The Misremembered Man by Christina McKenna

indicated a spot at the end of the bed. Eighty-Four lifted his nightshirt over his head and dutifully bent over to receive his punishment on his bare behind.
    The others stood silent as the blows fell, trying not to look, staring straight ahead. Each boy counted and suffered each stroke; each boy knew the indignity of wetting his own bed and frequently endured the humiliation dealt out by the merciless nun. One morning a boy woke up on a dry, spotless sheet, relieved; the next morning he woke up wet. There was nothing he could do but pray it wouldn’t happen.
    “What’s this, Eighty-Six?” Sister was pointing at the bloodstained sheet.
    “Don’t know, Sister,” the boy stammered.
    He kept his head down as always, his eyes fixed on his bare toes, which had turned blue on the cold floor. Outside, a raven tore at the howling wind.
    “Bend over. Let me have a look.” He had not expected this. Would have done anything than have her inspect him. He could already hear the name-calling laughter at the breakfast table. He wished that she’d just beat him and be done with it. Faced with this predicament, he did the only thing he could. He started to cry.
    “Eighty-Six, I will not ask you again. Out here, now .”
    She whacked the stick against the foot of the bed. He jumped to it immediately, clumsily bunched the shirt in both hands and held it up. The nun bent down to have a look. She winced on seeing the series of bloody lacerations on the child’s backside. The raven cawed again as if mocking him. He shivered in his nakedness and prayed for it to end.
    “All right.” Her voice was no longer harsh. He automatically bent over and waited for the cane to fall, clenching his painful muscles in readiness.
    But nothing happened.
    “No, Eighty-Six. You got your punishment last night, I see.”
    He did not see the fret of pity in her eyes as he lowered the nightshirt. He did not look up with the shame of what he’d just endured.
    “Now gather up your sheet for washing.”
    She moved to the next bed.
     
     
    Of the twenty boys who had wet their beds, seventeen were made to tie their wet sheets about their waists and wear them as punishment for the rest of the day. The remaining three were more fortunate, inasmuch as they got to wash theirs. They stood by the pump in the cold backyard; their sins lay before them in a sodden heap in the tin bath.
    Sister Veronica pumped the water in—a blustery gush to wash away their wickedness. They set to the task, small hands slipping the bar of carbolic soap back and forth, rubbing their knuckles raw on the coarse cloth.
    The bloodstains were hard to shift, so Eighty-Six was last again; last to hoist his dripping sheet up on the barbed-wire barrier that fenced the graveyard, last in the queue for the spoon of cod-liver oil and the meager breakfast.
    He did not care. He could not eat.
    The cod-liver oil was dispensed from the same metal tablespoon, coating ninety-six offered tongues, each of whose owners longed to spew it back in Sister Mary’s face. Eighty-Six had learned to swallow it quickly. Not to think too deeply; to proffer his bowl for the ladle of lumpy gruel and carry it directly to the nearest vacant place at the long refectory table.
    He attempted to sit, lowering himself gingerly onto the wooden bench. When he made contact with the hard seat, pain shot through him; pain so brutal and burning, that it was as if he were back there in Keaney’s room, sprawled over the fusty bed, suffering the same violence again. He shut his eyes tight against the torment, his head down, hunched over the bowl, his backside half raised off the seat, and struggled to eat, his tears falling into the gruel.
    His fellow offender, Eighty-Four, was seated in like manner beside him. He wore the emblem of the chronic bed-wetter: the wet sheet tied around his middle. He was a small boy with large eyes, and a birthmark like a red ink spill soiling most of his pale neck. They might be the same age—who