ANNA RETURNED TO fundamentalist religion a week after Paul turned 14. Twice I had heard her wondering out loud whether Paul’s “unruliness” was God’s way of chastising her for leaving the Church of the Elect. “Once you’re of the elect, you must return to the fold,” she later told me with conviction. Her conversion had come suddenly. One of the nurses she worked with, a half-Chinese Jamaican woman called Princessa Chung, had something to do it. Anna had taken us to a party at her house — somewhere on the West Island — Kirkland probably — during our second year here. It took us two hours to get there; to a house stuffed with dollar-store figurines, doilies, and plaster and plastic plaques with inscriptions that read: GOD IS THE HEAD OF THIS HOUSE and THE FAMILY THAT PRAYS TOGETHER STAYS TOGETHER. There were three sofas in the living room, three unmatched armchairs, cabinets, several unmatched lamps, and plastic plants and plastic flowers in vases scattered all over the living-and-dining room. “She’s tired of shift work and amassing stuff to start a junk business,” Paul said. Thereafter he referred to her as Madam-Junk-Ma’s-Friend, eventually shortening it to Madam J. She’d set up a sound system on her quite spacious lawn at the back of her house. It blasted the neighbours’ ears well past 11 pm, causing Paul to quip: “They also bray.” The house was crammed with residents too: sisters with their children, nieces and nephews from Jamaica going to university —enough to constitute a town — explaining, no doubt, the three sofas in the living room.
Anna joined Madam J’s church following months of tribulations with Paul. Things had begun to go seriously wrong in July. On a dare, he’d tried to steal a gold chain from a jeweller in the Côte des Neiges Plaza. By the beginning of September Anna had made four trips to get him out of police custody. His gang vandalized bus shelters, spray-painted graffiti on people’s homes and fences and in the metro and on buses — throwing up, bombing, they called it — and gathered in Van Horne Park to smoke grass. One morning in August, around 2 am, the police caught him putting graffiti on one of the doors to the Plamondon metro station. He carried no ID, and told them his name was Don Giovanni. They took him to the police station. He suffered an asthma attack while they were administering the “workover,” and had to be rushed to the emergency at St. Mary’s. Two evenings later — Anna was at work — I caught him smoking pot in his bedroom. He grinned and handed me the joint. “It will unplug you.”
I shook my head.
“See? You’re corked, man. Corked en hostie! Just don’t rupture; they’ll have to evacuate the whole goddamn neighbourhood.” He guffawed and slapped the bed with his free hand.
“Focus on who’s seeing you and your boys rolling and passing around joints in Van Horne Park,” I told him.
***
Of course there were times too when he was helpful. That Christmas, Ma worked, and Paul actually offered to help with the cooking. He creamed the butter, broke the eggs and threw them into the mixer followed by the various ingredients for the pound cake I was making. It would have been simpler if I had done it myself — I had to interrupt what I was doing to get each ingredient for him — but I was happy that we were doing something together, instead of fighting. And he’d vacuumed the entire apartment without my asking him. On Christmas evening he greeted Ma when she arrived at the door around 7:30 and told her to sit at the table and let him serve her. She had just completed a twelve-hour shift.
Three days into the New Year, I entered the apartment in the middle of a dispute he and Anna were having in time to hear him say: “Ma, you’re too old to remember some things, and I’m too young to know some things. And some things I won’t learn. Because other people are dumb and obedient doesn’t mean I have to be dumb and obedient too.” He grinned at her, that grin with his tongue half-extended that exasperates her, then added: “Treat me like an equal and you’ll be surprised the things I’ll teach you.” She swallowed, looked at her fingers, which she was opening and closing, then went into her bedroom.
If that was a window, it closed, and the abusive language, one-upmanship, and swagger returned. Once after that, almost a year later, he offered to make tea for us. From the gleam in his eyes and his hands kneading his chin and caressing the back of his head, I sensed that something wasn’t right. I opened the teapot and saw two stainless steel balls in it. I lowered my head and sniffed. Marijuana. Paul’s fingers went to his lips. I removed the balls, gave them to Paul, rinsed the pot, and put teabags in.
***
On baring her bosom to Madam J, Anna found out that Paul was a pusher at the English secondary school some distance from where we lived. One of Madam J’s nieces attended the school. She’d remembered Paul from the party and had relayed the information to her aunt. “That boy, Anna, that boy going kill you unless the Lord make ‘im see the herror of him ways.”
The very next day, a Saturday, someone phoned the house three times and hung up each time I picked up the receiver. When the phone rang a fourth time, I screamed at Paul to pick it up. Paul was trembling. I picked up the handset and yelled: “Answer the damn phone, Paul.” The caller spoke then. “Tell Meatman I book him for heaven the minute he step outside. I warn him one time too much to keep fucking clear of my turf.”
Next day Anna went to Madam J’s church and announced on her return home that she had “re-entered the fold.” She began praying at meal times, asking God to intervene in all sorts of ways. Grama used to say about the women in Havre who got beaten by the men in their lives — most were — “they should do like your mother: chuck the good-for-nothings, and chuck the damn religion they say authorizes them to.” She never needed to say that she’d set the example for Anna.
Grama had a long journal entry about a woman called Lena, whose partner, Henry — they’d been living together for 12 years — was about to leave her to marry someone in England. Lena gave him something to drink, most likely a neurotoxin, that left him a zombie. Grama disapproved of her going to get potions from the obeah man, but wrote: “I would have burned the passport and the plane ticket and put the ashes in the envelope, and written on it: ‘BON VOYAGE, HENRY.’”
When Anna announced the news of her ‘conversion,’ I asked her if she’d fled Caleb’s fists only to go looking for them again in fundamentalist religion.
She replied: “When your travels take you to dangerous places, you’re wise to return to safe ones.”
“Safe?”
“Yes, better the devil you know . . . Anyway a plane can’t stay up in the air forever.”
“So you’re only refuelling?”
“No. I’m ‘safe in the arms of Jesus — safe on his gentle breast. There, by his love o’ershadowed, sweetly my soul shall rest.’”
Thereafter I knew I’d simply have to accommodate her religiosity.
Not so Paul. The threat of execution having receded, his truculence returned. When Anna confronted him about his drug involvement, he turned it into humour.
“I want a straight answer from you,” she insisted.
“I can give you a gay one.” He grinned and changed the subject. “So, Ma, you’ve ‘re-entered the fold.’ Doesn’t that make you sheep? Lemme see if I can get my head around this. You are saved from sin! Get real, Ma. You don’t need to be saved from sin. You need to sin.”
“We are in the last days,” she said. “The Bible predicted all this. Disobedient children. All this tribulation. We’re definitely in the last days.”
“Then pack in all the living you can.” He scrutinized her, an ironic smile playing over his face, his tongue twirling slowly in his half-open mouth. “Come clean with us, Ma. Fess up. You joined that church hoping to find a husband. Admit it, Ma. Admit it.”
“Don’t talk to me like that!”
“Oh, Ma, come off it.”
“You’re disrespectful!”
“Disrespectful! Which planet you live on, Ma? I have a classmate my age, 14, who’ll soon be a father. You know, Ma, there’s this girl, buddy o’ mine. Her mother, Ma, went back to Jamaica for three weeks and — holy Moses — brought back a man. You should like let her coach you, Ma.”
Anna went into her bedroom and closed the door.
The next day she let out to us that God’s way was the only way, that God had charged her with the responsibility of saving our souls. “Especially yours, Paul. The blood of Christ can root out all that’s causing havoc in you.”
“So what’s your religion called?” Paul asked.
She didn’t answer.
“My mother has a new incarnation.” He giggled. “Anna Kirton, BDMD? Aka Felicity Foil, lifelong member, chief benefactor, of the Serena Joy Sorority.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“BDMD? bedevilled by delusions of mass deception.”
“And the Serena Joy Sorority?”
“For that, you’ll have to pay me. It will cost you. Fifty bucks, Bro. I’m tired of educating you for free.”
But he was more interested in taunting Anna. “Really now, Ma. Why all this foolishness?”
“‘The fool says in his heart there is no God.’”
“And the wise woman parrots all she hears and dimly understands. Which god did you have in mind?”
“There’s only one: the true and living one. You better stop your blasphemy. You think God is asleep, but he isn’t. If you keep this up, God himself will deal with you. It’s clear in the bible: ‘Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’”
“Yes, Mrs. Cohen, or is it Mrs. Stein? You parrot! That’s a Jewish statement. What sort of land God ever gave to us descendants of slaves? Africa that should be ours is controlled by Europeans. Look at your church sisters. Most of them are cleaning White people’s dirt, and you’re just a cut above.” He said nothing for a while. Then resumed. “So you want honour. You want me to honour you. What have you done to deserve it? And you want me to honour the nincompoop in St. Vincent. Hold your breath, Ma.”
He stared at me. “Boy it’s a good thing this isn’t 1978 or she’d have had us at Jonestown drinking Jim Jones Kool-Aid.” He stopped talking and gave me a mischievous grin. “You’d have downed it without a peep.” Returning to Anna, he continued: “You believe that everything in the bible is there because God put it there. Right?”
She said nothing.
“Answer me, Ma. I’m serious. You believe God is just and ethical. Right?”
“Yes. God is certainly that. You got that right.”
“I did. Hold on a minute.” He got up, went into her bedroom, and returned flipping the pages of her bible. He sat at the dining table. “Here it is.” He began to quote: “‘Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself. Thou shalt give it to the stranger that is in thy gates that he may eat it, or thou mayest sell it unto an alien.’ Ma, this according to your belief, this is God advising his chosen people to sell diseased meat to strangers.”
“Paul! You’ve gone too far. You made that up.”
He rolled his eyes and tossed his head and looked up at the ceiling. He tapped the floor with both feet. When he looked at her again, he said: “Ma, here’s your bible. Read it for yourself: Deuteronomy 14:21.” He walked to the sofa where she was sitting, his thumb marking the spot, and handed her the bible.
“It can’t mean that,” she said after reading it. “It can’t. I know it can’t. I will ask Pastor Billings about it. It can’t mean that.”
Paul giggled and gave a loud handclap. “You’re intoxicated, Ma. You’ve been dining on diseased meat for a long time, since you were 13, I once heard Grama say; so long you no longer smell it. There’s a lot more in Deuteronomy. I could go on and on, but what difference would it make?” He shrugged his shoulders and for a few seconds stared hard at her with the corners of his mouth pulled down. “Imagine! Of all the mothers on this earth, I have to have this one!” He gave a drawn-out sigh. “There are thousands of gods in this world, Ma. Thousands! A shyster named Constantine, a Roman emperor, imposed Christianity on the entire Roman Empire just as Islam is imposed in some countries today, and killed all who resisted. The Europeans who captured Africans and Native Americans forced Christianity on them, but it doesn’t mean that they killed off all the other gods in the world. In any event, Ma, god is only what powerful people say god is. They create god and heaven so they can enslave and rob people here and tell them they’ll be paid after death. And people are so damn stupid, they swallow that shit. Even First Nations: people stripped of their land, language, and culture and beaten and buggered in Christian residential schools they were forced to attend — even they swallow that shit. Practise your foolishness if you want to; eat all the diseased meat you want to, Ma, but don’t try to feed me any. Do your dining at the Serena Joy Sorority. Don’t bring it home. Consider yourself warned.”
Around 4 pm, Anna went down to the laundry room, and I confronted Paul.
“So Ma is BDMD. And you are what?”
“Paul Jackson, PP.”
I scowled.
“Perennially Persecuted.”
You must mean pampered and paranoid. “The gall! How about Loki?”
“What?”
“Loki. L-o-k-i.”
“Explain.”
I shook my head. “You already know everything. And my name?”
“Jay Jackson, MMDD: McGill’s Most Docile Donkey.” He laughed and punched the air with both fists. “Man, when those professors finish with you, all you’ll be good for is to sweep the fucking floor.”
I took a deep breath. “Paul, why are you so cruel to Ma? People join religions for all sorts of reasons. People, even the educated and powerful, are always looking for safe spaces, places where they feel at peace. If Ma’s beliefs make her happy and don’t meddle with our lives, we should just let her be. It’s pretty clear she finds something in her church that enriches her life.”
“And what might that be?”
“Ask her. She’d be glad you asked — if you can do it without insulting her.”
A flicker of remorse showed in his drawn face and bowed head. “Jay, you must know that the Islamic-Judaeo-Christian god is the deadliest piece of poetry humans ever invented. Those guys leading congregations — whatever they call themselves — are conmen or fools.” He sighed. “I want to be proud of Ma, the way I’m proud of Grama . . . In a way I’m proud of her — how she speaks, especially at parent-teacher meetings. Then I’m always proud of her. Most of my classmates’ mothers never go to parent-teacher meetings. Just as well. The teachers won’t understand what they’re saying. At least Grama had some influence. And sometimes Ma says things that tell me she has a brain. I know she came here, went back to school, got a profession and all that. But sometimes I think all she did at CEGEP was memorize and regurgitate what the teachers said. Haven’t you noticed that she never reads? Not even the newspapers lying around. It was the first thing that struck me about her when I came here. There wasn’t a single newspaper in the house and the only books were her CEGEP textbooks. After Grama, it’s hard to take her, even now. Grama wanted to know about all the new ideas shaping the world and sent away for books she heard discussed on the BBC, and she read them all, some she gave to the Havre library. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. I used to hear you both reading and discussing. Sometimes I joined in. To come to a mother who never reads, who’s always parroting foolishness — Jay it’s tough. Tough.”
“She’s ashamed of you too, ashamed of your behaviour.”
Frowning, he mulled over that for a while. “Jay,” he said with a serious look, his gaze averted, “I wonder if Ma knows that the bible, the so-called word of God that can’t be wrong, advises parents to stone their disobedient children to death?”
“That can’t be true, Paul.”
“Oh yeah. Deuteronomy chapter 22: 18-21. Go read it for yourself. Know how I know this? I heard about this group in the US that’s called Christian Reconstructionists. They want to set up a Christian theocracy in Washington based on Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Jay, they believe that poverty is a punishment from God, that governments should not help the poor, that African nations are underdeveloped because they worship demons, and that developed nations should stop giving them aid. They plan to bring back slavery and to stone adulterers, homosexuals, and disobedient children to death.” He stopped talking, his face stricken. “Don’t take my word for it. Go google Christian Reconstructionists. And you better start working on Ma. You better rescue her from their clutches.”
I was stunned. I knew Paul wasn’t making this up. Sincere Paul and posturing Paul were distinctly different creatures.
“Jay, you remember when that preacher tried to upbraid Grama for not sending us to church and Sunday school?”
“Which one?”
“Bob Bowles, the Baptist preacher. He told Grama she was raising us without a Christian foundation — ”
“ — and without the fear of God.”
Mrs. Kirton, at the urging of the Holy Spirit, I have come to pull you and your grandsons back from the precipice of damnation. You are raising these boys to be godless.
Mr. Bowles — her hands on her hips, her head wagging slowly like a boxer about to slug her opponent — on the authority of my understanding, you are a pompous jackass. I don’t want my grandsons to fear your god — or you. I want them to be kind, honest, just, and charitable. Your god drowns an entire planet, burns the disobedient eternally in pits of fire, tortures people to win a wager. I am training my grandsons to have minds of their own, Mr. Bowles. I don’t tell them what beliefs they can or cannot hold. And now, if you don’t mind, please leave my premises.
She didn’t usually state her views so publicly. In fact she’d warned us not to tell anyone what her beliefs were. Paul had asked her why, and she’d said: “My customers will stop coming to the shop and I will become poor and won’t have money to pay your school fees.”
We fell into a long silence. “Jay,” Paul said, breaking it, “you mustn’t encourage Ma in her religious foolishness. You know better. You can influence her. I was leafing through your book Philosophical Essays. I read Bertrand Russell’s essay on why he’s not a Christian, and I agree with his reasons, and Grama would too.”
“Paul, Ma’s beliefs make her happy. If they’re nonsense, it’s harmless nonsense.” But even as I said it, I remembered Nietzsche’s point that it’s only fools and children who can be happy. And Brother Vanderbilt. He’d come from The States to conduct a revival and was staying at the manse and had given me a chocolate bar for quoting: “Unless ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Quite the parrot! They clap on the manacles early. “It’s alright, Paul. It’s alright, if Ma harms no one. But I’ll talk to her about Christian Reconstructionism.”
***
I never did. Yes, there’s something childish, bizarre even, about plunging into fountains of blood to be “redeemed,” and dropping out of high school and dressing up in white waiting for Christ to come. I listen to her rattling breath. Yet it was she who’d ended my fear of going to hell. I did read Deuteronomy and Leviticus and I checked out the information Paul mentioned about Christian Reconstructionism. It’s quite possible my father’s church holds some or all of these beliefs. I remember hearing Caleb say the earth was created about 6,000 years ago.
***
Hardly a week later Paul burst into my bedroom one Saturday morning. “What a fool!”
“Who?”
“Ma. Who else. What a fool!”
I leaped from my desk chair and my fingers were around his throat.
“Go on, choke me.”
A triumphant smile framed his face, and I became aware of what I was doing. My hands fell. I felt ashamed. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s just that I’ve had enough — enough of your insolence. So what are you accusing Ma of now?”
“Why should I tell you? For all I know, you won’t choke me afterwards, you’ll kill me.”
“Get on with it or get out of my room.”
“She gives her pastor $370 per month.”
“Come on?”
Paul nodded and pulled a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. “See for yourself.”
The sheet listed Anna’s income and expenses, and there it was: “tithe: $370.”
“Can you believe this? Can you?”
I remembered my father’s harangues to his congregation: “For every dollar you earn, ten cents belong to Lord.”
That Saturday a new caption went up on Paul’s door:
PRIESTS ARE TOOLS OF THE WEALTHY
WHO EXTORT THE POOR.
The following Thursday evening, Anna was in the living room watching television, when Paul burst out of his room, breathless, his eyes glowing with mischief. “Ma,” he said, “today I almost rushed home to congratulate you.”
She frowned. “Congratulate me? Why?” She was seated on the sofa. The news was on. He stood half a metre in front of her, blocking the TV.
“You see, Ma, this school friend o’ mine, Bertrand. His mother, she drags him to church with her every Sunday like you want to do to us. A deacon in Bertrand’s church caught the pastor balling away at a middle-aged, brown-skin sister in the church basement. ‘Oh that must be Ma,’ I said. ‘Finally she’s getting something for all those tithes she’s paying.’ Then Bertrand told me the woman was from Guyana. Oh, Ma, I was so disappointed.”
Anna exhaled loud, turned off the TV, and went into her bedroom.
I felt uncomfortable. Paul had entered taboo territory. “Why’re you so obsessed with Ma’s sexuality?”
“‘Cause, I’m concerned about her health.” One hand pulled at his chin, the other caressed the back of his neck. “‘Cause sex is important. We need it. It’s why you and Ma are so uptight. You two aren’t like getting any.”
“So you’ve changed your mind about Jonathan and me?”
“Who says I have? That’s not sex. That’s perversion.” He gave a self-congratulatory chuckle and his eyes glowed.
I wondered where he got his sex, remembered his letter to Mrs. Bensemana, and was tempted to say that I’d seen a lot of used tissues in his wastepaper basket. Instead I went into my bedroom and hoped Paul wouldn’t follow. He didn’t.
The next day I was the target. Paul was lumbering around annoyingly, his torso bare, his hairy chest puffed out, his feet stomping the floor. “A brakeless bulldozer, is that’s what you are?” I said.
“You’re just jealous because I’m too wide and deep for your measure.”
“Inflated: yes. Deep?” I shook my head. “Stay away from sharp objects.”
“That’s just jealousy talking. I’d be a champion sumo wrestler if I were Japanese.”
“You’re missing a few ifs.”
“Can’t help it: I’m the alpha male in here.” He grinned, his arm raised, fingers wiggling.
“Just don’t stake it out with pee.”
“We, the powerful” — he pounded his chest — “that’s not how we do it. If you were a real historian you’d know that we kill the males — in some cultures we eat them too — take their lands, and put their wives and daughters in our harems.”
“Yeah. After your soldiers raped them. Be careful: the only woman in this house is your mother.”
He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes for a few seconds. “You sicko! I’ll let that one pass. What can I say? The weak have always been food for the strong. Antelopes exist to feed lions.”
“And the poor?”
“Fodder for the rich.” He stretched out his hand. “Hand it over, Bro. Your money and your freedom.”
“Useless. In a year or less Nine Lives will take you out. Poor Grama. All that effort only to create a Minotaur.”
“Cockadoodle do! See what the British have in their coat of arms? The lion and the spear. See what the American emblem is? The eagle. Predators, man . . . they rule the world. It’s no contest, Bro. No contest.” His head moved slowly from left to right; his eyes twinkled. “Nature’s law, man.” He grinned. “You’re the wimp here, see? I’m the nobleman, see? You’re the serf. I am strong, you are weak. Do like animals in the wild. Flee. Yield your territory and your . . . You don’t have any women, just pathetic Jonathan.” He parted his arms, gesturing: Are you going to?
“Some nobleman who wants his brother to be his serf.”
“What am I supposed to do? You have the character of a serf.” His grin got broader. “Besides I can use a valet. And you’ll look lovely in livery.”
“Now I’ll give you a bit of advice: start learning to forgive.”
“In the jungle! Forgive!” He wrinkled his nose.
“Then go live in the jungle. Walk on all fours. Get a prehensile tail. Leap from tree to tree. All that hate spilling out of you, it’s the price you’re paying for refusing to be a decent human being.”
The phone rang for Paul.
While he talked on the phone, I thought of my intro to poli-sci prof, Professor Johnson, whose Ichabod-Crane nose reached out from his face like a gar’s spike, his eyes gleaming electric blue, his fist-sized Adam’s apple working away as he thundered: “As you’ve heard me say over and over again” — and some of the students would chorus along: “Power and property are synonymous. Slice it how you can, dice it how you will, in Western democracies the rich ensure that only governments who’ll protect their wealth get elected. And if that protection means hordes of homeless, starving people, so be it. And they expect government to put in place the propaganda apparatus to convince the homeless and starving that their plight is the consequence of their incompetence. Two hundred years ago, they’d have said it was ordained by God.” Once he’d left out the last sentence, and Jonathan, his arm raised, said: “Sir, you left out part: Two hundred years ago, they’d have said it was ordained by God. The next time he declaimed it, he looked at Jonathan. “Did I leave out anything?” The class laughed.
Paul ended his call and began to rap:
The strong kick ass, get
to the head o’ the class.
Good guys come last.
George Bush say:
‘Fuck with the U.S. of A,
Won’t get the chance
to eat hay.
We drop daisy cutters
on your sorry ass,
every which way.’
Forgive your enemies,
they take you for a sop,
turn you into pop;
put you in a blender
and drink you like soursop.
He pushed his left hand under his braids and caressed the back of his neck; with his right he kneaded his chin. He winked at me.
I’d kick your ass,
if I thought you’d pass;
show you the ropes,
but you’ll hang yourself
when you can’t cope.
Man, you get more stupid,
I’ll be raking leaves
and be left bereaved.
He stopped, stared at me, and laughed.
“If we were Daddy you’d be raking skin.”
“You admit it! Out finally!” He snorted. “Always wanted to beat me. Know why? ‘Cause I kept the spotlight off you. It’s a fact and you can’t say boo.” He wriggled his body and bared his teeth. “One time you even wanted to drown me. Don’t look so shocked. When I was little you used to say that a mermaid will come and get me because she wanted a husband for her daughter. Always wanted me out of the way. One time I dreamed that you were strangling me. My antenna picked that up.”
“In that case, I would have been protecting my territory, following your logic. Do us all a favour: go sit on the toilet bowl.”
“Historian! You wish. Poor Clio, exhausted, trying to find space in your corn-grain brain. Go vent your anger on nature, man.”
She’s got you sealed,
sealed, man, in a tiny tin can.
Tin-man, Tin-man.
Pa pa pam pam.
Slam you to the macadam.
He slapped his thighs to create a rhythm.
“I’ll tell you what’s eating you, man: You ain’t never gonna be bright like me. Never. That’s the acid, man: the acid that’s eating you from inside out. He stuck his tongue out at me.
“‘You ain’t never gonna be . . .’?” I chuckled.
“You, correcting my grammar! What do we know? Smoke is oxygen. Shit is food.”
“For some creatures shit is food.”
“You’re one of them: a shit-eating blat.”
“You throw so much of it around, I can’t help ingesting some. And, speaking of oxygen, you hog ninety percent of what’s in here.”
“So? Asphyxiate. The world would be a cleaner place. That or let me launch you into space.” He made a forward thrust with his right fist.
I laughed.
“You hen! Go ahead. Cackle. Lay. You and your rooster were out yesterday.” He gave an exaggerated wink and stayed silent for a few seconds, then smiled. “Dear Bro” — he swallowed, licked his lower lip, and half-closed his eyes — “no need upsetting yourself. It’s bulling alright.” He tossed his locks and continued grinning with his eyes still closed. “Perverti en hostie. But it cools the rocks.” He winked. “I better stop ripping or you’ll start bawling.”