Delaney. Part X

Delaney walks back to the room by herself and feels the full force of her otherness. It is exacerbated as she listens to the play of the boys outside after their evening chores are finished. She peers across the room and out one of the windows from her bunk. They are laughing and roughhousing in the yard. A football match is underway even though the sky has darkened and the dingy ball can barely be seen. When the sun has completely disappeared beneath the horizon one of the brothers rings a bell to usher the boys in. Distant debates drift up to the window about which team was ahead in the game and who might have one.

Delaney is in her bunk when the boys fall loudly into the room, stripping off their clothes and getting ready for bed.

“Hey, De-puny. Should’ve come out to help the pansies.” Frank says dropping his trousers at the foot of the bed. “They might’ve even done better with a wee one like you on their team. They couldn’t have done worse.”

“Leave the kid alone, Frank.” Eric says. “You guys only won because the game was cut short.”

“All right, lads,” Brother Doyle shouts stepping into the room. “Get in your beds. Time for lights out. Don’t forget to say your prayers.”

More complaints shuttle across the room as the brother goes around to each lamp and puts it out. When the room is dark but for the orange glow of the fire, the boys can be heard muttering some prayer or another under their breath.”

Delaney has buried her face into her pillow to stifle her lonely sobs. As Brother Doyle passes, he places a hand on her head.

“I’m gonna give you a short blessing, lad. One that one of the brothers gave to me the first night I arrived.” And after a still moment, as the crunch of a dozen boys settling on their straw mattresses quiets and the murmur of prayers fade, Brother Doyle whispers;

“May God, the provider of green pastures and quiet waters,
be the peace in your heart tonight

“May Jesus, the guide on mountain top and valley deep,
be the hope in your heart tonight

“May the Spirit of truth and knowledge,
our comforter and friend
be the strength in your heart tonight.”

He leaves his hand on her head for a bit, whispering quietly to himself, then pats her back. And though the tenderness of the gesture lightens the shadow that has fallen upon her, she is still drowning in grief. It is long after the snoring around the room has commenced, particularly the one underneath her, that Delaney succumbs to her emotional exhaustion and falls asleep.

****

The following morning is worse than the evening before it, if such a thing is possible. Delaney sleeps through the morning bell, so fatigued was she from the grief of the previous day. She even slept through the chaos of a dozen boys noisily getting ready for breakfast right beside her bed. Frank gave a kick to her bunk from below and she only turned over. In the end, even kind Father Fitzpatrick must come into the room to give a mild scolding after breakfast is done and the dishes cleared up.

“Delaney. Son.” He is shaking her as the boys collect their books.

“You’ve missed breakfast.”

She pries her eyes open and slowly dawns to the reality that yesterday was not a horrible nightmare, and that she has already begun today badly. She sits upright in a panic.

“I don’t know what kind of a schedule you kept in Dunleer, but when you miss breakfast here you will not be eating again until lunchtime.

“I’m sorry, Father.” And she tries to say more but words are not forming in her head and all she can get from her tongue is a bit of stuttering. “I … I don’t … I … Wh – what time …”

“It’s alright this time. But let’s do better tomorrow, shall we?”

“Yes. Father.”

“There are two classrooms, one for the younger and one for the older. You’ll be in class with the younger lads this morning.

“Patrick,” he calls to a boy picking up his books, “you can show Delaney to the classroom.”

Patrick looks as though he’s just been delivered a fatal sentence.

“Yes Father.” He says, and then with a pleading look to Delaney mouths “hurry!”

Delaney slept in her clothes on top of the covers. She was shy about getting dressed in the boy’s nightshirt the sisters had obtained for her, even when the room was empty with the boys playing football outside. Secondly, she was too bereaved to even want to change clothes and get under the covers. At least this has made preparation for the day a little easier.

“Thought you were dead, De-puny.” Frank says after the Father leaves the room and Delaney descends from her bunk. “Guess we’ll have to put up with your puny ass around here a bit longer.” And Frank kicks her she heads to boy’s bathroom, sending her to the floor and nearly causing her to pee her pants. She gets up and glares at him, anger bubbling like magma under her weary soul.

“Oooo.” Says Frank. “Gonna do something about it?”

Delaney turns and enters the bathroom adjoining the dorm room.

She has not relieved herself since before leaving the convent the afternoon prior, and now she has a tremendous bladder ready to burst. When she steps past the threshold into the bathroom the reek is profound. She had anticipated the room would smell badly since she had caught threads of the raw sewage wafting past her nostrils even in her bunk, but inside the poorly ventilated room of Jacks, she is gaging on stench.

Two boys stand peeing into a trough with a hole at one end of the base leading down a pipe which pokes outside of the building and drops into a septic tank. Terror strikes her heart. She knew the biological differences which existed but had no idea that boys would prefer to stand when peeing or that they would have a Jack requiring one to pee while standing before it. She looks around the room desperately. There is a single, curtained-off area, though the curtain is not drawn all the way and she can see a boy squatting over a chamber pot.

“Almost done.” He grunts, then wipes himself with a strip of newspaper which has been shish kabobbed onto a spike rising from the floor. He walks past Delaney buckling his trousers and a breeze of the stink follows in his wake. She enters the area and is careful to pull the curtain fully around herself. The chamber pot is an island of feces rising from a sea of piss. She pulls down her trousers and squats over the pot, trying to avoid contact with the “island.”

“C’mon.” Patrick calls to her. “Brother Michael will paddle us both if we’re late.

She finishes her business, vowing to only use the outhouse ever after, no matter the weather or the inconvenience.

On a table in the wretched room there is a basin for washing and a pitcher next to it. She lifts the pitcher eager to wash what she imagines to be a visible reek from her hands. She longs to wash from her face the grime after the journey from Dunleer and the tears which streaked her face in the night. She’ll even delight in dousing her hair with water since Sister Julian was unskilled in the art of giving a boy cut and her unruly hair is sticking up in every directly. But alas, the pitcher is empty, and she must rush out without even getting to swish a little water around her pasty dry mouth.

When they enter the classroom, Brother Michael stands, arms folded and lips pursed, at the front of the classroom. There are six boys, aged eight to ten and Patrick slips surreptitiously into a vacant desk at the back of the room.

“Sorry, Brother.” He says as he slides into the chair. “Had to help the new kid.”

The only remaining desk is at the front, and it is made for an adult. So not only must Delaney walk the gauntlet of desks to get to the front of the class, but she is made to appear even smaller than she truly is lifting herself into the large desk and chair, toes dangling an inch from the floor.

Brother Michael doesn’t speak but walks to Patrick’s desk. He doesn’t need to say anything. Patrick is familiar with the routine. He holds his hand flat out in front of him in the air above the desk, not on it, so as to be able to absorb the shock. Brother Michael strikes it hard with the ruler, sending a shuddering slap across the room. Then he walks to Delaney’s desk. She lifts her hand tentatively, palm upwards. In doing so her sleeve creeps back revealing part of a rune. She pushes the sleeve up to cover it and then looks up into Brother Michael’s face.

“Just a warning this time.” He says. “Seeing as this is your first day.” And she lowers her hand onto her lap below the desk.

“Take out your maths lesson,” the Brother announces, and everyone shuffles to pull well-worn writing pads out from inside their desks or from the books on floor at their feet. Delaney lifts the hinged desk surface to find the space empty. Brother Michael looks perturbed and fishes around his desk drawer for a booklet, tossing it with a slap onto her desk.

Since the Sisters do not emphasize scholarship like the Franciscan brothers, and as all the boys are older than Delaney, she finds herself utterly lost in the lesson. Boys call out in unison the answers to the problems that the brother is writing upon the blackboard at the front of the classroom.

Delaney feels the sting of humiliation for being late to dinner, for sleeping in, for missing breakfast, for being dirty and unwashed, for being late to class, and for sitting at an oversized desk. But now she must sit stone mouthed while everyone else calls out answers which seem obvious to them but are absolutely baffling to her.

Delaney sits alone at lunch taking stock of her miserable life. She decides that if Frank is not the sole source of her depressing existence, he is at least responsible for making the others allergic to befriending her. Outside in the yard after lunch she sits staring at the back of Frank’s head as he and two of the older boys kneel over some sort of mischief before them on the lawn.

Possessed by a force from somewhere outside herself she stands and walks up to Frank and his posse. They are crouched over a toad which has been turned on its back. One boy has the creature’s neck pinned to the ground with a forked stick while Frank focuses the rays of the sun through a magnifying glass onto its belly. The tortured animal squirms as the bright pinhead of light burns smoking spots onto the toad’s stomach.

“Stop that!” She says with surprising command.

“De-puny!” Frank says turning to look up at her unconcerned, then he returns to his work of tormenting the toad.

“I said, stop!” And now the two boys on either side of Frank smile and utter an “Oooo” as though a defiant challenge has been laid down.

When Frank stands, he towers over the girl by a foot, and his shadow swallows her entire frame.

“You don’t really wanna …” in a flash Delaney is stepping on his foot and thrusting both hands into his mid-section, sending Frank toppling backwards and onto the ground. Before he can get up, she has jumped onto him, locking her legs around his neck like scissors. This is partly inspired by the forked stick which had been used to pin the toad to the ground and partly by the hangman’s noose used on occasion in the Dunleer town square. Her arms would certainly not have been equal to an all-out boxing match with Frank, but her legs are powerful, and they are pinching his neck tighter and tighter, Frank clawing at her legs gasping for breath.

The two boys struggle to unhook her locked ankles and pull Delaney from Frank who is red-faced and choking as his pinched larynx slowly opens back up. Frank’s companions stand on either side of her, gripping her arms and bracing her before Frank whose fist is craned back to crack her in the face. Taking advantage of the fact the boys have lifted her just above the ground, she pulls her knees to her chest and delivers her feet into Franks chest like a spring-loaded trap. It knocks what little wind he had regained after being choked half to death and sends him to the dirt.

By the time he can pull himself back up, Father Fitzpatrick is marching out with two Friars at his side, his long Cossack flying out behind him like a banner at the head of an army galloping into battle.

“Boys!” He nabs Delaney and Frank by the ear while the Brothers have the other boys by the collar. “Frank, I admit, this is no surprise. But Delaney, I’m very disappointed in your behavior.” They march past the other boys as Father Fitzpatrick continues his scolding. “You may have been raised in a brothel there in Dunleer, young man, where fights are acceptable, but here you will find things work very differently!”

And with these words, spoken within earshot of every boy in the yard, Delaney’s reputation ascends to legendary heights. Not only did the punk take down the orphanage bully, but the new kid apparently grew up in the alluring and profane world of prostitutes and brothels.

Delaney may have only been born into a brothel and spent her relatively short life sheltered by the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, but she welcomes the mystique and power such a pronouncement induces, even if it must come at the expense of the yardstick applied to the back of her legs and a solitary afternoon spent on a bench in the Father’s office.