Somewhere I Belong (6 page)

“Our letters, sir.” The colour drained from Thomas's face. He slumped so low in his seat, his bum threatened to slide off the edge.

Mr. Dunphy shifted a foot and leaned over me. “So you think you're smarter than we are, do you, Mr. Kavanaugh?” His deep voice filled the now silent room. “You think we're, perhaps, a little behind up here, do you?” Before I could answer, he stood back and pounded his pointer into the floor. “So you've brought your new-fangled Yankee ideas with you to show up your ignorant northern cousins, have you?”

“No, sir!” I said. I sat paralyzed, wondering at Mr. Dunphy's accusing stare. Thinking how I had only been trying to help Thomas. This wasn't the Charlie Dunphy who had helped himself to Uncle Jim's cider and joked in Granny's parlour. I looked up at his angry face and conjured an image of him pie-eyed, pestering Aunt Gert in the kitchen, and Uncle Ed practically throwing him out the back door.

I put my hand over my face and suppressed a smirk.

“So, now you think you're funny?” Mr. Dunphy said.

“No, sir, I don't.” I wasn't thinking about the drunk Mr. Dunphy now.
The angry Mr. Dunphy leaned down and spewed his stale oatmeal
breath all over my face.

He moved away, a hand swinging out, limped up the steps, then
stopped in the middle of the platform. He pointed a finger to a space beside him. “Up here, young man. And be quick about it.”

I slid from my seat and mounted the steps. My legs shook and my heart pounded. My face burned despite the cool air. My new teacher
took me by the shoulders and turned me to face the room. I stood,
conscious of my baggy trousers and their rolled-up cuffs, of the too-big shirt with a pocket that drooped to the waist. Of the thirty silent faces staring at me. And I was the only one in the room, besides Mr. Dunphy, wearing a bow tie.

“Show us how smart you are, Peter James.” His lips rolled into a
grin. “Let's hear it again.”

In his drunkenness at Granny's he had called me “Peter James.” I
thought it was a joke. Now he repeated it, stone-cold sober. Surely
he must have had all the other names in the classroom committed to memory and only had to tackle another three.

“Hear what, sir?” I asked.

“Your alphabet—your letters, boy.” He clasped his hands behind his back and waited. “Your version of them, in any case.”

I scanned the back row and searched for Larry. I found him sitting at the edge of his seat, leaning away from Patrick Daley. He nodded in encouragement. I took a deep breath and raced through it, all the way to
Z
, pronouncing each letter the way I always did. I stared down at the floor and waited.

“
Zee
?” Mr. Dunphy said, echoing my own pronunciation. “What's all this about
Zee
?” He stepped toward me and smacked his pointer onto an open palm. “In the King's English, my boy, it is
Zed
. Now start again. Louder, so we can all hear it. And properly this time.”

I started over, mumbling it out. My throat went dry. My nose filled with snot and I snuffed it up as I fought back tears. Part of me tried to figure out what I had done wrong. The rest of me wanted to race out the back door and down Northbridge Road to Granny's.

“You'll get it eventually, Peter James.” He folded his arms. His stomach protruded below them. “Off you go, then.”

I wanted to blurt out my real name to that horrible man, but I was too afraid. Instead, I bolted from the platform and slumped into the seat beside Thomas. I stared at the desktop, the floor, the Union Jack that hung limply beside the blackboard. I caught a glimpse of the blond-haired girl looking over at me in sympathy from the other side of the classroom and I burned in humiliation.

“Peter James!” Patrick Daley hollered from the back row.

Mr. Dunphy scowled across the room, then rang the bell for recess.

I followed Thomas to the back of the room, jostled for my jacket
and boots, and bounded out the back door. I scanned the schoolyard
looking for Larry. A bunch of little kids moved across the yard and
gathered in a tight little group. Helen wandered toward a number of girls who huddled under a tall, bare tree close to the fence at Peters Road. The blond-haired girl stood alone, several feet away from them. Helen approached her and struck up a conversation. Larry, Thomas, and Pat Jr. were standing close to the corner by the crossroads. Just as I moved toward them, Patrick Daley and two older boys blocked my way.

“Peter James,” Patrick Daley sneered.

The other two just stood there and stared.

I moved back from them, preparing to make a run for it. Mr. Dunphy stepped out onto the stoop, and the three boys sauntered away. I skirted around them and turned toward Larry. “It's P.J.,” I hissed over my shoulder. The word “knucklehead” sat at the end of my tongue. But I kept it there and I ran for it.

Pat Jr. glanced across the yard, making sure our teacher was out of range. “That was some bit of business with Ol' Dunphy.”

“What did he do that for?” I asked. “I didn't do anything wrong.”

“When it comes to Ol' Dunphy, you got to follow orders,” Pat Jr. said. “You don't and you're in for it.”

“It's my fault,” Thomas said. “We was supposed to be readin'.”

“No it wasn't, Thomas,” I said. “If you don't know your letters, how are you supposed to read?”

Thomas hung his head and brushed away tears. Looking back on it now, I might as well have called him a dummy.

In the afternoon, Mr. Dunphy instructed the fifth to ninth graders to get a dictionary from the bookshelf at the front of the room. Then he wrote a single sentence across the top of the blackboard: Confederation is good for Prince Edward Island. He drew a line down the middle, and wrote
Yes
on the top right hand side of the line, and
No
on the top left.

“There are two sides to this issue. Grades five to seven, you are to argue
for
Confederation; grades eight and nine, you are to take the opposing view. And watch your spelling—I want to see you using those dictionaries.”

He handed out worksheets to the first to fourth graders. Then he grabbed his pointer and circulated through the back half of the room.

I opened my desktop and pulled out a brand new Hilroy scribbler, a pen and nib, and a bottle of Penman Blue Ink. I placed the ink bottle in the holder in the top right-hand corner of my desk. I opened my scribbler, dipped the nib in the ink, touched it to my blotter, and copied the sentence along the top of the first page. I did this all with my left hand. Then stopped.

What's Confederation, anyhow?
I wondered. I held my pen over the
page. Ink dripped off its nib and gathered in a small pool below it.
Writing had always come easily to me, but now I was stuck.
How do you argue for something you know nothing about?
Beside me, the blond-haired girl's words flowed like water.

Mr. Dunphy's brace rattled as he circled along the back of the classroom and stepped into my aisle. From the sound of him, he was three desks away and taking his time. Even so, I knew I had to scramble and write something down. I leaned over my desk and thought hard on the subject. Hoped he would keep right on going. But the rattling stopped.

“What's this left-handed business, Peter James?” Mr. Dunphy reached down and grabbed my pen. “You'll never learn if you insist on it this way. And get out a pencil. I specifically instructed your grandmother you were to have a pencil. And I want to see it in your right hand.”

He turned toward the girl sitting next to me, rested a hand on top of my desk, and spoke in a near whisper. “Maggie MacIntyre, whatever are you writing on?” His pilled woollen vest brushed my face. And I could smell the corned beef and cabbage he had eaten for lunch.

“My notebook's full, sir.” Maggie MacIntyre had filled the inside cover of her scribbler and had started to write on the back. And she had the same pale-white expression of fear I had seen on Thomas that morning.

“You wouldn't have a couple of pages you could lend Miss MacIntyre, would you, Peter James?” Mr. Dunphy sounded as kind and mannerly as he had been at Granny's, before the cider. But he was asking me to rip pages from my brand new Hilroy scribbler.

I looked up at him and hesitated.

He stood back and waited, his pointer jabbed into the floor.

“Yes, sir.” I fumbled for the centre page, loosened the staples, and eased off several pages. I was eager to avoid a repeat of the morning's event and for Mr. Dunphy to hobble on up the aisle. But he reached down, grabbed my scribbler, and ran a finger down the blank front page.

“What's this?” he said. “You've done nothing. For a young man who prides himself on his letters, surely you must have something say.”

I shrank back in my seat and stared at up him, feeling as scared and stupid as I had that morning.

Mr. Dunphy waited. “Oh, yes, of course.” Without a second glance, he turned up the aisle and past the front row toward the bookshelf. “You Americans are none too interested in what goes on outside of
your own borders. We study a lot about your country up here. But
you don't know a thing about ours.” He retrieved three textbooks and passed one each to Helen, Larry, and me. “You're to write your names
in these. Helen and Peter James, you're to start reading chapter six
this afternoon and write an essay at home on what you learned about Confederation. Larry, you can start by reading chapters six to eight, and do likewise. You're to pass your good copies in next Monday. We'll catch you Kavanaughs up. We'll make true Islanders out of you in no time.”

On the way home, Pat Jr. said, “Ol' Dunphy's hard to figure out, ain't he? One minute he's right peevish, the next he pretends he's your best friend.”

“You can't never figure that fella out,” Thomas said.

“The trick is to keep your head down and look busy,” Pat Jr. said. “That's what Percy says, anyhow. Ol' Dunphy catches you sloughing off, and you're in for it.”

“How am I supposed to know about Confederation? We never learned that stuff back home.” I scooped up a handful of snow, slapped it into a ball, and hurled it at a lopsided fence. “‘You Americans don't know a thing.' Right!”

“Leave it, P.J.,” Larry said. “We'll get the homework done, then he'll see.”

The smell of oatmeal and molasses cookies, cooling on the counter at Granny's, was a small consolation for the day. Ma, Granny, and Aunt Gert were sitting around the kitchen table, smiling like Mr. Dunphy after a third tumbler of cider.

“How'd it go?” Ma asked, before we even had a chance to take off our jackets. “How was your new school?”

Helen dropped her satchel onto the kitchen floor and grabbed a
cookie. “I made a new friend already.” She hadn't, really, but she could think so.

If I'd bothered to answer Ma, I would have said “not good” to her first stupid question, and “terrible” to her second. Instead, I slung my
jacket over a hook in the mudroom, and kicked off my boots. “Just
swell
, Ma.” I passed through the kitchen, without even looking at her, and headed upstairs. Larry followed me.

Ma called up to us from the hallway. “Pius James, Larry, is anything the matter?”

“Nothing,” I hollered, stomping up the stairs.

When we reached the top, Larry raised his hands up and signalled for me to calm down. Then he leaned over the stairwell. “It was fine, Ma, really. We just have a ton of homework.” At least Larry's day went better than mine. And he was right about the homework.

Ma took him at his word and returned to the kitchen. Helen kept going on about her “wonderful day,” like nothing else mattered.

Larry put a hand on my shoulder. “Perhaps we shouldn't bother her with it just now, P.J. I mean, the thing with Mr. Dunphy.”

I tossed him a look of disgust and retreated to my bedroom. Helen's constant chatter rose through the vent in the hall floor. I closed my door to it and wondered if she would ever shut up.

Larry knocked lightly and entered. “I know you got off to a bad start today, P.J. But tomorrow's a new day, right?”

I sat on the edge of my bed and shrugged my shoulders.

“You were only helping Thomas,” Larry said. “Perhaps if you didn't try so hard. Perhaps if you just did what Mr. Dunphy says.”

“Right,” I said. “Keep my head down, like Pat Jr. says. Maybe I should just pretend I'm dead too.” I felt as if my whole life had simply dropped
away, along with my dead dad. I felt suspended somewhere, like I
couldn't find a footing. Back home, I had my whole life mapped out
before me. Now, it seemed as if Mr. Dunphy and Northbridge Road
School were charting out pure misery.