My Life as a Rat. Joyce Carol Oates

protect us, we knew.

      Jerr returned to work, where his employer and most of his fellow workers were inclined to be sympathetic toward him. Lionel was suspended indefinitely from school.

      Fewer people dropped by the house. But Kerrigan relatives were loyal. Staying late into the night in the basement room Daddy had remodeled into a TV room, drinking, talking loudly, vehemently.

      Just adults in the basement with Daddy. No kids including Jerr and Lionel.

      With so many people in the house it wasn’t hard for me to avoid my brothers. At meals they ignored me, as they ignored their younger brothers and sisters, sitting next to Daddy, eating with their heads lowered and addressing one another in terse exchanges. Their lawyer’s last name was O’Hagan—you could hear their remarks peppered with these syllables—O’Hagan—but not what they were saying.

      Since he’d shoved me in the kitchen Lionel rarely looked in my direction. I had come to think that he’d forgotten me, for he had much else to think about. Jerr’s pebble-colored eyes drifted over me, restless, brooding. Within a week or so my oldest brother had lost weight, his face was gaunt, his manner edgy, distracted. While Lionel ate hungrily Jerr pushed food about on his plate and preferred to drink beer from a can. Often he lifted the can so carelessly to his mouth, rivulets of liquid ran glistening down his chin. One evening Daddy told him no more, he’d had enough, and Jerr rose indignantly from the table unsteady on his feet murmuring what sounded like Fuck.

      Or maybe, judging from Daddy’s reaction—Fuck you.

      In an instant Daddy was on his feet too. Gripping Jerr by the scruff of the neck and shaking him as you might shake an annoying dog. Shoving him back against the wall so that the breath was knocked out of him. Glasses, silverware fell from the table onto the floor. There were cries of alarm, screams. Jerr scrambled to his feet ashen-faced but knew better than to protest.

      No one dared leave the table except Jerr who retreated like a kicked dog. Daddy was flush-faced, furious. We sat very still waiting for the fury to pass.

      In silence we finished the meal. In silence, my sisters and I cleared the table for our mother who was trembling badly. It was frightening and yet thrilling, to witness our father so swiftly disciplining one of us who had disrespected him.

      That is the sick, melancholy secret of the family—you shrink in terror from a parent’s blows and yet, if you are not the object of the blows, you swell with a kind of debased pride.

      My brother, and not me. Him, therefore not me.

      OUR MOTHER BEGAN TO SAY, MANY TIMES IN THOSE WEEKS—Those people are killing us.

      On the phone she complained in a faltering, hurt voice. To her children, who had no choice but to listen. She’d been talking to our parish priest Father Greavy who’d confirmed her suspicion, she reported back to us, that those people were our enemies

      We wondered who those people were. Police? African Americans? Newspaper and TV reporters who never failed to mention that an anonymous witness had described “white boys” at the scene of the beating—“as yet unidentified.”

      Those people could be other white people of course. Traitors to their race who defended blacks just for the sake of defending blacks. Hippie-types, social-worker types, politicians making speeches to stir trouble for the sake of votes.

       Taking the side of blacks. Automatically. You can hear it in their voices on TV …

      No one in our family had any idea that I knew about what had happened that night. What might have happened.

      That I knew about the bat. That there was a bat.

      In articles about the beating there seemed to be no mention made of a “murder weapon”—so far as most people might surmise there wasn’t one. (Had police actually mentioned a tire iron? I had not heard this from anyone except my mother reporting one of many rumors.) A boy had been beaten savagely, his skull (somehow) fractured. That was all.

      I wondered if Jerr and Lionel talked about me. Our secret.

      They knew only that I knew they’d been fighting that night. They had no reason to suspect that I knew about the bat. Surely they thought that I believed their story of having been in Niagara Falls and not in South Niagara.

       She wouldn’t tell. Not Vi’let Rue.

       You sure? She’s just a kid.

       Anyway, what does she know? None of them know shit.

       Because …

      BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT HAVE DONE THAT, SUCH A TERRIBLE thing there came to be They did not do that terrible thing.

      Because It can’t be possible there came to be It is not possible. Was not possible.

      Because They wouldn’t lie to us there came to be They did not lie to us. Our sons.

      Through the floorboards you heard. Through the furnace vent you heard. Amid the rattling of the ventilator. Through shut doors you heard, and through those walls in the house that for some reason were not so solid as others, stuffed with a cottony sort of insulation that, glimpsed just once, as a wall was being repaired, shocked you looking so like a human lung, upright, vertical.

      Like a TV in another room, volume turned low. Daddy’s voice dominant. Mom’s voice much fainter. A pleading voice, a whining voice, a fearful voice, for Daddy hated whining, whiners. Your brothers knew better than to piss and whine. Shouting, cursing one another, shoving one another down the stairs, overturning a table in the hall, sending crockery shattering onto the kitchen floor—such behavior was preferable to despicable whining which Daddy associated with women, girls. Babies.

      And so, your mother did not dare speak at length. Whatever she said, or did not say, your father would talk over, his voice restless and careening like a bulldozer out of control. Was he rehearsing with her—You could say they were home early that night. By ten o’clock. You remember because …

      They would choose a TV program. Something your brothers might’ve watched. Better yet: sports. Maybe there’d been a football game broadcast that night … On HBO, a boxing match.

       Jerome I don’t think that I—don’t think that I can …

       Look. They aren’t lying to us—I’m sure. But it might look like they are lying, to other people. Sons of bitches in this town they’d like nothing better than to fuck up decent white kids.

       Don’t make me, Jerome … I don’t think that I, I can …

       You can! God damn it, they might’ve been home—might’ve watched the fucking TV. Or you might remember it that way and even if you were wrong it could help them.

      None of this you heard. None of this you remember.

       The Rescue

      BY CHANCE YOU SAW.

      So much had become chance in your life.

      Headlights turning into the driveway, in the dark. Your father’s car braking in front of the garage.

      By chance you were walking in the upstairs hall. Cast your eyes down, through the filmy curtains seeing the car turn in from the street. Already it was late. He’d missed supper. Past 9:00 P.M. No one asked any longer—Where’s Daddy?

      In the hall beside the window you paused. Your heart was not yet beating unpleasantly hard. You were (merely) waiting