Fish in the Sky (21 page)

“It hurt so much,” she says, and squeezes my hand. “I’ve never done it before, and that’s the honest truth, although you might not believe it. He was so worked up, he didn’t listen to me at all — he wouldn’t. What will I do if I’m pregnant?”

As soon as she has burst this last bit out, she starts to cry in earnest into the pillow, and I worry that she’ll wake up Mom, who has a migraine and can hear everything. So I shush in a low voice, stroking her back, and pull the comforter over her. Then she moves closer to me and puts one arm around me, holding my hand tightly with her other hand and snuggling up to my chest.

“You’re so kind to me,” she says.

I can’t say anything except, “There, there,” like Mom did when I was little and she was comforting me. No, I have nothing to say. But my cousin has made me her confidant in the middle of the night, given me a portion of a terrible secret, and that’s why I fill up with overwhelming affection. Suddenly she’s just a little girl, a stupid kid who was lured into a trap. And I’m the only one she can trust in the darkness of the night. Poor Trudy. Just a little child, but inside a woman.

The fire between the black rocks devours the pages one after the other, and the naked bodies writhe in the flames until they turn black and singed; the grimaces of lust change into astonished terror as the paper burns to ash that flies up from the rocks and out over the bay. Never again shall these demonic vampires keep me awake. I feel dirty and unclean having touched these pages. Is there any difference between my fantasies and what Mike did to Trudy? There’s a thin line between thought and action. If I’d kept on how I was, I might well have turned into what Mike is, a sex-crazed barbarian and a soul murderer.

Now my cousin lies in bed with a cut lip and her soul in shreds. That’s not love; that’s for sure. What Mike did is something completely different and has nothing to do with love.

I sit in my hollow and watch the ashes blow over the rocks, up in the air, out onto the bay. If I hadn’t played hooky from school I never would have found out that Trudy had a boyfriend. Then there never would have been a conspiracy between us, and maybe we would have continued being enemies. And if we’d been enemies, then she wouldn’t have come to me in the night and trusted me with this terrible secret. Maybe she would have jumped into the harbor — who knows? Yes, maybe my existence on this planet has actually saved a life, because I played hooky. Then wasn’t it a good thing that I did it?

I can almost hear my little brother’s laughter echo off the rocks around me, and it feels as if he’s looking at me with a teasing grin on his face.

“But why were you playing hooky?” it seems he’s asking.

“Because I was scared,” I say to the rocks.

“Of what?” asks the echo.

“Of myself, of everything. Afraid that I wasn’t good enough, not fun enough, not handsome and terrific, not strong and wise. Then there was the pubic hair,” I add.

“Of course that’s the end of the world?” he says teasingly.

“It could well be, I’ll tell you.”

“But could it not be the beginning of a new world? A world where you don’t have to be scared anymore, where it doesn’t matter if you’re handsome or terrific, where it’s nobody’s business if you are strong or wise, a world where the only thing that matters is for you to be as you are, not like anybody wants you to be.”

“But who am I really?” I shout, and the question echoes over the bay.

For a long time, there is no reply except the sleepy lapping of the waves. The fire is almost out. But then the answer comes to me, not in words, because the voice is now silent, but it feels as if he’s standing behind me, the he who used to be me and will always be there when I need him. The answer trickles through my body like a warm stream, and I feel the fright subside and the anxiety melt away. I am unique, not like anybody else, perfect as I am. Whatever others say or think doesn’t concern me anymore. It will be their words and their thoughts, not mine. To be free is not to run away. I’m going to fight for myself and stand by myself. I’m going to walk on water. Large warm drops of the first real spring rain hit the rocks all around me. At first like a light applause. I lean forward from under the rock and stand up straight, looking around me. I can feel his eyes upon me as the applause grows louder, and I know instantly that we’ll never speak again, for now I’m ready to face the world on my own. Somewhere out there among the roaring noise of millions of heavy raindrops hitting both rock and sea, I just barely hear his faint whisper: “You’ll be all right.”

A huge car is parked by the front door, so well polished that the rain runs off it immediately. I can even see my reflection in the dark-red paint. Mom is obviously home, because her coat is hanging by the door and her wet boots are on the doormat. I hadn’t expected her to be home just yet, and I haven’t quite prepared my speech, but that doesn’t matter. I am as ready as I will ever be. Tonight I’m going to talk with Mom honestly. Tell her that I’ve been playing hooky, but now that’s over and done with. I’m going to confess all my sins to her and ask her forgiveness, because the truth is the best you can do. But then I notice unfamiliar large black galoshes on the shoe rack.

“Josh? Is that you?” Mom calls from the living room.

“Yes,” I answer, wiping my soaking-wet face, the water dripping off my drenched clothes all over the doormat. The days of lying and cheating are over. Today I’m baptized to the truth; I am the son of truth, its patron saint.

That’s how I walk toward the living-room door: soaked to the bone but elevated in spirit.

I step over the threshold onto the gray carpet. I look toward Mom, sitting at the dining table, and I am nailed to the floor.

My mother is holding a typed letter in one hand, but with the other one she covers her mouth. Opposite her sits a bald man with horn-rimmed glasses, in a gray suit and white shirt with a red tie. He has placed his hat on the table beside the floral coffee cup from Mom’s finest collection, which is never taken out of the cupboard except for the most honored guests.

“How do you do, Josh,” he says in a mild voice. “We’ve been missing you at school.”

As his voice hits my eardrums, I wonder if all strength will wither away from me. I wait for an excuse to roll out of my mouth, but my lying days are over. Mom looks at me with horror in her eyes like I’m not her son but some insect that’s crawled out on the living-room floor and the only thing to do is to squash it into the carpet and vacuum the leftovers.

“How could you do this to me?” she whispers.

I’ve never heard this tone in her voice before, and it’s like an ice-cold paw locks itself around my heart and squeezes it slowly apart.

“How dare you!” she screams out, and hits her flat hand on the table on top of the letter, so the fine china jumps on the flower-painted saucer. Pinko is startled and jumps in his seat.

“We shouldn’t blame the boy too hastily,” he says in a serious manner, pushing a finger lightly under the rim of his glasses; then he clasps his hands together and places them heavily on the table.

He’s very calm where he sits opposite Mom, like our living room has become his office all of a sudden, and my mom and I just an inconvenient disturbance on a busy day.

“He’s not the first kid to ever skip school,” he adds, and pulls a chair from under the table.

“Come and sit here, Josh.”

I sit down and take a deep breath.

“There are always some reasons for children to run way from school,” says Pinko in an encouraging tone of voice to Mom. “And it is among my duties to find those reasons and eliminate them so everybody feels better. And of course we all want our Josh here to feel good about school, don’t we?”

Mom doesn’t reply, but I feel her eyes on me with the same look as before.

“Now, tell us what happened, Josh,” Pinko says. “Was someone bullying you or teasing you? If someone has been bad to you, then you must tell me. We can’t have anyone getting away with that kind of thing.”

But these questions are not easily answered, for surely I was being bullied and teased, but it wasn’t deliberately toward me, not in that sense. And even the things that had been done to me weren’t that overwhelmingly terrifying that they justified running away from school. My thoughts go around and around at tremendous speed. One by one, they gradually fly into infinity, and there’s nothing left in my mind except black empty space.

“You can trust that everything you say is strictly confidential and won’t go any further. It will only be between you and me,” he says, and his voice echoes between the empty walls in my mind.

But then, a thin ray of light is thrown into the void and it falls on the slimy grim face of a bullfrog. At once I remember why I ran out of the shower room, promising myself never to go back to school. I know full well that it’s not likely that Pinko will accept this as a fair reason, but it’s the true reason.

“I am, I was, afraid of the shower warden.”

“You mean Sandra?” he asks, surprised.

“I was afraid she was going to eat me.”

For a second everything is still and nobody says a word. The headmaster’s face doesn’t move, except his chin drops a little and he blinks a couple of times, glancing sideways at Mom. She lowers her hands slowly into her lap, where they lie quite still, palms turned upward. She breathes out slowly as if she had been holding her breath. If she felt I was an insect before, I can’t imagine what she thinks of me now.

“God help you, child,” Mom mutters.

They straighten up in their seats, the chairs creak a little, and they glance at each other. I notice something boiling in Mom’s throat, but Pinko just breathes out of his nose for a long time, resting his eyes on his clasped hands.

“A lie!” Mom screams in a clear voice. “You just tell stories! Tell lies! That’s all you do. What am I supposed to do with you?” she shouts.

“Calm down, please be calm,” Pinko says, taking control. “Hysteria doesn’t help,” he goes on. “Quite the opposite. Discipline. Josh is a creative boy and lets his imagination get the better of him. It’s not at all uncommon. He just needs to learn to distinguish between illusion and reality.”

Mom sniffs into her hand and struggles to hold back her tears. Pinko stands up, walks over to me, places a heavy hand on my shoulder, and bends down to me. There’s a tone of disbelief in his voice regarding my statement, but still he is trying to figure out what really happened.

“What did she do?” he asks.

Conscious of my promise to the voice of truth, with the words already lined up on my tongue I start to speak. “Nothing,” I say, looking straight at Mom. “I was just afraid.”

Mom throws up her hands and laughs on the verge of tears, but Pinko straightens up slowly, takes his hand off my shoulder, and runs it over his bald head.

“Well,” he finally says. “That’s that.”

He takes his hat off the table, and his fingers run over the brim of the hat for a while where he stands by the sewing machine.

“I want you to come back to school tomorrow,” he says gently but firmly. “We won’t let this interruption affect your studies. Easter is getting closer, and you’ll have some extra work to do over the break. Then we’ll see. Thank you for the coffee,” he says, and is obviously relieved that this is over.

“And don’t worry too much, Mrs. Stephenson,” he adds. “Young boys need discipline, and it’s the responsibility of the school to provide it.”

Mom leads him to the door, and I hear them whisper for a while. Then she closes the front door, and I hear him walk down the path, hear him open the car door, slam the door, and start the engine. Its rumble drones in my ears until the car glides slowly down the street and the sound disappears.

I’m ready for Mom to come back into the living room hurling herself at me like a thunderstorm, but nothing like that happens. I hear her sit down in the kitchen, and after a little while I smell cigarette smoke. Mom never smokes on her own. I can’t hear it, but I think she’s crying. I haven’t seen her cry since Dad left us. She probably cries silently so nobody knows of her sorrow.

That’s how all the moms with sons like me must cry. Without a sound. Because a son will hurt his mother more than other men, without even realizing it, without meaning to. It’s like we can’t help it. And that’s why all the mothers are sitting just like this, all over the world, each in her own corner. When the day’s work is done, when others have fallen asleep and they’ve said good night to everybody, they sit down in their kitchens, maybe with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and cry silently so nobody will guess their sorrow. And it doesn’t matter how earnestly I ask her forgiveness in my mind, it’s no use. I’ve broken her heart, and now I’ve got to mend it.