Covenant of the Eyes

Written by Shannon Harvey

Photography by Elizabeth Hunt

The guy who ran the after-school program said he was named after a famous person, but none of us had ever heard of James Dean before. I don’t think he was lying, though; James never lied to us once. He taught us about first aid and CPR—he warned us that it was possible to misstep one time, twist your ankle, and never walk right again. He told us about nutjobs who brought guns to the mall. 

“I don’t care about anyone else in that moment,” he told us, miming his way through an imaginary crowd. “I’m pushing him out of the way, I’m pushing her out of the way. If some lunatic is hurting people, I’m getting my family to safety. I don’t care if I have to trip the guy next to me to drag my daughter to the nearest exit. In a situation like that, you run, okay?” 

We nodded.

The program was run through Forest Hill United Church by the local YMCA. The church was a flat yellow building with one and a half floors, thin carpeting, and windows that were too high up to see anything outside. I liked to brag that my mom worked there; she was a sort of substitute minister, a nomadic preacher who traveled to different churches around New Brunswick as needed, and sometimes she was called to Forest Hill. Three minutes down the road from Forest Hill United was St. Margaret’s Anglican Church, where my father preached on Sundays; the rest of the week he was an addictions counselor.

When the YMCA’s budget didn’t live up to James’s standard of childcare, he would use his own money to make our days at Forest Hill feel special. He decorated for every holiday, put together themed treat bags, invented seasonal games with actual good prizes. For Thanksgiving he would take all of our orders and then bring in a turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, and gravy. At Christmas, we decorated sugar cookies and built gingerbread houses. On Valentine’s Da,y he made us all cards. James lived close to the church, and sometimes on Wednesdays when we had half days we would all walk to his house together and watch a movie in his living room. His very pregnant wife, Lucy, brought us popcorn.

During hockey season James tried to teach us about fantasy leagues. He planned day-long tournaments of Connect 4 and Crazy 8s, writing out the brackets and taping them to the wall. James loved card games and taught us euchre, spoons, and cheat. He also taught us poker and blackjack, and showed us how to bet using Starbursts. One day, my dad came to pick me up during one of these high-stakes games.

“I don’t know what kind of show you think you’re running here,” I heard him saying to James as I pulled my winter boots on around the corner. “But I don’t appreciate you teaching my ten-year-old daughter to gamble. And I hope I won’t see it again, or there will be hell to pay.” Hell was the only swear word my dad would use because it was in the Bible.

I hurt myself twice at Forest Hill. The first time, I sprained my arm during a game of Fishes and Whales and got to wear a sling for a day. I secretly wished my arm was actually broken. The second time was when I tripped while running in the nave (for our purposes, a gymnasium) and tore open a half-healed scab on my knee. James took me into the kitchen, where I sat on the counter and he rolled up one leg of my corduroy flares. He cleaned and bandaged the scrape. I was embarrassed that my leg was downy with new hair, too conscious of even the implication of sexuality—that one day soon I would shave that precocious calf.

Outside the church was a small forest where we were allowed to play unsupervised. Stephanie and I were looking for new territory in the never-ending war for the best tree fort when David and Patrick found us. They said they had something to show us. We followed them through the woods and behind the church, to an area we hadn’t explored before; I remember there was a massive abandoned treehouse with a broken ladder and a lot of garbage. The boys told us to look closer at the garbage on the ground. It looked like someone had been camping there: they had left a pile of old magazines behind. Young women stretched their assholes wide for the camera. Girls locked eyes with me while their fingers grazed over their breasts. I remember a feeling, like being caught cheating on a test; like the membrane that separated me from the world had thinned and perforated. I was not conscious of the boys running away, or of Stephanie screaming next to me, covering her eyes. She was only 7. I was the boys’ target, the eldest girl, shameful wearer of training bras and hibiscus flower-print bikinis to the Fredericton Indoor Pool.

Stephanie chased after the boys once she realized I was not moving. The paper was stiff and shiny in my hands, many pages stuck together, dirt deeply crusted in the spine. The cover folded like a soda cracker. A beetle crawled out and over my hand, and I did not shake him off. I felt stuck, having been pinned by some interest, some nascent reflection of existence now unveiling itself to me. Something distinct from what I had previously known, but that would soon envelop me, take my body home like a fresh kill. Her eyes begged, and her fingers beckoned, promising dignity and honour in death. I could not stand it; I touched it; I turned the page.

My last year at Forest Hill, one of the youngest girls found a bucket of paint in the woods and threw it at another boy. She was 5. They both ended up covered in paint, clothes ruined, and that was the last straw.

“Now nobody can play in the woods,” James said to Olivia. “Because of you. You ruined it for everyone.”

Olivia cried, and I ignored her.

That winter James brought his shovel from home and set to work on the massive snowbank that had accumulated in the parking lot after the plow left. Under his ministrations, it became a warren, a fortress, with slides and tunnels and towers and dungeons. If we needed a stronger bridge or a wider moat, he helped us; magic flowed from his capable adult hands. When the snow was frozen solid, James told us to follow him behind the church. He told us to stand back and look up. The eave of the church was dripping with crystal-clear icicles, as thick as tree trunks and longer than many of us were tall. They were magnificent; they were perfect. James threw a snowball at one and it broke off, falling and piercing the snow in front of us, still sticking several feet up into the gray air. We moved closer; I stuck my tongue to it. It had a pure, clean smell, and tasted like spring.

On a cold day, James helped us make up a game that crossed capture the flag with dodgeball, and the chapel was alight with screams and laughter. Our shoes squeaked on the shiny tile floor, and balls bounced off the walls with hollow rubbery twangs. The lights were off; we played by the midday twilight from the high windows. I had a hunch that my crush, Thomas, had hidden his flag on his person because he was guarding his stomach rather than attacking as offensively as he usually did. I waited until he was distracted by someone else’s ball sailing in his direction, and then charged, blocking his shove as I lifted up his peeling graphic t-shirt. The flag, a hunter-orange piece of terry cloth, was there against his skinny white abdomen. I grabbed it with one hand, but he braced himself against the wall and pushed me away, taking the flag’s other end and pulling as hard as he could. I let myself be dragged toward him, giggling and screaming “NO!”

“QUIET!” yelled James. I whipped my head around, then fell as the flag went slack in my hands.

The other kids’ laughter died, and the cavernous space echoed our cut-short shrieks, the sound of dodgeballs losing velocity with every bounce and rolling into corners. Silence as we all caught our breath, felt our smiles falter in confusion at the interruption. James was in the middle of the nave with a finger over his lips.

“Shhhh,” he said, more quietly now. “Listen.”

I couldn’t hear it until then. The rain was a firing squad, a drumline on the old, thin roof of Forest Hill United Church. It was so loud it drowned out the entire world. Drops sprayed above our heads ricocheted and rolled toward the eaves in a lovely wave, one white sound from another world.

I knew Steph had told James about the magazine. I assume she said we didn’t understand what they were, that we hadn’t really looked but thought they were garbage. This was probably true of her. The next day, James asked me to follow him into the kitchen, where he closed the dark wooden door behind us, shutting out the yellow hall light.

“Stephanie told me the two of you found some magazines in the woods, and there were girls in them. Did you see the magazines too?”

“Not up close. We ran away.”

“Okay. Did you touch anything else on the ground over there?”

He was kneeling like you’re supposed to when talking to a child: get on their level, make them feel seen. His hands were clasped, his jeans faded at the knees, his flannel shirt buttoned almost to the neck. His face was nice, I thought; he definitely could have been famous. I said no.

“Are you sure? It’s very important you’re honest with me. You could get sick.” He waited and I shook my head. I could feel my heartbeat like a war drum. 

“Did you see anything I should tell your parents about?”

“No.” He held my gaze and I didn’t blink.

“Okay,” he sighed and clapped his hands on his thighs, standing with a groan. “Well, I don’t want you guys going back there again, okay? I cleaned it all up but who knows, they might come back.”

“So what were they?”

James, who had already turned away from me, furrowed his brow and looked back down. “What were what?”

I just looked at him. I remembered being arrested in her watering gaze, caught admiring the glossy “o” of her mouth, and trying to fix him with the same stare. James pushed out a long sigh.

“Just pictures. The kind that aren’t for kids.” His eyes, from above, held mine warily. “You sure you didn’t see anything I need to call your parents about?”

I nodded; I could feel my face burning but I was sure not to look away. James crouched again.

“Listen,” he said, “those women have nothing to do with you. They’re just pictures. Some guys, they like to look at girls, so they buy magazines. They want to look at them in a different way than how I’m looking at you right now.” He smiled and gave my arm a gentle pinch. “You’re not in a magazine. You’re not like them. Maybe when you’re older,” he said with a laugh and stood up. “But you don’t need to know anything about it right now. Okay?”

We went back to the main room. In the nave my friends were playing a game and laughing, chasing one another through the maze of oak pews. My breath was leaving me, jumping out of my chest like fleas on a dog, and I rubbed my arms and pushed my sleeves up to scratch my inner elbows. My armpits were wet; I felt, for the first time, the weight of maturity. Ignoring my friends, I approached a pew and fell on the kneeler. I pressed my forehead on the smooth oak and wrapped my arms around my head. I listened to the happy screams echo in the near-empty nave, and let my eyes unfocus. In the dark I saw girlhood like a mirrorball, or perhaps a bead curtain, dripping and sparkling in my bedroom, shining on me in terrible fractal patterns. I saw jewels of spit through a perfect lens. Scarab beetles glittered like eyes. And it all rained down until, one by one, they were caught and suspended in diaphanous strings. And there they hung. And there they stayed.