No Country: A Novel (50 page)

I carried the can to the sink and began shaking out the contents. I studied the side of the can again, a close-up of perfect fried chicken, breaded and toothsome. Then I read what was written on its side:
Crisco
. Vegetable shortening.

I had no idea what “shortening” was, but understood that all I had to eat in this hungry winter dawn was a can of whitish frying medium. I lit the stove, poured out some of the ooze, cracked the solitary egg, and ate it straight off the pan. But my body was still full of hunger, as if a zest for life had woken inside me and would not be denied.

So out I went, plodding through the knee-high snow, muffled in my thin anorak, mittened hands stretched out for balance. The sky had cleared, and a small bent moon hung overhead. So did a variety of floodlights over white-quilted parking lots near the hospital. I waded alone down Crittenden Boulevard. The parking lots ended; so did the lights. Apart from my plumed breath, it was silent. The houses huddled together, and the end of the road was lost in a milky darkness.

Then I saw them, a group of slender deer gathered at an intersection far beyond, their delicate brown fetlocks kicking up powdery snow. The world belonged to them as they crossed the broad white avenue, towards the large, hilly cemetery beyond it. Aureoles of light above the avenue magically changed hues, red, amber and green and back again, reflected in the drifts of snow.

Just as I reached the store, I realized I had forgotten my wallet, and began to laugh. It was a laughter that shook the plinth of all my sorrow and I felt some great weight falling off me. I shivered with pleasure and cold.

That is how my future wife first saw me.

Having finished her gruelling medical intern’s shift of close to
thirty-six hours, she had gone straight from the hospital’s pediatrics ward on the fourth floor to the supermarket, bought groceries from her neat list, and returned to her car in the deserted parking lot. But Dr. Seetha Rathnam’s temperamental car would not start. She pumped the accelerator several times in irritation. As a faint smell of gasoline seeped through the rusty Saab, she realized she would have to wait a little while before she could crank the engine again. She possessed a strong sense of the pragmatic and refused to panic, sitting quietly and biding her time, when a man appeared out of the night, clearly having walked a long way.

He stood as if in a trance under a solitary lamppost, then began to laugh by himself like a child beguiled by the sheer absurdity of some tale. He pulled back the hood of his parka, his eyes glistening brightly with tears of mirth.

Seetha could see plainly he was Indian.
Another eccentric grad student!
she thought. Then she rolled open her car window.

“Give my car a push, please,” she said decisively.

•  •  •

I
COULD NOT
have been more startled if the car had spoken. I nodded and got behind the small car and pushed. It began to move, slowly at first, and then with gathering speed. Seetha turned the ignition and put her car in gear. It coughed and lurched forward. She looked in her rearview mirror, but I had disappeared from sight. Putting her car in neutral, engine idling comfortably now, Seetha stepped out.

“I think I have twisted my ankle,” I mumbled in embarrassment, lying on the narrow layer of ice the car track had made.

Mom likes to keep her special pictures on her dresser. In her wedding picture, I can make out Dad’s birthmarks, one on his face, and one on the back of his right hand, with which he holds Mom close to himself. But the picture is black-and-white. His birthmark on his cheek glows red when he is angry. When he clenches his fist, I can see the other birthmark before it lands on me. No one can protect me.

She also has other pictures on the lace doily in front of her oval mirror, next to her combs. Mom had lovely long hair. Beside the combs her parents stare, unblinking, black-and-white and long dead, from inside their shiny silver frames: Grandpa and Grandma Donovan. Their permanent address was Mount Hope Cemetery. My sister Sandy’s baby picture and mine are also on that doily. My dad, an orphan, had no pictures, none.

Mom had a pendant locket strung on a thick gold chain she had inherited from her father, together with our house at 166 Haddon Place. After she wore the necklace on special occasions, like
Thanksgiving, she would let me carefully open the minute clasp on the pendant. Inside, on either side, were engraved silhouettes of
her
grandfather and grandmother Donaldson.

She once said that this was the most precious thing she owned.

•  •  •

“W
HAT A NICE
accent you have, Mrs. Swint!” Mrs. Herbert, my first-grade teacher, said during the meeting, and Mom blushed. Dad hadn’t come. My mom was pretty, always surprised when anyone said something nice to her. “Is it English?” I liked Mrs. Herbert although her teeth looked large when she sang.

“Yes,” said Mom, “yes it is. My parents came here when I was eleven.”

“Do you miss England?”

“Miss it? I miss Liverpool. We lived in Dingle, next door to my cousins. I miss them.”

“Do you visit?”

Mom shook her head. “Dad couldn’t leave his business. Donaldson’s Garage.”

“Oh, isn’t that a coincidence. My dad always got his car fixed there, all the oil changes and stuff. It’s such a small world.” My mom and my teacher smiled together. I smiled with them.

“Is your dad still running it?”

“It’s
my
dad’s now,” I told Mrs. Herbert.

Mom had stopped smiling. “I’ve got to go start supper,” she said. “Archie likes it on time. Oh, come along, Billy, hurry up!”

“My grandpa died,” I confided to Mrs. Herbert, but she wasn’t listening, staring at my mom hauling me along, her handbag open.

•  •  •

I
LOVED MY
school and my crayons, and Mrs. Melanie Herbert, who said that my drawings and my singing were her joy. I think I love the name Melanie. It’s like melody. And Herbert is sort of like sherbet, which I like, tingly and lemony on my tongue.

But then, one day, the letters arrived: twenty-six of them!

As long as I spoke words, or thought about them, they were wonderful. Then came the twenty-six letters. They were in
every
word, Mrs. Herbert said. They looked like hooks and locks, and twisty threads.
S
was a serpent sometimes turning into
g
just to spite me. Then
p
,
b
and
d; T
and
J; m
and
w
squirm about, pretending to be each other, all of them vicious. The pencil began to hurt my hand, because I was trying to remember those nasty shapes, holding it so tight that my fingers were red and aching. Sometimes I shut my eyes to squeeze all the letters out of my head. But when I opened them, they wriggled on the page.

I really hoped that letters would soon be forgotten, just another part of school we’d leave behind on our way to all the fun things, like drawing, singing, learning to name trees and flowers.

But soon EVERYTHING that we were doing in school had to do with reading and—worse—writing. Those twenty-six letters were driving me into a small corner where I could not breathe.

One day Mrs. Melody Sherbet herself picked up my sheet of paper, looked disgustedly at me, and tore it in four pieces. “Lazy,” she hissed. I was sure everyone heard: my sister in her classroom, Mommy at home, and particularly Dad, in the garage. Mrs. Herbert slapped a fresh sheet of paper on my desk, held my fist—with its enemy pencil—and said, “Don’t dawdle, Billy Swint! Write properly now.” She squeezed her fingers over my pencil-hand.
The twenty-six little demons were going to trick me, I knew. Their shapes kept jumping up and down. Why couldn’t nice Mrs. Melody Sherbet see what was wrong? I dipped my head and bit her thumb. I hadn’t known I’d do that.

She cried out in surprise. Then, snatching back her hand, she pushed me away. My head twisted and hurt, and I could see her large teeth now, smeared red with lipstick, her nostrils hovering over me, one a black
O
, and the other a
D
with two hairs sticking out of it, like bits of black twine. She was ugly.

“Shit piss cock booger crap fuckfuckfuck,” I shouted all the bad words I knew, trying to clear my head, shivering, clutching my pencil and twisting it about—until it broke by itself. I was squirming to get away, and hit her shin accidentally, but she didn’t believe it.

The principal sent me home.

•  •  •

D
AD PULLED OFF
my belt, holding it by the buckle. The first sharp whack across my chest set a red world dancing before me. My pants, without the belt, slid down. I dribbled pee through my undies on the carpet, but my father was poised like a pitcher, red birthmark bouncing up and down with his hard head. The second swish missed and left a mark on the table.
Whick-whack
. The sixth caught me across my left arm, which I had raised. My mouth was open and I heard screaming somewhere. Air rushed out of me. I am scabby stupid slime dimwit cretin Billy Swint. I am scum.

I am hurting somewhere—where? The nineteenth swish scrapes me above my eyes, and I feel a small part of my left eyelid peel off. The red is everywhere, but I have no more pee to dribble down.
I see my dad stand over me, paper-cutting knife in his hand.

“I’ll cut off yer pecker now,” he announced. I was quivering, my palms over my penis, sheltering my small pods underneath. Mom appeared suddenly and threw herself on him, clinging to his chest, his belly, giving me a shove toward the door, beyond which I stumbled and fell. Her dress was open all down the front.

“Oh love, ooh, love, oooh, love.” I heard her struggling. At the doorway, I lay crumpled, but couldn’t turn away from this fascinating battle. Was my mother getting revenge for my hurt? A hot breath filled my chest. I heard my father groaning. Was he hurt? She shoved her chest into his choking face, which broke free, and then was smothered by the white globe with its jiggling pink target. His bristling moustache disappeared beneath it.

“Get outta here,
shoo,
” she hissed to me. But I could not stir. She straddled him, arching back, suddenly slumping over him. Another groan from him. She must have really hurt him. Suddenly his face appeared from under her. With the free hand, he flung my belt at me. The buckle missed my eye, but grazed my cheek.

“Git, yasumuvabitch,”
he spat in agony. My penis was intact, but unaccountably tense. I slid out quickly, slamming the door shut, but still could not drag myself away. Lying there, eyeing the chink at the bottom of the door, I could see only a part of his palm. They fought while I stood covered with smelly sweat. Could it be mine?

“Oh, oooh, oh,” Mom cried out, while he grunted in pain. Yes, hurt him, hurt him,
kill him killhim killhimkillhim
, I urged Mom on. Suddenly, I heard my mother cry out. Was it some deep wound inflicted inside her? I could hear her labored breath, and then him groaning and choking, slower and slower now. In the silence, my heart thudded on.

Then I heard something. He must have revived. He was trying to hurt her again. “Oooh.
IS
that you? Love?” she cried out, somehow delighted, as if he has shown her some magic trick. What do those words mean?

I wished I had a long knife to cancel and cut off the pictures in my head
slash-SLASH-slash.
I would hack them away
yesyesyesyes
and run. I wanted to cancel his face, her face too, for sounding pleased.
She is supposed to be hurting him
. But what strange game is this? I stood up uncertainly, my body smarting all over. I needed to open that door and see. I put my palm against it, but I was pulled away. There stood my sister, Sandy, grinning slyly.

“Peeking, you shit? You’re a dirty little prick, Billy, aren’t you?” she smirked.

As I turned to the top of the stairs, I saw the top of her head, bent, attentive, straining to listen to the last rocking groan of my parents’ fight. I was dizzy and vomity. In the bathroom mirror, I saw red welts all over me, like birthmarks. I spat at myself in the mirror.

•  •  •

I
HAD TO
go back to school. Cretin stooopid halfwit dumbass conehead. I understand these words, simple facts of everyday life. I scraped along, passed reluctantly, from grade to grade, like a lump of shit through the system.

During one meeting with my parents, my seventh-grade homeroom teacher called me “severely challenged.” I sat up in surprise. This was Mr. Wofford, his wattled neck rising above his strangling tie, a few hairs floating out of his ears like probing antennae of carefully nurtured insects.

Severely Challenged!
I imagined horses with muscles moving like cables under sweaty hides, the gleaming knights atop them, all shiny and metallic, rearing in frenzy, holding lances tipped with deadly metal. They thundered toward each other. From the melee and dust, I am the only one rising up, victorious in the last joust—
Sir Severely Challenged!
Battered but victorious.

I looked at Old Woffo. His tongue lolled pinkly, and wobbled about in his loose mouth. Bubbles appeared at both corners of his mouth, turning into a private ointment on each yellow end of his lips. His words were always moist with spit. “Severely Challenged,” he burbled above me.

“Dumb as dirt, you mean?” snorted my dad. “Oh, love,” Mom protested nervously. She was clutching and unclutching her handbag.

“Eh . . . ibegyerpardon?” stumbled Woffo, tripped by the interruption.

“Stoopid,” offered my dad, teeth bared, the kind of smile he wears when he pulls off the belt from around my pants and flails at me, while I, eyes watering, nose running, hands clutching falling pants, stumble about, sorry ass sticking out, severely challenged, and my mother comes in bucking and snorting, joining the play of rescuing me. I wondered if it was a ritual he had invented for Mom—and I the accessory before the fact.