Hungry Hill: A Memoir

Chapter 50 - Best Tunafish

234 H u n g ry H i l l 50. Best Tunafish Sister Rose Carm el terrifies me. After a run-in Kevin had with her in the hall last fall, I remember his saying that if Sister could play defensive guard for the football team, they might win a game or two. In the opening minutes before the bell rings, she asks what we have read over the summer, and Gail Culver just about does cartwheels over Catcher in the Rye and Rabbit, Run. Although I had read nothing beyond the summer reading, I could recite the name of every town in Hampden County and many of its employees as well, a recitation that would not amuse Sister Rose Carmel. Suzanne Kean, another reader, throws the title of a novel or two into the pile. At the bell, Sister explains that in Honors English we will spend the fall term reading medieval literature—Beowulf, Chaucer, Paradise Lost, Dante’s Inferno—and there will be a five-hundred-word essay due every Monday. A few brave boys, those as tall as Sister, groan softly. Ernie Croughwell raises his hand and asks her whether she had said “every.” No one breathes while Sister stares him down, but the fool stares back. Sister drags him into the hall, and two minutes later a cowed Ernie slouches back into class. Father Peter “Smacks” Loughran speaks in such a droning monotone that we can hear the saliva pooling in his mouth cavity. Students in his seventh-period American history class fight drowsiness as he lectures us about the Revolutionary War, the causes, the battles, the Tea Party, and the Freedom Trail. In his class, everyone sits in anticipation, waiting for him to smack his lips together. Father hardly ever gives homework and is thrilled when anyone knows an answer. Four or five boys have started to answer questions by smacking their lips together and despite the outbreaks of coughing when they do it, Father doesn’t even get it. Sister Rose Carmel could give Father Loughran lessons on classroom discipline. Like everyone else, I start my other homework during his class. Seventh-period history is like a study hall. Stuffed into my assignment notebook, I have an application for the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, which I slide out, relieved to see that A Memoir 235 it requires no application fee, but annoyed that I have to write an essay. Sunday afternoon is now my essay writing afternoon. Thank you, Sister Rose Carmel. I tuck the application back into my book and put my chin in my hand to keep from nodding off, staring at Father so he might think I care about the Articles of Confederation. Between the hissing noises from the radiator and Father’s smacking, his class has a lullaby feel. “I will kill or be killed if I don’t get away from my stepmother.” The University of Massachusetts is not expecting its applicants to be harboring thoughts of violence. But I am. Since the last family “explosion” (Gerry had come up with this word, more fitting than “fight”) I have been trying to figure out a way I could take care of my brothers if Mary makes good on her threats to leave. Grabbing a handful of hair, I rub my head until I can dream up a more riveting answer on why I want to attend the University of Massachusetts. I don’t think “nearby and affordable” indicate the intellectual curiosity the admissions staff is favoring. Leaning back in my chair, I look out the window at Tommy and Bobby jumping in a pile of blood red leaves. With Mary away for the weekend visiting her mother in a nursing home outside of Boston, a blessed peace has descended on the house. The essay is not coming easily, but a confusing memory is. I remember the night sitting in the living room when my dad told me about my mother’s scholarship to the College of New Rochelle, and how even with a scholarship she couldn’t afford to go. From the armchair across the room, my mother had given him a resigned, tired look and stubbed out her cigarette . Like my mother, I can’t afford to go to New Rochelle, and couldn’t even if my father were still alive, a fact hard for me to admit. No class leadership positions for me this year, and still there’s not enough space on the...