Somewhere I Belong (8 page)

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.”

Nobody 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, whether 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.

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.