Читать книгу Blood Brothers - Colleen Nelson - Страница 8

I crouch over my sketchbook, drawing. Sometimes, an idea pops into my head and I have to find a scrap of paper, a gum wrapper, anything, before I forget it. I see how people look at graffiti art that has meaning. They stop to take it in. They respect the artist. There are some guys with talent around the city right now. Creeping, like me, in the night and leaving behind a piece that forces people to stop and stare in the morning.

This new piece that’s taking shape isn’t about my name. It’s about this place. A human head and torso, bound and gagged with a building for legs: half-man, half-structure. Looks good in my sketchbook, but throwing it up scares me. What if people think it’s stupid and laugh at it? Or worse, a king tags it with TOYS, the ultimate insult to a graff writer. Tag Over Your Shit.

Dad comes home late that night, humming Polish folk songs. It’s when I know he’s happy, the quiet rumble in his throat making him nod his head.

“Jakub!” He claps his hands and rubs them together. “I have news,” he sings. “Great news!”

He’s been with Father Dom. They probably got into the Polish vodka people give Father Dom at baptisms and weddings. He has that loopy look on his face, his grin so big I can see gaps where he’s missing teeth.

I don’t smile back. I know what he’s going to say. The letter arrived. Sure enough, he pulls it out of his pocket and wags it in front of me. “Accepted to St. Bartholomew’s! As a bursary student. They’ll pay your way, as long as you get good grades and stay out of trouble!” I lean closer to my sketchbook, hunching over the pencil lead as it scrapes over the paper. I don’t want him to see my face. A private Catholic school in a good part of town, St. Bartholomew’s Academy is the answer to Dad’s prayers for me.

Dad grabs me and gives me a kiss on each cheek. His whiskers scratch my face. He lets out an explosive laugh of joy and punches the air with his fist. Shaking his head in disbelief, he mutters, “St. Bartholomew’s,” and raises his eyes to the ceiling and what’s beyond, to heaven. To my mom.

He’s excited enough for both of us. It takes Dad a minute to realize I’m not rejoicing with him. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

He flaps his hands at his sides, like a flightless bird, and shakes his head at me. “What, then? This is a gift.”

“More like a punishment.”

Dad swears in Polish. “This place has done this to you! We’re stuck in shit and you think it’s where you belong.”

Pushing away my sketchbook, I stand up. The West End is all I know. How would I fit in with a bunch of rich kids? “I get good grades, what does it matter where I go?”

St. Bart’s was Father Dom’s idea. He and Dad dragged me to the interview. I wore a collared shirt dug out of the donations box in the church. It stunk like mothballs. When we were at the interview, I looked at photos of the graduates. Rich kids from that part of town. I’d never fit in with them. They’d smell the poor on me. Schools like that aren’t made for kids like me, no matter how smart I am. No matter how much I deserve the chance.

Dad frowns, desolation pulling at his face as he slumps into his chair. “That’s what I thought about Poland. Your mother was the one who wanted to come here. I would have stayed, made the best of it.” He’s getting nostalgic; booze does that to him, too. I sit back down. He doesn’t talk about my mom much.

“She wanted to come for our children, to give them a chance at a better life. She was brave.” Colour flushes his face. “You think this is the life she wanted for you?” He stares at his leg, splayed off to the side, a useless appendage, like a stray dog that won’t leave him alone.

Things would have been different if he hadn’t gotten hurt at work. We’d be in a better place, not living month to month off his disability cheque or the kindness of the church. I know Dad stays in Canada for me. He could have gone back years ago to be with his family. They write him letters, telling him it’s better now, but he promised my mom we’d stay, no matter what.

He leans forward and grabs my wrist, his grip surprisingly strong. I don’t try to shake him off. I look him in the face. His eyes, blue and bulging, are wet. “I want better than this for you. You get a good education, you can go to university, get a job. A good job. You can have a good life, Jakub.”

A burner takes shape in my head as he talks. The images colliding in my head. A father and son, locked together, the eerie outline of someone angelic overhead. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. A shiver runs through me at the thought of how it will look high above the street, in a heaven spot, for everyone to see.

“I heard from St. Bart’s,” I say. Lincoln and I are sitting on the front steps of the rooming house. They were painted green once, but footsteps wore the colour off, so now a strip down the middle is bare concrete. Laureen planted some flowers in pots, but after the dry heat of the summer, they’ve turned spindly and brown. Matching the rest of the place. Paint peels off in splinters from the window frames, and all five of the mismatched mailboxes hang at different angles, like cartoon road signs.

He turns to me, frowning.

“I got in.”

“Shit,” he groans. “You’re going?”

I sigh. I don’t have a choice.

Lincoln makes a face. “You’ll look like a faggot, wearing the jacket and tie and shit.”

I give him a punch to the arm, hard enough that he has to rub the spot I hit.

Our neighbour from the third floor, Lester, opens the screen door, lights the cigarette already in his mouth, waves the match to kill the flame and flicks it into the flowerpot. He nods to us. “You boys behavin’?” he asks in his lazy drawl. Spindly like the flowers, he’s been living here longer than me and Dad. The day we moved in, he came down to help. There wasn’t much to carry; a couple of boxes of clothes and some kitchen stuff, but Dad was useless with his leg. Lester and I hauled everything up the stairs. That night, Dad invited him for dinner as a thank you. He told Dad later he’d never been asked to anyone’s for dinner before.

“Heard your news,” he says to me, blowing a stream of smoke out the side of his mouth. “It’s good, making your dad proud like that.”

I roll my eyes. “He probably took an ad out in the paper telling the world. It’s like no one ever got into that school before.”

Lester gives me a long look, one side of his mouth tilted up. “No one who lives in a rooming house, that’s for damn sure.”

Lincoln stays quiet beside me, hiding under his hat.

“Any of those rich pricks give you trouble, you let me and Lincoln know. We’ll straighten ’em out, eh?” He taps Link’s shoe with his workboot.

“You?” Link glances up at him. “You couldn’t take my ninety-year-old grandma,” Link says, dodging a swipe from Lester.

“Later, boys,” Lester calls and saunters down the sidewalk, the frayed cuff of his jeans dragging behind.

“Think he’s screwing Laureen?” Lincoln whispers when he’s out of earshot. “Saw ’em talking one night,” he says, leering. “You know, like maybe there was more going on. She’s not so bad looking.”

I throw him a disgusted look.

“For an old lady,” he adds. “Just wondered,” he laughs as I pretend to barf.

A group of little girls walk past with Slurpees. Their mom trails behind with a kid in a stroller, screaming and arching his back to be let out.

“You think about what we talked about last night?” I ask. “About Henry?”

Lincoln pulls his legs toward him. “Yeah, kind of.”

“You don’t have to do what he wants just cuz he’s your brother.”

He shakes his head at me. “You don’t get it, Koob.” He sighs.

“Get what?”

“Me and you are different. I’m never gonna have a shot at things you will.”

“That’s bullshit,” I fire back. “Did Henry tell you that?”

“He didn’t have to. Now that you’re in that school, you think you’re coming back here? Working at the 7-Eleven? Or a factory?”

A girl we go to school with waddles past. Pregnant, her belly sticks out from under her T-shirt. A plastic grocery bag swings at her side.

I look at Lincoln, at how the taut, shiny skin of his scar is lighter than the rest of his face. “It’s just a school. It doesn’t change who I am. We’ll still paint together.”

Lincoln nods, but the corners of his mouth turn into a frown.

Dad puts a bowl of hot buttered noodles in the middle of the table. Father Dom sits across from me at the dinner table. “Father O’Shea, the principal, is giving you a clothing allowance to use at the campus uniform store,” he tells me.

“Thanks.” I nod, but keep my head down, shovelling food into my mouth.

“You see?” Dad looks at Father Dom, but points at me with his fork. “No gratitude! Nothing. He has a gift from God and he acts like it’s a punishment.”

“I said thanks, Dad!”

He blows a puff of air at me. “That was no thank you. After all Dominic has done for you!”

I put my spoon down. “Thank you for doing all this,” I say, looking him in the eye. I turn to Dad, but he scowls at me.

It isn’t the first time Father Dom has been pulled in as the mediator between us. He leans back in his chair and laces his fingers together over his stomach. “Opportunities like this don’t come along every day. There’s a reason it’s come to you.”

“Oh, yeah? You think God is looking out for me?”

Dad opens his mouth to say something, but Father Dom quiets him with a look.

“Yes, I do.”

The matter-of-factness of his words shuts me up. It is what he truly believes, and I’m not going to argue. But if God is looking out for me, why’d he let my mom die? And my dad get hurt? I’d asked Father Dom these questions before. He’d given me his version of why, but what I really wanted to hear was that God screwed up, not that life isn’t without pain, or that we all have burdens and God gives us as much as we can handle.

If that’s the case, I’d also like to know, from God, exactly how much He thinks a crippled single-father can handle.

“God is not cruel. I know, sometimes, it might seem that way. I struggle to see his ways, too.” Father Dom wrinkles his eyebrows. “But hard times push us in two directions. Either we accept them and look to God for help, or we turn away and let the devil take us on his path.”

“You’re getting kind of heavy.”

Father Dom waves a hand at me and smirks. “Occupational hazard. Don’t be a smartass.”

“I told Lincoln about St. Bart’s,” I mutter.

“What did he say?” Father Dom asks.

I shrug. “Not much he could say. He doesn’t want me to go.” I look at Dad. “It’ll probably push him closer to his brother. He just got out of prison, you know. He’s in a gang.”

I thought telling Dad about Henry would sway him, but my plan backfired. “More reason for you to get away from this neighbourhood,” he says with satisfaction.

Father Dom nods in agreement. Arguing against them is a waste of time. I’m going to St. Bart’s whether I like it or not.