IT WAS MONDAY and Teacher stood at the board in white pants and a white blouse, a strip of shiny black belt slicing these. A chalk drawing of a man in a sheet took up the full height of the blackboard beside her. He carried a little harp shaped like a tulip. A strange animal stared at him from the third blackboard—three enormous dogs’ heads, the fangs sharp and their mouths open. The animal was so huge, Teacher had run out of blackboard near the top. The class chattered.
Bo huddled Loralei in his mind, the fight, the fair. He’d signed the contract even though he hadn’t understood all of it, and he’d got Rose to sign too. Then he’d tucked it under his mattress in case Gerry ever came back for him.
“Sit down, children.” Teacher waited until they hushed, then began to tell them about how this man Orpheus had lost his wife Eurydice when she was bitten by a snake.
“This is the Greek story! I looked it up,” called out Emily. “It’s the story Sir Orfeo is about, right, Miss?”
“Yes, Emily. It’s an old, old story. I wanted to tell it to you.” Teacher walked back and forth in front of the class. She got more animated if they paid attention, as if they had fed something in her. They were all soaking up the story—and watching her. She pointed to her drawings like they might come to life. Bo imagined her pacing back and forth at City Hall with her placard.
“Everyone has a talent,” Teacher said. “And Orpheus’s talent was singing. He played this lyre, and he sang beautifully. When Eurydice died, he was so very sad that he went to the underworld—”
“That’s like Hell,” said Emily, and Teacher hushed her.
“The Greeks believed the underworld to be a very treacherous place. Orpheus had to traverse a dangerous roadway, and cross a river with a ferryman named Charon, and somehow pass by”—here she pointed to the animal she had drawn on the board—“this monster named Cerberus.”
“A monster?” blurted Bo.
“Yes, Cerberus is also called the three-headed dog. Orpheus sang it to sleep.”
Bo shrank down in his chair. Teacher came to stand over him. “Maybe the dog was not as bad as he looked,” said Bo. He was thinking of Orange, and of Max wanting her for his sideshow. His face crumpled, and when Teacher touched his shoulder it was too late—tears came. Bo watched Ernie scribbling a note that would be passed to Peter and on through the class. This was who Bo was, a boy made up in the stories of others. He tried to think only about the weekend and how he had fought the bear.
Teacher bristled beside him and stared at Ernie. And then back at Bo. She had seen something transmitted, not the note but the idea of the note.
“Ernie and Bo,” she said. “I want to see you both in the hall.”
Ernie glared over at Bo. The rest of the class raised eyebrows, giggled.
Teacher followed the two boys out and shut the door behind her. They stood ready to hear Miss Lily’s reprimand. She crossed her arms and was silent for a good long time. Bo looked up into Ernie’s sneer. It would be better to fight than to just stand here.
“I want your help,” Teacher said, finally. She looked to Bo and then to Ernie. “Actually, I need your help. We will be viewing a film.”
“Miss!” Ernie’s eyes lit up.
“Hush,” she said. “The film is on a reel in the A.V. room, and so is the projector. I want you two to go to the A.V. room and fetch the projector and the reel. Bo, I want you to hold the reel. It is rented and needs to be returned in perfect condition. Ernie, you will roll the cart with the projector on it. You will not twirl, or spin, or ride on the cart. Do you both understand?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why I asked the two of you to do this?” she added. There was clearly a trick in this question.
“Yes,” said Bo, hoping to stop her.
“Tell me.”
Bo shook his head fast. He did not know at all.
“Ernie?”
“Because you can rely on us?”
“No,” she said. “I most certainly cannot rely on you. I asked you because I want you to work together. I want you to cooperate. Do you understand?”
They both nodded. Bo did not know what Ernie thought but he thought that he would never be able to work with Ernie, and that to have to do this small errand with Ernie was already worse than the torturous silence of Teacher. But still, a film—they would see a film.
“Teacher’s pet,” Ernie said as soon as Teacher had gone back in the classroom.
“Shut up.”
“Did she buy you right off the boat?”
“She didn’t buy me. Nobody bought me.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
Ernie and Bo arrived at the A.V. room, located the projector on its brown steel rolling cart. The reel came in a beautiful green round metal box, clipped together at the sides. It was like a huge shoe-polish tin. A piece of masking taped across it read: Toys, Grant Munro, 7 minutes, 46 seconds, 1966. Short, Bo thought. But still, it was already a perfect thing carting a real film down the hall, along the terrazzo floor, carefully avoiding stepping on the steel grouting between the tiles.
Ernie jumped on the lower shelf of the cart and pushed with one foot, riding it until they reached the classroom door. “Don’t tell,” he said. It was an order not a plea.
When they entered, Teacher was saying how the most important thing about the two stories—Orpheus and Sir Orfeo—was the risk they both took in going down to the underworld to save someone they loved. This was their heroic deed. “Over the next weeks, we will speak more about this story, but for now, I wonder if anyone can tell me what makes a person a hero?”
Ernie’s hand shot up, which surprised everyone. “Someone who sings dogs to sleep,” he said, and many in the class laughed.
“Very funny,” said Teacher. “But children, really, what makes a hero a hero?”
“He’s someone who loves so much, he does valiant deeds,” Sally offered.
Bo watched the back of her head, the perfect part of her hair, and the long brown braids, one on either side.
“Yes, class. Did you hear what Sally said?” Sally’s shoulders softened and her back straightened.
“Yes,” they answered together, grateful for Sally’s answer. The class breathed out a breath they’d been holding hard. They looked toward the film projector.
“Sally, you get the lights, please, and, Emily and Peter, pull the blinds down.”
Teacher was now leaning into the projector, squinting, trying to find the right feed. “I’m fitting this film in before the lunch bell, but really it is part of the history lesson. I would like you to think of heroes when you watch it, please.” She was nervous about working the projector and the class loved her more when she was like this, a real human, like them. “I think it goes here,” she said, fiddling with the film.
“It goes in there, Miss,” said Bo. He showed her the right slot in the receiving winder. She smiled at him in a way that made Bo forget for a second that she was his teacher, and he smiled back. He was glad they weren’t talking about monsters anymore.
She hit a switch and said, “Now sit back, class.”
The theme song, full of trumpets, rolled over them. There were little kids in the film watching a museum display of toys. Laughing. Suddenly the toys began to do things, and the children laughed harder. Then there were G.I. Joe dolls in camouflage. They were just dolls at first, but then they began to move, doing what soldiers do, and the children in the film became serious, because now they were watching a war through the display-case glass.
Teacher stopped the film and asked, “What is happening?”
Bo heard Emily say, “The children’s imaginations are coming true.”
And Teacher said, “Good,” and let the film run again, and now the G.I. Joe dolls killed one another, a jet dropped bombs, there was a river of blood, and the movie-children stared and stared.
Bo swallowed, and held his breath. For him it was memory.
Teacher began to speak over the credits.
“War,” said Teacher. “Why do we have war?” The film flapped against the reel and someone turned the lights on.
Bo sat very still and tried not to blink. He sent his mind to wander in Orange’s blue castle. He fought knights on her behalf, and then he ran and ran around the track, and thought about Loralei and smelled her and fought her again and again, and in this way he stopped himself from listening to Teacher and the class speak of war. Then it was quiet, and Teacher was looking at him and he realized they were alone.
“The bell rang,” she said.
He got up and gathered his things.
“Bo,” Teacher said, as he was about to leave.
“Yes, Miss Lily.”
She was biting her bottom lip and looking worried. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s in the curriculum.”
“Okay.” Bo nodded, but he felt sick. He had to get home to Orange. But he could see that Teacher wasn’t done with him.
“Remember I once told you where I worked before becoming a teacher?”
He did. Her summer job for two years before teachers’ college had been in a chemical plant that made Agent Orange in a small town outside Toronto. “It doesn’t matter,” he’d said.
“It does matter. It’s important for everyone to understand that their actions have consequences. War is bad.”
Bo turned away. He thought of Father Bart saying this same thing to him about stealing the Host. War is bad, he thought. But war also made Orange.
“I have to go take care of my sister,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
And Teacher just nodded.
BO’S MUM HAD ALREADY LEFT for work when he got home and Orange lay on the floor of her room splashed in her own vomit.
She slept, her breathing thick with mucus. He lifted her so that she would not wake, put her on the mattress. He washed the sick from her cheeks and from the wispy hair near her ears. Vomit congealed inside the curl of her ear too, and he took a damp cloth and wiped it away. When she was tidy and he’d cleaned up the mess on the floor and made sure she was peaceful, he called the hospital, asked for Rose Ngô. It was some time before she picked up.
“Mum, it’s Bo.”
“Bo,” she said, and he could hear surprise in her voice. “Why are you calling me? What is the matter?”
“Sister is sick, Mum.”
“Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll bring some medicine home.”
“She’s very sick. I have to go back to school, Mum. Her face is all red and she’s burning hot. She needs to see a doctor.”
“Bo, no,” said Rose, and here she switched to Vietnamese. “No more doctors, Bo.” She hissed this into the receiver and then she hung up the phone.
Orange didn’t wake up when he propped the window open, or when he tucked the sheets around her to try to keep her in one place until he got home. The whole house stank of sick. Before he called the hospital a second time, he watched Orange’s flushed face, the red only making the shape of it more marvellous and strange. His mother would not come to the phone, and the Muzak infuriated him so he hung up. He wiped Orange down once more with a cold cloth.
“Sorry, Orange. I have to go.”
TEACHER SAID, “Take out your copies of Sir Orfeo. How many of you read the poem over the weekend?” All of the girls put their hands up, and a few of the boys.
Bo saw that Ernie did not raise his hand, so he decided it would be better not to admit he had read the poem even though he had read it through twice. When the time came, he would vie for the role of the Fairy King, who said almost nothing except “Truly it is so / Take her by the hand and go / I want you to be happy with her!”
Then they began a reading, going around the class taking turns until the entire poem was read. It took almost the whole period, with Teacher stopping here and there to ask them questions. She wanted them to understand everything about the poem and its story so that when she rewrote it as a play, they would truly enter the spirit of it. “A play is a little piece of magic,” she said. “If it’s done well.”
Emily had her hand up.
“Yes, Emily,” said Teacher.
“In the Greek story, Orpheus has to promise he won’t turn around when he leaves Hades. But he does. He turns around to make sure Eurydice is there, and she dies again.”
“That’s right.”
“Why doesn’t that happen in Sir Orfeo?”
“It’s a really good question,” said Teacher. “I don’t really know. No one knows. But one thing is true. Whenever someone retells a story, bits get added and bits get lost.”
“I like this version better,” said Emily.
Teacher said, “Me too.”
When they were done reading, Teacher doled out parts, the class’s anxiety and excitement pressing them into one great feeling. A boy named Michael had got to read the Fairy King section and had said the lines with such conviction, Bo had no doubt who would be King. He thought again about working the curtain, how pleasant that would be.
Several of the girls cried when Emily was picked for Heurodis.
“And I’ve given the role of Sir Orfeo to Bo,” said Teacher.
The class fell silent. It was like Bo had entered a shadow. His classmates could not see him in this role. They would not. But Emily’s face lit when this was revealed.
“It’s a play,” said Ernie, to snap her out of it.
“Obviously I know that,” she said.
The class erupted into laughter, and then chatter, and Teacher let it get wild.
Bo looked at Teacher. “It will be too many lines, Miss,” he said.
“It will be a challenge,” Teacher said, tilting her head and smiling.
“I don’t want the part.” He had said it louder than he meant to, and now the students quieted and looked at him. It was as if they had never considered he might want or not want anything.
Teacher sat on the edge of her desk and gazed at them all. “I gave you each a role that I think will be good for you. That I hope will help you develop into good adults. I’ve given a lot of thought to this. I also want you to know your character so that as we study the poem and its history this term, you will come to know these characters even better. That will happen as we begin to look more closely at the Greek myth of Orpheus and compare some of the stories, and the people in them.”
Peter’s hand shot up.
“Yes?”
“Ernie and I play a tree.”
The class burst into laughter again—even Bo laughed, careful not to catch Ernie’s eye.
ERNIE HELD BO’S LARYNX with the palm of his hand, shoving him again and again into the gym wall. Bo strangled as Ernie whispered, “Orfeo, Orfeo, Orfeo.” They were in gym class, and Mr. Morley was late. Peter watched like they were on TV, his eyes glazed, entranced.
Shut up, Bo thought. He hadn’t wanted the part. He slammed back with his torso, pushed Ernie away long enough to adjust his position, make himself less vulnerable. He made like he was recuperating, then rammed his head into Ernie’s stomach, pushing through and, when Ernie fell, landed astride him. He pinned Ernie’s arms to the ground.
“Jesus,” said Peter.
Mr. Morley’s head appeared just above the horizon of boys—his tawny hair, some of which he had already lost, and a blush of angry pink rising on his face.
“What’s this?” he said.
He sentenced the whole class to ten minutes of fast laps. Mr. Morley sat on a chair in the middle of the gym until they were done. He went from visibly furious to calm in those ten minutes, and when he called for them to stop running, they came to him, panting, out of breath. He gestured and they understood. Bo expected to be sent to the office. He wondered if Ernie would be sent too.
“Today,” said Mr. Morley, “you’ll learn to fight properly. Peter, twenty push-ups for blaspheming. Bo, get the mats. Ernie, help him.”
“Cobra Clutch!” someone squealed.
“Wrestling,” said Mr. Morley.
They hauled out an old mat set, pieced this together in the middle of the gymnasium. It was a bull’s-eye, a huge dartboard laid out on the ground. There was something ceremonial in setting it up, amplified by Mr. Morley’s quietness.
“This is an old sport,” he said. “The rules have evolved over centuries.” He showed them how to enter the wrestling arena, how to shake hands. “No oil, no sweat.” He dried his own arms with a towel. He wore an undershirt and shorts. “Next class I will bring singlets.”
Morley kept his feet apart and held his hands out with palms to the sky. All the boys found their positions. “Okay, Ernie.” When Ernie stepped toward him on the mat, Mr. Morley wrapped his arms under Ernie’s armpits and came in for a hug. His head tucked into Ernie’s shoulder. He shifted his back foot in beside Ernie’s front foot, so that his feet pinched Ernie’s and held them in place. “I pull my body weight into the ground,” he said. “And sit back.” Mr. Morley flung his head back and twisted then, still holding Ernie, so that together they arced back, flying and then falling, with Ernie somehow landing on the bottom.
Anger contorted Ernie’s face, but it subsided almost before anyone noticed. He laughed. “Cool move,” Ernie said. “Do it again.”
Mr. Morley moved off the mat, nodded to Bo. “You,” he said. He blew his whistle when Bo hesitated.
Bo took his position on the mat, his legs wide and solid, his hands ready to take Ernie’s hands.
“Bo,” said Mr. Morley. “Let him take you the first time.”
Bo let Ernie curl his arms under his own, tuck his head down.
“Feet,” said Mr. Morley.
“Oh, yeah.” Ernie slid his back foot forward, held Bo’s locked, and sat, throwing his head and shoulders into a twist.
Perfect. Bo sailed, and was pinned, breathless.
“See, boys. Greco-Roman wrestling. Counterattack? Anyone know?”
Bo put his hand up.
“Bo.”
“Keep your weight deep down, lean to the opponent’s outside foot, and when his weight follows, drop and roll.”
“Okay. Maybe. Try it.”
So the boys locked again, but this time when Ernie shifted to throw himself back, Bo sank and pinned him instead. Mr. Morley smiled.
He had each boy in the gym class try to make the manoeuvre. “No throw. You are to stay upright. Feel your opponent’s vulnerability. Feel it, and act upon it.”
For forty minutes the class of boys attempted to perfect this. The boys took turns on the mat, half listening for the thump beside them, turning to see who had mastered whom. Bo imagined throwing Loralei, the bear arcing across the mat, flailing fur, even though he knew it wasn’t possible.
ROSE WAS HOME—early—and Orange sat in the kitchen sink, frothy suds billowing around her. She slapped the water when she saw Bo so that it crested over the sides and onto the linoleum. She was too big for the sink but Bo knew she was too much for his mother to handle in the bathtub.
“Shh, Sister. She likes to splash.” Rose was drunk, the only time she could be so lovingly fluid, so motherly. Her body swayed.
“Thank you for coming home, Mum.”
“How was school?” she said.
“Good.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
Rose put her head down on the counter, let Orange splash her. She said, “I gave her medicine to bring the fever down. Hopefully she’ll be better tomorrow. I wonder if she ate something bad. Did you feed her anything strange?”
“No,” he said.
A Host, even if you were not consecrated into a Sacrament, could not give you a fever, Bo thought. It was only flour and blessings. But if God was angry there was no telling what He might do. He was erratic. You never knew what He would like or dislike. If God sought vengeance it would be upon him, though, and not his innocent sister. If she died, he thought, and then he stopped himself thinking. She mustn’t die. He would pray for her tonight, tell God that if He killed Orange, He’d lose Bo’s faith.
“Help me,” said Rose, and Bo lifted Orange’s tangled red body out of the sink.
She did not want to get out, and kicked and thrashed. She liked to make sounds, smacking flesh against the water, ugly music. She made a wet mess of Rose, who laughed at first and then got annoyed, and finally spanked her, holding her with one fist and hitting her on the bottom with an open palm, so that the sound mimicked Orange’s own music. Orange’s little mouth rounded to scream but nothing came out, though Bo knew she screamed with all her body and soul. He saw small pustules along her legs.
“What’s that?”
“It will heal, Bo. No doctors, right?”
Bo said, “I will take care of her.” He had to stay calm or Rose might turn angry, he knew. Or start crying. She had already started crying.
“Sister needs to eat,” Rose said.
Bo said, “I’ll dress and feed her.”
His mother’s face flickered with emotion when she handed Sister over: disgust and misery hidden behind stoicism. Pity mixed in there too, which he could stand even less than disgust. At least disgust did not pretend to righteousness. Orange had come out of her body. It was this creation that formed the disgust, he knew. If it had been someone else’s child, his mother might have had more compassion. As it was, she simply hated herself for making this. And he hated her for it too, a hate mixed with love.
“IN THE FOREST…”
Bo whispered up close to Orange’s malformed ear, bent into her as she rocked herself to sleep. “In the forest you are a princess. It is a beautiful forest—yes, all blue and white, made entirely of paint—and in it there is a grand building. It might be a castle or a palace. For many it looks impossible, all brush strokes and colour. But you live in the palace and are famous for living there.
“There is a horse just your size and you ride upon it. It is also blue and still smells of oil, as if it was just created by the artist, just for you. Your horse is named Bucephalus and it is upon this horse that you carry out your greatest deeds. For you are endowed with superpowers. You are a hero.”
He would write about Orange for his assignment What Is a Hero? He would write about how daring it was for her to allow herself to be born, and maybe Teacher would understand about Orange, then.
“Once there was a man riding through the forest who came upon you. He thought you the most hideous creature his eyes had seen. He called you ‘loathly.’ The loathly lady.” Bo was stealing from King Arthur but he didn’t care. Stories wanted to be stolen.
Orange stopped rocking to listen.
“It was Sir Gawain. Another one. A future one,” Bo said. “He did not know your powers. He found you seated on a log in the forest and asked your hand in marriage. You thought it was a joke!” Bo looked up at the ceiling and then around the room, stopping here and there at the scenes on the wallpaper. “And then Sir Gawain kissed you,” he said, and turned to kiss Orange.
She flailed her arms, wildly, so he caught them and held her. He looked right in her eyes. “He kissed you and you stayed just the same.”
AFTER ORANGE HAD FALLEN ASLEEP, Bo found his mother at the table, asleep over her evening tea. Bo woke her by gently touching her back.
“Bo,” she said.
“Go to bed.”
“I need to talk to you. That man Gerry made me nervous. What if you get hurt?”
“I won’t get hurt. And maybe he won’t come back.” Bo wanted him very badly to come back.
“Remember, I need you.” She wrapped her arms around herself.
“It’s not real fighting, Mum. It is like a show except there are some people in the audience who don’t realize it’s not real. A person could only get hurt if they made a mistake. And I won’t.”
“Bo—”
“Mum, it’s like a puppet show, nothing more than that. If I make enough money, you can stay home. You can take care of—”
He stopped because she had got a look in her eye. He had wanted to say, take care of us.
Rose’s hand lifted and she slapped his face. He blinked from the sting of it, but said nothing.
In the night, he woke to his mother wailing. When he went to her room, he found her crouched on her bed, tearing her face with her nails. She’d gouged long wounds into her skin, and beneath her nails was her own blood.
“Mum,” he said. “Mum.”
She was asleep. She didn’t wake up as he pulled her hands down and pinned them until she relaxed. She didn’t wake up until the morning.
“Who did this?” she said, bewildered, gesturing to her face as she came out of the bathroom.
“You were dreaming,” Bo said.
She started, then said, “I remember a nightmare.” But she would not tell him how it went.
She went back into the bathroom and powdered over the rents in her face, but it was easy to see them. They ran like frozen tears down her cheeks and her neck.