Joyce Oates - My Life as a Rat

After the TV news we went away stunned. It was as if a fire were burning somewhere in the house, no one knew where. I could hear Katie’s bewildered voice and Miriam telling her sharply just be still, not to bother Mom.

I wanted to tell them: I knew much more than they did. Our brothers had entrusted me with a secret as they had not entrusted them.

For seven hours my father remained with Jerr and Lionel at police headquarters as they were being interviewed. (Not “interrogated,” since they had not—yet—been arrested.)

Initially, my brothers denied any involvement with Hadrian Johnson, at any time.

Then, Jerr conceded that just possibly he’d struck something, or someone, driving on Delahunt Road on Saturday night. And he’d been drinking—a few beers. And maybe speeding, a few miles over the forty-five-mile-an-hour limit.

Definitely, he’d heard a thud. He and Lionel both. Looked in the rearview mirror but didn’t see anything, guessed it might’ve been a deer, or a bicycle abandoned at the side of the road.

Had anyone else been with them?—my brothers were asked.

At first, reluctant to give the names of the other boys. For they were not the kind of guys to rat on their friends.

At first, shaking their heads no.

Though soon, after repeated questions, and Daddy’s increasing impatience, they acknowledged yes —there were two other guys with them, in the backseat of the car.

And so, my brothers did “rat” on their friends after all. (Would this be held against them?—it did not seem so.)

I would wonder when our father was told by police officers about Hadrian Johnson—what had been done to him, what condition he was in; when this had happened, and what a witness had reported.

When Daddy had no choice but to realize that the trouble his sons were in wasn’t just a hit-and-run accident.

After seven hours Daddy was allowed to bring my brothers back to the house. They had not (yet) been arrested. They had been warned, and had agreed, not to leave South Niagara but to be available for further questioning as soon as the next day.

It was after 9:00 P.M. They were exhausted, and they were starving. In the kitchen they ate the supper Mom had prepared for them, kept warm in the oven. No one else was welcome in the room though we were all told—by Daddy, for Mom could not bear to speak—that there’d been a “misunderstanding” by the South Niagara police—a “misidentification”—that would be straightened out in the morning, with the lawyer’s help.

Rick asked if it had anything to do with Hadrian Johnson getting beaten and Daddy said angrily no it did not.

What we could see of our older brothers, they were looking fatigued, grim. Their jaws were dark with stubble and their eyes were rimmed with shadow. Lionel didn’t smirk as he usually did if someone was looking at him more intently than he liked and Jerr ignored us altogether.

Katie and I went to bed, later than our usual hour. And in our beds we lay unable to sleep. Katie said, “I guess Jerr and Lionel are in some kind of trouble from the other night. With Jerr’s car? You think—they were drinking?”

Of Hadrian Johnson she did not speak, as if she’d forgotten him.

And I’d forgotten him, too. And the baseball bat.

Strange to be lying beneath a warm comforter, in flannel pajamas, shivering. So hard, my teeth were chattering.

And my head was aching, as it sometimes did when I lay down, my head on a single pillow; too much blood rushed into it. Badly I wanted to just lie there in the dark, not having to see another person, not having to hear another person speak and not having to speak myself. Not having to think about anything that was upsetting, frightening.

What is it? Why?

AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WAS WIND SCRAPING BRANCHES AGAINST the roof of the house then I understood it was Daddy speaking with my brothers in the kitchen below. His voice was low and urgent, their voices were murmurs. At times it sounded as if he was giving them instructions, and at times it sounded as if he was pleading with them. And then his voice was abrupt, as if he was interrupting them. I could not hear words distinctly, for the pounding of my heart.

I was sick with the knowledge of what Jerome and Lionel had done even as I could not quite understand what they had done for still I was thinking of Niagara Falls … I had no wish to eavesdrop now. Never would I eavesdrop on anyone again.

It was frightening to me, I did not think that I could lie, if I was questioned about my brothers. If police officers questioned me.

I could not lie very convincingly to my brothers and sisters, and I could not lie at all to any adult. I would have to tell the truth. As, in confession, I made an effort to list the “sins” I’d committed, which included sins of omission. If the priest asked me— What are you not telling me, my dear? What is your secret? If one of my teachers asked me— What is it, Violet?—that you should be telling police?

Through the long day at school I’d been thinking of Hadrian Johnson. Hearing his name spoken, seeing his picture. His face on the front page of the South Niagara Union Journal. Your first thought is he’s an athlete, he has brought some sort of acclaim to South Niagara, a championship, a scholarship. But then you see the headline.

LOCAL YOUTH, 17, SAVAGELY BEATEN

Attack on Delahunt Rd., Police Search for Assailants

Jerr had stayed the night, in his old room he’d shared with Lionel. I wondered if the two were awake as I was awake and if they spoke together or had lapsed into silence, exhausted. I wondered what they were thinking. If they were thinking.

Though I knew better I wondered if somehow it was true—true in some way—that there’d been a “misunderstanding”—a “misidentification.”

Already my brothers had a lawyer. So quickly, Daddy had known to, as he’d say sardonically of others, lawyer up.

In Daddy’s world, to lawyer up was to admit guilt. Usually.

But you needed a lawyer, if you were accused of anything. Under the law you were innocent until proven guilty and only a lawyer could guide you through the process of such proof.

As the lawyer had protected my brothers and the other boys from serious consequences, at the time of Liza Deaver.

In a paralysis of dread I lay with my hands pressed over my ears as my father continued to question my brothers almost directly below my bed. I wondered if in my parents’ bedroom at the end of the hall my mother too was lying awake, unable to sleep, listening for sounds—footsteps on the stairs, a softly closing door—that the ordeal was over, for the night.

Whatever Daddy was asking my brothers, they were giving him answers that were not satisfactory. This, I seemed to know.

Daddy must have been humiliated by the ordeal in the police precinct. He knew South Niagara police officers, and they knew him. He’d gone to school with some of them. Possibly, they were embarrassed for him.

Of the four boys brought in for questioning, Jerr, the oldest, would have seemed the most convincing as he was (seemingly) the most intelligent; Walt, a cousin, the son of one of Daddy’s younger brothers, would have seemed the most innocent, and the most easily led. Lionel, uneasy in his body, grown inches within the past year, with the red cut beneath his eye like a lurid wink, would have seemed the least trustworthy. And there was Don Brinkhaus with his Marine-style haircut and broad heifer-face who’d been on the varsity football team at the high school until he’d been expelled from the team for fighting two or three years ago.

Had the guys been driving on Delahunt Road, and had Jerr (unknowingly) struck something or someone on the shoulder of the road?—this was the issue. Lionel wanted to insist that nothing had happened at all. Aggrieving, whining to Daddy— We didn’t do it. We didn’t even see him. They just want to arrest somebody white.