dunphy a little visit,” Granny said.

  “Wish I’da bin there,” Uncle Jim said. “Woulda bin interestin’.”

  “Well, we can’t go interfering.” Ma paused for a moment. “Could make matters worse.”

  “I wouldn’t call it interferin’ when someone’s pickin’ on your own flesh ’n’ blood,” Uncle Jim said. “If William Giddings can straighten Charlie Dunphy out, I don’t see how’s I can’t.”

  “Jim,” Granny said.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Uncle Jim said. “I’m just sayin’ I could remind Charlie Dunphy whose dinner table he sits at every other Friday evenin’, that’s all.”

  “Maybe we should wait and see?” Ma said.

  That night I fell into bed, grabbed the covers, and shoved Alfred. I didn’t care if I woke him. When he squealed, I hissed at him to shut up and left him whimpering against the inside wall. Wait and see, right, I thought. Right! The Ma that didn’t want to interfere with my lunatic teacher was nothing like the Ma I remembered from back home.

  Whatever it was Mr. Dunphy had drunk on Sunday seemed to wear off over the week. He spent less time slumped in his chair scowling over his tea. The notes he scribbled across the blackboard were easier to read. And when he clobbered up my aisle and st
uck his pig nose into my work, he just grunted and continued on his way. Even so, what I had seen of him over my short time there told me his calm demeanour was just a thin shell. Thinking about him made my head ache. My hands shook at the sound of his brace rattling up my aisle. When he bent down and ran a fat finger over my work, the smell of him made my guts churn. And I suspected it wouldn’t be long before he was picking on me again. I didn’t know when it would happen and what it would be, but I knew for sure it was coming.

  Every morning on my way to school, I tried to think up ways to stay clear of the old grump. When Thomas struggled over a word at reading, I’d just point to it and keep my mouth shut until he got it right. No matter how much he whined, I didn’t offer a hint. When we copied notes from the board, I gripped my pencil firmly in my right hand and rounded out my letters as best I could. It felt slow and clumsy. It was painstaking work, and I usually fell behind. When Old Dunphy approached, I slid my arm over my work and put my head down, so he couldn’t see what I had missed for going so slow. I caught up later by copying Larry’s notes at home. And for some odd reason it seemed to work.

  Late Thursday afternoon, Old Dunphy made his final rounds of the classroom, then mounted the platform and stood dead centre. He slapped his pointer onto an open palm, and said, “We’ve a spate of bad weather coming. But you’re to prepare for tomorrow just the same. Everybody is to review their math for the week. Grades six to nine, you’ll be writing an essay for civics.” He paused and smiled, his thin lips nearly disappearing into his fat face. Old Dunphy always smiled when he was barking out orders. “Tomorrow’s math and the essay will count for fifty percent of the mid-term mark, so I’d advise you to review your notes. And if the weather shuts us down, you’ll be writing Monday—no excuses.”