Queer Organs

     Somewhere between the prawn cocktail and the boiled tongue my impetigo flares up and causes Mam to drops her fork and cry out, “Oh, Jesus, your poor face is destroyed.” Mam wipes my chin with a bit of wet tissue paper and says, “There now, you're game ball.”

     Whether it's the pink sauce on my cheeks, or the glaring red pustules, Mam says not to put a finger on my face until she washes it with a wet cloth and applies Sloan's Horse Liniment—the Old Man's cure for everything from the common cold to the Black death.

     The Old Man works a piece of gristle between his false teeth and a low growl comes from his mouth as he struggles with the meat. As I lick the Marie Rose sauce from a prawn he resorts to putting the knife in his mouth to loosen some meat from his teeth and Mam sighs the way she does when I do something wrong. He raises a bushy eyebrow and continues to worry away at his teeth, daring Mam to say something.

     “How many valves are in a prawn's heart?” I ask Mam, afraid I'm eating all sorts of queer organs I know nothing about.

     “Do you know I haven't the foggiest notion,” she says. “But I do know their hearts are on top of their heads.”

     “God, that's fantastic,” I say, amazed at all the wonderful things Mam knows. She learns lots of them from her set of Everyman Encyclopedias on the bookshelves in the dining room. I love the green covers and the gilt numbers on the spines of the encyclopedias, or is it encyclopediae? I think Father Declan said something about Latin plurals ending in —aie in class a while ago.

     When we go home I want to explore the volume that has lots of stuff about astronomy, the formation of suns and how they travel through the universe at dizzying speeds. But the Old Man is our sun and Mam and me orbit about him like two helpless planets, the anger he shows when he's unhappy pitched at us the way he launches the small white golf ball into the stratosphere. But for now I resist the urge to scratch my impetigo and fork another prawn with its dead heart into my mouth.

James Claffey

Bath Time

     Friday night is bath night. Auntie Martha balances me in the sink, her lips pursed, the Pears soap in one hand, my arm in the other. There's not much room in the kitchen because Mam is frying the tea for the Old Man who is at the pub. Eggs cracked in lard sizzle and cigarette smoke mingles with the darker smoke from the stove. Mam is angry because she bangs the skillet about and says “He's worse than fifty children. Away all month and spends all his time nestled up to the bar.” Martha soaps my skinny bones and washes under the place my testicles will be in the future.

     Martha knocks the blue glass ashtray off the edge of the sink and it bounces on the linoleum floor. “Ah, you're as clumsy,” Mam says to her. I wriggle about and Martha drops the soap on the floor, too. “For God's sake, please would you be careful?” Mam cries, rattling the wooden spoon against the stovetop. “Sorry, he's wriggling too much,” Martha says, tightening her grip on my arm. “Stop acting the maggot,” she tells me, and folds me in the towel to dry me off.

     Mam grates the orange Galtee cheddar and crushes the cigarette butt out in the ashtray. The cheese is Da's favorite and he likes to sprinkle it on his eggs with Worcestershire sauce before he forks it into the hole in the center of his face. He doesn't skimp when it comes to food, that's what Mam says when he's away. A man of simple pleasures, she says, too. I only want him to play with me, to hoist me up toward the ceiling and to feel the thrill and the fear of flying in his arms. Instead, Auntie Martha cuddles me in her lap and rubs my head with the rough towel. The Old Man's place goes unfilled as we eat our tea and Mam glares into the emptiness.


James Claffey

Hopscotch

     Emer and the girls play hopscotch in the chalked grid on the footpath. Four and seven are rest squares and you can put both feet down before continuing. From the corner of my bedroom window I watch her in the evening sunlight. Her brown shoes are scuffed at the toes and there's a wrinkle in her burgundy school skirt. She goes to Loreto on the Green and gets the bus early in the mornings. Sometimes I walk with her as far as the traffic light and then I make my own way to my school, which is in the opposite direction.

     She says it's okay if I want to take her to the flicks on Saturday morning. It's always a matinee in the Kenilworth and they're showing re-runs of Flash Gordon. The last time we went to the cinema I touched her face and it felt like the sand on the beach at Bettystown—all soft and warm. I was afraid to utter a word, and if we go this week I'm going to try and kiss her. Downstairs I can hear Mam rattling pots and pans for dinner. The Old Man is still away and we're having boiled chicken and cabbage tonight.

     Emer tosses the Mansion Polish tin onto the grid and hope, splits, and hops again before stopping on the seven square. She's playing with Nettie Hanratty and she doesn't like me at all. Mam says her parents are left-footers and not to be trusted. The two girls talk as they play and the stones in the tin rattle as they throw it ahead of them. Emer's wrist is narrow as a twig and the sun catches her wristwatch and sends a stream of light toward the ground. There's a moment of silence in the bedroom as I linger at the window, imagining the kiss we'll share on Saturday morning in the darkness of the Kenilworth. Mam calls me for dinner and I let the muslin curtain trail through my fingers before going downstairs.


James Claffey


James Claffey hails from County Westmeath, Ireland, and lives on an avocado ranch in Carpinteria, CA, with his wife, the writer and artist, Maureen Foley, their daughter, Maisie, and Australian cattle-dog, Rua. He is the winner of the Linnet’s Wings Audio Prose Competition. He received his MFA from Louisiana State University, where he was awarded the Kent Gramm Prize for Non-Fiction. His work appears in many places including The New Orleans Review, Connotation Press, A-Minor Magazine, Literary Orphans, and Gone Lawn. You can read him at www.jamesclaffey.com.