Just Beneath My Skin Read Online Free PDF Page A

she was looking down at me and I felt scared. Her eyes were red, and hard as marbles. The skin around them was puffed up like it got when she was too drunk. She looked at me like an earwig if it got into the kitchen and she wanted to crush it underfoot.
    â€œYou’re just like him,” she said. “Him and you with your secrets together, and whispering. Don’t think I don’t hear what you say when you think I’m not listening. I hear. I listen. The two of you making plans against me. Don’t think I don’t hear it, Mr. Man. Don’t think I’m not on to the two of you.”
    I can’t remember what happened next. Maybe she went to bed and fell asleep and snored the rest of the night. But at least she told me finally, though she would tell me different the next morning. The thing about Mom is, no matter how drunk she gets, she never forgets anything that happens. “About what I said last night,” she told me, her eyes still red and puffed, but softer and more tired now. “I was just foolin’ ya. Jake isn’t really your father, you know.”
    â€œI know,” I said.
    â€œGood,” she said. “I was just talking.”
    â€œI know,” I said again.
    Jake was my father. That much I was sure of, though he never said as much and my mother denied it like Peter denied Jesus before he was nailed to the cross, like Irene Lang told me. Sometimes just by watching Jake I could see me, like I was buried there just underneath his skin, a few inches deep, trying to claw my way out. And sometimes it was just the way Jake looked at me, though in a way his look made me feel worse than Mom’s when she got drunk. I’d catch him at it when he thought I wasn’t looking — at the table, say, or when we were watching The Dukes of Hazzard on Friday night and Mom went out to bingo at the Masonic Lodge with Irene Lang.
    I’d look beside me on the couch and Jake would be staring right at me like I done something. Or like he hadn’t seen me in a long while. Or like he might not see me ever again.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Jake?” I’d ask. He’d shake his head and say, “Nothing,” and turn back to the TV . But I could tell it was something. I knew. It wasn’t just me Jake was looking at like that, like I caught him by surprise by even being there and being alive. It was himself he was looking at, buried in me just like I was buried in him.
    Even Mom has to admit she sees that much about us.

TWICE JOHNNY SENDS ME AND Charlie back to the liquor store for more White Shark and by three o’clock they are so pie-eyed they can barely see three feet in front of them. And yet, every time I make noises about going, Johnny tells me to sit the fuck still. “What’s your hurry, McNeil? You got a dinner party to go to?”
    Sometimes Johnny gets in these moods and there isn’t any point arguing with him. You have to wait him out. If I play along long enough, he’ll see I’ve had enough and let me go. So I sit and wait. He doesn’t seem to notice I’m not drinking much.
    Or maybe he noticed and doesn’t mind — all the more for him if I don’t. Johnny is flat broke. He quit working at the mill years ago. He is on welfare, and sells enough hash and weed and the occasional sheet of acid to keep him drunk and high most of the time. But the dope business hasn’t been so good lately. The RCMP seized a big shipment of Columbian coming in off the coast of Oldsport and Johnny’s supply has dried up.
    He has some, though, ’cause he keeps pulling out a baggie and rolling joints. I take it each time it comes to me, take a few half-hearted puffs and pass it on. When Johnny pulls out three tabs of purple microdot and tells Charlie and I to each take one, I refuse.
    â€œSorry, man,” I say. “I gotta go see the old man and Carla tonight. I can’t be too fucked up, ya know?”
    Johnny