My Life as a Rat Read online

  That is the sick, melancholy secret of the family—you shrink in terror from a parent’s blows and yet, if you are not the object of the blows, you swell with a kind of debased pride.

  My brother, and not me. Him, therefore not me.

  OUR MOTHER BEGAN TO SAY, MANY TIMES IN THOSE WEEKS—Those people are killing us.

  On the phone she complained in a faltering, hurt voice. To her children, who had no choice but to listen. She’d been talking to our parish priest Father Greavy who’d confirmed her suspicion, she reported back to us, that those people were our enemies

  We wondered who those people were. Police? African Americans? Newspaper and TV reporters who never failed to mention that an anonymous witness had described “white boys” at the scene of the beating—“as yet unidentified.”

  Those people could be other white people of course. Traitors to their race who defended blacks just for the sake of defending blacks. Hippie-types, social-worker types, politicians making speeches to stir trouble for the sake of votes.

  Taking the side of blacks. Automatically. You can hear it in their voices on TV . . .

  No one in our family had any idea that I knew about what had happened that night. What might have happened.

  That I knew about the bat. That there was a bat.

  In articles about the beating there seemed to be no mention made of a “murder weapon”—so far as most people might surmise there wasn’t one. (Had police actually mentioned a tire iron? I had not heard this from anyone except my mother reporting one of many rumors.) A boy had been beaten savagely, his skull (somehow) fractured. That was all.

  I wondered if Jerr and Lionel talked about me. Our secret.

  They knew only that I knew they’d been fighting that night. They had no reason to suspect that I knew about the bat. Surely they thought that I believed their story of having been in Niagara Falls and not in South Niagara.

  She wouldn’t tell. Not Vi’let Rue.

  You sure? She’s just a kid.

  Anyway, what does she know? None of them know shit.

  Because . . .

  BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT HAVE DONE THAT, SUCH A TERRIBLE thing there came to be They did not do that terrible thing.

  Because It can’t be possible there came to be It is not possible. Was not possible.

  Because They wouldn’t lie to us there came to be They did not lie to us. Our sons.

  Through the floorboards you heard. Through the furnace vent you heard. Amid the rattling of the ventilator. Through shut doors you heard, and through those walls in the house that for some reason were not so solid as others, stuffed with a cottony sort of insulation that, glimpsed just once, as a wall was being repaired, shocked you looking so like a human lung, upright, vertical.

  Like a TV in another room, volume turned low. Daddy’s voice dominant. Mom’s voice much fainter. A pleading voice, a whining voice, a fearful voice, for Daddy hated whining, whiners. Your brothers knew better than to piss and whine. Shouting, cursing one another, shoving one another down the stairs, overturning a table in the hall, sending crockery shattering onto the kitchen floor—such behavior was preferable to despicable whining which Daddy associated with women, girls. Babies.

  And so, your mother did not dare speak at length. Whatever she said, or did not say, your father would talk over, his voice restless and careening like a bulldozer out of control. Was he rehearsing with her—You could say they were home early that night. By ten o’clock. You remember because . . .

  They would choose a TV program. Something your brothers might’ve watched. Better yet: sports. Maybe there’d been a football game broadcast that night . . . On HBO, a boxing match.

  Jerome I don’t think that I—don’t think that I can . . .

  Look. They aren’t lying to us—I’m sure. But it might look like they are lying, to other people. Sons of bitches in this town they’d like nothing better than to fuck up decent white kids.

  Don’t make me, Jerome . . . I don’t think that I, I can . . .

  You can! God damn it, they might’ve been home—might’ve watched the fucking TV. Or you might remember it that way and even if you were wrong it could help them.

  None of this you heard. None of this you remember.

  The Rescue

  BY CHANCE YOU SAW.

  So much had become chance in your life.

  Headlights turning into the driveway, in the dark. Your father’s car braking in front of the garage.

  By chance you were walking in the upstairs hall. Cast your eyes down, through the filmy curtains seeing the car turn in from the street. Already it was late. He’d missed supper. Past 9:00 P.M. No one asked any longer—Where’s Daddy?

  In the hall beside the window you paused. Your heart was not yet beating unpleasantly hard. You were (merely) waiting for the car lights to be switched off below. Waiting for the motor to be switched off. Waiting for the familiar sound of a car door slammed shut which would mean that your father had gotten out of the car and was approaching the house to enter by the rear door to signal Nothing has changed. We are as we were.

  But this did not seem to be happening. Your father remained in the (darkened) car.

  Still the motor was running. Pale smoke lifted from the tailpipe. You were beginning to smell the exhaust, and to feel faintly nauseated.

  In the hall by the window you stood. Staring down at the driveway, the idling car. Waiting.

  He is not running carbon monoxide into the car. The car is not inside the garage, there is no danger that he will poison himself.

  Yet, gray smoke continued to lift from the rear of the car. Stink of exhaust borne on the cold wet air like ash.

  He is sitting in the car. He is smoking in the car.

  Waiting to get sober. Inside the car.

  That is where he is: in the car.

  He is safe. No one can harm him. You can see—he is in the car.

  You could not actually see your father from where you stood. But there was no doubt in your mind, he was in the car.

  Had Daddy been drinking, was that why he was late returning home, you would not inquire. Each time Daddy entered the house in the evening unsteady on his feet, frowning, his handsome face coarse and flushed, you would want to think it was the first time and it was a surprise and unexpected. You would not want to think—Please no. Not again.

  You would want to retreat quickly before his gaze was flung out, like a grappling hook, to hook his favorite daughter Vi’let Rue.

  It was one of those days in the aftermath of the death of Hadrian Johnson when nothing seemed to have happened. And yet—always there was the expectation that something will happen.

  Your brothers had not been summoned, with O’Hagan, to police headquarters that day. So far as anyone knew, the others—Walt, Don—had not been summoned either.

  No arrests had (yet) been made but your brothers were captive animals. Everyone in the Kerrigan house was a captive animal.

  They’d ceased reading the South Niagara Union Journal. Someone, might’ve been Daddy, tossed the paper quickly away into the recycling bin as soon as it arrived in the early morning,

  For articles about the savage beating, murder of Hadrian Johnson continued to appear on the front page. The photograph of Hadrian Johnson continued to appear. Gat-toothed black boy smiling and gazing upward as if searching for a friendly face.

  You saw the newspaper, in secret. Not each day but some days.

  These people are killing us. Possibly, your mother meant the newspaper people. The TV people.

  You are beginning to feel uneasy, at the window. You are beginning to wonder if indeed your father is actually in the car. And it is wrong of you to spy upon your father as it is wrong to spy upon your mother. Faces sagging like wetted tissue when they believe that no one is watching. Oh, you love them!

  In the car Daddy is (probably) smoking. Maybe he brought a can of ale with him from the tavern. Maybe a bottle.

  The bottles are more serious than the cans. The
bottles—whiskey, bourbon—are more recent than the cans.

  In the plastic recycling bin, glass bottles chiming against one another.

  Daddy is not supposed to smoke. Daddy has been warned.

  A spot on his lung two years before but a benign spot. High blood pressure.

  More than once Daddy has declared that he has quit smoking—for the final time.

  When Daddy smokes he coughs badly. In the early morning you are wakened hearing him. So painful, lacerating as if someone is scraping a knife against the inside of his throat.

  Years ago when you were a little girl Daddy would come bounding into the house—Hey! I’m home.

  Calling for you—Hey Vi’let Rue! Daddy is home.

  Where’s Daddy’s best girl? Vi’let RUE!

  That happy time. You might have thought it would last forever. Like a TV cartoon now, exaggerated and unbelievable.

  Now Daddy is showing no inclination to come into the house. (Maybe he has fallen asleep, behind the wheel? A bottle in his hand, that is beginning to tip over and spill its contents . . . ) He has turned off the motor, at least. You are relieved, the poison-pale smoke has ceased to lift from the tailpipe.

  He’s coming inside now. Soon.

  There is a meal for Daddy, in the oven. Covered in aluminum foil.

  Even when your mother must know that Daddy won’t be eating the supper she has prepared for him there is a meal in the oven which, next day, midday when no one is around, Mom will devour alone in the kitchen rarely troubling to heat it in the microwave. (You have seen her with a fork picking, picking, picking at the cold coagulated meat, mashed potatoes. You have seen your mother eating without appetite, swiftly picking at tasteless food.)

  It is unnerving to you, the possibility that no one is in the car.

  In the driveway, in the dark. Dim reflected light from a streetlight in the wet pavement.

  No, there’s no one there!

  Somehow, your father has slipped past you. You have failed to see him.

  Or, your father has slumped over behind the wheel, unconscious. He has found an ingenious way to divert the carbon monoxide into the car while no one noticed . . .

  The father of a classmate at school has died, a few weeks ago. Shocking, but mysterious. What do you say?

  You say nothing. Nothing to say. Avoid the girl, not a friend of yours anyway.

  As, at school, your friends have begun to avoid you.

  Pretending not to notice. Not to care. Hiding in a toilet stall dabbing wetted tissues against your face. Why are your eyelids so red? So swollen?

  But now you have begun to be frightened. You wonder if you should seek out your mother. Mom? Daddy is still in the car, he has been out there a long time . . . But the thought of uttering such words, allowing your parents to know that you are spying on them, is not possible.

  And then, this happens: you see someone leave the house almost directly below, and cross to the car in the driveway.

  Is it—your mother?

  She, too, must have been standing at a window, downstairs. She’d seen the headlights turning into the driveway. She’d been waiting, too.

  Slipping her arms into the sleeves of someone’s jacket, too large for her. Bare-headed in light-falling snow that melts as soon as it touches the pavement, and her hair.

  It is brave of Mom to be approaching Daddy, you think. You hold your breath wondering what will happen.

  For you, your sisters, and your brothers have seen, numerous times, your father throwing off your mother’s hand, if she touches him in a way that is insulting or annoying to him. You have seen your father stare at your mother with such hatred, your instinct is to run away in terror.

  In terror that that face of wrath will be turned onto you.

  You are watching anxiously as, at the car, on the farther side of the car where you can’t see her clearly, your mother stoops to open the door. Tugging at the door, unassisted by anyone inside.

  And now, what is your mother doing? Helping your father out of the car?

  You have never seen your mother helping your father in any way, like this. You are certain.

  At first, it isn’t clear that Daddy is getting out of the car. That Daddy is able to get out of the car.

  It has become late, on Black Rock Street. A working-class neighborhood in which houses begin to darken by 10:00 P.M.

  In early winter, houses begin to lighten before dawn.

  Up and down the street, in winter, when the sun is slow to appear, windows of kitchens are warmly lit in the hour before dawn. You will remember this, in your exile.

  Well—Daddy is on his feet, in the driveway. He has climbed out of the car with Mom’s assistance, and he does not appear to be angry at her. His shoulders are slumped, his legs move leadenly. The lightness in his body you remember from a time when you were a little girl, the rough joy with which he’d danced about in the garage, teaching your brothers to box, has passed from him. His youth has passed from him. The years of his young fatherhood when his sons and daughters had been beautiful to him, when he’d stared at them with love and felt a fatherly pride in them, have passed.

  Transfixed at the window you watch. For the danger is not past yet.

  You steel yourself: your father will fling your mother from him with a sweep of his arm, he will curse her . . .

  But no, astonishingly that doesn’t seem to be happening. Instead, your father has allowed your mother to slip her arm around his waist. He steadies himself against her, leaning heavily on her.

  Awkwardly, cautiously they make their way toward the house. Taking care not to slip on the driveway where ice is beginning to form, thin as a membrane.

  What words have they exchanged? What has your mother said to your father, that has blunted his rage?

  You have drawn away from the window. You have let the curtain fall back into place. You do not want either of your parents to glance up, to see you at the window, watching.

  It is a remarkable fact, your father leaning heavily upon your mother, who is several inches shorter than he, and must weigh seventy pounds less than he does. Yet she holds him up without staggering, your mother is stronger than you would have imagined.

  Together your parents approach the house, walking cautiously, like much older people, in this way you’ve never seen. They pass out of your sight, below. You stand very still waiting for them to enter the house, waiting to hear the door open below, and close, so you can think, calmly—They are both safe now. For now.

  The Secret I

  THERE IS A SECRET BETWEEN MY MOTHER AND ME. ALL THESE years in exile, I have told no one.

  In fact, there are secrets. Which one shall I reveal first?

  In sixth grade I’d become friendly with a girl named Geraldine Pyne. Several times she invited me to her house after school, on Highgate Avenue. Her father was a doctor in a specialty that made me shiver—gastroenterology. She lived in a large white brick house with a portico and columns like a temple. When I first saw Geraldine’s house I felt a twinge of dread for I understood that my mother would not like me to visit there and would be unhappy if she knew.

  I understood too that my father would disapprove, for my father spoke resentfully of “money people.” But my father would not ever know about Geraldine Pyne, and it was possible that my mother would.

  On days when Geraldine invited me to her house for dinner Mrs. Pyne usually picked us up after school, and either Mrs. Pyne or her housekeeper drove me home afterward; there was no suggestion that my mother might come to pick me up.

  Mrs. Pyne’s station wagon was not a very special vehicle, like the long, shiny black Lincoln Dr. Pyne drove. So if my mother happened to glance out the window, and saw me getting out of it, she would not have been unduly alarmed or suspicious.

  And Geraldine too, if Mom happened to see her, did not look like a special girl. You would not have guessed from her unassuming appearance (pink plastic glasses, glittering braces, shy smile) that she was the daughter of well-
to-do parents, or even that she was a popular girl (with other girls and with our teacher, at least) and an honors student.

  Geraldine was an only child. This seemed magical to me. As my sisters and brothers, all older than me, seemed magical to her.

  “You would never have to be alone,” Geraldine said wistfully.

  I tried not to laugh. For this was not true, and why would anyone want it to be true? An only child could have no idea of the commotion of the Kerrigan household.

  It was embarrassing to me that Geraldine should confide in me that her parents had hoped for another child, but God had not sent one. In the Kerrigan family no one spoke of such intimate matters casually. I could not imagine my mother or father sharing such information with me.

  I was grateful not to be an only child. My parents would have only me, and I would have only them, to love; it would be like squinting into a blinding light that never went out.

  I did not feel comfortable inviting Geraldine to our house for I believed she would be embarrassed for me. Especially, she would see my mother’s weedy flower beds, that were always being overwhelmed by thistles and brambles, and coarse wildflowers like goldenrod, so different from the beautiful elegant roses in her mother’s gardens, with their particular names Geraldine once proudly enunciated for me, like poetry—Damask, Sunsprite, Rosa Peace, American Beauty, Ayrshire. Geraldine would see how ordinary our house was, though my father took great pride in it, a foolish pride it seemed to me, compared to the Pynes’ house: as if it mattered that a wood frame house on Black Rock Street was neatly painted, and its roof properly shingled, drainpipes and gutters cleared of leaves, front walk and asphalt driveway in decent condition though beginning (you could see, if you looked closely) to crack into a thousand pieces like a crude jigsaw puzzle. Especially Geraldine would wince to hear my older brothers’ heavy footsteps on the stairs like hooves and their loud careening voices like nothing in her experience, in the house on Highgate Avenue. And there was the possibility of my elderly grandfather emerging from his hovel of a room at the rear of the house, disheveled, unsteady on his feet and bemused at the sight of a strange young girl in the house —Hey there! Who’in hell are you?