FALL ON YOUR KNEES
              A Novel

                  by
        ANN-MARIE MACDONALD

             Published by:  SIMON and SCHUSTER
          Rockefeller Center  1230 Avenue of the Americas
       New York, NY 10020  
            Copyright 1996  by Ann-Marie MacDonald
 
       BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

    No. 1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

        OPRAH'S Book Club

  "This big, bold, epic shocker of a novel  reads as if John Irving met Joyce Carol  Oates in her Gothic period. ... It's a  wild ride."--SANDRA SCOFIELD,  CHICAGO TRIBUNE

            WINNER OF THE  COMMONWEALTH WRITERS PRIZE
        FOR BEST FIRST BOOK

  "This resonant first novel ... [has] a  mythic quality that allows dark, half-buried  secrets to be gracefully and chillingly  revealed."
    --JOHN MOTYKA, THE NEW    YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

  The Piper family is steeped in secrets,  lies, and unspoken truths. At the eye of the
 
storm is one secret that threatens to shake their lives--even destroy them.
  Set on stormy Cape Breton Island off Nova Scotia, Fall on Your Knees is an internationally acclaimed multigenerational saga that chronicles the lives of four unforgettable sisters. Theirs is a world filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love.
  Compellingly written, by turns menacingly dark and hilariously funny, this is an epic tale of five generations of sin, guilt, and redemption.

  "At her brightest moments, when various cultures and voices clash and merge in a great rush of energetic prose, MacDonald nears Rushdie-like heights."--RACHEL STOLL, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER AND CHRONICLE

  "Fall on Your Knees does not disappoint; this is an ambitiously big story --refreshingly old-fashioned in its wide scope, the sheer number of central characters, and the tale's own epiclike complexity."
    --LIESEL LITZENBURGER,
    DETROIT NEWSSTCOMFREE
    PRESS

  "This richly layered tale of the secrets within several generations of a Canadian family is both feverishly intense and darkly humorous."
    --DAILY VARIETY

  ANN-MARIE MACDONALD is a writer and actor. Her play Goodnight Desdemona (good Morning Juliet) won the Governor General's Award, the Chalmers Award, and the Canadian Author's Association Award. She won a Gemini for her role in the film Where the Spirit Lives and was nominated for a Genie for her role in I've Heard the Mermaids Singing. She lives and works in Toronto.

  VISIT US ON THE WORLD WIDE
WEB http://www.spiritimonspiritays.com

FICTION
 
 More Praise for
        Fall on Your Knees

  "In this mesmerizing book, Ann-Marie MacDonald stuns us with her graceful journey into the dark secrets of four generations of men and women. The breadth of MacDonald's vision is extraordinary. Magical, mythological in its scope, Fall on Your Knees transports us into a reality, at once horrifying and familiar, that we cannot bear to turn away from."
    --Kim Barnes, author of In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in an Unknown
    Country

  "Fall on Your Knees proves that sisterhood is powerful--but not exactly as we thought it would be. It's a bit like performing the Stations of the Cross to rock 'n' roll."
    --Rita Mae Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle and Riding
    Shotgun

  "MacDonald's finest tool is her narrative voice, an intimate, companionable voice that makes of this novel a confidence whispered in a pillow. ... She has found the language of the heart. ... There is no resisting this story."
    --Joan Thomas, Globe and Mail

  "A magnificent novel ... [Fall on Your Knees] follows in the Victorian tradition of a big story widely told, a story of historical change in a community of crimes half-concealed inside a family's memories and of fearful secrets slowly unraveled."
    --Philippa Gregory, The London Sunday Times

  "With Fall on Your Knees, playwright MacDonald has taken a surprising leap into the front ranks of major Canadian novelists. ... Fall on Your Knees is a novel of tremendous appeal with a wonderful title, wonderful characters, and a story of such power that
 
it lingers in the mind and continues to astonish long after the book has been put down. Eloquent, richly textured, and eminently readable."
    --London Free Press

  "A phenomenal novel ... these are the sorts of characters, both beautiful and ugly, who stay with you forever."
    --Emma Perry, Time Out London

  "With Fall on Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald has woven a complex and fascinating story filled with entrancing, unforgettable characters. I am in awe of her work, which cuts to the bone of family relationships with a surgeon's expertise and a writer's depth of emotion."
    --Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain

  "This gorgeously realized family saga shot to the top of Canada's bestseller list shortly after its release. It deserves no less attention in the U.s. market. Highly recommended."
    --Library Journal

  "A full-bodied, ever-rolling debut, the story of a talented Cape Breton family with more than its share of repression and tragedy ... an accomplished, considerably affecting saga."
    --Kirkus Reviews

  "[A] lyrical, complex, near-mythic debut novel ... remarkable. ... Most of all--beyond superb characterizations, an evocative sense of time and place, and divinely intricate plotting--MacDonald knows about the vagaries of love."
    --Ruth Coughlin, Newsday

  "Fevered ... a whomping achievement." --Angie Jabine, The Oregonian

  "A delicious story, one of those sweeping family sagas to take on summer vacations and savor. ... MacDonald is a master of exciting story-telling, of suspense and surprise. She has a dramatic touch that can
 
elicit gasps from readers."
    --Montreal Gazette

  "Ambitious ... MacDonald's gallows humor serves as a warning to all those who expect a traditional historical epic--although she knows well how to balance the genre's conventions with dark wit."
    --Nathalie op de Beeck, Out

  "Brilliantly crafted ... profoundly and refreshingly different ... MacDonald has constructed a plot worthy of Victor Hugo, a novel that is like peeling an onion (not without tears) in its teasing revelations of truth. ... A standout."
    --Vancouver Sun

  "Stunning. ... The book and the talent behind it are big. The story is riveting, the characters achingly human, and the writing will take your breath away. ... [MacDonald] has leapt into the first rank of fiction writers."
    --Toronto Star

  "Magnetic ... a dizzying leap into a mind so rich and complex you spend almost as much time marveling how she got there as enjoying the results. ... Compelling and original ... MacDonald succeeds brilliantly in building a world that, at least for the satisfying length of time it take to finish Fall on Your Knees, gloriously supersedes all else."
    --Financial Post

  "Impressive. ... From the haunted first sentence [MacDonald] displays the assured touch of a skilled fiction writer."
    --MacLean's

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      Dedicated with love and gratitude to Cheryl Daniels and Maureen White

            Thanks and Acknowledgments

  The author wishes to thank the following individuals and organizations, as well as to acknowledge certain books that were particularly helpful in the course of her research. David Abbass, Sister Simone Abbass CND, The Canada Council, Cape Breton's Magazine, Cheryl Daniels, Diane Flacks, Lily Flacks, Rita Fridella, Nic Gotham, Malcolm Johannesen, Honora MacDonald Johannesen, James Weldon Johnson's Black Manhattan, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, Daphne Duval Harrison's Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920's, Arsin@ee Khanjian, Suzanne Khuri, Margaret MacClintock, Cuddles MacDonald, Dude MacDonald, John Hugh MacDonald, Katie MacDonald, Laurel MacDonald, Sister Margaret A. MacDonald CND, Mary Teresa Abbass MacDonald, Harold MacPhee and The Black Cultural Centre of Nova
 
Scotia, John Mellor's The
Company Store, Bill Metcalfe and the Cape Breton Highlanders Association, New Waterford Three Score and Ten, ed. Ted Boutilier, Beverly Murray, Michael Ondaatje, The Ontario Arts Council, Bridglal Pachai's Beneath the Clouds of the Promised Land, Pearl, John Pennino and The Metropolitan Opera of New York Archives, Archival Staff of The Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, Father Principe of Saint Michael's College UofThat, Shari Saunders, Wayne Strongman, Lillian MacDonald Szpak, Kate Terry and The Beaton Institute of The College of Cape Breton, Mrs. Helen Vingoe, Maureen White, Gina Wilkinson.

  "Why canst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?"
  "Why cannot you always be a good man, father?" WUTHERING HEIGHTS
 
        FALL ON YOUR KNEES

           Silent Pictures

  They're all dead now.

  Here's a picture of the town where they lived. New Waterford. It's a night bright with the moon. Imagine you are looking down from the height of a church steeple, onto the vivid gradations of light and shadow that make the picture. A small mining town near cutaway cliffs that curve over narrow rock beaches below, where the silver sea rolls and rolls, flattering the moon. Not many trees, thin grass. The silhouette of a colliery, iron tower against a slim pewter sky with cables and supports sloping at forty-five-degree angles to the ground. Railway tracks that stretch only a short distance from the base of a gorgeous high slant of glinting coal, toward an archway in the earth where the tracks slope in and down and disappear. And spreading away from the collieries and coal heaps are the peaked roofs of the miners' houses built row on row by the coal company. Company houses. Company town.
  Look down over the street where they lived. Water Street. An avenue of packed dust and scattered stones that leads out past the edge of town to where the wide, keeling graveyard overlooks the ocean. That sighing sound is just the sea.

  Here's a picture of their house as it was then. White, wood frame with the covered veranda. It's big compared to the miners' houses. There's a piano in the front room. In the back is the kitchen where Mumma died.
  Here's a picture of her the day she died. She had a stroke while cleaning the oven. Which is how the doctor put it. Of course you can't see her face for the oven, but you can see where she had her stockings rolled down for housework and, although this is a black and white picture, her housedress actually is black since she was in mourning for Kathleen at the time, as well as Ambrose. You can't tell from this picture, but Mumma couldn't speak English very well. Mercedes found her like that, half in half out of the oven like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. What did she plan to cook that day? When Mumma died, all the eggs
 
in the pantry went bad--they must have because you could smell that sulphur smell all the way down Water Street.

  So that's the house at 191 Water Street, New Waterford, Cape Breton Island, in the far eastern province of Nova Scotia, Canada. And that's Ma on the day she died, June 23, 1919.

  Here's a picture of Daddy. He's not dead, he's asleep. You see that armchair he's in? That's the pale green wingback. His hair is braided. That's not an ethnic custom. They were only ethnic on Mumma's side. Those are braids that Lily put in his hair while he was asleep.

  There are no pictures of Ambrose, there wasn't time for that. Here's a picture of his crib still warm.

  Other Lily is in limbo. She lived a day, then died before she could be baptized, and went straight to limbo along with all the other unbaptized babies and the good heathens. They don't suffer, they just sort of hang there effortlessly and unaware. Jesus is known to have gone into limbo occasionally and taken a particularly good heathen out of it and up to heaven. So it is possible. Otherwise. ... That's why this picture of Other Lily is a white blank.

  Don't worry. Ambrose was baptized.

  Here's one of Mercedes. That opal rosary of hers was basically priceless. An opal rosary, can you imagine? She kept it pinned to the inside of her brassiere, over her heart, at all times when she wasn't using it. Partly for divine protection, partly out of the convenience of never being without the means to say a quick decade of the beads when the spirit moved her, which was often. Although, as Mercedes liked to point out, you can say the rosary with any objects at hand if you find yourself in need of a prayer but without your beads. For example, you can say it with pebbles or breadcrumbs. Frances wanted to know, could you say the rosary with cigarette butts? The answer was yes, if you're pure at heart. With mouse turds? With someone's
 
freckles? The dots in a newspaper photograph of Harry Houdini? That's enough, Frances. In any case, this is a picture of Mercedes, holding her opal rosary, with one finger raised and pressed against her lips. She's saying, "Shshsh."

  And this is Frances. But wait, she's not in it yet. This one is a moving picture. It was taken at night, behind the house. There's the creek, flowing black and shiny between its narrow banks. And there's the garden on the other side. Imagine you can hear the creek trickling. Like a girl telling a secret in a language so much like our own. A still night, a midnight clear. It's only fair to tell you that a neighbor once saw the dismembered image of his son in this creek, only to learn upon his arrival home for supper that his son had been crushed to death by a fall of stone in Number 12 Mine.
  But tonight the surface of the creek is merely as Nature made it. And certainly it's odd but not at all supernatural to see the surface break, and a real live soaked and shivering girl rise up from the water and stare straight at us. Or at someone just behind us. Frances. What's she doing in the middle of the creek, in the middle of the night? And what's she hugging to her chest with her chicken-skinny arms? A dark wet bundle.
Did it stir just now? What are you doing, Frances?
  But even if she were to answer, we wouldn't know what she was saying, because, although this is a moving picture, it is also a silent one.
  All the pictures of Kathleen were destroyed. All except one. And it's been put away.

  Kathleen sang so beautifully that God wanted her to sing for Him in heaven with His choir of angels. So He took her.
 
               Book 1
              THE GARDEN

          To Seek His Fortune

  A long time ago, before you were born, there lived a family called Piper on Cape Breton Island. The daddy, James Piper, managed to stay out of the coal mines most of his life, for it had been his mother's great fear that he would grow up and enter the pit. She had taught him to read the classics, to play piano and to expect something finer in spite of everything. And that was what James wanted for his own children.
  James's mother came from Wreck Cove, the daughter of a prosperous boat builder. James's father was a penniless shoemaker from Port Hood. James's father fell in love with James's mother while measuring her feet. He promised her father he wouldn't take her far from home. He married her and took her to Egypt and that's where James was born. Egypt was a lonely place way on the other side of the island, in Inverness County, and James never even had a brother or sister to play with. James's father traded his iron last for a tin pan, but no one then or since ever heard of a Cape Breton gold rush.
  It used to make his father angry when James and his mother spoke Gaelic together, for his father spoke only English. Gaelic was James's mother tongue. English always felt flat and harsh, like daylight after night-fishing, but his mother made sure he was proficient as a little prince, for they were part of the British Empire and he had his way to make.
  One morning, the day before his fifteenth birthday, James awoke with the realization that he could hit his father back. But when he came downstairs that day, his father was gone and his mother's piano had been quietly dismantled in the night. James spent six months putting it back together again. That was how he became a piano tuner.
  All James wanted at fifteen was to belt his father once. All he wanted at fifteen and a half was to hear his mother play the piano once more, but she was dead of a dead baby before he finished the job. James took a tartan blanket she'd woven, and the good books she had taught him to read, and tucked them into the saddlebag of the old pit
 
pony. He came back in, sat down at the piano and plunged into "Moonlight Sonata." Stopped after four bars, got up, adjusted C sharp, sat down and swayed to the opening of "The Venetian Boat Song." Satisfied, he stopped after five bars, took the bottle of spirits from his mother's sewing basket, doused the piano and set it alight.
  He got on the blind pony and rode out of Egypt.

  The Wreck Cove relatives offered him a job sanding dories. James was meant for better things. He would ride to Sydney, where he knew there'd be more pianos.
  Sydney was the only city on Cape
Breton Island and it was many miles south, by a road that often disappeared, along an Atlantic coast that made the most of itself with inlets and bays that added days to his journey. There were few people, but those he met were ready with a meal for a clean clear boy who sat so straight and asked for nothing. "Where you from, dear, who's your father?" Mostly Gaelic speakers like his own mother, yet always he declined a bed or even a place in the straw, intending that the next roof to cover his slumber be his own. Moss is the consolation of rocks, and fir trees don't begrudge a shallow soil but return a tenfold embrace of boughs to shelter the skinny earth that bore them. So he slept outside and was not lonely, having so much to think about.
  Following the ocean a good part of the way, James discovered that there is nothing so congenial to lucid thought as a clear view of the sea. It aired his mind, tuned his nerves and scoured his soul. He determined always to live in sight of it.
  He'd never been to a city before. The cold rock smell of the sea gave way to bitter cooked coal, and the gray mist became streaked with orange around him. He looked way up and saw fire-bright clouds billowing out the stacks of the Dominion Iron and Steel Company. They cast an amber spice upon the sky that hung, then silted down in saffron arcs to swell, distend and disappear in a falling raiment of finest ash onto the side of town called Whitney Pier.
  Here homes of many-colored clapboard bloomed between the blacksmiths' shops and the boiler house of the great mill, and here James got a fright, never having seen an African except in
 
books. Fresh sheets fluttered from a line, James guided the pony onto asphalt, across a bridge where he looked back at the burnt-brick palace a mile long on the waterfront, and contemplated the cleanliness of steel born of soot.
  Plaits of tracks, a whiff of tar, to his right a dreadful pond, then onto Pleasant Street where barefoot kids kicked a rusty can. He followed the screech of gulls to the Esplanade where the wharfs of Sydney Harbour fanned out with towering ships from everywhere, iron hulls bearded with seaweed, scorched by salt, some with unknowable names painted in a dancing heathen script. A man offered him a job loading and unloading--"No thank you, sir." New rails in a paved street mirrored cables that swung along overhead and led him to the center of town, an electrical train carriage sparked and clanged right behind him, the sun came out. Charlotte Street. Fancy wood fa@cades rose three stories either side, ornate lettering proclaimed cures for everything, glass panes gloated there was nothing you could not buy ready-made, McVey, McCurdy, Ross, Rhodes and Curry;
Moore, McKenzie, MacLeod, Mahmoud; MacEchan, Vitelli, Boutillier,
O'Leary, MacGilvary, Ferguson,
Jacobson, Smith; MacDonald,
Mcdonald, Macdonell. More people than he'd ever seen, dressed better than Sunday, all going somewhere, he saw ice cream. And at last, up the hill where the posh people lived.
  The pony sagged beneath him and cropped the edge of someone's fine lawn as James came to the conclusion of his traveling thoughts. He would have enough money to buy a great house; for ready-made things, and a wife with soft hands; for a family that would fill his house with beautiful music and the silence of good books.
  James was right. There were a lot of pianos in Sydney.

            His Left Eye

  The first time James saw Materia was New Year's Eve 1898, at her father's house on the hill. James was eighteen.
  He'd been summoned to tune the Mahmouds' grand piano for the evening's celebration. It was not his
 
first time in the Mahmoud house. He'd been tending their Steinway for the past year, but had no idea who played it so often and so energetically that it needed frequent attention.
  The piano was the centerpiece in a big front room full of plump sofas, gold-embroidered chairs, florid carpets and dainty-legged end tables with marble tops. A perpetually festive chamber--even slightly heathen, to James's eyes--with its gilt mirrors, tasseled drapes and voluptuous ottomans. Dishes of candy and nuts, and china figurines of English aristocracy, covered every surface, and on the walls were real oil paintings--one, in pride of place over the mantelpiece, of a single cedar tree on a mountain.
  James would be let in the kitchen door by a dark round little woman who he initially assumed was the maid, but who was in fact Mrs. Mahmoud. She always fed him before he left. She spoke little English but smiled a lot and said, "Eat." At first he was afraid she'd feed him something exotic and horrible--raw sheep, an eyeball perhaps, but no--savory roast meat folded in flat bread, a salad of soft grain, parsley and tomatoes with something else he'd never before tasted: lemon. Strange and delicious pastes, pickled things, things wrapped in things, cinnamon. ...
  One day he arrived to find Mrs. Mahmoud chatting in Gaelic with a door-to-door tradesman. James was amazed but glad to find someone with whom to speak his first language, since he knew few people in Sydney and, in any case, Gaelic speakers were mostly out the country. They sat at the kitchen table and Mrs. Mahmoud told him of her early days in this land, when she and her husband had walked the island selling dry goods from a donkey and two suitcases. This was how she had learned Gaelic and not English. Mr. and Mrs. Mahmoud had made many friends, for most country people love a visit, the mercantile side really being an excuse to put on the kettle. Often the Mahmouds carried messages across counties from one family to another, but good news only, Mrs. Mahmoud insisted. Just as she did when she read a person's cup--"I see only good." So when she peered into the tea leaves at the bottom of James's cup he was neither frightened nor skeptical, but felt himself drawn in with an involuntary faith--which is what faith is--when
 
she said, "I see a big house. A family. There is a lot of love here. I hear music. ... A beautiful girl. I hear laughter. ... Water."
  When the Mahmouds had saved enough, they had opened their Sydney shop, which thrived. Mr. Mahmoud had bought his wife this splendid house and told her to stop working and enjoy her family. And yet James never saw a sign of the family. Her children were all at school, and the big boys were at the shop with her husband. Mrs. Mahmoud missed her Gaelic friends in the country and looked forward to grandchildren. She never spoke of her homeland.

  On this New Year's Eve day, Mrs.
Mahmoud greeted James with Bliadhna
Mhath @ur but didn't show him into the front room, remaining in the kitchen to work alongside the hired Irish girl, who had a lot to learn. He proceeded there by himself, quite comfortable now in this house, took off his jacket and got to work.
  He had already removed a few ivory keys and was bent under the lid behind the piano's gap-toothed smile, so he didn't see Materia when she stepped into the archway.
  But she had seen him. She had spied him from her upstairs bedroom window when he came knocking at the kitchen door below, toting his earnest bag of tools--a blond boy so carefully combed. She had peeked at him through the mahogany railings carved with grapes as he entered the front hall and hung his coat in the closet beneath the stairs--his eyes so blue, his skin so fair. Taut and trim, collar, tie and cufflinks. Like a china figurine. Imagine touching his hair. Imagine if he blushed. She watched him cross the hall and disappear through the high arch of the big front room. She followed him.
  She paused in the archway, her weight on one foot, and considered him a moment. Thought of plucking his suspenders. Grinned to herself, crept over to the piano and hit C sharp. He sprang back with a cry--immediately Materia feared she'd gone too far, he must be really hurt, he's going to be really mad, she bit her lip--he clapped a hand over one eye, and beheld the culprit with the other.
  The darkest eyes he'd ever seen, wet with light. Coal-black curls escaping from two
 
long braids. Summer skin the color of sand stroked by the tide. Slim in her green and navy Holy Angels pinafore. His right eye wept while his left eye rejoiced. His lips parted silently. He wanted to say, "I know you," but none of the facts of his life backed this up so he merely stared, smitten and unsurprised.
  She smiled and said, "I'm going to marry a dentist."
  She had an accent that she never did outgrow. A softening of consonants, a slightly liquid "r," a tendency to clip not with the lips but with the throat itself. What she did for the English language was pure music.
  "I'm not a dentist," he said, then rushed pink to his ears.
  She smiled. And looked at the loose piano teeth scattered at his feet.

  She was twelve going on thirteen.

  Had she hit E flat things might never have progressed so far, but she hit C sharp and neither of them had any reason to suspect misfortune. They arranged to meet. He wanted to ask permission of her mother but she said, "Don't worry." So he waited for her, shivering on the steps of the Lyceum until he saw her come out the big front doors of Holy Angels Convent School across the street. The other girls spilled down the steps in giggling groups or private pairs, but she was alone. When she caught sight of him she started running. She ran right into his arms and he swung her around like a little kid, laughing, and then they hugged. He thought his heart would kill him, he'd had no clue what it was capable of. His lips brushed her cheek, her hair smelled sweet and strange, an evil enchantment slid from him. The salt mist coming off Sydney Harbour crystallized in the fuzz above his lip and alighted on his lashes; he was Aladdin in an orchard dripping diamonds.
  She said, "I got five cents, how 'bout you, mister?"
  "I have seventy-eight dollars and four cents in the bank, and a dollar in my pocket, but I'm going to be rich someday."
  "Then give me the dollar, Rockefeller." He did and she led him to Wheeler's Photographic on Charlotte Street, where
 
they had their picture taken in front of a painted Roman arch with potted wax ferns. He felt, before he learned anything about where she came from, that the photograph had made them one.
  They continued on to Crown Bakery, where they shared a dish of Neapolitan ice cream and melted their initials onto the window. He said, "I love you, Materia."
  She laughed and said, "Say it again." "I love you."
  "No, my name."
  "Materia."
  She laughed again and he said, "Am I saying it right?"
  She said, "Yes, but it's cute, it's nice how you say it."
  "Materia."
  And she laughed and said, "James." "Say it again."
  "James."
  It was when she said his name in her soft buzzy way that his desire first became positively carnal--he blushed, convinced everyone could tell. She touched his hair, and he said, "Do you want to go home now?"
  "No. I want to go with you." They walked to the end of the Old Pier off the Esplanade, and looked at the ships from all over. He pointed. "There's the Red Cross Line. Someday I'm going to get on her, b'y, and go."
  "Where?"
  "New York City."
  "Can I come with you?" "Sure."
  She really was betrothed to a dentist, promised when she was four. The dentist was still in the Old Country but was coming to marry her when she turned sixteen.
  "That's barbaric," said James. "It's old-fashioned, eh?"
  "Do you like him?"
  "I never met him."
  "That's so ... backward, that's savage." "It's the custom."
  "What does he look like?" "He's old."
  "For God's sake!"
  They walked back up the Old Pier hand in hand. To the right of them sank the tepid sun, while
 
to their left the blast furnaces of Dominion Iron and Steel erupted into a new day's work. A light orange snow began to fall.

  Sydney is only small. By then several people had seen them together and word reached Mrs. Mahmoud, who kept it from Mr. Mahmoud. Materia was forbidden to have anything to do with the piano tuner. She was cross-examined. "Did he touch you? Are you sure?" And the nuns were alerted. She was never alone, and at night her mother locked Materia's bedroom door.
  Materia had been just six when they docked in Sydney Harbour and her father said, "Look. This is the New World. Anything is possible here." She'd been too young to realize that he was talking to her brothers. On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Materia climbed out her window and left the Old Country forever.
  Come with me from Lebanon, O my sister. February 17 1899, a moonless night,
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. They set out before dawn on a hired horse and got married that day at Irish Cove, in a Protestant ceremony performed by an ex-navy chaplain who asked no questions in exchange for a quart of rum. Thy lips, O my bride, drop as the honeycomb, honey and milk are under thy tongue. They snowshoed in to a hunting cabin on Great Bras d'Or Lake that was used by rich Americans in the fall, thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my bride. It was all boarded up but he set to work --thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes--prying planks off windows, healing the blind. Inside, he wouldn't let her open her eyes till he'd swept, lit a fire and laid the table. He'd thought of everything; there was rose-hip wine, new linen sheets, and the mothbally tartan from his late mother's hope chest, and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon. He sang her a Gaelic lullaby which made him cry because, if such a thing was possible, he loved her more in his mother tongue, a garden inclosed is my sister, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. He kissed her so gently, didn't want to frighten her, he'd mail-ordered What Every Husband Should Know but decided never to touch her in that way if necessary, he'd rather die than
 
frighten or hurt--she reached up and stroked the back of his head, "Habibi," she whispered, "BeHebak." With my own hands I opened to my love.
  On the second day she said, "Let's live here forever, let's never go anywhere except New York City."
  And he said, "Don't you want a lovely big house and fine handsome children and to have your parents say, "Well, you were right all along, Mrs. Piper"?"
  "No," rolling over to lie on him, her elbows on either side of his face, "I want to stay right here for a long long time," curving her belly against him, "forever and ever. ..." kiss me with the kisses of your mouth. "And ever and ever ..." he sighed.
  When he came out of the woods for provisions on the third day, James was seized by two large men and taken by cart to Sydney and the back room of Mr. Mahmoud's Dry Goods Emporium on Pitt Street. Mr. Mahmoud sat on a pressed-back wooden chair, a long narrow man with leathery cheeks and black wavy hair.
  "Sir--" said James.
  Mr. Mahmoud had splintering brown eyes. James looked for Materia in them. "Sir--" said James.
  Mr. Mahmoud raised his forefinger slightly and the two younger men removed James's boots and socks--James noted with some distaste that they both of them could use a shave.
  "--where's my wife?"
  Mr. Mahmoud took a leather thong and whipped the soles of James's feet so that for days they swelled and peeled and leaked like drenched onion paper.
  They put him in the YMCA and brought him meals. When he could walk again with the aid of a cane, the two men escorted him to Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church. "Take your hands off me," James said, but he hadn't heard either man speak a word of English. "Oily bastards," he added.
  Materia was waiting for him alone at the altar, veiled in black. She wouldn't look at him. Her hair had been cut off. They exchanged vows once again, this time before a priest of Rome. It was James's first time in a Catholic church. Smells like a whorehouse, he thought, although he'd
 
never been in one of those either.
  At the back of the church Mrs. Mahmoud's heart broke, because how could that pale boy with no family and no real religion possibly know how to treat a wife? It's a terrible thing for a mother to know that her daughter will not have the happiness she herself has had. But more than that--more than sorrow--was a chill. For she had seen something in his cup.

  Mahmoud didn't beat his daughter, and he counted it a weakness that he'd never been able to bring himself to raise a hand to any of his girls for there was the root of the problem. The day after the horrible wedding, he instructed his wife to purge the house of Materia. He went to his shop and sealed himself in his back room while Mrs. Mahmoud burned, snipped and bundled off his daughter's memory.
  Materia's favorite little sister, pretty Camille, cried for days. She and Materia had dreamed of marrying two handsome brothers: they would live side by side in big white houses and their children would grow up together; Materia would brush Camille's beautiful straight black hair every night and they'd share a room just like always. Camille wrote a letter to Materia in large neat printing with x's and o's at the bottom, but Pa found it and burned it. He called
Camille to him in the cellar and beat her.
  It wasn't so much that the piano tuner was "enklese," or even that he was not a Catholic or a man of means. It was that he had come like a thief in the night and stolen another man's property. "And my daughter yielded." There was a word for all this in the Old Country: 'ayb. There was no translation, people in this country couldn't know the depth of shame, of this Mahmoud was certain. There was no taking her back, she was ruined.
  But God is merciful and so was Mr.
Mahmoud. He allowed James to convert to Catholicism in exchange for his life. And Mr. Mahmoud arranged for a good-sized house to be built for the newlyweds nine miles up the coast near Low Point. This was so he wouldn't have to toss them from his doorstep a year from now when they turned up destitute. Such a thing would kill his poor wife.

  As for the yellow-haired dog who stole my daughter, may he rot. May he awaken to the
 
contents of his mouth strewn across his pillow and may God devastate his dwelling ... well, perhaps not the dwelling.

  As for my daughter. May God curse her womb.

  The night after Materia's horrible wedding, Mrs. Mahmoud opened her rosewood jewelry box. Immediately the little ballerina popped up and began to revolve to the strains of "The Anniversary Waltz." Mrs. Mahmoud peeled back the red velvet lining from the bottom and placed there her daughter's long black braid, coiling it flat. She covered it with the velvet and replaced the beautiful things her husband had given her over the years--rubies, diamonds, moonstones and pearls. ... Then she went into the big oak wardrobe where he would not hear her, and mourned.

  Materia never saw her family again. Her father forbade it. Her younger sisters were taken out of school and kept home till they were married. Materia's older brothers were forbidden to kill the English bastard but, all the same, he had better keep out of their way. She was dead to them all from that day forth.
  James and Materia moved into their big two-story white frame house, with attic, a month later. But just because it was new, doesn't mean it wasn't haunted.

              Low Point

  What James resented most was that enklese nonsense. He wasn't English, not a drop of English blood in him, he was Scottish and Irish, like ninety percent of this godforsaken island, not to mention Canadian. Filthy black Syrians.
  "Lebanese," said Materia.
  "What's the difference, you're better off without them."
  There was no town or village at Low Point. There'd been small mines around here, some dating back to the first days of the French, but they were all closed up now. Though scratch anywhere and you'd find coal. The closest neighbor was a Jew who raised kosher meat, and James kept
 
his distance. God knows what rituals involving chickens and sheep ...
  In back of the house there ran a creek that emptied into the ocean half a mile away. The Atlantic was always in sight and this was something James and Materia both came to depend on.
  If you followed this creek, you'd walk through long pale grasses keeled over in the damp, careful not to stumble on the rocks that sleep and peep out here and there. Past a stocky evergreen or two, their spiky scent, beaded sap stuck with rain. Startled by the scarlet mushroom, you might stop and stare. Or bend to feel the purity of the stream, refresh your eyes upon the pebbles stained with iron gleaming on the bottom there. Then you'd come, with your wet shoes and droplets in your hair, to a dirt road that stretches nine miles to Sydney on the left and all the way to Glace Bay on the right. Some called this Old Lingan Road, and others called it Victoria or Old Low
Point Road, but in time it came to be simply the Shore Road.
  You might cross this road and walk a few steps to the edge of the cliff. Down below is the jagged water. All day it chatters back and forth across the gravel beach, unless the weather's rough. Farther out it's mauve like a pair of cold lips; closer in it's copper green, gun gray, seducing seaweed to dance the seven veils despite the chill, chained to their rocks by the hair. And there on the cliff you might sit with your legs dangling even on a flinty winter day, and feel soothed by the salt wind. And if you were like Materia, you might look out, and out, and out, until what there was of sun had subsided. And you would sing. Though you might not sing in Arabic.
  In time, Materia wore a path from the two-story white house, along the creek, across the Shore Road, to the cliff.
  They didn't have much furniture at first. James bought an old upright piano at auction. In these early days Materia would play and they'd sing their way through the latest Let Us Have Music for Piano. Sometimes she'd slide down the bench and insist he play and he would, with gusto, the first few bars of some romantic piece, and then stop short, just as he did when he tuned pianos. Materia would laugh and beg him to play something right through and he would reply, "I'm no musician, dear, I'd rather listen to you."
 
  He built her a hope chest out of cedar. He waited for her to start sewing and knitting things--his mother had milled her own wool, spun, woven and sewn, a different song for every task, till wee James had come to see the tweeds and tartans as musical notation. But the hope chest remained empty. Rather than make Materia feel badly about it, James put it in the otherwise empty attic.
  He wasn't much of a cook but he could boil porridge and burn meat. She was young, she'd learn in time. On weekends he tuned pianos as far away as Mainadieu. Weekdays he cycled in to Sydney, where he swept floors at the offices of The Sydney Post Newspaper in the morning and worked as a salesclerk at McCurdy's Department Store in the afternoon. Then he'd buy groceries, cycle home, make supper and tidy the house. Then prepare his collar and cuffs for the following day. Then climb the stairs and fold his dear one in his arms.
  One day in spring he asked her, "What do you do all day, my darling?"
  "I go for walks."
  "What else?"
  "I play the piano."
  "Why don't you plant a little garden, would you like me to get you some hens?"
  "Let's go to New York."
  "We can't just yet."
  "Why not?"
  "We have a home, I don't want to just run away."
  "I do."
  He didn't want to elope for a second time. He wanted to stay put and prove something to his father-in-law. He intended to pay for this house. He started going to school every night by correspondence with Saint Francis Xavier University--liberal arts. He knew that could lead to law and then he could go anywhere. He had his mother's best-loved books, her Bible and her Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress and Sir Walter Scott, all well worn, but he knew there were gaps to be filled if he was to become a cultivated man. A gentleman. Books were not an expense; they were an investment. He spotted an ad in the Halifax Chronicle and sent to England for a crate of
 
classics.
  He worked at the Sydney Post but he read the Halifax Chronicle to get a perspective on the world outside this island--the real world. The hacks at the Post thought he was just a broom boy, and those unctuous philistines at the store thought he was lucky to have a collar-and-tie job what with no family and no one to recommend him. He'd show them too, not that they were worth showing.
  One evening that spring, he pried the lid off a packing crate and removed untold treasure: book after beautiful book, Dickens, Plato, The Oxford Book of English Verse--he paused over the latter, weighing it in his hands; just read that cover to cover, thought James, you could go anywhere, converse with the Queen. Treasure Island, The World's Best Essays, The Origin of Species. He counted them; there were twelve in the crate, that meant he now possessed sixteen books. Just imagine, thought James, all that knowledge, and it's here in my house on the floor of my front room. He sat cross-legged and surveyed the riches. Which to open first? Their gilded leaves and their crimson covers engraved with gold invited him.
  He went and rummaged in the kitchen, returning with a pair of scissors. He selected a volume and lifted its front cover; the spine crackled, sending a shower of red flakes into his lap--no matter, it's the words inside that count. He took the thin blade of the scissors and carefully cut the first pages. He called to Materia--she was about the house somewhere but he hadn't seen her for an hour or two. "Materia," he called out again as he cut the last page. When she appeared he said, "Where've you been, my darling?"
  "The attic."
  "Oh. What were you doing up there?" "Nothing."
  He didn't pursue it, maybe she was up there secretly sewing something for the hope chest, planning to surprise him. He smiled fondly at the thought and said, "You look right pretty."
  "Thank you, James."
  Her hair was freshly braided and wound about her head, and she wore a rosebud print with puffed sleeves, matching ribbons and a hooped skirt.
  "Look, my dear," he said, "here's a book
 
you might enjoy."
  "Let's go out."
  "Out where?"
  "To town. To a dance."
  "But sweetheart, we can entertain ourselves for free right here, and you'll see, it'll be more fun."
  He gave her a warm smile and drew her down next to him on the horsehair sofa. He put an arm around her and turned to page one of the beautiful volume. He read aloud, his
"Book One. Of shapes transformed to bodies strange, I purpose for to treat. ..."" savoring the words and the warm weight of his wife cuddled close, ""Then sprang up first the Golden Age. ...""
  He read and evening closed in. ""Men knew no other countries yet than where themselves did keep. There was no town enclosed yet with walls and ditches deep. ..."" He read and the coals cooled to gray in the hearth. Reaching over to the lamp and raising the wick, he remarked to his wife, "Now isn't this better than going out among strangers?" And turning to her for confirmation, he saw she was fast asleep. He kissed her head and returned to the book, ""Of Iron is the last, in no part good or tractable. ...""
  He continued aloud because that was how he and his mother had read together and the thought made James's happiness complete far into the night, ""... Not only corn and other fruits, for sustenance and for store, were now exacted of the earth, but eft they 'gan to dig. And in the bowels of the earth insatiably to rig for riches couched and hidden deep in places near to hell ...""

  By midsummer she was three months pregnant and crying all the time. James couldn't figure it out--weren't women supposed to be happy about something like that? He tried to be extra nice. He brought her sweets from town. He tried to get her to read so they'd have something to talk about.
  He was at first amazed and then dismayed by her indifference to books. He assigned her a chapter a day of Great Expectations in order to cultivate a love of reading and at suppertime he quizzed her, but she was a sorry student and he abandoned the effort. He racked his brains to devise some sort of seemly diversion for her, having given up hope that she'd take to housewifery. But it was no use, and he tried
 
not to judge her too harshly; she was young, that was all.
  And yet it tried his patience.
  "Materia, you can't spend all your time wandering the shore and fooling around on the piano," for lately she'd begun playing whatever came into her head whether it made sense or not--mixing up fragments of different pieces in bizarre ways, playing a hymn at top speed, making a B-minor dirge out of "Pop Goes the Weasel," and all with the heavy hand of a barrelhouse hack. James found it disturbing, unhealthy even. Besides, he couldn't study with that racket.
  "I'm sorry, James."
  "Why don't you play something nice?"
  At which she struck up "The Maple Leaf Rag" and he yelled at her for the first time. She laughed, pleased to have gotten a rise. He decided to ignore her after that. Which made her cry --again--but, frankly, he'd figured out her tricks by now, she was just looking for attention.

  On Labor Day he turned down an invitation to bring the wife and come to a McCurdy employee boat ride and picnic. He told himself he had no desire to socialize with ready-made gentlemen, it was enough that he worked beside them; if he once gave himself the spurious comfort of a social life he might get sidetracked. But deep down he winced at the thought of showing Materia to anyone. He was grateful they lived in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't that he didn't love her anymore, he did. It was just that, recently, it had struck him that other people might think there was something strange. They might think he'd married a child.

  By September she had puffed up and turned sallow. He began sleeping on a cot by the kitchen stove. "It's for your own good, my dear, I don't want to roll over and gouge the baby with an elbow."
  Pound, pound, pound on the piano keys in the middle of the night. No wit anymore, however juvenile, no naughty ditties, just discords. Tantrums. Fine, let her exhaust herself. Plank, splank, splunk into the wee hours. In the mornings he would rise from his kitchen cot as though he'd slept perfectly well, pack his own lunch, pat her on the head and
 
cycle off to work on iron tires.

  By Halloween she was big as a house. One evening he came home to find her sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of molasses-cookie dough, for that was what the ingredients lined up on the table indicated. He was delighted. Her first attempt at cooking. He even gave her a kiss to show just how pleased he was, but when he went to dip a finger in the dough the bowl had been licked clean.
  "What in God's name are you doing?" She just looked queasily straight ahead.
  "Answer me."
  She just sat there, bloated.
  "What's wrong with you? Don't you think? Haven't you got anything to say for yourself?"
  The blank stare, the flaccid face. He grabbed the bowl.
  "Or are you just a lump of dough?"
  No answer.
  "Answer me!"
  He hurled the bowl at her feet and it broke. She ran outside and threw up. He watched her hunched and huge over the back steps. You'd think by now she'd know enough not to bring it on, a dumb animal knows not to make itself upthrow. Well she can stay out there till I've cleaned up this mess.
  He swept the floor and scrubbed it too. He got a lot of work done that evening, not to mention some clear thinking. He locked the piano and pocketed the key. Then he said, "I'm not cooking anymore and I'm not cleaning. You do your job, missus, 'cause Lord knows I'm doing mine."
  She looked so sad and dumpy. He had a pang of pity. Did all women get this ugly?
  "I'm sorry, James," she said and started crying. At least it was better than that weird staring she'd been at lately. He let her hug him, knowing it would calm her. He didn't want to be cruel. He hoped the child would be fair.
  Materia went upstairs to the attic. She knelt down, opened the hope chest and inhaled deeply. James thought Materia hadn't filled the hope chest because she had nothing to put in it. But she kept it empty on purpose, so that nothing could come between her and the magical smell that beckoned her into memory. Cedar. She hung her head into the
 
empty chest and allowed its gentle breath to lift and bear her away ... baked earth and irrigated olive groves; the rippling veil of the Mediterranean, her grandfather's silk farm; the dark elixir of her language, her mother's hands stuck with parsley and cinnamon, her mother's hands stroking her forehead, braiding her hair ... her mother's hands. The smell of the hope chest. The Cedars of Lebanon. She stopped crying, and fell asleep.

           The Jewish Lady

  Mrs. Luvovitz had seen the pregnant woman sitting on the cliff's edge. Like a fixture warning ships, or luring them. People around here believed in kelpies. Mrs. Luvovitz's imagination had been infected. What could you expect with so many Catholics? They saw omens in everything. Where Mrs. Luvovitz came from they called them golems.
  Maybe there's something wrong with the woman, thought Mrs. Luvovitz, maybe she's simple. Because when Mrs. Luvovitz had passed by on the Shore Road to Sydney with her cartload of eggs the other day, she had heard the woman singing what sounded like nonsense words. A poor simpleminded woman from down north in the hills perhaps. They marry their cousins once too often. But as yet Mrs. Luvovitz had never seen the woman's face, for she always wore a plaid kerchief that had the effect of blinkers.
  Mrs. Luvovitz had asked her husband, Benny, if he'd seen the pregnant woman, but he never had.
  "Mr. Luvovitz, you must have."
  "I haven't, Mrs. Luvovitz."
  "She's there every day."
  "Maybe she's a ghost."
  "Get out, Ben."
  Benny laughed. He knew her weakness. Mrs. Luvovitz had resolved to speak to the woman next time, because by now she was beginning to suspect she'd been all too Celtified. She needed to satisfy herself that the woman was human and not an omen. If an omen, it was important to determine certain things: "When do I usually see her? In the morning? Or evening?" A forerunner seen in the morning meant death was still a ways off. Seen in the evening, it
 
meant get ready. A child meant the death of an innocent.
  On this day, Mrs. Luvovitz was driving the Shore Road from Sydney as usual, having sold all her eggs.--"A dozen Jewish eggs, please."--She could hardly keep up. Likewise Benny, who delivered meat in his icebox wagon.
  "Hello," said Mrs. Luvovitz, pulling up her horse.
  The bright kerchief fluttered in the sea breeze; it was a nice day but that could mean anything.
  "Hello there," Mrs. Luvovitz repeated. "Hello, hello!" cried little Abe beside her.
  The plaid kerchief turned and Mrs. Luvovitz said to herself, "Gott in Himmel!" A pregnant child. A dark little thing, too, she must be from away. Or from Indian Brook maybe. Mrs. Luvovitz forgot all about ghosts and golems. "Where are you from, dear, who's your mother?"--falling into the local formula.
  "I haven't got a mother."
  "Get in the cart, girl."
  It was surprising to find out that the child belonged to that big new white house across the way. Mrs. Luvovitz had never seen her come or go, just appear, as it were, on the cliff.
  "How old are you?"
  "Thirteen and three-quarters." Ay-yay-yay, and married to that young fella. It was illegal, of course. Where did he get her? --a child bride. From overseas somewhere, was she Eyetalian? A Gypsy? What was the accent? Mrs. Luvovitz made tea and entertained these and other questions. All would be revealed, she'd see to that, but first, tea. Where she came from and where she lived now, tea meant a spread. She placed a plate of cookies before Materia, who said, "What's that?"
  "What do you mean, "what's that," that's ruggalech."
  Materia took a bite of the folded-over cookie. It tasted strange and familiar all at once, cinnamon and raisins.
  "It's good," said Materia.
  "Of course it's good."
  Materia turned her attention to little Abe, playing peekaboo.
  "Where's your family, Mrs. Piper?"
 
  "I haven't got one--you can call me Materia."
  "What's your maiden name?" "Mahmoud."
  For God's sake, everyone knows the Mahmouds.
  "Ibrahim?"
  "That was my father."
  "And Giselle."
  Materia nodded.
  Mrs. Luvovitz remembered when the Mahmouds used to sell from a donkey, hampers swaying on each side. Hardworking people, they did what we all hope to do. Now there's the big dry-goods store in Sydney.
  "So what are you saying, "You haven't got a family"? You've got a family, they're your family."
  Materia shook her head. "I don't belong to them anymore."
  "Why not?"
  "I'm dead."
  "You're dead? You're not dead, what kind of crazy nonsense is that, "I'm dead"?"
  "It's a custom--"
  "I know from the custom." Sitting shiva for your own flesh and blood while they're alive and well, such a custom is better left in the Old Country. "Drink your tea, Mrs. Piper."
  "You can call me--"
  "And eat. You're eating for two, eat." Mrs. Luvovitz taught Mrs. Piper to cook.

  "What's this?" asked James. "Chicken soup with matzo balls."
  He looked at the bland sponge floating in broth. Broke off a fragment with his spoon, ate it. After all, not so different from a tea biscuit dunked in soup. "This some kind of Ayrab delicacy?"
  "Jewish."
  They weren't the first people he would have picked as friends for his wife but, after all, it wasn't as though they were sacrificing babies over there. And she had finally started acting like a wife, even if the results were on the heathen side. James figured it was just as well the neighbors were foreign; it wouldn't occur to them that there was anything
 
strange about his being married to such a young girl. And what did he care what a Hebrew farmer thought of him?--although Mr. Luvovitz seemed like an all-right type. James had gone over there to make sure.
  "Call me Benny."
  "Benny."
  "Taste this."
  "What is it?" Looked like a plug of MacDonald's Twist.
  "Taste it."
  "... h'm."
  "You like that?"
  "Not bad. It's good."
  "I smoked that myself--you want, I'll sell you a whole cow for the winter, fresh off the hoof, pick one, they're all good."
  Nothing really strange about the Jew except the accent, his black beard and curly sideburns and his little cap. James bought half a cow.
  "I don't want it kosher," said James. "What do you mean, it's kosher, I butcher it, it's kosher."
  "I don't want you to do anything funny to it." "Don't worry, you see that cow?"
  "Yuh."
  "That's the one I'm saving for you. That's a Presbyterian cow."
  "I'm Catholic."
  Benny laughed. James smiled. Compared to Materia's family, the Luvovitzes seemed downright white.

  At the eleventh hour, in her ninth month, Materia began looking forward to her baby. That's because she'd grown to love Abe Luvovitz, who was two, and Rudy, who was six months. She wanted a son of course. Her father would be hard pressed to disown a first grandson even if it came to him through a daughter. That was what she told herself. And then she could see her mother again, and her sisters-- she'd be a good woman after all. She began to pray to Our Lady, please, Dear Mary, let it be a boy.

  James named the baby Kathleen, after his late mother. Kathleen wasn't the first baby of the new century, but she was near enough so that James had
 
to pelt all the way to Sydney on the old nag and drag the doctor from the dregs of a New Year's party. They arrived back at Low Point in time for the doctor to tell Mrs. Luvovitz she'd done a pretty good job. Mrs. Luvovitz thought, "You should only pass a turnip through the end of that which you have between the pants over there, then we'll see who's done a pretty good job." But she took care to think it in Yiddish.
  Mrs. Luvovitz told Materia how blessed she was. "I love my boys, Mrs. Piper, but a woman wants a daughter."
  Materia didn't say anything.
  James said, "I love you, Materia." She said, "Baddi moot."
  He patted her head and gazed at the baby. "Kathleen," he said. Then, "Look, she knows her name!"
  He had her baptized by a Presbyterian minister.
  "We gotta get a priest," said Materia. "It's the same God," said James. It was bad enough he'd had to go through the motions of conversion, he needn't subject his daughter to any Roman hocus-pocus.
  Mrs. Luvovitz looked after Materia and the new baby for the first two weeks. Benny said, "You're interfering."
  "I'm not interfering, she has no mother." "You're not her mother."
  "She needs a mother."
  "She needs time with her baby, how's she going to learn?"

  James felt invincible. He charted the highest sales for two weeks running. He walked into the boss's office uninvited and demanded a raise.
  "I'm afraid I can't do that just yet, Piper."
  "I have a child now, sir."
  "So have the other men."
  "I'm worth three of those other fellas." "You've had a good couple weeks--keep it up, you'll be employee of the month."
  James turned on his heel and it felt that good to walk out on the old man--let him try to replace me, he can't do it, it can't be done.
  James rode home high on his rickety horse, he was going to give that girl everything.
 
She was going to grow up a lady. She'd have accomplishments. Everyone would see. He felt like a king. A sudden drop and he was standing on the Shore Road, the horse dead between his feet. No matter. As good as a sack of money lying there in the slush, worth its weight in glue.
  He walked the rest of the way and formulated a plan. Pianos only need tuning once in a while, but they need playing much more often. And who plays piano? Country folk who learn by ear, thumping to fiddles and spoons for simple enjoyment. And the children of townspeople who want their kids to have accomplishments. The likes of those uppity losers he'd worked with at McCurdy's, not to mention the really well-to-do: MR. JAMES H. PIPER ESQUIRE offers tuition in the home to young ladies and gentlemen, in the theory and practice of the Piano Forte.
  He wouldn't bother quitting the job at the Sydney Post. He just wouldn't show.
  James arrived home in the middle of that day to find Mrs. Luvovitz in the kitchen feeding his baby with a dropper.
  "Where's my wife?"
  "She's sleeping."
  He took the stairs two at a time and dragged her up by an arm. Herded her down to the kitchen, whinging and whining every step of the way.
  "Thank you, missus, my wife'll take over now."
  Mrs. Luvovitz got up, thinking thoughts not in English, and left the house.
  James plunked his wife onto the chair and put the screeching baby into her arms. "Now feed her."
  But the mother just blubbered and babbled. "Speak English, for Christ's sake."
  "Ma bi'der. Biwajeaal."
  He slapped her. "If she doesn't eat, you don't eat. Understood?"
  Materia nodded. He unbuttoned her blouse.
  James allowed Mrs. Luvovitz over that evening when Materia hadn't produced a drop and the baby was fit to be tied. The women went upstairs. The howling the mother put up, as Mrs. Luvovitz did the necessary. Downstairs in the front room, James unlocked the piano and played the opening bars of various pieces from memory in an effort to drown the sound. He'd have
 
to invest in some sheet music and exercise books. His daughter would play.
  In a few days the pump was primed and the baby was sucking. But the mother cried through every feeding. One evening in the fourth week of Kathleen's life, James snatched his child from the breast in horror.
  "You've hurt her, Jesus Christ, you've cut her lip!"--for the baby's smile was bright with blood.
  Materia just sat there, mute as usual, her dress open, her nipples cracked and bleeding, oozing milk.
  James took one look and realized that the child would have to be weaned before it was poisoned.

  James might be a Catholic convert, but he'd never forgotten his Scots Confession. Feckless Catholics believe in salvation through faith--good enough, sit on your arse and believe all you like, but some of us know that work is the only sure bet, for the night will come, etc., etc. ... get on with it, nothing will come of nothing.
  Within a month, James had enough students from Sydney to Glace Bay to start making ends meet. All day into the evening, every good boy deserves fudge and all cows eat grass. And at night, the staring zombie he'd married. Why had he married her? It was when he sat next to twelve- and thirteen-year-olds on the piano bench and watched their eyes glaze over at the mention of middle C that it hit him in the stomach that his wife had been no older than they.
  How had he been ensnared by a child? There was something not right about Materia. Normal children didn't run away with men. He knew from his reading that clinical simpletons necessarily had an overdeveloped animal nature. She had seduced him. That was why he hadn't noticed she was a child. Because she wasn't one. Not a real one. It was queer. Sick, even. Perhaps it was a racial flaw. He would read up on it.
  All Materia wanted to do was get pregnant again so God could send her a son. But there wasn't much chance of that because her husband wouldn't come near her. Got angry if she touched him. Materia realized that God would not give her another baby if He saw she was ungrateful for the one she had. So she prayed to the Blessed Virgin. She prayed in the attic because there was no church for miles and miles, and James didn't
 
like her wandering anymore. On her knees, elbows resting on the hope chest, "Please, dear Mary Mother of God, make me love my baby."

  Kathleen thrived. Silky red-gold hair, green eyes and white white skin. Materia wondered where she'd come from. Surely she had been changed in the night. Mrs. Luvovitz didn't care to speculate.
  James watched Kathleen grow more beautiful and hardy every day. And what a set of pipes--he'd carry her out to the stony fields for yelling contests. They'd holler till they were hoarse and hilarious. He loved to hear her laugh. She could do no wrong.
  Feeding the child some lovely mush at the kitchen table, Materia leaned forward and cooed, "Ya Helwi. Ya albi, ya Amar.
Te'berini."
  The child smiled and Materia said a silent prayer of thanks, because at that moment she'd felt a faint breath of something not far from love.
  "Don't do that, Materia."
  "What?"
  "I don't want her growing up confused. Speak English."
  "Okay."

          A Miner 'Forty-Niner

  Kathleen sang before she talked. Perfect pitch. James was a piano tuner--he knew: his eighteen-month-old daughter could carry "Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms" flawlessly, if wordlessly, after hearing him play it once. ... He sat perfectly still on the piano bench and regarded her. She looked straight back at him with adult gravity.
  It was a moment of equal parts anxiety and awe, like the striking of a wide seam of gold. The prospector sinks to his knees--he's only been looking for coal. At a gush of oil he'd hoot, baptize himself and buy the drinks. But the sight of gold is different. He observes a moment's silence. Then he rises, eyes watering. How to get it properly out of the earth? How not to be robbed in the meantime?
  Eventually it would require real money. For now, he set aside his own studies and started
 
teaching her himself. He read up on it. He bought a metronome, a gramophone, and began a collection of records. He ordered whole scores and song sheets from New York, Milan and Salzburg. He decided it wasn't too soon to start in on the Vaccai Practical Method of Italian Singing. Mozart composed at three. At three, Kathleen sang, "Manca sollecita
Pi@u dell'usato, Ancor che s'agiti
Con lieve fiato, Face che palpita Presso also morir."
  Materia was permitted to play piano again, this time exactly what was put in front of her:
  scales, intervals, i semitoni "this lesson must be sung adagio at first, and the time accelerated to allegro, according to the ability of the Pupil"
  syncopation, ornamentation, literal translation, "The flame fails rapidly ar more than usual ar even if it flickers ar with a light breath"
  appoggiatura, introduzione also mordente
  "the acciaccatura differs from the appoggiatura in as much as it does not interfere with the value or the accent of the note to which it is prefixed," intervals of thirds, intervals of fourths, salti di quinta, salti di sesta
  "the little bird in a narrow cage ar why does one never hear it sing?"
  Lesson XI, The Shake, "I would explain my anguish"
  Lesson XII, On Roulades, "I cannot believe my thoughts"
  Lesson XIII, Per Portare la
Voce, "I cannot keep silent about everything." Materia played. Kathleen turned seven.
  Materia watched it all from a great distance, and as the years flew by she missed her father more and more, forgetting everything but that he had once cared enough for her to find her a husband. All memories soften with age, and the good ones are also the most perishable--her mother and sisters had long ago been caressed to disappearing soapstone, conjured up till they faded to nothing. Like cave paintings by candlelight, she could only glimpse them now in the dark from the corner of her eye. But her father's memory was durable. Obelisk eroded to a dome of rock, the touchstone of her loss.

  "You're too fat."
  Materia looked at James from afar and said, "Okay."
  He shook his head. Other men went strolling with their wives of a Saturday evening. Took them to church on Sunday, sat at opposite ends of a row of children. But not James. He didn't want people thinking he'd married a woman old enough to be his mother, for one thing. But mainly, what with Materia gone slack in mind and body, he didn't want his child stigmatized. For on top of everything else, Materia was dark. He tried not to see it, but it was one of those things that was always before his eyes, now that the scales had fallen from them.
  He took Kathleen everywhere. They went on long walks--Kathleen in the beautiful English pram at first, and then hand in hand. Their walking language was Gaelic. With her fairy hair and fine deportment, people stared because she looked like a princess. Her clothes came from England. Nothing showy, all quality, like a real-life princess. And James trusted his immaculate shirts to no one but himself, shaved his face clean every morning. Together they turned heads.

  It was 1907 and there was a town now. It had sprung up overnight starting with Number 12 Colliery. Numbers 14, 15 and 16 followed in short order. The railroad came in and so did the miners. At first they came from all over the Maritimes, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. In time they came from everywhere. The Dominion Coal Company bought up land and built a sea of company houses--serviceable clapboard dwellings attached in pairs. There was a school, a Catholic church, Luvovitz's Kosher Canadian Butcher Shop and Delicatessen, MacIsaac's Drugs and Confectionery and the Company Store with enough merchandise to mephistophelize a miner's wife.
  Every Friday night the miners would hand over their sealed pay packets to their wives, who'd open them and fork over the price of a drink. Problem was, come Saturday shopping the pay packet--with or without Friday's tipple--would barely feed even a small family of six. But the coal company had a solution to this: "company scrip." This was a form of credit. The missus could spend cash at those shops in town that stocked the odd
 
item unavailable at the Company
Store. And she could spend company scrip at the Company Store on food, shoes, cloth and kerosene. Her man's sealed pay packet grew thinner and thinner, until quite soon it contained only an itemized account of how much rent he owed on his company house, how much interest he owed on his debt to the Company Store and how much was still available to him in scrip to spend there. The Company Store came to be better known as "The Pluck-Me Store."
  Still people poured in, filling up the streets that ran north-south, and the avenues that ran east-west, every second one named for a Catholic saint or a coal company magnate. Boom Town. It didn't exist officially and it had no name yet, but the Piper house was suddenly on a street and the street had a name: Water Street.

  Materia hadn't been in a church since she'd got married. Now that there was a Catholic church right handy there was no reason she couldn't just walk over. But she felt unworthy. Our Lady had not answered her prayer. Materia still did not love her child, and she knew the fault lay within herself,
  "Kathleen, taa'i la hown."
  Materia sat the child on her lap and wrapped her arms around it. She sang, unrepeatable and undulating:

"Kahn aa'ndi aa'sfoor zarif us ghandoor rasu aHmar, shaa'ru asfar bas aa'yunu sood sood metlel leyl. ..."

  Materia rocked the child and felt sad--was that closer to love? She hoped. The child felt cool in her arms. "I'll warm you," she thought. And kept singing. Kathleen stayed perfectly still, pressed close up against the rolling mass. Materia stroked the fire-gold hair and passed a warm brown hand across the staring green eyes. Kathleen tried not to breathe. Tried not to understand the song. She tried to think of Daddy and light things --fresh air, and green grass--she worried that Daddy would know. And be hurt. There was a smell.
  Materia released the child. It was no good. God could see past Materia's actions, into her heart.
 
And her heart was empty.
  Materia no longer went up to the hope chest to cry--she cried wherever she happened to be at the time--nor did it any longer interrupt her work or wrench a single muscle in her face.

  "Give us a jawbreaker and a couple of honeymoons," said James.
  MacIsaac's Drugs and Confectionery smelt of new pine, bitter herbs and saltwater taffy. Mr. MacIsaac reached into a tilted jar brimming with the edible rainbow. Behind him stretched shelf upon shelf of bottles and packets containing powders, essences, oils and unguents. Whatever ails you.
  Mr. MacIsaac handed Kathleen a sarsaparilla candy cane as an extra little treat, but she hesitated and looked at James, who said, "It's all right, my darling, Mr. MacIsaac's not a stranger."
  Mr. MacIsaac looked at Kathleen gravely, lowered his head and said, "Go on, touch it."
  She touched his billiard-bald head and grinned. Mr. MacIsaac said, "I hear you got a set o' lungs on you, lass."
  She nodded wisely, sucking on the candy cane. MacIsaac laughed and James beamed. He and Kathleen left the shop together. Mrs. MacIsaac said from her perch on the sliding ladder, "She's beautiful."
  "Yuh, she's a pretty little thing." "Too pretty. They'll never raise her."
  Mrs. MacIsaac watched the shop while Mr. MacIsaac limped back to his greenhouse for a drop of "the good spirit." He'd been in the Boer War.
  At home, Materia stood at the counter rolling out dough for a pie--steak and kidney like James's mother used to make--and finally twigged to a thing that had been nagging her all along. It was this: Kathleen's baptism hadn't taken. It had been done by a Protestant minister. The child needed to be properly baptized, in Latin, by a Catholic priest. And then everything would be all right. She told James when he arrived home with the girl but he said, "Kathleen has been baptized. It was done by a man of the cloth, a Christian man, and that's all there is to it."
  Kathleen's cheeks bulged with hard candy, her
 
green gaze directed up at her mother.
She didn't look all that baptized to Materia.

  James had taught his daughter to read words soon after she learned to read music. At three and a half she'd shared his lap with a terrifyingly illustrated book more than half her size and sounded out, ""In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray. ..."" He'd started her on Latin when she was five, teaching himself at the same time--it would help with her Italian singing. He ordered another box of books. Children's classics this time, and they read them aloud, taking turns.
  He hadn't much time for his own reading, though his books now numbered twenty-three not counting the Encyclopaedia Britannica--"Read that end to end," thought James, as he gazed at his glass cabinet, "and you'd know just about everything. Go anywhere at all."
  At the local schoolhouse Kathleen learned to sit in rows and not to gawk at those less fortunate, but little else. The lady teacher got the creeps from the porcelain girl with the mermaid eyes. The child seemed to be in disguise. Staring up at a corner of the ceiling or out the window, waiting for something, a sign--what?--yet always ready with the answer: "Wolfe died on the Plains of Abraham, miss." Hands folded on the desk, spine straight. "The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, miss." Every feature formed to preternatural perfection. "It's i before e except after c, miss." It wasn't right in a child. Perhaps she wasn't a child at all.
  In the schoolyard Kathleen came alive but in the oddest way, showing an alarming tendency to play with boys. Hurling sootballs, schoolbag raised as a shield, shrieking with joy in her linen sailor dress, ringlets flying, forever banishing herself from the society of girls.
  Blackened knees and torn silk were the stuff of high spirits, and James never scolded her for ruining her clothes, but when Kathleen came home and said, "Pius MacGillicuddy gots a finger in a jar what his da found in the mine, that he b'ought up from a wee tiny sprout," it was time to send her to Holy Angels in Sydney.
  The Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame
 
were in the business of educating the whole girl: from grammar to botany, physics to French. But above all, Holy Angels offered an excellent music program. James had been going to wait a few years, till Kathleen turned twelve and he'd saved enough for tuition, but there was no help for it, she'd be tarnished by then. He'd find the money.
  He started a garden in the backyard on the far side of the creek. He bought a new old horse and cart. He traveled across the island to the Margaree and collected topsoil with no trace of coal dust. The missus would have to learn to make soap, butter and her own clothes. From now on they'd have to pay only for meat, and Benny always gave them a special price. Benny gave
James a special price on manure too.
  "For you, free. That's kosher cow shit, mind you, you're going to have kosher carrots and potatoes, you'll be a Jew in no time--you want, I'll throw in a circumcision, no charge."
  James went out to the woods and cut down a young apple tree. Stripped it of branches, sharpened it at both ends and drove it into the center of the garden. Nailed a plank of driftwood across it, and dressed it in one of Materia's old frocks that she'd grown out ofanda fedora he found blowing over a field. It wasn't effective till he fashioned a head and torso from two flour sacks stuffed with straw to fill out the clothes, and impaled them on the stake. Every so often he changed its attire, now a dress, now a pair of trousers, but always the hat, keeping the birds on edge.

  "Kathleen, come."
  Materia no longer spoke Arabic to the girl. What for? Kathleen followed her mother into the kitchen. The big tin tub was full and steaming. Tomorrow was Kathleen's first day at Holy Angels and James wanted her spick-and-span. That meant hair. Materia used to dread washing the child's hair because of all the fuss. James would holler from outside the kitchen door, "Are you trying to kill the poor child?" But Materia was used to the girl's hysterics, and performed the task briskly, scouring the scalp, dunking the head, wringing the tresses, getting the comb through, keeping her still. James could holler, but he would never intrude on his daughter's ablutions.
 
  This evening there were the customary protests --"Don't pull!--my eyes are stinging! O-o-ow, stop i-i-it!"--but when Materia took Kathleen by the hair as usual and plunged her head backward for the first rinsing, she kept it under long enough to say into the submerged green eyes, "Do you renounce Satan? Yes. And all his works? Yes. I baptize you in nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus
Sancti, amen." There. In an emergency, any Catholic can baptize a child. And after nine years, Materia considered it an emergency. Now the child would be safe. Now God could love her, even if Materia couldn't, and the nuns wouldn't think ill of her. Materia let go and Kathleen's face broke the surface, gasping.
  Kathleen didn't cry or complain. She stood unwontedly docile as her mother toweled her dry, careful to attend roughly to the bad parts of the body.
  In the wee hours of that night, Kathleen woke up screaming. She was still screaming when her daddy picked her up, and she clung to him as he walked her up and down the hallway, struggling to make out what she was saying.
  "Who's coming to get you?" he asked. And when he had deciphered some more, "Who's "Pete"?"
  And she told him through her sobs.
  He carried her downstairs, out the kitchen door, across the coal clinks in the backyard, over the little footbridge to the garden and right up to the scarecrow.
  "Now beat the can off him," James ordered. Kathleen was shaking uncontrollably, almost gagging with fear. The scarecrow's hat cast a shadow over its featureless face. She couldn't see if it was smiling or frowning.
  "Make a fist, go on," said James.
  She did, still crying.
  "Now whack the bejeesus out of him!" She struck out and knocked the scarecrow's head to the ground, hat and all.
  "That's the stuff!" said James, and he tossed her into the air and caught her with a war whoop.
  Kathleen laughed as wildly as she'd been crying a moment before. It wound up in one of their yelling contests, only there were neighbors now and before long the lights came on in a nearby row of company houses and cries of protest, obscene and
 
otherwise, were raised. James replied at the top of his lungs, "Shut up the lot of you and listen to this!"
  And he had Kathleen sing:

"Quanto affetto! Quali cure! che temete, padre mio?
Lass@u in cielo presso Dio, veglia un angiol protettor.
Da noi toglie le sventure di mia madre il priego santo; non fia mai divelto o franto questo a voi diletto fior."

  That's how James got a reputation as a drinker, although at that point he was a teetotaler.
  The next day he stuck the straw head back onto the stake and jammed the hat on the head. There were no more nightmares.

What great love! What care!
What do you fear, my father?
In heaven above, with God,
I have a guardian angel.
We are protected from all misfortune by the holy prayers of my mother. This flower that you love so much will never be uprooted or destroyed.

               The Pit

  Even though it was just an old cart, he painted it red with gold trim so she'd have something handsome to ride back and forth to school in. He did her initials in fancy gilt on the side and their joke was "Your carriage awaits without, ma'am." It meant giving up some piano pupils, but he drove her the nine miles to Holy Angels every morning and he was there every afternoon when the big double doors opened and she came running down the steps to meet him. On Friday afternoons they'd linger in Sydney, wandering down to the yacht club wharf to look at the ships in the harbor.
  "One day you'll get on one of those liners, my darling, and go."
  She wanted him to come with her, of course, but he didn't patronize her. "You're going to sing for people all over the world. I won't always be there, but I'll always be your daddy."
 
  At which she would cry and he would take them for ice cream at Crown Bakery, her eyelashes still wet but her eyes smiling once more. She never stayed sad for long. People stared wherever they went because she was beautiful, and the two of them were so obviously the best of friends.
  James knew that someday he'd have to hand her over to professionals, send her far away, but for now ... There was a God. James consecrated his life to being a worthy caretaker of God's gift. It was how he could endure teaching the offspring of the petty bourgeoisie to mangle "F@ur Elise." I'll do anything, he told God and himself. I'll cut off my arm, I'll sell the teeth in my head, I'll enter the pit. I'll allow my wife to get a job.
  "Okay," said Materia.
  He prepared himself for the fact that she'd likely get work cleaning and cooking in someone else's house, or at a hotel. He told her to use her maiden name. "If people think you're married, they'll pay you less," he explained. It mustn't be known that Kathleen Piper's mother was a maid.
  Imagine his surprise when Materia left the house a few evenings later wearing her good dress, her hair combed and done up under her hat.
  "Where're you going, missus?"
  "Work."
  On Plummer Avenue, the main drag of the boom town, inside the Empire Theatre, the silver screen flickered, and down in the orchestra pit so did the piano. Trills and triplets seemed a natural counterpart to the frenetic dance of light and shadow above.
  The audience leans slowly back as the locomotive appears on the horizon, tinkling toward them at first, birds singing--just another day in the country--then the first hint of doom as the train looms larger; a switch from major to minor, chu)a chu)a, here it comes rattling and rolling, whistle screeching, punctuated by the warning woo-woo, escalating through the landscape in a melody of mad elation, hurtling over the keys till all erupts in chaos, notes and birds fly asunder and the speeding iron horse thunders right over our heads and past us.
  The audience is breathless, eager for the next terror, all you can take for a nickel. Materia can't believe she's getting paid for this.
 
  The next scene is more terrifying. A man in evening clothes has cornered a young woman in a slinky nightgown halfway up a clock tower. No narrative preamble required, all ist klar, the shadows lurk, the tower lists, the music creeps the winding stair, the villain spies a grace note of silken hem and he's on the chase in six-eight time up to where our heroine clings to a snatch of girlish melody, teetering on the precipice of high E, overlooking the street eight octaves below. Villain struggles with virgin in a macabre waltz, Strauss turned Faust, until, just when it seems she'll plummet, dash her brains on the bass clef and die entangled in the web of the lower stave, a vision in tenor crescendos on to save the day in resolving chords.
  Before long, Materia was playing for local ceilidhs and traveling vaudeville troupes.

  In December 1909, James boarded
Kathleen at Holy Angels because children were dying in the boom town. Scarlet fever, diphtheria, cholera, typhoid, smallpox, tuberculosis. Leaving a wake of little white coffins. Outbreaks of disease were far from uncommon but this was something else, this was an epidemic brought on by the miners' strike. Rows of company houses sat empty, their striking tenants evicted, yanked naked some of them, pulled off the crapper and out of the cradle, credit cut off at the Company Store. Pinkerton guards and special company constables went door to door till there was more furniture on the streets than in the houses. Even miners who had bought their own homes were evicted, the coal company having put the fear of God into the mortgage company. Families hunkered down in ragged tent cities out in the fields, no running water, less food, scant shelter from the Atlantic winter winds. Scarlet blotches bloomed on the thin cheeks of children, they suffocated on pus or died worn out from coughing.
  But nothing could convince the miners back to work. Not even a Royal Canadian machine gun mounted on the steps of the Immaculate Conception Church over at Cadegan Brook--and though Father Charlie MacDonald claimed he was away at the time, the Catholic church did its bit all the same to end the needless suffering of the strike: the bishop sent a special envoy to the boom town
 
to empty the convent, the school, the rectory and the church of the miners' families that the parish priest, Father Jim Frazer, was sheltering there. Then the bishop transferred Father Frazer right off the island.
  James acted fast. There was no money to board Kathleen at Holy Angels but money would be found. She'd not be kept here in the boom town to catch her death from the miners' brats. Or wind up crippled, or scarred in the face, please God no. They've brought it on themselves, stubborn bastards, and that's why I have to board my daughter at the school I already can't afford to send her to, and who's to help me do that? The piano teachers' union? The Piano-Tuners-of-the-World-Unite Party? Jesus Christ on the cross, no.
I'm on my own.

  "Sweetheart, you're going to live in at school for just a little while."
  She didn't want to.
  "No, I won't be there, and it'll be a while before I can visit." He would observe strict quarantine. "It'll be fun, you'll see, you'll make some buddies."
  She cried. He said, suddenly severe, "Giuditta Pasta was lame, and when she was asked how she was able to sing so beautifully and act so brilliantly night after night, yet give no sign of her affliction, she said what?"
  ""It hurts.""
  He patted her on the head, "That's the stuff."
  It would be months before he saw her again. He thought to himself, it's good training for the both of us.
  He took the ill luck the strike had dealt him and turned it to his own purposes. Before dawn one winter morning he shouldered three sparkling new picks, an undented shovel and a length of rope. He filled a teapot-style lamp with whale oil, clipped it to his peaked cap, hooked a lunch can to his belt and walked with three Pinkerton guards to the Number 12 gate, where khaki-clad Tommies guarded the coal with fixed bayonets.
  The soldiers who let him in were no friendlier than the gauntlet of striking miners he'd left outside, though the soldiers didn't spit or rave and call him "scab," and accuse him of murdering their children. Nor did they promise to throw
 
his balls to the pigs.
  He entered the mouth of the pit, following the trembling light of the open flame at his forehead and the shadows of the men ahead, down the sloping shaft of the main deep along the rail tracks, reaching out to touch the steel rope now and then. The airless smell of ponies, damp wood and earth, through trap doors that swung open magically, it seemed, until a child's voice said, "Hey buddy, what's the time?" Left turn, right turn, right, then left again, down, down, through the maze of hollow branches that blossomed into dark chambers. He heard a bird chirping.
  Number 12 Mine was terribly wet and gassy but James had nothing to compare it to. He shoveled coal onto a cart in a dripping room he didn't know was under the ocean. He worked alongside one other man who happened to be experienced. It was this man's job to undercut the wall, then to bore and lay and light the charges without blowing up the mine. James couldn't place the man's accent and never realized he was black, from Barbados, just knew he was Albert who never got them killed. Barbados, Italy,
Belgium, Eastern Europe, Quebec ...
The Dominion Coal Company had reached far and wide to break the strike. Very few English voices in the darkness and those that there were were heavily accented. James drank cold tea and chewed tobacco to keep down the dust, and at first concealed, then shared, his meat sandwiches. The cart held just over a ton, and when it was full he and Albert pushed it from the coal face to the headway and hitched it onto a trip. At the end of ten hours they surfaced into more darkness.
  The foreign men were escorted to their stockaded work camp nearby, called Fourteen Yard, to sing, sleep or gamble while the Royal Canadian Regiment stood guard. James walked home with the Pinkerton sons of bitches, passing between lines of mangy men who would have torn him limb from limb given half a chance--for as they saw it James had no excuse, he wasn't starving and he wasn't a foreigner--past women who stood on front stoops and gave him the evil eye, muttering, "May God forgive you." One said a prayer for him, then hurled an iron doorstopper, missing him by a hair.
  James was making many times what he'd made teaching piano. For the first few weeks he wept
 
silently at the beginning of every shift, until his body got rebroken to the work. Every night at home, after he'd turned white again, he'd get on his knees, fold his hands and beg his mother's forgiveness for going underground.

          The Price of a Song

  "You've got a bit thinner. That's good," James said to Materia over supper.
  She shrugged.
  "What are you daydreaming about?" James used the term loosely, she was always gawping at everything and nothing.
  "Houdini," she said.
  "Who?"
  "Houdini."
  He didn't bother to pursue it. Ask a silly question. He'd long ago given up on conversation and now merely thanked God that the idiocy and swarthiness had bypassed his daughter. And that his wife had learned to cook.
  "What's this?"
  "Kibbeh nayeh."
  "This a Hebrew delicacy?" "Lebanese."
  Benny had smuggled her the recipe. Anyone can make kibbeh nayeh, anyone can make anything by following directions, but to make it right ... that takes a blessed finger. Some say it's in the length of the cook's fingers, others claim it's in the scent, as unique as a fingerprint, that every person carries. It is definitely a gift.
  Kibbeh was the national dish of Syria and Lebanon, it had to be made from the most trustworthy meat, therefore the Mahmouds bought only from Luvovitz's Kosher Canadian Butcher Shop. While Mrs. Luvovitz and the boys minded the shop, Benny made his deliveries in Sydney, always going last to the Mahmoud house on the hill. There, a dark little round woman with a graying bun of black hair would open the kitchen door to him. Benny didn't speak Gaelic and Mrs. Mahmoud's English was still halting, but they managed to chat. Benny would go along with the pretense that Mrs. Mahmoud's interest in the Piper family was purely casual.
  "Oh sure I know the Pipers, she's a
 
nice lady Mrs. Piper, Lebanese too, I guess you must know her--no?--ah well, yes they've got a lovely daughter, Kathleen, goes to Holy Angels, sings like a bird."
  And this morning, when Benny asked Mrs. Mahmoud for the kibbeh recipe "for my wife," she didn't raise an eyebrow but went immediately to her cupboards and pointed out ingredients. Benny noted it all on brown butcher paper as Mrs. Mahmoud mimed the whole process, including the imprinting of a cross on the prepared meat. Benny laughed and shook his head and drew a Star of David for her instead.
  Mrs. Mahmoud shrugged and said, "What you like," and gave him the ritual first taste of the imaginary kibbeh.
  "Delicious," he said.
  That evening, Mrs. Mahmoud watched her husband eat and thought of her lost daughter, perhaps even now serving the same dish to her own husband. Would he appreciate it? Did he love her still?
  Nine miles away, James took a forkful of kibbeh and ate.
  "It's delicious."
  "Eat with bread."
  He followed Materia's example, drizzling oil over the spiced meat and soft cracked wheat, tearing off bits of flat bread, folding the meat into mouthfuls.
  "Where'd you learn to cook this?" "Is raw, no cook."
  He paused.
  "Kosher?"
  She nodded. He resumed eating. Materia got a pang; she thought, "We're happy without the girl."
  She touched the back of his neck lightly. "What are you doing?" he said.
  "Nothing," and she returned to the sink.

  Up till now the vaudevillians had been white, doing their minstrel shows and piccaninny turns in blackface, but now that there was a colored migration to the Sydney coalfield, genuine colored artists started coming up from the States. Materia couldn't figure out why they too performed under cork with giant painted-on mouths, but she did know she preferred them. She
 
acquired a big collection of ragtime, two-step, cakewalk, processionals, sorrow songs, plantation lullabies and gospel.
  She got to play for the Blackville Society Tap Twizzlers when their own accompanist was arrested in Glace Bay. They were a trio of brothers managed by their mother. The eldest had named his feet. He called the left one Alpha and the right one Omega.
  Percussive shoes, flashing feet that chatted, clattered, took flight and girdled the globe without ever leaving center stage at the Empire Theatre. Materia just watched their feet and let her hands go, chunks of Rigoletto colliding with "Coal Black Rose," "Una Voce
Poco Fa" on a seesaw with "Jimmy
Crack Corn," all slapped up against her own spontaneous compositions--just as for the moving pictures, only with the dancers there was a two-way feed. They hounded, flattered, talked back and twisted--ebony, ivory, and nickel clickers grappling till there wasn't even any melody, just rhythm and attitude.
  Materia became a bit of a celebrity, especially among the young folk.
  "Hey there, Materia, how's she going, girl?"
  "That's Mrs. Piper to you, buddy," James shot back.
  It was a Sunday in March, they were out whitewashing the house. He turned to Materia when the feller had slunk by. "How do you know him?"
  "The show."
  The Blackville Society Tap
Twizzlers invited her to tour with them as their permanent accompanist. They were going to Europe. Materia said no. She cried on the way home at the thought of how happy she and James could be, seeing the world together with a traveling show. But she knew better than to ask him.
  The colored artists stopped coming soon after, because word had gone down the line that the new arrivals in the Sydney coalfield were up from the West Indies and weren't too interested in American colored entertainment. But Materia still had the vaudeville and the picture shows and she was happy as long as she could play. Down in the orchestra pit she consoled herself with the occasional embellishment. Now and then a locomotive sped toward the audience through "I Love You Truly,"
 
and ran over them to "Moonlight
Sonata." Villains struggled with virgins to "The Wedding March" and tenors saved the day to "Turkey in the Straw." Performers complained, but the audience ate it up when rabbits emerged from top hats to discordant splats and women were sawn in half to "Nearer My God to Thee." Materia had always smiled as she played but now she started chuckling, though she wasn't aware of it. This further endeared her to the audience, who liked her all the better for being a bit loony.
  These days, James went all the way to Sydney for provisions. With the exception of Benny and Mr. MacIsaac, he didn't darken the door of any boom town establishment. Why go in to be insulted when he was paying good money? The whole town was suffering as a result of the strike, not just the miners, so everyone loved to hate a scab. He never walked, he drove his cart so as not to give people the satisfaction of crossing the street when they saw him coming. "And all because I have the gumption to support my family." It was galling, therefore, on the rare occasion when Materia accompanied him, to hear time and again, "Hello there, Materia, how's the show business, dear?" The same people who wouldn't give him the time of day would stop to chat with his illiterate wife about her career as a player-piano. Naturally these people would appreciate a low type of music. And why were they out spending money they supposedly didn't have on the price of admission at the Empire Theatre? There were too many Irish in this town by now for James's liking. Every second house a shebeen, drunken Catholics the lot. If they worked more and fiddled less they wouldn't be in such a mess. James thought of Aesop's grasshopper and ant and made a mental note to enclose the fable in his next letter to Kathleen.
  Picking up a packet of starch at MacIsaac's, James had to endure "You've got a very talented wife, Mr. Piper."
  James paid. MacIsaac continued, "And how's the wee lass?"
  "She's all right."
  "She's got a gift, that one."
  James nodded. MacIsaac smiled and added, "Gets it from her mother, no doubt."
  James turned and left the store. He wouldn't be taking Kathleen in there again. He
 
decided he didn't trust the bald man. He didn't like the way he looked at children with his watery blue eyes and his big red face. If MacIsaac liked children so much why didn't he have any of his own?
  When James left, Mrs. MacIsaac said to her man, "We shouldn't let Piper set foot in here."
  MacIsaac smiled softly at his wife, then retired to his greenhouse. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
  Everyone liked MacIsaac, though not everyone understood how he could tolerate a man like Piper. But MacIsaac didn't see the point in penalizing a man's family for a man's mistakes and that was what you did when you cut a feller off. People shrugged and figured maybe MacIsaac was just religious. And he was, in a way; he spent a lot of time finding medicine out in the fields where other people saw only stones and scrub. He cultivated the plants in his greenhouse. Never called in a debt. Pity about the drink.

  At the end of that week, James sat down to his latkes and molasses and said, "I want you to quit your job now, missus, I'm earning enough at the pit."
  No answer. He looked up. Hard to know sometimes if she even registered a word he said.
  "Did you hear me?"
  "... Okay."
  "And don't be traipsing around town on your own."
  How unhappy are they who have a gift that's left to germinate in darkness. The pale plant will sink invisible roots and live whitely off their blood.
  The first week away from the Empire was hardest. The empty house, and at night James, who required feeding and nothing else. She searched for the key to the piano, and finally pried the instrument open with a knife. But after a few numbers she fell silent. She needed a stage, not a garret. No audience, no show. Materia took her sheaf of music and put it in the hope chest.
  She cleaned the house and cooked a lot. Ate. She didn't have the heart to spend much time with Mrs. Luvovitz because the boys, Abe and Rudy, were a reproach to her soul. How could it be
 
that she loved another woman's children and not her own? The interlude at the Empire receded and became unreal. Now that Materia was on her own again, with plenty of time to think, all her badness rolled back in and enveloped her: to have left her father's house, to have disobeyed and dishonored her parents--that was against the Commandments.
  I have to go to confession, she thought, but then ... in order to be forgiven I must be heartily sorry, but to be sorry for eloping means to be sorry for everything that came from it. And she couldn't be. She still wanted her husband and that too was a sin: to want the man, and not the child that comes from the marital act. And so she would keep coming back to her original sin.
  She resumed her prayers to the Blessed Virgin. It pierced her heart, and it seemed a dreadful vapor rose from the wound, when she realized she hadn't given a thought to her daughter all this time. Not a note had she sent, no package of goodies from home, she hadn't even asked James, "How's the girl?" Materia saw herself in a clear glass at last, and it was monstrous.
  Whom could she tell? No one. Yet she must tell or die.
  In the second week, Materia left the house and walked to the cliff but didn't linger there as she used to. She scrambled down to the rocky shore and walked. She didn't sing, she talked and talked in her mother tongue to the stones, till she grew dizzy and the day grew gray and she lost track of where she was. Finally, as sometimes happens in this part of the world, the clouds lifted. A burning sky lit the sea in rippling tongues of red and gold. Materia fell silent. She faced the horizon and listened until she heard what the sea was saying to her: "Give it to me, my daughter. And I will take it and wash it and carry it to a far country until it is no longer your sin; but just a curiosity adrift, beached and made innocent."
  And so, day after day, Materia slowly let her mind ebb away. Until she was ready to part with it once and for all.

            Quanto Dolor

  "I'm very fond of dividing and classifying and examining, you see I'm so much alone, I've so
 
much time for reflection, and Papa is training me to think."
    CLAUDIA, BY A.L.O.E.

  The strike ended in April 1910, and James got a job on the surface as a check-weighman in reward for his loyalty. He had expected to see his pit buddy Albert up there too, had hoped to get a look at him in the light of day, but Albert had been let go. He had moved on to Sydney with many others from Fourteen Yard, and settled in Whitney Pier in the neighborhood known as The Coke Ovens. There were lots of people there up from the West Indies; the Dominion Iron and Steel Company knew the value of a strong man who could stand heat. The Coke Ovens was a cozy community, its houses painted everything but white, snuggled right up against the steel mill. The mill put bread on the table and a fine orange dust on the bread.
  In the boom town the company houses were tenanted once more, the Company Store took miners' scrip again, the last children were buried and Kathleen came home. James had a surprise waiting: electric lights, and a modern water closet complete with indoor toilet, enamel tub and nickel-plated taps, hot and cold.
  What with his hours at the pithead, James could no longer drive Kathleen to and from Holy Angels. He hired a fellow from The Coke Ovens who drove his own horse and buggy. James was taken aback by his youth--Leo Taylor was barely sixteen--but he was steady, James made sure.
  "No detours, straight there and straight home."
  "Yes sir."
  "I don't want you talking to her." "No sir."
  "Don't touch her."
  "I wouldn't."
  "I'll kill you."
  "Don't worry, sir."
  James reflected that he'd rather have a timid youth drive his daughter than a leering man. The fact that Taylor was colored made James feel all the more confident of the necessary distance between driver and passenger.
  Although she no longer had any buddies in the boom town, Kathleen was relieved to be living
 
at home again. Boarding at Holy
Angels had been lonely. At first she'd cried herself to sleep, comforted only by the notes and treats that her daddy sent. But she knew that sacrifices were being made, knew what was expected of her, didn't flinch. She studied hard, obeyed the nuns and never complained, though she did pray for a fairy godmother to send her a friend, for there was no one to play with at Holy Angels. No boys.
No cinders embedded in her knees. Other little girls weren't interested in swordfights and adventure or in who could enact the most spectacular death scene. Other girls were preoccupied with meticulous feminine arcana of which Kathleen knew nothing; what was more, none of them had careers. Initially, her schoolmates had vied for Kathleen's friendship--she was so pretty, so smart. But she failed to decode pecking orders, declined gracious invitations to braid other girls' hair and made a lasso of the skipping rope. They put her down as odd until, finally, they shunned her altogether.
  Kathleen threw herself into her work and cultivated an insouciant nonconformity--her sash low slung and tied in front, hat pushed back, hands jammed into the pockets that she ordered her mother to sew into her uniforms, her long hair waving loose. The nuns made allowances. She had a gift.

  In the fall of 1911 they sailed to the mainland --James, Kathleen and her singing teacher, Sister Saint Cecilia--to a recital at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Halifax. An invited audience of professionals.
  "Look me in the eyes."
  She did. He invoked the spirits,
  "What did Stendhal say of Elisabetta Gafforini?"
  ""Whether you see, or only hear her, your peril is the same.""
  "That's the stuff." His usual affectionate bonk on the head. "Now go out there and show 'em who's boss."
  Kathleen sang Cherubino's love poem to Susanna from Le Nozze di Figaro. Teachers from New York City gave James their cards, they were looking for the next Emma Albani. Told him what he already knew.
  Henriette Sontag debuted at six,
 
Maria Malibran at five; Adelina
Patti was younger every year, her legend already way ahead of her mortality; but James was so serious about Kathleen's career that he could wait for it to begin. Patience is the mark of the true player. Her voice would last, not burn out in a blaze of adolescent glory. He would send her to Halifax for a year to get her sea legs. Then on to Milano at eighteen.

  Kathleen turned twelve.

  "When Malibran's father told her she must go on for Giuditta Pasta, as Desdemona to his Otello, he looked her in the eye and swore that if she did not sing perfectly, when it came to the scene where Otello murders Desdemona, he really would kill her."
  Kathleen laughed and said, "You're a melodramatic old feller, aren't you."
  Materia marveled. The girl was saucy, she deserved a good slap talking to her father like that, but never got one, got a chuckle and a wink instead.
  Kathleen had a way of swaggering a little even standing still, and especially when leaning against a piano. She didn't yet know how beautiful she was, but she'd begun to suspect. She'd begun to care about how she walked, to gauge her effect on others. She practiced world-weary expressions in front of the mirror. She looked up the word "languid." She adopted a tone of amused scorn and loved to kid her father about his romantic obsession with la Voce, ordering him to fetch her grapes and peel them too. "If I'm going to be a diva, you'd better start treating me like one."
  He loved her way: acting casual, working like a Trojan, singing like an angel. Not "angelically." The voice of an angel. Winged, lethal, close to the sun.
  When Malibran died too young too fast-- "Sure, sure, her voice went into her husband's violin. And pigs fly."
  She had the world by the tail. A modern girl. James had read about the "New Woman." That's what my daughter's going to be.

  One Friday afternoon in March 1912, while Materia is in the kitchen cooking a magnifi- cent silent supper and James is half-
 
entombed in the old piano, Kathleen appears in the archway of the front room.
  She's wearing her Holy Angels uniform. She's grown tall. Leaning in the doorway, her weight on one hip, feeling her teens though they're a year off. A smile plays about her mouth at the sight of her old dad toiling over the strings of that decrepit war horse. She glances down, bites her lip, then steals over to the piano and strikes a chord.
  James springs up and around, though the hammers barely winged him, belts her with an open hand then a closed fist before he realizes who it is and what he's done, and how he'd never, not even Materia, though God knows--
  His daughter is crying. She's shocked. He's hurt her, how? With my own hands. Dear God.
  He reaches out, grazes a shoulder, an elbow, finds the small of her back, crushes her to him, he has never, would never do anything to hurt you, rather die, cut off my arms. He feels so acutely what she feels, clasping her, "Don't cry," a perishing empathy, "Hush now," his throat scorched and taut, "Shshshsh," he must protect her from--he must shield her from--what? ... From all of it. From it all.
  A life and a warmth enter his body that he hasn't felt since--that he has rarely felt. She will be safe with him, I'll keep you safe, my darling, oh how he loves this girl. He holds her close, no harm, never any harm. Her hair smells like the raw edge of spring, her skin is the silk of a thousand spinning wheels, her breath so soft and fragrant, milk and honey are beneath your tongue. ... Then he shocks himself. He lets her go and draws back abruptly so she will not notice what has happened to him. Sick. I must be sick. He leaves the room and bolts through the back door, across the yard, over the creek to the garden, where he calms down enough to vomit.
  Materia gets her balance in the archway where she stumbled just now, when James knocked her aside on his retreat. She came when she heard the commotion, and stopped in the doorway and watched. She's still watching. She goes to her daughter.
  One of Kathleen's teeth is loose. She's young, it'll mend. There's a silly amount of
 
blood on the carpet. Looks worse than it is. Materia takes Kathleen by the hand to the kitchen, where she washes her at the pump. She puts her to bed and brings her soft food. Sings until the green eyes close. Takes a pillow and places it gently over the sleeping face.
  But removes it the next instant. If Materia's heart were full, she'd know what to do. Who to save, how. Loving the girl now seems like an easy task compared with protecting her. It's because I failed the first test that I am confronted with the second.
  Materia tries to think what to do. But thinking never helped in such a situation. She gets a whiff of salt air, a chill laps her cheek, she feels movement beneath her feet, the bed pitches and she is on a liner bound for New York City, the girl with the heart-of-flame hair at her side clinging to the rail. But the moment flees before Materia can get hold of it, a message telegraphed weakly over a sagging distance of time and space, every second word missing.
  Materia knows now who sent Kathleen, and why. It's her own fault God is forced to work in this way. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.

  Kathleen knew that her father had hit her by mistake, that he was terribly sorry. She knew he'd been working too hard and all for her sake. No harm done, the tooth settled back into the gum. She made him a card to tell him she loved him. She wrote a funny poem about "the lost chord." They put it behind them.

            The First Solution

  The next night, Materia conceived Mercedes.

  To her own surprise, Materia began to look forward to this child, not even caring if it was a boy. She was Hebleh again and she liked it this time. It made her feel close to her own mother, expanding body, avalanche breasts, slow thighs. Her troubles went into remission.
  James still didn't take her places, but he came alive again at night--she's my wife, after all. Her dark body and soft mind allowed him to enjoy her in an uncomplicated way. Why
 
did he ever look to her for conversation or mental stimulation? It was unfair of him. A man looks elsewhere for those things. James finally felt normal.
  He put on a little weight; she fed him, ran his nightly bath, washed his back, licked his ear and reached into the water. He let her. He was soothed. He had outrun the demon that had leaped up in him the day he hurt Kathleen.
  Materia tried to conceive in sorrow, telling herself that it was only to prevent a greater sin on her husband's part that she acted the harlot with him, enticing him even when she was already pregnant. Lust in marriage is the same as adultery. Adultery's a mortal sin. That's in the Commandments. Materia prayed that God might overlook the impurity in her heart. For after all, her actions were correct.

  Mercedes is born late in 1912.
Materia loves her. She doesn't have to try, she just does, it's a Joyful Mystery. Thank you Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints. And God too.
  Materia doesn't begrudge Mrs.
Luvovitz a third son, Ralph, two months younger than Mercedes; maybe they'll grow up to marry each other.
  James doesn't object or even comment when Materia gets Mercedes baptized by the priest at the Catholic church in nearby Lingan. She starts going to mass again, not just Sunday but every day. Holy water in the desert, she hadn't known how thirsty she'd been. Materia lights candles and kneels to pray with Mercedes in her arms at the base of the beautiful eight-foot Mary. But Materia doesn't look up. She looks straight into the ruby eyes of the grinning serpent dying under the Virgin's foot.
  Materia offers it a sacrifice. She will play only at church, and only from the hymnal. Her one concession is Mrs. Luvovitz's Yiddish songbook, which is the least she can do for a friend who has given so much. It's the same God, after all.
  Eleven months later, Mrs. Luvovitz is on the spot again when Materia gives birth to Frances. Lucky thing, because Frances is set to walk out feet first. Mrs. Luvovitz reaches in and turns her around. Not so much difference between a
 
calf and a child. Frances is born with the caul. An especially good omen for an island child, being a charm against drowning.
  Frances looks a little starveling and she's bald as a post. Materia figures it's because she conceived too soon after Mercedes, the goodness in her womb hadn't yet been replenished. And her milk isn't as bountiful. All the more reason to love this one too.
  Frances is baptized at the Empire Theatre on Plummer Avenue. The temporary digs of the new Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church.
  Mercedes is a good baby, following everything closely with her brown eyes, sleeping when she ought, wanting to hold the cup and not spill a drop. Frances laughs at seven weeks.
  Along with Frances, the town is officially born in 1913. The boom town has a name now: New Waterford.

  James feels the normal pride of a man with a growing family. He works double shifts but that's a small price to pay. Those two babies are the proof. His demon is so far behind him now, he can reflect upon it: he was overworked. He hit his daughter by mistake and got terribly upset. In the ensuing panic there was a physical accident. Meaningless. Hanged men get hard-ons, for heaven's sake.

  Materia's pregnant again.

  James is glad to see that his wife has recovered her senses. No more roaming the shore, babbling. No more unnerving sights like that of his wife in the attic with her head in the hope chest, sound asleep or entranced. Never now does he hear her tormenting the piano as he comes up the walk from work. Crazy for religion, yes, but women are. And she'll get her shape back after the baby.
  The two little ones seem fine, Mercedes breastfeeding a dolly and cooing to Frances. Frances has hair now. Curly golden locks, hazel eyes with glints of laughing green, first word: "Boo!"
  It rains all winter. Plummer Avenue is aptly named and runs with mud but the Pipers have plenty of coal to burn off the damp. The fire is lit and the radiators clank to life the moment
 
Kathleen gets home from school.
  Materia watches Kathleen mount the stairs to her room, then returns to the kitchen and mixes flour and water for doughboys while James washes up at the kitchen pump. She watches him head to the front room, already absorbed in his HALIFAX HERALD: News from merry old England: the Union Jack has unfolded itself over two acres of new territory every time the clock has ticked since 1880. ...
  Five minutes later Materia wipes her hands on her apron and spot-checks James from the shadows of the front hall. Yes, he's safely settled in the wingback chair beneath the reading lamp--Sozodont: Good for Bad Teeth, Not Bad for Good Teeth. ...
  Materia returns to the kitchen, where supper simmers and Mercedes rocks Frances in the cradle. She sets the table. Twelve minutes later, she climbs the stairs to peer through the inch of doorway Kathleen has left open--the girl has a bad habit of lounging about in her underthings, draping herself over the side of her bed reading, wearing toe marks into the flocked wallpaper while brushing her hair, practicing different accents-- yes, she's alone. Materia silently pulls the door to, turns and descends all the way to the cellar to stoke the furnace. The house can never be hot enough for the orchid on the second floor.
  Once back in the kitchen, Materia fixes a honey lemon toddy and crosses again to the front hall--James now dozing in his chair, the paper slipped to the floor, Disgruntled Serbia ... --continues upstairs, opens Kathleen's door--"Mother! Can't you knock?"-- hands the young lady her preprandial tonic and watches her sip from the steaming cup. A green vein shimmers beneath the surface of Kathleen's lily-white neck, summoned by the heat. Another glides from the crease at her armpit, to disappear behind the genuine silk camisole. A flush spreads from her cheeks down her throat, splashing her chest.
  Materia lumbers back down to the kitchen, stirs the pot and hollers, "Supper!"
  James shakes off his nap and arrives at the table rubbing his hands--"Something sure smells good."
 
  Materia yells again for Kathleen, who saunters in loosely wrapped in a kimono--"Must you bellow? I'm right here"-- slouches into a chair; "What are we having?"
  Materia replies, "Boiled dinner."
  "Oh boy," says James.
  Kathleen groans, he laughs. "It's good for ya, old buddy, put hair on your chest."
  Kathleen winces, he's so corny.
  Real Cape Breton cuisine.
Potatoes, turnips, cabbage, carrots and, if you're prosperous, plenty of pork hocks. If you've ever had it cooked right, your mouth waters at the thought. Materia continues to surpass herself in the kitchen, everything she touches turns to juices. She hauls the pot to the table and ladles out big portions. Kathleen is English for the moment. "No cabbage for me, thank you, Mother dear, je refuse."
  James is amused. He watches Kathleen rearrange the food on her plate and, after a token interval, gets up and makes her a toasted cheese.
  Materia eats her own supper, then she eats Kathleen's, sopping up the broth with bread. James avoids looking at her--stooped over her plate, masticating slowly--he tries not to think it but there it is: bovine. Kathleen nibbles her cheese toast and leaves the crusts. The princess and the pea.

  If James has forgotten the demon, Materia hasn't. She saw it. It looked at her. She knows it's coming back. Materia has two real daughters now, she loves them, so it's all very clear. One novena gives way to another, she logs miles along the Stations of the Cross, meditates upon the Mysteries-- Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious--of the rosary. Gains partial indulgences, does not hope to gain a plenary indulgence, being never free from attachment to sin despite frequent confessions.
  The beautiful eight-foot Mary with her blue robe and sweet sorrowful face has been moved from Lingan to New Waterford's newly built Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, and there, in her own grotto, she presides with her Holy Infant and serpent.
  In the cool darkness, sweet chafing incense faint upon the air, Materia kneels at Our
 
Lady's feet and prays that James be kept free of his demon for as long as possible. She prays to the demon. And lights another candle for it.

  It's a freak spring, so hot Materia can hardly move; she's huge. What can be in there, wonders James. Looks like she's incubating a twelve-inch cannonball. Nonetheless, she walks to church every morning with her two children in Kathleen's old English pram. Mrs. MacIsaac watches her inch by the drugstore window and worries for her: no one should be that close to God. Mr. MacIsaac beckons her in for raspberry soda. Materia declines, everything makes her queasy, but the little ones drink till they sport pink mustaches.
  The bigger she gets, the harder she prays, for James has once again ceased to come near her, and Kathleen grows lovelier and more careless every day. Materia watches their heads mutually inclined over a sum on a slate; sees Kathleen prance before him in her newest frock. Watches his face when the girl sings just for him.
  Swamped in flesh, Materia can't seem to get a clear deep breath. By June she's sleeping on the kitchen cot, no more stairs. This baby is sapping the life out of her--no more spot-checks on her husband and daughter, not at this rate.
  She hasn't a thing to fit her anymore so she takes three old dresses and cuts them into one: rosebud print in front, green taffeta sides and plaid back. She spends a comfortable day but when James comes home it's "What in the name of God have you got on?"
  She asks him for money. She buys a remaindered bolt of crazy floral calico and, with the help of Mrs. Luvovitz, fashions three roomy dresses. Mrs. Luvovitz offers her several yards of pale blue muslin instead, but Materia declines. She likes the flowers. James shakes his head but doesn't comment.
  Materia's always murmuring these days, her lips constantly moving whether she's mending a sock or changing a nappy. Worst, while making her glacial way through town to church.
  "Don't be traipsing up Plummer Avenue nattering to yourself, woman."
 
  "I not talking to myself."
  "Then who're you talking to?"
  "Mary."
  Jesus Murphy.

  Materia sees the demon grinning at her again from the mouth of its furnace. Night and day she secretes and spins a gauzy shroud of prayer in which she swaddles Kathleen. She sees the body of her daughter cocooned, suspended, green eyes open. But no one can spin forever, and cocoons must yield, whether to release a butterfly or a meal. What has she left to sacrifice? She offered up her music long ago. She would mortify her flesh, but that might harm her unborn child. She has no vanity left to mortify, so she offers up her fat, her shabby shifts, her curly hair gone thin. But the demon isn't satisfied.
  In the cool dark of Mount Carmel Church, Materia looks into the narrow green face of the serpent and makes the sign of the cross. Beside her kneels tiny Mercedes, little white-gloved hands folded around her very own rosary beads. Behind them baby Frances crawls beneath the pews, trailing her dress in the dust, finding shiny things. Materia fixes on the serpent's red eyes and bargains: if the demon will limit itself to one daughter, Materia will allow it to have Kathleen when the time comes. The demon grins. Agrees.
  Then Materia looks up into the serene alabaster face of Our Lady and asks her to slow the demon down. Materia recites the Memorare: "Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help or sought your intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to you I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful; O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy hear and answer me. Amen."

  Our Lady will think of something. Merciful are her ways.

      The Third Secret of Fatima

  "I wonder," observed Emma, "whether well educated Romanists really believe in all the
 
strange miracles which are said to have been worked by their saints."
    CLAUDIA, BY A.L.O.E.

  July is sweltering. They've vegetables enough to feed an army. The scarecrow simmers in James's old pit boots and Materia's motley dress of rosebuds, taffeta and plaid, the fedora angled on its blank head as always. If you've ever stuck your hand inside a haystack and pulled it out again as though from a hot oven, then you know what straw can do. Pete heats up quietly. James waters the garden from the creek. Materia fills jar upon jar with preserves, labeling them "Summer 1914."
  James doesn't go to the baseball game on August 3, so he misses all the excitement of New Waterford's victory over Sydney, but he'll read about it on the front page of the Post next day. James has enough to keep himself busy, what with his job, the garden and his daughter. That's why he doesn't go to ball games, or sit down to politics in front of MacIsaac's store or a deck of cards in back. In this way, he foils the efforts of most of New Waterford never to let him forget that once a scab, always a scab.
  James strolls up Plummer Avenue on his way to buy the paper. He no longer takes the cart, for why shouldn't he walk through this town? He lived here before there even was a town, before there was a coal company or a single miner.
  From a block away you might think James was walking on water, but it's just the shimmer of the cinders. Nothing is stirring this afternoon, certainly not a breeze. Those who have not taken refuge at the shore sit motionless on their front stoops, feet in buckets of ice water. For once it's a good day to be underground.
  James is dressed, as usual, like a gentleman. Only a beast or an imperfectly civilized man reacts blindly to the vicissitudes of nature. Let the semiliterate masses strip to their undershirts, and behold the crux of their problem right there. So he strolls coolly into town. Cucumber in a woollen suit.
  He buys the Post at MacIsaac's, where a couple of old-timers sit blinking occasionally. MacIsaac is sound asleep behind the cash.
 
James drops his coins on the counter and, glancing at the headline as he leaves the store, can't suppress a pang of civic pride at his town's big baseball win. The old fellers watch him go, then break their wilted silence to speculate as to what qualifications might render a man insensible to scorching heat.
  At the corner of Seventh Street an old West Indian woman rings a bell, selling oranges from a handcart. Atop her pyramid of fruit is set a sample of her wares split open. Blood-red juices. James buys one.
  The sun has begun to set, the cool balm of evening coming on. Lilacs relax and the air is full of blue perfume. A dog barks, resurrected from the heat, and someone has struck up a strathspey on the fiddle, it being still too warm for a reel. James turns onto Water Street in time to see Leo Taylor pull up in front of the house in his buggy. Kathleen is home from her rehearsal. She waits while Taylor hops out and lets down the step for her. She descends from the buggy with the ease of a born aristocrat. Taylor says not a word and neither does Kathleen, nor does she look at him. It's moments like this that James savors. The sun basking in the west, blessing this island with rare rose and amber hues--it's all of life in a moment like this. God in His Heaven, and I in mine.
  Kathleen sees James and runs to him as though she were suddenly seven years old again, breaking one spell to cast another. She's so excited, so nervous, "I could puke!"
  "Some of the best singers puke before every show," James tells her.
  She laughs, delighted and disgusted, frisking him for the treat she knows he'll have. Got it!--an orange hidden in the newspaper.
  She's been practicing for weeks. Tonight she will sing publicly before a paying audience for the first time. Just at the Lyceum in Sydney. Just with amateurs and an audience of locals. But all the same. A performance is a performance.
  "Always sing like you're at the Metropolitan Opera," says James. "Sing like you're at
La Scala and never forget your public." They're not calling it a debut. But it is a first, in its way. And they're both beside themselves with nerves.
 
  That night:
                                  
       THE ORPHEUS SOCIETY
        OF SYDNEY PRESENTS

       Elegant Special Scenery
     Wonderful Mechanical Devices Mysterious Electrical Effects
     In a very meritorious production of

     Great Moments from Grand Opera

  Don Juan disappears in a blaze of flashpots, dragged to hell by a statue. Silence. Applause. "Bravo!" "Encore!" "Blow 'er sky high, b'y!" The Lyceum is packed, standing room only. They've seen Tosca skewer Scarpia, then immediately leap into a void upstage. Seville has given way to Nagasaki, women have sleepwalked, been entombed in Egypt and brown body paint, stabbed themselves on their wedding day, and gone mad. Just the high points. INTERMISSION. Fans revolve in the vaulted ceiling, where leafy bowers and painted youths droop beside nymph-infested ponds. Below, spectators are happily abuzz as they unstick themselves from wooden seats and head for the lobby, where tea is served with date squares and little Union Jacks.
  James stays put, his face shiny with impatience and anxiety, his stomach half turned by the past hour of grotesque huffing and straining on the tiny stage. Sister Saint Cecilia places a hand on his sleeve, but he doesn't notice. She rises and rustles off for a cuppa, thinking it's too bad and even a little odd that the girl's mother can't be here tonight--she had looked forward to meeting Mrs. Piper at last, and congratulating her on such a talented daughter. James is feeling badly in need of air but he's frozen in his seat. He has no wish to mingle and hear the effusions of the benighted throng. Kathleen is on after the intermission.
  Unseen by James, a dark little round woman with a gray bun slips into the back of the hall with a tall young black woman. Mrs. Mahmoud is here because Benny made a delivery this morning. All these years, she has been able to resist waiting outside Holy Angels to get a look at Kathleen. She has managed never to send a
 
note or a word via Benny to her daughter. But Mrs. Mahmoud has come here tonight because she needs to hear her granddaughter sing. And Teresa, her maid, was happy to accompany her, enjoying as she does, refined entertainment.
  "Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats for the second act." The audience rhubarbs back in--the upper crust of Sydney plus quite a few music lovers. The Sydney Symphonette tunes up. The house lights come down. The stage manager puts a taper to the footlights. The curtain rises. A courtyard. A midnight moon. A fountain. Ivy and climbing roses. A cardboard cat with eyes that open and shut, and one working paw--James is irritated, we're here for the music, not cheap theatrics. A man with a hump and a jester's hat of bells limps importantly onto the stage. The blood recedes from James's hands as he waits, every sinew in his body rapt and wrought like the strings on the first violin.
  The orchestra sees her first. Then she appears from behind the painted jet of water. Incandescent. Kathleen. In a flowing white gown, her undone hair a halo of fire. James sits forward slightly--stop, stop, stop everyone and just look. Before you listen. You up there in the jingling hat, be still.
  Rigoletto cries, "Figlia!" She flies into his arms; "Mio padre!" Father and daughter embrace. They weep, pledge their love, she asks what his real name is--"I am your father, let that suffice."
  She asks who her mother was and what became of her.
  (Con effusione) "She died."
  "Oh Father, what great sorrow--quanto dolor--can cause such bitter tears?" But he can't tell her anything, he loves her too much. So much that he keeps her locked up here--
  "You must never go out."
  "I go out only to church."
  "Good."
  --so much that he'll put her in a bag and stab her by mistake (Orror!)--but that comes later. For now:

"Quanto affetto! Quali cure! che temete, padre mio?
Lass@u in cielo presso Dio,
 
veglia un angiol protettor. ..."
                                  
  With the first notes a frisson runs through the house; hairs spring to attention on napes of necks; erectile tissues stir unbidden beneath pearl-studded shirt fronts and matronly bodices, and within the farthest folds of nuns' habits. Two things can inspire such a shiver: a beautiful voice, and someone walking on your grave. But only the former can allow you to share the shiver with a packed house.
  As the song takes wing, the Lyceum disappears and the heat melts away. James cannot suppress his tears. At first he's self-conscious, then he notices other people are wiping their eyes. It's nothing to do with the words, which are in a foreign language, or the story, which most people don't know. It's because a real and beautiful voice delicately rends the chest, discovers the heart, and holds it beating against a stainless edge until you long to be pierced utterly. For the voice is everything you do not remember. Everything you should not be able to live without and yet, tragically, do.

"... Da noi toglie le sventure di mia madre il priego santo; non fia mai divelto o franto questo a voi diletto fior."

  The cavatina comes to an end, a simple song. There is a silence in the hall, full of the peace that can follow music and allow you to forget for a moment your mortal enemies, flesh and time.
  The curtain falls. Applause. James releases Sister Saint Cecilia's hand.
"I'm sorry, sister."
  She smiles, testing discreetly the harmony of twenty-seven compressed bones.
  The baritone in the hunchback suit waddles out and bows deeply with all the humility of haute ham but James pays him no mind--here she comes! The applause soars. "Brava!" cries the crowd, "Bravissima!" "Atta girl!"
The audience rises to its feet. She curtsies, poised, dignified. James has never been so proud. For all his boyhood ambitions he never could have dreamed of this, of her, a gift of such magnificence. She belongs to the world, she's almost gone, he knows that and does not begrudge it, he applauds with the rest. The
 
baritone takes her hand, kisses it--foolish lardass, get out of the way--any second the stagehand will bring out the roses James has arranged, he can't wait to see her face-- she's being pelted with daisies--James swivels in his chair, intending to spot the culprit, and instead looks straight into the eyes of his estranged mother-in-law. Teresa, the maid, sees the avid white face with the boy-blue eyes and bird-of-prey bones and wonders, who is he to be staring at Mrs. Mahmoud?
  Meantime, the boy who fired the daisies is running toward the stage, a black haired scallywag barely out of knickerbockers. The house is still applauding. James turns to the front to see the boy vault onto the stage and kiss his daughter on the cheek. An uproar, a laugh, more applause; the youth turns pink, drops to his knees, laughing, worshipping. She knights him with a daisy, James is on his way down the aisle, going to put a stop to this, when "Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your urgent attention, please!"
  Clanging a handbell at the back of the hall, it's gray Mr. Foss, head of the Orpheus Society. James stops in his tracks halfway through the brass section. The roar of the crowd dies. All eyes are on Foss, who clears his narrow throat and, with a reedy dignity befitting hope and glory, announces, "The offices of the Sydney Post have just received a cable from the provincial parliament in Halifax. Today, Great Britain declared war on Germany. Canada will heed the call of the Mother Country in her hour of need. Ladies and gentlemen. We are at war."
  Two minutes of silence will come four years later, but for now it's a dotted-quarter-note rest broken by the boy on stage, who springs to his feet con spirito, hurls three cheers into the air followed by a handful of petals. The Sydney Symphonette strikes up
"God Save the King." The audience sings. James reaches for the lip of the stage to steady it, for it's suddenly gone a little lopsided.

  Late that night, twelve hours into The War, Kathleen sits at her vanity, brushing her hair before the big oval looking-glass. She is not sleepy, how could she be? Tonight she sang. The
 
world will never be the same.
  Who is that in the glass? She sees herself for the first time. She doesn't require soft light, not at her age, not with her looks, so the effect of three candles is excessively ravishing. Her hair sparks at every brush stroke. The candlelight carves a grotto in the gloom around her. The mirror is a sacred pool, in it she sees the future: her lips swollen with kissing, eyes caressing, come with me to my home beneath the sea and I will love you.
  She unbuttons her nightgown. My beautiful throat. Bares a white shoulder, ohh. Parts the fabric to reveal her breasts, sailor take warning. Her image floating just beneath the twilight surface, tempting herself overboard.
  She hovers her hand above a nipple that gathers and pleats to a point seeking heat. Kisses her palm with one eye on the mirror. Again, this time with her tongue. Experiments with the creation of cleavage. Arranges her hair: Gibson girl, milkmaid, madwoman, dryad. And leaves it there, spilling over her shoulders.
  It's a self-portrait and the artist is in love.
  Her mother has warned her against gazing too long into a mirror. If you like too well what you see there, the devil will appear behind you. This has always worried Kathleen in spite of the fact she knows it to be nonsense, so she has never lingered. But tonight she feels brazen. Prepared to test the theory.
  She smiles at herself. And gets stuck. Can't move. Can't look away or break the smile tightening to a grin on her face until she seems to be mocking herself. That's when she sees him. Pete. In the shadows behind her. His smooth stuffed head. His hat. His no ears. His no face. She whimpers. Pete watches,
Hello there. She can't find her voice, is this a dream? In a wi/l tone, Hello little girl. His no mouth, Hello.
  She explodes from the sateen stool with a cry, flies blindly through the room, through Pete for all she knows, crashes out her door, across the hall, screaming like an incoming shell to the room where her father sleeps alone. She lands heavily on his bed sobbing, "I want to sleep with you tonight!"
  He's bolt upright, prepared to kill an
 
intruder, but his fists turn to hands just in time to seize her shoulders. She's shaking.
  "Shshsh," he says.
  Carefully, through the darkness, he strokes her face. His thumb grazes her lips. "Hush now." His hand slips round the warm back of her neck, "Hush my darling." He kisses her cheek, the warm scent of her--he gets out of bed. Takes her briskly by the hand, "Come on, me old son," quick march down to the kitchen, on with the electric light. In her cot, Materia is already awake. "A bad dream, that's all, go back to sleep, missus." Hot milk with honey, "That'll fix you up, old buddy."
  Kathleen sips and calms down while he reads the paper and Materia stares at the yellowing linoleum. She'll strip the wax tomorrow.
  Back upstairs, he drags her mattress into the nursery room, where Frances and Mercedes sleep curled in their crib. Kathleen looks down at her sisters and feels her first rush of love for them, sweet bundles of babies' breath and milky dreams. She leans down to kiss them. When she rises, a lock of her hair is twined in Frances's fist. Gently she opens the tiny hand and tucks it under the covers.
  Kathleen snuggles into her own bed on the floor and says to her father, "Don't go."
  James says, "I'll be right here," and places his chair near the door, where he watches her till she falls asleep. Then he goes back to his own room and locks the door.
  The next day, James outsmarts the demon for the second time. He enlists.

  When James tells Materia that he has enlisted, she makes the sign of the cross. Oh no, he thinks, and tells her firmly, "It's no good asking me not to go, I've already joined up." She goes straight to church. James shakes his head. She might as well pray to the Kaiser for all the good it'll do. He's going, it's done.
  Materia arrives at Mount Carmel and hurries over to Mary's grotto. There she prostrates herself as best she can, what with her unborn cargo, and gives thanks to Our Lady for sending The War.
 
 Moving Picture

  James decides it can't do any harm to carry a photo of Kathleen with him to the war. He gets one of Wheeler's boys to come out to New Waterford. He wants to remember her in her own home setting, not in a corpselike tableau against a backdrop of faux antiquity. Lifelike. Like her.
  After school on August 7, Wheeler's assistant arrives with his contraption piled in Leo Taylor's buggy, between himself and Kathleen.
  "Set 'er up out here," says James, "in front of the house, it's such a beautiful day."
  The photographer peers through the circle of his thumb and forefinger at Kathleen standing motionless on the veranda with her hands folded and her feet in fifth position.
  "That's lovely, Miss Piper, just lovely."
  As Taylor unloads the buggy, James comes up and tells him quietly, "From now on, Taylor, any male passengers ride up front with you."
  "Yes sir."
  Taylor carries the boxy camera across the yard, its long hood trailing "like the severed head of a nun," thinks Kathleen, pleased with her own ghoulishness. The photographer arcs around her, finding just the right angle, as Taylor follows with the equipment. Kathleen is still in her Holy Angels uniform. James has told her not to bother changing.
  "Beautiful, now just hold that pose, Miss Piper."
  The photographer spears the tripod into the earth and disappears under the camera skirts. Taylor tilts a large black card above the lens. Everyone waits. Kathleen doesn't move a muscle until snap.
  "Miss Piper, I'm afraid I must ask you to remain still."
  "Sorry, I didn't know you were going to take it."
  "Do you need to stretch again?" "No."
  Kathleen folds her hands once more and smiles. The photographer cranks the lens for
 
what seems like forever. Kathleen mutters out the corner of her mouth, "Take the picture," just as snap--
  "Miss Piper, please."
  "Sorry, I'm sorry, I won't move this time."
  Demure smile, eyes turning glassy, an eternity passes; her mind wanders, she pictures the geography teacher, Sister Saint Monica, without her veil, is she bald underneath? Do nuns go to the toilet? Kathleen scratches her nose just as snap.
  The photographer pops his head out from under the hood, "It's not a motion camera, Miss Piper."
  James catches Kathleen's eye and winks. She grins. The photographer huddles once more behind the camera, "That's nice, Miss Piper, that's lovely, one ... two ... three ..."
  James sneaks up behind the camera and pulls a cross-eyed face at Kathleen. She flops forward, hands on her knees, laughing into the camera, "Daddy!"--while at the same instant Materia appears in the window behind her and waves --snap. Through the lens, Materia's hand fractures into light, framing Kathleen's blur of hair. Materia must be holding something shiny.
  "I give up!" The photographer collapses his tripod. "You don't have to pay me, Mr. Piper, except for the fillum, I got exactly nothing."
  "Print up the last one, b'y, I'll pay you."
  Leo Taylor packs the equipment back into his buggy. He's a bit surprised. He has never seen Mr. Piper anything but stern. Leo has always sensed something about Mr. Piper-- the thing you sense about certain dogs. Best to avoid their eye, don't make them nervous with sudden moves. And yet here's Mr. Piper, high-jinksing with his daughter just as though he were her brother or her beau.
  James and Kathleen are still laughing as the buggy rolls off in a cloud of sepia and Materia raps on the window with the scissors.
  "Supper," says James.
  "What're we having?" Kathleen asks. "Steak and kidney pie."
  "Yuck."
  He ruffles her head and they go inside.

                                  
                Limbo

  The child was not right from the start. First of all, it hardly cried. Made a sound like a little wet kitten. So maybe it was just as well. The tragic part was that neither Materia nor James nor even Mrs. Luvovitz knew to baptize it in time; how could they? There was nothing out and out wrong with it, it was even a big child. Full term, born the day after Kathleen got her picture taken. Did Materia weaken it when she prostrated herself at the plaster feet of Mary a few days ago? Seems fanciful to think so. And a tad blasphemous. No, it was a big child with a good strong heartbeat and it lived three days, then died, no one knows why. Crib death. It just happens, children stop, why? It's a mystery. As though they arrive, look around with their little blind eyes and decide not to stay.
  Materia had called it Lily but it can't be said to have been truly named; it was unbaptized and therefore no one, and therefore incinerated. James took it, wrapped in a sheet inside an orange crate--he was a little dazed--to the double company house on King Street that served as a hospital.
  Burial was not an option. Mourning was not an option. This was the other Lily, before the Lily who would live to be twice baptized, as though to make up for the first. Other Lily.
  What you do after a baby like this is get over it. Don't mope, it wasn't meant to be. Don't pray, prayers don't reach limbo. Have faith, God had a reason. To test you, most likely. God never sends us more than we can bear. Offer it up. Keep in mind it was another girl.
  Materia gets on with it. Cleans the house in the night, bumping and scouring from pool to pool of kerosene light till the dawn reeks of lye and she begins to bake and bake and bake. Who's going to eat all this? She takes it over to the Luvovitzes; Abe and Rudy are teenagers now, big boys with bottomless stomachs. Materia loves to watch them eat--beautiful healthy boys, winking at their mother, towering over her, devoted to her. Good sons.
  Mercedes and Frances are disappointed. Bewildered. Their new sister was there and then she
 
wasn't. Kathleen is angry; babies shouldn't die.
  "Well, what was wrong with it?"
  "We don't know," says James.
  "That's a stupid rotten answer."
  "Life is sometimes rotten and stupid." James prides himself on always telling her the truth.
  "Not for me it won't be."
  "No, not for you."
  What upsets Kathleen most is the blank face on her mother. A baby factory. Insensate. My life will not be like that.
  James doesn't dwell on it. He feels sorry for the thing, but it's just as well not to have another mouth to feed. And Materia has bounced back remarkably. Like a heifer. He tries not to think it. Trouble is, she still looks pregnant. She'll be slim again by the time I get back from the war.
  But Materia will look pregnant from now on. People will always assume she's six or seven months. This will come in handy.

  James joins the 94th Victoria Regiment Argyll Highlanders. His captain speaks Gaelic, as does eighty percent of the unit. James volunteers immediately for overseas duty, glad of any training that gets him away from home. Bayonet fighting at the Wellington Barracks in Halifax: rushing at bags bleeding sand, "under and up, ladies, under and up! You're caught in his ribcage!" A British sergeant teaches them how to dig immaculate trenches, neatly sandbagged: "Not too deep, lads, we ain't stopping long!"--just long enough for a bit of a kip, then it's over the top with the Hun on the run. James is among the older men there. He doesn't fraternize, he doesn't care about King George nor does he have anything against the Kaiser. He counts the days till he's overseas. "Under and up, ladies, under and up!"
  Fifty years of European peace have generated exuberance on all sides. A lot of horses stand ready to gallop across Europe in two directions. Cape Breton has joined up in droves, despite the fact that over the past twenty-five years the Canadian army has spent more time guarding the property of the Dominion Coal Company than it has fighting. But the
 
recruiters have been eloquent--"poor little Belgium, the bloodthirsty Boche"-- the mines have been slow and what boy doesn't long to be a soldier? The fact that friends will get to serve side by side is also very persuasive-- whole towns in the same stretch of trench. Everyone is afraid that "she'll be all over by Christmas." James hopes the war will last two years. That way Kathleen will be old enough to leave home when he returns. If he returns.
  James finishes basic training and takes up home defense duties. All through the fall, he and the rest of the 94th patrol the coast in a state of frustrated suspense, terribly worried lest the war should end before they get over there. They become known as the blueberry soldiers, because there's not a lot else for them to do besides pick blueberries and keep their eyes peeled for a German ghost ship. James eats at home, but sleeps with two other soldiers in a shack on the beach at Lingan. Ready, Aye, Ready.
  Eventually, James is transferred to the Cape Breton Highlanders 85th Overseas Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He is issued a Ross rifle. It's a good thing there's a knife attached to its barrel --no one knows yet just how far the Ross rifle's efficiency in a field of North American rabbits outstrips its performance in European mud. Along with sixty-five pounds of kit, James is also issued a khaki tunic, a leather battle kilt, a blond and black horsehair sporran, a dress kilt of bright Macdonald tartan and a beret with a red tassel. The Germans will be sure to see him coming. And with the regimental pipers first over the top, the Germans will be sure to hear them. Bagpipes have a liquefying effect on the bowels of the enemy, and bare knees in battle strike the fear of the fanatical. The Germans will come to call the Highland regiments "die Damen von H@olle"--the ladies from hell.
  Finally, one day in December 1914,
James stands in the drive while Taylor heaves his duffel bag into the buggy waiting to take him to the docks in Sydney. It's snowing and James feels the unaccustomed bite of winter on his knees. He knows he is in the proud dress of his ancestors but he sorely misses
 
his trousers. Materia can't help but think how handsome he looks. James pats them all on the head. Frances tickles his knee, Mercedes offers him her soggy cookie, Kathleen throws her arms around him, can't stop herself crying, she never cries, she's not a sissy. She clings, he tries to disengage.
  "Be a good soldier now, look after your mother." "No!"
  "That's enough now, shshsh. ..."
  But she runs to the house, ramming open the door --Daddy, my daddy is going away, he might be killed, or drowned before he even gets there-- up the stairs two at a time--and he's leaving me here with this horrible woman! Into her room, avoiding the mirror, slamming the door, locking it.
  "G'bye fellas, say a prayer for your old dad."
  He knows Materia will pray, she'll pray her fool head off.

  He's right, she does. She prays so hard that her head really does seem to get a little wobbly. She prays he'll be killed quickly and painlessly in Flanders.

               Over Here

  With James gone, Materia comes to life. She takes pleasure in her little ones--Mercedes is such a good girl and Frances is a clown. Kathleen keeps up a life of her own, staying late at school to train with Sister Saint Cecilia or to practice with the choir, solos of course. When she's home she's impossible, but at least she's out of harm's way, inshallah.
  What to feed her is a constant conundrum. Nothing satisfies. She rolls her eyes, sighs ostentatiously, flounces from the room. Materia falls back on James's old standby of toasted cheese, slicing it daintily into four, placing it before her, "SaHteyn."
  "Mother! English, please."
  Kathleen, Mercedes and Frances share the impression that their mother doesn't speak much English. This didn't used to be true, but it has come somewhat to pass simply because Materia doesn't speak English much. Forwith whom would she converse in English? Not her husband. And Mrs.
 
Luvovitz has always been mercifully undemanding of Materia in that regard, their friendship having revolved around food, children, the old Yiddish songbook. Materia has been content just to sit at Mrs. Luvovitz's kitchen table and listen to the older woman hold forth on what's what.
  Prepositions were the first to fall away, then adverbs crumbled, along with whole clauses, until Materia was left with only the most stolid verbs and nouns.
  The difference between Kathleen and the younger girls is that Materia speaks plenty with Mercedes and Frances--although she has lost some of her mother tongue too, through disuse, all but the indelible language of her own earliest memories. Thus Materia and her two younger daughters speak the Arabic of children--of food, endearments and storytelling. Ya aa'yni, te'berini.
  Mercedes and Frances understand that Arabic is something just between them and Mumma. There are many Arabic-speakers in Cape Breton by now, but the little sisters think they and their mother are the only ones, outside the mysterious population of that far-off place called the Old Country. A place better than any on earth, but a place you are nonetheless lucky to have escaped,
  "Why?"
  "Because of the Turks."
  "Oh."
  A place where everyone speaks the Piper girls' private at-home language right out in the open, and everyone looks like their mother.
  "Tell us about the Old Country again, Mumma."
  On the kitchen cot, before Kathleen gets home, they sink into Materia's soft body, which provides a pillow for each head, her plushy smell of fresh wet bread and oil, a pot of bezzella and roz with lamb on the stove, the lid buzzing sleepily. Outside, the winter drizzle blurs the window.
  "Lebanon is the most beautiful place in the world. There are gentle breezes, it's always warm there. The buildings are white, they sparkle in the sun like diamonds and the sea is crystal-blue. Lebanon is the Pearl of the Orient. And Beirut, where I was born, is the Paris of the Middle East."
  "Can we go live there?"
 
  "No." You were lucky to be born on this damp gray rock in the Atlantic, beautiful in its own mournful way.
  "Because of the Turks?"
  "Yes."
  This island, familiar to famished Irish and gnarly-kneed Scots who had been replaced by sheep in their Old Country.
  "Mumma, what's Turkish delight?" "It's nasty."
  "Oh."
  Cape Breton Island is not a pearl-- scratch anywhere and you'll find coal--but someday, millions of years from now, it may be a diamond. Cape Breton Diamond.
  "Mumma, tell us about Jitdy and Sitdy again."
  "Your jitdy was my daddy. He and my mother, your sitdy, came here with nothing and they worked very hard. They had many children and they prospered."
  "Why didn't they stay?"
  "They missed the Old Country." "Someday we'll go see them, eh."
  "When you're a grown woman with children of your own, you can go there."
  "Mumma, tell us about the good Muslin lady again."
  "Muslim."
  "Muslim."
  "She was a good woman. Her name was Mahmoud. Many years ago, when your jitdy was a baby, the Turks came to his village in the Old Country. They were looking for Christian babies to kill. The Mahmoud woman took your jitdy and put him among her own children. When the Turks came to the door and said, "Are there any Christian babies here?"' she said, "No! All these children are my own." And to convince them, she put your jitdy to her own breast and suckled him. The Turks went away. When he grew up, your jitdy took the Muslim lady's name out of gratitude. Even though he was really a Christian."
  "Oh ... Mumma, can we see the picture?"
  And Materia gets out the picture of her and James in front of the painted Roman arch from that long-ago day at Wheeler's Photographic. Mercedes and Frances pore over the photo: when Mumma and Daddy were young. In Frances's mind,
 
the arch leads sometimes to the Old Country, sometimes to The War.
  "When's Daddy coming home?"
  "Soon. We must pray."

  Materia has heard from her sister Camille. Camille waited outside the Mahmoud kitchen door for the Jewish butcher to finish his weekly cup of tea with her mother. When he came out, Camille handed him a flat square parcel. She asked him to give it to Materia and, without waiting for a reply, hurried away. Benny passed it on to Mrs. Luvovitz, who gave it to Materia. Materia cried when she opened the gift. An Arabic record. Its paper cover bore a watercolor of Beirut by night. She looked inside eagerly for a note-- half-expecting the childish printing of years ago, smiling at the memory even as it hurt her heart; my little Camille, "you're the prettiest of all of us, ya Helwi." But there was only a scrap of brown paper and the words, "I'm married now."
  At least once a week, Materia takes the record from the hope chest, carries Kathleen's gramophone down to the kitchen and winds it up. She aims the brass bloom and places the needle on the spinning wax:
  First the antechamber of snowy static, airlock to another world, then ... open sesame: The deerbeki beats rhythm, ankle bells and finger cymbals prance in, the oud alights and tiptoes, a woodwind uncoils, legless ancestor of the Highland bagpipe, rising reedy to undulate over thick strings thrumming now in unison. It all weaves and pulses into a spongy mesh for the female voice to penetrate-- no words yet, a moan between joy and lament; the orchestra suspends itself below, trembling up at the voice, licorice, liquid, luring, "dance with me before I make love to you later, later, soon."
  Materia gets up and dances the dabke. Her mother taught her this dance, and Materia has taught Frances and Mercedes. The dabke is a continuous series of small lilting steps in quarter-swirls which sway your hips, laze your shoulders back and forth and breeze your arms like treetops over your head. Your hands are supple seaweed, waving on unresisting wrists,
 
encircling, grazing, flirting with each other.
  This dance works best if you are buxom but anyone can do it, it's that kind of dance. And although officially a man is supposed to lead a line of pretty girls, the dabke is for everyone. At weddings, at baptisms, with children, grandmothers, anyone. That's why the eyes are so important. Because the whole point of the dabke is to get up and do it in the center of the gathering, where you acknowledge everyone until you pick out the person you will invite into the dance. Then you lower your arms towards them, hands still weaving to the music, and you lure that person until they get up and join you because they can't refuse. Then they become the center.
  The dabke is all about hips and breeze whereas, if you find yourself at a ceilidh, Celtic step-dancing is all about feet and knees. Both can be danced in a kitchen by anyone.
  The dabke is a big favorite with Frances and Mercedes. They'll do it as long as Materia can hold up, which, in these early days, is a long time. She teaches them a whole bunch of Arabic songs, as well as the way to wail them while dancing. The trick is that the dancing and singing are unrepeatable. Once you know this, you're ready to start learning.
  When the precious record wears out, Frances innovates with a comb and wax paper to approximate the reeds and strings. Far from thinking it a sacrilege, Materia considers it ingenious, and it is.
  Put the shell to your ear. You can hear the Mediterranean. Open the hope chest. You can smell the Old Country.

            Holy Angels

  Perhaps her requirements were too great, or her indulgence for human weakness too small, for her attempts to form a friendship had always ended in disappointment.
    CLAUDIA, BY A.L.O.E.

  Sister Saint Monica's class is decorated with a map of the world, a chart of a volcano in cross-section, a collection of fossils and a color print of her namesake. It hangs above the blackboard. In it, Saint Monica holds a book open on her lap, but she is not reading; she is gazing off, seemingly
 
unaware of another pair of eyes peering up from the book itself, one on each page.
  When she is overcome by boredom, Kathleen's eyes often stray to this picture, it being the one focal point for covert daydreaming not disapproved of by Sister Saint Monica, who is given to impromptu anecdotes on the lives of the saints in amongst lessons on the earth's crust and its chief capitals. The girls all know that the Prairies are the breadbasket of Canada and that Saint Monica was the mother of the greatest of all Church fathers, Saint Augustine. In his youth, Augustine lived in sin with a heathen African woman. His mother prayed for his redemption and one day, when Augustine was strolling in a garden, he heard a child's voice sing out, "Take it, read it!" It was the Bible talking. Augustine deserted his African concubine, converted to Christianity and became the scourge of fornicators. And Rangoon is the capital of Burma.
  This afternoon, however, Kathleen's eyes are not on Saint Monica's picture. Kathleen is far far away in the English countryside, where she lives with her widowed father in a manor house-- "Kathleen!"
  Kathleen jolts at her desk and looks up into Sister Saint Monica's towering wimple.
  "Yes, sister?"
  "What could possibly be more engrossing than the formation of glacial moraine?" Sister Saint Monica does not wait for an answer, but seizes Kathleen's novel from behind its camouflage Geography of the British Empire.
  "Claudia, by A.l.o.e. Who"-- scathing tones--"is A.l.o.e.?"
  Kathleen feels herself blush. She looks down. "... A Lady of England."
  "I beg your pardon? You have a voice, don't you?"--titters from the class--"Use it."
  Kathleen looks up,
  "A Lady of England."
  "A Lady of England, what?"
  "A Lady of England, sister."
  Kathleen swallows as Sister Saint Monica scans the page. The other girls start whispering. "Silence!" Silence. Sister dangles the book before Kathleen and commands, "Share a few gems with the class."
 
  Kathleen takes the book and bites her lip.
  "Loudly and clearly. I for one do not wish to miss a single charming word."
  Kathleen starts anywhere, reads, ""I often catch a glimpse--"'"
  Singsong: "I can't hear you, Kathleen." ""--of dark robes--"'"
  "Louder."
  ""--passing across the little open space yonder--"'"
  "Good, continue."
  ""--with something of the longing for forbidden fruit.""
  Giggles on all sides. Kathleen takes a breath, blinks. Continues, ""Doubtless one would get a knowledge of good and evil by being better acquainted with convent life. I suspect more of the evil than of the good ..."" Gasps from the other girls. Kathleen waits, her eyes on the book, please don't make me continue.
  "Continue."
  ""... but Papa forbade me to hold any intercourse whatsoever with the Romanist ladies.""
  Silence, shocked and appalled. Sorrowful sister. "Girls, profit and perpend. This is a piece of unalloyed trash, a libel hatched by a low type of woman whose refusal to publish under her true name testifies to the evil of her intentions. No one but an idiot or a fiend could derive pleasure between its covers; which, Kathleen, are you?"
  Kathleen can't look up. All around her, petty triumph.
  She forces herself to answer, which is, in itself, a defiance. "Neither."
  Sister Saint Monica confiscates the book and swishes away to her desk.
  Sister Saint Monica is the one teacher who does not subscribe to the untouchability of Kathleen Piper. She has been looking for an opportunity to give the girl the gift of mortification, but it hasn't been easy; Kathleen is a model student and it is well nigh impossible to put one's finger on the insolent pride that colors her flawless manners--not to mention the unsubstantiated but unmistakable whiff of immodesty. "I'll teach her," thinks Sister Saint Monica, locking the offending book in her desk.
 
  "She'll learn," thinks Kathleen, staring at the inkwell, hot with humiliation. "She'll be sorry, I'll kill her with a stake in her heart, I'll be famous and she'll be ugly and dead, I'd like to poke out her eye, I'll show her. She's not worth showing." Kathleen bites her lip. Hard. "I'll show them all." She feels her eyes brim up. Don't cry. Don't. Stare. Harder.
  Kathleen glares out the window at the blast furnaces of Dominion Iron and Steel; imagines herself bursting in flames from the stack and soaring all the way to La Scala. Or anywhere, so long as it's far from this one-horse burg, this wretched rock, these horrible girls--
  "I said! Advance to the front." Kathleen starts and looks up. Sister is waiting on her high platform in front of the blackboard--Ice Age, Cretaceous, mass extinction--what now? Kathleen slides from her desk, leaving palm prints on its surface, snagging her woolen stocking on a splinter, and walks the gauntlet of female eyes.
  "Face the class."
  Kathleen obeys. The next thing she knows, she is showered with scrap paper and pencil shavings, and the lights have gone out.
  "Since you're so eager to fill your head with garbage," says Sister Saint Monica, "you may as well have a garbage can on your shoulders."
  Shrieks of laughter.
  "That's enough, girls. Now, Kathleen. Sing for us."
  Kathleen is paralyzed. Blinking into the darkness of the metal can, she feels sweat trickling under her arms, between her legs.
  "You're a "songstress," aren't you?"-- whack!--the yardstick against the side of the can.
  Kathleen is spared the sight of row after row of girls with their hands clamped over their mouths, plugging their noses against hilarity, crossing their legs--"I said sing!"
  Only one song presents itself, perversely, to her mind, and she begins, muffled and echoey: ""I'll take you home again, Kathleen ...""--hysterical laughter, sister gives them free rein--""Across the ocean wild and wide--"'"
  "Louder."
 
  ""To where your heart has ever been--Since first you were my bonny bride""--a bare thread of a voice is all that's available to Kathleen, and it breaks.
  "Continue."
  ""The roses all have left your cheek-- I've watched them fade away and die--Your voice is sad whene'er you speak. And tears bedim your loving eyes. ...""
  Kathleen is finally crying. Helpless, enraged. What's worse is that she hates this song--old-fashioned, sickly sweet, nothing to do with her but her name: ""Oh I will take you back, Kathleen, To where your heart will feel no pain--And when the fields are fresh and green, I'll take you to your home again.""
  The song finished, Kathleen waits in dread to be dismissed--how can she possibly remove this can from her head in front of everyone? She knows she must, eventually. Some day. She has to go to the loo. She feels as though she's wet her pants with shame. Surely that's not possible, surely she would know if she had. ... Kathleen realizes that she's been standing there for some time. And that Sister Saint Monica has resumed the lesson.
  "... And what occasioned the putting aside of Saint Augustine's African concubine?"
  "Oh, sister, sister, I know--"
  "One at a time, girls."
  Kathleen stands motionless until the bell signals lunch and she hears Sister Saint Monica swish out after the last pupil.

  Kathleen has no friends. She has her work and she's grateful for that because friends are simply not to be had at Holy Angels. Not that Kathleen goes out of her way: "Snob." Seeing her up there, anonymous, with a green metal garbage can for a head, hiding that conceited face--why do people think she's so pretty, her hair is horrible, it's red. That's all it is. Not "auburn," not "strawberry blond," red. Like a demon, like a floozie. Kathleen's ordeal at the hands of Sister Saint Monica soothes a lot of badly ruffled feathers.
  The truth is, Kathleen has no idea how to go about making a friend. She has been trained to live for that glorious place, the Future. Friends are superfluous. This is reinforced by the tacit understanding that she is not to bring anyone home.
 
Something to do with Mumma. She and Daddy would never say it, but they both know it.
  Other girls spend nights at each other's homes, tucked in together talking till dawn. Kathleen overhears them whispering in the lavatory. She never finds out that Daddy would not let her spend a night at a friend's house, because she is never invited. James is planning to send her all the way to Italy by herself, but that's different. That's Life. The other is Nonsense. And who knows what another girl's father might get into his head? Kathleen is chaperoned every moment but she does not see it that way. Freedom consists of being insulated from the envy and ignorance of the unimportant people who temporarily surround her.
  Now, after five years at Holy Angels, Kathleen would not know a friend if one sank its teeth into her wrist--which is more or less what she expects from the mass of other girls. She skirts them cautiously, as if they were dangerous wild animals loitering about a common watering hole ready to pounce, you'd never know why or what hit you. She fears them, sharp glinting creatures, and hasn't a clue what they talk about or how they do it. How they merge into gregarious packs. Kathleen is in fact horribly shy, but no one would ever suspect it--after all, she gets up and sings in front of halls full of people.
  What seals Kathleen's fate, however, is the presence of several Mahmoud cousins at Holy Angels. One of them has even been in her class for the past six years. Though Materia hasn't wanted the girls to know anything at all about the shame of family exile, and has concocted her story about "the Old Country," James has told Kathleen the truth: Your mother and I were very young. We eloped. It was wrong, but what was worse was the behavior of the Mahmouds. Barbaric. They are from a part of the world that hasn't seen a moment's peace in hundreds of years, little wonder. You have cousins at Holy Angels. Ignore them. Don't give them the opportunity to snub you. Carry yourself like you own the place.
  The Mahmouds are rich and civic-minded. The Mahmoud girls are popular, each of them a gleaming clear-eyed olive in plaid and perfect English. They have been told that Kathleen is the
 
daughter of the Devil, and have duly accorded her a wide berth. To befriend Kathleen is to offend the Mahmoud girls. You can't have it both ways.
  But is there not one potential friend among the horde, one bookish girl, plain as a rainy Tuesday, or so beautiful as to be unafraid? One who does not travel with the pack, who might come forward as a friend for Kathleen? No. Kathleen's fortress, her tower of creamy white, is steep and terrible. No one comes in or out. Except for her father, Sister Saint Cecilia and a select few minions necessary to support life. Such as her mother. Such as the buggy driver.
  The other girls salve their corrosive envy and allay their fear of Kathleen, the antisocial prodigy, with an invigorating dose of racial hatred:
  "She may be peaches and cream but you should see her mother ... black as the ace of spades, my dear."
  "You know that sort of thing stays in the blood. Evangeline Campbell's mother's cousin knows a girl had a baby in Louisburg? Black as coal, my dear, and the both their families white as snow and blond blond."
  "We should've never let the coloreds into this country in the first place."
  "My uncle saw a colored woman driving a cart with a load of coal, the next morning he was dead."
  "They have a smell, they do." "Kathleen Piper belongs in The Coke Ovens!"
  And they laugh.
  Naturally, this remedy is never indulged when the Mahmoud girls are around. That wouldn't do, they're nice girls and rich rich. The brothers of Holy Angels have already begun lining up.

  No girlfriend has ever made it up to the tower chamber.

             Three Sisters

  Frances has discovered a new game: exploring the mysteries of the teenager, Kathleen. Unfortunately, she is too young to know how to investigate thoroughly without leaving a trace.
  "Come here, you little brat."
 
  Frances peeks out from behind Mercedes with a guilty twinkle in her eye, her hands folded innocently behind her back, and enters Kathleen's boudoir.
  "If you come in here again I'll tell Pete to get after you," says Kathleen, enthroned at her vanity, where she has just discovered the comb where the brush should be and a candy heart gumming up one of her good lace hankies.
  "Who's Pete?" asks Frances. "He's the bodechean and he's going to drag you to hell!"
  Frances laughs. Mercedes's eyes grow round as saucers and she says, "That's not nice."
  "Not you, sweetie." Kathleen holds out her arms and Mercedes approaches. Kathleen pops her onto her knee. "He doesn't get after good little girls. What shall we read?"
  "Water Babies." Mercedes chooses Frances's favorite out of love for her little sister, who doesn't mean to be naughty.
  Kathleen eyes Frances's crooked grin. "Come here, you rascal, you can listen too."
  Frances climbs onto the other knee. The two little girls look at each other and squirm, hands clamped over their mouths, cheeks ballooning with suppressed rapture.
  "Quit wriggling or I'll stick you on a pin and use you for bait in the creek."
  Mercedes composes herself; Frances shrieks with laughter and asks, "Can I play with your hair?"
  "What do you say?"
  "Please."
  "What else?"
  "With a whole bunch of cream and a cherry and fruit and candy."
  "What else?"
  "And a sword and a bug and a worm. And a bare bum!"
  Mercedes says to herself on behalf of Frances, "Sorry dear God." Kathleen laughs and Frances giggles passionately, poised to plunge both hands into the red sea, but Kathleen holds out,
  "What word am I thinking of?" "Lantern."
  "Nope."
  "Stick."
  "Nope."
  "Matchbox."
 
  "No."
  "Teapot."
  "Right."
  "Yay!"
  "Don't pull it or I'll skin you.
"Once upon a time there was a little chimney sweep. ...""
  Kathleen has taken to spending time with her little sisters. At first she does this for Daddy's sake, because she knows that otherwise they get nothing but their mother's barbaric yammer during the day while she's at school--she can smell it hanging in the air when she gets home. But as the schooldays and the war drag along and Kathleen becomes lonelier, she grows to cherish the time with her little sisters every bit as much as they do. Sunday mornings, she allows them to sit on two stools at the threshold of her room--"If I'm in the mood"--and witness her toilette. They sit as still as they can, enthralled, while Kathleen sings the world's greatest songs in her opera voice, and slips on a white cotton blouse over her lace-embroidered petticoat. She turns the cuffs, fashions a Windsor knot in her striped silk tie, and pulls on her tan linen skirt, flared at the ankle--"My bicycling costume," she calls it, although she does not possess a bicycle. Evenings after school, she stands with her arms akimbo at the door to the forbidden chamber, and groans, "Oh all right, you can come in. But not a peep! I'm studying."
  The little girls always cross the threshold with a sense of awe, for Kathleen's room is a temple of sophistication. Its shelves are lined with every girls' book you could ever think of, from Little Women to Anne of Green Gables. Its walls are plastered with pictures of great artists and beautiful underthings cut from magazines.
  There is a picture of a man with wild hair and a flying necktie, pouncing upon the keys of a piano. This is Liszt. Kathleen is in love with Liszt. Kathleen says even his name sounds like a romantic sigh. Mercedes and Frances breathe the name to each other as a kind of all-purpose adjective for everything divine: Jell-O, fresh bed linen, Mumma's molasses cookies, all are wonderfully "Liszt!"
  There is a picture of a beautiful dark woman in a wide hat and an old-fashioned dress cut low, with a rose in her lap. This is
 
Maria Malibran. "La Malibran,"
Kathleen says dramatically, "the greatest singer who ever lived." Kathleen has told Frances and Mercedes the tragic story of how Malibran went out riding on the wildest horse in the stable. She fell, caught her foot in the stirrup and was dragged over stones for a mile. She got up, powdered her cuts and bruises and sang that very night--beautifully, as usual. Then she died of a swollen brain and "she was only twenty-eight." Mercedes always says a little prayer to herself for Malibran, while Frances tries to put the pretty lady in the picture together with the idea of her being dragged with her head bonking along. It's terrible.
  There is a big poster of "the woman of a thousand faces"--although in the poster she has only one. Her name is Eleonora Duse. She has burning dark eyes and piles of black hair. Daddy sent it to Kathleen from England before he went to the Front. Duse is "the greatest actress who ever lived." In the poster, she stands inside the front hall of a nice house. She is wearing an overcoat and her hand is reaching for the doorknob. The poster is for a scandalous play called A Doll's House. Daddy sent it with a letter, "to remind me not to get married and wreck my career," Kathleen has explained. Mercedes can't understand why Kathleen would not want to get married and have babies like Mumma, but Kathleen just snorts, "Marriage is a trap, kiddo. A great big lobster trap."
  Every evening when Kathleen opens her door and grudgingly admits them, Mercedes and Frances wait in obedient silence for five endless minutes, after which Kathleen proclaims her homework finished. Then there are just too many treats to choose from.
  Often all three of them wind up lying on their stomachs on Kathleen's bed, chin in hand, going through a priceless issue of Harper's Bazaar, picking out fashions and accessories "for those in the know."
  "That's me," says Mercedes, and Kathleen reads the description. ""A saucy confection of pale mauve cr@epe de Chine touched up with rosettes of pussy-willow silk.""
  "Chic," says Mercedes wisely.
  "Tr`es chic," says Kathleen.
  "I'm that one." Frances points and Kathleen
 
obliges. ""She lost her head over this good-looking and comfortable pair of corsets from La Resista. The lacy brassiere has the unmistakable Paris hallmark.""
  Frances giggles and echoes, "Brassiere!" Even though there's a war on, there's still plenty of fashion pouring out of Paris--although according to the magazine the designers only keep it up for the sake of their poor seamstresses, who would otherwise be out of a job.
  Kathleen teaches her sisters to mimic the effects of rouge by pinching their cheeks, and of lipstick by mercilessly biting their lips. ""Beauty is a powerful weapon,"" she reads, at once sarcastic and enthralled. ""To Fashion's Throne must the free untrammelled girl be brought for sacrifice.""
  The sisters invariably dine at Sherry's on Fifth Avenue, where Kathleen greets them in a French accent, "Good evening, mesdemoiselles, what would you like? We have Caviar on Toast, Vol au Vent of Sweetbreads, Brandied Peach Tarts and Green Turtle Soup. Or would you prefer Jellied Tongue?"
  It's not all frivolity, however. Kathleen is religious about reading Lady Randolph Churchill's series on the war, By the Simmering Samovar. The sisters all hold their breath when they come upon a picture of a French casino that's been converted to a hospital. No ... Daddy is not there.
  And Kathleen always reads aloud the latest installment of a racy story while the little girls listen, mystified, and gaze at the illustrations over her shoulder: ""Go! You are nothing but a brute!""
  Kathleen eagerly awaits every issue of Harper's Bazaar that Mrs. Foss of the Orpheus Society passes on to her, and she savors them with a combination of delight and disgust. For example, there is one picture that Kathleen has cut out for her wall just in order to remind herself that philistines are not confined to her own hometown--they can even be found amid high society: the photograph is supposedly of the great Geraldine Farrar singing Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera House of New
York. Yet in the foreground sits a boxful of
 
Astors admiring each other's jewelry. It had never before crossed Kathleen's mind that people might go to the Opera out of anything but a passion for opera. "Let that be a lesson," she thinks, vowing, "When I sing, no one will be allowed to look anywhere but at the stage!"
  There always comes a point when Kathleen flings the Harper's Bazaar across the room and declares herself "fed up with frippery and foppery and the silly chits who fill their heads with all that rot!"
  "Rubbish!" Mercedes agrees. "Foolish burn bottoms!" seconds Frances.
  "Frances!"
  Mercedes is always shocked and Kathleen always laughs.
  Then they return hungrily to fairy tales and The Bobbsey Twins.

     Women of Canada Say, "Go!"

I used to walk the sidewalks in Nova Scotia town,
There was a man came down, his face was bronzed and brown,
He told us how King George was calling each to do his share,
He offered us a khaki coat to wear. He told us how the call had gone far over land
  and sea,
And when I heard that speaker's word, I said, "Why, that means me."
    MARCHING SONG OF THE 85THIS OVERSEAS BATTALION, CANADIAN
    EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

  His notes arrive quite regularly, on standard military postcards.

Dear Missus,
  All is well. Do not worry. Love to the girls.
    James.

  Nothing is ever blacked out--James never writes enough to give anything away. Materia's heart leaps at the mail because His Majesty's gratitude and regret come on a card of the same size. She tears open the envelope, looking for the black border, but it's never there.
 
  In spring of '16, Mrs. Luvovitz shows up at Materia's kitchen door with little Ralph in tow. The tables are turned, Mrs. Luvovitz is crying. Here, here, come in, sit down, cuppa tea. She slumps over the kitchen table, Materia shoos Ralph away--he hovers in the door with Mercedes and Frances, who wonder what's wrong with Mrs. Luv. Mrs. Luvovitz reaches out without looking up and clasps Materia's hand. Her boys are going, Abe and Rudy. They thought she'd be proud, they're real Canadians.
  "Don't worry, they gonna be back soon," says Materia.
  For all the papers say there's bound to be a breakthrough any day; the stalemate can't last forever.
  Mrs. Luvovitz blows her nose, scrapes her face with her hanky. "I know, I know, you don't understand, we have"--and crumples once more--"we have family there," her voice creaking upward. "My mother is there--"
  "Your people in Poland, they got no fighting in Poland."
  "Benny's are in Poland, my people are German."
  Materia hugs her while she cries just like a child. Her boys will be fighting their own flesh and blood. The Luvovitzes are real Canadi- ans, and the Feingolds are real Germans.

  Near the River Somme in summer 1916, there are several innovations: Canadians have helmets, and rifles that fire most of the time. Germans have machine guns. July 1 the British plan is this: a million shells to cut the Boche wire. Shoulder your seventy-pound pack as usual. Go over the top. Walk toward the German lines, they'll all be dead by now. Keep walking till you hit Berlin.
  In four and a half hours, fifty thousand Britons and Canadians are shot. That afternoon, the British plan is revised: do everything as before. But this time, run.
  Abe is killed walking. Rudy is killed running.
  Neither of them killed any Germans. Aleihem Ha'Shalom.

July 2, 1916
 
Dear Missus,
  All is well. ... Mrs. Luvovitz never recovers. She functions, has to, she has her youngest son, she has Benny. And there's Materia, a child still really, I remember when I found her on the cliff, what would she do without me? She took the news about the boys very hard. Materia's husband will probably be killed, a blessing, God forgive me, I don't know why but he scares me. Benny says that's prejudice. It isn't. It's superstition. There's something not right, I can't prove it, I can feel it. I may be meshuga, one thing I know, I'll maim my son Ralph before I let him go to a war, I'll nail his feet to the floor.
  It's begun to sink in on two continents. Younger sons are being dragged away from recruiting stations before they can say, "Sixteen, sir, honest." Everywhere, the youngest have suddenly become the eldest.

  None of this is what Materia intended.

  Ypres: gas--at least it kills rats too. Passchendaele: it doesn't matter if you can swim.

Dear Missus,
  I am fine. ...

  Summer of '17, Number 12 Mine, where James worked, explodes. Sixty-five dead. The war has created a boom in the Sydney coalfields. Full employment, lower wages, and strikes forbidden by law, coal being vital to the war effort. Production has been stepped up, airways left shut, gas building up. Number 12 was always bad that way. Materia plays at many funerals, and ponders James's luck and her own stupefying sins.
  To whom can she confess? Not to her dear friend, Mrs. Luvovitz. She tries to tell the priest. "Father forgive me for I have sinned, I brought the war." But he tells her she's guilty only of the sin of pride; "Say the rosary three times and ask God for humility." So Materia goes unabsolved. She visits the cliff every
 
day in her mind and every day she swan-dives off it, weightless for a moment, feeling the slim girl she used to be, then the sudden satisfying impact of the rocks. It's where she belongs, she craves the caress of the violent shore, to come alive like that once more in a clash of stone and then to die. Peace. But she has her little girls, and suicide is the unforgivable sin.
  In the fall of 1917, Our Lady appears to three children in F@atima, Portugal, and tells them three secrets, the third of which remains a Vatican secret to this day. But Materia knows what the third secret was. It was this: "Dear children; I sent the Great War in order to shield, a little longer, the body and soul of Kathleen Piper."

          Dulce et Decorum

Now we wear the feather, the 85th feather, We wear it with pride and joy.
That fake Advertiser, Old Billy the
  Kaiser,
Shall hear from each Bluenose boy.
Where trouble is brewing, our bit we'll be doing, To hammer down Briton's foes,
With the bagpipes a-humming, the 85th coming, From the land where the maple leaf grows.
    85THIS OVERSEAS BATTALION, CEF

  It must mean something, there are so many of us--never have so many sacrificed so much for so little. It must mean something, otherwise there would not be this parade; there would not be this royal inspection, these brassy buttons, these slender wounds in the earth across Europe, these sturdy beams holding back the tide of mud and human tissue, this meticulous network of miniature mines, these lice, these rats, these boots returning unto dust, these toes lying scattered about my feet, like leaves, like fallen teeth.
  James has spent three years in a narrow strip of France and Flanders, dodging snipers in order to collect the dead and comfort the dying. He is not a medic, he just volunteers a lot. Wiring parties, digging parties, reconnaissance parties, one big party. The streamers, fireworks and ticker tape that sent them off are nothing compared to the bright bits of men that sail through the air and festoon the remaining trees here in the land of
 
permanent November. These decorations will stay up for years.
  Chloride of lime to kill the stench, cordite to kill the lice, whale oil to keep the feet from rotting. Fifty-four days at a stretch in the flooded mass grave of the living but he never complains. James has prolonged the lives of so many men that he has been mentioned in dispatches several times. Originally he was recommended for the Victoria Cross, but as the Great Adventure dragged on his brand of "conspicuous gallantry" reflected poorly on the war.
  Once, a wrecked man called him Mummy and clutched at the buttons on James's chest. Nothing was surprising. James let the boy from Saskatchewan suck on one of his brass buttons before dying. The Mother Country.
  The mud between the opposing trenches is known as No Man's Land. This is a reasonable name for a stretch of contested ground that has yet to be won by either side. But James and possibly a number of others along the line have forgotten that this is the origin of the name. The name has come to mean a haunted foggy expanse of silent slime. A limbo--gray, yellow, green, mostly gray, and empty except for the dead. Rats may scamper across it and remain rats. Birds may fly above it and remain birds; they may alight and tear and eat and prick up their heads to stare motionless and beady for a moment before pecking and eating again, and remain birds. But no man may venture into this space between the lines and remain a man. That is the difference. No man may enter, either stealthily on his belly alone, or noisily on two feet racing through glue with a thousand versions of himself firing, falling, on either side as far as the eye can see, and remain a man. It is possible to become a man once more if you make it back behind your line again, but you suspend your humanity for your sojourn in between. That is why the place is called No Man's Land.
  By 1916 James had volunteered so often that other men assumed he had a death wish. Either that or he was protected--by an Angel of Mons, perhaps, or Old Nick. They didn't know whether it was lucky to stick close to James, or if that was asking for the next bullet that missed him by an inch. Before a night raid or a dawn attack, when other men were tucking Bibles into their left breast
 
pockets, kissing love letters or a lucky rat's paw, James was relaxed against a reeky sandbag full of mud and pieces of former men, reading.
  James's first act of "total disregard for his own safety" was in the fall of 1915. Five men had gone out after dark with their bouquets of barbed wire, and four came back, but no one had heard a shot or a shout. That meant the fifth man was out there lost, wandering around in the place of no reference points. German Very lights bloomed in the sky from three directions, adding confusion to danger. Briefly lit, a shattered tree, a sea of craters, corpses interchangeable, now pink, now bronze, now blue. On the western front there is nothing so colorful as the night. James went out after the fifth man. He wasn't a friend, he was just some fella.
  After two hours he found the man walking toward the German line. James brought him in, but he didn't make friends with him or anyone else.
  On Christmas Day 1914, the British and the Germans had laid down their arms, climbed out of their trenches, and walked into No Man's Land. They met halfway between the lines, and exchanged gifts. Not so strange, considering that never before had so many nice men with families and decent jobs volunteered to face each other under arms across distances as brief and static as twenty yards. Such chocolate. Such bully beef. The truce was completely spontaneous and not repeated in anything like those numbers again--somehow people can still get into the Christmas spirit when they've only been mowing each other down with ordinary bullets, but the festivity goes right out of the season once they've gassed each other. Nonetheless, James brought over a gift on the Christmas of 1916.
  At night you tell yourself that the howls and whimpers out there are wild dogs. This gets difficult if one of the dogs starts praying. The night before Christmas, James had already brought in two wounded and he was out looking for another. By the light of a flare he saw two dead stretcher-bearers lying at either end of a stretcher containing a bandaged man--an unusual sight in that the dead were whole. As the flare died, James saw the man on the stretcher stir. He approached but found the man was dead after all--a feast for the rats that had turned him over in the course of their meal. James carried on,
 
blind-man's-buff, listening for any sound that was not a rustling or a gnawing. He stopped and crouched over a whimper. He felt for arms, legs, and guts (if the guts are merely exposed, it's worth picking him up; otherwise, finish him off quietly). This man was in pretty good shape, though unable to walk, and when he answered James's "How ya doin, buddy?" with "Ich will nicht sterben, bitte,"
James picked him up and walked east. When they got close to the German trench, the man cried out to his comrades, "Nicht schiessen, nicht schiessen!" James laid him down within arm's reach of the parapet, turned around and walked back to his own side.
  James could do all this because he had made a bargain with himself: he wouldn't try to get killed, nor would he try to survive. He could do all this because he felt terribly sorry for the men he rescued. They harbored the saddest and most foolish desire of all. The desire to go on living.

         The Bobbseys at Home

  One evening, Kathleen has instructed Mercedes and Frances to play on their own while she finishes a letter to Daddy--"... school is great ... lots of fun. ..." By now she finds their chatter less distracting than their eager silence.
  Frances is at the reins of the covered wagon they've made from Kathleen's bedspread. "When I grow up I'm going to have so much hair and be the boss of everything and I'll be singing and eating candy."
  Mercedes is the pioneer mother with the babies. "Me too, and when I grow up I'm going to the Old Country and visit Sitdy and Jitdy."
  "Me too."
  Kathleen looks up from her letter. "They're not in "the Old Country." What are you talking about?"
  Frances clicks her tongue at the horses, Mercedes comforts the monkey baby and answers, "Yes, because they prospered--"
  "But then they missed the fruits and diamonds--"
  "They darn well live in Sydney," says Kathleen.
 
  Frances blinks and the horses disappear. The babies cool to porcelain and rubber in Mercedes' arms. "... Mumma said--"
  "I don't care what she said, they live in Sydney and they hate us, they're stupid rotten idiots and we're better off without them." Kathleen tosses her pencil onto the desk and stands up. "What shall we read?"
  Frances looks to Mercedes. Mercedes says, "The magazine."
  "No," Kathleen decrees.
  "The Red Shoes."
  Frances enthuses, "Oh yes, and she gets her feet chopped off."
  Mercedes bursts into tears. Then so does Frances.
  "She does not get her feet chopped off," says Kathleen.
  Frances sobs, "She does, she does." Mercedes wails, "She does."
  "Not if I say she doesn't."
  But they are inconsolable, clinging to each other and crying for Mumma.
  "What a couple of sissies, come on, we'll read something else."
  She wipes their noses, hands Frances her hairbrush and settles Mercedes in her lap.
  "Can we sleep with you tonight?" "Oh all right, get in--"
  "Yay!"
  And when they've snuggled down, "Now clam up and listen. The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore--"
  It's wonderful when Kathleen reads because she does all different voices and accents. ""Suah's yo' lib, we do keep a-movin'!" cried Dinah, as she climbed into the big depot wagon. Dinah, the colored maid, had been with the family so long the children called her Dinah Bobbsey, although her real name was Mrs. Sam Johnston.""
  Downstairs, Materia wrings her hands before a big bout of cleaning and baking. She received a telegram today. James is coming home.

                Boots

  On a cold April afternoon in 1917, James got the inspiration for his boot business from a French soldier near Vimy.
 
  The Frenchman wandered skeletal from the fog, his bare feet sucking the yellow muck where James was looking for wounded. The Frenchman drove his thumbs into either side of James's windpipe, slamming him into the slime, holding his head under. Then he went to work on James's boots, slicing the laces. James wrenched up and stuck the man. Luckily no one saw for the fog--the French were our allies.
  From that moment, boots are all James can think about. It's the only thing that will drown the sound of his bayonet scraping between Frenchie's peekaboo ribs, and the sight of him scarecrowing off the end when James managed to shoot free--under and up, ladies, under and up. Boots are what count. More than weapons, food or strategy. We will win because we have more and better boots, boots determine history. Warm dry feet will allow us to go on being killed longer than the enemy. When the enemy's boots wear out, they will no longer be able to run in waves into our machine-gun fire, and they will surrender. I'm going to be ready for the next war by making boots. I'll be rich enough to send my daughter to the conservatory in Halifax for a year, then to anywhere in the world. But not Milan or Salzburg or even London. The Old World is a graveyard. ""Is't not fine to dance and sing, When the bells of death do ring?"'" No, it isn't. The great music will immigrate to the New World. New York. James can smell it. He has a distant cousin there--an old maid with an odd first name ... Giles--that's it--she works with the nuns. Everything is turning out beautifully. Everything's going to be fine. Spit and polish, rise and shine.
  James starts polishing his boots every day, sometimes all day, because often all day is all there is. Between the rips and rotten bits, around his exposed toes, the remains of James's boots positively glow through the perpetual fog. The other men call him "Rudolph."
  It is this habit of the boots that prevents James from yet another tour of duty, although he's volunteered. His superiors determine that he is no longer fit for combat conditions. Sticking someone is perfectly normal in the mud culture. Obsessively polishing a pair of disintegrating boots is not. It's shell-shock. James's superiors do not refer to him as "Rudolph"; they call him "Lady
 
Macbeth."
  Along with an invisible part of himself, James loses a toe. It falls off, painlessly. And is seized and carried away by a rat right before his eyes. If the shell-shock hadn't got him, this thing with the toe would have. So, out of consideration for a man's pride, "shell shock" is not what James's superiors write on his discharge. Officially he is invalided out because of the injury to his foot.
  James is taken out of the drowning pools of Passchendaele and across the Channel to Buckingham Palace, where he is awarded the Distinguished Service Order "for extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy." During the ceremony he looks from people's footwear to their faces and decides whether or not they match.
  He is shipped home to be honorably discharged. No one can know how tired he is. He will be tired for the rest of his life.
  When James sees Halifax Harbour from the deck of the troopship in December 1917, he revises his plans for Kathleen. He'll have to send her straight to New York City. Halifax has been blown up. He doesn't wonder how or why. The war has grazed the edge of Canada, is all.

          The Candy of Strangers

  A war changes people in a number of ways. It either shortcuts you to your very self; or it triggers such variations that you might as well have been a larva, pupating in dampness, darkness and tightly wrapped puttees. Then, providing you don't take flight from a burst shell, you emerge from your khaki cocoon so changed from what you were that you fear you've gone mad, because people at home treat you as though you were someone else. Someone who, through a bizarre coincidence, had the same name, address and blood ties as you, but who must have died in the war. And you have no choice but to live as an impostor because you can't remember who you were before the war. There's a simple but horrible explanation for this: you were born in the war. You slid, slick, bloody and fully formed, out of a trench.
  The Great War was the greatest changer of them all.

  James has one thing in common with the man who
 
marched off to the wars three years before: their daughter, Kathleen. On December 10, 1917, he steps off the train in
Sydney, an unexploded shell.
  He has had a few years' practice being present and absent at the same time so he is able to find his way from Sydney to New Waterford. He walks the nine miles of frosted dirt road in his civvies, his duffel bag over his shoulder, and with each step his mind says, "Sydney, New Waterford. Sydney, New Waterford." To his left is Europe.
  Several people see him enter town and walk down Plummer Avenue. They don't know he is a hero, they just know he has survived when most died --are still dying. James walks up the steps onto his veranda and is able to say hello to his wife as though she were someone he once knew, pat two little girls who squeal and call him Daddy, and avoid the eyes of the one person who is all too real.
  He walks past her into the house and up to the attic. He puts his bayonet in the hope chest. He ignores the military doctor's orders and gets straight to work. He must banish her before he gets used to being alive again.
  Kathleen is worried but tries to be grown up about it: it's not that Daddy doesn't love me anymore, it's that the war was so terrible.
  James builds a shed off to the side of the house, and a workbench to go in it. Christmas comes and goes but he takes no notice, despite the excitement of the little ones, and the smell of baking from the kitchen. Without a word to his wife, and bold as brass, he writes to old Mahmoud and cuts a deal. Mahmoud supplies the Dominion Coal and Steel Company and James will supply Mahmoud. With boots only, but that's a significant product where mines and mills are concerned. Mahmoud will lend James the start-up money and then buy the boots below the wholesale rate he currently pays to ship them from Halifax into his Sydney store. James starts making boots.
  "Daddy?"
  "Yes, Kathleen?"
  "Are you all right?"
  "I'm right as rain."
  "... It's my birthday today."
  "Happy Birthday, old buddy."
 
  "Thank you. Daddy?"
  "Yes?"
  "Would you like me to sing to you?" "I'd love that, my dear, but I've work to do."

  Mahmoud develops a grudging respect for his good-for-nothing son-in-law but draws the line at direct contact with James or the family. Fine with James. They exchange messages via Leo Taylor. James starts to make money.
  He digs out the business cards he collected at Kathleen's recital in Halifax years ago. Makes inquiries. He writes to the chief administrator of the Metropolitan Opera of New York, "Dear Sir: Who, in your expert opinion, would you say is the pre-eminent practitioner in the field of vocal training?" He receives the answer, and sends a lengthy telegram to a man with a German-sounding name in New York City. Receives a reply: "Yes, Herr ---- will see Kathleen in his studio at 64th Street and Central Park West, 10:00 A.m., March 1, 1918."
James writes to his spinster cousin, Giles, in New York, "... and as my mother always spoke highly of you ... Naturally I am prepared to reimburse you for any and all ..."
  The time has come. Kathleen is barely eighteen, but her voice is ready. And cousin Giles has agreed to act as chaperone. Moreover, James no longer deludes himself as to where the girl is likely to be safest.
  Even with the boots, it becomes apparent that this step will be crushing to the family finances. James does not hesitate. He writes to Mahmoud and asks him straight out for money to send the girl to New York.
  The directness of the request startles Mahmoud even more than James's initial business overture. Ensconced in a mauve satin armchair, his slippered feet resting on a cushioned ottoman, Mahmoud squints and reads the note a second time.
  Surrounded as he is by comfortable curves, it is easy to see how angular Mahmoud has become with the years. Business has eroded flesh and sharpened bones; vigilance has contracted the eyes, which are as keen as ever. His hair has
 
thinned to a meticulous steel-gray and two deep lines crease either side of his leather face from cheekbones to jaw. He has grown to resemble his spare wooden chair in the back room of his shop. Only Mrs. Mahmoud looks at him now and sees the tall dark and handsome he used to be.
  Mahmoud glances up from James's letter over to the old accursed piano. The voice comes from the Mahmoud side, of course. All the men and women of his family sing. Born singing. It is a gift from God and apparently God and Mr. Mahmoud have transmitted this gift through Materia --dead to me, she is dead--to the eldest daughter of the enklese bastard. Too bad. She is no granddaughter of mine.
  Mahmoud raises the forefinger of his left hand slightly, and his wife replenishes his teacup.
  In the kitchen, Teresa Taylor chops parsley for tabooleh and wonders why Mr. Mahmoud treats his wife like a maid now that he can afford several real ones. The old standby about the strangeness of white people doesn't really apply here because, although you'd take your life in your hands if you said it, the Mahmouds aren't really white, are they? They're something else. They are somewhat colored. What this means in Nova Scotia at this time is that, for the Mahmouds, the color bar that guards access to most aspects of society tends to be negotiable. It helps that they have money.
  Teresa is a beauty. Although most people in these parts might not think so unless they saw a picture of her in a book about Africa. Everything about Teresa is tall--her face, her eyes especially. Everything about her is fine--her hands dicing tomatoes, her ankles standing, striding between counter, table and sink nine hours a day. Her voice with its trace of Barbados. And beneath her dress, the silver cross she wears that Hector gave her.
  Teresa won't be a maid forever. She is engaged to be married. She squeezes the juice of three lemons and says a little prayer of thanks to Jesus for keeping Hector safe. In 1914 he volunteered to go overseas and fight but the army wouldn't have him: this was a white man's war, they didn't want "a checkerboard army." Hector went into the steel plant instead and swore off wars altogether. Now they can't conscript
 
him because he is in a vital industry. Teresa and Hector are both saving money so that he can go to the United States and study to become an Anglican minister.
  Teresa has known Hector all her life.
When she was ten, their families came here at the same time, moving from a lush island to a stark one, so their daddies could work, first in the mines, then at the mill. Teresa has grown up in The Coke Ovens section of Sydney's Whitney Pier and, despite the ongoing battle with grime from the trains and smokestacks, she wouldn't want to live anywhere else, except New York
City. That's where she and Hector will move once they're married.
  Thus, Teresa does not begrudge a single working hour at the Mahmouds'. And it really isn't a bad job. She likes the food she's learned to prepare for them--this tabooleh, for instance. It makes a nice change from the Anglos and Scotch she has worked for, with their endless meat and potatoes and not a spice in sight. Most of the Mahmouds are very friendly and they know how to throw a party--always singing, with no need of liquor to let go, not like the meat-and-potato set. And Mr. Mahmoud pays well. Teresa has already started buying her trousseau. He expects the best but, unlike most, he's prepared to pay for it--he hasn't forgotten where he came from. Nor has he ever made an improper advance, though he does have a temper. Ask his daughters. In the meantime, Teresa works hard, stays out of his way, and feels sorry for her. Mrs. Mahmoud has everything money can buy--not to mention a devoted family and lots of grandchildren. But she has a private sorrow, too, Teresa can tell.
Teresa drains the water from the cracked wheat the Lebanese call burghul, and folds it into the spiced meat--they're having kibbeh tonight.
  In the big front room, Mr. Mahmoud dozes while his wife, Giselle, looks on. Except for her gray bun, she seems not to have changed at all over the years. The same smooth round face, round arms, soft eyes. She is wearing her moonstone ring and strand of genuine pearls to please her husband. Carefully, she removes the note from his hand and takes it into the kitchen.
  "Teresa. Read please."
  Mrs. Mahmoud has never learned to read English. Teresa reads the letter aloud, then
 
says, "Kathleen Piper. That's the young lady we heard sing at the Lyceum before the war."
  Mrs. Mahmoud nods. "My granddaughter."
  Teresa raises an eyebrow. The girl my little brother ferries to and from school. The princess who has never spoken a single word to him. The one with the voice. Well. "That's your granddaughter, Mrs. Mahmoud?"
  Giselle nods.
  That night in bed, Giselle skillfully enlightens her husband as to his own intentions. In the morning he writes a check. He tells himself that he does it for Giselle. But as he writes the third zero, he reflects upon the future of the family voice. Universally acclaimed. The crowning glory of his success in the New World.

  Only Teresa will do for an errand of such importance, and Mahmoud puts the envelope into her hand, saying, "Get a receipt." Teresa sets out for New Waterford, where she anticipates a rare look at the severed branch of the Mahmoud family tree.
  Materia answers the door. She is wearing a smock. She has a pair of stained scissors in her hand. She's been cutting kidneys for a pie. Little Frances stands peeking out from behind the foliage of her mother's crazy floral print. Materia's gaze has widened over the years, as though she sees more of the world at once than other people do. But although she seems to see more, she does not have the expression of someone who is processing what she sees. She doesn't look, she stares. Now she's staring up at Teresa.
  Teresa recognizes the look of someone who's not all there. Teresa would have assumed that the big sad woman in the doorway was the hired help had she not been prepared to spot the Mahmoud family resemblance--discernible in the shade and smoothness of the skin, in Mrs. Mahmoud's eyes veiled in a vague face.
  "Mrs. Piper?"
  Materia nods. Teresa inquires politely, "Is Mr. Piper home, ma'am?"
  Wee Frances has never seen a black person before. Everyone around her is chalk-white except for her own tan mother. She reaches out
 
to Teresa and touches one of her hands. The one holding the envelope. Teresa smiles down at her. Frances collects the moment and puts it in a safe place with two or three others.
  Meanwhile, Materia has muttered something and waved her scissors in the general direction of the shed at the side of the house. Teresa heads for the shed and Frances follows her. Materia returns to her kidneys, snip, snap.
  Through the crack in the door, Frances sees Teresa hand an envelope to Daddy. Daddy opens the envelope and looks at the contents for quite a while. Then Teresa gets him to write something on a piece of paper that she puts back into her purse. When Teresa comes out of the shed, Frances is lingering nearby.
  "What do you want, darlin, hmm? Where'd you get all that pretty yellow hair?"
  Frances gazes up by way of an answer. What she wants is everything about this fabulous woman, who is surely a queen from some far-off place. Teresa would laugh if she knew: the Queen of Whitney Pier, dear.
  "Here you go, honey." Teresa hands Frances a piece of rock candy just as--
  "Frances!"
  The child and the woman look up to see the golden girl step from the taxicab that has pulled up in front of the house. Leo Taylor has an actual automobile now, a Model T Ford with his name stenciled on the side, Leo Taylor Transport. He holds the door open and Kathleen walks past him without a glance. It was she who called out and interrupted the sweet transaction. Now she walks stately toward them and, in cultivated tones, inquires of Teresa, "Can I help you, miss?"
  To heck with you, thinks Teresa, "No, Miss Piper, I just dropped something off for your father."
  "Hey, Trese, come on, girl!"
  Leo Taylor doesn't like to linger here. Teresa shakes her head as she climbs into her brother's cab. The Pipers--living like hillbillies, acting like royalty. They drive away.
  "Show me your hand, Frances."
  Frances opens her little hand and reveals the black and white licorice peppermint. A prize. Kathleen takes the sweet and throws it
 
in a high arc across the yard till it lands in the creek with a small plop.
  "You know you shouldn't take candy from strangers, Frances. Especially colored strangers."

            Lady Liberty

  Girl as she was, Claudia looked upon the world before her like some young untried knight.
    CLAUDIA, BY A.L.O.E.

  Kathleen is truly and utterly and completely Kathleen in New York. That's what the city does for you if it's meant for you. She's got plenty of personality and no history, and she has never breathed so much air in her life. She comes from an Atlantic island surrounded by nothing but sea air, yet in the man-made outdoor corridors of this fantastic city she can finally breathe. This air is what the gods live upon. The gods who get things done. Not the gods who mope on ancient promontories and exhale fossil vapors, waiting for someone to fill in the fragments of forgotten sagas that have come unraveled with age. Those gods have sagged so long on their rocks, they are well on the way to turning to stone themselves.
  But the new gods. That bright baritone chorus. They inhabit every steel support, every suspension bridge, every gleaming silver train, all things vertical and horizontal, all glass, gravel and sand. They take big breaths and they make big sounds and with every breath and sound they open up more sky.
  When Kathleen steps onto Pier 54, she starts writing the book of her life in her head: And then she arrived in the New World. She heard the heels of her sensible shoes ring out on the gangplank, and resolved never to be sensible.
  There are a bewildering number of uniformed porters and un-uniformed scamps ready to seize her trunk and make off with it, but Kathleen hauls it to the center of the terminal and sits on it beneath the big clock, an eye out for her distant cousin, not minding the wait, serenaded by the crowds. It's clear: the whole world comes to New York City.
  Kathleen intends to be the Eleonora Duse of the operatic stage. If anyone can do this, she can: a classically trained girl with modern ideas
 
about holding the mirror up to nature. The born performer's zeal to leave no heart intact. An engine in her stoked so high it turned her hair red in the womb. Her mixed
Celtic-Arab blood and her origins on a scraggly island off the east coast of a country popularly supposed to consist of a polar ice cap are enough, by American standards, both to cloak her in sufficient diva mystery and to temper the exotic with a dash of windswept North American charm. She'll refer to pickled moose meat and kippered cod tongues and occasionally swear in Arabic just to get the legend rolling, but she is of the New World, the golden West. She is no Sicilian or Castilian castaway bound for glory, then early ruin. Like them she is going to be great but, unlike them, she is going to survive. She has decided never to stop singing. She will be singing at seventy-five.
  She eats a frankfurter in a bun she bought from a fat man with a black mustache who told her the story of his life in broken English. Her life has finally started.
  "Kathleen?" Kathleen turns and sees a little spinster lady.
  "I'm Giles. Welcome to New York
City, dear."
  Giles, to whom Kathleen has been entrusted, has unfaded blue eyes and a genteel apartment in Greenwich Village. Kathleen estimates Giles's age to be in the vicinity of a hundred and two. In fact Giles is a young sixty. Perhaps, Kathleen speculates, Giles was once a schoolteacher or--better--perhaps Giles is a beneficiary of that vague yet respectable means of support known among English literary heroines as "an annuity."
  Being retired, Giles volunteers at a convent infirmary, where she helps old nuns to die. Her highest qualification for this calling is not her compassion, or her surprisingly strong stomach, or even her piety. It is her unshockability. Giles has lowered her ear to many a withered mouth and heard confessions no priest ever has--for toward the end there is often confusion; a sudden disquiet lest one has after all confessed and repented of the wrong things in life. Ancient sins bloom afresh, fragrant with the purity they possessed a moment before they were named and nipped in the bud. And having listened, Giles may
 
remark, "I know, dear." Sometimes the dying words come in the form of a question to which Giles may reply, upon reflection, "I wonder that myself, dear, from time to time, truly I do." But Giles never asks any questions herself.
  All of which makes Giles a pretty poor chaperone for a young champion like Kathleen.
  That first night in Giles's guest room, which overlooks the roofs of the Village and affords a view of the tallest buildings on earth, Kathleen opens a fresh new Holy Angels notebook and writes on the virgin page:

8 pm, February 29, 1918, New
  York City

Dear Diary ...

  She keeps her appointment the next day, at the corner of 64th Street and Central Park West in a fifth-floor studio. It is a room of excellent posture. There is a Frenchified sofa that is apparently not for sitting. To the right of the door stands a bust of Verdi atop a marble column. To the left is Mozart. On the gleaming parquet floor, a Persian carpet. A high coffered ceiling in mahogany, a giant window onto the park, a grand piano. An immaculate wheat-colored man with a goatee, morning coat, tapered trousers and striped cravat. The maestro. From somewhere in Europe. Brief introductions, she is not invited to be seated, she is instructed to sing something.
  She does.
  It's a small room. It's a big voice. The maestro's gaze alights on a corner of the carpet, disinterested as an insect, and stays there for the duration of the song. Kathleen finishes. The maestro glances up and perceives the flush on her face, the moist glistening of her eye, the pulse at her neck, her lips still parted. And he says in a wafer-thin voice, "We have a lot of work to do."
  Corruption hangs in the air around a great talent. Such a gift is unstable by nature, apt to embarrass its handlers. About her there is the whiff of the entertainer. Like vaudeville nipping the heels of grand opera. The maestro smells all this on Kathleen and cools his blood to a temperature undetectable by wild animals.
 
Before him lies a grueling task. It is so much easier to shape competence. Yet, in a small spot beneath the hardest part of his skull, the maestro is feverish with excitement. You don't get a student like this every day--perhaps two in a lifetime. He prepares to show her no mercy.
  As Kathleen works harder and harder, she walks farther and farther. Between sadistic singing lessons with the maestro and suffocatingly sedate suppers with Giles, Kathleen walks the length and breadth of the Island of Manhattan. From the East River to the Hudson; from Battery Park to the Haarlem River.

  One day, a girl is sitting at the maestro's grand piano when Kathleen drags herself up to the studio. She is Rose, in a pale pink dress perfect for a dear little thing with an open face and a trusting nature, and therefore all wrong on Rose.
  Rose is an extremely good pianist, but Kathleen doesn't notice that at first, for two reasons. First, because when you're training with a famous bastard in New York City, with one eye on the Met and the other on obscurity, you don't notice the quality of the piano accompaniment during your lesson unless it is incompetent. But this pianist is doubly inaudible because she is black and therefore outside any system that nurtures and advances a classical virtuosa. So Kathleen thinks of Rose not as a pianist but as an accompanist.
  When Rose looks at Kathleen the first time, she sees a daughter of fortune and looks back down at her piano keys. When she looks the second time it is to verify that the sound that just filled the room really came from that milk-fed thing standing on the carpet. The voice is worth considering. The singer can go to hell.
  "The piano is out of tune," says Kathleen.
  Ordinarily, Kathleen says nothing during her lessons. She makes the sounds the maestro orders her to make and, in the privacy of her own mind, thinks up a thousand devastating retorts with which to slay him. But today she is impelled to speak, because what's the good of an accompanist if she can't even hear when the piano is off key? Kathleen has addressed her observation to the maestro, but Rose addresses Kathleen, "The piano is
 
perfectly in tune. You're flat."
  Kathleen glares at the accompanist, with equal parts fury and disbelief. And the accompanist looks back--calm, level gaze. Insolent, more like it, how dare she? Handsome features cut like sculpture into her face, so at odds with the puffed sleeves and schoolgirl braids. Kathleen looks away dismissively from the beanpole in a hand-me-down dress. She expects the maestro to scold the accompanist or, preferably, fire her. But instead he turns to Kathleen. "Perhaps if you were less intent upon making noise, and more intent upon listening, you might learn to hear the difference between that"--the maestro jabs at a piano key--"and this"--the maestro makes a horrible honking sound through his nose, supposedly in imitation of Kathleen.
  Kathleen floods crimson. The maestro instructs her coolly, "Lesson One: The Scale." Lesson One! Kathleen takes a breath and steadies herself for the giant step backward. She pictures a shining sword sharp at both edges, and sings the scale, pondering all the while who is worse: Sister Saint Monica, or this singing teacher whom she has come to think of as the Kaiser. And before she is halfway through the scale, she decides: the accompanist is worse.
  Rose plays the scale and watches the singer. Decides she is not white, not even red. But green. Faintly visible, called up by outrage, are the veins at her wrists, neck, temple. This is the only physical detail that corroborates the voice, which Rose knows to be not of human origin. The green must be seaweed. Rose allows her mind to wander in this way whenever she is required to play in harness. It helps take the sting from the bit. Rose has no need of fancy when she plays her own music, because there is no difference between her own music and her mind. All alone after hours in a second-story church in Harlem, far north of this studio. Free rein.
  But for now: Lesson One--La Scala. Kathleen glowers at the accompanist. Rose blinks at the singer and allows the slightest bit of curiosity to mingle with scorn.

  It's 1918. New York City is inching toward the center of the universe. Its streets
 
throng with working girls and doughboys and the gumption of immigrants from the four corners of the earth. Kathleen is sorely tempted to cut her classes, her hair and her hems. She has forgotten all about the "fashionable New York" of Harper's Bazaar. She is consumed by the new New York, which is more various and fabulous at two in the afternoon on Mulberry Street than come midnight at the Ziegfeld Follies. In Manhattan's north end Rose plays her own music, while outside her church window Haarlem is turning into Harlem. Rose's mother has raised her to be an example to The Race, and every day the list of places Rose must never set foot in grows longer. But Kathleen is subject to no such restrictions. Her father is far away, and Giles asks no questions except to inquire, "How are you enjoying New York, dear?"
  First Kathleen fell in love with New York. Then she fell in love with a New Yorker. It happened very quickly, the way things are supposed to happen when you move from New Waterford to New York at eighteen.

            The Children's Hour

  At home, James slows down a bit. With Kathleen gone, it's safe for him to spend an after-supper hour in the wingback chair again. In the corner of the front room sit two unopened crates of books, but there are still so many unread in the glass cabinet that James leaves the crates untouched. There will be time enough later, when Kathleen is launched in her career and he doesn't have to work so hard. Fifty-two books, not counting the Encyclopaedia Britannica. One day,
I'll sit down with all my books around me, and just start reading.
  Right now, however, there's still too much work to do. What's more, James has taken to devoting his precious evening hour to his two little girls, whom he has noticed for the first time. He is pleased to find they're bright, the both of them, and he reproves himself for having simply handed them over to Materia until now. He intends to make it up to them. To this end, one evening soon after
 
Kathleen's departure James calls the two wee ones over to the wingback chair, tucks them in one on either side, opens a big book and reads, ""In the second century of the Christian era the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth and the most civilized portion of mankind."" And the little girls listen, bewildered by the strange names and long words but enchanted by Daddy's careful voice, by glimpses of wonderful worlds that unfold at his command and, most of all, by his special attention.
  It is different from the thrill they experienced with Kathleen. With Daddy they are aware of something rare and solemn. They understand that he is teaching them. And they respond with as much reverence as they can muster.
  Mercedes is almost six. She never fails to bring Daddy his tea, balancing it carefully along with the evening's book. She is a good child who takes her role as Mumma's helper and Frances's big sister very seriously--although it looks likely she'll turn out on the plain side, her hair a bit mousy. Nonetheless she has nice brown eyes and a good disposition. But James can't help being particularly taken with Frances. She's a live one, going on five, with her burnished gold ringlets and mischievous grin, green lights dancing in her hazel eyes. Always ready with a joke for Daddy: "I've got your nose!" And full of good ideas for games that she and Mercedes can play. "Mercedes, let's shave!" "Mercedes, know what? These buttons can fit in our noses." Mercedes has learned by trial and error when to say, "Okay," and when to say, "Let's pretend."
  James doesn't like the sound of Materia and the children chattering in Arabic but he doesn't object. He simply counters with the special time they spend together after supper. He leavens the weight of classics with fairy tales and rhymes. The girls love poems and learn them easily. Standing at the foot of his chair holding hands, neat as two pins in Kathleen's old frocks--blue for Mercedes, red for Frances-- their button boots so nicely shined, they recite in piping singsong voices: ""I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my
 
bed.""
  Then Frances squeals with glee and Mercedes curtsies. James smiles and claps. Frances scrambles onto his knee, Mercedes lays her cheek against his hand and James feels the ice in his chest breaking up. The war is finally over. He is home again, and everything is turning out all right after all.

I have you fast in my fortress
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you for ever,
Yes for ever and a day
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin
And moulder in dust away.

  There are fewer letters from Kathleen than James would like, but now and then Giles sends a card assuring him that all is well. In June, a package arrives from Kathleen containing twin sailor-boy dolls, one for Frances and one for Mercedes. They are thrilled and immediately take the new additions to meet the rest of their doll family, "Look, children, these are your new American cousins." There is also a letter and James calls his girls to the wingback chair and reads it aloud.

""Dear Daddy and Mumma and young ladies, ""I am making wonderful progress under the expert tutelage of my voice teacher. He could not be better pleased, and neither could I. Giles is a wonderful companion and she has introduced me to a number of quite inspiring cultural experiences. To date, I have enjoyed excursions to the Museum of Natural History, as well as theatrical evenings of modern dance. There is also a good deal of modern music being premi@ered in Manhattan, and it is a privilege to be among the first to hear such ground-breaking compositions. There are also numerous soldiers passing through on their way to the Front, and I plan to assist Giles in wrapping bandages--although I cannot claim any great skill with knitting-needles and would pity the poor soldier who received a pair of socks from me! These diversions aside, my time is almost entirely caught up with lessons and
 
practice, practice, practice. Please say hello to Sister Saint Cecilia if you happen to see her in town. I will write again soon.
    ""Love, Kathleen""

  Content, James folds the letter and tucks it into his breast pocket. Then he tells Frances and Mercedes once again about how, when Kathleen finishes her schooling, they will take the train to New York City and hear her sing at the Metropolitan Opera House. Mercedes pictures a white palace, and Kathleen sitting on a throne next to a handsome prince. Frances sees a castle with mermaids swimming in a moat full of ginger beer, and Kathleen holding a sword, singing on a balcony.
  The summer flies past. Materia cooks, James works, the little girls thrive. By fall, they can read. It has happened by osmosis, the way it ought to: after they have spent several months on Daddy's lap, following his spoken words with their eyes and pretending to read, there comes a day when they no longer have to pretend. The glass of the mirror has simply melted away and now they are free to enter as many worlds as they like, together or alone. Thank you, Daddy.
  On November 7, James walks to the post office with his girls to find a letter from New York waiting for him. There is his usual pleasure at the sight of the postmark, but it is followed today by slight surprise, for there is no return address and his own name and address are written in a ladylike but unknown hand. While Frances and Mercedes scrupulously divide a shoestring of licorice, James opens the letter and reads. ...
  Its contents are a cruel contrast to its refined penmanship. It is signed "An Anonymous Well-Wisher." James folds the letter over and over until it is minute, and considers: Either it is a malicious joke. Or it is true. He leaves that night.
  Three and a half days later, at 6:05 A.m. on November 11, 1918, he walks out of Grand Central Station.

  He finds Kathleen. And takes her home again.

               Book 2
          NO MAN'S LAND

            O Holy Night

  On the first night of summer 1919, in the attic of the house on Water Street, as Kathleen lies dying--and unable to appreciate that fact due to the heaving and excessive pain, due to the blood that's all a result of the bomb jammed in the antechamber of her belly, threatening to explode before it can be dropped to earth--she has a moment's respite: a calm descends and the pain dissolves and disappears, along with the siren wail of her mother's incessant prayer warning of an air raid, God is coming, wailing in supplication, Come O Lord, begging God to pass over and to bless, not touch, this house. O Lord hear our prayer. O Lord be with us at a safe distance now and at the hour of our death--
  This is a breech birth; the child is stuck feet first. Someone will not get out of this room alive. There was a choice to be made. It has been made. Or at least the choice has been allowed to occur. Everything disappears from sound for Kathleen: her mother's voice--by now perhaps speaking in tongues or at least the mother tongue--the pounding of her father's fists on the door--he'll break it down in a moment. She levitates in a profound and complete relief, peace, floating absence of pain. It's all over for her now, anyone can see that.
  Materia sees it. Has been expecting it, accepts it, unlike James on the other side of the door. She gently closes her daughter's eyes, then takes a pair of scissors--the old kitchen scissors, freshly sharp and sterilized to cut the cord--and plunges the pointier blade into Kathleen's abdomen just above the topography of buried head. She makes a horizontal incision and reaches in; there's not much time, the infant will suffocate in a moment, in a moment James will be through the door, one cut is not enough. Materia sculpts panic into a slow march, reining it in, now and at the hour of our --she makes another cut, a vertical one bisecting the first. She prayer-dives both hands through the center of the cross-cut into the warm swamp
 
slippery with life, past mysterious ferns and swaying fibers, searching for a handhold on sunken treasure, there an ankle, there an arm, the living treasure caught in a net of fingers. With a series of precise and dire yanks the catch is dragged from where it lay lodged halfway down the canal that locked despite the battering of the seismic tides that were set off by those first gravitational yearnings. The bundle of tiny limbs and vestigial gills and unique fingerprints is hauled toward the torn surface of its small swollen sea. Its four eyes are scorched by the sudden light that jags in through the flapping entrance to the outside world, and in an instant it is borne up and through the wound in Kathleen's belly.
  The air splashes and spumes against it, threatening to drown it--them--for there are two but they have yet to be cut in half, they are still one creature, really, male and female segments joined at the belly by a common root system. It-they is a blood breather and could drown in this fatal spray of oxygen, will drown if they remain silent much longer, will become bright blue fishes in a moment. But the cords are cut, snip-snap, and tied just in time, and in an instant the shocking air is gulped and strafed into the lungs. They become babies just in time; slick, bloody, new, wailing, squinting, furious, two.
  One of them, the male child, bleeds a little from a cut on his ankle. His feet were nestled next to his sister's head when the scissors descended. He was all set to arrive head first like a good mammal. Technically, therefore, the female twin is responsible for the death of the mother, for it is she who was breech. But this was pure roulette. The pair had been revolving counterclockwise in the chamber for weeks before their birth was triggered.
  Kathleen is an abandoned mine. A bootleg mine, plundered, flooded; a ruined and dangerous shaft, stripped of fuel, of coal, of fossil ferns and sea anemones and bones, of creatures half plant, half animal, and any chance that any of it might end up a diamond.
  James has supposedly seen worse. He was in the war after all. Now he finally sees something from which he will not recover. Beyond shell shock. Beyond No Man's Land.
 
In a cavern in a canyon,  excavating for a mine,  dwelt a miner, forty-niner,  and his daughter Clementine.
Light she was and like a fairy,  and her shoes were number nine,  herring boxes without topses,  shoes they were for Clementine.
Oh m'darlin, oh m'darlin, oh m'darlin  Clementine;  you are lost and gone forever,  dreadful sorry, Clementine.

  Here's what Kathleen saw just before the moment of  respite. Between agony and release, she saw--  framed by the door which is thumping like a heart  attack--Pete. With his head off Hello little  girl. This time he's not behind her in the mirror.  He is out in the open. It's safe for him now.  And after all, he just wants to get a look at  her, just one good look Hello there. His no  face tucked beneath his arm Hello.
  And when he has looked his fill, he  politely nods his stump of neck and leaves.  She whimpers briefly. There is the blissful  release from pain. Nothing has ever been better  than this moment. It is enough. And then all we can  do is see her through her mother's eyes, because her own  are extinguished.

  Materia's dilemma was this: Do I let the  mother live by removing the infants limb by limb,  finally crushing the heads to allow for complete  expulsion from the mother's body? It is hard  to imagine a worse sin for a Catholic. The sin  resides not in the gory details of the operation,  because the details of doing the right thing are equally  gory. The sin resides in preferring the life  of the mother to those of the children. For this you are eternally  damned. Materia does the right thing by allowing the  mother to die and the children to live.
  So why does Materia die a few days  later of a guilty conscience? Because she did the right  thing for the wrong reason. For a reason which was itself a  mortal sin. For two days she wrestles with her  conscience. But God is everywhere. It takes  Materia forty-eight hours to face that what she  did, although correct in the eyes of the Church, was  murder in His all-seeing eyes: the real reason  I let my daughter die is because I knew she  was better off that way. I didn't know her  well, but I knew she didn't want to live  anymore. She preferred to die and I  allowed her to do so.
  Looked at from this angle, Materia has not  saved two babies, she has mercy-killed one  young woman, and therein lies the mortal sin. For  Materia cannot swear that, had her daughter been  clamoring for life, she might not have used the  scissors to dismember the infants rather than open the  sky for them. In her heart of hearts she  suspects this might have been so. And in this  suspicion Materia discovers the chill comfort that,  in the end, she managed to love her daughter after  all.
  God sees an opening and rushes in. He  makes himself comfortable in the back of Materia's  mind for a couple of days, during which time she cleans  obsessively.
  On the third day she cleans the oven, first  turning on the gas to soften up the grit inside,  it'll only take a moment. She is so tired.  She hasn't slept in three nights, not so much  as a tiny zizz, and she has never worked harder.  She kneels in front of the oven, peering in,  waiting for the gas to do its work, her arms folded on  the rack. It'll only take a moment--she  rests her head upon her arms. She is so tired.  She will start scrubbing in just a moment, just one more  moment. ...
  For the umpteenth time that week James has  to improvise a criminal mind, for he doesn't  naturally have one. He turns off the gas,  hauls his late wife upstairs and onto their  bed, scrunches her rosary into her hands, then  calls the doctor and the priest. This allows  Materia to be buried next to Kathleen in the  churchyard instead of in an unsanctified field  somewhere--in the type of place where soldiers and  suicides and unbaptized babies sit out  eternity, some unholy No Man's Land.
            The Mass Card

       MAY JESUS HAVE MERCY  ON THE SOUL OF

     Mrs. James (materia) Piper  (n@ee Mahmoud)
        Died June 23, 1919  Age 33

  "We have loved her in life. Let us not  abandon her, until we have conducted her by our  prayers into the house of the Lord." ST.  AMBROSE
    Solace Art. Co.--202 E. 44th  St. N.y.
  
  Frances is going on six now. She has a  number of questions regarding the mass card, but this is  clearly not the time or place to raise them.  Mercedes kneels next to her, crying and crying  into her little white gloves, her hanky already  drenched. Daddy's face is frozen. If the  wind changes it will stay that way for ever. Mrs.  Luvovitz, in a pew across the aisle, is  crying behind her black veil. This is the first time  Mrs. Luvovitz has ever been inside a  church. Mrs. MacIsaac is there too, with  dusty grapes on her hat. Frances decides  the wind must have changed for her long ago. Filling  in for Materia at the organ is Sister Saint  Cecilia. Or at least it must be she within the  flowing black robe beneath the Gothic skyline of  starched white wimple. Frances thinks it  logical that nuns wear cathedrals on their  heads.
  At the back of the church there is a phalanx of  strangers. People with black curly hair, full  features and smooth olive faces. These are some  of Frances's unknown relatives. Frances's  unknown Grandfather Mahmoud is not present. For  him this funeral is redundant. Right now he's  locked in the back of his store, hunched on a  plain wooden chair, apparently poring over a  ledger.
  Mr. Benny-the-Butcher
Luvovitz, Daddy and Mr. MacIsaac are  the pallbearers. It's all very much like Kathleen's  funeral a few days ago except for three  things: Mumma was sitting at the church organ that  day instead of lying in the box. And the scary old  man who peered into Kathleen's casket and  muttered bad words in Mumma's language,  he's not here. But most important, Frances  has noticed at the very back, standing next to the  dark little round woman with the gray bun, one tall  lean figure: the dark lady who came with an  envelope for Daddy and a candy for Frances a whole  year and a bit ago. Teresa is here for some  reason. Teresa the maid. Queen Teresa.  Frances doesn't listen when told to keep her  eyes front, and has to be yanked around  by Daddy, who will reserve proper punishment for  home later on. If she hurries, perhaps  Frances will be able to make it out of the church in time  to run after the lady and hop into the taxi with her,  never to return. They will drive off together into the land
  
of black and white licorice peppermint rock  candy.
  "Eyes front!"
  Frances is really going to get it after the  funeral. She dares not sneak another look behind  her at the woman of her dreams. So she  concentrates on the mass card instead: ST.  AMBROSE. The name detaches itself from the card,  leaving its holy prefix behind like a tail, and  floats up into her mind, where it wafts about  gently until it settles via some mysterious  associative route upon the infant boy who died  a few nights ago in her arms. Ambrose.
Yes. That will be his name. Ambrose.
  There have been three deaths in the space of one  week at 191 Water Street. And two  funerals. And three baptisms. And three  burials. And two mass cards, identical,  fill in the blanks. What a week. Enough to make  you feel as though you've breathed laughing gas. And  right now Frances wants very badly to laugh, she  can't tell why, except that it's the single worst  thing a person could do right about now. Oh no. Now  that she has thought of laughing she can't unthink it.  She covers her face with her hands and grins. She  tries to grin out the laughter. To exhale it  silently, smoothly. But she starts to convulse and  shake. She clamps her hands tighter against her  face and gives in. She can no longer  resist. It's like the tide of pee when you're  outside playing and refuse to go inside and use the  toilet--your water breaks and it's both a blessed  relief and the ultimate mortification.
  Frances is spared the pee. But what could be  worse than this outrageous hilarity at her mother's  funeral which comes two days after her sister's  funeral which came two days after all the  baptisms and the death of--oh no, tears of  laughter are darkening her white cotton gloves.  Frances expects her father's hand to grip the back  of her neck, expects to be dragged in disgrace  from the church. But what happens instead is a  gentle pat upon her head--her father's sympathetic  hand, her sister's offer of a sodden hanky.  Frances is amazed. They think I'm crying.
  Frances learns something in this moment that will allow  her to survive and function for the rest of her life.  She finds out that one thing can look like another. That  the facts of a situation don't necessarily  indicate anything about the truth of a situation. In
  
this moment, fact and truth become separated and  commence to wander like twins in a fairy tale, waiting  to be reunited by that special someone who  possesses the secret of telling them apart.
  Some would simply say that Frances learned how  to lie.
  Of all her secrets, Ambrose was  Frances's biggest. He was also her greatest gift  to Lily.

            Cave Paintings

  When the attic door finally gave way,  James saw this silent portrait: Death and the  Young Mother. It's an overdone, tasteless,  melodramatic painting. A folk painting from a  hot culture. Naive. Grotesque.
Authentic.
  This is not a gauzy Victorian death scene.  No fetishized feminine pallor, no agnostic  slant of celestial light, no decorously  distraught husband. This portrait is in livid  color. A crucified Christ hangs over a  metal-frame single bed. On either side of the  crucifix are two small pictures: one is  of the Virgin Mary exposing her sacred heart  aflame, the other is of her son Jesus, his  heart likewise exposed and pierced to precious  blood by a chain of thorns. They look  utterly complaisant, Mother and Son. They have  achieved a mutual plateau of exquisite  suffering.
  On the bed lies the Young Mother. Her eyes are  closed. Her blond-red hair is damp and  ratty on the pillow. The sheets are black with  blood. The center of her body is ravaged. A  plump dark woman who looks much older than  thirty-three stands over her. This is the Grandmother.  She holds two dripping infants trussed by the  ankles, one in each hand, like a canny shopper  guesstimating the weight of a brace of chickens.  The Grandmother's face looks straight out from the  picture at the viewer.
  If this were really a painting, there would also be a  demon peering out from under the lid of the hope chest at  the foot of the bed, looking to steal the Young Mother's  Soul. But he'd be preempted by her Guardian  Angel waiting in the wings to guide her already  departing Soul up to God. The Soul, half in,  half out of the tomb of her body, is in very good
  
condition, the hair freshly combed, the nightgown  spotless, the face expressionless--the first divine  divestiture has taken place, she has  sloughed off her personality like an old skin.  She won't need it where she's going. Above the  crucifix, the wall has dematerialized.  Clouds hover. Somewhere within is God, waiting.
  But since this is not really a painting but a moment  freeze-framed by James's eye, the  supernatural elements are, if present,  invisible. There is the dead Young Mother, the  Grandmother, the Infants, the Icons, the hope  chest. What can you do with such a picture? You never  want to see it again yet you can't bring yourself to burn  it or slash it to dust. You have to keep it.
  Put it in the hope chest, James. Yes.  That's a good place for it. No one ever  rummages in there. This is crazy, of course.  You can't stuff a memory of a moment into a  real-life hope chest as if it were a family  heirloom. But for a second James feels as  though that's what he's looking at--an old  portrait that he hid in the hope chest many years  ago and just stumbled upon again. This temporary confusion  is a premonition; it tells him that he will never  get over this sight. That it will be as fresh fourteen  years from now, the colors not quite dry, just as it is  today.
  James goes out of the room, but not  far. His legs give way and he collapses  outside the fallen door, unconscious. He  doesn't hear the first cries of the babies  inside. The involuntary part of his mind does,  though. It is just not conveying the message. It is  keeping it on a crumpled piece of paper on the  floor of its cave. It is taking a break,  admiring its cave painting by the light of the dark.
  A few moments later, James's hand shoots  out and fastens on Materia's ankle, almost  toppling her down the narrow staircase as she  leaves the room. James's mouth opens a  split second before his eyes. "Where the hell are  you going?"
  "I'm gonna get the priest."
  "No you're not." He's awake now.
  "They gonna be baptized."
  "No they're not."
  "They gotta be baptized."
  "No!" James roars.
  "You gonna kill them, you gonna kill their
  
souls, you're the devil--"
  She's hitting him. Closed fists in his  face. If the scissors were handy she wouldn't  bother to shut his eyes first--"Ebn  sharmoota, kes emmak! Ya khereb  bEytak, ya Hara' deenak!" If the  bayonet were near she would not hesitate. And  God would understand. Why didn't she think of this  before? Materia too is awake now, after a  nineteen-year slumber. She will kill him if she  can.
  James gets her wrists in a vise grip.  His other hand clamps across her mouth. Her eyes  roll back. James tells her, "Who's the  killer eh?! Who's the killer?! God damn  you, God damn you, damn you--" He begins  to punctuate the curses by slowly slamming her  head into the wall. Her eyes are trying to reason  with him, but without the help of words her eyes become  a horse's eyes, as mute, as panicked. His  tears are flowing now. His lips tripping on  salt and snot, his nose bleeding, he's retching  out the most agonizing man-sobs, the wall is  starting to conform to her skull. This time, however, he  hears the tiny cries from inside. Like kittens.  He picks up Materia and carries her three  flights down to the coal cellar and locks her  in. Then he goes for a walk. And many fast  drinks, of course. Some of us are just not  equipped for suicide. When we're at the  bottom, suicide is too creative an act  to initiate.
  Which leaves little Frances. At the bottom of the  attic stairs. Based on her upbringing, and from  what she has heard and seen tonight, one thing is  clear: the babies up there must be baptized. But  she has to be careful. She has to hurry. She  mustn't get caught. She stands at the bottom  looking up.
  The attic room has been a place of  absolute peace and quiet for the past many months.  Until tonight. Her oldest sister has lain up  there not saying anything. Frances and Mercedes have  been allowed in to read to her and to bring her trays of  food. They have read Black Beauty,  Treasure Island, Bleak House,
Jane Eyre, What Katy Did,
Little Women and every story in The Children's  Treasury of Saints and Martyrs. The two of  them decided to look up the hard words next time
  
around, rather than break up the reading aloud. They also  got their mother to search out recipes for the invalid  food found in What Katy Did and Little
Women. "Blancmange" seems to be the  favorite of languishing girls. They never do  find out what it is. "White eat." What would that  taste like?
  Frances knew Kathleen must be very ill because of the  huge lump in her stomach. Mercedes told her  it was a tumor. "We must pray for her." Together  Frances and Mercedes have prayed for Kathleen.  They have made a little shrine and given up sweets  for as long as it takes her to get well.
  So here's Frances at the bottom of the narrow  attic staircase. She is almost six. She is  not afraid of the dark. Besides, there's a little light  coming from that room. And she's not alone. Her big  sister, Kathleen, is up there. And so are the  babies. The babies, which sound exactly like  kittens. Frances is very fond of kittens.  She's in her bare feet. She's got her white  nightgown on and her hair is in two long french  braids. She gets to the landing. She's too  small to be on eye level with the new depression  in the wall; just as well. But what does it  matter, she saw how it got there, and now the child is  entering the room and she's going to see everything.  She's stepping over the splintered caved-in door  with her bare feet.
  The difference between Frances and James is that,  although she sees a version of the same horrible  picture, Frances is young enough still to be under the  greater influence of the cave mind. It will never  forget. But it steals the picture from her  voluntary mind--grand theft art--and stows it,  canvas side to the cave wall. It has  decided, "If we are to continue functioning, we  can't have this picture lying around." So Frances  sees her sister and, unlike her father, will forget  almost immediately, but, like her father, will not get over it.
  What Frances sees: the gore. The  pictures over the bed. The scissors. And the  babies, squirming slightly and mewing between  Kathleen's legs, where they have been wedged for  safekeeping until the priest can be dug up. So  ... the secret contents of Kathleen's tumor,  revealed; this gets filed under "Normal" in  Frances's mind.
  Frances devises a way of carrying both  babies: she spreads the front of her white
  
nightie on the bed and places the slippery  babies on it. She folds them into the fabric,  making a cozy bundle. She cradles her  bundle of babies and walks carefully all the  way down two flights of stairs with her  underpants showing, through the kitchen, out the back  door, across the pitch-dark coal clinkers in the  backyard, until she comes to the bank of the  creek. There is one scary thing: the scarecrow in  the center of the garden on the other side of the creek.  If toys come alive at midnight, what  happens to scarecrows? Frances avoids looking  at it. "It's just a thing." But she doesn't  want to offend it. She lovingly empties the tiny  children onto the grass. It's a nice warm evening.
  Frances regrets that she didn't think  to rifle the hope chest for the white lace gown and  bonnet--the outfit that she, Mercedes and  Kathleen were all baptized in. Too late  now, there's no time, I have to get this done before  Daddy comes home.
  Frances loves her little niece and nephew  already. There is nothing she would not do to make sure  their souls are safe. She knows that otherwise they  die with Original Sin on them and go to that  non-place, Limbo, and become no one for all  eternity. Frances has never been up close at  a baptism, but she's heard the priest mumble,  barely moving his lips, she's seen him  dip the baby's head into the water. The priest is  praying, that's for certain, so Frances must pray  too. Hurry Frances. Frances makes the  sign of the cross, In nomine padre ...
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.  She looks at the wee babies in the skimpy  moonlight; "Ladies first." She picks up the  girl baby, and shimmies on her bum down the  embankment to the creek. She wades to the center.  The water is waist-deep. On wee Frances,  that is. Her nightgown puffs and floats on the  surface before taking on water and silting down  around her legs. She makes the sign of the cross  with her thumb on the baby's forehead.
  Now's the part where you pray. Frances takes a  stab at it: "Dear God, please baptize this  baby." And then her favorite prayer from bedtime,  "Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom  God's love commits me here, ever this day be at  my side, to light, to guard, to rule and guide.  Amen." Now's the part where you dip the head in the
  
water. Frances tips the baby carefully toward  the water. The little thing is still slick and slips through  her hands and sinks. Oh no. Quick! Hen,  rooster, chicken, duck! Frances plunges  down, grabs the baby before it hits the bottom,  then breaks the surface clutching it to her body.  It's okay. Frances's little heart is beating like  a bird in the jaws of a cat, she catches her  breath, the baby lets out a tiny holler and the  sweetest little sputtering coughs. It's okay, it  just swallowed a bit of water, it's okay. It's  okay. Frances rocks it gently and sings to it a  small song composed then and there, "Baby, baby  ... baby, baby ... baby baby." There.
At least it's nice and clean now.
  Frances crawls up the bank again, lays the  girl baby down on the grass, kisses her little  hands and head and picks up the boy. She knows that  you have to be extra careful with new babies because their  heads aren't closed yet. Like a ditch or something  along the top of their skulls. It's called a  "soft spot" even though it's in the shape of a  line. You can see it stretching along beneath the layer  of bluish skin that's draped across it. Frances  didn't see it on the girl baby's head because the  girl baby has a weirdly dense thatch of  black hair. But there it is on the boy baby's  feathery pate: a shallow trench dividing his head  in half. Frances enters once more the  waters of the creek and lightly traces the pale  blue fault line in the infant's skull. What  if someone just came along and poked their fingers in  there, what would happen? He would die. Frances  squirms at the thought that just anyone could come along  and do that. What if her fingers just went ahead and  did that? Oh no, hurry, you have to get him  baptized before it's too late. Before Daddy comes  home, or before anyone's fingers can press in his  head.
  Frances drops the second baby. Oh no.  Quick! Hen, rooster, chicken--
  "What in God's name are you doing?"  Frances's head jerks up, arresting her  plunge. It's Daddy. There's the great  upside-down V of his legs towering at the top  of the creek embankment. He's got the girl  baby in one arm.
  "Get the hell out of there!"
  He's drunk, otherwise he would never curse  in the presence of a child. He reaches down and gets
  
Frances by one arm, easily swinging her up out of the  water, her soaked nightgown hanging down past  her toes, she could be the Little Mermaid invited  at long last onto the good ship Homo  Sapiens, ready to try out her new feet.  Except for the bloodstains.
  The water is dark. James doesn't see the  child on the creek bed. "No!" Frances screams  as he sets her down on the grass. She can't  find the words. She can't tell him, telling is not  an option, this is like a dream, she's forgotten how  to say in waking English, "The other baby is in  there, he's going to drown, we have to get him out!"  James tosses her ahead, herding her in jerks  back towards the house. Frances breaks and runs  back. He lurches after her. She reaches the    edge of the creek and leaps. Over the top.  Splash and plunge. She scrabbles about on the  bottom for the baby, her lungs are stinging, in this  water she's as blind as the newborn she can't find,  she finds him. She breaks the surface for the  second time as James arrives back, swaying  a little, at the creek's edge. She bundles the  baby to her chest; it stirs once and is silent.  She stares up at her father and the girl baby. She  starts to shiver.
  James either says or thinks, "Jesus  Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ."
He slides down the bank, takes the  child and goes through the motions of resuscitation. But  it's no use. The boy baby was in the water a  good twenty seconds too long. Frances's  teeth start to chatter, and she wonders if her  black and white candy is still at the bottom of the  creek or if it has been washed out to sea.

             Blancmange

  Frances spends the next day in bed, shivering.  Her teeth are chattering. She can't get warm.  Outside it's June. Her lips are blue.
  Mercedes wraps her in several blankets and  feeds her pretend blancmange. "Pretend"  because the dish is unavailable to them outside the  realm of fiction, and because all Frances can manage  to eat for the next couple of days is pretend  food.
  Where's Mumma? What with a freezing child in one  bedroom and a burning hot infant in another?  She's downstairs cleaning. The house is
  
spotless.

       MAY JESUS HAVE MERCY
          ON THE SOUL OF

        Kathleen Cecilia Piper
        Died June 20, 1919
               Age 19

  "We have loved her in life. Let us not  abandon her, until we have conducted her by our  prayers into the house of the Lord." ST.  AMBROSE
    Solace Art. Co.--202 E. 44th
    St. N.y.

  Frances stops shivering in time to attend  Kathleen's funeral but she still hasn't eaten  any real-life food. By now she has already lost  her conscious grip on the events of two nights  ago, when the babies were born. She has shivered  them away. The cave mind has entered into a  creative collaboration with the voluntary mind, and  soon the two of them will cocoon memory in a  spinning wealth of dreams and yarns and fingerpaintings.  Fact and truth, fact and truth ... "Where's  my nightgown, the one with the--I spilled  something, I have to wash it, remember that fish I    caught in the creek that time?--I did, I did,  there are so fish in there--it had a thin blue  stripe but I let it go, it was just a baby fish,  too small to eat, I threw it back, it swam  away, back to the ocean. ..."
  But the nightgown is long gone--committed  to earth by James, who made of it a shroud for an  infant boy.
  And as for the fish, everyone knows there have never been  any fish to be caught in the creek. The only  thing anyone's ever going to catch in that creek is  polio.
  On the day after Kathleen's funeral, on the  third day following Kathleen's death, Frances  is still fasting when she is overcome by a powerful  craving. She goes to the kitchen, where Mumma is  getting ready to clean the oven. She opens a long  cupboard and takes the lid off the flour bin.  She fills her hands with the white dust and carries  it carefully across the kitchen and upstairs to her
  
room. Materia sweeps up the thin white  trail behind Frances without a word, without looking  up, without following it beyond the border of the kitchen  linoleum.
  Once in her bedroom--the one she shares with  Mercedes--Frances releases the flour from her  hands into the empty porcelain washbasin on her  dresser. She adds water from the pitcher and mixes  it with her hands until she has a soft sticky  dough. She takes the dough in both hands, curls  up on her bed and begins to suck on it. At first  she sucks rapidly, making little sounds, then more  slowly as the craving subsides. Her eyelids  get heavy and she falls asleep, her mouth  filled with the soft moist mass.
  Mercedes enters carrying a tray heaped with  invisible delicacies. Frances's lips still  suck a little intermittently in her sleep.  Mercedes puts down the tray, careful not  to upset the flagon of port and send it streaming  into the blancmange. She bends over Frances and  feels her forehead, then gently pries the  glutinous white blob from her mouth. She carries  it downstairs, following the trail of white powder  back to where it ends at the kitchen linoleum, and  stops. Not because the trail stops. But because of what  she sees. Mumma. Mercedes stands staring, the  raw dough cupped in her hands like an offering. She  was going to bake it for Frances. It's not  good to eat raw dough, you might get worms.  Mercedes was going to bake it in the oven. But her  mother is using the oven. Mercedes stands there for a long  time, with her hands full of wet white dust.

            See No Evil

  On the night when Lily and Ambrose were  born, Mercedes was awakened by the same racket  that woke Frances. But Mercedes stayed in bed,  while Frances crept out to the attic stairs.  Mercedes held onto the blankets just under her  chin and said the rosary, even though she was too scared  to turn and reach for the beads where they lay under her  pillow. It was after this night that Mercedes started  actually to wear a rosary on her person, because  sometimes even under the pillow is too far away when  it comes to a rosary. So Mercedes said the rosary  with the tufted nubs of the chenille bedspread instead:
  Mercedes stares hard at a row of white  tufts but she has trouble getting the rosary going,
  
not because it's just a bedspread, but because of the Devil.  Only the Devil would block her mind with a  picture of the wooden backscratcher that leans  against the mirror on her bureau. You can't see it  now, it's too dark, but it's there. A long  wooden backscratcher carved with three monkeys  doing "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no  evil," and at the tip of it are three prongs  curved like claws for scratching. It was a joke  gift from a friend of Mumma's at the Empire.  Mercedes has just realized that it is an evil  thing, and in the morning she will put it in the garbage.  No, the furnace. In the morning. When it's  light and the sounds from up in the attic have stopped.  Someone just started hammering the wall up there.  Maybe they're hanging a picture.
  Mercedes fights the Devil and wins. She  manages to make the backscratcher disappear from  her mind, she banishes it with the first prayer that's  able to break through--"Angel of God, my  guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me  here, ever this day be at my side, to light,  to guard, to rule and guide. Amen." Quick, before the  evil picture comes back, quick, "Hail
Mary, Mother of God, the Lord is with thee, blessed  art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy  womb, Jesus. ..." and the rosary is safely  started. And once it's started, you can just keep going  around and around for as long as you want or  need, following the stepping-stones of the bedspread.  Yes, in an emergency you can say the rosary  anywhere, provided you have faith.
  Finally the house is quiet. Where's Frances?  Mercedes creeps softly into the hallway. She  looks up the attic stairs. There's a little  light up there, but silence. Mercedes has no  desire to go up there. Perhaps the thing in the back of  her mind takes better care of her than the thing in  the back of Frances's mind. Perhaps. Mercedes  turns away from the attic door and walks  towards her parents' bedroom. On her way she  steps in something sticky. She gives herself a  gentle reprimand for not putting her slippers on,  and in fact gropes her way back to her room,  finds her slippers and her green tartan  housecoat and puts them on, tying the flannel  belt snugly around her waist and smoothing down  her hair before venturing back out into the hallway.  She reaches the door of her parents' room.  It's half open. She stands very still and listens.
  
Nothing. No breathing. Her heart leaps for a  moment, no breathing! She is young enough to fear that  both her parents may simply have died in their  sleep. She moves softly toward their bed and  reaches out her hands like a sleepwalker, still  listening. Will they be there? Will it be their bodies?  Will they wake up and be annoyed with her? It's a  sin to doubt so much. If you really have faith in  God you won't go around expecting to find your  parents dead in their bed for no reason. Say a  little prayer. "I'm sorry, dear God." Now  let your hands descend gently towards the bed  and--nothing--empty sheets. What a relief,  they're not lying there dead, they're just not there at  all. Oh no! Where are they? It's the middle  of the night, where are my parents? Where is  Mumma, where is Daddy? Stop it, you're going  to make God angry, you deserve to find them dead  downstairs, murdered by a tramp.
  Mercedes' almost-seven-year-old nerves are still  tender but tonight begins a process that will eventually  turn them into steel. Her little nerve fibers are  being heated up. Tonight is the smelter. When her  nerves have been heated up enough, when they are  white-hot, they'll be plunged into cold water,  tempered and strong forever. Strong enough to support a  building or a family, strong enough to prevent the  house at 191 Water Street from caving in on  itself in the years to come. It will stand. It  will stand. But for now: go downstairs. ...
  Mercedes' search carries on in this way.  Listening, listening. Looking, looking. She finds  no one downstairs. Apparently she is all  alone in the house. Oh, except for Kathleen.  Or maybe Kathleen is gone too. Maybe  they've all gone and left her. You could go  check, Mercedes. Check in the attic. No.
"And besides," Mercedes answers, "Kathleen  doesn't speak anymore, she couldn't tell me  where they've gone." You haven't checked the  cellar. "There's nothing in the cellar but coal  and the furnace."
  It would take a less rational sort of person  to conduct the type of search that would result in real  information--the type of search that turns up the reading  glasses in the icebox and the car keys in the  medicine cabinet. But then, it takes a less  rational sort of person to misplace things so  spectacularly. Or to speculate, "Hmmm,  perhaps my mother is locked in the coal cellar,
  
I'll just have a little look-see." And it would take  the sort of person who can't resist trouble  to actually climb those attic steps after the wailing  and rampaging that have issued from that direction.  Mercedes can resist. She can hold out against  trouble, against curiosity, someone has to.
  She returns to her bedroom. She makes the  blankets into a cloak around her and sits on her  knees on her bed, staring out the window at the moon  over the backyard. Our Lady is in the moon.  The cool white light is her love. Everything's  going to be all right. And finally Mercedes sees  something which is not an absence. It's Frances, down  there in the creek. She's holding something, cradling  it--a bundle. And on the embankment there's  something moving. A small animal. A kitten.  That must also be a kitten she's holding. Frances  dunks the bundle, then dives after it. What's  she doing? No! No, Frances loves kittens,  she wouldn't be drowning them. She's giving them a  bath. That's what she's doing. She puts the one  kitten down and picks up the other one, but  Mercedes doesn't see what happens next because  Daddy comes into the yard and up to the creek,  blocking her view. Uh oh, Frances is really  going to get it now. Well, she shouldn't be up  playing in the creek at this hour anyhow. In  fact, no one's allowed playing in the creek  ever. It's not a beach. Mercedes sees  the struggle, the extent of Frances's disobedience in  running back to the creek, leaping in. Why is  she so bad? Some people are just made that way.
  When Frances comes to bed she is ice cold.  Mercedes pretends to be fast asleep, and in her  pretend sleep she snuggles over to Frances and  folds her into her tartan housecoat. Frances  is bare naked. This too is unusual. But no  matter how Mercedes snuggles Frances,  Frances goes on shivering.
  Mercedes will never again sleep through a night. From  now on she will be listening even in her sleep.  Someone has to.
  In the morning, Mercedes notices the blood  in her slipper. She washes it out. The only  other thing different about this morning is that, if you  look out at the garden, you'll notice that the  scarecrow is gone and in its place there's a big  rock.

         The Adoration of the Body
  
  James, knee-deep in water, reached up and  placed the dead infant on the ground on the far  side of the creek, then climbed out after it.  Frances was holding the girl baby close against  her stained and soaking nightgown and she made a  move to head back to the house.
  "Stay right where you are!"

  Frances watches as Daddy squishes in his  wet shoes over to the scarecrow. He takes  hold of its legs and yanks at it as if he were  uprooting a small tree. Its head wobbles and  falls off and rolls down the slope into the creek  with a splash. The creek begins to carry it away.  Frances watches the head bobbing along on the  water and thinks, "He's going to find my black  and white candy, he's going to eat it, he's going  to tell someone in a far-off land what I did."  The head is carried off and out of sight toward the  sea. But the hat remains. The crunched fedora.
  James tears the scarecrow free of the earth.  Its body was impaled on a stake and that stake  must have been green wood, because now that Daddy has  yanked the pointed end from the ground you can see it is  alive with pale sprouting roots. Eventually a  tree would have grown right up through the scarecrow.  Maybe with fruit too. A branch would have grown  straight out through his mouth, and on the end of the  branch a big red apple. "Imagine," thinks  Frances. "Imagine if you had a tree growing  inside you." Imagine seeing the green leaves  everywhere, trapped just under your skin and growing,  imagine seeing the thin roots swirling under the  surface of the soles of your feet, their white  ends looking for a place to poke through. The earth is  a magnet for roots.
  James tosses the scarecrow across the creek.  It lands with a thud next to Frances, its neck  bleeding straw, its legs splayed crazy on either  side of the teeming wooden stake. Frances can  feel the scarecrow looking up at her. It has  no head but she can see its expression anyway,  pathetic and sad: "Why did you do this to me?"  Lying there like a dying soldier wanting to give her  a message from his dying throat: the location of the  enemy, a message for a loved one back home,  a piece of a joke, a piece of a poem, the  address of his childhood home crystal clear,  the memory of a boy drinking from a summer stream in
  
a painting or did that really happen, was that  me? Frances doesn't answer. She looks  away from the scarecrow even though she knows it may  move if she doesn't keep an eye on it.  Her arms have congealed around the clammy little baby.  She fastens her eyes on the scarecrow's hat.  The hat is lying next to Daddy. And Daddy is  digging in the garden. With his bare hands.
  James stops. It's ridiculous to dig  anywhere but in a sandbox with your bare hands, but in a  New Waterford backyard it's even more  ridiculous, because there's coal not far under the  ground, even coal right at the surface in  places. And rock. James is crying. He  covers his face with his hands, streaking it with mud and  soot and blood. He has never cried like this before,  not counting early childhood. He's in the war. Not  that he is hallucinating himself back to the Front  or hearing shells explode in his head or seeing  chopped-up men, it's not that conscious. It's just that  if you asked the layer of his self that's in charge of  assumptions, "Where are we now?" it would reply,  "In the war, of course." There is a  water-filled trench. There is an unhappy man  with bleeding hands. There is the body of a boy. Of  course.
  "Daddy."
  "No-o-o-o-o-o.  No-o-o-o-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho." Like
Santa Claus, only sad.
  "Daddy, I'm sorry."
  James quiets down a bit and rocks on his  heels for a while, making only very small sounds,  with his hands still covering his face.
  "The baby's cold, Daddy."
  James gets up, gasping, swaying a bit,  every breath touching off a little moan. But they're just the  aftershocks of grief. He can function now, the  chest-heaving will run its course like a case of  hiccups. He looks across at Frances. He  splashes through the creek and takes the live baby  from her. Her elbow joints unsquinge like damp  springs, and her arms levitate in giving up the  child's weight, while retaining its warm impression  --a phantom baby she will feel in her arms for  days to come. James gives her a light shove  toward the house.
  "Go to bed now, go on."
  "Don't hurt her."
  "I won't hurt the baby, go."
  
  Frances goes.
  "Wait. Take off your nightgown."
  She peels it from her body and James takes  it from her. She watches Daddy return to the  garden, where he swaddles the infant boy in her  nightgown and tucks him into the shallow earth.
  Frances walks across the yard back to the house,  savoring the novelty of the night air on her bare  chest. Boys are the only ones who ever get  to feel this. There's a bright moon, her underpants  glow white and she pretends to herself that she's really  a boy stripped down for a swim at Lingan. She  skips across the backyard feeling light and free,  and it's not until she steps out of her damp  underpants and snuggles down in bed next  to toasty-warm Mercedes that Frances starts to feel  cold and to shiver.

  Down in the cellar, Materia is curled  asleep on a pillow of ashes behind the coal  furnace. She dreams of an expanse of  quiet earth embroidered by drought, then a calm  sea of sand. In her dream she is aware that kings  and queens are buried in the sand. A wide blue  river blinks in the distance. In the river there is  something she needs. But the sand makes her sleepy.  Sleepy like Arctic snow. It's not the cold that  makes you sleep yourself to death in the Arctic, it's  the smooth pallor of the landscape, and the  desert has that same smooth pallor, though  Arabic. It's the whiteness, the sameness of  everything, that makes you fall asleep out of life,  parched or frozen and so so comfortable when you finally  let it roll over your mind, like a rolling-pin  over dough.
  The latch on the cellar door thwacks open  and the airborne part of Materia slams back  into her body, her eyes opening on impact; she  has fallen awake. His shoes squish heavily  down the steep wooden stair slats. He stumbles  a bit at the bottom because there's no light down  here and he hasn't brought a lantern. Materia  doesn't move a muscle. She is a pair of  eyes now, that's all she is. A desert with  eyes.
  James has either forgotten she's there or  doesn't consider it of any importance. He  yanks open the door of the cold furnace and  tosses in a load of bloody sheets, douses  it with kerosene and lights it. The sudden glow across
  
his face startles even Materia and tears spring  to her eyes, there is nothing sadder than the  Devil. Tears spring to her eyes because in this  light, in firelight as in candlelight, the  essential beauty of a person is evident.  Candlelight is kind and caressing and therefore a  natural companion to romance. The essential  James is what the flames illuminate and it's  splintering what's left of her heart, the sight of  him as he was so long ago, the two of them alone in  the hunting cabin out of season with his gift of his  mother's tartan blanket and the song and his bliss at  the sound of her mother tongue, he loved her but she  didn't know she was supposed to save him, she  didn't know, she didn't know, he must have fallen  down and hurt himself just now because his face is  dirty, he's been crying and his cheeks are  striped with blood.
  He sprinkles a little more fuel onto the  flames. Materia can't stay by the furnace much  longer what with it heating up like this. If he  doesn't leave soon she will have to move and betray  her presence. But he shuts the potbelly door  and the glow dies down, his sweet agony disappears  and is replaced by the shadows of the face she has  come to know and Materia ceases to feel the lump in  her throat.
  As he heaves and shifts the weight of himself from  one foot to another up the steps,
Materia wipes the tears from her face with her  sooty hands. She unwedges her body and drags  it along the cinder floor behind her until she can  stand up in it again, and goes back to being nothing but a  pair of traveling eyes.

  Before dawn, with Mercedes still sound asleep beside  her, Frances opens her eyes and sees a black  woman staring down at her. The woman reaches out  and lightly strokes Frances's forehead. She  does the same to Mercedes, and then leaves.  Frances falls back asleep. Candy. She  dreams of candy.

  The night is bright with the moon. Look down  over Water Street. On the lonely stretch between  where the houses end and where the sea bites into the land,  a tree casts a network of shadow that stirs and  bloats in one spot, as though putting forth dark  fruit that droops, then drops from the bough. It's  a figure come out from under the branches and onto the
  
street. It stops, drifting in place like a  plant on the ocean floor. Then it travels  again all the way down the street to the graveyard.  It passes among the headstones that have flourished  with the town, but it does not linger at the freshest  mound. It continues to the edge of the cliff. There, it  lies down on its stomach and places its neck  upon the lip of the precipice, as though the earth were a  giant guillotine. It looks straight out to the  sea that stretches four thousand miles due east,  and sings.
  Is it possible that the Atlantic conducts the  song across its waters until, thirsty and ragged,  the song reaches the Strait of Gibraltar,  revives a little with the refreshment of its own echo  off the rock of ages and continues its journey,  turning on its tattered axis all the way  to Lebanon, where it finally loses momentum and  rests in air for a moment before descending in soft  arcs to the sandy shore below, to sleep there in peace and  forever, at last?

  When Mrs. Luvovitz opens her back  door at three that morning she gets a fright.  There's someone in her garden. Just standing there at a  slight tilt, as though blown that way by a wind  that's since died down.
  Mrs. Luvovitz woke up because she heard  something. A woman singing, of all things.  She couldn't make out the words. It didn't wake  Benny. Hard not to think "banshee"--sometimes they  wail, sometimes they weep or just sing softly, but  their message is always the same: someone will cross  over. By the time Mrs. Luvovitz got her  eyes properly open the singing had ended. But she  looked out the front window anyhow--nothing. Just  to be sure, she went downstairs and opened the  back door, and that's when she got the fright--a  figure stood in her garden, with its back to her.
  Fear turned to surprise the next instant when  Mrs. Luvovitz recognized the shape.
  "Materia?"
  Materia does not turn around, she does not  stir. She is a ripe stalk planted in shallow  soil, top-heavy, about to fall over roots-up.  Just a baby's breath will do it now.
  Mrs. Luvovitz walks between the beans and  tomatoes until she is close enough to touch  Materia's arm. It is cool and smooth and  plump. Materia's hair is loose. It
  
hangs in wiry black waves that just touch her  shoulders. She's wearing one of the loose cotton  dresses that Mrs. Luvovitz helped her  sew, soft and favorite now with age, covered in  faded wild flowers.
  Materia turns at the touch and Mrs.  Luvovitz sees the front of her. "Gott  in Himmel."
  Materia stands in Mrs. Luvovitz's tub  while Mrs. Luvovitz washes her. They're  in the kitchen with the fire going. The water is  black with coal dust and blood. Materia's  dress is on the floor, the front of it is a  scab, it will be thrown out. Mrs. Luvovitz  washes her gently, no scrubbing, no cloth, with  her soap-sliding hands only, as though Materia  were a newborn. It's a milky skin Materia  has, not in color but in texture, all  curves, compact muscle under a soft sheath.  Materia doesn't say anything. All the effort  and anxiety of distinguishing one thing from another  drained away forever, all distances now equal--  Mrs. Luvovitz's face and the Cape of Good  Hope, Materia's own warm body and the rest of the  world.
  Mrs. Luvovitz has sent Benny to the  Piper house to find out what in God's name is  going on over there. When he arrives he finds  James in a clean white shirt making  tea, at 3:30 A.m. The house is very warm,  hot. Kathleen is dead upstairs under fresh  linen. There's an infant girl asleep in a  crib by the stove.
  "I'm sorry for your trouble, James."  "Thank you, Ben. Will you have a drink?"
  "Cuppa tea."

  In the morning, Mercedes awakens next  to Frances and sees a black smudge on her little  sister's forehead. It looks like ashes from the  fireplace. Mercedes licks her finger and  cleans it off. Frances sleeps on. While  dressing, Mercedes notices a similar  smudge on her own forehead. She wipes it  away. Frances wakes up.
  "Mercedes, I dreamed that the lady who gave  me the candy came into our room last night."
  "What lady?"
  "The dark lady. She touched me."  Mercedes knows that it was the Devil and that they were
  
protected by the rosary. The Devil would leave a  coal smudge on your forehead. It would be like him  to mock what the priest does on Ash  Wednesday. And it couldn't have been Our Lady.  Everyone knows Our Lady is pure white in a  blue dress.
  "It was just a dream, Frances."  "She was beautiful."
  Mercedes says a silent prayer for her  sister.
  "She's my fairy godmother," says Frances.  Mercedes puts the rosary around Frances's  neck and goes downstairs to help Mumma make  breakfast. Frances curls up on her side and  shivers.
  Daddy is waiting for Mercedes in the kitchen.  He has made porridge for her. She sits  down at the table.
  "Good morning, Daddy."
  "I need you to be a big girl, Mercedes."  He looks at her. They have the same eyes,  though hers are brown. Their faces are of sandstone,  though hers is tinged with olive. Mercedes understands  that the worst is coming and unfolds her serviette,  placing it neatly on her lap. She's glad she  took special care with her braids this morning.
  "Your sister Kathleen has been taken away  from us."
  "Has she gone to New York
City?"
  "She's gone to God."
  A gap opens up in Mercedes' stomach. She  bridges it by picking up her spoon. "Thank you  for breakfast, Daddy."
  "I need you to look after your mother."  "Is Mumma sick?"
  "No. But she's very tired. She's just had a  baby."
  "Oh." Mercedes shows her teeth politely  and gets her first permanent wrinkle. "A boy  or a girl?"
  "Another little sister for you."  "Oh." The second permanent wrinkle.
  "Mumma is very sad about losing Kathleen.  She's too tired to look after the new baby."
  "I'll look after it."
  "That's my girl."
  "Don't worry, Daddy."

          The Official Version
  
  She endured the most severe trials with a  calmness, fortitude and resignation which are the best  proofs of the innocence of her life.
    EPITAPH, HALIFAX CEMETERY

  Materia had done the Roman Catholic thing;  the mother had died. And James, of course, had not  been in attendance at the birth and had therefore been  in no position to apprehend the danger or  to intervene. So there was no inquest, and the examining  doctor and the undertaker kept the details to themselves  and their wives.

  One child was born.

  Kathleen looked lovely, God rest her  soul, so young and lifelike. Just as though she were  asleep. They buried her in white, it should have  been her wedding dress. The influenza, you know,  there's not a family on three continents hasn't  been touched by it. And her with her God-given gift  and her whole life ahead of her.

  Everyone knew that Kathleen was pregnant and that  she died of the child. You'd have to be an idiot not to have  figured that out, what with the girl's hasty  home-coming and incarceration in the house. But the thing  you do in a case like this is go along with the  idea that the child is the offspring of its grandparents.  Everyone agrees to this fiction, and the only people who'd  breathe a word of the actual facts to the  illegitimate child are those who are so malicious  to begin with that they are easily dismissed as liars.  As in truth they are. For the beneficent lie  tells the truth about the child, which is "you belong to this  community," whereas the malicious truth-tellers  use fact to convey a lie, which is "you don't  belong." This is an imperfect system but it's the  prevailing one. And as the years go by the facts  get eroded and scattered by time, until there are more  people who don't know than people who do.

    Mahmoud Mourns
  Mahmoud never wants to see Materia or her  husband or her children or any evidence of them ever  again. The only communication he's had with the Piper  family for the past nineteen years has been the  business arrangement with James, and they've both  done well out of that while never once coming face
  
to face. But that's over now.
  Kathleen was the one Mahmoud invested in, was  proud of, but he ought to have known that exposing the girl  and her gift to the world was exactly prostitution.  She went out and reaped the wages of her parents'  vanity (in the case of James) and stupidity  (in the case of Materia) and wound up a  tramp. It's what happens. Where did she do  it, who did she let do it to her and how often, who  was it, some Anglo dog  son-of-an-enklese'-bitch with no respect  for people's daughters, or worse, a Jew, New  York is full with them, or worse, a colored  man--likewise thronging in that city--and once  that's in the blood it sleeps there for generations  until you least expect it, where was her father when his    daughter was being ruined in the worst city in the world,  where people mate like mongrels? And now a bastard in the  family, another girl to boot, my  son-in-law is truly cursed. Bad from the  beginning, bad in the end, I wash my hands.
  Mahmoud is enraged to find himself choked with  tears as he looks at the lily-white girl in  the casket with her copper hair spread out around  her. He's never seen her up close before. And  he fumes that they would dare to send her to her grave  in white, in white they would send her to God who  sees all! "And there's my idiot daughter at  the organ. I should have broken her fingers  at birth. I should have dismantled the piano and shot  the bastard, Piper. I was merciful and look at  the result."
  Mahmoud scans Mercedes and Frances sitting  scrubbed and gleaming in the pew next to James,  who looks positively bleached in his black  suit, "If he's smart he'll have the older one  in a convent and the younger one out of the house and married  before her first period, damn them all to hell."

    The Rocking Chair
  James takes his last drink on the night of  Kathleen's funeral. It's after midnight when  he comes in from the shed, sits down at the piano in  the front room and plays. The opening bars of  "Moonlight Sonata" and many other pieces.
  Upstairs, Mercedes awakens when the music  stops. Frances is not in bed. Mercedes sits  up and looks out the window, expecting to see  Frances down at the creek again, but no.  Mercedes leaves the room and pauses on the landing
  
looking down. There's a light coming from the front  room. And something else coming from the kitchen--a  smell. It's late at night but Mumma's  cooking kidneys for a pie. Daddy's  favorite. Mercedes takes one step down.
Two steps. Three. And stops to listen ... a  little sound like a puppy. Mercedes thinks of the  kittens in the creek the other night and shudders.  She doesn't like it when Frances goes roaming in  the dark. She wishes everyone would just stay in bed  at night. She wishes she were back in her own  cozy bed too, but she is the eldest now.  Mercedes places her hand lightly on the railing  and descends toward the light spilling over the  bottom of the stairs. She rounds the archway of the  front room and stops.
  It's all right. Frances is alive  alive-o. She is in the rocking-chair with  Daddy. It's funny that Frances seems already  to have been looking at Mercedes even before Mercedes  arrived in the doorway. It's Daddy making the  puppy sound. He is sad because Kathleen died.  He needs his other little girls all the more now.  Frances is sitting nice and still, not squirming for a  change. Mercedes waits until the rocking  chair stops and Frances slides from Daddy's  lap to join her in the doorway. As they walk  upstairs hand in hand Frances says, "It  doesn't hurt." Mercedes says,
"I don't like that smell of kidneys cooking."  And Frances says, "Me neither."
  Back in bed with Frances cuddled once more at  her side, Mercedes starts to feel afraid.  And a bit sick to her stomach although she can't understand  why. She rises, goes over to the washbasin and  throws up. It must have been that smell of kidneys  cooking that got her upset, because why was Mumma  making meat pies in the night? And are there really  places where people put children into pies and eat them?  It's a sin to think that about Mumma. But Mercedes  can't help it. She knows there couldn't really be a  baby in the pie, but she also knows that whenever she  loses track of Frances, bad things happen.

    The First Holy Sacrament
  "Daddy, where's Mumma?"
  "I need you to be a big girl, Mercedes."

  The first thing James did after dragging  Materia's body up to the bedroom was run and
  
get the priest--not for Materia, too late for  her--for the baby girl. James has caught on:  there is a God. There is a Devil--necessary  evil. You may be cursed, but at least God  has a plan for you.
  The alternative to believing is buckling under the  weight of irredeemable guilt and the meaninglessness that  used to be your free will; ceasing to function; and that  is not an option. He has a family of motherless  children depending on him.
  He sent the priest on ahead, then ran for the  doctor.
  The baby girl is on fire with polio-  myelitis. Or "infantile paralysis."
You don't have to be an infant to get it.  The house is quarantined. It doesn't make  much difference, there never having been many comings or  goings. But now it's official. The doctor has  taken his pot of black paint and slapped an  X on the front door as he has on so many  others. Every day, people spit on their thresholds  front and back, declaring, "No disease in my  house!" but the charm has lost its power. There's  disease everywhere.
  Stealing center stage from the regular cast of  diphtheria, TB, scarlet fever and typhus  is Spanish influenza. You don't have to be  Spanish to get it. In 1918 and '19 the flu  kills millions more people worldwide than the  war did. Many believe the disease spread from the  rats that fed off the corpses in the trenches.
  The graveyard has sprouted afresh with little  white crosses carved with cuddlesome lambs. Children  have been hit particularly hard. Mercedes has just  finished first grade. She goes to Our Lady of  Mount Carmel School and up until the summer  holidays she had to wear a white surgical  mask to class like all the other children, so as not  to spread germs. "Miss Polly had a dolly  who was sick, sick, sick, so she called up the  doctor to be quick, quick, quick." All through town,  groceries are left at the bottom of front  yards along with the milk, no one wants to get  near. Even doctors and nurses are dropping like  flies. Coal deliveries are carefully  monitored: if a coal cart delivers a load  you never ordered, look out, someone's going to leave  your house in a box. If a black horse  stops in front of your house for no reason, start  praying. If a white horse comes in the night,
  
forget it.
  The doctor stands on one side of James,  looking into the crib. The priest stands on the other.  He is wearing his vestments and holding cruets of  holy water and oil. James has no idea that  the infant has already been baptized. He  doesn't know that's what Frances was doing out there in  the creek, he just knows she's bad. As for the night  of Kathleen's funeral--well, he won't be  touching another drop of anything stronger than tea  from now on.
  The priest will baptize the baby without picking  her up because to move her at this point in her illness  would be very dangerous. He asks James, "Who  will stand as godfather for the child?"
  "I will," says James, since there's no one  else but the doctor in the quarantined house, and  he's a Protestant.
  The Holy Roman Church has been waiting  for James all along. He thinks back to his  own forced baptism years ago when he married  Materia. He stood defiantly with his head  unbowed while a priest mumbled words over him,  "The voice of the Lord is mighty. The voice of the  Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks  the cedars of Lebanon. ..." He endured it as  a sham. But now he knows there are no accidents,  only tests. The Church is full of examples  of men like him, who thought themselves damned and  yet were saved. Men equal parts monster and  martyour. And through one last act--perhaps occurring  invisibly and deep within the heart at the hour of  death--they were saved. Even sainted.
  "And who will stand as godmother?" inquires the  priest.
  James opens the door to where Mercedes is  waiting. He has her stay on the threshold,  well back from the seething crib. Mercedes'  hair is freshly though unevenly braided,  she's not yet used to doing it herself. A blue  gingham pinafore, stockings of red because blue and red  match.
  The priest doesn't flinch. In the eyes of the  Church a child can stand as sponsor in an emergency,  and besides, it is fairly clear this baby will soon  be with God.
  Godparents must promise that, should anything  happen to the child's parents, they will bring the child up in  the Roman Catholic faith. This is usually a  hypothetical vow, but not for Mercedes because Mumma
  
is already dead. "I'm the mother now," she tells  herself. "And I've had my confirmation so I'm  ready." Last May Mercedes put on an  immaculate white dress and veil and, along  with the rest of her shiny clean classmates, was  ritually slapped by the bishop. Three of her  classmates have since died. Dottie Duggan  died, she sat next to Mercedes. Dottie had  the disgusting habits of eating glue and picking her  nose, but now she is one of God's angels.  Mercedes chose Saint Catherine of Siena as  her saint's name even though she badly wanted  Bernadette, but Bernadette isn't a saint  yet, when oh when? Frances told Mercedes  to take Veronica as her saint's name because of  Veronica's magic hanky. "Not magic,  Frances. Miracle."
  The priest leans over the crib where the infant  lies on its little bed of coals and he asks it,  "Quo nomine vocaris?"
  In the doorway, Mercedes and James answer  together on behalf of the baby, "Lily."
  James hasn't thought of a middle name. There  hasn't been time. He just prays that she'll grow  up to use this one.
  The priest continues, "Lily, quid  petis about Ecclesia Dei?"
  Mercedes and James reply, "Faith." They  have a special dispensation to reply in  English because Mercedes is too young to have learned  all that Latin--though she would have tried had there  been time.
  Mercedes is longing for a look at her new  baby sister. She watches as the priest bends  down and blows softly three times into the crib.  He is blowing away the unclean spirit to make  room for the Holy Spirit. The Consoler.
  "Exorcizo te, immunde spiritus
... maledicte diabole."
  The priest spends a long time blessing Lily and  praying over her. Mercedes and James say the  Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer. And then  the priest resumes his questions. "Lily,  abrenuntias satanae?"
  "I do renounce him."
  "Et omnibus operibus eius?"
  "I do renounce them."
  The priest anoints Lily's head with oil as  the godparents attest to her faith in the Holy  Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the
  
communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the  resurrection of the body and life everlasting.  Finally, he sprinkles holy water onto the  burning forehead. It beads into the oil and simmers  there as he baptizes her, "in nomine  Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus
Sancti."
  When the priest turns to Mercedes, she  trembles with the gravity of the moment and hands James  the precious white satin bundle she has been  holding neatly folded in her arms. It is the  family baptismal gown. James takes the  gown over to the priest. Lily is too sick  to wear it, so the priest merely lays it over her  and tells her to accept this white garment, and never  to allow it to become stained.
  Thus, along with her father, and at the age of almost  seven, Mercedes assumes responsibility for the  soul of Lily Piper.
  Now it's the doctor's turn. He peers  into the crib, shakes his head, gives James the  it's-in-God's-hands-now look, pats    Mercedes on the shoulder and leaves with the priest.

    Babes in the Wood
  "Frances," said Mercedes, handing her a mug of  cocoa, "Mumma's gone away."
  "Where?"
  "To God."

  The graveyard was scary even though it was a  sunny day with a breeze off the water. They  watched Mumma's coffin go into the ground. They  each threw down some dirt. It made them feel  a bit funny doing that--it didn't seem like a very  nice thing to do. Kathleen's grave was right next  to Mumma's. Kathleen is down there, thought  Mercedes and Frances--although Mercedes tried  to remind herself that Kathleen was not down there, she was  with God. Frances was very worried about Kathleen--  it's dark down there. How can she breathe? Is she  scared of the other dead people? Most of them are  skeletons by now. Are there worms?
  Afterward they went home and Daddy took a  steak-and-kidney pie out of the icebox and heated it  in the oven. How could it be that Mumma's cooking was    on the table when Mumma was in the ground? James  ate, but the little girls couldn't touch a bite.  They tried to stop breathing until they were allowed  to leave the table. Frances tried not to picture
  
Mumma cutting raw kidneys with the scissors.  The snip-snap sound.
  That night of Mumma's funeral they couldn't  sleep. They crept out of bed and knelt outside  the door to Kathleen's old bedroom, where their  new baby sister lay. How many Lilys can there  be in one family, Mercedes asked herself.  Frances was worried; babies called Lily  lay perfectly still, then were taken away. Daddy  called her Lily because of something I did, thought  Frances. It's to remind me. Of something. They  prayed.
  "Angel of God, my guardian dear,  please save our baby sister, amen."
  They sang to her:
  ""Oh, playmate! Come out and play with me.  And bring your dollies three, climb up my  apple tree. Shout down my rain barrel,  slide down my cellar door, and we'll be  jolly friends for ever more. ...""
  And they told her all the nice things they would do  together when she got well.
  "We'll have candy for breakfast," promised  Frances.
  "We'll join the choir," Mercedes pledged.  "We'll put on a beautiful ball gown."
  "We'll cook lovely things for Daddy."  "We promise, Lily."
  "We swear."
  "On our graves."
  "On our bones."
  "On our kidneys." Which made them burst out  laughing and Daddy called upstairs for them to go  straight to bed, which made them both start  whisper-singing at the very same time, ""The doctor  sighed and he shook his head, and he said, Miss  Polly put her straight to bed!""
  Mercedes tucked Frances in with her favorite  doll, a beautiful flamenco dancer in a red  dress. Frances made the doll dance quietly  for a while. She made her go home and make  molasses cookies for her children. "Now be good,"  said the dancer to her children, "I am going to study. And  afterward, if I'm not too tired, maybe we will go  to the Old Country. Inshallah." After a  while Frances said, "Mercedes?"
  "What?"
  "What if Daddy dies?"
  "Daddy's not going to die, Frances."  "We would be orphans."
  
  "Daddy's not going to die."
  But Frances was crying, her twinkly face all  crumpled, her tears hot like hot water from the  kettle.
  "Frances, I wouldn't let you be an  orphan."
  "I don't want Daddy to die," Frances  sobbed, inconsolable because of poor Daddy, his two  little girls lost in the woods with leaves for a  blanket and no food. She cried because of the kind  birds and the sad squirrels and poor Daddy  can't save his dear children. It was the warmest she'd  been in days.
  "Frances, I wouldn't let you be an  orphan."
  Frances was crying so hard now that Mercedes got  worried.
  "I want my Mumma to come  ba-a-a-a-ack."
  Mercedes stroked Frances's fuzzy braids  and whispered tenderly, "It's all right, baby,  Mumma's here."
  Frances stopped crying.
  "I'm your mumma now," said Mercedes.  Frances lay still for a while, then she said, "No  you're not."
  "Yes I am, sweetheart."
  Frances curled up into a tight ball.  "Mumma's here," Mercedes cooed,  "Mumma's here."
  Frances hugged her knees till her bones  met one another. She turned her limbs  into strong little tree branches. She made her  spine into a springy switch and her skin into new  bark. Not crying.
  Frances never cried for Mumma after that night.  "It's a good thing Mumma's gone," Frances  would say to herself, going over and over in her mind  all the terrible things she couldn't quite recall--  weaving the threads together into an ingenious cloak of  motley. "Because if Mumma were here, she would know  what a bad girl I've been."

    Lily Who Lived
  The morning after Materia's funeral dawns  joyfully. James says to Mercedes, "Come and  see your godchild." Frances follows. They  walk into the sickroom, now stripped of everything but  the glorious sunlight pouring through the open window,  bathing the crib in a dazzle of dust sprites.
  
Frances and Mercedes approach and look through the  bars. Daddy beams. The little girls expect  to see a plump and peachy version of their doll  babies, but lying there is a thin-cheeked thing under a  mass of black hair that looks like a fright wig.  Dark eyes full of intense and watchful concern--  they seem to have seen plenty already.
  "What's wrong with her?" asks Frances.  "Nothing, she's perfect," says James.
  She looks like a golliwog, thinks  Mercedes, and Frances says, "There is so something  wrong with her."
  For which she gets a clip on the ear.  Mercedes says, "She's beautiful," and  makes a mental note to confess the lie.
  James picks the baby up. "She's a  prizefighter."
  Frances follows Daddy and the baby and  Mercedes downstairs. They're going to feed her  now. Coming from the kitchen is sweet tinkly  music. They enter to see a six-inch porcelain  girl revolving on the table. She wears kid  button-boots and a lime-green silk dress  over several petticoats, and holds a yellow  and white parasol over her golden ringlets. On  the base is an inscription, An  Old-Fashioned Girl. It's for Mercedes,  "For being such a good grown-up girl."
  "Oh, Daddy, thank you."
  Frances is pleased, happy that there is  happiness in the house.
  "It can be both of ours, Frances."  "No, it's your special thing, Mercedes."
  Mercedes lets Frances wind it up,  "Careful, not too tight."
  Frances treats it reverently, but can't  suppress a craving to know what makes the  music.
  The baby lies limp but alert in Mercedes'  arms while James feeds her milk from a  dropper. He says, "She's going to be fine.  It's a miracle."
  I am holding a miracle, thinks Mercedes.  "There is so something wrong with her," says  Frances under her breath.

I'll take you home again, Kathleen ...

  Making love with the New Yorker is an  experience which announces to Kathleen that the present
  
tense has finally begun. It's summer now. For  Kathleen the Present is a new country,  unassailable by the old countries because the Goths and  Vandals of the old countries don't even know the  Present exists. But it is assailable. It will  be breached. Kathleen is too young to know that. Right  now, in summer, she is making love. She is just  being born.

My love
I love you
Oh
Sweet honey
I love you
Sweet, oh
Oh

  It's a first-love conversation. Mouths can't  kiss each other enough or find enough of the beloved to be  kissed enough. The invisible ocean holds the room  and the bed and the lovers suspended and treats them like  aquatic plants, arms can never stop moving,  fronds in the liquid breeze, hands never stop  waving slowly side to side, caressing the loved  one, hello. ... fingers never stop fanning,  tendrils in a ceaseless bouquet, all parts  sway and sway sometimes violently sometimes almost not  at all. A small grazing gesture ignites  the need for closer, and breaks the  surface of the water, never in you enough, gulping  air, never contain you enough, on dry land now,  never hold you enough, the desert heat, drink  you, oasis lover shimmering under a palm, I will  burn to ashes here then blow away--until that  merciful peak is discovered, and once that is  discovered, the slow tumble back down the hill,  buckets of water spilling in slow motion,  streaking the sand along their way until again the  gentle sway, the ocean floor, the grazing touch  that reignites the sea.

I want you  want you to  want you too  want to  oh you  so, so  sweet
Oh
Oh
  
like honey
I love you  taste like honey  my love

  That fall James got a letter. He went down  there and brought Kathleen home the day the war ended.

across the ocean wide and wild ...

               Book 3
    THE SHOEMAKER AND HIS ELVES

               Bootleg

  1925. April Fool's Day--although  Frances never needs an excuse. She and Lily  are playing in the attic surrounded by a rabble of  dolls. The room is otherwise empty except  for the hope chest. Lily is going on six.  Frances is eleven. She is Lily's  self-appointed babysitter, playmate and  tormentor. Lily wouldn't have it any other way.
  Lily no longer resembles the strange baby  she was. The only trace is in the particular  attentiveness of her lovely green eyes, as  though always prepared to take in a solemn truth.  This is a quality that Frances especially  enjoys. Lily's black hair has acquired  an auburn sheen and, although nowadays a lot of little  girls and boys have Buster Brown haircuts,  Lily's hair falls down past her waist when
  
loose. Her skin is peaches and cream and honey,  she looks to have been kissed by the sun even in  winter. She has lips like Rose Red, and an  adorable little bump that appears in her forehead when  she is perturbed. Frances has told her it is  a horn that will soon grow out through the skin.
  Today Lily is dolled up in a frilly  knee-length dress of light green taffeta with a  crinoline--no special occasion, just because she is  our darling sweet Lily and Daddy likes to see  her prettily turned out. Most girls, both  little and big, have long since renounced crinolines  and petticoats--women no longer need all that  nonsense tripping them up, they've had far too  much to do since the war. But Lily doesn't have to do  anything but be happy.
  Today, as usual, she wears a gleaming crown of  french braids scraped so tight by Mercedes that the  corners of her eyes are slightly stretched.  Mercedes is in charge of Lily's hair, but    Lily doesn't like anyone but Frances to dress  her or give her a bath. That's just the way it  is. Even though Lily never knows when Frances will  do or say something alarming--"Honest, Lily, you  were adopted. We just found you in the garbage one  day. You had potato peelings stuck all over  you."
  Frances is a wiry girl. And white as a  sheet, usually. Except for the freckle  on her Roman nose. And except for when she  is laughing, or thinking up something really good. Then  the bits of green glass in her hazel eyes  light up, her nose goes pink and a little white  stripe appears across its bridge. Lily  watches Frances's nose as a sailor might  watch for a lighthouse beam. When the stripe  appears, it means Frances is about to go  overboard.
  And what has become of Frances's beautiful  dark blond curls? They have given way to an  invasion of wild undergrowth. "Naturally curly"  is a euphemism. In brilliant sunlight it  is possible to catch a hint of the blond halo she  used to wear. Otherwise it has been obliterated  by a riot of rust and brassy browns. Frances  wears her hair in braids too, just like Lily and  Mercedes, although hers writhe with escape-artist  locks that by the end of the day bounce free. She  cuts her own bangs.
  Mercedes doesn't much care for dolls
  
anymore, but Lily is passionate about them and so  is Frances. She still has all her dolls from when  she was little. When the dolls are not sleeping on the  bed, they live in the attic. At the moment, they  are all nicely lined up against the hope chest:  there is Maurice, the organ-grinder's  monkey; there is Scarlet Fever, the girl  baby with the porcelain head; there is Diphtheria  Rose, whose velvet dress Frances has  shortened fashionably; there are the twin  sailors, Typhoid and TB Ahoy, and the little  boy doll, Small Pox. There used to be a  lovely lady doll in a ball gown, Cholera  La France, but she got lost somewhere. In pride  of place is the flamenco dancer with her crimson  dress and castanets. Spanish Influenza.
  Lily reveres Frances's dolls, but the one  she loves with all her heart is her very own  Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley. Mrs.  Luvovitz made her and Lily named her in  honor of Frances's favorite perfume. She  has lovely thick brown woolen locks,  perfect for braiding, except where Frances gave  her a bit of a haircut. Today, Lily takes  Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley and picks the mouth  off her for no reason. Regret is bitter and  instantaneous. But what is to be done now?
  "You've wrecked her," observes Frances.  "No I haven't."
  "You sure have, here, give her to me."  "What are you going to do to her?"
  "I'm going to fix her."
  "Don't wreck her."
  "She's already wrecked."
  Lily hands over the rag doll.
  "It's okay Lily, we can just pretend she  had leprosy--"
  "No!"
  "--b then she meets Jesus and he heals  her."
  Frances takes a fountain pen from the pocket of  her plaid jumper. Lily watches, poised  to grab and rescue if need be. Frances  calmly holds the doll just out of Lily's reach,  but reassuringly tilted in such a way that Lily  can watch the careful restoration of Raggedy's  smile. Frances sings as she works, ""Miss  Polly had a dolly who was sick sick sick,  so she called up the doctor to be quick quick quick.  The doctor sighed and he shook his head, and he
  
said Miss Polly, she is dead dead dead.""
  Lily howls, "No, Frances those aren't the  words!"
  Frances hands the doll back, "There."  "How come you gave her a blue mouth?"
  "She stayed in the water too long and her lips  turned blue."
  "But what about when she gets warm?"  "She won't."
  "Frances!"
  "I can't help it, Lily," Frances points  out reasonably. "You're the one who picked half  her face off. I just fixed her, that's all, she  looked stupid without a mouth. What an  ungrateful little brat."
  Lily stares at Raggedy.
  "Thank you, Frances."
  "You're lucky she didn't drown."  Lily finds the place within herself where love  discovers that Raggedy is now more dear than ever.  Frances watches Lily soothe the cruddy rag  thing, and twines a finger round a stray coil of  hair.
  "Lily ..." says Frances in a friendly  confiding tone, "you know what Daddy has back there  in his shed? A still. He's a bootlegger."
  "He is not. He's a bootmaker."  "Why do you think they call it bootleg  whiskey? Because Daddy makes it along  with the boots."
  "Frances."
  "And I'm an alcoholic. I have been since  I was six. Don't tell Mercedes. I took  to the bottle the day you were born and I've been  secretly drunk ever since. I'm drunk right  now."
  Lily doesn't like it when Frances's eyes  start to glint green. It's the first sign. It  means Frances is going to tell her something.
  "No, you're not drunk, Frances, I can't  smell it."
  "It's so pure it doesn't even have a  smell." Frances knows how to make her voice so  calm and serious at the same time, the plain  truth, like a doctor; "I'm afraid that head's  going to have to come off, Mrs. Jones."
  "Daddy wouldn't let you, Frances."  "Daddy gives it to me. I'm the taster."
  "I'm asking him myself, that's not true,  Frances."
  
  "Lily, if you ask Daddy it will really hurt  his feelings. He only makes the whiskey so we  can afford a decent life. And I have to help him.  It's too bad I got addicted but that's the  sacrifice I made to help you and Mercedes.  What if we couldn't have afforded a doctor?  They'd've cut your leg off."
  Lily starts to cry.
  "Frances, I don't want you to be an  alcoholic."
  Lily's tears are pouring out and her throat is  getting sore from sorrow. "I'm going to tell  Daddy not to give you any more."
  "Don't cry, Lily, it's okay, I  don't mind. I've always known I would die  young."
  "No-o-o!" Lily covers her face and  water streams through her fingers. Slowly, Frances  puts her arms around Lily and begins gently  to rock her as she cries.
  "Daddy's not a bad man, Lily. He  loves us very much."
  Frances closes her eyes and soaks up  Lily's warm grief for her predicament. It  spreads like medicine through Frances's narrow chest.  She experiences a precious moment of peace.  Dear Lily. Frances breathes deeply, and her  face undoes itself until it is as smooth as a  young girl's skin.

  "Frances, Lily ... where are you?"  Mercedes doesn't like to raise her voice.  Anything worth saying is worth saying in a  civilized tone. This means she climbs a lot  of stairs.
  Mercedes' light brown braids are decently  folded into a bun at the back of her neck. She  wears a cameo fastened to the throat of her stand-up  collar, and her blue serge skirt hangs three  inches below her knees. Modesty is always in  style. Mercedes is a slim girl who is  scrupulous about her posture. Mercedes is  twelve going on forty.
  Second floor. No sign of the girls,    meantime the liver is getting cold in the pan  downstairs. Loaded with iron, and economical,  you can't go wrong with liver. Mr. Luvovitz  has said so and he should know. Mercedes does most  of the grocery shopping these days. Every Friday,  Daddy entrusts her with housekeeping money, and on
  
Saturday morning she makes the rounds.  Lately she has begun doing most of the cooking  too. After supper, she and Frances do the washing  up. Then Mercedes does her homework. And then  she does Frances's homework--although she tells  herself that she is merely helping Frances,  otherwise it would be cheating. And what does  Frances do? Plays with Lily or fools around  on the piano. Daddy taught Mercedes how  to play up to grade seven according to the Toronto  Conservatory, but he gave up on Frances  early on. Frances prefers to play by ear, but  only when Daddy's out working.
  Mercedes peeps into Frances and Lily's  bedroom. They're not there either. It always irks  Mercedes when dinner is late, and it usually is,  through no fault of hers. She sighs and looks  forward to the end of day, when all her chores will be  done and she can settle in with her book. These days  she is achingly absorbed in Jane Eyre for the  second time. Today is Thursday. Just two more  days till glorious Saturday when, after she  has done the shopping and the washing and ironing,  Mercedes will go as usual to the home of Helen  Frye, her best friend--best after Frances, that is.  Helen Frye lives in a company house because her  daddy is a miner, but the Fryes are not as poor  as other mining families because Helen is that rarity,  an only child. The others all died. So
Helen has her own room and quite nice clothes.  Maybe this Saturday Mercedes and Helen will  take in a picture at the Bijou. Or work on  one of several shared projects; they have a quilt  on the go, along with baby clothes for their future  children. And maybe, as they have been recently wont  to do, they will discuss love. Helen is in love with  Douglas Fairbanks. Mercedes is in love  too, but she cannot yet bring herself to speak his holy  name.
  The door to the attic stairs is ajar.  Mercedes stands at the bottom, a little put out.  What's the attraction? Why do they play up  there? For one thing, there's nothing up there but the old  hope chest and she has the key, and for another thing  Frances is rather too old for play. Frances could  do with some friends her own age. Mercedes cups her  hands around her mouth and speaks into the darkness of the  stairwell.
  "Frances, Lily, supper."
  No answer. Then a low moan and a whistling
  
sound like the wind, except it obviously isn't the  wind.
  "Frances, no nonsense now, supper's  getting cold"--allowing herself a hint of genteel  exasperation.
  "Mercedes ... give me back my liver."  "For gosh sake, Frances--"
  "Mercedes ... I'm on the first step."  Metallic clomp.
  "Supper's getting cold."  "Mercedes ... I'm on the second step."  Clank.
  "Fine, starve."
  Whispering, "Mercedes ... BOO!"  "A-a-a!"
  Why? Why does it always work?  Frances emerges into the hallway and dances the  highland fling, the iron brace on her left leg  swinging like a shillelagh.
  "Frances, Daddy is right downstairs ...  Frances!"
  Frances dances on, high kicking into Offenbach,  singing in a Scottish accent, "Can, can you do the  cancan, can you do the cancan"--accelerating--  "canyoudothecancancanyoudothecancan--"
  Lily has collapsed at the bottom of the  attic stairs, beside herself with giggles, trying not  to pee; Mercedes starts to succumb in spite of  herself--
  "What's all the commotion up there?" It's  Daddy on the first step.
  Mercedes snaps to the banister and calls down,  "Nothing, Daddy, we're coming." She hurries  down the stairs, heading him off, "Supper's  ready when you are, Daddy," while Frances  undoes the leather straps of the heavy steel brace  and gives it back to Lily.
  They say grace around the kitchen table, "Bless  us O Lord and these Thy gifts which we are about  to receive through Thy bounty through Christ our Lord,  amen." Frances adds, "Inshallah."
  James eyes her and shakes his head  slightly. Lily grins behind her napkin.  Mercedes serves.
  "Mmmm," says Frances, "leather and  onions."
  Clip to the ear from Daddy, she earned that one.  Let's all just ignore her.
  "These carrots are from our own garden, Daddy,"  says Mercedes.
  
  James had let the garden go to seed, but  Mercedes resurrected it last year because she knows  how much it meant to him at one time. Before all the  sad things happened. She is very proud of the  scrawny carrots and strange potatoes it  produces and she always announces the fact that the  family is being nourished by the bounty of their own  backyard. James nods, gives her his faint  distant smile and goes on eating. Frances,  however, experiences difficulty.
  Eat. Chew, chew, chew, offer it up for the  poor souls in purgatory. Frances has  difficulty getting through a whole meal at the best  of times--maybe if I smuggle the liver into my  pockets bite by bite--I know, tonight while  everyone's asleep I'll glue a big  envelope to the underside of my chair so that from now  on--
  "Eat," James tells her.
  Lily's forehead has puckered, there are tears  in her eyes, but she eats bravely on.
  "It's all right, old buddy, you don't have  to finish it," says James.
  Lily looks to Mercedes, hating to hurt her  feelings. "That's okay, it's delicious.  Thank you, Mercedes."
  James smiles mature complicity at  Mercedes, who forms a smile in return and  removes Lily's plate, saying in  her kind voice, "Lily, would you like a toasted  cheese?"
  "Yes please, Mercedes."
  "Atta girl," says James.
  "I could use a filet mignon, personally,"  says Frances.
  James shoots her a look--she'll feel the  back of his hand in a minute.
  He turns to Lily and tugs one of her  braids. So like her mother, her mother's lovely mouth  and perfect nose, her eyes. So like Kathleen but  for the blight. That only makes her more precious  to me. In the right way.
  Lily doesn't know whom she looks like. She  knows she had a sister who died, and Mumma died  of a broken heart right after, and Daddy loves us very  much.
  James strokes Lily's sweet head and she  caresses Daddy's hand with her cheek. The hand  turns into a spider and tickles her under the ear;  she wriggles and squeals and makes him stop with a
  
little kiss. Lily senses that Mercedes  disapproves, probably thinks she's too old  for this game, but Lily can't imagine ever being too  old to play with Daddy. She never wants to get  that old.
  On the whole James is satisfied with his  life, and in some ways very happy. Mercedes is  a pillar. And Lily is precious. They make  up for Frances. "How was school today?" he asks  her.
  "Great, we looked at a bunch of fossils  and spent the whole day on Jane Eyre." Which  is true, Frances did look at fossils;  she spent the day at the shore, reading and skipping  rocks.
  James looks at her and in the silence  Frances feels a little prickly, but takes  another bite of liver. Mercedes waits by the  stove. She will leave it till later to reprove  Frances for borrowing her book without permission.  For now she watches Daddy. Will he drop the  subject? James opens his mouth but Mercedes  chirps, "Daddy, you'll never guess what  happened today," placing the toasted cheese before  Lily and resuming her seat. "Ronald  Chism's pet frog escaped from the pocket of his  trousers."
  "What happened?" asks Lily, all ears.  "Well, the errant frog was nowhere  to be found until Sister Saint Agnes started  from her chair and the creature leapt from behind the hem of  her habit, to the great amusement of the class and the  consternation of Sister Saint Agnes."
  James chuckles politely, Frances  yawns audibly.
  James returns his attention to his plate and  Mercedes breathes again. She ponders Daddy's  love for Lily. And his anger at Frances. She  picks up her fork and feels lonely.
  That night, Mercedes creeps into the room  Frances shares with Lily and into bed next to her  sisters, and whispers, "Frances ... are you  awake?"
  "No, I'm talking in my sleep."
  "You have to come to school tomorrow."  ""Oh, Daddy, 'twas so-o amusing,  Mistah Froggy was moast impehtinent, methought  he would leap right up the dingy crack of Sister  Saint Agnarse.""
  "Frances!"
  
  "You're laughing."
  "I am not." Mercedes laughs silently into the  pillow for a while. Finally she collects herself,  wipes away tears and, "Frances?"
  "What?"
  "Promise me you'll come to school tomorrow."  "What for?"
  "Sister Saint Eustace will have to get the  truant officer after you and he'll tell Daddy."
  "So what? We could use a little excitement  around this joint."
  "Frances, please."
  "All right, all right." Frances rolls over  and starts snoring.
  "Frances, can I sleep here tonight?"  "I don't care."
  "Thanks." Mercedes snuggles in, tucking  Frances's always icy feet between her own.
  "Aa'di aa'e'ley, Habibti."
  "Don't worry, Mercedes."  "Te'berini."
  "Yeah, yeah."
  "Good night, Frances. I love you."  "Barf."
  Mercedes giggles and falls asleep.  The Demon Rum

  James is doing well off the Nova  Scotia Temperance Act. He's doing even  better off the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.s.  Constitution, otherwise known as Prohibition.  Frances doesn't know it for a fact but she  suspects. In Our Lady of Mount Carmel  schoolyard, two brothers, both named  Cornelius in case one dies, flung the  truth at her. "Your old man's nothing but a  bootlegger!" Frances retorted, "Oh yeah?  Well your old man's a silly bitch!" They  came after her but she ran, and no one can catch  Frances on the run.
  Frances has already learned that boys and fishermen  have a richer vocabulary than girls and nuns--  even if she's not always sure of the exact meaning  of the powerful words she likes to use. She knew  she wouldn't find "bootlegger" in the dictionary,  any more than she had been able to find a
  
satisfactory entry for "bugger," so she went  to Mr. MacIsaac. His red face split in a  grin, he wheezed out his laugh like a busted  accordion and told her what it meant, quick  to add, "But your daddy's not a bootlegger,  lass, where'd you get that idea?"
  Frances figured Mr. MacIsaac was just  saying that to be nice. Either that or he's stupid.  Why else does he fail to notice how sticky  her fingers get whenever she passes the bin of  cinnamon hearts and jellybeans? Frances let  Mercedes in on her theory about the true nature  of Daddy's work, but Mercedes just said "silly  nonsense."
  James is a bootlegger. When he works, he  works at night. He leaves the house around  eleven o'clock and locks the girls inside. He  lights a lantern in the shed, where his cobbling  tools sit gathering dust. Then he leaves the shed  too and locks the door. He drives away,  leaving the light to burn all night in the window.
  He goes to the mouth of a certain stream and  meets the dories that row in from the boats anchored  offshore on "rum row." These boats are en  route from the British colony of Newfoundland,  where liquor is legal, to points down the coast  as far as New York City. James carries  barrel after barrel and case after case up the  middle of the stream to a hiding place.
He returns the next night, loads up his  automobile and makes trips from the hiding  place to his secret premises back in the  woods. He is starting to feel too old for all  this lifting and ferrying, however, and is considering  hiring a couple of younger or poorer men. There are  plenty of both kinds about these days.
  One strike follows another: '22, '23,  and just this past March of '25 the miners walked out  again. It reminds James of New Waterford's  bad old days before the war. Outside Cape  Breton, the twenties are roaring. But the famous  postwar boom never hit here. At least not for  ordinary people. Things have gone from bad to worse. The  politicians and the captains of industry blame  it on that mysterious mechanism, "the world  economy." But even James recognizes this as  a euphemism for "God-forsaken  sons-of-bitches who took everything out of here and  never put a thing back." Many miners' children walk  to school barefoot and eat lard sandwiches soaked
  
in water to give them substance--this during times of  full employment. No one knows it yet, but  Cape Breton is a dress rehearsal for the  Great Depression.
  It's not surprising that bootlegging is  tolerated. Who can blame a body for seeking  to supplement his income a little? Or for just brewing  some consolation to share with friends and family around a  fiddle? And that's what most people do. It's  unusual to find a local who sells homemade  'shine at more than cost. And it's unusual to find  someone who doesn't have a jug stashed somewhere, if  not a vat on the stove. The story goes that Father  Nicholson opened Mount Carmel's rectory  door to a stranger who inquired, "Where can a  fella get a drop around here, father?" And the  priest replied, "Well, my son, you've come  to the only place in town where you can't get a  drop, although I don't know, my curate might  be selling." The few serious bootleggers tend  to be good fellas--wild but not bad, and certainly  not stingy or vindictive. Even the Mounties  enjoy the game, no matter how often they're  outwitted, and a mutual respect flourishes.  Win some, lose some.
  Naturally there is a Women's Christian  Temperance League, but they are a Protestant  bevy and New Waterford is a Catholic town.  Even in Sydney, where there are more  teetotal Protestants, the hotels serve  strong drink with only the threat of now and then being  charged a token fine for a first violation. A  second violation shuts you down, but a  proprietor would have to make himself very unpopular in  order to have his twentieth violation designated a  "second."
  There is no shame in bootlegging. Not the way  it is practiced by most people. James, however, is  a professional. At his shack, in the middle of a  secret clearing in the woods, he takes genuine  scotch and gin, real rum, and cuts it all with his  own lye-quickened concoction that bubbles day and night.  He reseals the genuine liquor bottles and  turns a handsome profit. It helps that he  doesn't have friends to blab to. Otherwise one thing  leads to another and, before you know it, the Mountie who  has just turned up at your still to purchase a drop  of Christmas cheer is duty-bound, come New  Year's, to burn you down, no hard feelings.
  Like the professional he is, James sells
  
only to those most likely to pay: to several wealthy  individuals who do their drinking at home and can  afford a cut above the usual "recipe" of  molasses, yeast and water. And to most of the  hotels and blind pigs from Sydney Mines  to Glace Bay--where the liquor gets diluted  again. He no longer sells to miners because he has  grown weary of collecting debts. James has  read in the papers about spectacular outbreaks of  violence down in the States, where gangs fight for  control of their patch and men are shot over bad  debts. But in James's experience, all that's  usually required is a threat to tell the poor  bastard's wife. James is sick of hearing their  sob stories. If their children are so hard up, they  shouldn't part with a penny for his poison. And they need  look no further than James himself for a good  example: he doesn't touch a drop.
  All this helps to keep James well and  truly hated. Why? Because I'm not disappearing  down the same drain they are. Because I have the guts  and the sense to support my family.
  Not only does James's work keep meat on  the table when most people are lucky to get porridge,  and good clothes on his children's backs when many go about  in made-over flour sacks--the hours allow him  to devote himself to what matters: Lily.
  James has stopped counting his books; there are  too many. Mercedes and Frances have  dipped into all the crates and he encourages them.  But for his own part, he barely has time to glance at  the newspaper before supper, and daytime is reserved  for teaching Lily.
  They do a different letter of the Encyclopaedia  Britannica each day for two hours. James  assigns passages for Lily to memorize and  he quizzes her as to comprehension. She writes  miniature essays on butterflies, boxcars,  Bulgaria and Big Berthas. Lily loves  to learn, but most of all she loves Daddy. After  book-learning, James takes Lily for  drives in the automobile. Sometimes they stay  away all night; like the time they went to St.  Ann's and saw the home of Angus
McAskill, the Cape Breton Giant.
Lily saw a picture of the big man holding  Tom Thumb on the palm of his hand. She was awed  by the tender bond between giant and midget--glad  they had each other.
  James has got permission to keep Lily out
  
of school. She is crippled. It makes sense  that she would be delicate. Everyone assumes she  is--everyone but Frances. James doesn't  entirely approve of the closeness that has  developed between Lily and Frances, but he can't  deny Lily anything. He just tries to keep  track of them. Always at the back of his mind is  the episode in the creek the night Lily was  born and he caught Frances trying to drown her.  Only James knows whom Lily has to thank for  her withered leg, because surely Frances was too young  to remember. Just as she was too young to remember the  second infant. ...
  Now and then at dawn, on his way home from a  night's work, James stops at the cemetery and  visits Kathleen. He doesn't leave  flowers. What's the point? He may pull a  weed if it obscures her name. Her headstone is  dignified and free of second-rate sentiment.  It says simply, "Beloved Daughter."
James does not tend Materia's grave because  someone else does that. "Call'd from the cares of  this world." Someone also leaves flowers, he  doesn't know who. James stands as still as the  stones, looks out at the water and feels how  small the world has become. Europe is in  front of him. Home is behind him. And at his  feet ...
  At this hour there is always a mist about  a mile out. James is a Catholic but he cannot  believe in life hereafter. Not for himself, anyway.  Sometimes, though, when he looks out at the fog on  the water, he feels comforted.

              Little Women

  Mercedes is in love. He is tall--at  least she thinks so--dark, that's for sure, and  handsome, no question. His eyes burn into her very soul and  seem to say, I need so much, so badly, for a good  woman to love me and tame me. He wears a  turban. He is most often to be found in his  lavish striped tent, or galloping across the sands  on a white Arabian charger. He is
Rudolph Valentino. Mercedes does not know  whether to hate Pola Negri with all her heart,  or to pray for her since she has been entrusted with  Mercedes' one true love. She prays for  Valentino every night. She has never heard his  voice, but somehow she has married his silent
  
image to the rich baritone of Titta Ruffo, whose  every recording she possesses.
  "Rudy probably has a horrible  plugged-nose voice and a lisp," says  Frances, mercilessly. "He's probably a  midget in real life." How did Frances  guess her secret, anyway? Mercedes has  been so careful not to betray her heart, but Frances  is uncanny; tying a tea towel around her face  as a veil, batting her eyelashes and swooning in  an all-purpose exotic accent: ""Someday you  weel beat me with those str-rather-rong hands. I should like  to know what it fee-eels like.""
  Mercedes has told only Helen Frye,  who is in love too, with Douglas  Fairbanks. Mercedes indulges Helen's  schoolgirl crush but can't sympathize;  Fairbanks is somehow smug and  self-sufficient. Valentino is haplessly  fierce and hopelessly needy. Helen once said  he was coarse--there almost went the friendship. But they  made up the next day and took turns  describing their future married life with their  respective paramours.
  Whenever Mercedes has had a particularly  lovely time with Helen, she feels a bit  guilty. It pains her that Frances doesn't  seem to have any friends. Unless you can call those  dirty sniggering boys at school  "friends." Frances skulks off with them behind the  boonies at recess sometimes. Mercedes knows  they probably smoke and spit and swear. It's  dreadful. And then, who knows what Frances does  when she disappears from school altogether? Mercedes  does her best, but it's difficult keeping  Frances out of trouble. For example, Frances  always seems to have the latest issue of that lurid  rag Weird Tales, by H. P.
Lovecraft. Daddy does not permit trash in  the house and Mercedes is constantly hiding  Frances's contraband under her pillow, or simply  doing her the favor of tossing it into the furnace.
  When Mercedes feels the prick of sisterly  conscience, she invites Frances to tag along with  her and Helen. Helen always purses her lips  at the sight of Frances and Mercedes can't blame  her. The last time they made a threesome, it was  to see Douglas Fairbanks again, in The  Thief of Baghdad, at the Bijou. Frances was  terribly provoking, speaking aloud all the lines
  
in the script the second before they came on the  screen, but worst of all, she scandalized Helen  with "Okay watch, here comes the part where he gets  flogged 'n he escapes from the palace and you can  see his pecker right through his pants."
  Frances is a moving-picture fan too but  she has different idols. Lillian Gish.  Lillian Gish. Lillian Gish. Her hair  is perfect, her eyes are perfect, her little  mouth is perfect. She is so small and so  brave. She can be bent, but never broken. Men  are brutes, and if they are not, they are big  galoots or else chivalrous princes who  arrive too late. When Frances plays  hooky, she can be found down at the shore, maybe  chatting with the lobstermen--or, if she has the  price of admission, slouched with her legs  dangling over the seat in front of her in the  ecstatic darkness of the Empire or the Bijou,  taking in the matinee.
  Having no funds of her own, Frances  frequently manages to talk Mercedes out of a  dime from the housekeeping money, then pilfers  half as much again when Mercedes isn't looking.  If Frances takes Lily along of a  Saturday, then Lily pays out of her allowance.  Otherwise Frances just helps herself from Lily's  stash that she leaves right out in the open on top of the  dresser they share. Frances only  takes what she needs--"a mere bagatelle"--  and she knows Lillian Gish would do the same.  They have so much in common: forced to live in poverty;  to stoop to shameful stratagems and desperate  measures just in order to survive. And they both  know what it's like to live "way down east."
  For her part, Lily has been slain by Mary  Pickford. She cries through Pollyanna every  time. Frances tries to broaden Lily's  horizons: "Look, Lily, don't you see that  once she turned into a cripple she got boring  and sucky?"
  "No."
  "That's 'cause you're a suck."
  "I am not!"
  They'll be walking home down Plummer  Avenue sharing a fizzy Havelock Iron  Brew that Lily has kindly sprung for.
  "Just like in What Katy Did, she's a  holy terror till she breaks her back, then  she's a sooky baby just like you."
  
  "I am not a sooky baby, Frances."
  "Oh yeah? Prove it."
  Then Lily may take a poke at Frances,  who laughs, holds Lily's head just beyond arm's  length and watches her swing. And when Lily is  exhausted, "Lily. Say bastard."
  Lily hesitates. Frances taunts,  "See, I told you--baby."
  "Bastard!"
  Frances looks around, "Jeez, Lily, not so  loud."
  And Lily whispers, "Bastard."
  "Say horse's arse."
  "Horse's arse."
  "Say Lily Piper is a horse's arse."  "Frances Piper is a stupid bum-ass."
  "Lily." Frances stops in her tracks.  "You have really hurt my feelings this time."
  Lily's eyes fill up. "I'm sorry,  Frances."
  Then Frances smirks and says, "Suck."  While Frances can tolerate Lily's  idiotic crush on America's Sweetheart,  she has no patience with The Sheik because ever since  Mercedes fell in love with Valentino she's  been no fun. She won't play anymore, just  patrols the house and makes the meals and acts like  she's lost a cucumber sideways up a  woman's most precious possession.
Or works on her other obsession: the family  tree. A dry diagram covered mostly with names  of dead Scottish people. Frances knows that Mercedes  has started her period. Maybe that explains it.  Mrs. Luvovitz came over one afternoon in  January and locked herself in the bathroom with  Mercedes for over an hour. Then Mercedes  emerged with a kindly yet superior smile on her  face, because Mrs. Luvovitz had told her the  wonderful news that she was a woman now. "And  soon, Frances," Mercedes simpered, "the same  miraculous thing will happen to you."
  In the good old days, however, all three  sisters used to play together. Lily was their doll,  they could do anything with her. Until she started  to scream. Then they'd let her be an active  participant. She was great to play with because she would  get so caught up.
  "Let's play "Little Women," okay?"  "Okay, Mercedes."
  "Lily, you be Beth, okay? And we all
  
tell you how much we love you and you forgive us for  ever teasing you and then you die, okay?"
  "Okay, Frances."
  Mercedes would be motherly Meg, and Frances would  be tomboy Jo who cuts off her hair but gets  married in the end, and Lily would be delicate  Beth who was so nice and then she died.
  Even though the Little Women in the book were  Protestant, "Let's say they're really  Catholic, okay?" and Frances and Mercedes would  do extreme unction on Beth in her death-bed and  apply a holy relic to her burning forehead,  let's say it's a piece of the Shroud of  Turin, okay? No, let's say it's Saint  Anthony's tongue.
  "Goodbye, dear sisters, I'll pray for you.  Thank you for always being such dear sisters and for making  cinnamon toast, and Jo for letting me play with  your Spanish doll, and Meg for always being such a  good cook. Good ... bye." Lily's eyelids  would flutter convincingly, then she would lie  perfectly still not breathing. It was great. Mercedes  would cry every time. In the early days so would  Frances, but later on she would wreck it all  by saying, "Now let's go and steal her pennies and  divide up her clothes."
  A year or so before Mercedes stopped playing,  the game deepened. It darkened, time distended and they  entered another world. They played "Little  Women Doing the Stations of the Cross." Lily  got to be Beth being Veronica wiping the face of  Jesus with a cloth and the picture of his face  goes perfectly onto her cloth as a gift for  her kindness. Mercedes got to be Meg being  Simon of Cyrene who helps Jesus carry the  Cross, and Frances wanted to be Jo being  Jesus but Mercedes said that would be blasphemous  so Frances got to be the Good Thief hanging  next to Jesus. That is, she got to be Jo being  the Good Thief.
  They descended another level and shed their  intermediary Little Women personae. They entered the  world of "The Children's Treasury of Saints and  Martyrs." They went through the canon. They'd  always start with Saint Lawrence, who got roasted  alive on a grill and halfway through said, "You  can turn me over, I'm done on this side," and  became the patron saint of people who roast meat for a  living. At which they'd laugh uncontrollably,  even Mercedes. They all three felt hot and
  
wicked, but as they played on the game grew  grave and reverent and they reached heights of pious  fervor.
  They each had favorites. Sometimes Frances  was Saint Barbara, whose father was a pagan and when  she wanted to be a Christian he took her up  a mountain and cut off her head while she was  praying for him. Or else Saint Winnifred,  who once knew a man who wanted to do wrong with  her but she said no so he cut off her head but her  kind uncle put it back on her leaving only a  thin white scar. Or sometimes she was Saint  Dymphna, who had a father who wanted to do wrong  with her but she wouldn't so she escaped with the court  jester, but her father found her in Belgium and cut  her head off but she didn't have a kind uncle so  she died and got to be the patron saint of crazy  people.
  Mercedes' favorite was Bernadette.  "That's no fair, Mercedes," said Frances,  "Bernadette's not even a saint yet."  True, Bernadette had only recently been  beatified, but because Mercedes was the eldest they  played the game of Bernadette being such a good  daughter and having asthma and seeing Our Lady in  the grotto at Lourdes where Our Lady told  her three secrets.
  Lily only ever wanted to be Saint  Veronica wiping the face of Jesus,  which got tedious after the nth time and Frances and  Mercedes would try to persuade her to be someone  else.
  "Why don't you be the little boy saint who gets  his hands and feet cut off but then he gets nice  new silver ones?"
  "Why don't you be Saint Giles, who was the  patron saint of cripples, Lily?"
  "Lily, do you want to be Saint Gemma,  who had tuberculosis of the spine but Our Lady  cured her?"
  "No," said Lily, "I want to be  Veronica."
  All right, all right--if you don't let her,  she'll scream and Daddy'll come running and that'll  be it.
  They always exited their passion plays of  ecstatic faith and glorious martyrdom with the  same story, in which they all starred  simultaneously: that of Saint Brigid. She  was the most beautiful girl in Ireland but she
  
wanted to be a nun, but there were too many young men  who wanted to marry her so she prayed to God,  "Please, dear God, make me ugly."
  And He did.
  One by one, Frances, Mercedes and Lily would  crumple and wither till they were wicked-witch  ugly. Then, bent over and shriveled, they'd join  the convent with cackling voices--"Hello, sister,  how are you today, ya-ha-haa!"--where they'd kneel  down at the altar rail and the miracle would  happen: Saint Brigid turns beautiful again.  "Why, sister, you are beautiful!" "So are you,  sister!" "Oh, sisters, look at my beautiful  golden hair!" "And look at my lovely  lips!" "Oh, look at my ball gown!"
"Look at mine!"
  Many a long Saturday and Sunday afternoon,  while Daddy slept off his night's work in the  wingback chair downstairs ...
  It was short days ago, but it seems like forever  since Mercedes got her period and fell in  love and lost her mind. Oh well. At least  Frances and Lily still know how to have fun.

            Cat's Cradle

  Frances and Lily share a room. James would  have preferred that Lily share with Mercedes, but  Lily insisted--to Mercedes' silent  relief. Frances has set up their bedroom so  that there's two of everything and Lily knows exactly  which side of everything is hers and which is Frances's.  You might think Frances would be a slob, but she  isn't, she's very neat and organized. She has  accommodated Lily with a framed magazine  photograph of Mary Pickford in a stupid  gingham apron. It hangs next to Lily's  color print of Jesus with the lambs. Jesus  looks sad, of course, "because he's thinking about  how much he likes lamb chops," says  Frances, but Lily is not fooled by that. The rest  of the walls are covered in Frances's collection.  She writes away for publicity photos. There  is one of Lillian Gish trapped on an ice  floe. There is Houdini naked and furious in a  milk can. There is an actual poster that an usher  at the Empire gave her of Theda Bara in  Sin, holding her unbelievably long tresses  at arm's length above her head like a madwoman.  Frances calls her Head of Haira. Mercedes
  
thinks the picture is immoral.
  One evening, Frances is seated at her side  of the desk, pen in hand, doing her "homework":

Dear Miss Lillian Gish,
  I am writing to you to respectfully request  an autographed photograph of you in any  picture. I have seen them all. It would mean so  much to me because I am a crippled girl and have  spent all my life in a wheelchair. I rode  the wildest horse in the stable. I was dragged, but  I did not die, thanks to my Guardian  Angel. I wish I could run and play like the  other children, but at least I am glad that Daddy  dear can wheel me to the picture house so I can  see you. Thank you.
    Yours truly ...

  Frances muses for a moment and then it comes to her  ... who the letter is from, that is. She signs it,  tucks it into the envelope and addresses it  to Miss Gish's fan club in Hollywood,  California. Then she looks up at Lily,  who has been waiting obediently for playtime  to begin, and says, "All right, Lily, come with  me."
  Lily follows Frances up to the attic.  "I was going to show you something but now I think  maybe you're not old enough."
  "I am, Frances. I'm old."
  They are seated on the floor, cross-legged  before the hope chest. "This was Kathleen's room,  eh, Frances," always must be said, and the response,  "That's right, Lily, this is where she died," before  they can get on with whatever game Frances has in  mind. This liturgy serves to honor the story that  no longer needs repeating. The story that Frances  told Lily so long ago and so often:
  "Our beautiful older sister, Kathleen. She  had red hair like an angel on fire. And she  had the voice of an angel. God loved her so  much, He took her. She was only nineteen when  she died of the flu. I was there when she died and I  closed her eyes."
  There is always a pause here while they both  picture it faithfully. Then Frances continues,  "Her last words were ... "Dear Frances, you are  my favorite sister. And you are also the most  beautiful next to me. Please. Look after  Lily."" Frances's eyes start to glint
  
green, but it is a serious glint. Scary.  Lily's eyes grow round and wet. The bump  appears in her forehead.
  "Why did she say look after me?"  Frances doesn't take her eyes off  Lily, she just says evenly, "Because she loved  you, Lily."
  "... I love her too." Tears.  Frances puts out a hand and barely strokes  Lily's long hair that's never been cut. Then  ... "Okay, quit blubbering, let's play."
  It is understood that Kathleen is not to be  mentioned around Daddy, "because, Lily, it would hurt  him terribly if you even said her name."
  On this particular evening, Frances has  decided that the time has come to talk of other things.  She reaches into her pocket and produces the key  to the hope chest. Lily gasps.
  "Don't be so melodramatic, Lily."  "What's melon dramatic?"
  "It's stupid."
  "Oh."
  Frances repockets the key. "I made a  mistake, you're too young."
  "I am not!"
  "Keep your voice down."  Whispering passionately, "I am not,  Frances, I won't tell."
  Frances raises an eyebrow,  shakes her head, mutters, "I must be losing my  marbles," and inserts the key into the lock. Raises  the lid. The waft of cedar ... Frances gets a  lump in her throat, blinks past it. Lily  knows better than to ask.
  "Close your eyes, Lily."
  "Okay."
  "There are things in here that you're not ready  to see."
  Rustle, rustle.
  "Put your hand out."
  Lily does. "It feels silky."  "It's pure satin. Open your eyes."
  Frances holds what looks like a miniature  wedding gown, gone a little yellow with age.
  "It's beautiful," Lily breathes.  "It's the christening gown. We were all  baptized in it. Kathleen, Mercedes, me, you.  And Ambrose."
  Lily looks up. "Who's Ambrose?"  The thin white stripe appears across the bridge
  
of Frances's nose. It usually only appears  when she's laughing, but she's not laughing now.
  "He's your brother, Lily."
  Lily stays perfectly quiet, looking  into Frances's eyes, waiting. Frances says,  "Here. You can hold it."
  Lily takes the gown from Frances and cradles  it in her arms, such a precious thing, an  heirloom.
  Frances says, "Ambrose died."
  Lily waits. Listens. Frances tells the  story:
  "On the day you both were born, a stray  orange cat came in through the cellar door. It  climbed the cellar steps. It climbed the front  hall steps. It climbed all the way up to the  attic without a sound. It came in here where you both  were sleeping and it leaped into your crib. It put its  mouth over Ambrose's face and sucked the breath  out of him. He turned blue and died. Then the  orange cat put its paws on your chest and it was  about to do the same thing to you but I came in and I  saved you. Daddy took the orange cat and  drowned it in the creek. Then he buried it in the  garden. In the spot where the scarecrow used to be but  now there's a stone. I helped."
  Lily doesn't move a muscle. Frances  takes the gown carefully from her and calls,  "Here, Trixie," making kissing sounds  with her mouth, "Come on, Trixie, come on,"  until they hear the loping pad pad up the  stairs and Trixie appears in the room, blink.  You called?
  "That's a good Trixie, c'mere."  Trixie comes. She always does when Frances  calls. She found Frances three years ago.  Trixie is pure black with yellow eyes.  Although, who can say, maybe her missing front  paw had a white slipper on it, we'll never  know.

  "Frances, Lily, supper."
  "Coming, Mercedes."
  Downstairs, Mercedes pops her head out the  front door, looking for Daddy's  Hupmobile. He had to do an emergency  delivery to Glace Bay this afternoon. Someone needed  twenty pairs of shoes right away. Mercedes is  proud that Daddy works so hard, and always at night,  just so he can look after Lily. Otherwise
  
Mercedes would have had to leave school. Daddy  drives all over the island delivering dry goods  he picks up in Sydney. And often he makes  boots all night in the shed. Mercedes has seen  the reassuring glow of his lamp down there in the  window, although she would never dream of disturbing him--  Daddy doesn't like to be interrupted when he's  working.
  Mercedes is proud they have an automobile,  although she knows she should only be grateful. Here it  comes, right on schedule, long and boxy, bobbing  over the ruts. And here come the girls down from the  attic; it looks as though supper will be on time for  once. Tonight it's an old Cape Breton  recipe that Mercedes got from Mrs.  MacIsaac: ceann groppi. That's
Gaelic for "stuffed cod head." It's taken  Mercedes all afternoon, she sincerely hopes  Daddy will be thrilled: take a big cod head,  take a lot of cod livers, scrape off the  iffy bits, take rolled oats, cornmeal,  flour and salt, stuff the head through the mouth,  holding it with a finger in each eye. Boil.
  James tosses his cap onto the halltree  hook and says, "Come and hit the ivories,  Mercedes, I feel like cutting the rug with my  best girl."
  Mercedes smiles at Daddy and proceeds  obediently to the front room, forced  to wait dinner after all. Tortured as though  by tacit conspiracy involving her entire  family. She sits at the piano and grits her  teeth at the sound of Lily giggling and running  to Daddy. Mercedes opens the old Let Us  Have Music for Piano and plays.
  Lily places her left foot on top of  Daddy's right one, her right one on his left, and  they dance to "Roses of Picardy."
  Until finally "I'm starved," says Daddy.  "What's for supper, Mercedes?"

  Supper.
  "You've got to be kidding," says Frances.  Even James. "I'm sure it's  delicious, Mercedes, but I have a hard time  eating with my dinner looking me straight in the  eyes."
  They all laugh except Mercedes, who gets  up and leaves the room.
  "What's the matter with her?" asks James.
  
  Frances responds, "It's her period."
  James winces, so sorry to have inquired that he  fails to notice the inappropriateness of the  answer. "Well ... I'll apologize. Who  wants tea biscuits and molasses?"
  Up in her room, Mercedes consoles herself with the  family tree. She has been working on it for  almost a year. It is a painstaking process.  Whenever she has a new entry--whenever she has  had the precious time to dig a little deeper in the  Sydney library, or on those rare occasions when  she has received a long-awaited reply from the  provincial archives in Halifax--she  carefully unrolls the large scroll of  special paper on her desk. She fastens down  the corners, takes out a pencil and a ruler and  neatly draws a short vertical line beneath one of  several long horizontal ones, under which she  inscribes the latest name. And there it hangs,  quietly suspended like a piece of desiccated  fruit.
  Mercedes' patience for this task is  unlimited. She plans to surprise Daddy with  it. He never talks about his own family except  to say they all died. Perhaps she can restore  to Daddy a fragment of what he has lost.
  After supper on this evening, Lily comes up  to find Mercedes going over all the pencil lines  in careful ink.
  "Thank you for supper, Mercedes."  Mercedes looks up sharply to see if Lily  is being mean. But Lily is never intentionally  cruel; Mercedes knows that and repents of her  suspicion. She returns to her work and says  merely, "Hmm."
  Lily approaches and looks over Mercedes'  shoulder, fascinated.
  "How come it doesn't look like a tree?"  ""Tree" is only an expression,
Lily. If it looked like a tree then it would be  art. This is a chart."
  "Like a map?"
  "Kind of."
  "Is there treasure?"
  "Each name is a treasure."
  "Where does it lead to?"
  ""Map" is just an expression too. It  doesn't lead anywhere." Mercedes relaxes  back in her chair. "Well, maybe in a way  it does. It leads into the past. It tells us where
  
we came from. But it doesn't tell us where  we're going. Only God knows that."
  "Where am I?"
  "You're right here on the same line with me and  Frances and Kathleen, God rest her soul."
  "Where's Other Lily?"
  "She doesn't appear here, dear."  "How come?"
  "She was never baptized."
  "But she was our sister."
  "Yes, and we love her and pray for her, but  that's not how it works on a family tree."
  "Where's Ambrose?"
  Mercedes looks at Lily. "Who's  Ambrose?"
  Lily looks back at Mercedes. "Will you  read me a story?"
  "Of course I will, dear, you go climb into your  nightgown and pick one out, I'll be right there."

  At three that morning, Mercedes slumbers beneath  a finger of moonlight. As usual, her door is  an inch or so ajar--she has nothing to hide and  plenty to listen for. The door begins to open  silently. Mercedes' eyes open. In time to see  it swing to rest wide enough to admit a draft. Or  a very small child.
  "Who's there?"
  No answer. The soft, barely  discernible pad-padding of tiny feet. Approaching  the bed.
  "Trixie?"
  Silence. Trixie never visits her room.  "Go 'way, Trixie."
  At the corner of Mercedes' eye, a whitish  glimmer. Her blood cools. Not Trixie.  Mercedes raises her head. The thing moves into the  slant of moonlight. And there--oh Mother of God  --an unholy infant. Swathed in a mockery  of the first holy sacrament. Mercedes tries but  fails to say, "Ou."
  Dressed in the baptismal gown, stained with the  Devil's swart embrace.
  "Out"--a cracked whisper.
  Two yellow eyes.
  "Out out out out, ou-ou-that!" straight from her  bowels.
  James bolts through the door, flails, finds  and yanks the electric light chain to see  Mercedes shuddering, staring, teeth bared, rosary at
  
her chest.
  "What's happened?"
  Mercedes speaks but her sobs snatch and tear  the words; he grips her shoulders. "Look at  me." He shakes her. "Look at me." She  does. She pulls herself up and away from the  void, then says, "I thought I saw something."
  He nods and sits down on the edge of her  bed. There is, and is not, any such thing as a ghost.  This house, for example: James, honest with  himself, admits that there are places and times which he  avoids in his own home. Not out of belief--out of  that spot on the back of his neck that stirs now and  then for no reason. That's when he wishes he had  the right to pray. Because that's what the unquiet need.  "Pray for us" is what they're saying with their  moans and midnight walks.
  James runs his tongue over the dry bluish  sheen of his lower lip and Mercedes notices how  long his lashes are. He speaks to her--to her  alone--oh it seems for the first time since she was a  very little girl.
  "Your grandmother. My mother. Saw something once.  Or no. Heard."
  Mercedes waits. Daddy has never mentioned his  mother to anyone but me, now, at this moment ... and  perhaps once long ago to Kathleen. Mercedes  holds her breath, not to startle the moment. So  fragile. All the fine things, anything  not smudged, all things that can never wither but break so  easily, that's what he is.
  "Music," he says. "It was a sunny day.  She couldn't tell you what instrument or what  tune, or even which way it came--whether in through the  window, or right beside her. Just that she thought, "That  must be what heaven's like." It was that beautiful.  So she knelt down where she was in the kitchen and said  a prayer of thanks because she'd had that little taste,  see? And after that she was never afraid of anything."
  Mercedes forms her small smile. She  holds her tears in a reservoir. Tears could  only dampen a moment such as this and set it  to mildew, guaranteeing its decay.
  A voice from the door. "What's the matter?"  "Hey, little buddy." James goes to Lily  and scoops her up, Lily fastens her legs  around his waist. She's too big to be picked  up, thinks Mercedes, answering, "I thought  I--" but she catches Daddy's warning look and  revises her story; "Nothing, Lily, I
  
rode the nightmare is all."
  "Did you see the bodechean?"
  James laughs at the old Gaelic  expression. "There's no such thing, who told you  about the bodechean?"
  "Frances."
  Shut up, Lily, for once can't you just shut  up, but Mercedes says, "Frances was just teasing,  there's no such thing."
  "Mercedes, want to sleep with me and  Frances?"
  "No. Thank you, Lily."
  "Give your sister a kiss goodnight,  Lily."
  They leave and Mercedes, thoroughly back  to herself, rises and crosses to the center of the room,  douses the light and returns to bed in the dark,  scornfully recalling the days when she believed that  long-necked creatures resided beneath her bed  waiting to bite her ankles.
  She kneels at the side of her bed and starts  the rosary. Just in time, because she felt the first inkling  of the long-necked things just now, when her mind's  disdain wore off. Bedside kneeling in the dark  is always the hardest, for imagine the things wrapping  themselves around your upper legs. Pulling you under.  Don't imagine anything past that, nothing like that is  going to happen as long as you say your rosary. With a  pure heart. Mercedes despises herself  for these childish superstitions, knows them to be  groundless, but can't stop the retractions in her thigh  muscles all the same. These small flexings  often lead to a dread feeling farther up that craves  undoing, and it's this feeling more than all the others  that serves to remind one that--while there are no  long-necked creatures under the bed, and the  bodechean is merely a pagan notion--there  is certainly a Devil. Holy Mary Mother  of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour  of our death, amen.
  Mercedes imagines her unknown grandmother bathed  in sunlight, kneeling in thanks for the foretaste of  heaven. Then she considers the visitation which she herself  has just been vouchsafed. God gives us each  something different.

  Frances is in the cellar, holding a  coal-oil lamp to the gap between the furnace and the  blackened wall, where Trixie is wedged as far  back as possible. Trixie's lace bonnet
  
is askew, her white satin gown a sooty  mess. Earlier this evening, just before supper, she  scrowled out of Frances's hold in the attic and  streaked down to the cellar for refuge. Cats  don't enjoy dress-ups. She stayed behind the  furnace until the house fell silent. Then  she crept out and up the stairs. To Mercedes'  room.
  "Come on, Trixie."
  Frances has to get Trixie undressed  quickly, because if Daddy finds her like this again it will be  into the creek with her.
  "Trixie, please."
  Trixie vigorously licks her front paw  and washes her face.
  "Trixie, taa'i la hown,
Habibti."
  Trixie looks up, then suffers herself to be  hauled from the corner. Frances unties the  bonnet. "You looked so pretty, Trixie."  And undoes the thousand buttons of the baptism  gown. "Stay still, I'm almost--"
  Trixie scratches the rest of the way out and  bounds up the steps. Frances follows more  quietly. When she reaches the top step, her  lamp light splashes across Daddy's shoes.  Trixie is long gone, thank goodness; she'll be  back in two or three days.
  James waits until Frances has  washed and hung up the gown and bonnet.

  Upstairs, Mercedes finishes the rosary.  Even as she screamed, her mind had already  identified what she had seen, but it had to wait for  her body to catch up. The apparition explained,  however, is not expunged. It was a demonic  vision whatever the earthly agency. God works in  mysterious ways, but the Devil's ways are even  more arcane and often spiced with the absurd. Some would  say funny. Mercedes would not. Funny is a  fat lady playing the ukelele. Funny is a  man dressed up as a woman in a Gilbert and  Sullivan musical. Funny is not a  crippled black cat got up like a devil  baby in the family christening gear at midnight.  Frances is a vessel. Like that morning before  Mumma died and Mercedes and Frances both had  coal smudges on their foreheads and Frances said  she was visited by a "dark lady" in the night.  Please, dear Mother of God, hear my prayer and
  
accept the offering of thy holy rosary for the  preservation of the soul of my sister Frances, amen.
  No sooner is Mercedes back in bed than the  light slices on again and she squints up to see  Frances's head bobbing and lurching, he's got her  by the back of the neck, Punch and Judy.
  "Now apologize to your sister."
  Mercedes looks away. She can't stand it when  Frances grins with a bloody lip.

  Later, when all is calm, Mercedes slips  into the room overlooking the creek. She crawls  into bed and spoons around Frances's chill back and  encircles her thin waist. On the other side,  Lily feigns sleep. All the sisters tucked  up in one bed--this wonderful thing only ever  happens these days on sad occasions. Frances  has had another talking-to from Daddy, Lily  knows that.
  Mercedes feels ease. This is as close as  she gets to a state of grace, curious as she  knows this to be. It's a mystery. To experience the  gift of peace with your bad sister in your arms.  Nothing can get you now, Frances, te'berini.
  Mercedes casts a net of thought prayers over  Frances's sleeping form, lighter than air, than  gossamer wings, finer than the finest silk to keep  my little sister safe. Hush baby, sleep, thy  mother tends the sheep. ...

           The Family Tree

  Three and a half weeks later, Mercedes  has unearthed another fossil. It was beached beneath  a quarter-inch of dust on a forgotten page of a  crumbling chapel registry. Another name.  Perfectly preserved in its desert grave,  waiting to be exhumed and grafted onto  Mercedes' family tree; granted eternal still  life in a meaningful context.
  Late at night when all is blessedly  quiet, when she's got a moment to herself alone,  she sits at her desk, straightens her spine and  begins to unscroll the family tree. She  squints as though against a sudden light--it's ...  unscroll a little more ... what is it? A riot  of golds and greens and ruby-reds swirls and  ululates across the page, what is it? ...  scroll it slowly open all the way and ... where  there was once a sober grid etched in ink with loving
  
and dispassionate care, there is now a swaying,  drunken growth, a what, a tree! A tree.  Yes, she can see that now, it is in fact a  tree.
  Colored in with crayons. Every ancient name  has been obliterated by a shiny red apple, each  right angle beguiled into a serpent twist of bark;  each vertical stroke has evolved into a leafy  stem bearing fruit. The largest apples strain the  lower boughs all in a line. These are the only  apples with names, printed in an awkward childish  hand: "Daddy," "Mumma," "Kathleen,"  "Mercedes," "Frances," "Other Lily," and  "Lily." The Mumma and Kathleen apples have  little golden wings and the Other Lily one has  silver wings. Trixie's black face and  yellow eyes peek out from a high branch amid  emerald leaves. Meanwhile, at the base of the  trunk, grass sprouts on the surface of the  earth and a little blue creek flows by all innocent  of the continued drama below, for a cross-section of the  earth reveals tree roots thrusting down and  branching out into the surrounding soil studded with  glistening chunks of coal and worked by a sightless  army of worms. And there, nestled among the pale  subterranean branches, is a golden chest  encrusted with diamonds. Buried treasure.
  Mercedes' tears fall and bead on the shiny  wax colors of the new revised edition  of the family tree. She has never cried so  bitterly or so quietly in all her life.
  People have been known to go gray or snow-white  overnight due to a fright or a sudden loss of  all joy. But Mercedes' hair simply  fades. Frances sees it happen. She was thinking  of sneaking out of the house when she passed Mercedes'  door and saw her light.
  "Mercedes? ... Are you awake?"
  Mercedes is slumped over the desk,  perfectly still. Has she died? Turned to stone?  To salt? "Mercedes?" Frances approaches,  leans down and looks. Golly Moses. How  long has she been like this? Her gaped-back mouth  all tight and wrinkled at the corners, her eyes  crunched and seeping, perfectly still. Frances  touches Mercedes' shoulder and Mercedes takes a  big gulp of air, emerging from her silent  picture to cry in a real-life way.
  "What's wrong? Mercedes, what is it, what  happened?"
  
  Mercedes speaks from the back of her throat:  "I hate her. I hate her so much. I wish  I could kill her. I wish it weren't a sin, I  wish she were dead, I wish she had died, I  hate her, hate her."
  Frances understands Mercedes and so does not  embrace her but lightly strokes her newly  pale braids. What on earth is Mercedes  going on about?
  "She wrecked everything," says Mercedes,  "everyone was happy before she came along, everyone  died, everything went wrong when she was born, she's  spoiled rotten and I'm going to have to look after her  for the rest of her life because she's a cripple, oh  God I hate my life, I hate my  life."
  Mercedes sobs. Frances comforts her the way you  would a dear and delicate moth, if moths could be  comforted.
  "Shshsh. Shshsh, it's okay now. It's all  right now."
  "What's wrong with Mercedes?" Reverent,  worried, Lily asks from the door. How long  has she been standing there? How much did she hear?  Frances answers gently without missing a beat,
  "She had a bad dream, Lily. Go back  to bed."
  Mercedes doesn't acknowledge Lily's  presence. She just goes on crying.
Lily retreats. Frances looks down at the  brilliant scroll.

  In bed, under the covers, there is a small  unearthly glow. It emanates from a tiny  grotto formed by sheets held up by Lily's  knee. The source of the glow is the Virgin  Mary. She is made of white phosphorescent  Bakelite and towers four inches above a tin  sedan in which Lily, Frances and Mercedes have lost  their way in the middle of the night out the country.  They saw a glow in the distance a little way off the  road, in a farmer's field. And there she was.  Our Lady. Everywhere there is the smell of lily  of the valley. They must be right in the middle of a  field of it but it's too dark to tell. Either that  or the lovely smell is coming from her. The Blessed  Virgin has a message for each of the sisters that  they must never reveal. Not even to one another.  Lily's message is this: Her leg will never  heal. It will never be like the other one. She will always
  
have one boot-leg and one good leg. There is a  reason for this. Our Lady does not say what it  is. "Now get back into your car and love one  another."
  "Yes, Our Lady."
  "Lily."
  It's Frances. Oh no. Lily has used  her perfume without asking. But Frances doesn't  even say anything about that.
  "Lily."
  Lily drives the car away from the grotto and  out from beneath the sheets. She looks up at  Frances. Frances has the scroll.
  "What happened here, Lily?"  Tears form in Lily's eyes and roll down but  she's not crying that she knows of. "I colored in the  family tree."
  "That was Mercedes' special thing."  "It was a surprise." Now she's crying.
  "You know you shouldn't touch other people's things,  Lily, especially when they've worked hard. You  should have drawn your own."
  "I couldn't help it."
  Frances knows this to be true. She sits down  on the edge of the bed.
  "I'm sorry, Frances."
  "Don't cry, Lily."
  Lily tumbles into Frances's arms for a good  snoggling cry and Frances hugs her.
  "Frances?"
  "Mm-h'm?"
  "Everyone didn't die."
  "What do you mean?"
  "Everyone didn't die when I was born."  "Of course they didn't."
  "Daddy didn't die. Mercedes didn't  die. You didn't die."
  "Mercedes' feelings were hurt, that's all,  Lily, she didn't mean it. She loves you.  We all do."
  Lily can't resist another look at her  artwork. She peels open the scroll and reaches  under the sheets for the phosphorescent statue. She  and Frances look at the scroll together by the light  of the Virgin Mary.
  "You're a good artist, Lily. I like the  worms."
  "Thank you."
  "What's inside the treasure chest?"  "Treasure."
  
  "What kind of treasure?"
  "Ambrose."
  "Lily. Ambrose is just a story."  "I know."
  The Virgin is losing her glow. The picture  is no longer visible. It's time to go to sleep.  Frances rolls up the scroll.
  "What are you going to do with it, Frances?"  "We don't want Mercedes to see it  anymore. I'll have to take it to the dump or  burn it."
  "No!"
  "Shsh. We can't keep it."
  "We could bury it."
  Frances considers. ... "In the garden."

  Frances and Lily are crouched in the garden,  working by the cautious light of a candle stub. The  Virgin Mary is in Lily's pocket. Together  they manage to dislodge the big rock--a  catastrophe for a whole community of soft-shell  creatures that go scrambling in all directions.  Lily marvels at how they all managed  to thrive under that rock without being crushed by it:
  "For them the rock is the sky."  "Come on, Lily, we haven't got all  night."
  Even though Mercedes is the gardener of the  family, she is unlikely to go digging  under the rock, so the garden is actually quite a good  hiding place. Daddy put the boulder in this  spot, "the year he decided to make it a rock  garden," says Frances. "Up to then there was a  scarecrow, but one night it pulled itself out of the  ground and walked away."
  Lily pauses and looks at Frances, but  Frances is calmly digging with a spoon, not using  a spooky voice or anything.
  "Nobody knows where it went. Maybe it'll  come back and visit us someday if you're lucky,  Lily. Anyhow, Daddy never made the rock  garden because Mumma died around that time and he  didn't have the heart to continue."
  "Around the time that I was born, eh."  "That's right. You and Ambrose."
  "Frances, you said Ambrose was just a story."  "I changed my mind."
  "Frances, don't!"
  "Don't be a baby, Lily, jeez, you're  so easy to scare."
  
  "He was just a story, Frances."
  "All right, Lily, he was just a story."  "He was, Frances!"
  "Lily, you think what you want to think and  I'll think what I want to think. And if you're  not mature enough to help me here then we'll just burn  your stupid drawing in the furnace and Daddy will  know about it, is that what you want?"
  "No."
  "Then quit whining about Ambrose, he was just a  story."
  Silence. Lily, satisfied, picks up a  spoon and digs obediently.
  Frances grins; "No he wasn't."  Lily controls herself and manages not  to respond. Frances starts laughing. They keep  digging. Frances calls softly,  "A-a-ambro-o-ose ... Ambro-o-ose,  Lily wants you-ou-ou."
  Giddy gales of laughter. Prickly lights  in her eyes and the little white stripe. Frances  rolls over in the dirt and shakes her hands and  feet in the air like a dog and giggles  demonically. The only thing to do when Frances  gets like this is to ignore her until it wears  off, otherwise you make it worse. Lily just  keeps digging.
  "That's deep enough." Frances is suddenly  back in command. "We don't want  to dig up the bones of the orange cat."
  Lily draws back. She had forgotten about the  cat, now only inches below. Frances lays the  scroll in the shallow hole. "Rest in  pieces."
  Lily looks up sharply but it's okay; apart  from a gleam in her eye, Frances is safely this  side of the verge.
  They each toss in a handful of dirt, then  bury the scroll and roll the rock back  into place. A perfect job. Just place these  loose bits of dry corn husks around its  base and no one could ever tell in a million  years.
  "Okay, Lily, go on inside now, I'll  be right there."
  "What are you going to do?"
  "I'm going to say a little prayer."  Lily obeys. Out of the garden and onto the little  footbridge over the creek in her steady uneven  gait and whap, she catches a dirtball right in
  
the back of the head. She turns. Frances is  doubled over in the center of the garden. She's off  again. Oh no.
  "Frances, come on. Someone will see you."  Frances runs in a crazy limp out of the  garden, down the bank and right straight splash through  the creek, waving her arms, doing her impression  of Lily--"Fwances come on, come on Fwances!"  laughing, limping all the way back to the house.  Lily follows slowly. Frances can't help it,  Lily knows that. She just hopes Daddy hasn't  heard them out at this hour. Because if he has,  Frances will get a good talking-to. And there  won't be anything Lily can do about it, except  to bring her warm milk after and let her sleep with  Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley.

  But it's all right. Daddy is out. He isn't  working, he just couldn't sleep. He went for a walk  and wound up at the graveyard, longing for a drink.  He drank salt air instead. Now at dawn  he turns homeward, listening for the sound of pit  boots along Plummer Avenue, expecting  to hear the mine whistle. Then he remembers the  strike. For no reason his throat tightens. His  eyes sting but he isn't going to cry, there isn't  time. He wants to be home when his girls wake  up.
                                  
              Porridge

  "Here, Daddy."
  Breakfast. It's a new day and the night is  gone and I'm here with my girls. "Thank you,  Mercedes. Eat up, Frances."
  "I'm not hungry, Daddy."
  "Eat."
  Frances skims her porridge. It's still hot  underneath but the surface has congealed to a thin skin  and a few viscous strands cling to the end of her  spoon.
  "Don't play with your food."
  "It's cold."
  Daddy gestures to Mercedes, who adds another  steaming spoonful to Frances's bowl. Frances  grimaces.
  "Men in the trenches would have given an arm for  what you're turning your nose up at."
  Frances pictures the severed arm. She sees  an apple-cheeked young Tommy; he smilingly
  
detaches one of his arms, sleeve and all, and  says in a fetching cockney accent, "No 'arm  done mate, can Oy 'ave yo' gruel now?"  Don't laugh. Just stare down into the glistening  gray muck. There are dead men under there.
  "I said eat."
  Frances places her spoon in her mouth.  Snot.
  "Swallow it."
  Who will save Frances? Lily is eating every  bite of her own porridge, little brat. Is there  any way to sneak some into her bowl? Will Mercedes  intervene discreetly? Frances racks her brains  for a diversion. She knows her throat will not open  again. It will gag and she'll spew and Daddy will--
  "Answer your sister."
  "What?"
  Mercedes quietly repeats, "Are you all  right, Frances?"
  "Yes thanks, it's really good, Mercedes."  Who will save Frances?
  "That godforsaken cat is in your garden again,  Mercedes."
  "That's okay, Daddy."
  "It's digging." He sets down his spoon,  "We shouldn't eat a thing from that garden with that  animal around."
  "Trixie never relieves herself there,  Daddy."
  Everyone turns and sees Trixie out the  window, her tail bobbing around the rock. James  tolerates Frances's cat because Lily is  attached to the thing. But he is running out of  patience, already composing a kind lie about how  Trixie had a long and happy life but cats  sometimes just run away. He gets up from the table.
  Frances watches him head for the back door--  oh thank God, thank Jesus, Mary,  Joseph and all the saints, I will never sin again  --she waits till he's halfway across the  yard, then jumps up and empties her bowl into the  garbage by the stove. Mercedes doesn't comment, but  Lily looks suddenly worried.
  "Relax, Lily, he'll never know," says  Frances.
  But Lily isn't worried about the porridge.  She's been watching Daddy bending over the rock  in the garden.
  He comes back into the kitchen, but does not sit  down. He stands at the head of the table with his arms
  
folded and asks quietly, "Who moved the  rock?"
  Frances feels sick. She knows now that life  was easy when there was just porridge. Lily turns  bright red.
  "I did, Daddy." Nice try, Lily.  Daddy strokes her hair. Mercedes is at  a loss--if she knew what Frances's crime  was, perhaps she could--"Perhaps I dislodged it while  gardening, Daddy." That was pretty lame.
  "I did." Frances speaks clearly.  "When?"
  "Last night."
  Silence. How is it possible to feel so cold  and yet to be sweating at the same time? How long  have we been sitting here? What's the big deal  anyway?
  Whack across the side of the head.  "I'll tell you what the "big deal" is"  --oh no, Frances, you said it out loud, you thought you  just thought it but you said it--"the big deal is, you had  your sister out in the middle of the night and she could have  caught her death of pneumonia."
  Frances: "So could I."
  "You have the gift of health. Your sister is  delicate."
  "I'm fine, Daddy," says Lily, and  sneezes.
  Frances almost grins, but Mercedes  looks down. She does not believe in  accidents. James has not taken his eyes off  Frances. "What in God's name were you doing?"
  Frances considers. And answers, "We  planted something."
  "What?"
  Lily saves Frances. "We planted a  tree. For the family."
  Mercedes looks at Frances as the penny  drops.
  James asks Frances, "Under the rock?"  "It's a really strong tree." Thank you  Lily.
  James looks at Frances. He should pave  over the garden plot and park the car on it. But that  wouldn't seem right. He should dig up what's there  and put it elsewhere. But he can't. And perhaps, after  last night, it is no longer there. He looks  at Frances. Surely she was too young  to remember. But if she does ... What kind of  person takes her baby sister out at night
  
to exhume infant remains?
  Frances meets James's eyes and says,  "I told Lily that if we dug in the garden we  might find treasure. But we didn't find  anything."
  James resumes his seat. He rests his  eyes on the tea leaves at the bottom of his  cup. Mercedes pours him some hot. He sips.  Frances can't believe her luck. Mercedes  says a prayer of thanks and apologizes  to God for being ungrateful about her family.  James says to Frances, "Eat."
  "I've already finished, Daddy, look."  "So you have."
  No. She could not possibly remember.

            Water Babies

From breakfast on through all the day  at home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the Land of Nod.
    ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, "THE
    LAND OF NOD"

  A very young Frances is standing in the creek in the  middle of the night staring out. At us. Or at  someone behind us. She is holding a bundle in her  skinny arms. You can sort of almost see  it from the corner of your eye but you can't see it at  all when you look right at it. Like trying to look  directly at a dim object in the dark. It's  annoying. What is it? And just when you thought this was a  still picture in black and white, the water around  Frances's white nightgown lights up blue.  The source of this light is a bright blue fish  that's flicking and swimming about her ankles. It's  beautiful. Lily wakes up screaming.
  "Lily, Jesus Christ Almighty!"  Frances is blanched and staring at Lily's  shell-shocked form, silent now, and  ramrod-straight beside her in the bed.
  The overhead bulb goes on--it's James in  a plaid panic. "What's happened?"
  Mercedes appears behind him, a new line  hovering at her brow.
  "It's okay, she had a nightmare," says  Frances, petting Lily's rigid back.
  Lily turns and looks at James. He  comes to her and picks her up. She wraps her
  
arms and legs around him and lays her head upon his  shoulder, eyes wide open. He rocks her  gently from side to side, wondering a little at the  recent rash of nightmares under his roof.
  Lily says, "I dreamed I was a fish."  Frances shivers. Mercedes smooths her  temples.
  "In the creek," Lily continues. "And I  couldn't breathe."
  Mercedes heads down to the kitchen to make hot  milk all around. Frances rolls over and  rescues Lillian Gish from the ice floe.  James leaves the room but returns a few  minutes later, just ahead of Mercedes. He has  Trixie. Trixie looks terrified but knows enough  not to move a muscle when in this particular  embrace. He puts Trixie down gently  next to Lily, who buries her face in the    astonished black fur. When Mercedes passes  around the warm milk, James pours a little of his  own into his hand and offers it to Trixie. Trixie  gives him a look, then bends and laps it up.
  "Do you feel better now, sweetie?"
James asks.
  "Yes," answers Lily.
  Trixie curls up between Frances and Lily;  James tucks them in and turns out the light.
  Back in her room, Mercedes is finishing  Jane Eyre again. She was thankful  when Frances returned her favorite volume  apparently unscathed. Now, with that mixture of  satisfaction and regret with which one comes to the end  of a beloved book, Mercedes turns the last  page only to find Frances's unmistakable  scrawl on the flyleaf. It is an epilogue,  wherein Mr. Rochester's hand, severed and lost in the  fire, comes back to life and strangles their  infant child.
  Mercedes closes the book and merely sighs.  She is past weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is  abundantly clear that her two sisters are working  their way through everything that is of the slightest value  to her and ruining it. Mercedes is resigned. For  now. Someday she will marry someone wonderful. Perhaps  not Valentino. But wonderful nonetheless. She will have  her own family and they will be civilized. Frances  will be allowed to live with them, but it will be Mercedes'  castle. And her husband's too, of course. But  not yet. Daddy needs her. Hail Mary full  of grace, the Lord is with thee ...
  
  "If you were a fish, how come you couldn't breathe?"
  Frances hasn't touched her milk. It's on  the bedside table wearing a wrinkled skin.
  "I was drownding."
  "Fish don't drown."
  "You were in it, Frances."
  "In the creek?"
  "You were little."
  "... I know."
  "What were you holding?"
  "Nothing ... I don't remember. Go  to sleep. It was just a dream."

  Lily's hand glows red around the Bakelite  Virgin--conductive scarlet threads beneath the line  of life, of fate, heart and mind, her palm  bleeding light.
  Later that night Frances is awakened by a  weight on her chest. She opens her eyes and  looks into Trixie's intent face staring into her  own at a range of about an inch. Trixie's  black paw hovers white-tipped and frozen in  midair. A wizened slimy strand of some thing like the  throw-uppy bit of a raw egg dangles from the  corner of Trixie's mouth. Frances blinks and  Trixie turns back to the glass of tepid  milk on the bedside table, ignoring Frances,  wiping her milky face, dipping and  drinking.

  The first time Ambrose comes to Lily he is  naked except for the decomposing bits of  Frances's old white nightgown in which he was  laid to rest. The shreds cling to him here and there,  fluttering slightly because there's a bit of a  breeze when Ambrose arrives. Safe and  soundless in his garden womb, he has not been  dreaming because he has not been asleep. He has  been growing. His body is streaked with earth and  coal but otherwise he is pale as a root.  Although he is exactly the same age as Lily,  he is full-grown like a man whereas she is still a  little girl. This is because their environments have been so  different. What color is his wispy angel  hair beneath the dirt and soot? Reddish. He is  standing at the foot of the bed. Frances is asleep.  Lily is somewhere in between. She must be; to see such  a thing, and not scream? To see such a thing and know it  can't quite be a dream, because there is the foot of my
  
bed; there is my sister sleeping; there is my rag  doll; and here is Trixie curled between us with one  eye open. And there is Ambrose. Although Lily  does not yet recognize her twin.
  "Who are you?"
  Has she spoken this? She must have because the man  who is looking at her from the foot of her bed  opens his lips to reply. And as he does so,  water gushes from his mouth and splashes to the floor.  Now she screams. Now she is "awake"--back  in a state which is a definite place on a  map. Here is the place called Awake. On  the other side of this line is the country of  Asleep. And you see this shaded area in between?  Don't linger there. It is No Man's
Land.
  Lily is safely back in Awake and  expects to see Frances's exasperated face  looming over hers. She expects the overhead  light to snap on for the second time and for Daddy  to pick her up again and wonder how she could  possibly have two nightmares in one night. But  there is no light, and Frances is still asleep.  Lily did not scream after all. Although the sound of  her cry was enough to wake her up, it was apparently  no more than a whimper, because the house around her is  still breathing regularly, expanding and contracting,  dreaming. And see? There is no man at the foot  of the bed. There's no water on the floor  as there would be had he truly been here.
  Lily doesn't tell anyone about this dream  because it is too scary to tell. Even though the  dream of Frances in the creek with the dark bundle  and the bright blue fish caused Lily to cry out and  wake the whole house, the dream of the Water-Man  from which she awoke with a whimper was much more frightening.

            A Child's Prayer
            for a Happy Death

  O Lord, my God, even now I accept from  Thy hand the kind of death it may please Thee  to send me with all its sorrows, pains and  anguish.
  O Jesus, I offer Thee from this moment my  agony and all the pains of my death. ...
  O Mary, conceived without stain, pray for us who  fly to thee! Refuge of sinners, Mother of those who  are in their agony, leave us not in the hour of our  death, but obtain for us perfect sorrow, sincere
  
contrition, remission of our sins, a worthy  reception of the most holy Viaticum and the  strengthening of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction.  Amen.
    BY SISTER MARY AMBROSE, O. P.

  "Prayer for a Happy Death" is from a children's  paperback called My Gift to Jesus.
The prayer is the last one in the book--which makes  sense. The book was a gift from Mercedes  to Lily for no reason. About twenty minutes  ago Mercedes came in and said, "Here, Lily,  here's a little gift for you for no reason in  particular." Then Mercedes went to Helen  Frye's house.
  It's a hot sunny day and Frances and Lily  should be down at the shore--Lily in the old  English pram and Frances pushing it on the run,  careering over rocks and pebbles, splashing through  foam, both of them screaming with terror and joy.  But instead they are dressed up in togas and  turbans from the linen closet, confined to the house  because Daddy says it's not safe to play outside.  In fact he has driven Mercedes over  to Helen Frye's house on Ninth Street and  he plans to drive her home again too. The  miners' strike has dragged into June and turned  ugly.
  Special company constables have been on  the rampage: drunken goons on horseback  wielding sticks and guns, knocking people down in the  street--women, children, it makes no difference. The  bosses are now a monopoly called the  British Empire Coal and Steel Company,  "Besco." This time, not only have they cut off  credit at the company stores, they've cut off  New Waterford's water and electricity. For the  past week, sweating bucket brigades have  stretched from the few wells to houses throughout town.  At New Waterford General Hospital children  lie parched amidst a new outbreak of all the  old diseases with the pretty names.
  People can't haul buckets indefinitely with so  little to eat to keep up their strength. And the  resumption of the almost daily sight of small  white coffins has convinced many that their last drop  of strength might be better spent hammering the  guilty parties.
  Once James dropped Mercedes off, he  drove to Sydney to buy bottled water and
  
kerosene with strict instructions to the girls to  "keep inside." Apart from missing out on the  sunny days, the girls haven't minded so much.  It's been fun using only lamps and candles  again, "like in the olden days." Frances would venture  out on her own, but Lily is so worried by this  prospect that she has already sworn to tattle if  Frances risks it.
  Having tired of playing "Arabian Nights,"  Lily and Frances are now poring over My  Gift to Jesus. Like her sisters before her,  Lily is already a good reader. But she hasn't  had a chance to read the little book herself because Frances  grabbed it, turned to the last page--as is her  habit with all books--and read it aloud. Lily  has understood everything in the happy-death prayer  except for one word.
  "What's a viaticum?"
  "It's a holy word for clean underwear."  "Can I see the book now, Frances?"
  Lily reaches, but Frances pulls the book  away and explains, "When you're about to die and the  priest comes and gives you extreme unction, he  takes a set of clean underwear out of your drawer  and blesses them. Then he puts them on you. Or  if it's an emergency and there's no priest,  anyone can bless the clean underwear. That's where  Fruit of the Loom underwear comes from, it comes from the  Hail Mary when you say, "Blessed is  the fruit of thy loom, Jesus.""
  "Did I get clean underwear that time when I  almost died when I was a baby?"
  "Yup."
  "Blessed by Father Nicholson?"
  "No, by me--Lily, look!" Frances has  just noticed the name on the title page of My  Gift to Jesus. "This book was written by a  nun called Sister Mary Ambrose!"
  Lily gasps obligingly, "Does she know  our brother?"
  "It could be a message to us from Ambrose  himself."
  Lily gazes in wonder at the title page  while Frances deduces.
  "Ambrose is working through that nun, and he also  made Mercedes buy this book and give it to you so  you'd know he's watching over you."
  They look at one another, united by the  discovery.
  "Does he always see me?" asks Lily.
  
  "Yes."
  "When I'm bad?"
  "Yup."
  "Is he going to tell God?"  "God knows everything anyhow."
  "Oh yes." This had momentarily slipped  Lily's mind.
  "Ambrose sees you when you're sleeping. He  knows when you're awake."
  "Like Santa Claus."
  "That's blasphemous, Lily."  "Sorry."
  "Don't tell me, tell God."  Lily folds her hands, squeezes her eyes  shut and whispers, "Sorry dear God,"  following it up with a rapid sign of the cross.  Making the sign of the cross after a prayer is as  essential as putting a stamp on a letter.  Otherwise your message isn't going anywhere but  prayer limbo.
  "Frances, you know what? God is really  Santa Claus and Santa Claus is really  God."
  "No he isn't, Lily."
  "But God gives us gifts and knows everything and  so does Santa."
  "Yeah, but Santa Claus doesn't give  people leprosy and earthquakes, stupid, he  doesn't give them the Titanic  sinking or people getting their legs chopped off!"
  Frances turns her attention back to the book  and ignores Lily.
  "Frances?"
  No response.
  "Frances?"
  "What!" Slapping down the prayer-book.    "Is Ambrose going to bring me presents?"
  "A lump of coal if you're bad."  "But what if I'm good?"
  "Ambrose doesn't really care if you're  bad or good, Lily."
  "Oh."
  "He just cares if you're okay. If you're  happy."
  "How come?"
  "Because he loves you."  Frances looks straight at Lily. Lily  puts on her most seriously attentive face.
  "Don't you know who Ambrose is, Lily?"  "He's our wee baby brother who died."
  
  "He's your guardian angel."
  Lily's forehead puckers. "Everyone has a  guardian angel, don't they, Frances?"
  "Yes, but most people don't know who theirs is.  You're lucky. You know who yours is. And that  he's your very own brother, and he's watching over  you. And he loves you. He really loves you,  Lily."
  "Don't cry, Frances."
  "I'm not crying."
  "Yes you are."
  Frances wipes her eyes. Her throat  constricts. Yes, she's crying. Why? She  didn't feel sad until she started crying.
  "Frances? ... Frances, let's go up and  look in the hope chest."
  But Frances is crying.
  "Frances, do you want to give  Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley a bath? You can.  I'll let you give her a bath if you want.  ... Do you want to wear my brace? You can,  I'll let you."
  Frances has dropped My Gift  to Jesus. Lily picks it up and reads  silently, poring over the bright pictures. When  Frances feels better, Lily will ask her what  INRI means. It's the thing written on the  scroll that's always nailed at the top of  Jesus's cross. INRI.
  I'll ask Frances, thinks Lily. Frances  will know.

  Late that afternoon, Mercedes comes home crying  too, but for a different reason. In the car she  told Daddy it was because she and Helen had been  talking about all the poor children in the hospital.  James simply nodded. Mrs. Luvovitz  has informed him that girls of this age are likely  to become emotional. The last thing one ought to do is  tell them not to cry. He watched Mercedes get  safely into the house, then he turned the car around  and headed back downtown, having forgotten to drop  by the post office.
  Mercedes tiptoes up to her room and closes  the door quietly. She doesn't want to have  to see anyone or explain anything. She lies  face down and weeps into her pillow. Today a miner  called Mr. Davis was shot dead. There was a  riot at the power plant out on Waterford  Lake. The miners went there to flush out the company
  
police and turn the water and lights back on  for the town. The miners had sticks and stones and  cinders. The police had guns and horses, but the  miners won. Except that some got shot and poor  Mr. Davis who wasn't even in the fight was  killed. He was on his way home with milk for his  youngest, they found a baby bottle in his pocket.  Now there are seven more fatherless children in New  Waterford.
  But that's not why Mercedes is crying. This afternoon,  Helen Frye's daddy came home with a bullet  in his wrist. While Mrs. Frye took the  bullet out, Mr. Frye took a long drink from  a medicine bottle and told Mercedes that he was  "most regretful, because I know you're a nice  girl, Mercedes. But I only have the one child,  see, and I can't have her associating with the  Pipers."
  Mercedes' eyes filled up and her face  felt scalded. She felt mortified, as though  someone had caught her in a shameful private  act, but she could not think of anything she had done  wrong. Mrs. Frye just continued digging in Mr.  Frye's wrist, while he turned white but  didn't flinch and spoke in a kindly voice,  words that cut Mercedes apart. He said Mercedes'  father was a bad man. A bootlegger. A scab.  An enemy of this town. Then Helen was told to go  upstairs and Mercedes was asked to wait  in the front room until her father came to pick  her up in his automobile.
  Now Mercedes curls onto her side and  catches sight of Valentino perched in his frame  on her dresser next to the china figurine of The  Old-Fashioned Girl. Valentino invites  fresh tears but they are tears of consolation. At  least I still have you, my love. And The  Old-Fashioned Girl reminds her how nice  her daddy is. He is, he is a kind good  man. And if--if--Daddy is forced to do certain  things, it is only because he loves us so much and we  don't have a mother to look after us. Fresh tears.  Mercedes can hear Mumma singing, and this is too  much. She covers her head with the pillow and forces the  sound from her mind. She banishes the memory and  focuses on what is important: my  family. Helping my father, who is a good good  man; who looks after his crippled daughter all  day long. If Mr. Frye and everyone else could  see Daddy with Lily, then they'd know.
  
  Mercedes has grown calmer and her eyes  drift now to the picture of Bernadette in the  grotto with Our Lady of Lourdes.
Bernadette has been beatified. Someday she will  be a saint. They dug her up and she was sweet as  a rose--that's the odor of sanctity. She was a  little crippled girl too. Maybe people hated her  father as well.
  Mercedes has cried herself almost to sleep, but  before she tumbles under, a plan forms in her mind.  Tomorrow she will take Lily for a walk. They will go  together to the hospital--not to the wards, she doesn't  want Lily to catch anything, just to the reception  area. And there Mercedes will have Lily give all  their old storybooks and clothes, as well as  several pies that Mercedes will bake, to the poor  children suffering upstairs. Then people will see ... What  a good man ...

  It took James an unusually long time  to drive to the post office because several streets were  impassable. Rocks bounced off the hood of his  automobile and a horde of young men descended and  began to rock it to and fro. He gunned through them but  found Plummer Avenue likewise swarming. A  bunch of dismounted company police were being kicked,  prodded and paraded toward the jailhouse. Women  ran behind the prisoners, brandishing hatpins and using  them, too. There would be trouble tonight.
  James drove to the Shore Road, parked and  made it on foot through side streets back to the  post office. He could have put off the errand till  tomorrow, but he considered that the post office and half the  buildings on the main street might be burned to the  ground by then, and he was expecting money.
  He enters the post office, collects his cash  and is about to leave when, "There's a letter here too,  Mr. Piper."
  James reaches to take the envelope from the  clerk. Mail is fairly rare. Packages and  pictures sometimes come for Frances--James  vets them before handing them over, he has confiscated  more than one bottle of "Coca Wine: for brain  fag and listlessness." At the moment, the post  office is buzzing with the day's events and people are  glued to the windows watching the mob go by, but it  all fades to silent stillness around James as  he catches sight of the name on the front of the  envelope: Miss Kathleen Piper.
  He loses consciousness for a split second.
  
Like a blink inside the head, accompanied by the  flash of a camera. Then the sound of excitement  floods back in around him and for an instant he  thinks the uproar is all about the fact that someone  has sent a letter to Kathleen Piper. Someone has  written to my daughter, not knowing--or perhaps knowing--  she is dead.
  Just the sight of her name. In letters scripted by a  living hand, so unlike the letters carved in stone at  the edge of town--this is why the light in his head  flashed and faded on the fleeting notion that she was  alive after all. That must be what insanity is like,  thinks James. Except that the flash lasts for  ever. Maybe that would be good.
  He is back in the car before he can bring himself  to open the letter. He remembers another letter so long  ago. Anonymous. Horrible. It changed  everything. He breaks the seal. He unfolds  the page--a refined and ladylike hand. He  reads:

Dear Kathleen,
  I was so sorry to learn of your terrible  accident. You are obviously a very brave girl.  And you are also a lucky one to have such a nice father.  Maybe one day you will be able to leave your  wheelchair and run and play again. I hope so.  Here is a signed photograph for your  collection with my best wishes.
    Yours truly,
    Lillian Gish

  James presses the electric starter on the  Hupmobile and heads for home. He will take  Frances out to the shed. And ask her to explain the  joke.

  That night, Mercedes, Lily and Daddy stand  on the veranda and glimpse the torches processing  through town. Frances is upstairs in bed with a damp  cloth to her face. James has the car packed and  gassed up in case they all have to leave in a  hurry. The army won't be here for another couple  of days and, until then, it's better to be  prepared.
  First the miners burn down Number 12  washhouse. Then they raid the company stores--they  don't burn them for fear of setting the whole town  on fire. Then they go to the jailhouse to lynch the  company police. But the priest meets them and
  
talks them out of it. There are enough fatherless children in  New Waterford.

to where your heart has ever been ...

October 31, 1918

Dear Mr. Piper,
  Your daughter is in grave danger. Knowing  Kathleen to be of good family and blessed with  prodigious musical gifts, I feel it my  duty to you and to the world to sound the alarm. Sir, you  are from another country and perhaps fortunate enough to be  unfamiliar with the very term "miscegenation." It is  a modern evil and it is weakening the fabric of  our nation. It now threatens to claim your own  daughter. Through cunning seduction and flattery,  your daughter has been ensnared in a net of  godless music and immorality.
  I look on helpless to intervene because I am  an invalid. I speak as one who knows to her own  cost, when I say that by crossing nature's  divide, your daughter courts her own ruin and can  end only by yielding to the dark remnants of the beast  in man. It is, perhaps, not too late. She is  yet young. It is your prerogative to ignore,  yea to condemn the report of a stranger. My  conscience dictates this letter. Thus  discharged of my Christian duty, I remain,
    An Anonymous Well-Wisher

since first you were my bonny bride ...

               Book 4
        THE OLD FRENCH MINE

            Lest We Forget

  Lily's foot is bleeding. She doesn't  know it, because the bagpipes are drowning out the pain.  This is what bagpipes are designed to do. But  even if she felt the pain and saw the blood  soaking the back of her stocking, Lily would not  stop marching, because she is on top of the world. She  is carrying the Nova Scotia flag up  Plummer Avenue. Her heart and lungs are  big and plaid like the tartan bags of air that feed  the pipes. And for once Lily's type of walking  is the ideal type. The sway and lilt of her  unevenly matched legs go with the every-second-beat  flex and swing of the music. Lily has a big  open smile on her face and tears in her eyes  --the pipes always make her feel tragic and  elated all at the same time. With a poppy pinned  to her tartan sash, she feels like a brave  soldier. It's November 11, 1929,
Armistice Day. Today we remember The War  to End All Wars.
  New Waterford is out in force.
Plummer Avenue is lined. Even James is  out--not in his capacity as veteran, but as proud  father. Mercedes stands at his side in front of  Cribb's Bookstore. Across the street,  Luvovitz's Kosher Canadian is closed,  the blinds drawn down. There is no danger of them  forgetting this day, but Mrs. Luvovitz prefers  them to do their remembering at home, far from the  sights and sounds of Sacrifice and Honor.  Frances is supposed to be here but she is at the  Empire Theatre, watching Louise Brooks in  Pandora's Box again before the authorities get  wind and it gets banned.
  The parade swings toward the Miners' Monument.  Although it was erected in memory of the sixty-five  who died in the explosion of '17, it has become  a symbol of all the others who have been killed in  battles both foreign and domestic: those like Mr.  Davis, who were shot in the street, and all those  who ever have been or will be blown up or gassed in  a trench or mine. The pipes fall abruptly
  
silent. Lily and the rest of the parade march onward  to the stark beating of the drums, until they halt at  the monument. Then it's two minutes of silence.
  You can hear the ocean. You can hear birds and the  wind. You can hear the poppies blow in Flanders  fields between the crosses row on row, "we are the  Dead. Short days ago we lived, felt  dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved."  Men have stony expressions on their faces, their  hands folded in front. Women look severe.  Everyone remembers their dear ones who will always be  young.
  Then a wrenching groan, a high-pitched wail,  the drones start up and the pipes are on the march  again. This releases tears, although the bagpipes do  people's keening for them. A primitive reed instrument  awakens something very old, and puts sorrow in a  consolingly long perspective. Perhaps because grass  is the oldest musical instrument for all kinds of  people.
  Lily feels secure among all the hard  hairy pale male knees keeping time between  socks and swinging sporrans and swaying kilts.  She feels a camaraderie with the men. As if  they'd all fought the war together. She would like to be a  soldier. She's ten. She would like to be a  veteran when she grows up. She wouldn't be  afraid of the pain or the bullets, she'd leap  over the top and charge with bare knees  into battle. Daddy got the DSO medal. She  knows because Mr. MacIsaac told her.
  It's only when the pipes and drums cease and the  brass band at the rear strikes up "Rule  Britannia" that Lily feels the first twinge in  her left foot, the little one. Her brown boot,  with the built-up sole that Daddy made specially,  is firmly harnessed between the steel supports of  her brace, but it has been rubbing the top of her  heel because it's new. A red stain has spread  around her ankle. Lily steals a look, but  doesn't miss a beat. There are Daddy and  Mercedes. There are Mr. and Mrs.
MacIsaac. Lily gives them what she  hopes is a manly smile. Many people, not just those  she knows, smile back.
  Lily is unaware of the stigma surrounding her  father, and people--not only her family--conspire  to keep her that way. There are plenty of children with  braces on their legs, some with crooked backs  too, but Lily is the only one out marching. She
  
is also the prettiest child ever to have been stricken.  And the sweetest. Lily has become well known  in town thanks to Mercedes, but she has become  well loved because of herself.
  New Waterford hasn't changed much. The  company stores have gone. Besco never reopened  them after the looting of '25. Many miners went  back to work with an eight-percent wage cut but many  others were blacklisted as Bolsheviks and wound up  moving south of the border to Boston, and to the mills  and lumber camps of New England. It was the  beginning of the exodus to points south and west which shows  no sign of stopping. The crash of '29 rocked  the world but registered as a ripple in Cape  Breton, where it takes a while for the  Depression to sink in because it had already been going  on for so long. Besides, it is widely believed that  Nova Scotia's catastrophe occurred in
1867 with Confederation. Anything since then has just  been an aftershock. No one can imagine how the  thirties could be worse than the twenties. And as  R. B. Bennett is fond of saying,
"Prosperity is just around the corner."
  But nothing can dampen civic pride--the  turnout today shows that. Cape Bretoners have  reconciled loyalty to King and country with scorn  and skepticism for all things "from away"--the  foolish arses in Upper Canada and the useless  bowler hats in Whitehall. They are  fiercely proud of their veterans, yet bitter  about the Canadian army that has so often invaded the  coalfields. In spite of this, the armed forces  are increasingly an option for the jobless and the working  poor looking to get off this curs@ed godforsaken  rock that they love more than the breath in their own  lungs. There is no such place as "down home"  unless you are "away." By November 1929 the  process is under way whereby, eventually, more people will  have a "down home" than a "home."
Remembrance Day tends to stir up a lot of  mixed emotions.
  On days like this, Prohibition seems doubly  ludicrous. By evening, kitchens will overflow with  music and family and conversation. Jugs and cups  of tea will be passed around. Mounties will turn a  blind eye to hotel bars and speakeasies and more than  one brawl will add to the evening's entertainment.
  James will not work tonight. And he certainly will not  socialize, although this is the one night when  bridges might be mended--he is a veteran,
  
after all, and decorated. But this is also one of  two nights in the year when he does not trust  himself near a bottle, because he wishes to forget, not  remember, the day the Armistice was signed. All  over town, people are asking each other the ritual question  "Do you remember where you were the day the war ended,  b'y?" James remembers all too well.
He was in New York City. He was in
Giles's apartment in Greenwich Village.
He was walking through the front door because it was  unlocked. He had called out but no one  answered. He is walking down the hallway, the    apartment smells like lavender, he is looking for  Kathleen, he finds her--stop
  Tonight James needs to be safe at home in the  bosom of his family.

  Frances is already home playing piano,  imagining her future life as a white slave  cabaret dancer in Cairo, playing Mumma's  forbidden music from the hope chest--Daddy says  it's colored music, put it away. She is  bobbing on the bench to "Coal Black Rose"  when James and Mercedes rush in with Lily.  Daddy carries Lily upstairs and Mercedes  follows. Frances leaves the piano and takes the  steps two at a time to the bathroom, where Daddy  unrolls the stocking that's stuck to Lily's tiny  foot and Mercedes gets the carbolic  acid. Lily doesn't cry out at the pain, she  just looks over Mercedes' shoulder at Frances in  the doorway. Frances says, "It's okay, little  gingerbread boy," which is one of their special  codes, adding, "Hayola kellu bas
Helm." Lily's gaze does not waver as she  replies, "Inshallah." James glances  at Frances in the doorway but says nothing.  Mercedes bandages Lily's foot, praying that  there won't be a scene later.
  Inshallah is Lily's magic word. It  is from the language that she knows ought not to be used  by day except in an emergency. Because the words are  like wishes from a genie--don't waste them. Lily  has not even a rudimentary understanding of Arabic; it  is, rather, dreamlike. At night in bed, long after  lights-out, she and Frances speak the strange  language. Their bed language. Frances uses  half-remembered phrases and tells fragments  of old stories, weaving them with pieces of songs,  filling in the many gaps with her own made-up words
  
that approximate the sounds of Mumma's Old  Country tongue. Lily converses fluently in the  made-up language, unaware which words are  authentic, which invented, which hybrid. The meaning  resides in the music and the privacy of their  magic carpet bed. Arabian Nights.
  Later that evening, when Mercedes has gone into the  kitchen to make cocoa for everyone, Lily slips  off Daddy's lap in the wingback chair without  waking him and quietly asks Frances to redo her  bandage: Mercedes has wrapped it a little too  tightly.

            Sweet Sixteen

  Frances has grown an inch and a half. She  is now five feet tall and old enough to quit  school. And she would, except that Daddy will not  hear of it. Frances wants to get out in the world and  garner some practical experience so she can join the  French Foreign Legion as a nurse. She  wants to cross the desert disguised as a camel  driver by day and a seductress by night, smuggling  secret documents to the Allies. Mata Hari  and her seven veils. Except that Frances would  escape the firing squad at the last second.  But Daddy only ever has one response  regardless of the extravagance of Frances's  ambitions: "Even spies--especially  spies--need an education."
  Frances has already shamed Mercedes by flunking  two grades. Not that it makes much difference,  seeing's how they were both put ahead a year when  they started, owing to the fact that they could already read and  do long division. So by Frances's calculations  she has really only flunked one grade.
  Frances always sat at the back of the class with the  hulking boys until the teacher realized it was best  to move her up front. She has become  pretty tight with the Corneliuses.  Cornelius the younger has turned out nice, his  friends call him Puss-Eye. Everyone expects  him to be a priest because no one can imagine him as  a miner or a soldier. Cornelius the older  is nasty, his nickname is Petal. Frances  saw Petal's thing three years ago but she has  never shown him hers. From Petal, Frances  extorted forbidden information and cigarettes in  exchange for false hope. Petal always thought  Frances was going to let him demonstrate his
  
lessons one of these days, but Frances would just  tell him, "You're nothing but a brute. Piss  off." Petal quit school last year and moved  to Vermont to cut wood and terrorize  Americans, so aside from Puss-Eye and  Mercedes, who don't count, Frances is without a  worthy ally at Mount Carmel. Unless you can  call Sister Saint Eustace Martyour an  ally.
  She is the principal and therefore Frances's  arch-enemy. Not because she has threatened to expel  Frances, but because she refuses to. And how else  is Frances going to get out of school? Frances  has done many bad things to this end. None of them,  however, seems to have been quite bad enough for Sister  Saint Eustace, a woman whose faith--judging  by her belief in Frances--could move mountains.
  "You have God-given ability, Frances. When  are you going to apply yourself?"
  Silence. Smell of beeswax. Frances  fidgets.
  Sister persists. "There are scholarships  available for bright students, but you'll have to buckle  down and start achieving consistently."
  "Yes, Sister Saint Useless, thank you."  Frances thinks Sister Saint Eustace does  not notice.
  Or: "Why do you do these things, Frances?" This  could refer to anything from theft or  defacement of other people's property, to reducing a  fellow pupil to tears by telling her that her parents  have just been killed in an automobile accident,  "Your mother's head came right off."
  "Why, Frances? When we know that deep down  you're a good girl."
  "I'm sorry, sister. I'll try to behave  in a way that's worthy of all the special  efforts you make on my behalf."
  "What about what's worthy of you, Frances?"  Silence. Frances glances up at poor  disappointed Jesus on the cross. She glances  down at her nicotine fingers.
  "What do you want to be when you grow up,  Frances?"
  "A cabaret parasite."
  Sister's expression does not change.  Frances grows beet-red under the beady blue  gaze. Finally: "You know, Frances, sometimes it's  the wildest girls who end up with the strongest  vocations."
  
  No way, no way I'm being a nun.
  "But you don't have to become a nun to get a good  education and pursue a satisfying career. Women  can do anything nowadays. You're an intelligent  girl, Frances. The world is your oyster."
  Yeah, slimy and smelly.
  Frances wonders, what will it take to get  free? Because all Sister Saint Eustace does  is poke at an old and tender bruise that  reminds Frances what a bad apple she really  is.
  Frances has been going stir-crazy waiting for  her life to begin. She has cut the sleeves off  most of her dresses and shortened them herself--  uneven is all the rage. She has decided she  has a perfect figure, which is none. She  removes the ribbons from her braids and ties them  around her forehead and she has experimented with the  bejeweled-brow look, courtesy of Mercedes'  opal rosary. In the toe of an odd stocking in  her drawer she keeps a tube of Rose of  Araby lipstick she swiped from MacIsaac's.  She has scorched her hair in an effort  to straighten it, and always before her mind's eye is  Louise Brooks, with her jet-black shingle and  fringe.
  Louise Brooks has usurped Lillian
Gish in Frances's heart and on her wall.  Lillian survives now only in an  honorary capacity, alone on her virginal  ice floe. Louise smolders from beneath a black  widow's veil, smirks in a tuxedo, flirts  over the rim of a champagne glass, simpers on  jack the Ripper's knee, and sprawls in a  wicked heap, naked but for a handful of feathers. She  is the best and the worst girl in the world. She is  also the most modern. Frances longs to be sold  into a "life of sin," forced onto the stage and into  "houses of ill fame" where life is tragic but  so much fun.
  In the meantime, she plays hooky down by the  shore or at the picture house. Lately she  has taken to walking and trotting the Shore Road  all nine miles into Sydney, where she heads for the  docks of the Esplanade and hangs around the  ships. She's thinking about stowing away. She chats  with merchant sailors from all over the world and  entertains them with her own skinnamalink  stepdance-Charleston for pennies. Lets the odd  nasty one touch her chest for a quarter before taking
  
to her heels.
  The only thing that keeps Frances from running  away is Lily. She has to make sure that  Lily is okay before she can let her life begin.  What "okay" means is not clear. Frances will  know it when she sees it. For now, she contents herself  with a fresh diversion: on November 12, she  follows James to his secret place in the  woods:
  It was difficult because she didn't have a car  to follow him in and, besides, he would notice that. So  she went on the floor of the back seat of his  Hupmobile, under a blanket.
  When the car stops, she hears him get out. Then  she hears another automobile drive up.  Sounds like a truck. She hears James's  voice and another man's, soft and deep. She  waits until their footsteps scuff away, then  she carefully rises and peeps out the window.  There's a shack with smoke coming out the top of a tin  chimney--I was right!
  Her elation is such that she reflexively  ducks back down, as though she had made a  noise. She peeps out again in time to see James  come out of the shack and stand with his back to her. Nearby  is a truck, its trailer covered with a tarpaulin  stretched up and over a frame of wooden ribs like  a covered wagon. The other man comes out of the  shack carrying a big barrel on his  shoulder.
  He is familiar to Frances but she cannot place  him. He is a substantial man, though not  unusually tall, with wide shoulders and chest;  obviously strong, but there are no sharp edges  to him. His body is a pile of cushions, his  face is an open invitation to come in and relax.  Honest round forehead, large eyes--there is an  overall quality that Frances racks her brains  to identify. Then it comes to her. He looks  kind. Something about him reminds Frances of  Lily. Maybe that's why he seems familiar.  The man rolls the barrel off his shoulder and into the  back of his truck, where Frances sees a name  stenciled, "Leo Taylor Transport." This  too is familiar, but just out of reach.
  Frances watches as the man carries barrel  after barrel and case after clinking case while  James waits. When the man has finished, he  ties the canvas flaps of the tarp together. James  takes a roll of bills out of his pocket and
  
peels off a few. The man says, "Thanks,  Mr. Piper."
  And James says, "All right, Leo.  Drive safe."

     Let Me Call You Sweetheart

  "You know why you have a boot-leg, Lily?"  "'Cause I got infantile paralysis when  I was a wee tiny baby but God wanted me  to live."
  It's a rainy Saturday afternoon. Frances and  Lily have been playing Covered Wagon on  Mercedes' bed. Mercedes is off volunteering  at the hospital and Daddy is out  Frances-knows-where. The chenille spread is the  wagon cover and behind them are their children: Diphtheria  Rose, Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley,  Spanish Influenza, Maurice and the rest. They  are a pioneer family bound for the frontier,  shortly to be scalped. Lily has finally got  the reins.
  "You caught it in the creek."  The horses stop. Lily waits.
  "You caught it in the creek because Mumma tried  to drown you as soon as you were born."
  "Frances"--quivering lip, this is the worst thing  Frances has ever said--"Mumma loved me, she  wouldn't hurt me."
  "You were a dark baby. You and Ambrose."  "Frances, Daddy says--"
  "He's not your daddy."
  "He is so!"
  "Shut up, Lily, or I won't tell you  anything."
  Whispering, "He is so!"
  Frances gets up and heads for the door. "Never  mind, Lily, 'cause obviously you don't  even want to know who your real father is."
  "Yes I do."
  Frances takes a long look at Lily, as  though assessing her ability to withstand the truth.  Then: "Your father is a black man from The Coke  Ovens in Whitney Pier."
  Lily takes it in.
  "Mumma tried to drown you 'cause you were  dark." Every time Frances tells the true story,  the story gets a little truer.
  "I saved you, Lily."
  Lily bites her lip. Frances's lips have
  
gone white-hard. Her throat is a white  rope.
  "From drownding?"
  "Drowning, not drownding, stupid."  Frances tosses the dolls onto the floor and  begins to make the bed. Lily's silky black  eyebrows tremble. "Mumma killed  Ambrose?"
  "That's right." Suddenly offhand, an efficient  plump of the pillow.
  Lily starts to cry.
  Frances points out reasonably, "She was  afraid Daddy would kill her."
  "But he wouldn't!" Lily sobs.  Frances watches for a moment. She always feels  immensely relieved when Lily starts to cry.  She sits beside Lily, puts an arm around her and  strokes her sweet head. Dear Lily.
  "It's okay, Lily ... Daddy couldn't ever  hurt anyone."
  "Ever."
  "I won't tell you any more, you're too  little."
  "I am not!" Lily pulls away, swatting  the tears off her cheeks.
  "Yes you are, Lily. You're a sweet little  girl."
  "Tell me, Frances! I'm big."  "Little."
  "Big!"
  "Tiny."
  "NO!"
  "Oui."
  "TELL ME!" Lily bright red, fists  pounding the bed.
  Frances flops back on the pillow, hands  folded behind her head, and casually sings, one foot  resting on the other knee and bobbing time,  "Mademoiselle from Armenti@eres,  pa-a-arlez-vous?" Lily starts tearing apart  the freshly made bed. "Mademoiselle from  Armenti@eres, pa-a-arlez-vous?"--  bedspread yanked out from under Frances--  "Mademoiselle from Armenti@eres"--strewn  sheets, rosary attached with a safety pin--  "hasn't been kissed in forty years"--Lily  could pass out with rage--"inky-dinky  parlez-vo-o-ous"--she whirls around the  room, grabs a big book and tears off the  spine. She rips up hunks of pages and throws
  
them out the window. She whips the gutted binding down  after them like a blown-off shingle, spins back on  her sturdy leg, her steel brace propelling out  to the side, and spots The Old-Fashioned  Girl that plays "Let Me Call You  Sweetheart." It holds a yellow parasol.  It lives on Mercedes' dresser on a doily  all its own. Lily grabs it.
  "Tell me, Frances, or I'll smash it."  "I'm not telling you anything, you're a  maniac."
  Lily's arm swings up, "Tell me."  "No."
  Lily pauses--the enormity of the idea of  throwing The Old-Fashioned Girl to the floor  threatens to sink in, so she simply lets the  figurine drop. It hits the floor. The  parasol and the head. Clink. Roll, roll,  ruddle-ruddle. Lily looks in shock at what  she's done. Frances delivers the punch line.
  "If you were doing all this to get back at me,  you didn't, all you did was wreck Mercedes'  precious things."
  Again. Oh no. Lily stands with parted lips and  puckered forehead. Oh no, oh no, oh no.
  "Okay, Lily. I'll tell you"--Lily  can't remember what Frances is talking about--"but  you have to swear."
  Lily just stands there.
  "Don't worry, Lily, we'll clean it  all up."
  "But some things are broken."  "We'll fix them, don't worry. Swear."
  "I swear."
  "You have to swear on something."  "Um ... on  Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley."
  This makes Lily feel teary because she  imagines how she'd feel if someone came along  and did to Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley what she  has just done to The Old-Fashioned Girl.  Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley with her head off.  Little bits of gray material coming out. But  Frances has other stakes in mind.
  "Swear on your boot-leg."
  "On my little leg."
  "May it be cut off if you speak of this again."  Lily looks down at her legs: the strong  right one, and the wispy left one. In its sincere  beige wool stocking, which sags like empty skin
  
within the steel harness; its high narrow shoe with the  mild horse's face, the iron bit clamped  under the sole. Her heel is much better now,  there's just a scab from Armistice Day.
  "Okay," says Lily. Don't worry,  little leg, I'll keep my vow.
  "Okay. Well. Mumma went crazy from  shame of what she did with the man from The Coke  Ovens. Plus she was dying of a wound she got because  Daddy had to cut you and Ambrose out of her  stomach with his bayonet." Make yourself cozy,  now. "It was the middle of the night. Daddy left  her sleeping and went to get the doctor. But she  got up even though she was cut open." Frances  has slipped into the eerie voice of the  stray-orange-cat story. It's the voice she  uses when she is telling the truth. "I was at  my bedroom window wearing my tartan housecoat.  I saw Mumma down in the creek. Ambrose  was lying on the bottom. She was just about to do the  same thing to you. But she looked up and she saw me  watching her so she stopped. There was a bright bright  moon and I just looked her in the eye like that till  Daddy came and dragged her back to the house with  you. Then she died."
  "Poor Mumma," Lily weeps.
  Frances blinks, finally. "Poor Mumma?  She tried to kill you, you idiot, I'm the one  who saved you."
  "Why didn't you save Mumma?"
  "No one could save Mumma."
  "You saved me."
  "Yes, you dunce, I saved you."
  "Thank you, Frances." Lily hugs  Frances. "Does Daddy know?"
  "That I saved you? Yes."
  "Does he know he's not my real daddy?"  "Yes, but you can never mention it, Lily, it would  really hurt him. 'Cause even though you're not  his, he loves you more than the rest of us."
  "He loves you too, Frances."
  "Yes, but he loves you the most."
  "I want him to love you the most too."  "It's all right, Lily, it's supposed to be  this way."
  "I love you the most, Frances."
  "What about Daddy and Mercedes?"
  "I love them the most too."
  "There's no such thing as loving everyone the most."
  
  Mercedes spent the morning at New Waterford  General Hospital. She read aloud to a  veteran who had been gassed in the war, emptied  bedpans, changed the water in vases and generally  made herself useful. She'd have brought Lily, but  Daddy wants to make sure Lily's foot is  completely healed before she ventures out. After the  hospital, Mercedes went to Mount Carmel  Church and helped the nuns polish the communion  rail and dust the altar. She lit a candle,  knelt at the base of the beautiful eight-foot  Mary and said a few prayers for Mumma and  Kathleen and Valentino and all the poor  captive souls in purgatory.
  Valentino died three years ago. The day she  heard the impossible news it was all Mercedes  could do to keep from running to Helen Frye's  house. She found the strength to forbear. It's  simple, really: just don't move, and you won't  do anything you'll regret later. Mercedes spent  that day sitting, enervated, on the edge of her bed,  staring at Valentino's picture. When she got  up, it was to replace his face in the frame with a  poem she had come across in Reader's Digest  called "Don't Whine."
  Mercedes always crosses the street when she  sees Helen Frye. Helen looks wi/lly  at Mercedes, although she has given up saying  hello. The Fryes must know by now how  wrong they were, no doubt Helen has shed her  share of hot tears. Good enough for them. Mercedes  hasn't wasted time on silly girlfriends since  Frye. She has been too busy with school and  family. Here is the order of priorities:  God, family, school, piano, friends.
  Mercedes will soon turn seventeen--  November is the one month when she and Frances  are the same age. Mercedes is in her final  year of high school. She is a definite for a  scholarship to Saint Francis Xavier  University on the mainland. Surely Daddy will  be able to spare her by then. She tries not to be  selfish about it, but she wants so badly to go  to university. It's too late for her other  ambition: to be the best student ever to grace the  halls of Holy Angels. She has settled  for being the best Mount Carmel has ever seen, and  among the best in the province. All this and cooking  and cleaning and babysitting too. Mercedes tries  not to be proud--only grateful. Think of how many
  
girls never even get to finish high school.  Think of the poor children who share a single pair of  shoes among a whole family.
  Mercedes leaves the church, raises her  umbrella and walks down Plummer Avenue through  the steady drizzle, nodding polite greetings  left and right. Despite her youth, many people call  her "Miss Piper." It seems natural.
Partly because of her bearing and good works. Partly because  of her grooming. She is swathed in tweed,  crisp in a white blouse and black necktie,  gloved, with a straw boater angled on her pale  bun. She never fails to wear a hat and  gloves, not just out of seemliness but because, summer  or winter, she darkens rather too readily. In  Paris, Coco Chanel has just invented the  suntan, but word hasn't reached New Waterford.  Beneath it all, Mercedes is decently corseted  and petticoated. Frances has told her she  looks as though she just stepped out of the Time  Machine. But good taste is always in style.  Truly, civilization is a thin veneer. For what  have we to distinguish us from the beasts of the field?  Besides, of course, an immortal soul?  Manners, and suitable attire.
  One effect of cultivating the virtue of  charity is the realization that the Mahmouds over in  Sydney require her prayers. So along with the  dead, Mercedes prays for her unknown  relatives. She is praying for them now,  inwardly, as she passes the new gasoline  pumps and nods to Mr. MacIsaac. It  slipped her mind in church, but there is no such thing  as an inconvenient moment when it comes to prayer.  That's the marvelous thing about it. "Please, dear  God, don't judge too harshly Your  servants in Sydney who cast out their own flesh  and blood. Amen."
  Although Mercedes was too young to respond  mercifully to the first twenty-five years of disaster,  she has been working hard to make up for it. And  there's plenty of time; this is, after all, only  1929. In the grievously wounded but still young  twentieth century, Mercedes finishes her  prayer with a discreet sign of the cross etched with  her index finger upon her thumb and turns  into Luvovitz's Kosher Canadian to buy a  roast for Sunday's supper.
  Luvovitz's Delicatessen has expanded  to include fruits, vegetables, tinned goods,
  
dry goods, and bins of bulk comestibles, because few people  can afford to buy meat on a regular basis.
  The bell rings as Mercedes opens the door, and  Ralph Luvovitz looks up from behind the counter.  The tips of his adorable sticking-out ears turn as  red as the stripes in his apron when he sees her.  Mercedes looks as young as she is the moment she  smiles at him. They exchange pleasantries,  avoiding and catching one another's eyes, as he  draws out the process of measuring and cutting  brown paper, unwinding a length of string,  selecting just the right roast, wrapping it and tying it  up. At the end of the process it seems to slip  his mind that Mercedes is waiting for him to hand the  package to her. Neither does Mercedes remind  him.
  "How is the clarinet going, Ralph?" she  inquires.
  "I've been practicing"--
  "Good, are you--?"
  "Are you--his Sorry--"
  "Sorry."
  Smile.
  "Are you still able to come over Sunday evening?"  asks Ralph.
  "Oh yes. May I bring the girls?"  "Of course, that'd be grand."
  Smile.
  Mercedes reflects, not for the first time,  that Ralph's shiny brown eyes and sandy curls  are somehow more pleasing than Valentino's turban  and charcoal glowers. Perhaps it's because, if she  reached out right now, she could touch Ralph. She  blushes afresh and fumbles for the roast. Ralph  drops it.
  They've known one another all their lives, but  suddenly over the past few months they've become  terribly polite. It is a change that is not  lost on Mrs. Luvovitz, who is taking  inventory across the aisle.
  Mercedes is a good girl. A wonderful  girl. I helped bring her into this world. I loved  her mother like a daughter. B.
  The problem is, if Mr. and Mrs.  Luvovitz are to have grandchildren--Jewish grandchildren--  well, it can't be a shayna Catholic  maidela, now can it?
  "Relax," Benny has told her.
  "How can I relax? You want a Catholic  grandchild?"
  
  "A grandchild would be nice."
  Mrs. Luvovitz gets choked up and can't  continue the argument. Benny says, "Come here, come  here."
  She does. He says, "You want he should go  away to school, and you want he should stay home."  She nods. He says, "You want he should be a  doctor, and you want he should be a grocer." She  nods again, smiling now through tears. "And," says  Benny, "he should marry a nice Jewish girl  and move into a house down the street." She  nods, stuffing a hanky in between his shoulder and her  nose.
  "You know, liebkeit, we're the ones who  came here. If we'd stayed in the Old Country  there'd be plenty of nice Jewish girls. It's  not Ralph's fault we made him be born  here." He pauses. "And it's not his fault that  ..."
  But he doesn't have to continue. They both know.  If Abe and Rudy had not been killed in the  war, Mrs. Luvovitz would not have such a problem  letting Ralph marry Mercedes.
  Over the tins of Dutch Cleanser, Mrs.  Luvovitz watches Mercedes count out the money  for Ralph and she watches him meticulously  place it in the cash register. She sees him  slip a chocolate rosebud into Mercedes' hand  before she leaves.
  Mercedes exits Luvovitz's Kosher  Canadian feeling light-headed. Maintaining the  pink glow on her cheeks for several blocks is  the thought of what her and Ralph's children would look  like. Mercedes Luvovitz. Mrs. Ralph  Luvovitz. Their children would be Catholic, of  course.
  Mercedes indulges herself until King  Street, then reins in her thoughts and remembers  to open her umbrella. I wonder if Frances and  Lily went on their picnic. I hope not, in this  weather.
  She turns onto Water Street and sees that  Daddy is not yet home. Just as well. I  feel like a little lie-down before starting supper.
  Mercedes mounts the stairs to her room. The  house is quiet. Lily and Frances must have gone  on their picnic after all. It's sweet of  Frances to play with Lily so much--it means  Lily's not constantly on my hands--but I could  wish Frances had a friend her own age. A nice
  
one.
  Mercedes lies down on her perfectly made  bed, and allows her eyes to travel contentedly about  her room. She has only fine things. Books.  On her bedside table she has framed the old  photograph of Mumma and Daddy in the archway.  And safely hidden is the one surviving  photograph of Kathleen--hmm, what's it doing  on the floor, it's always tucked inside Jane  Eyre where Daddy won't have to come across it.  Mercedes reaches down, picks up the photo and  puts it on her bedside table. She'll tuck it  back into the book after she has a little zizz.
  Mercedes' eyes come drowsily to rest on the  wall above her dresser where she has hung the  portrait of Our Lady appearing  to Bernadette in the grotto at Lourdes.  Yellow roses sprout between the toes of Our  Lady, and arranged in a halo about her head are  the words she said to Bernadette, "I am the  Immaculate Conception." A stream runs between  them. The stream that became the healing waters of  Lourdes and now provides three-times-nine  thousand gallons every day. Our Lady appeared  to Bernadette three-times-six times. She told  Bernadette three times to drink from the stream, which  Bernadette did after throwing away the first three  handfuls of water. Our Lady told her three  secrets that Bernadette carried to the  grave. Bernadette escaped all the  publicity by becoming a nun. In the convent she  helped out in the hospital and the chapel and struggled  to control her lifelong bad temper. When asked  what she was doing, Bernadette replied,  "Getting on with my work: being ill." Three days  after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception she  became bedridden. At three-times-twelve years  old she died of asthma, tuberculosis and a  tumor on the knee. She received extreme  unction three times. Three nuns knelt by her  at her death and now three million faithful a  year flock to three basilicas at Lourdes,  where the waters occasionally effect a miraculous  cure.
  Mercedes has become very sleepy thinking about  Bernadette.
  As her eyes drift down from the picture they  naturally fall upon the figurine of the dear  Old-Fashioned Girl. Mercedes' eyes  lurch open. Diabolical.
  
  The Old-Fashioned Girl has a parasol  for a head and a head for a parasol. She is  daintily holding up her own head of ringlets to the  sun while the insensate yellow parasol is  implanted in the empty neck like a flag.  Frances.
  Mercedes blinks back tears. It's always like  this--the minute I have something good, something clean.  She goes to the dresser, tidying her tears with a  thin trembling wrist.
  She examines the body. The pieces have been  glued like that, there's no fixing this. At least not  now. What to do with it, where to put it in the meantime  where it won't be like an obscene smell, invisible  yet oppressive. The hope chest. It's been  kept locked ever since Frances dressed  Trixie in the baptismal gown. Mercedes has  the key.
  She picks up the disfigurine without looking at  it. It tinkles briefly. On the way, she  picks up the photo of Kathleen, intending  to replace it between the leaves of Jane Eyre,  but Jane has flown. She is not on the shelf  near the window. She is nowhere to be seen.  Frances must have borrowed her. Again.
  First things first. Mercedes will hunt for the book  later. She puts Kathleen in her pocket and  walks to the foot of the attic stairs. Listens.  Silence. She mounts the stairs.
  The attic is so empty. Nothing but the hope  chest. Even the attic's one other distinguishing  feature is an absence: a crisscross  halfway up the wall where a crucifix used  to be. Mercedes remembers when this was Kathleen's  bedroom. Before she died here, peacefully in her  sleep.
  The hope chest is a good place to store things  like the ruined Old-Fashioned Girl because the  attic is so separate from the rest of the house. In  a state of perpetual quarantine. It's really  an abandoned room. That's why the sad feeling  here, Mercedes supposes. Sad like a  deconsecrated church. Maybe I'll put a  crucifix back up here if I think of it next  time. Or no, because then you couldn't store anything  up here like the ruined Old-Fashioned Girl.  Mercedes sees the practical benefit of having  a nonroom in the house.
  She opens the hope chest. The cedar smell  clouds up soft and alive, resurrecting an
  
old grief. Mercedes has no wish to linger here  or to rummage in the past. She takes what is  to hand--the baptismal gown is at the top of the  pile from the Trixie incident--and wraps the  Old-Fashioned Girl in it. After what the  garment has been through this can hardly be considered a  desecration. She closes the lid and locks it.  She stands for a moment in the emptiest of rooms.  Then leaves, quietly closing the door behind her.
  Mercedes feels calmer by the time she arrives  in the living room. Daddy will be home soon and  she mustn't show that anything's wrong. She sits  down at the piano. No doubt Lily knocked  over the figurine by accident, she is a child after  all--jab jab jab at that sticky C  sharp, Daddy keeps saying he's going to fix it  but never does--Mercedes is under the impression that  she has forgiven Lily for the family-tree  incident and now she is preparing herself to forgive  Frances for mutilating the Old-Fashioned  Girl. She turns to page thirty-two in  Everybody's Favorite Songs. Oddly,
Mercedes has always found it much easier to forgive  Frances than to forgive Lily, even though  Frances is satanically inspired and Lily is  unarguably innocent. Mercedes needs to forgive  Frances the same way Frances needs to comfort  Lily.
  Mercedes goes to touch down lightly  on the keys but stops and reaches into her pocket,  where she has forgotten Kathleen. She takes the  photo out and props it on the music ledge next  to the song book. Kathleen in her Holy  Angels uniform, hands on her knees, laughing.  She was beautiful. A slight blur around her  hair because she wouldn't keep still long enough for the  camera. There, says Mercedes to Kathleen with her  mind, you can listen and watch and I'll play you a  song.
  Mercedes starts to play. And to sing sincerely:  ""Darling I am growing old. Silver  threads among the gold, shine upon my brow today,  life is fading fast away. But, my darling you will  be, will be, always young and fair to me. Yes! My  darling you will be, always young and fair to me.""
  Trixie, Frances, then Lily quietly  file in. Lily's face is black with coal  except for a wide oval around her mouth.  Mercedes sees them but keeps singing. Frances  looks at Mercedes and figures, I guess
  
she hasn't been up to her room yet.
  Frances, Lily and Trixie sit on the sofa  and listen.
  ""With the roses of the May, I will kiss your  lips and say, Oh! My darling mine alone, You  have never older grown.""
  Daddy is in the doorway. The song ends.  "That was lovely, Mercedes."
  "Thank you, Daddy."
  "Play something else, my dear," he says,  crossing the room to sit in the wingback chair.
  "Play "Oh My Darlin' Clementine,""  Lily requests.
  "What in the name of time have you done to your face?"  "We did a minstrel show in the cellar,  Daddy," says Lily.
  James looks at Frances. Frances just  looks back. Daddy smiles at Lily,
  "Come here, ya wee scallywag."
  Lily jumps into Daddy's lap.
  "Go on and play, Mercedes."
  Mercedes plays and Daddy and Lily sing,  cuddled together in the wingback chair. Frances  watches them as though transfixed. Lily belts  out her favorite part, ""herring boxes without  topses, shoes they were for Clementine."" Lily  always wonders what happened to Clementine, the miner  forty-niner's daughter, "lost and gone for ever,"  where?
  The song comes to an end; Daddy gently shifts  Lily off his knee and rises.
  "Tell you what, Mercedes, I'm going to fix  that C sharp right this minute."
  "Oh, thank goodness, Daddy, it's so  annoying." Mercedes is a lady. She is able  to chat with Daddy like that. Frances marvels.  James opens the piano lid and looks in.  "Give it a tap, Mercedes."
  She does.
  "Nothin' to it," says James, "I'll get  my tools." Then he sees the photograph.  The laughing leaning-forward girl with the halo of  hurry, "Daddy!" The house is behind her and you can  just see Materia in the kitchen window waving.  Something bright in her hand. Flashed against the lens.  James can hear Kathleen laughing at him,  totally unafraid, nothing to be afraid of. Not  like now in this room. Now is the dim past. Then was  the shining present. He hears her laugh. He  hears the water trickling in the creek and flash
  
goes Materia's waving hand, although her face is  barely visible. Kathleen is fourteen. You think  you're safe. Until you see a picture like that.  And then you know you'll always be a slave to the  present because the present is more powerful than the  past, no matter how long ago the present  happened.
  If only he hadn't let her go so far from  home. If only he had gone with her to New  York. None of it would have happened. She never  would have got pregnant. Not that I regret  Lily, Lily is my consolation, but my first  girl ... She'd be with me now. Oh my  darlin'. The breath assaults James's lungs  and he comes out of the black and white picture  back into the room of living color.
  And looks around. My good daughter. My bad  daughter. And my dear daughter's daughter--in  blackface. That isn't even worth getting  riled about, although riled is what Frances tries  to get me with something like that.
  "What's this doing here?" he asks Mercedes,  softly. There are no pictures of Kathleen  anywhere. Not a spinning wheel in the kingdom, so  to speak, and then you prick your finger.
  Mercedes answers, "I'm sorry, Daddy."  Frances stares at James. "I did it."
  Mercedes swivels on the piano stool. She  wants to say to Frances, no, it will go  much harder with you, you don't have to atone for the ruin of  my silly possessions by taking the blame for this.  But Frances deliberately digs her own  grave. "Kathleen was my sister and I'd like  to see her now and then."
  James is getting whiter. The blue part of his  eyes is heating up.
  Frances stokes him. "Why can't we, anyhow?  Was there something wrong with her? Was she a lunatic  or something?" Casual insolent tone.
  Mercedes can't find her voice. It's  autumn in her mouth and all her tongue can do is  rustle. Lily doesn't like it when Daddy  looks at Frances like that. It's not Daddy  anymore. Not her daddy.
  "Was she a slut?" Frances, in a helpful  tone of voice. Ahhh, that's just right. Look at  him, all lit up like an Easter candle.
  James says quietly to Frances, "Come with  me."
  Frances shrugs and gets up, nonchalant,
  
grinning at Mercedes. Mercedes covers her  face with her hands. James says to Mercedes,  "Take your sister out for a while."
  "Come on, Lily."
  Lily's forehead has the bump in it but she  obeys.
  Frances saunters across the room toward  James, who finally snaps at the sight of her  slouching toward him, grabs the back of her neck  and flings her through the doorway. Mercedes hustles  Lily out the front door.
  "Where are we going, Mercedes?"  "Ou."
  "I broke your beautiful thing."  "I don't care, Lily, just walk please"  --down the porch steps.
  "Frances glued it but I broke it and I  tore up your book too, I didn't mean  to."
  "They're just things, Lily, they don't  matter."
  Lily is having a hard time keeping up but she  has no choice, Mercedes has her by the wrist.
  "I'm sorry, Mercedes."
  No answer.
  "Mercedes--"
  "That's enough, Lily."
  They walk-drag through town until they come to the  cliff above the shore. Mercedes stands  staring out at the gray sea. Lily sits with her  legs dangling over the edge.
  "How come I never saw that picture?"  "You know perfectly well, because Daddy  doesn't like to dwell on Kathleen. It  grieves him."
  "Did you hide it?"
  "Yes. In the book you destroyed. That's how  it came to be out in the open."
  "That's the book Frances likes to read. That's  how come I accidentally wrecked it. Because Frances  accidentally made me."
  "Well, then. She has you to thank for whatever  Daddy gives her."
  "How come you put the picture on the piano,  Mercedes?"
  Mercedes freezes. How come indeed?  Surely not on purpose. Mercedes turns her  head slowly and looks at Lily. She sees  her falling over the cliff to the rocks below. The  only thing that would not break would be her withered leg in
  
its steel brace.
  Without looking at Mercedes, Lily rises and  wanders back toward the Shore Road. She  turns to see if Mercedes is coming, but Mercedes  is kneeling at the precipice, facing the ocean.
  "Mercedes," she calls. "Don't fall,  Mercedes."
  Mercedes makes the sign of the cross and gets  up. God will forgive her. She has made Him  a promise.

  On Water Street, the outside walls of the  shed thump now and then like a bass drum with a foot  pedal at work inside it keeping the beat. In the  shed the performance has begun. The upbeat grabs  her neck till she's on point, the downbeat  thrusts her back against the wall, two  eighth-notes of head on wood, knuckles  clatter incidentally. In the half-note rest he  lights up her pale face with the blue wicks of  his eyes, and the lyrics kick in con  spirito, "What right have you, you have no right, no  right to even speak her name, who's the slut, tell  me who's the slut!" The next two bars are like  the first, then we're into the second movement, swing  your partner from the wall into the workbench, which catches  her in the small of the back, grace note  into stumble because she bounces, being young. Staccato  across the face, then she expands her  percussive range and becomes a silent  tambourine. Frances gets through this part by pretending  to herself that she's actually  Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley, which makes her  laugh and provokes his second verse, "I  don't want to hear you speak her name,"  accidental note to the nose resolves into big  major chord, "Do--You--Under--Stand--Me?"  We've gone all stately; it's whole notes  from here on in. She flies against another wall and  he follows her trajectory, taking his time now  because we're working up to the finale. One more clash of  timbers and tissues and it's finally opera,  "I'll cut the tongue right out of your head." She  sticks her tongue out at him and tastes blood.  Cue finale to the gut. Frances folds over  till she's on the floor. Modern dancer.

  The first thing Mercedes did was bring Frances  Spanish Influenza and the rest of her dear children,  arranging them lovingly on her bed. Even though
  
Frances didn't register their arrival,  Mercedes knew their presence would comfort her. Then  she got a basin and a cloth and cleaned Frances's  face.
  The swelling makes Frances look even younger  than sixteen, especially with all her dolls  around her. She speaks finally, her words a little  thick. "Where's Trixie?"
  "It's okay, Trixie's fine."  Frances hurts all over, which makes her  feel re/l. It's a lovely feeling that she  hardly ever gets.
  Mercedes squeezes out the cloth, "You shouldn't  make him angry like that."
  "He deserves it."
  "You're the one who gets hurt."  Frances swallows carefully. "I'm sorry  about your things."
  "It's all right, Frances. You didn't have  to take the blame for the photograph."
  "Yes I did."
  "Why?"
  "It's the way it is, Mercedes. You can't  change the way it is."
  "I don't agree, that doesn't make any  sense, he shouldn't beat you for something I did."
  "Well, he wouldn't beat you."  "Well good, then, no one need have got  beaten."
  "Yes, someone did need to. Besides, it lets  me get back at him."
  "For what?"
  Frances looks at Mercedes and smiles  slightly, which makes the fresh seam in her lower  lip gleam.
  "For the thing you don't know. And what you don't  know won't hurt you."
  Mercedes says nothing. Frances reaches for  Diphtheria Rose, hugs her and closes her  eyes.
  Mercedes has told Daddy that the picture  has been burned to nothing on the stove. But it's  a lie. She can't part with it. She leaves  Frances sleeping, but before going to the coal cellar  to keep her promise to God, she climbs the  attic stairs for the second time today. Mercedes  knows that Daddy never looks in the hope chest. The  photo will be perfectly safe there.
  When the house is quiet, Trixie lopes  up the stairs into Frances and Lily's room and
  
silently leaps onto the bed. She snuggles  down amongst the dolls in the crook of Frances's  arm. She watches Frances sleep for a while.  Then she lays her head upon the pillow, extends  her paw and rests it against Frances's forehead.  Neither of them moves till morning.

            We Are the Dead

... All by myself I have to go
With none to tell me what to do
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountainsides of dreams ...  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, "THE
    LAND OF NOD"

  An opening in the earth a third of the way up a  steep slope of limestone, thin grass and scant  soil. Crazy pine trees grow parallel to the  slant here and there. An archway in the earth. No  inscription. An abandoned bootleg mine. A  drift mine, the type that cuts into a hillface  and burrows horizontally.
  Every time people find an old mine around here, they  think they've found the old French mine. There's  no treasure associated with the old French mine,  it just happened to be the first hole excavated for the  purpose of extracting "buried sunshine." This  is the sort of thing that becomes  important when you don't have cathedrals.
  "It's the old French mine," says Frances.  "No one else knows it's here."
  Frances and Lily stand at the base of the hill  looking up. Behind them are the woods, where Frances  has just blazed a trail in the pine trees with the  kitchen scissors. She brings a hand up to shade  her eyes in the manner of a French Foreign  Legion commander, the overcast Cape Breton  sky notwithstanding. Her left eye socket has  healed to pale yellow, but her right one is still a  pouchy mauve--wounds sustained in my last  hand-to-hand bout with the Algerians, mon  Dieu!
  Frances cuts what she intends to be a  plucky figure in her blue Girl Guide  uniform. Her neckerchief is neatly knotted,  her beret tweaked at regulation angle, her  leather pouch buckled to her belt. The only things  missing are badges. She has yet to earn one.  She has yet to attend a second Guide
  
meeting. Lily is in her Brownie uniform.  Daddy has finally let her join because she hasn't  had so much as a cold for a long long time. Frances  was supposed to take her to her first Brownie pack  meeting this afternoon, but brought her here instead. They  walked all the way, and it's miles. Frances  told Lily she would earn her hiking badge.
  "There are dead men in there, Lily. And  diamonds."
  "Like in Aladdin."
  "That's right."
  "Let's go home now, Frances."  "We're going in."
  Frances reaches for Lily's hand, but Lily  backs away. "Come on, Lily, just for a little  visit."
  "No, Frances, there's dead people in there."  "Dead people are completely harmless."
  "What about ghosts?"
  "There's no such thing."
  "Then who're we visiting if they're all  dead?"
  "Ambrose."
  Lily searches Frances's face.  "Ambrose is dead."
  "No he isn't."
  "He is so, he drownded, you said."  "Yes, he drowned, but he isn't dead,  Lily, he's an angel, remember?
He became an angel, it happens. And he's  in there. That's where he lives. I think it's time  you met him."
  "No."
  "Come on, I'll be with you."  "No."
  Frances seizes Lily's arm and pulls her  along, like trying to get a dog up stairs.
  "You'll earn a badge for this, Lily."  "I don't want to go in there, Frances."  Lily's voice is shaking with fear.
  "You can't get your wings and fly up to Guides  if you don't earn your guardian angel  badge."
  Frances starts laughing and Lily knows it's  going to get bad. They've started up the slope,  Lily twisting in Frances's grasp. Frances  grapples her into a sack of potatoes over her  shoulder. Lily ceases to struggle. They climb  up to the mouth of the mine. They enter.
  There's nothing much to see--a few rotting ribs
  
of wood and pit props, a rusted shovel.  Frances carries Lily forward. It gets  darker. The air is musty. They follow a bend in  the tunnel and lose sight of the light at the  entrance. Frances walks on slowly into the dank  and shapeless dark.
  Lily asks quietly, "What if we get  lost?"
  "We won't. Ambrose will find us."  Lily whimpers.
  "He loves you, Lily, don't be  afraid."
  "I want to go home."
  "We are home. We're in his home."  Frances stops and puts Lily down. Her  fingers feel for the snap on her Girl Guide  pouch. She withdraws a cigarette, and strikes a  match against her belt buckle. The tongue of  fire illuminates: a pool of still water  inches from their feet, dear God, how deep is  it? And over there, against the wall--Lily  screams. Frances lights her cigarette and  blows out the match.
  "There's someone here, Frances." Lily's  voice is shaking.
  "I know."
  "He's standing over there. On the other side of the  water."
  Frances takes a big puff.  "What's he look like?"
  "He's got overalls on. And a pick. And a  peaked cap."
  "Is there a lamp on his cap?"  "Yes. The teapot kind."
  "He must have been dead quite a while." Frances  blows invisible smoke rings.
  "Frances"--Lily's fear is spilling over.  "It's not Ambrose, Lily. It's a dead  miner."
  Frances lights another match: the pool, the  seeping wall--Lily cries out again as the  flame disappears.
  "It's not a miner, Frances."  "What is it?"
  "He's got a mask on."
  "A Halloween mask?"
  "A gas mask. He's got a rifle with a  bayonet on the end."
  "A dead soldier."
  Frances lights another match: the black
  
water, stones and earthen walls--
  "He's gone," says Lily.
  "Ambrose took him away 'cause he  knew you were scared. Baby. Brownie baby."
  "Ambrose isn't here."
  "Yes he is."
  "Where?"
  Frances drops her cigarette and it sizzles  against the unseen pool.
  "In there."
  Lily looks down, dizzy from the dark.  "Angels live in heaven."
  "They live wherever the hell they want."  "I'm telling. You smoked and swore."
  "Go ahead and tattle. Ambrose and I will still  look after you no matter what."
  "There's no such thing as Ambrose."  "At night he dives down in this pool and  swims in an underground river till it comes out at  the surface and turns into our creek. He  takes a breath and swims in the shallow water,  long and white, all the way till he gets to our  place. Then he climbs out over the top of the  bank and slowly walks, dripping, across our yard  and opens the kitchen door. He walks past the  oven. He walks into the hall past the front  room. He walks up the stairs without a sound,  and past the attic door. He comes into the room  where you're asleep. He stands at the  foot of the bed and looks down at you. He has  red hair.
  "And then he leaves. But he can't swim  back. He has to move the rock in the garden and  go down a tunnel that's too small for him now,  until he gets to the sad and lonely mine. He  walks for miles in his bare feet past all the  quiet soldiers and miners resting against the walls.  And every time he makes the journey back to the  pool, his heart breaks. So you see how much he  loves you, Lily, to make such a trip night  after night."
  Silence. Lily pees her pants.  Frances's footsteps trot away and around the  bend until Lily can't hear them anymore.  Her Brownie stockings are soaked. She  passes out.
  When Frances doesn't hear Lily cry or  holler, she runs back through the darkness and lights  another match. Oh my God, "Lily!" But  Lily lies motionless, dead of a heart attack
  
at ten, it could happen, "Lily!" Frances  shakes her, splashes water on her face, and  she wakes up. Frances piggybacks her out of the  mine and slides half the way down the hill in  stones and dirt. When they get to the bottom, she  props Lily against a mossy tree and catches  her breath, hands on her knees.
  Lily opens her eyes. "Frances, I  peed."
  "That's okay, we'll go straight home and  change, come on."
  Lily stays sitting. "Frances. What if  Ambrose is the Devil?"
  "He's not the Devil. I know who the Devil  is and it isn't Ambrose."
  "Who's the Devil?"
  Frances crouches down as if she were talking  to Trixie. "That's something I'll never tell you,  Lily, no matter how old you get to be, because the  Devil is shy. It makes him angry when  someone recognizes him, so once they do the  Devil gets after them. And I don't want the  Devil to get after you."
  "Is the Devil after you?"
  "Yes."
  "Jesus can beat the Devil."
  "If God wants."
  "God is against the Devil."
  "God made the Devil."
  "Why?"
  "For fun."
  "No, to test us."
  "If you know, why are you asking me?"  "Daddy says there's no such thing as the  Devil, it's just an idea."
  "The Devil lives with us."
  "No he doesn't."
  "You see the Devil every day. The Devil  hugs you and eats right next to you."
  "Daddy's not the Devil."
  "I never said he was. ..."  Frances has got a dry look, tinder in the  eye; her voice is a stack of hay heating up  at the center, her mouth a stitched line. "I'm the  Devil."
  This is the moment Lily stops being afraid of  anything Frances could ever say or do again. Stops  being afraid of anything at all. She reaches out  and takes Frances's hand. The white hand that always  smells of small wildflowers, lily of the
  
valley. The hand that has always done up Lily's  buttons and laces, and produced wondrous  objects. She holds Frances's hand and tells  her, "It's okay, Frances."
  Frances's bruised face crumples and her  forehead drops to her knees knocking her Girl  Guide beret askew. Her stick arms  encircle her legs and she cries. Lily  strokes the sinewy back while Frances mumbles  something over and over.
  Years later, Frances remembers that she was  saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Lily,
I'm sorry."
  But memory plays tricks. Memory is  another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.

           The First Miracle

  My own soul cries out in anguish, it  thirsts so much for purification and cleansing. Even  while I sleep my soul groans for complete  surrender to Jesus. Ah my Saviour, my  heart bleeds with pain and love. Oh, Jesus--  You know it--My Jesus!
    "THE SECRETS OF PURGATORY,"
    AUTHOR UNKNOWN

  While Frances and Lily were at the old  French mine, Mercedes was home in the  coal cellar keeping her promise to God.
  "Through my fault, through my fault, through my  most grievous fault." Penance has not only  eased her soul, it has been the occasion for Our  Lady to put the idea into Mercedes' mind of a  Lourdes fund for Lily. Why didn't I  think of it before? But Mercedes knows the answer.  She wasn't worthy to receive the inspiration until  she acknowledged her sins and humbly begged  God's forgiveness.
  Naturally Mercedes has made a full  confession: "Father forgive me, for I have sinned.  ... I wished my lame sister dead of a fall,  I grieved my poor father, I allowed my  favorite sister to suffer for my sin. I have a  favorite sister." She has been assigned a  standard penance of prayers, but she has devised an  additional private penance here in the cellar.
  Although she has told no one of her penance, she  has told Daddy and Frances about the Lourdes  fund so that they may contribute, and she has
  
told Lily so that Lily may have hope. There  is nearly two dollars in the cocoa tin already and  it's only been a week. At this rate, Lily  will be able to go to Lourdes when she's fourteen.  That's a good age for a cure. The brink of  womanhood. Think how perfectly lovely  Lily would be without her affliction.
  Mercedes rises, takes off the white shift  and hides it behind the furnace. She stands naked  for a moment in the darkness and says a prayer of  thanks to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Most Blessed Virgin, Merciful Mother, Virgin  Most Powerful, Seat of Wisdom, Tower of  Ivory, Mystical Rose, Queen of the  Apostles, Martyrs and all the Saints, Mother  Undefiled, pray for us. White Rose of  Purity, Winsome One, the Daintiest Jewel that  God hath ever made, Great Casket of  Mysteries, Princess Fair, that death may be  but a prelude to thy kiss, amen.
  Then she gets dressed and goes upstairs  to wash her tongue before everyone gets home.
  She has set the table for supper by the time  Lily and Frances arrive rather late from Brownies  and Guides. Lily goes straight up to the  bathroom to launder her uniform and woolen  stockings "for a cleanliness badge." Frances  goes straight to bed to avoid the meal. No one  has invented a badge for that yet.  Mercedes tells Daddy that Frances is  "indisposed" knowing he will not inquire further.  Lies like that are not a sin, they are a  sacrifice. Mercedes goes upstairs to get  Lily.
  Lily is kneeling barefoot at the tub which  is how Mercedes notices that the wound on her  left heel has reopened. That's not good. It's  two weeks now since Armistice Day.  Mercedes wrings out Lily's Brownie uniform and  soaks the bad foot in warm salt water.
  "We'll have the doctor look at it tomorrow."  Lily has noticed something different about  Mercedes lately. For example, now--her  movements. They've gone ... glidy. Mercedes  gets a clean dressing from the cabinet. She  binds the wound gently and efficiently, not too  tight this time, so why does Lily feel frightened  as she watches the white cloth go round and round and  round her little foot?
  "There."
  
  "Thank you, Mercedes."
  Mercedes smiles at Lily with the peace that  penance brings. Lily makes her mouth stretch  east and west simultaneously. And again she  feels a little scared because Mercedes' smile is the  kind of smile you figure must be meant for the  person standing behind you, but behind you is the wall.

  They have sardines on toast for supper since no  one is very hungry tonight.

  When Lily crawls into bed, Frances is already  asleep. And soon, so is Lily.

  It's Ambrose. Standing at the foot of her  bed, looking down at her the way he does.  Lily is in that place again between the lines. This time  she looks at him carefully. His wide green  eyes, wincing even in this dim light. High  smooth forehead with the hint of a bump. His pale  body, green shadows drowned beneath his skin.  Ivory belly, strange soft segments nestled  between his thighs. Hairless but for his head of  fine-spun angel orange.
  Lily asks him, "Who are you?"
  She is prepared for the flood but he does not  open his mouth. Instead, he turns his palms  to her. They are blank.
  She asks him again, "Who are you?"
  He opens his mouth and the water pours out but  Lily stays in the in-between place and does not  make a sound until she and the bed and Frances  sleeping next to her are soaked. It's not so  bad. The water is warm, having been inside  him. When all the water is out of him, he is still  looking, looking, his empty palms facing her.
  She asks for the third time, "Who are you?"  Ambrose speaks his first words. He has a  dark voice because he lives in a dark place.  "I am No Man."
  "Don't be afraid, Ambrose. Don't be  afraid. We love you."
  Ambrose says, "Hello."
  "Hello," says Lily. "Hello, little  boy. Hello."

  Lily wakes up because Mercedes is sponging  her head. "She's waking up."
  "Ambrose," says Lily.
  "She's delirious." Mercedes' voice
  
feels like surgery on Lily's skin.
  "Who took my skin?"
  "Soaked with fever."
  Lily buries her face in her drenched  pillow because the light is an eye operation.
  "The light is off, Lily, see? There's no  light on."
  Daddy has arrived with the doctor. It's a good  sign that Lily's fever has broken, unless her  temperature goes back up. Gangrene.  Somewhere in the scalpel light Lily hears him  talking to Daddy and her sisters, "You did the right  thing, Mercedes." They'll have to keep an eye on  her for the rest of the night, if her temp goes up,  if it goes up ... They go out into the hall,  Lily can't hear them anymore except that  Mercedes cries out something, then Frances comes  back in and sings songs to Lily. Nice ones.  Beautiful sad ones in minor keys, long story  songs that our ancestors sang on the boats coming  over in other languages.
  That was midnight. At 3:30 A.m. Lily  wakes up. There's a bright moon glazing the  window. On either side, Frances and Mercedes are  slumped in chairs under bedsheets lit like  snowdrifts shadowed blue. It's Christmas  Eve. The shepherds have fallen asleep beneath their  flocks of snow. Lily sits up in bed. Her  skin is no longer sore. She feels  cool and calm, a midnight clear. She walks  between the snowdrifts and their deep sleepers to the  window because she has been invited. Oh, it's not the  moon at all, there is no moon tonight, the light  is coming from the creek.
  Ambrose is in the creek. He is leaning out  to wave, his left arm above his head, his right arm  stretched along the lip of earth. His lower body  is concealed by the embankment, he looks like a  merman waving to Lily in the slow wide lullaby  of the ocean, hello ... His skin has changed from  white to amber and the glow has wakened Lily from her  bed of fire into soothing rose milk. She puts  a hand to the window, hello ... Ambrose is the  drowned sun, he is the buried sunshine, he's  saying, come Lily, come. My sister. And I  will heal you. A garden locked, a fountain sealed,  many waters can not quench me. He says, the  spring in my garden pours down from Lebanon, come  to me and I will give you rest. And Lily says,  yes. She is asleep but her heart is
  
wakeful, yes I'm coming, Ambrose. Wait  for me, dear brother, I am coming.
  Lily leaves the snow sleepers by the window and  walks down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the  back door and over the coal clinks in the  backyard in her bare feet, she shouldn't be able  to walk at all with her wounded heel but there's no  pain. Just the glow of Ambrose waiting for her in  the creek, her big baby brother. He opens his  arms. She goes to him. He picks her up in  her white nightgown and cradles her, her head  resting in the crook of his left shoulder, his right arm  encircling her body. She has never felt so  warm and peaceful, are my eyes open or  closed, it doesn't matter. There is almost no  sensory change between the air and the water, it takes  her a moment to realize why she feels lighter now  and even more tenderly embraced--it takes the sight  of her own hair fanning out from her head and the  thickening of the soft orange light to let her know that  now she is under water, her cheek resting against his  breast, her body curved around its first companion,  I would take you to my mother's house, to the room  of she who conceived me--Lily has never got  used to being alone. They turn in the water and turn  again, then Ambrose lifts her above the surface  once more and the creek rains down from her. He  lays her gently on the bank and her heart  breaks. Her tears begin to flow because he  is leaving--don't go! He sinks into the water  on his back--take me with you! His body  turns white again and shimmers into segments until  all the pieces disappear. Lily lies face  down at right angles to the creek, her head  hanging over the edge, arms outstretched toward the  spot where she last saw her brother.
  That's how Mercedes finds her at 5:00
A.m., in the first snowfall of the season.

  Mercedes blamed herself for the fever that was consuming  Lily and might result in the loss of her leg  or worse. That was why she went straight to the  coal cellar after the doctor's visit. While  Frances sang to Lily in the dark, Mercedes was  naked under burlap, kneeling by the furnace,  offering up her sacrifice to God.
  She cups the lump of coal in both hands,  elevates it and bows her head; "Through my  fault." When she did this last week she was  serene, a foolish smile on her lips. This
  
time, however, she weeps hot tears. This time she  is truly penitent. That was the problem the first time.  Pride. She was proud of herself for staging her  penance in the cellar, for establishing the Lourdes  cocoa tin. She was pleased with herself as she bathed  and bandaged Lily's foot with an expertise she  thought surpassed that of the nurses at New  Waterford General. Her piety was pride in the  Devil's guise, her penitence nothing but a  fresh occasion of sin, oh how often must we learn  the same lesson? God reacted swiftly and  smote Lily. "Through my fault," Mercedes can  barely get out the words, and as she takes the first  bite of coal, chews and swallows, sorrow  overwhelms her. She is so bitterly aware of  how she hurt God, and of how God in His  infinite mercy has given her this second chance of  which she is not worthy. "Through my most grievous  fault." She takes another bite of coal.
...
  When Mercedes finished in the cellar, she rose  shakily, changed back into her nightgown and went  upstairs, where she washed the soot, snot and  tears off her face, scrubbed her tongue as best  she could, got her opal rosary and went in to keep  watch on Lily. She fell asleep in a  chair opposite Frances. When she awoke for  no reason at 4:55 A.m., Lily was gone.  Mercedes obeyed an ancient reflex  to look out the window and down at the creek.

  The following evening, when Lily opens her  eyes and looks into Mercedes' praying mouth, it  occurs to her for the first time that she must be dreaming, because  why has Mercedes got a black tongue?
  Lily slept through extreme unction and she  slept through the doctor saying no point even  amputating the leg now, and was she in the habit of  sleepwalking? She slept through Daddy laying his  head on her chest and sobbing. She slept through  Frances bribing and threatening God, "You bastard,  I'll be good, okay? Just don't murder her and  I won't smoke anymore, okay? I won't  swear, I won't make my fuckin maniac father  mad anymore, and I'll say the rosary ten  times a day and be a goddamn nun, okay?  Amen."
  But what woke Lily were Mercedes' whispered  prayers.
  Lily asks, "How come you've got a black
  
tongue, Mercedes?"
  Mercedes cries, "Oh thank God--  Daddy! Daddy!"
  He swerves into the room--"Oh thank God"  --and kneels next to Mercedes at Lily's  bedside.
  Lily says, "I'm hungry."
  Daddy and Mercedes laugh and hug each other and  thank God again. Frances loiters in the  doorway and tells God, "There's no way  I'm being a nun out of this."
  Mercedes is careful to avoid the slightest  idea of Lily's miraculous cure being at  all connected with her own acts of contrition in the  cellar. That would be inviting more of God's infinite  mercy. So she is relieved when Lily offers  an explanation of her own.
  "Ambrose cured me. He washed me in the  creek."
  "Who's Ambrose?"
  "He's my guardian angel."

  Mercedes tells the priest. He nods but  tells her that it is of the greatest importance not  to be premature about these things. Rome  requires more than an isolated event, while the  laity require almost nothing to make a shrine out  of a creek and a saint out of a ten-year-old girl.  Best to keep quiet and watch for  signs.
  So Mercedes does. She tries not to dwell  on the signs that are suddenly evident in  retrospect: Lily's shriveled leg--saints  are often stricken in childhood. Her pretty  face--the mirror of her soul. The tragic  circumstances of her birth--poor motherless child. Just  imagine if Lily were revealed to have a healing  power. Or if she were the instrument of a posthumous  miracle by Bernadette at Lourdes.  Mercedes does her best to chasten these thoughts, knowing  from bitter experience how the Devil  masquerades. He is a mocker and a mimic, a  dealer in reflections and parallel lines. Just  look at all the supposed saints the Church had  to burn a few centuries ago. Saints and  satanic vessels tend to start out the same way.  You have to watch closely to see which force will rush in  to claim the highly conductive soul of the candidate  --for it is bound to be one or the other. Mercedes  knows that if the Devil catches the slightest
  
whiff of ambition on her part, he will come and get  Lily.
  But since Mercedes can't help but want  Lily to be revealed as a saint, she tries  to want it only for Daddy's sake. The  ultimate vindication.

  Frances doesn't need to tell Lily any more  Ambrose stories after this because he has become  Lily's story. Frances has finally succeeded in  giving him to her. Lily is okay. For now.  Frances can get on with other things. Her life.
  She raids the Lourdes tin. She puts on  her Girl Guide uniform and stows away in the  Hupmobile. Once at James's still, she  slides out and hides in the bushes till Leo  Taylor's truck pulls up. She waits  till he's finished loading and has returned  to James to get his pay, then she makes a break  from the trees to the truck, leaps into the back and  disappears behind the crates and barrels.
  "Thank you, Mr. Piper."
  "All right, Leo. Drive safe."
  Frances pokes her head out between the tarpaulin  flaps and watches the Shore Road speed away  beneath her. She turns and grins like a dog into the  sunny sea wind, and lets her braids fly out  behind her.
  The truck slows when they reach  Sydney and stops in the Coke Ovens section of  Whitney Pier. She ducks as Taylor gets  out, comes round, and undoes the tarps for his first  delivery. When his broad back is turned, she  hops out, lightening his load by an additional forty  ounces. She waits behind a tar-smelling timber  of the C.n. rail bridge until he drives  away. Then she walks over to the run-down  clapboard house and knocks at a big steel  door.

If I should take a notion,  to jump in to the ocean,  't ain't nobody's business if I do, do, do,
  do ...

I swear I won't call no copper,  if I'm beat up by my Poppa,  't ain't nobody's business if I do. ...

The roses all have left your cheek. ...

Saturday, August 31, 1918

Dear Diary,
  I don't know where to begin. I have to get it all  down now while it's fresh. I'm here under my  tree in Central Park and we have all afternoon  till supper-time. I'll have to go back a few  days because despite all that whining about nothing ever  happening,
  I realize now that tons was happening and it was  all leading up to what I have to tell you which is  EVERYTHING.
  ... I have no shame in front of you, Diary,  for you are me. You won't squirm, you can't be  shocked, you know that nothing in love is nasty so I  will try to be as free with you as I am in my own  thoughts. Lest I forget, let me offer up a  sincere orison of thanks for Giles. She is  the least curious person on the face of the earth.  Without her total lack of vigilance my life  could never have got started. If Daddy knew what  a lackadaisical gatekeeper she is he would  be down here in a second to board me with the  nuns. Which reminds me, I'd better write  him. Oh but I'm teasing you, aren't I, Diary.  You're in an agony of anticipation. Be still,  open your heart, and I will begin at the beginning and  unfold it for you as it unfolded for me. ...

I've watched them fade away and die. ...

               Book 5
      DIARY OF A LOST GIRL

           Baby Burlesque

  A six-inch panel thwacks open and two  brown eyes take aim at her beneath a single  eyebrow. Frances holds up a bottle of  James's finest. The panel slides closed and  after a moment the steel door opens. Standing there is  a big man. Wavy black hair, nose like a  fist, arms like cannon, would-be olive skin but  he obviously doesn't see much sunlight.  Young and, Frances has to figure, dopey. He  stares down at her blankly, blocking the inner  gloom she is so longing to glimpse.
  "Close the friggin door, Boutros, it's  broad fuckin daylight, b'y."
  A small man elbows the younger one aside and,  with a glance not at Frances but over her shoulder,    grabs her arm. "Get in, get in."
  She's in.
  The interior of the speakeasy lives down to its  exterior. It's the only drab house in The  Coke Ovens. Peeling gray paint, boarded  windows, you'd have to know what you were looking for to find  it because it appears deserted--with the exception of the  upper story, where a few tired petunias and  chewed marigolds cling to life in a window box  overlooking the slag dump of Dominion Iron  and Steel. Above is the train bridge. This is  Railway Street.
  Frances blinks into the dusty shadows and the room  takes shape. Benches line the walls.  Wallpaper strips with traces of lords and  ladies flap from ceiling corners dingy with  nicotine and neglect. On the floor, a  genuine brass spittoon awash in brown  slime, and several rusty tin cans that serve the  same purpose. A pile of cigarette butts  has been swept to the center of the floorboards.  A makeshift bar--sheet of scrap metal on  two oil drums--bottles and barrels, not a  mirror, not a shot glass, no engravings of  ships or trains, no regimental photo, no  boxing heroes grace the walls. In the far  corner stands a scarred player piano.
  Frances looks into the taut sallow face of the
  
small man. His black stubble matches  his eyes.
  "Who sent you, you're not selling cookies."  He snickers. Frances feels suddenly  ridiculous in her Girl Guide uniform, which  she thought was the perfect disguise.
  "It's a costume," she falters. "I'm a  ..."
  "You're a what?"
  She can't answer. Her eyebrows quiver.  She's mad at herself--baby. Sooky baby,  Frances. She bites her cheek and looks down.
  "I asked you a question."
  She looks up at him. He is something new.  Not a nun, not a bad boy, not her father.
  "Get outta here. Go on, beat it."
  He shoves her toward the door, Frances  stumbles and blurts out, "I'm an entertainer."
  He stops and laughs, hands in his pockets--a  mean mirthless laugh, his sharp tongue protruding  past his lower lip as he jingles change with one  hand. Beside him, big Boutros hasn't changed his  expression--still just looking at her. Maybe going  to jump me and won't give me no quarter neither,    won't take no. Frances looks around, but  there's nowhere to run. The dumb giant is  planted between her and the door, why didn't she  leave when the greasy little man told her to?  Frances wants suddenly to high-tail it home  to Lily and Mercedes.
  "What's your name, kid?"
  Frances says, "I have to go now. Sorry  to bother you."
  The little man gestures to her to "come here."  Frances walks slowly back to him. He  snatches the bottle from her hand. Everything about him  is a coiled spring ready to pop you in the eye.  Frances doesn't see him move, she's just  suddenly sitting hard on her tailbone on one  of the benches.
  "Please, mister, I just want to go home."  "Come on, sweetheart, what's your name?"
  Frances doesn't reply. He grips her  chin between thumb and forefinger--she realizes he's  stronger than he looks--he shakes her head  till her neck burns. She starts to relax.
  "You gonna be nice, now? Hey? You gonna  answer me?"
  This isn't so hard after all. "Fuck off,"  she says.
  
  He seizes a fi/l of her hair  and yanks her back to her feet. Frances is  elated at the power of the word, unleashed here for the first  time on a grown-up. She laughs at him and  spits, "Who do you think I am, look at the  bottle, stupid."
  He smacks her efficiently, one eye already  on the label. He examines it, lips still parted  and curled. He looks back at her and shakes  his head slowly. Frances straightens her beret.  The man tosses the bottle to Boutros without  looking and asks her, "He know you're here?"
  "No. But he will."
  "Bullshit."
  Frances just shrugs.
  He repeats, "Bullshit, you tell him,  he'll kill you--"
  "He'll kill you second. You touched me."  She puts her chin up and looks down her nose.  "Daddy wouldn't like that."
  The man considers this. Then he says, "Which one  are you?"
  "Frances."
  He narrows his eyes. "What do you want,  Frances?"
  "A job."
  He starts to laugh again but Frances just looks  him steady in the eye. He shuts up and asks,  "What can you do?"
  "I can dance. I can sing and play piano."  He looks her up and down. "What else?"
  She twists her mouth into a sneer she hopes  is hard as nails. "I can do anything."
  He gives a short chuckle. Then another,  and nods. "You're all right, Frances." Without  taking his eyes off her, he says to Boutros,  "Say hello to your cousin, b'y." Frances  looks up at Boutros. Concrete with  eyeballs. She turns back to the small man.  "What are you talking about?"
  "I'm Jameel. I'm your uncle, doll."  That's when Frances sees, between yellow-gray  curtains in the dusk of a rear doorway, a  puffy woman staring at her in a way that shocks  her. Only people who know me really well hate me  like that. Who can she be? Then, with a sickening  half-turn of her stomach, Frances identifies  the other side of a coin she knew and loved so  well.
  "Camille, come here and meet your niece,
  
dear," says Jameel.
  But Camille just turns and disappears into the  back room. Frances hears her slow heavy  foot up the stairs. It's too horrible. Not  these men, not the brown sputum in the cans, the  butts on the floor, the stench of liquor and  puke--but the fact that that hateful woman is  Mumma's sister.
  The following Saturday, without waiting for  James to leave on his midnight rounds, Frances  gets out of bed, puts on her Guide uniform,  ties two sheets together, knots them and fastens  one end to the radiator. She climbs out the window  and rappels down the side of the house. Lily  reels the ladder back in once Frances has  landed safely. Lily will sleep fitfully till  just before dawn in the expectation of hearing a cinder  against the windowpane. In helping Frances, she  has chosen the lesser of two evils: even though  it's terrible not to know where Frances will spend the long  night, it is more terrible still to picture what  Frances's face will look like if Daddy catches  her. "Please dear God, please let
Ambrose look after Frances."

Ain't she sweet? She's a' walkin down the  street.
Now I ask you very confidentially, ain't she  sweet?

  Well-off people purchase liquor discreetly and  consume it in a civilized manner at home.  Ordinary people pass the jar in a convivial kitchen.  Loose pegs and young trouble-seekers come  to Jameel's blind pig in the Pier to fight, play  cards and pass out. Miners, merchant seamen and  steelworkers, some as sweet and others as sour as  soldiers. A few genuine formaldehyde  drunks, the odd alienated contemplative just  passing through, a vet with no visible injuries.  No music--no one even cranks the old  player piano. This place is not sufficiently  jovial to inspire more than a caterwauling chorus  at closing time. The clientele are white with the  exception of one or two of the American  sailors. Certainly no one is here from The  Coke Ovens itself. There are no women. There are  no tourists--this isn't Harlem. No slumming  scions. Frances is the only fallen princess
  
to have crossed the threshold. Her aunt  Camille doesn't count because she is not here  voluntarily. She stays upstairs until it's  time to come down and empty the spittoons and swab  the piss from the doorstep.
  Frances arrives outside the steel door,  takes a last breath of coke-oven air and enters  the dim roar of the speak, passing under Boutros's  arm as if it were a bridge. The air is  palpable, not just with smoke but with the dark mass of  male voices and limbs, work-soiled clothes, the  smell of axle grease, sulphur and sweat. A  shifting, pitching anchorage of hard dirty  hulls in the night, and Frances swims among them  without so much as a paddle or a spar. What would be  more frightening? To be noticed and netted? Or  accidentally crushed? She finds Jameel and  gets up the nerve to order a drink in what she  hopes is the voice of experience, impatient for  her first real taste of sin. Jameel tells her  to forget it and get to work.
  She looks about. Work ... No stage. No  footlights. Certainly no hushed turning of  heads at her approach to the piano. Where to begin?  Frances wishes for a fairy godmother to swathe her in  ostrich feathers; in breasts, hips, lips and  lipstick--a husky contralto which she imagines  to be Louise Brooks's voice. No such  luck. Five foot nothing, flat as two  bumps on an ironing board, hips like  chopsticks--at sixteen Frances is as grown as  she'll ever be. She stands before the piano since  there's no stool. It's missing a few teeth, the  rest are edged in decay, still others are intact but  silent. Its pocked and yellowed music rolls  date from a long-dead turn-of-the-century  parlor.
  Frances turns to the indifferent bass throng and  feels her knees turning to water. To stop herself  running away, she kicks up her heels in the  fake tap dance that earned her so many pennies on  the docks. No response. Not even a "boo"  --she is invisible. A tobacco-streaked wad of  mucus lands next to her shoe by chance. She gags  briefly, closes her eyes, clenches her  fists and wills herself into song, belting at the top  of her narrow lungs, ""Mademoiselle from  Armenti@eres, parlez-vous?
Mademoiselle from Armenti@eres,  parlez-vous? Mademoiselle from
  
Armenti@eres, she hasn't been fucked  in forty years, inky dinky pa-arlez  vou-ous."" To no avail. What is shocking  in the schoolyard passes unnoticed at the  speak.
  She goes through her repertoire but it's no  use. Who wants to look at a skinny Girl  Guide doing a solo second-hand foxtrot  picked up from the movie screen, never mind listen  to her spindly kewpie-doll voice? Jameel  doesn't. He wants her out on her ear. He  grabs her neckerchief, she writhes free and, in  a desperate last-ditch sally, lands on someone's  knee and steals his drink--"Hey!"--she downs the  shot, gasps in shock, then quips in  moving-picture parlance, ""Oh gee baby,  how did the angels ever let you leave heaven?"'"  She weaves out of reach between slim hips and broad  shoulders, steals another from a man with three  jacks--"What do you think you're doin?"--and  knocks it back, promising, ""I've got  what ain't in books,"" coughing, sputtering,  blowing a kiss. Jameel follows with a bottle,  calming the waters, signaling to Boutros "Get  rid of her." When Frances has downed her third  drink in quick succession from a ""great big  good-lookin some-account man,"" and is convinced that  her esophagus and chest have been burned away,  her feet suddenly sprout wings, they become  hap-hap-happy, she cranks the  player-piano. The mechanical thumping of a  hobnail army renders "Coming thru' the Rye" and  Frances wriggles out of her uniform and down to her  skivvies via the highland fling cum cancan.  They start watching.

  On Monday, Frances skips school and  heads for Satchel-Ass Chism's barber shop.  She shows him a picture of Louise Brooks.  He shakes his head.
  "I don't know how to cut ladies' hair--"  "I'm not a lady."
  "Listen, dear--"
  She grabs his scissors, lops off one of  her braids and says, "Now fix it."
  "Lord love ya, girl!"
  The other men glanced up from Chinese checkers  at her entrance; they raised an eyebrow when she  plopped down in the barber's chair, and now they  grin at her. "That's the stuff."
  
  Satchel-Ass shakes his head and  does his best. "I don't know why you don't go  into Sydney to a proper beauty parlor."
  The checker players chuckle and lisp and call  him "Pierre."
  "I don't got time to be gallivanting off  to Sydney," says Frances, savoring her new  gun-moll grammar, "I got things to do."
  Twenty minutes later she emerges onto  Plummer Avenue, her head a bobbing mess of  rusty bedsprings. Canada just got another  sweetheart.
  She swings into MacIsaac's Drugs and  Confectionery. "Hello, Mr. MacIsaac,  may I please have a packet of pins?"
  "I like your haircut, Frances, it's right  jazzy."
  When he turns, she swipes a pack of  Turkish tailor-made smokes. He hands her  the pins along with a lemon drop and asks her,  "What are your plans when you graduate next  year, lass?"
  "Why, I think I'll go in for teaching, Mr.  MacIsaac. I believe it is most  important that children get a good start in life, and  that's what a good teacher can give them."
  "You're smart, you girls. You've a gift,  each and every one of you."
  She pops the lemon drop into her mouth and  leaves the pins on the counter.
  She enters the schoolyard throng at morning  recess. Frances has decided that today is her  last day of school. If she isn't expelled  after what she plans to do, then there's no justice.  She lights a cigarette and looks around for the  means to her end. Inside, Mercedes is washing a  blackboard. She looks out the window to see her  sister smoking right out in the open. And what on earth  has Frances got on her head? A strange little  cap ... of hair. Good Lord. By the time  Mercedes gets outside, Frances has taken  off somewhere with Puss-Eye Murphy. What can  she possibly want with poor sweet  Puss-Eye?
  Actually, "Puss-Eye" mutated into  "Pious-Eye" some time ago, until now most people  call him "Pius" or "Father Pie," so certain  is everyone, including himself, of his priestly  vocation. So Mercedes stands on the school porch,  beating shammies against the stone steps, unable
  
to shake an uneasy feeling, even though  she knows that any girl would be perfectly safe with  Cornelius "Father Pie" Murphy.
  When the bell rings to signal the end of  recess, Puss-Eye staggers from one of the  derelict outhouses on the edge of the playground and  runs sobbing through games of shinny, skipping  ropes and hopscotch, across the street into the  ballpark, all the way home. Why is he  holding his crotch? Mercedes scans the sea of  pupils for Frances and spots her strolling away  from the outhouses. What in heaven's name has  happened? Students pour up the steps and past  Mercedes, speculating as to the nature of  Frances Piper's latest crime--"Kicked him  in the nuts." "Put a snake down his  combinations." Mercedes watches till Frances is  out of sight, then she takes a deep breath,  collects her brushes and shammies and returns  to class, hoping for the best.
  That afternoon James receives a note from Sister  Saint Eustace. Frances has been expelled.

  Midway through supper, Frances arrives home  and joins her family at the kitchen table.  "Mmmm, boiled mush with mush."
  Lily is amazed at the sight of Frances's  shorn head but, before she can comment, James  excuses her and Mercedes from the table. They set  down their knives and forks and leave without a word.  James stands and raises his hand. Frances  doesn't wince. She doesn't even look up,  none of her involuntary muscles contract in  expectation. She just reaches for Lily's fork and  starts eating. James lets his hand drop to his  side. He says, suddenly tired, "Don't  bring it home." She just chews. He carefully  moves the plate out of her reach. "Do you hear  me, Frances?"
  She looks up, affecting good-natured  distraction. "What's that?"
  "If you're going to live here ... whatever you  get up to ... keep it away from Lily."
  Frances reaches for the plate and says,  "Don't worry, Daddy."
  He feels more than tired as he looks at  her. The insolent face, the freshly hacked  curls. Lost. And gone forever. What happened  to her? My little Frances. James sighs. He    can't think about all that right now. There's too much of
  
it. It's too dark in there, and he  doesn't have the energy. He watches her, elbows  on the table, humming as she chews. Then he  leaves without having laid a hand on her. She's  as beat as she'll ever be.

  Frances told Puss-Eye she needed his  advice about a terrible sin someone had confessed  to her. Once inside the darkness of the boonie with  its antique reek, Frances knocked him down  and, with a fi/l of his hair and her knee gouging his  breastbone, she jammed her other hand down his  pants. She grabbed and jerked while he cried.  The harder he got the harder he cried, he  couldn't help either one and it didn't take long,  he was only fifteen.
  Frances wiped her hand on the floor and left.  Mission accomplished. It's not like I hurt him  or anything.
  Puss-Eye's mother knew at the sight of him  when he arrived home, he didn't have to say much  except to name his attacker. His father was dead,  lucky for Frances, and Petal was far away.  Widow Murphy went to the school and told  Sister Saint Eustace, in as few words as  possible.
  If there was any lingering faith on anyone's part  that deep down Frances was good, it has been  obliterated.

  The next morning, Mercedes arrives at  school early as usual and has just enough time before the  bell to fill a bucket with soapy water and wash  away the cinder scrawl on the side wall,  "FRANCES PIPER BURN IN HELL."

              Cheap Women
            'n Cheatin' Men

Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon,    all I want is having you and music, music,
  music.
I'd do anything for you, anything you'd want me to  ...,  all I want is loving you and music, music,
  music.

  Now that there's entertainment, men start bringing the  occasional date to the speak. Jameel sets up  a couple of tables. Puts on an apron. The
  
women watch the show with varying degrees of  disbelief, scorn or fascination while their men  affect indifference. Frances has gutted the  player piano of its music rolls and she  hammers away at the keys, at first playing  Mumma's old vaudeville music from the hope  chest, and then by ear from the records that sailors  bring her up from New York City.
  Frances is a bizarre delta diva one  night, warbling in her thin soprano, "Moonshine  Blues" and "Shave 'em Dry." Declaring, an  octave above the norm, ""I can strut my  pudding, spread my grease with ease, 'cause I  know my onions, that's why I always please.""  The following Saturday will see her stripped from the  waist up, wearing James's old horsehair  war sporran as a wig, singing, "I'm Just  Wild about Harry" in pidgin Arabic. She  turns the freckle on her nose to an  exclamation mark with a stroke of eyeliner, rouges  her cheeks, paints on a cupid's-bow mouth and  dances naked behind a homemade fan of seagull  feathers, ""I wish I could shimmy like my  sister, Kate.""
  She invests her early profits in face paint  and costumery. She'll start out as Valentino in a  striped robe and turban. While one hand teases  the piano keys, she removes the robe to reveal  Mata Hari in a haze of purple and red. The  seven veils come off one by one to "Scotland the  Brave" and, just in case anyone's in danger of  getting more horny than amused, there's always a  surprise to wilt the wicked and stimulate the  unsuspecting. For example, she may strip  down to a diaper, then stick her thumb in her  mouth. ""Yes my heart belongs to Daddy, so  I simply couldn't be ba-ad. ...""
  Her act is fueled by "jazzoline," for at  first Frances takes most of her pay in liquid  form, till she gets wise. Drink is just a  means to an end: it inspires her one-woman  follies, and it makes her untouchable when she  takes the men outside one by one. Because the real  money is not in the speak. It's out back.
  Frances is a sealed letter. It doesn't  matter where she's been or who's pawed her, no  one gets to handle the contents no matter how  grimy the envelope. And it's for sure no one's  going to be able to steam her open. Frances will bounce  in your lap with your fly buttoned for as long as it
  
takes for two bucks. Expensive, but  consider the overhead in wardrobe alone. A hand  job costs two-fifty--she has a special  glove she wears, left over from her first  communion. Another fifty cents buys you  patter, a song, any name you want to hear. Touch  her little chest and cough up an extra buck; nothing  below her belt. That's the menu, no substitutions.  If she laughs at you don't whack her or  she'll holler for Boutros.
  Frances starts to make money. Once she has  acquired enough trinkets and trash to keep her  gussied, she starts saving her money in a  secret place. It's for Lily. Not for a  "cure"--Frances does not subscribe  to Mercedes' devout yearnings. In fact,  Frances is unsure why she is sure the money  is for Lily. She is putting it away "just in  case." In case what? In case.
  Frances remains a technical virgin throughout.  What is she saving herself for? She can't say.  It's a feeling. There is something left for her  to do. "For Lily." What, Frances? Something.
  Every night, when the last drunks are being peeled  off the floor and deposited outside, Frances  passes through the tired curtains to the back room  and changes. One night, early in her career, she  tiptoed up the back stairs and discovered her  Aunt Camille sitting in a kitchen, playing  solitaire under a dim yellow bulb. Again  Frances was struck sad by the sullen heap so like and  unlike Mumma. Camille was too absorbed  in her cards to notice Frances peering around the  doorjamb. Frances watched Camille sip her  tea and cheat.
  Frances can't help but wonder how Camille  wound up here, married to Jameel. But then, look  where Mumma ended up. Maybe Camille  eloped too. Frances's reflections on the  subject of romance are summed up by the last  scene of Pandora's Box: when Louise
Brooks finally gives it away to a fella for  free, he ups and kills her.
  Frances has no desire to penetrate any  further the shabby mystery of Aunt Camille, so  she hasn't repeated her foray into the upper  domestic reaches of the speak. Come closing time she  removes her costume among the crates and kegs  of the chilly back room and washes her face and  hands at the pump. She never washes the
  
costumes. She climbs into her beige  woolen stockings, her black button boots,  Girl Guide uniform and beret, and heads back  to New Waterford.
  Lily is always faithfully at the window,  ready with the sheet, even though Daddy never gets  home before Frances on weekends anymore.  James doesn't want to be there when Frances  "sneaks" in or out. He doesn't want to know  where she goes. In the mornings he glances into her  room, half expecting to find her gone. Run  off with a man, perhaps. Perhaps dead in a ditch.
  "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your  hair!" rasps Frances, and Lily lowers the  knotted bedsheet. Frances is usually fairly  sober by the time she climbs in the window, unless she  has nicked a jar for the road.
  "Want a sip, Lily?"
  "No thank you."
  "C'm'ere, dollface." Lily steps onto  Frances's feet and they spin about while Frances  sings, ""Let's dance, though you've only a  small room, make it your ballroom, let's  dance"--"
  Mercedes stands in the darkened doorway,  spectral in her white nightgown.
  "Join me in a nightcap, toots?"  "Frances, you're drunk."
  Frances rattles, "The-sheet-is-slit-who-  slit-the-sheet-whoever-slit-the-sheet-is-a-good-  sheet-slitter. Say it fast, Lily."
  "Frances, it's time to go to bed." Mercedes  tries to sound calm and bossy at the same time.
  "Piss on you, sister." Frances laughs.  Occasionally, if she's feeling up to it and  Frances is sufficiently intoxicated,  Mercedes will seize her round the waist, carry her  to the waiting tub and bathe her forcibly, uniform and  all. Otherwise Frances would not be fit to live  with, for she only ever washes her face and hands.  And she never washes her uniform. Mercedes  rifles the Guide pouch in search of soiled  hankies but finds only a dirty white  glove.
  "Where's your other glove, Frances?"  "I only use one."
  "Oh. Well, it may as well be clean."  Mercedes wrings it under the hot water, asking,  "Isn't it rather small for you now?"
  "It does the trick."
  
  Mercedes does not inquire further.
  On relatively sober evenings, Frances  curls up next to Lily and whispers whiskey in  her ear: "Lily. We are the dead"--Lily  pretends to be asleep--"except we don't  know it. We think we're alive, but we're not.  We all died the same time as Kathleen and  we've been haunting the house ever since."  Lily prays for everyone, in case Frances is  right.
  On quite sober evenings, Lily confides her  fears.
  "Frances, do I have to go to Lourdes?"  "No. You don't have to do anything you don't  want to do."
  Lily tucks her little foot between Frances's  ankles.
  "Frances. Al akbar inshallah?"
  "In fallah inti itsy-bitsy spider."  "Ya koosa gingerbread boy kibbeh?"
  "Shalom bi' salami."
  "Aladdin bi' sesame."
  "Bezella ya aini Beirut."  "Te'berini."
  "Te'berini."
  "Tipperary."
  Every night, pissed or stone sober, Frances  puts her money in the secret place for Lily.

            Lady Bountiful

  Mercedes graduates top of the class of  1930. Ralph Luvovitz is second.  Mercedes gives the valedictory address, in  which she urges her fellow young citizens to learn from  the mistakes of the past, to seize the numerous  challenges of the present and to put their trust in  God and His only begotten Son, Our Lord  Jesus Christ, amen.
  James sits near the back of the auditorium  with Lily and the Luvovitzes. It's inadvisable  for Frances to be seen near the school premises,  so she is absent this evening, although earlier in the day  Mercedes entered her bedroom to find a new boxed  set of Morocco-bound The Complete  Charlotte Bront`e on her dresser. Oh,  Frances! The expense. The dubious source of the  requisite funds. The generosity. Mercedes  cried and hugged Frances and told her she loved  her. Frances told Mercedes not to leak all over
  
her uniform.
  After the commencement ceremonies, Mercedes,  Lily and James repair to the Luvovitz  house for tea. Lily wonders again, but does not  ask, why all the mirrors are always covered in  Mrs. Luv's house. Mercedes and Ralph  play happy-sad klezmer music on piano and  clarinet while Mr. Luvovitz sings and dances  to the delighted embarrassment of Mrs.  Luvovitz.
  As Mercedes' and Ralph's heads incline  closer over the old Yiddish songbook, Mr. and  Mrs. L exchange complicated looks across the  parlor. James doesn't notice--he  simply enjoys the music, unaccustomedly  relaxed. A civilized evening with old friends.  We should do this more often. He savors a feeling of  normalcy for the first time in years. In the increasing  absence of Frances, it has become possible for  James, now and then, to feel like a good man.
  "Have another ruggalech, James."  "Thank you, Ben, don't mind if I do.  They're delicious, missus."
  Ralph escorts them home and lingers on the  veranda with Mercedes. He tells her he is going  away. Not for good. They can write.
  "Promise me you'll write, Mercedes."  "Of course I will, Ralph."
  His parents have scrimped and saved to send him  to McGill University in Montreal.
  "I thought you were going to Saint F.x."  Mercedes keeps her voice steady. Saint  Francis Xavier University is only a day  away by train. It's where she plans to go. When  her family can spare her. But Montreal ...
  "It's a great opportunity."
  "Of course it is, Ralph."
  He's leaving next week, it's all very  sudden. He's going to live with the Weintraubs,  friends of his mother's relatives who recently  emigrated from Munich. They've lined up a job  for him in a bakery. Ralph is going to be a  doctor. He is a scrupulous boy and so  does not make any rash proposals of which he  is as yet unworthy. He will wait until he  has finished his undergraduate degree, then he will  ask Mercedes to be his wife.
  "Mercedes ..."
  "Yes, Ralph?"
  Mercedes' heart beats so rapidly that she
  
fears it has set the ruffles of her  yellow silk blouse aflutter. Ralph leans  abruptly down and brushes her lips with his own.  Then he is away, leaving Mercedes breathless.
  Upstairs, she cools her cheek against the  scarlet leather of her brand-new edition of  Jane Eyre.

  Mercedes and Ralph exchange fervid newsy  letters all that summer and through the fall. Their  correspondence gives Mercedes strength  to endure; to postpone the beginning of her life. She  has turned down her scholarship to Saint  Francis Xavier University, for how can she  think of leaving home when Lily is still a child?  Mercedes is so accustomed to doing everything for  Daddy's sake that it seems natural to assign  this sacrifice to him as well. But deep down  another purpose has been emerging: Frances  needs looking after. More than Daddy. More than  Lily. What if I were far away at school in  Antigonish and Frances didn't come home one  night?
  In the meantime, Mercedes is not at a loss for  worthwhile work. She has her project:
Lily. There have not been any more overt "signs"  since the night of Lily's illness last  November. Mercedes does not include--indeed  tries not to notice--the reddish highlights that have  since appeared in Lily's hair. And she  reminds herself that miracles alone are not  sufficient to indicate that special closeness  to God which is sainthood; the Life too will be  taken into account. To this end, she redoubles her  charitable efforts with Lily in tow.
  The abundance of free time on Mercedes' hands  now that she is no longer at school dwindles to a  pittance once she has scheduled the needs of her  community. She learns a valuable lesson: if  you think you are good, just try doing good. You'll  soon find out how inadequate your little drop of  goodness is. Especially in a mining town.  Especially in the Depression.
  Mercedes bends with grim determination to her  mission--if it were enjoyable to immerse oneself in the  malodorous misery of the less fortunate, it could  not be counted a sacrifice. Offer it up for the  poor souls in purgatory. And remember, time  is of the essence: saints who are revealed in  childhood rarely live to adulthood.
  
Lily's life has already been painful  and Mercedes expects it to be short. She  prays. Lily need only survive  to celebrate her fourteenth birthday. In the  Lourdes tin there is almost thirty dollars.
  Mercedes has observed Lily's particular  gift with the veterans. On the top floor of the  pleasant west wing of New Waterford General  Hospital, there live a handful of men whose  injuries and lack of family have rendered them  permanent residents. Some have no arms or  legs. Three were gassed--they are perfectly  fine and whole other than their lungs. They sit  quietly near the window wearing their oxygen masks  till the sun goes down and it's time to lie  perfectly still in their oxygen tents. Their eyes have  enlarged and the lines have dropped away from around their  mouths behind the masks. They look like big children--  maybe that's why they like to see Lily coming. They  are child grown-ups and she is a grown-up child.
  Lily doesn't flinch when she meets the man  with no face, just a blank stretch of baby skin  with nose holes and a lipless mouth that doesn't quite  close. He doesn't mask his missing face  because he never goes out and everyone on the ward is  used to him; what's more, he can't frighten himself, he  has no eyes. His great pleasure is a  cigarette and, now, touching Lily's face. He    has found the bump in her forehead and it amuses  him. He swears he was uglier before and shows  Lily a picture to prove it. Lily agrees  that he was putrid-looking and he laughs.  Mercedes notes this as worthy of inclusion in The  Life of Saint Lily, for Mercedes has never  known this man to do more than grunt an obscenity,  much less laugh.
  Lily is not repelled by the veterans. She  feels badly for them, they've been terribly  hurt, but pity is a poison unction. Lily  has experienced pity but she didn't know what  to call it, she only knew it made her  terribly afraid. As if she had disappeared and  become a ghost. Having experienced her own  disappearance, she is conscious of how important  it is for people to be seen, so when she looks at them  --even the blind one--she also looks for them, just in  case they too have got lost and need finding.
  They play gin rummy until she learns  poker. The gas men are the only ones who never  laugh, though they enjoy themselves.
  
  On the way home, when Mercedes  quizzes her, Lily always feels she has  somehow let her sister down when she answers  truthfully, "I had fun."
  Every evening, when the day's ministrations are done,  Mercedes indulges herself with a gloriously blank  sheet of paper: "Dear Ralph ..."
  There are things Lily could tell Mercedes that  would have quite another effect, but it never occurs to her  to do so: For example, Mr. MacIsaac has  stopped drinking. He tells Lily she has  healed him. He tells her she has "the gift."  It happened one day when Lily asked to see where  he grew the medicine. Mr. MacIsaac took  her back to his greenhouse.
  Mr. MacIsaac is also a veteran, though  of the Boer War. It too was a bad war. He  has said there's no such thing as a good one. He and  Lily both limp on the same side and he  likes to tell her they'd run one heck of a  three-legged race together. He tells her how like  she is to her beautiful sister Kathleen, "God  rest her soul." Especially now that the red is coming  out in her hair. "Fairy hair" Mr.
MacIsaac calls it, a twinkle in his kind  bleary eye. "Don't worry, lass, that's a  good thing."
  They went through a canvas door into the  greenhouse. The air was mysterious to breathe, damp  like an underground lake. There were plants in boxes  everywhere, each with a special power but none, it  seemed, that could cure him.
  But the miraculous thing was overhead. Lily  looked up at the glass roof. The sun came out  from behind a cloud and filtered through the tiny panes.  Before her eyes a host took shape. Shadows of  green and gray, a ghostly army in uniform,  smiling down at her. Forever young.
  Glass photographic plates. Mr.
MacIsaac collected them--so many were discarded  after the war, there being no demand for additional prints  of such photos once their subjects had been  killed.
  "They're my children," he said. "We were never  blessed with our own, so I think about all the people who  lost theirs and how maybe I'd have lost mine too  anyhow, things being what they were."
  Mrs. MacIsaac had died early that year and  people expected Mister to follow soon at the rate  he was going, constantly quietly soused.
  
  Lily said, "I'll be your child."
  He laughed his wheezy laugh, then covered up  his face. He reached for her hand and placed it on  his bald head. After a while he gave her back  her hand and looked up again. He asked her to do  something for him.
  "Whenever you pass by my door, say a Hail  Mary for me. Will you do that?"
  Lily promised she would, and she did. Still  does. She didn't tell anyone because it seemed  private. Soon people were saying it was a miracle  that Mr. MacIsaac had quit the bottle.  Even though there was barely a soul in town who  didn't owe him money, there was no one who wouldn't  rather see him spry behind his counter.
  MacIsaac would live long enough to extend  credit right through the Great Depression, and die a  rich man on paper.
  Lily did not feel disloyal to Daddy when she  told Mr. MacIsaac she would be his child.  Frances would say, "That's because Daddy's not your  real father." But Lily knows he is. Just as she  knows that it is possible to love everyone the most.  Even if she can't help loving Frances most of  all.

             The Ginger Man

  Jameel has been charging admission on show  nights. He makes Boutros wear a fez.  He has replaced the faded curtain with a beaded  one. There are ashtrays. There are glasses.  He ups the price of poison. He's still paying  Frances a nickel a night. In September  he has the nerve to demand a cut of her earnings from  her private customers. What he gets is a  new deal.
  "Look, buddy, I've turned this dump into a  cultural Mecca, so don't you be talking to me  about cutting you in, you're cutting me in, pal,  I'm in for fifty percent of the door or I  walk and talk."
  "Fuck you."
  "Sixty."
  "Forty."
  "Auryvoir."
  He grabs her arm. "Forty-five."  "Kiss my arse."
  "Fifty."
  "Gimme a light."
  
  He lights her cigarette. "All  right. You're in now, so if you foul up I'll  cut your throat just like I would a man's."
  "Get me a decent piano in here."
  Boutros neither confirms nor denies  Jameel's threat, he just counts out half the  evening's admissions and hands it over to Frances.
  "Hey Boutros," she says. "I didn't  know you could count, b'y." She winks at him and  heads for the back room to change out of her diaper  and merry widow.
  In a place like this it's best to get a man's  status--the threat of throat-cutting and only  throat-cutting simplifies a woman's  survival. Frances trades in her coins and  two-dollar bills for larger notes at the bank  in order to fit it all into her hiding place.
  When the sweetheart of Whitney Pier turns  seventeen there's a cake and presents and everything.  The clientele, which has grown more checkered along  with Frances's reputation, sings "Happy  Birthday." A woman whom Frances calls
"The Countess" because she looks like the lesbian in  Pandora's Box gives her a one-way  ticket to Boston. The Countess has got a  big education and some kind of setup down there--  she's described it to Frances a thousand times but  Frances, though she keeps her eyeballs pointing  in the same direction no matter how much she's  had to drink, still can't get it straight whether this  woman runs a nightclub or a home for  wayward girls. "My intentions are entirely  honorable, Fanny," says The Countess, at  which Frances yawns in her face and winks. A  stoker named Henry gives Frances the latest  Bessie Smith, "Black Mountain Blues."
She gives him a big sloppy kiss, then  holds her hand out for a quarter, and everyone laughs.  Archie "White-Socks" MacGillicuddy,  who everybody knows is a sissy-boy, comes  wearing his thing outside his pants gaily  gift-wrapped with a bow and a tag, "For Frances."  Frances tells Boutros to open it for her, "Go  on, Buttress, good things come in small  packages." Boutros declines. Leo
Taylor shows up at the front door in time  to see Jameel parading through the crowd bearing a  pint-size painted whore with a parasol on his  shoulders. Taylor yells over the din, "Mr.  Jameel, I got what you ordered."
  
  Jameel sets Frances down and  numerous hands cover her eyes before she can turn  around, "Who toined out the lights?!" Boutros  leaves with Taylor. After a few moments they  return, veins bulging in their necks, inching a  good-as-new upright piano through the door.
  Taylor delivers the booze on weekday  afternoons so he has never seen the place in action,    which has been just fine by him. He dislikes  drunks, and prostitutes dismay him--they are  all someone's daughter. This one is small enough  to be a child but surely that's impossible--he is just  as glad that her face is obscured by someone's  hands. There's no missing the oversize red  ringlets of her wig, however, or her hands spinning  the parasol--lily white to the wrists, where two  sleeves of grime begin. Grime that has  accumulated through contact with nothing but time. And he  can't avoid her scent as he sets down his end  of the piano before her. She smells like a  neglected baby, that sad sour-milk pee-stain  smell. Taylor leaves and comes back with a  piano stool, but she's already seated with her back  to him, demurely rendering "Let Me Call You  Sweetheart." It disturbs him: such a  little-girl voice.
  Frances doesn't miss a sweet beat as  Boutros gets up off his hands and knees and is  replaced by the stool.
  Leo Taylor leaves feeling a bit sick.
The steel door closes behind him and he hears the  piano become a pie-anny as schmaltz  transmogrifies to boogie. He steps up  into his truck and starts the engine. He would like to go  home and kiss his wife and kids again for the road but  there's no time. Along with liquor, he's hauling  live lobsters to New York City for all the  fine old families and newly minted gangsters  who can afford them.
  He points his truck south on Highway 4  and conjures his wife's voice and image to keep  him company. He calls up every precious  detail: rusty wire hair, dark brown  freckles across her light brown face,  sharpshooter eyes. Lean and mean, it makes him  chuckle. They commune all the way to the Strait  of Canso, till he's off the island and he  figures he ought to let her get some sleep.  "Good night, Addy," he says, smiling at how  she'd raz him for his sappiness if she could see
  
him chatting to her out loud in his truck as  it rolls onto the ferryboat. He sees her  wry smile as she reaches up to kiss him, "Good  night, Ginger," she says. "Drive safe,  baby."
  Leo Taylor is not called Ginger because he  is a light black man. He is dark like his  sister, Teresa. He is called Ginger because he  brews real ginger beer from a West Indian  recipe passed to him by his mother, Clarisse.  Clarisse used to sell it but Ginger can afford  to give it away as a treat. He has the strong  arms and soft belly of a happy man. He often  counts his blessings, wondering how he got so lucky  in life. A good job, healthy beautiful children and a  tough wife.

  That night, Frances crawls into bed next  to Lily as usual but before long awakens from another  nightmare. There are dreams Frances is used  to by now, like the one where she gives her own  amputated leg to Lily but it's the wrong size.  There are dreams she'll never get used to, where  she puts Lily in the oven by mistake and cooks  her but Mumma doesn't seem to notice that the  roast is Lily and neither does anyone else at  the table. But tonight Frances awakens with her throat  constricted in a silent scream--Mumma in the  garden on the scarecrow stick, wearing the old  fedora and one of her baggy flowered dresses all    crusty down the front, and she's holding the  steak-and-kidney-pie scissors with a bit of pink  gristle hanging off. But the worst part is she  has no face. Mumma!--
  Frances is determined not to watch to the end of this  silent picture, in case it becomes a  talkie. She needs to sleep in a place of no  dreams. A place both empty and utterly  silent. The attic, being in a state of permanent  shock, is both.
  Trixie follows as Frances drags a  blanket and a pile of cushions across the hall  to the door of the attic stairs. She opens the  door, but both she and Trixie hesitate. The  problem is that, although the attic is not haunted, the  stairs leading up to it are.
  Frances stands barefoot at the bottom looking  up into the narrow passage. She feels a  tightness at her scalp as though she still had  braids. In the darkness, her body distends and
  
contracts wildly as though she were an  elastic band--suddenly ten feet long and curved,  then very small like a young child. "I forgot to put my  housecoat on"--Frances sees her green  tartan housecoat in her mind, "but that's silly  because I haven't had that housecoat since  Mercedes and I were little and everything matched."  Frances is on the first step. A wet chill down  her spine restores her body to its normal  size and she is seized with fear because she can hear  voices. Just below the water, they are still fish  voices but they are bubbling to the surface, in a  moment she will understand what they are saying. Frances  starts babbling quietly with her hands over her ears  and forces herself onto the second step. Damp  shadows slipper by, Kathleen is up there. No  she isn't, that's just the kittens, stop--they have  to be baptized--don't--"who's the killer?!"  --don't--"you're the Devil!"--don't,  don't, don't, don't, all the way up the  stairs till she gets to the top and opens the  door.
  Arriving in the attic is like arriving in the  desert after almost drowning. She closes the door  behind her. Trixie leaps silently onto the  window ledge. Frances lies on the floor. She  closes her eyes and sleeps deeply and  blankly, no longer any need to fear death  by dreaming.
  Frances awakens the next day more sober than  she's been in almost a year. She finds a train  ticket to Boston in her Guide pouch but  doesn't remember how it got there. She goes  to the station in Sydney and scalps it for cash. She  has no intention of leaving the island until she  has made enough money for Lily. And accomplished  something else too. What, Frances? Something.  She will know it when she sees it. She is a commando  in training for a mission so secret that even she  does not know what it is. But she is ready. Every  night the obstacle course. Maneuvering behind the  lines. Camouflaged to blend with the terrain.

Your voice is sad whene'er you speak ...

  The night before the war ends, Kathleen unties  an emerald sash from around the waist of her  scandalous new dress of pale green silk  chiffon, and winds it round and round the brim of her  lover's charcoal fedora. She runs her hands
  
up the diamond-studded shirt front and  slips her thigh between the stripes of the wide  black-and-tan pant legs.
  There are mixed clubs they can go to uptown. And  there is a private place in Central Park.  They have to be careful, but it's hard. They are so  young, they forget that the world is not as in love with them  as they are.

And tears bedim your loving eyes. ...

               Book 6
          THE GIRL GUIDE

             Don't Whine

  By May 1931, Mercedes is downright  worried. She hasn't heard from Ralph in  eight weeks. She won't ask Mrs.  Luvovitz about him because it is unladylike for a  girl to seem to be pursuing a boy, and Mercedes  doesn't want to appear "fast"--especially in  the eyes of her future mother-in-law. And besides,  if Ralph were in trouble his parents would know, and they  appear to be quite unperturbed. Nonetheless,  Mercedes drops into Luvovitz's Kosher  Canadian several times a week, the darnedest  items having slipped her mind--"Oh, Mrs.  Luvovitz, would you believe I forgot to pick  up a pound of blood pudding for Daddy."
  One Thursday afternoon, Mercedes returns  to Luvovitz's to buy a box of salt she forgot  that morning. As Mrs. Luvovitz rings up the  purchase she smiles a little oddly at Mercedes  and inquires, "Well now. And how's your father,  dear?"
  
  "Oh he's well, Mrs.
Luvovitz, thank you."
  The two of them nod and smile at each other  yet neither makes a move to leave. Mercedes  asks, "And how's Mr. Luvovitz?"
  "Oh you know Mister, he's grand, dear, just  grand."
  Mercedes chuckles and nods.
  Mrs. Luvovitz asks, "How are your  sisters?"
  "Lily is grand, thank you, and Frances  seems--well, I worry a little about Frances,  she's ... still finding herself, you know ..."
  "We all worry, dear, but she's a--deep  down, you know, she's fine."
  "Thank you, yes."
  Mrs. Luvovitz reaches for a tin of  Ovaltine and hands it to Mercedes. "Have you ever  tried this? This we get from England."
  "Oh, really? No, I never have."  "Here, try it, you'll like it."
  "Oh"--Mercedes reddens and reaches for her  purse, unsure as to--but Mrs. Luvovitz  places a hand on hers and, in the familiar  scolding voice that puts Mercedes back at  ease, "Ay-yay-yay, what do you think you're  doing, put your money away now."
  Mercedes says, "Thank you very much, Mrs.  Luvovitz, that's awfully nice of you," and  feels foolish, aware she must be thanking Mrs.  Luvovitz rather too profusely because Mrs.  Luv's smile has turned a bit pink. In  fact Mercedes has never before seen such a  sustained smile on the dear lady's face.  Mercedes smiles back, longing to ask, "Have you  heard from Ralph?" Instead she thanks Mrs.  Luvovitz once again and turns to leave, but  Mrs. Luvovitz pipes up, "Have you heard from  Ralph?"
  Mercedes turns back. Now she is truly  worried. "No I haven't, oh dear--"
  "He's fine, he's fine, our friends write  he's fine, he's perfect, it's just--"
  "Oh, well, that is good news--"  "We haven't had a letter from him and I  wondered--"
  "Oh dear." They look at one another a  moment, then Mercedes shakes her head. "I'm  afraid I haven't had one in quite some time either."
  Mercedes is both bewildered and embarrassed
  
by what follows. Mrs. Luvovitz  squeezes Mercedes' hands between her own and says,  with her chin wrinkled in a smile against tears,  "You're a good girl, Mercedes, a wonderful  girl."
  "Thank you, Mrs. Luvovitz." Mercedes  drops the Ovaltine into her net bag and almost  forgets the salt, adding, "I'll let you know as  soon as I've heard from Ralph."
  But Mrs. Luvovitz has turned back to the  shelves and is carefully straightening a box of  steel wool.

  Three weeks later, the longed-for letter  arrives. Mercedes carries it up to her room,  taking the stairs an unaccustomed two at a time.  She flings herself onto her bed, kissing the  envelope before her head hits the pillow, and  spends a moment lying on her side just caressing the  seal. Dear Ralph. His features have smoothed  and his voice has deepened in her mind over these  past many months. She sighs, catches sight of  her red cheeks in her dresser mirror and commands,  "Don't be such a silly chit, Mrs. Ralph  Luvovitz"--which makes her giggle and she hugs  her pillow and buries her face in it at the  same time. Finally she composes herself enough to open the  letter. "Dear Mercedes"--dear Ralph--"I  feel conceited even writing this to you because you are such  a swell girl and could have any fellow in the world  instead of settling for me anyhow, but I feel I  had better say it because maybe you'll think I'm  a coward if I don't. Here goes. I am  terribly sorry if I ever led you to expect  ..."
  When Mercedes can get up, she crosses to her  dresser and removes Ralph's picture from the  frame to reveal the poem with which she replaced  Valentino's picture almost five years ago.  She returns to her bed and sits perfectly still,  willing all her leaping blood back to low tide  until, even if she tried, she could not so much as  make a fist. Little by little her temperature  drops as she stares at the words of wisdom in the  frame, erasing Ralph.
  By evening she is perfectly calm. Lucid,  in fact, for the first time since she conceived her little  crush on the grocer's son. A Hebrew.  Heavens. Meanwhile there are those who need me  whom I have neglected.
  
  Mercedes walks downstairs with her  head perfectly balanced on her neck, one hand  lightly gracing the balustrade. Tonight Frances will  get a bath, no two ways about it. Mercedes  enters the kitchen, goes directly to the Lourdes  tin and counts the money. Hmm. We'll have to do  better than that, now won't we? She lights a  burner on the stove and dispatches the crumpled  photograph of the boy with sticking-out ears. She  cooks a large supper for Daddy. It pains her  to realize how she has neglected her culinary  duties of late. And Daddy is so kind about it,  saying only, "I'll pick up some cold cuts  on the way home, Mercedes, don't you go to any  trouble." Mercedes plans to keep the table  groaning from now on. Poor Daddy.
  Mercedes has told no one of the letter, so when  Mr. and Mrs. Luvovitz drive into Sydney  for the joyous reunion with their son early in June  they are unprepared to meet his wife.  Marie-Jos@ee is petite and plump in just the  right way. Dark and pretty. Catholic and  pregnant. This dire accident in no way  obscures the fact that she and Ralph are very much  in love.

            DON'T WHINE

Today I saw a lovely girl with golden hair,  envied her and wished I were so fair.  When she rose to go, she hobbled down the aisle.  She had one leg, wore a crutch and a smile.  Oh God forgive me when I whine
I have two legs, the world is mine.

Then I stopped to buy some sweets.
The lad who sold them had such charm.
I talked with him--my being late was no harm.  As I left he said to me, "You've been so
  kind.
You see," he said, "I am blind."
Oh God forgive me when I whine
I have two eyes, the world is mine.

Later, I saw a child with eyes of blue.  Watching others play, not knowing what to do.  "Why don't you join the others, dear."  He stared ahead, he could not hear.
Oh God forgive me when I whine. ...  AUTHOR UNKNOWN

             Dark Ladies

  Frances is changing into her Guide uniform in  the freezing back room of the speak one March  night in 1932. Although she feels the cold more  than many people, she welcomes it because it makes her  outfits seem so fresh. Tonight she gets a bit  of a start: a flaccid female voice plops  against her like a jellyfish, "You're no good."
  Frances looks up. The darker patch of  gloom is unmistakably Camille.
  "Oh hi, Aunt Camille."
  "You're trash."
  Frances pulls on her ripe woolen  stockings. "We're all sisters under the mink,  honey."
  "Why don't you kill yourself."
  Frances bursts out laughing and leaves.  At first glance, in her Guide uniform, it's  hard to believe Frances is eighteen and not a child of  twelve. At second glance, it's hard  to believe Frances was ever a child. Camille  watches her go and wonders, what did my sister  ever do to deserve that? But then, what did I ever do  to deserve my life?
  When Mahmoud's eldest daughter Materia  ran off with the enklese bastard, Mahmoud gave  his second eldest daughter to Tommy Jameel,  thinking that his being Lebanese was enough. It was not  enough. Mahmoud knows that now; Jameel is no  son-in-law of his.
  Luckily there were three daughters left so he  was able to make up for the first two. They're all  happy. Two married nice Lebanese  Canadian boys from Sydney and the youngest married  a doctor--enklese, but a good one. And his  sons all married well: three got wives from  the Old Country, which is ideal. Three married  Canadian girls: one Lebanese, two  Acadian. One son is a priest, God is  great. That makes forty grandchildren so far,  twenty-four of whom are Mahmouds, and fifteen  of those are male. Mneshkor allah.
  Camille could have had her pick of husbands.  She really was the most beautiful in that many-sons  sort of way. She could have been Camille  Macationeil, Camille Shebib or Camille  Stubinski. Instead she is Camille  Jameel. She doesn't blame Pa--Pa she
  
reveres. And how could she blame  Materia, whom she idolized? So she hates  Frances, the slut who lives only to dishonor the  memory of poor Materia.
  Camille is a simple woman who wanted  a simple life. Instead she got a complicated  one. She giggled and batted her eyelashes and where  did it get her? Jameel's gin joint. Pa  gave Jameel a big dowry, God only knows  where that money went. Camille is not talented.  She would have been good at the things she was raised  to be good at. The world should not be organized  to require heroines, and when one is required but  fails to appear we should not judge. We should just  say, poor Camille, she turned into a bitch  the way most people would have--and stay out of her way.
  In her heart, though, there is still expectation.  A clearing in the woods. Not when she looks at  her five sons, who were absorbed by their father as  soon as they were big enough to carry a crate or run  with a message. Not when she looks at her  husband, who never even bothered to shave on their  wedding night--he examined himself and the bedsheet right  after to make sure he hadn't been cheated. No.  The clearing in her heart is where Camille  pauses like a deer, and waits for Pa to see her.
  The following night, the inky specter waits  once again in the back room. Frances actually  gets a bit nervous--Camille is the type of  woman who sits like a lump, then picks up an  ax one day.
  "Hi, Aunt Camille, what can I do for  ya?"
  "You're shit."
  "My, that's a lovely ensemble you're wearing."  "You're a disgrace to my father."
  "How's he doing, I keep meaning to drop  by."
  "You're not fit to set foot in my father's  house."
  Frances snaps shut her bulging Guide pouch  and leaves. Camille has just given her an  idea.

  The address is in the phone book. Frances  finds her way to a house on the hill. She  flits from hedge to tree. From shrub to side wall  --the coal chute is just big enough for a child. Once  she is inside her grandfather's house, there are quite a  number of secret vantage points. And plenty
  
to steal, one hardly knows where to begin.
  There's a grate on the inside wall of the  opulent front room. Frances's face can often  be seen there through wrought-iron vines, but no one ever  thinks to look. The closet beneath the stairs is  full of soft dark things. When its door stands  open a crack it is possible to discern a thin  white stripe interrupting the sliver of gloom.  That's Frances peeking out. Hands seeking furs and  shawls have brushed right past her curls, hardly  pausing to register them as just so much more mouton. And  if, one night, the occupant of the master bedroom  upstairs awoke and looked under the bed for no  reason, he might see her lying there with her arms  folded across her chest, staring up at the spot where  his heart sleeps. That is, if she is not peering  at him through the brass bars at the foot of the bed.
  Frances drinks in her grandfather's long lean  frame, his skin the tone and supple texture of  aged deer-hide. She can't see Mumma anywhere  but in the color of him, in the liquid ebony of the  eyes--though his are sharp--and the waviness of the  steel-gray hair. She is pierced with a sudden    longing for her grandmother and wonders how it is  possible to miss what you never had. She is  surprised to locate one family resemblance,  however: there is something of Mercedes in the angles  of Mahmoud's body, his carriage and immutable  spine. Frances concludes, not for the first time, that she  herself is a changeling.
  She always brings back a present for Lily.  A sterling silver tail comb with tortoiseshell  teeth. A moonstone ring. A braid.

  Lily strokes the dry black braid as though  it were a creature prone to sudden death by fright.
  "It was Mumma's," says Frances.
  "Can I keep it?"
  "It's yours."
  "Where did you get it?"
  "I found a trapdoor like in Arabian  Nights. It leads to an underground garden.  There's everything you can think of down there just growing on  the trees. Jewels, hair ... And babies that  haven't been born yet."
  Lily assumes this is Frances's way of  talking about the old French mine. She doesn't  like to think of Frances there alone, looking for  treasure. Robbing the dead. Lily begs  to accompany her but Frances says the Arabian
  
garden is a "solo mission." When  Frances brings Lily back a single pearl,  however, Lily starts to worry because it means that  Frances has been diving. She is afraid  Frances might decide to drown in the pool at the  old French mine. Lily knows how tempting it can  be to breathe water so she asks Ambrose to watch  over Frances. Please, dear brother, deliver  our dearest Frances from drowning as you delivered  me.
  The first time Frances stayed out all night,  Mercedes was frantic. She changed in and out of  her nightgown, wrung her hands and several times was  halfway out the front door--but with no idea where  to search she soon returned to her vigil at the  kitchen table. Besides, what if Frances should  telephone while she was out?
  Mercedes did her fretting silently so as not  to worry Daddy, who was in a much-needed and  uncharacteristically deep sleep in the wingback chair.  In the morning, Lily came down to find  Mercedes peeling onions at the kitchen table.
  "What are you cooking, Mercedes?"  "Nothing, Lily, go back to bed."
  "It's morning. ... Is Frances home  yet?"
  Mercedes wiped her eyes with her onion hand  by mistake and found herself unable to do anything but  gulp.
  "Mercedes--"
  "I'm just slicing onions, Lily, don't be  foolish."
  "Don't worry about Frances, Mercedes, I  asked Ambrose to look after her."
  Mercedes seized Lily and hugged her. Lily  felt something hard pressing across her spine--  Mercedes had forgotten to put down the paring knife  --but Lily was too polite to say anything.  James came into the kitchen rubbing his hands together,  refreshed despite a night in a chair in his  clothes, "Who feels like bacon and eggs? I'll  cook."
  "Oh Daddy," said Mercedes, "don't  worry about Frances, she's sure to turn up."
  And she did, that afternoon, with a tiny carved  ballerina for Lily.
  Now Mercedes has ceased to worry when  Frances disappears like a cat for days, confident that  she is being watched over through the special  intercessions of Lily. Mercedes puts it down
  
as another sign and adds it to the lengthening  report she will one day soon make to the bishop.

  Mahmoud never misses the braid because he has  no idea it survived the Materia purge.
Frances found it under the red velvet lining at the  bottom of Giselle's jewelry box. It was  a close call.
  Mahmoud was in bed and out like a light at the other  end of the room. Frances stood at her late  grandmother's vanity and surveyed the loot laid out  before her. Silver brushes, combs and hand  mirrors. A rosewood jewelry box. She  lifted the lid and up struck a hurdy-gurdy  orchestra along with a pink ballerina. Frances  shut the box instantly and turned back toward  Mahmoud, who groaned, rolled over and looked  straight at her. They just stayed like that, staring at  each other, until she realized he was still  asleep. She waved at him. She gave him the  finger. She returned to the jewelry box and opened  it a hairbreadth--yes, now she could see the little  dancer lying flat on its face. Frances  slipped a finger through the crack and pinned the thing in  dead-swan position while she opened and plundered the  box. She checked for a false bottom in case  of cash, lifting the red velvet lining, and that was how  she stumbled upon the black braid lying coiled in  its jewelled nest. It must have been Mumma's  because why else would it be hidden? Artifacts of  lost girls are always forbidden. Frances stuffed the  braid and the jewels into her Guide pouch leaving  only a strand of genuine pearls. She extracted  the ballerina by its roots, little red bits of  velvet trailing from its pointed feet. She  considered laying it on Mahmoud's pillow like an  eldritch gift from the tooth fairy, but decided  Lily might like to have it. Finally, she picked up  the strand of pearls and carefully severed its string with  her teeth. She removed one pearl, then coiled  the rest back into the otherwise empty rosewood  box and tiptoed from the room with her booty.
  What Frances really wishes she could steal or  be stolen by, however, is Teresa, who still works for  Mahmoud. Teresa of the black and white candy.  Queen Teresa, disguised as a maid. Frances  is not fooled by her big purse and simple  dress. It almost seems vain for someone with a face  like Teresa's to dress in clothes so humble that they  serve only to highlight the beauty of the wearer.
  
When Frances first spied Teresa letting  herself in through the kitchen door with her own key she  had the wild certainty that Teresa was now Mrs.  Mahmoud--my step-grandmother! But Teresa left  at six that evening, having set out Mahmoud's  supper, and Frances realized she had her own  home to go to--with lucky children in it, no doubt.
  There's a kitchen door to the cellar and Frances  loves to sit behind its splinter of light and watch  Teresa work. She does this for hours, until she  turns into the dough that Teresa is kneading, or the  glass that Teresa pours milk into, or the  apron that she wipes her hands on. It's so  peaceful that one time Frances fell asleep and  tumbled all the way down the cellar steps. She  hid when Teresa came down to see what the  commotion was, and even though Frances was longing  to say, "It's me, I hurt myself," all she  said was, "Meow."
  One day, a man comes and eats lunch at the  kitchen table while Teresa works. His name is  Ginger--"Come on in, Ginger, darlin." He is  her darling but not her husband--Teresa calls  to Mahmoud in the living room, "My brother's  here, sir." Ginger wears overalls but he's not a  miner, he's too healthy-looking. Frances  recognizes him right away--he is the one who  used to drive Kathleen back and forth to school in  a black Model T Ford. He dropped off  Kathleen the day Teresa gave Frances the  black and white striped candy. He called  to Teresa and they drove away together and Kathleen  took Frances's candy and threw it into the creek.  Frances even remembers what they had for supper  that night--steak-and-kidney pie. Frances  wonders why stupid details like supper stick in  her mind when there are other things that she'd give  anything to remember, like the last time she felt her  mother's touch.
  Mr. Mahmoud comes in while Ginger is there and  says, "Hello, Leo"--and Frances nearly  loses her balance on the steps again, jolted by the  collision of two men in her mind. Frances sees  the name stenciled on the back of the booze truck,  parked out front of James's still, then the truck  dissolves into the Model T Ford but the stenciled  name remains: "Leo Taylor Transport."
  He says, "Hello, Mr. Mahmoud."
  Mahmoud asks in his dusky accent, "Have you  got my special order?"
  
  "I sure do, Mr. Mahmoud, and  strong like you like it."
  The surprise of recognizing Leo Taylor  outweighs the surprise of seeing her grandfather  guzzle a brown bottle of "special order."  Frances would never have pegged him for a drinker. He  isn't, of course, it's only ginger beer. And  when Teresa pours out glasses for herself and her  brother, Frances realizes that, along with the fact  that she too is thirsty. When she watches the  fizzy gold slide past Teresa's lips and  ripple down her throat, Frances feels a  craving. Leo Taylor sips his slowly.
  Frances watches and remembers when she told  Lily that her real daddy was a black man from The  Coke Ovens. It was Leo Taylor she was  thinking of, having seen him at James's still. She  told Lily this story in order to find out if it was  true. Like the old orange-cat story--how it  smothered Ambrose, and Daddy buried it in the  garden. Like the story of how Mumma drowned  Ambrose in the creek, and the one about the old  French mine. Frances needs to say a story out  loud to divine how much truth runs beneath its  surface.
  On her narrow journeys up the attic stairs  by night Frances has seen a picture she did  not know she owned: Kathleen with a black-red  stomach, sweaty hair, two tiny babies  alive between her knees. There is no one else in  the picture except the person who is looking  at it--that must be me. There is a voice way  at the back of Frances's mind, hollering into a  wind. She can't make it out yet, it's just a  sighing sound, it's sighing a question. The question is,  how did the babies get in the creek,  Frances? The voice is getting closer. It's  on the first step. Partly to drown the voice and  partly to enlist help in traveling to meet it,  Frances tells herself another story.
  There at the top of her grandfather's cellar  steps, behind the crack of the door, watching Teresa  and her brother drink ginger beer, Frances  murmurs aloud, quickly and under her breath like  Mercedes saying the rosary: Kathleen is  Lily's mother, Ambrose drowned because we don't  know why, Kathleen was not married, she had a  tumor in her belly but she didn't really, there  was a secret father, it was Ginger--he drove her and  they fell in love on the way to school, that's why
  
Daddy says don't play that colored  music from the hope chest--he sent Kathleen  to New York Town but Ginger followed in his  truck, Daddy took her home again but it was too  late, she died of twins--do you know the Ginger  Man, the Ginger Man, the Ginger Man, do you know  the Ginger Man he lives in Ginger Lane.  Amen Lily and Ambrose.
  "Goodbye, Ginger honey," says Teresa at  the kitchen door, "drive safe."
  Teresa washes the glasses and Frances pads  away down the cellar steps. Part of her story  is true. And part of it is true enough. Frances  will find out where he lives and buy herself a case of  ginger beer.
  She shimmies up the coal chute and out into a  stab of sunlight.

  Ginger has seen a little girl on the Shore  Road between New Waterford and Sydney. She  strays along the edge of the ditch looking every place  but where she's going. Why is she allowed to wander the  highway alone like that and why is she not in school?  Who's her father? Where's her mother? She always wears  a Girl Guide uniform, which is strange because  she doesn't look old enough to be a Girl  Guide, more like a Brownie.
  The third time Ginger passes, they're both  traveling in the same direction and he slows down  a little, thinking maybe to offer her a ride, but he  decides against it, not wanting to frighten her. She  looks up, though, at the slowing truck ahead, and  he sees her face in the side mirror. It  hurts him. Who would let their little girl walk the  Shore Road alone day after day? He never would.  He has three daughters: two Brownies and  one Guide.
  He shivers and drives on. He glances at  the St. Christopher medal hanging from his rearview  mirror. Ginger has never had an accident, he  is a good driver, but lately he has felt  funny about the road. He used to see it all at  once and drive as naturally as blinking and  breathing, but now it's as though he sees each  piece of road individually the moment his wheels  roll over it. To either side, each stone and tree  stands separately, and he has lost the knack of  expecting the road to unfurl around the bend.  Driving is his living--he can't afford to be  spooked.
  
  Ever since his last trip to New
York Ginger hasn't felt right. Never quite  rested, or quite awake. It's as though a window  has been left open inside his head, admitting  a draft. He can't get to it to close it. But  he can look out it, even though all he sees is  fog. It rolls into his mind, obscuring his  ease, setting him to shiver. Still, he looks and  looks. Because out there in the fog he can feel something  looking back at him.
  His wife, Adelaide, knows there is something not  right but how can Ginger explain to her what he cannot  explain to himself? He heard some music in New  York. That sounds crazy, he knows it, so the  least he can do is keep it to himself. Can music  cast a spell? Yes. Everyone knows that. And  everyone would laugh at him if he said it out loud.
  It was in a club up in Harlem. Ginger had  time on his hands waiting for a shipment of dresses  to haul back to Mahmoud's Department Store on  Pitt Street. Whenever Ginger is in a place  that's filled with other black people it's as though he  is relieved of a weight that he was unaware of  until it came off him. He walked up Lenox  Avenue feeling light. In Harlem Ginger felt  happy but lonely too. Home and not home. He  entered a small club on 135th Street that  welcomed Negroes in the audience, not just on  stage. A trio was playing quiet music for a  quiet crowd. The whole scene was highly  unusual. No floor show, no horns or  hi-de-ho. Piano, bass and flute. Ginger  stood and listened.
  The piano player was at the core of the trio.  A slim man with long fine fingers, hand-tooled  wrists. So good that he had come to prefer playing  between the music. This was not for everyone and the pianist  hadn't had a new suit in a very long time.  Threadbare trousers, white shirt open at the  long handsome throat. A charcoal fedora angled  low, and around its base a shimmering green silk  band.
  Three minutes or three hours later, Ginger  recognized the number as "Honeysuckle
Rose," but this did not prevent him from confusing his  left arm with his right when he went to lift his glass  of beer. The odd thing was, Ginger had homey  taste in music. If it could be sung by the whole  family, it was great by him. He certainly  didn't claim to be any kind of connoisseur.
  
And yet when the pianist allowed his fingers  to settle like mist onto the keys for the next  interstellar tune, Ginger had to stay and listen.
  It was on the night drive back up to Cape  Breton that he became aware of the fault line  opening inside his head, and twice he had to remind  himself to stop when the land ended: once because it was time  to coast onto the ferry, and once again because he was  home. He hugged Adelaide as though she were the  first solid food he'd had in weeks.
  Still, he hasn't been able to shake the unease,  and sights like the lost little Girl Guide are  bothering him perhaps even more than they normally would.  The third time he sees her, Ginger means to tell  Adelaide, but it slips his mind only  to return that night in a dream. He sees the thin  white face in the side mirror up close--the  serious brown green eyes, one freckle on the  nose. It still looks like a child, but an  unspeakably old one. It is the saddest face  he has ever seen. Ginger wakes up even though  it's not a nightmare. For the first time it occurs to him  that the little Girl Guide may be a ghost. What  is she saying to him with her eyes? "Here is how  I died. ... Pray for me." Ginger wipes his  face--it's wet but none of the rest of him is so it  couldn't have been a night sweat. How strange.  He goes and checks on all his children in their beds.  When he returns he looks down at his  rusty-haired wife, who appears ready for a  fight even in her sleep. Thank God for  Adelaide.
  Ginger means to tell his sister Teresa about the  little Girl Guide and about his dream the next day  at lunch when he brings Mr. Mahmoud his  ginger-beer treat, but again it slips his mind.

  Jameel squints down at Frances. "What  for?"
  "Just tell me."
  Frances has awakened him in the middle of the  day, he's jaundiced as the sun.
  "Why?"
  "Because I'll burn your fuckin house down if  you don't."
  Jameel horks out last night's nicotine.  "You just watch yourself, that's all I'm sayin,  Leo Taylor's got a mean wife."
  "It's not his wife I'm interested in."  "He lives in the purple house on Tupper
  
Street."
  Frances turns to leave; Jameel shakes his  head and warns, "Just don't come cryin to me."
  But she ignores him.

  Ginger Taylor gets a jolt when he looks  up from the shell in his youngest child's hand to see the little  Girl Guide standing in his backyard staring at  him. She is a ghost. What does she want?
  "May I have some of your ginger beer?"  Adelaide comes to the back door. "What do  you want?"
  Frances looks up at her. The woman's  reddish hair indicates to Frances the ability  to see through people. Best not to answer.
  Adelaide doesn't take her eyes off  Frances. "Who is she, Ginger?"
  "I don't know, honey." Then he turns  back to Frances, "What's your name, little girl?"
  Frances walks away. The child moves to follow  her but Ginger picks him up.
  Adelaide and Ginger watch Frances trail  off down the alley, then Adelaide says,  "That's not a little girl." And walks back into the  house.

                Salt

  The first thing Mahmoud notices is that one of the  sterling combs is missing. That leads him to the  rosewood jewelry box. He opens it. An  empty metal post pops up and rotates to the  strains of "The Anniversary Waltz." The box  is bare but for the pearls. Shaking with disbelief, he  snatches them up--they slide down their severed  string and spray across the floor.
  "Teresa!" he roars.
  She's up in an instant, wiping her hands,  white grains of burghul clinging to them--she's  making kibbeh--and the next instant she's lucky  he hasn't called the police; "Get your things  and go."
  Mahmoud contacts his youngest daughter and she  organizes a bucket brigade of female  relatives. The family is hugely  attentive anyway, but full-time housekeeping for  an old man is another matter. They'll have  to find a paid replacement because Mahmoud's  family is so successful that there are no spare  females lying around.
  
  A line of Irish girls and colored  girls and country girls is paraded before him but  Mahmoud can't seem to decide on a new
Teresa, so it falls to Camille to take up  most of the slack. She is the closest thing to a  widow there is.
  What enrages Mahmoud is that he let himself  be lulled into trusting Teresa--into thinking she was  different. That's when the viper strikes. He should  never have forgotten her color. They can be the nicest  people in the world but, like children, they mustn't be overburdened  with responsibility. They're like the worser sort  of woman in that way, even the men--which reminds  me, I wonder if the brother was in cahoots.
  It's enormously aggravating at Mahmoud's  age to have to explain every little thing to each of the female  relatives looking after him. They all do their  best but the evil truth is, none of them knows him  like Teresa did. And--this is the most evil truth  --none of them makes Lebanese food as  beautifully as she did. Better than his own  wife, God rest her soul and God forgive me.  Teresa seemed to read his mind. She made  everything so easy. And Mahmoud knew that, when the  time came, he could have accepted her most intimate  ministrations without yielding a particle of his  dignity. Now that is a good woman. And what is  her price? Above rubies. Damn it. What were  a few trinkets in exchange for that? He'd have  willingly given her the whole kit 'n'  caboodle, every bauble and--what am I thinking?  I'm a foolish old man. And what is my  price? An ass if I'm not careful. I need  my daughters at a time like this, my own flesh and  blood, this just goes to show it.
  It wounds Mahmoud to observe that the thefts do not  end with the departure of Teresa. They resume under  the increasingly continuous care of his daughter  Camille.
  Mahmoud blames himself. In the Old Country  he never would have given a daughter to Jameel, because  there the crucial distinction between their two families  would have been clear. The Jameels are Arabs.  We Mahmouds are more Mediterranean. Closer  to being European, really. Such distinctions are apt  to get blurred in the new country, where you open  wide your arms to a brother from home who speaks the  same beautiful language as you. The same  shapely humorous language with earth and water in  it. What a relief it is to sit down to a meal
  
or a game of cards with someone, a
Jameel for example, who shares this language.  What a relief from the chill of English, which is  exactly like immersing your tongue in ice water.  And after all, to the enklese you are all "black  Syrians." Mahmoud didn't recognize  until too late that his Old Country standards  had eroded to the point where he had given his most  beautiful daughter to a dirty half-civilized  Arab. Poor Camille, a good girl who has  borne sons only, and five of them--what a  waste. And he's lost Teresa to boot.
  Tears are shed by Mahmoud sitting next to his  bed. He has come up here to get away from a  bungling granddaughter. He sits in the skirted  chair that matches the bedclothes--Giselle's  taste, French provincial, God rest her soul  --and his eyes fall upon the carved mahogany  reproduction of D@urer's Praying Hands  hanging on the wall. My wife bought that. A  distant tremor for Giselle gives way to hot  tears because they are Teresa's hands.
  Go ahead, cry it out and be done with it. Then  get down on your knees and thank God that your  daughter Camille has been polluted by her  no-good Arab husband into a petty thief, and that you  fired Teresa for Camille's crime. Thank
God, because you know that otherwise, and not too long from  now, you would have asked Teresa to marry you.
  Mahmoud slides from the chair and clunks to the  floor on his knees. It must have been God who  intervened when the pearls went flying, because if  Mahmoud had been thinking for himself he never would have  believed the thief could be a woman to whom he had  entrusted the housekeeping money every week for the past  fifteen years. It was God speaking straight out  of his mouth. Thank you. Infinite wisdom,  infinite mercy, I am not worthy.
  Mahmoud kneels and weeps into his own  praying hands. Beneath the bed, Frances listens,  fascinated.

  Teresa is crying too, but with anger. She  sits on the loveseat in her home under the  hand-tinted photograph of Bridgetown and  wonders what she's going to do now. Worse than  the loss of her job is the loss of her  reputation. And what is its price? To have been  unjustly accused. And of something so far beneath her and  everything she comes from. How dare he? Hateful
  
old man. Like all the rest only  worse. Nasty, low-down, filthy Syrian--  oh sweet Lord, I am trying but You make it  hard. How is it possible to forgive and to live at  the same time?
  It always ends this way: not-colored people can't stand  it when a colored person gets too good at  something. Teresa blames herself for believing that she  was indispensable to Mahmoud. Pride goeth before a  fall. She did everything for him. She remembered  all the names and all the birthdays of all his  grandchildren, and shopped for the endless stream of presents  that bore his name. She remembered which son liked  what dish and cooked accordingly when they came for  supper. She knew when to mend a sock and when  to throw it out, where he had left his diamond  tiepin and his reading glasses, she banked his  money, paid his bills and soothed his corns. If  she hadn't done her job so well Mahmoud would  not have resented her and fired her on a vicious  lie. Yes he would. He'd have fired her for being  lazy "like the rest of your people." It ends the same  way no matter what, leaving you to suck salt and  pray Jesus to take away the hate.
  Hector reaches over and brushes away a  tear, which causes her to weep afresh. They have  been married thirteen years. All day long  Hector sits faithfully under his blanket  waiting for her to come home. Thank the Lord for  Ginger, Adelaide and their kids, thank God for  good neighbors, otherwise Hector would have died  of loneliness by now.
  Hector wasn't fired, he was never  unjustly accused of anything and, unlike dear  Ginger, he never resorted to making a living through  illegal means. Hector had a good job at the  steel plant. He and Teresa were married  fourteen months when a half-cooked beam fell  and caught him on the side of the head. Now he can  go for little walks if you hold his hand, but mostly  he gets pushed along in his wheelchair.
  Hector and Teresa had put off having children  because he was going to be a minister and they were going  to move to New York City and have American children  and a better life. Teresa pats Hector's  hand, then goes to fetch a fresh diaper for him from  the linen closet. She long ago gave up  imagining what their children would have looked like.

  Jameel barges into Boutros's bedroom on
  
the second floor and says, "Tell
Leo Taylor to come here tonight and bring a case of  ginger beer."
  Boutros turns from his open window and says,  "I'll pick it up myself, Pa."
  "Shut up and do what I say."
  "How come?"
  Jameel reaches up and clips Boutros a  sharp one on the back of the head, "That's how come."
  "Ow."
  Jameel laughs and explains, "Your cousin  wants him, b'y."
  Boutros doesn't say anything. Jameel  shakes his head, Jesus, I have to spell everything  out for this kid, takes after his mother--"Queen a'  Sheba, friggin Frances, b'y, she's after his  black arse."
  Boutros is trembling. With someone as big as  Boutros, it's hard to tell. He is nineteen.  Soon he won't be able to stop himself from belting his  father. Jameel laughs at Boutros, grabs his  big face in both hands, squashes the cheeks  together and slaps him affectionately. "Do what I  say, go on."
  Jameel leaves and Boutros turns back  to his open window. He picks up a battered  oilcan from the ledge and finishes watering his  marigolds and petunias.
  The name Boutros means Peter. And Peter  means rock. And upon this rock, Jameel has  built his booze can. It is Boutros's curse  to be the eldest. He has four younger brothers.  Most of them are just like Jameel and therefore well  suited to being the eldest, except for the middle  brother, who is obviously headed for the  priesthood. Boutros dreams of saving enough money  to buy a farm; of marrying his cousin Frances and  taking her and his mother, Camille, away to the  country, where they would all be happy. They'd have a  lot of children and he would love them all, but  especially he would love his wife, and make his  mother's last years the happiest of her life.  Frances is a painted drunken whore on the  outside but Boutros sees through that because he loves  her and, one day soon, intends to save her.

  "Pa wants you to come tonight and bring a case of  ginger beer."
  Ginger looks up at Boutros filling the  doorway. Adelaide calls from the kitchen,
  
"Take it yourself, buddy."
  "Puppa says for mister to come."  "It's okay, Addy, I won't be long."  Ginger goes for his jacket.
  "Not now," says Boutros, "tonight after  midnight."
  "What for?" Adelaide wants to know.  "I don't know, Mrs. Taylor, Pa  says."
  "It'll cost him," says Adelaide, pouring  some hot into Teresa's cup--Adelaide's been  making mincemeat pies and offering to beat the can off  old Mahmoud.
  Ginger says to Boutros, "Tell him I'll  be there." But Boutros doesn't leave right  away. He remains for a moment, looking down at  Ginger. Finally he turns and goes without a word.
  "Did you see that?" Ginger asks the women,  returning to the kitchen table. "Gawking at me like  I was a ghost?"
  "That whole family's right nuts," says  Adelaide, thinking not only of the old vulture  who fired Teresa, but of mean Camille--  twenty years in The Coke Ovens and she's never  said hello to a soul. Then there's the New  Waterford branch. Too bad Ginger has to be  mixed up with any of them.
  "Lord have mercy on them," says Teresa,  folding her hands around her cup.
  "Mercy my foot," says Adelaide,  "here, baby." Adelaide sets a plate of  Nellie's Muffins in front of Ginger. He  gives her a kiss, sits down and hands the  jammiest one to Hector, who grins with delight.
  Adelaide cooks all that good plain Nova  Scotia stuff. She comes from a community in  Halifax called Africville. She is  proud of her African Irish United  Empire Loyalist blood, proud to have been  baptized in Bedford Basin, and never tires of  telling tales of the 1917 explosion--I was  spared for a reason: to punch you in the nose, buddy  --to dance with you tonight, honey--to see my babies  grow.
  Later, when Teresa and Hector have gone and  they've put the kids to bed, Adelaide says,  not looking at him, "Don't go to that place,  Leo."
  "I have to, baby."
  "Then come right back, don't linger."
  
  "No desire to."
  "Come here," she says, looking at him.  He smiles and obeys her.

  Ginger carries the crate up to the front door  of Jameel's speak. He hates this place.  He can hear the usual party going on inside.  He can smell the booze from out here and it smells  like the raw material used to make vomit. He  feels sorry for Jameel's wife.
  On second thought, he'll go round the back.  Ginger dislikes using a back door, but in this  case he'd rather enter unnoticed by the crowd that  turns like one queasy beast every time someone walks  in--never mind the floozie on piano, who  smells like a sick baby. I should quit this job  --see if I can get on at the steel plant.  But Ginger knows there's no work to be had there or  anywhere else. Not even for white men.
  It's like a blow to his stomach when Ginger  walks into the cold storage room and sees the  Girl Guide uniform filthy and strewn across the  empty kegs, stockings, beret, the little pouch.  He looks about instinctively for the nude body--  this is what happens to little girls who aren't  looked after, I should have found out who she was, I  should have given her a drive ... He calms down  a little when he doesn't see her. But that's not  to say she hasn't been dragged outside by one of  Jameel's drunks and raped. Ginger is  suddenly enraged--to be working for a man like  Jameel, to be helping keep a place like this  going in the very neighborhood where his own daughters  are growing up. Ginger pounds on the door.  Boutros opens it and says, "Pa's over there."
  Ginger shoves his way through the crowd with his  crate, past the tart on piano--""Jeepers  creepers, where'd ya get those peepers""--and  finds Jameel. "Jameel, what happened to that  little girl with the Guide uniform?"
  "That's Mr. Jameel to you, boy."
  Ginger drops the crate and grabs Jameel  by the collar.
  "Where is she, you devil?"
  A cold pain on the back of Ginger's neck  and he's looking at Boutros's shoes.  Jameel is laughing down at him. "He wants  it ba-ad!"
  A cold drop splashes onto Ginger's  forehead. He looks up. The prostitute in the
  
orange wig is chug-a-lugging a  bottle of ginger beer. He can see the white  underside of her chin and her grime collar.
  "She's right here, Leo b'y," smirks  Jameel. "Help yourself. Cash only."
  She looks down at Ginger with serious  green-brown eyes. Golden froth trickles out  the corner of her smeary red mouth. He covers his  eyes with his hands.

  "I'm quitting, I'm not driving anymore,"  is all Adelaide can get out of him twenty  minutes later.
  He needs a good cry so let him. "You've  been working too hard, let's throttle back a  bit, eh b'y?"
  All he can do is nod and sob against her  until he falls asleep.
  Adelaide hugs him and counts five weeks  since that last New York run. Something's not  right.
  In the morning it all seems like a bad dream.  He tells Adelaide, "Jameel's got a  little girl hustling there." Adelaide listens.  "And it made me think of our own girls and what  would happen if--"
  "I know, honey." He's too sensitive.  "Why don't you take it easy today?"
  "I'm all right, Addy, I feel fine."  And he climbs into his truck.
  He drives away and realizes he forgot  to tell Adelaide the whole point of the story--that  the child prostitute is the little Girl Guide who  came into their yard that day, and that he's seen her on  the road and in the side mirror of his dream. But  he forgot. And what was it Adelaide said about the  Girl Guide that day? "That's not a Girl  Guide." Well obviously not a real one, he  knows that now.
  I'll tell Adelaide tonight, he thinks, and  turns onto the Shore Road.

             Harem Scarem

  At first, Frances wondered when Teresa was  going to get back from her holiday or her illness  or whatever it was. But this afternoon, as she walks the  Shore Road to New Waterford, a horrible  thought occurs to her. What if Teresa has been  fired? What if Mahmoud pinned the thefts on
  
her? He'd be crazy to--why, just  yesterday Frances helped herself to a Royal  Doulton shepherdess and a Chinese fisherman from  the piano, and Teresa had been gone three days  by then.
  In his truck, Ginger realizes that he's been  searching the Shore Road for the Girl Guide.  He wants to talk to her, that's all, but not at the  speak. He wants to find out who her father is, where  her people are, if she has any. And if she  doesn't, maybe he and Adelaide can help.
  Frances doesn't look or stop walking when  she hears the truck braking on the soft shoulder  behind her.
  "Hey there."
  She stops but does not turn.  "Excuse me, little miss."
  She turns and looks up at him leaning out the  window of his cab. I was right, thinks Ginger,  twelve at the most. She walks to the truck,  steps up on the running board and gets in beside  him. She has already pegged him for a nice man  ... this may take some time.
  "What's your name, dear, who's your father?" as  he pulls back onto the road.
  "My name is Frances Euphrasia Piper.  My father is James Hiram Piper, my  grandfather is Ibrahim Mahmoud. I don't know  his middle name."
  Ginger doesn't take his eyes off the road.  He is shocked, can't think what to say.
  "Is that right?" he says. "I knew your  sister Kathleen."
  "I know."
  He glances at her. She's looking at him.  "I used to drive her, you know, I'm Leo  Taylor."
  "I know."
  Ginger sees a tree go by on his left. Then a  rock. Another rock. He says the normal  thing and feels as if he's lying even though he  isn't. "It was a real shame her passing away  like that so young, she was a really pretty gal."
  "I know. I saw her."
  "I guess you seen photographs, eh?"  "I remember her perfectly well."
  "But you wouldn't've even been born yet."  He chuckles, which really is a lie.
  "I was going on six," she says. "I  remember everything."
  
  Ginger brakes and pulls over, pebble  by pebble.
  "What's the matter?"
  "I thought you were a child."  "You're Teresa's brother eh?"
  "Yeah." He feels a bit dizzy. It's  the driving, I can't drive anymore.
  "How come she's not at my grandfather's  anymore?"
  "She got fired. He said she stole but she  didn't."
  "He'll be sorry."
  He sits up. "Look you, does your daddy  know what you're doing, and why are you doing it  anyway when you got a good home and a family?"
  "Because I'm bad."
  He looks at her. "No you're not."  "How do you know?"
  Ginger takes a breath. His eyes water and he  says, "I can tell by looking. In your eyes.  You're not bad ... you're just lost."
  "I know exactly where I am."  "That doesn't mean you're not lost."
  He reaches out and cradles the side of her  face in his hand. She's got wise eyes. They  make him feel so deep dry sad that something must  be done. "I want you to come home with me and talk  to my wife, she's a good woman."
  "Do you want to be my friend?"  "I'd like to help you, honey."
  "Then take me with you where you're driving."  "I can't do that."
  "You did it for my sister."
  "I never took your sister halfway 'cross  the continent."
  "Where did you take her?"
  "School and back, what do you think?"  "Little Ginger Man ... I need someone to look  after me. I'm full-grown, but I'm just a little  girl inside. I want you to find me 'cause  I'm lost, I'm lost in a deep dark place,  please, please, please, oh you smell nice."
  He takes her hand away and pushes her, not  roughly, to the far end of the seat. "Where do you want  me to drop you?"
  "The Empire."
  He guns into New Waterford and Frances  hops down in front of the picture house. It's  a talkie today, but Frances buys a ticket  anyhow. She has some thinking to do. She knows now
  
what it is she must accomplish for
Lily. There remains, however, one piece of  unfinished business.

  Camille has often imagined herself a widow.  She would return home and look after Pa and  he'd realize she was the only daughter who really  loved him. It has weighed on her that he has  been all alone in that big house since Mumma  died with only a colored woman to wait on him.  Camille has cried over that. It's the only  thing she has cried over since the early days of  her marriage, when she still had the energy to cry over  herself. So now that Teresa is gone, Camille  is in her element. Her one regret is that she  is obliged to return home nights.
  Camille knows that Teresa is not a thief.  The jewels that went missing from Ma's rosewood  box have reappeared at the speak, encrusting  Frances's fingers, dangling from her ears and  glittering round her scrawny neck. The silver  tail of a comb pokes out her Guide pouch. If  Camille could incinerate Frances with her eyes,  Frances would have been blown away by now, but  Camille has a good reason for keeping mum about  the jewels.
  She frisks her father's house top to bottom  to find the breach where the pest has got in. Down  in the cellar she glimpses the guilty crack of  light framing the swing-trap at the top of the coal  chute. She nails a board across it for now and  goes upstairs to the front hall, where she  telephones the hardware store.
  Frances waits patiently inside the closet  until Camille gets off the phone and  returns to the kitchen, then she bounds soundlessly  upstairs two at a time into the master bedroom,  where she prepares for tonight's performance. Her last  on this stage.
  Camille has sealed up the rat hole but she  doesn't breathe a word about the rat. If Pa  found out that it wasn't Teresa who stole, then he  would hire her back and send Camille home  to her husband.
  Mahmoud has spent the day at his store as  usual, sitting out front, carving soapstone and  playing checkers with the other old fellas while his  sons run things. They have expanded the business and  now they are a major Maritime importstexport  company with a big warehouse in Sydney and
  
headquarters in Halifax. Shipping is  next. Mahmoud never played the stock market,  never bought on credit, and it has paid off. The world  economy lies in ruins, but the family business  is expanding. The Mahmoud boys honor their father  by allowing him to feel that he is still the boss, hence  "Sure, Pa, whatever you say," before going ahead  and doing what they know is best.
  Mahmoud has passed an agreeable day  growling at his grandsons and watching the street go  by. Everybody knows him, everybody respects  him. He wears a plaid shirt and a dove-gray  jacket and tie just as he did every day of his working  life. Today is Wednesday, so on his way home  he looks forward to stuffed koosa the way  Teresa makes it. He's been forgetting like this  lately. It's not so bad if he remembers before  he opens the front door. Then he can prepare  himself for her absence. But if he makes it all the  way to the kitchen, and over to the stove to taste  what's in the covered dish--"Teresa!" he  calls in disbelief at how she has murdered her  specialty with salt--only to turn and see  Camille at the top of the cellar steps.
  "What is it, Pa?"
  "Nothing."
  He does not blame Camille. The best  cook of the family is not quite as good as Teresa, and  Camille is the only bad cook. Another  effect of her wrong marriage--an unhappily  married woman is necessarily a bad cook--  and therefore his own fault, as well he knows. Just as  it's his fault she's a thief. Well, why  shouldn't she have her mother's pretty things? She has  little else, not even a talent for food. He  forgives her.
  "Are you starved, Pa?"
  He grunts and shuffles away. He  doesn't want to see her sallow smile, she  makes him feel tired. He'll just have a  snooze before attempting supper, which will taste, as  usual, like the Dead Sea. He forgives her because  he does not love her.
  He comforts himself with the thought of his other daughters  whom he does love--please God the one with  grown children will be widowed soon and deliver me from  Camille, God forgive me I didn't mean  that.
  After supper, Mahmoud drinks a big glass  of water and falls asleep in his mauve satin
  
chair in the front room. Nothing  quenches his thirst or his fatigue these days. He  thinks a lot about Giselle. Not in the ordinary  way, as of the dear departed, but as though she had just  stepped from the room. And for the first time in thirty-two  years he admits the memory of Materia. She  appears with her black braids and mischievous  smile. He is unaware of the smile on his own  lips--la hown, ya Helwi. She looked  like her mother and she ran off at about the same age  Giselle was when Mahmoud married her, but that was  different, oh very. That was in the Old Country where  they had everything in common.
  The Old Country was part of Syria then and a  lot of people were emigrating to America. He and  Giselle ended up in Cape Breton because of the  lying mongrel of a sea captain who took their  money, then dumped them on this barren rock. Days  of peering at the horizon waiting for land and finally  --land! Waiting to see the Statue of Liberty  loom up, to dock at Ellis Island before  ferrying to the blessed isle of Manhattan. They  dropped anchor in Sydney and the captain turfed  them out--"What's the difference, it's an island,  ain't it?"
  Jameel's father was on that boat too.  Mahmoud had no way of knowing that Jameel  senior was fleeing creditors in Syria, because he  said he was fleeing the Turks and the Druses like  everyone else. And when asked for his own story,  Mahmoud replied, "the godforsaken Muslim  devils." In fact, he and Giselle left  because her family was set to arrest him and stick her  in a convent. But it was different from what happened with  Materia and the enklese bastard--for one thing, he  and Giselle were both from the same race,  culture, language and faith. Although  Giselle's family did not see it that way.  They were doctors and lawyers, spoke more French  than Arabic, considered themselves more Mediterranean,  even European. They were from Beirut. He was  an Arab from the south. He had returned  to Lebanon, land of his birth, having spent his  boyhood picking cotton in Egypt. Don't  tell me what it is to work.
  He took Giselle to a better place across  the ocean and gave her everything her own family would  have and more. As soon as he could, he forbade her  to work, even though, being the good woman she was, she  resisted at first. He honored her, never laid
  
a hand on her in anger--never had to.  He gave her a beautiful house, servants,  jewels each anniversary. A silk negligee  from Beirut to make up for the fact she'd never had  a wedding gown; three shades of Mediterranean  blue and a veil with a fringe of real pearls. The  veil was purely for fun, of course, a  romantic joke. The sight of her in this outfit  was unimaginably exciting.
  If only her arrogant family could have seen  what Mahmoud achieved in the New World.
  "Pa? ... Pa."
  He wakes with half a moan to see  Camille. She's got her coat on and the room  is dark.
  "I'm going home now, Pa."
  "Where's your mother?"
  He's speaking Arabic but she replies in  English to help him back to his senses,  "Wake up, Pa, do you want something before I go,  a nice cuppa tea?"
  Oh. What? It's time for bed, where's Ter--his  Oh. "No, no, no, I'm going to bed."
  Camille goes to help him but he casually  swats her away as he rises.
  "I'll turn the light on for you, Pa."  "No, no, go home, Camille." Oh, his  life--what has become of his life?
  There is nothing more for Camille to do: she has  laid out his pajamas, he doesn't want the  light. Mahmoud reaches the foot of the stairs  andwitha slight wave of his hand he says without  turning, "Thank you, Camille."
  If his other daughters could hear Pa saying  thank you--"He never says thank you to me."  "Me neither, dear." "He's never said anything  to me except "Close your legs.""  Mahmoud thanks Camille because he does not  love her.
  Camille watches him slowly mount the stairs  until he disappears into the darkness of the landing. Then  she leaves, although she knows it's a sin to leave an  old man alone in that big house all night even  if he does insist. "Am I the only one who  cares?" she wonders.
  But he is not alone. There is someone else who  cares enough to keep him company through the long lonely  night.

  Mahmoud awakens smiling a few hours later
  
to the sound of an Arabic comedy routine.
A husband and wife chiding each other about  faithfulness. Then they break into a love song.  He had this record and many others brought over from  Beirut. He and Giselle used to sit side  by side on the sofa and never tire of laughing at the  same jokes. Then she would dance for him and he for  her. But only when the children were out. And only  sometimes. But what precious times ...
  His smile dies upon his lips when the  impossibility of what he is hearing hits him.  What, is he dead? Is there a thief in the  house? Playing his scratchy old records?  Why?
  He puts on his velvet robe, ties the  cord around his waist and creeps down the stairs.  He is dead. He must be. There is
Giselle.
  Beyond the archway, the front room is aglow with  candlelight and three shades of Mediterranean  blue. Swirling and swaying and quarter-turning,  hips beckoning, fingers twining in air, wrists  caressing one another above her head, the pearls of  her veil swinging to the rhythm of the reeds, the drums  and the wailing voices of the love song.
  Mahmoud is filled with desire and his heart  hurts, stirring again after such a long period of  inactivity, never having been particularly  athletic. She has seen him and now she is  luring him into the dance. Ohhh. He travels through  the archway, he does not know how. She bends  forward in her circle of firelight, the blue  silk wafts open at her breasts in shadow--  come closer, the better to see me, Habibi.  Her eyes are full of fun above the veil and her  fingers tickle the emptiness between her and her  beloved, closer, closer. "Giselle," he  whispers, reaching out to her. She giggles and he  laughs too, not knowing what's funny,  "Giselle," he whispers, "Habibti."
  But she slips out of the ring of light and  vanishes. He calls her but she does not  answer. He picks up a candelabrum, knowing  better than to turn on electric lights when  seeking a vision, and searches the ground floor; the  cellar. He goes back up to the front room.  He blows out the candles and turns on the  electric chandelier because he can feel she is  gone. The record has ended, there's just the  repetitive sigh at its center--he removes
  
the needle and returns to his bedroom.
He opens his wife's oak wardrobe where all  her fine clothes still hang among mothballs. There  at the back is the shimmering blue with its whispering  veil. He must have been dreaming. But what about the  candles? The record? Losing my mind. Or  else it was an impostor. I don't care. He  reaches out to touch the silk, which is impossible  to feel if there is a lifetime of work on your  hands. He touches it but does not feel it--just as  he saw what he could not have seen. I don't  care what you were, come back to me Please  Please Please Ohhh.
  It's his last thrill and his last sting of love,  as fresh and painful as youth transplanted over  time and an ocean. There is nothing left for him now  except to die, but that will take a while because he  is a creature of habit, and he has got into the  habit of being alive.

           Thief in the Night

  It wouldn't matter to Frances if Ginger were a  cruel man. She would do the same thing. Kindness  or cruelty, it's all by chance and what's worse  anyway? It's easier to endure cruelty so  maybe kindness is worse. The only question is,  how do you get a nice man to do a bad thing?
  She stops drinking. She wants all her  wits about her for what lies ahead. Frances without  liquor is a bit scary to her customers. No  more cutie-pie patter or kisses for gin, she  takes cash up front and services them  cold-bloodedly with the communion glove.  Dripping with her grandmother's jewels, she no  longer bothers to change out of her coal-smeared  Guide uniform, and at the piano she plays  Chopin while speaking blues lyrics in a loud  monotone despite a chorus of boos. When she  strips, she doesn't sing or shimmy, she  undresses like an automaton and bellows in a  leaden voice, ""IRENE GOOD-NIGHT.
IRENE GOOD-NIGHT. GOOD-NIGHT IRENE  GOOD-NIGHT IRENE I'LL REAM YOU IN
MY DREAMS."" She's no fun anymore,  soon they'll look elsewhere. It's almost as though  Frances despises her customers when she's  sober, and what could be more insulting, because what right  has she?
  Frances wants three thousand bucks for Lily
  
before retiring as a dive diva so she  ups her price. This does not go down well either  --some men try to dine and dash while others take  the insult out on her face. Boutros has  broken one man's wrist and crushed another's  cheekbone, but Frances doesn't care if her  clients hit her, she just cares if she's raped  --she doesn't want anything interfering with her  plans.
  Ginger Taylor has been gone in his truck a  week and a half now. Frances has kept his  purple house under surveillance. She knows  he'll be back tomorrow because she gets close enough  to listen. She has motive. She has means.  She watches the moon and awaits her  opportunity.
  Tonight Boutros follows Frances home as  usual. He has given up trying to walk with her  because she tells him where to go every time. So he  escorts her secretly all the way to New  Waterford and watches her slip around the back of the  house on Water Street. He waits out  front for the glow of her candle to appear in the gabled  window at the very top of the house. Tonight as he  waits, the headlights of a passing car catch two  yellow gleams at the attic window--there's a  demon up there, crouched and lying in wait for  Frances! Boutros is halfway to the veranda when  he sees her light appear and cast a halo of  black fur around two yellow eyes. He  watches her come to the window, sit on the ledge and  cradle the cat. His face softens. He is  glad to see that he is not her only friend.
  As yet, Boutros has not caught anyone  attempting to ambush Frances on her way home.  But if he ever does, the fella will die.  Snap. Simple as that.

  When Ginger Taylor returns the next day,  he lays Christmas in August on the kitchen  table. Rolls of white lace trim and colored  ribbon, yards and yards of fabric. A swatch  of sun, moon and stars against a smoky midnight  blue, a bolt of emerald polka dots on  iridescent black, spring flowers for the girls,  gray flannel for the boys. Candy, pineapples  and a whole deer dressed on ice in the back of the  truck.
  Adelaide's eyes water at the sight of the  fabric. The ladies she sews for buy some fine
  
cloth but nothing so jazzy. She has  made gowns for most of the white weddings in  Sydney. She uses silk, satin and organdy for  her ladies, and her imagination for her family.  Often there's a nice piece left over from a  job, but if the lady doesn't ask for it back  Adelaide gives it away to a neighbor because it  is contrary to her own professional code to dress  her children in leftover piecework. She'd sooner  turn flour sacks into perfect pinafores, and she  does. The Mahmouds were Adelaide's biggest  customers till the Teresa fiasco, and when you  add that times are worse than ever, Leo has no  business throwing money away on all this  nonsense.
  Madeleine, Sarah, Josephine, Cleo,  Evan, Frederick and Carvery swarm at the  sweets, shrieking, sharing, fighting, and  Adelaide wants to know, "What in the name of time  is all this, mister?"
  Ginger beams at her. "It's a whole lot of  nothing for no reason."
  She fingers the fabric. "What did you do,  rob a bank? You better've." They've been  saving for the kids for school, how could he?
  He heads her off. "I got so happy,  Addy, I had to go out and waste some money or  else bust, because I love you. Because you are the best  woman, you are the toughest, the meanest, the  prettiest and I can't believe that I got you!"  He jumps her in a spinning bear hug.
  "You're crazy, you know that? You're right nuts,  and put me down, b'y!" She packs a bony  wallop to his soft shoulder. "Put me down  till I beat the can offa ya!"
  And he does. "Come on," he says, feinting  with a right jab, and she comes at him with a left  hook, wiry she is--jab, jab at his  upraised forearms and dancing fists, socks him a  good one right in the breadbasket, till she has  to double over because she's laughing so hard she might  pee, and she can't see to box him anymore for the  tears streaming down her face.
  "Invite the neighbors," he tells her.  "I'm going to get Trese and Hector.  Evan, honey, I want a big fire out  back."
  Evan hops to it. He is the oldest at  twelve.
  Barbecued deer and boiled corn, enough for the
  
neighborhood, and the neighborhood is  there in the backyard. The sun is down, the fire  is high and so is the moon. Hector sits under  his blanket wide-eyed and smiling, tapping his  foot in reel time to the fiddle of the very old Mr.  Prince Crawley. Teresa feels well for the  first time since she was fired. She had forgotten the  sweet joys of society, of just yakking with people,  surrounded by kids and food and music. She has  made a fish curry fit to cure the dead--  renewing her claim to the local West Indian  cooking crown--and a tub of ice cream to cool the  flames. She goes so far as to let Adelaide  persuade her to sing--"Only for you, Addy, and  only this once." Teresa starts up one her mother,  Clarisse, always sang for her and Ginger:
  ""Sly mongoose, Sly enough but the dog knows  your ways. Sly mongoose, Sly enough but the cat  is on your track--"'"
  And what good's a song if you don't dance it?  Teresa is an excellent dancer when wild  horses have got her up and moving. Once moving,  she is nothing but happy--
  ""The mongoose went in the missus'  kitchen, Took up two of her fattest  chickens, Passed them into his vestcoat  pocket, Sly mongoose--"'"
  The crowd joins in, the going gets wild,  Hector is laughing and clapping and the little girls  have all got up to join Teresa. Her smile is  a mile wide, her hips have gone saucy, fingers  snapping, palms percussing. "Go, girl!"
  ""You look to me like a mile and a quarter, You  look to me like you require some water, You look  to me like your blood's out of order, Drink bush  tea, Drinky bush tea--"'"
  She begins to improvise verses, and it gets  hilarious because she makes up all kinds of  rhyming gossip about everyone there, and people throw  made-up verses back at her. At last
Teresa takes the song back to the chorus and  everyone sings, then shakes the firelight with  appreciation. Teresa hasn't caught her breath  before she notices Adelaide alert as a cat  staring at the backyard fence. Before she can say,  "What's the matter, dear?" Adelaide has  pounced--over the fence and down the alley.
  Adelaide pelts after the small fleeing  figure and catches it easily by the collar.
  "What's going on, eh? Why're you hanging
  
around my family?"
  "Fuck off--ow."
  Adelaide has got the fine art of  arm-twisting.
  "What's your name, girl?"  "Harriet Beecher Stowe, ha ha--ow!"
  Teresa has caught up. Frances sees her.  And can't help but speak to her.
  "Hi, Teresa."
  Adelaide looks at Teresa. "Who is  she, Trese?"
  "I don't know, Addy."
  "Teresa." Frances looks up at her.  "Don't you remember me?"
  Frances forgets to lie. She forgets about  Adelaide pinning her wrist behind her back, she  is tempted to tell Teresa everything. Because  Teresa would understand. Teresa would touch her forehead  and everything would fall away, all the weight of  everything Frances knows and doesn't know. The  terrible weight of her heavy heavy mind.
  "Dear God," says Teresa. She has just  seen the double row of precious stones on  Frances's fingers. "Where did you get those rings,  child?"
  "I found them." It's sweet like milk--she  called me "child."
  Ginger arrives but stops a little way off.  Adelaide turns to him, "It's her again, I  don't know who she is or what the hell she's  after."
  No sooner said than Adelaide has an  answer to the latter question: glancing down at her  prisoner, she sees Frances staring at Ginger with a  cool cool look on her face.
  "Who is she, Leo?" Adelaide says  sharply, watching his face.
  He looks back at the phony Girl  Guide and Adelaide knows the next thing she  hears will be a lie.
  "I don't know, Addy."
  Leo has never lied to her before. Adelaide's  talent for seeing through a lie could be called a  sixth sense, but she doesn't figure there's  anything spooky about it. To tell truth from a lie  is easy as salt and sweet.
  "Never mind," she says to her husband and his  sister. "Go back and enjoy yourselves, I'll be right  there." But they hang. "Move, will ya  Jesus-Christ-on-the-Cross move!" And they
  
do.
  Adelaide shifts Frances's wrist an  eighth of an inch and so gets her undivided  attention. Then she leans her face close in  till they are eyeball to eyeball. Quietly,  and with intent, "You come around my house; you touch my  babies or my husband, and I will kill you."
  "Yes ma'am."
  Adelaide lets go of Frances's wrist and  returns to her own backyard.
  Teresa and Leo have told everyone that  Adelaide caught a peeping Tom, a white  fella, and put the fear of God into him. Everyone  laughs because they pity anyone who crosses  Adelaide, and when she comes through the gate looking  so grim, they laugh some more. Adelaide marches  straight into the house and straight back out with her  mouth organ. She plays "The Old Rugged    Cross." It's bluesy this way, which is how it  sounds best. This one always makes Teresa cry,  the way "Ave Maria" does a tired  Catholic. Laughing and crying all in the one  night, it's been a wonderful party.
  Except for the dirty Girl Guide with  Mrs. Mahmoud's rings. How on earth did she  come by them? On the black market? In the gutter?  The actual thief must be long gone by now.  Teresa was too shocked at the sight to think what  to do but now she knows there is nothing to be done. No  point seizing the rings or telling Mahmoud, he  would never believe her, he's proven that much. And  he doesn't deserve the truth--forgive me,  Lord, only You know what we each deserve--  anyhow, why get Adelaide all het up about  what can't be fixed? "The Old Rugged Cross"  reminds Teresa to turn the other cheek and not  to dwell, what's done is done. Prince  Crawley joins in on fiddle, several sing and  Hector hums. It ends the evening in just the right  way.
  Teresa wheels Hector home down the  street and shakes off an unsettling question. How  did the little waif know my name?
  Ginger makes sure he's in bed ahead of  Adelaide. He feels ashamed to be mimicking  the sound of sleep as she undresses and crawls  in next to him. He's done nothing wrong, but how  could he possibly explain? A little white lie  and for no reason. It doesn't matter.
  She watches him for a while, then softly
  
calls him by his secret name--not  "Ginger," another name. It's private. He  stirs a little but doesn't open his eyes. She  kisses his shoulder and lies down next to him.  She'd do anything for her family.

  The next day.
  Adelaide arrives home from Beel's  Grocery with an envelope of bright new  buttons.
  "Josephine, Evan, come here till I  annihilate the both of you, what's this?"
  "I'm sorry, Mumma--Sorry,
Mumma."
  Two soft earlobes pierced between stiletto  thumbs and forefingers,
  "I'll tell you what's this, this is your baby  brother Carvery playing with the stove!"
  "Yes ma'am--Yes ma'am."
  Release earlobes, ah.
  "He is your brother. You are responsible for  him and you are responsible for each other."
  "Yes, ma'am--Yes, ma'am."
  "You never, ever let your family come in harm's  way."
  "No, ma'am--No, ma'am."
  Then she threatens them with retribution by their father  when he gets home and the two children breathe a sigh of  relief, because what they'll get from their father is  "Well now, how did that happen?" and a seat in his  cushiony lap.

  At the kitchen table.
  Adelaide sits down to her buttons and  bolts of precious fabric. Princely  knickerbockers for Frederick, gentleman  trousers for Evan, white shirts and collars for  them both, Sunday dresses decked with ribbons  for the girls, a swashbuckling shirt of sun,  moon and stars for Leo and a matching one for baby  Carvery. And finally, although she is mortified  to spend the time on it--"I'm only doing this  to please you, mister"--sleeveless, slinky,  low-slung, black satin and tropical green  polka dots. When you see Adelaide in this  dress, you'll have to ask her to dance just to feel her  slip through your arms like a flashy fish.

  At the matinee.
  "Has the picture started?"
  
  "Nearly over with."
  "One, please."
  Ginger hands over his nickel and enters the  Empire. It's a silent, Diary of a Lost  Girl starring Louise Brooks. Not many people.  It should be easy to spot Frances if she's here.  He stands at the top of the raked aisle and waits  until his eyes resolve the shadows into shapes.  The outline of her beret. Front row center, but  she's not alone.
  The picture ends, "IF THERE WERE MORE  LOVE IN THIS WORLD, NO ONE WOULD
EVER HAVE TO BE LOST." The lights come  up and he watches Frances rise from her seat.  Her companion looks to be a child, though Ginger is  wary of jumping to that conclusion anymore. But no,  it's definitely a real little girl, he sees that  when she stands and turns to collect her sweater from  the back of her seat. A really pretty child, with  long red-gold hair past her waist, familiar  in some way. Now that he sees Frances next to a  real child he can't imagine how he ever mistook  her for one. Actually, her face looks quite old.  He watches. The two of them start along their row  to the aisle and the long-haired child seems to stumble  to one side. Then again, and with each step. She must have  hurt herself somehow, he thinks, but he understands when  she rounds the last seat in the row and walks towards  him up the aisle. Pretty little gal, what a    shame. The youngest Piper child, of course, and that's  who she reminds me of, her older sister  Kathleen. The closer she gets, the more uncanny  the resemblance.
  Ginger waits for Frances to see him. But if  she does, she doesn't give any sign.  She's chatting to her little sister, "Next  Saturday is The Wind starring Lillian  Gish, it's about a beautiful girl who goes out  West but when she gets there the wind buggers her  mind."
  "How does it bugger it?"
  "Don't say "bugger," Lily, say  "derange.""
  "Derange."
  Frances puts an arm around Lily and walks  right past Ginger.
  "Hello, Frances."
  The long-haired child turns and gives him her  green eyes--so like the girl Kathleen, but so  unlike too because Kathleen never once looked
  
at him. Frances doesn't turn, just  yanks the little sister after her, nearly knocking her  off balance. Ginger is confused. Is this a slap  in the face? If so, what for? He feels like  someone's dirty secret. But I'm not. I  haven't done anything wrong and don't intend to.  Don't want to!
  But he has to talk to her. Tell her she can't  be skulking around his house like that, and not to be coming on  like a whore with him, he's not that kind of man.  Yes, he has to talk to her as soon as  possible. That means the speak. Tonight, Saturday.

  Ginger has no intention of ever entering that  Pandora's box again, so he doesn't even bother  to leave his house until 3 A.m., when he  knows she'll be leaving.
  "Sorry, Addy, I forgot to tell you,  Jameel said for me to come at closing."
  The second lie. How is Adelaide  to protect her family when she doesn't know  what from? She had seen with a chill that the fake  Girl Guide bore no good will toward her  husband. Like a fiend she looked at him: starved  but patient.
  Adelaide hears the front door shut behind  Ginger. She rolls over in bed wondering, what  does she want with him? And what could Leo  possibly see in that dirty little white thing?  Crazy girl, bad pixie, nobody's child ...  Adelaide sits up with a jolt as it hits her:  he feels sorry for her. Oh no. Oh no,  no, no, no, no.

  Ginger waits behind a wooden support under the  rail bridge as the clientele spills out of  Jameel's. The piano is going a mile a  minute--"The Funeral March." With the last of the  revelers gone, Ginger goes around back. He  figures he'll catch her before she gets  into whatever car takes her home. He watches from  the corner of the building as she comes out. In the cast  of light he sees she's back in uniform but still in  makeup and costume jewelry. A lot of those  men in there, and the women too who laugh along, they  see her as their clown. The whore part is bad  enough, but who ever heard of a whore clown? Ginger  wonders what it must be like to see through the eyes of  those who could find her funny or sexy. She  locks the storage-room door and Ginger is about
  
to reveal his presence when she takes off  into the dark--what? Where'd she go?
  He doesn't want to holler, doesn't  want Jameel in on this. He goes around the  front. No waiting car, and he's heard no  engine. Overhead, the rat-a-tat of a stick  along the railway ties. He looks up through the  trestle-work at the shadow feet flying between the  slats and follows at a trot below. The ground  rises to meet the rail line and he runs up the  bank, getting winded, but she's still sprinting  ahead, taking the ties three at a time with her  arms flying out from her sides. By now they're on the  edge of town, she tosses away her stick. He  bends over to get his breath--he's not the sporty  type. When he straightens up he can see her  way ahead in the moonlight, seeming to jump up  and down on one spot in a wild step-dance but  getting smaller, smaller. He trots on.
  To his left the water gleams dark silver beyond  the cliff, the sound of his breath and pounding chest  drown out his own footfalls along with the crickets  and frogs singing now in the high weeds that line the  tracks. They're traveling parallel to the  Shore Road. She's running the whole way, this  is how she gets home. Lord. They're way  past town, it should be safe to call, "Fra--" and  he's flat on his face on the piss-reeking  tracks, his gut shocked airless, his back only  now registering the impact that sent him flying forward  --something grabs a fist of his hair and slams him  into the gravel again and again and again, and darkness.

  Tonight, Frances extinguishes her candle before she  steps into the attic. It's the moon. Four  rectangles of light have swooned through the  latticed window onto the floor. The moon may  drive men mad but it can calm a savage girl,  for it is cool, precise, it is lucid.  Especially in such an empty room. Frances  pauses and allows herself to be soothed. Then she  goes to the window. It's a good night for gazing.
  One floor below, at the rear of the house,  Lily is at her bedroom window watching the  creek. Her lips are moving slightly as though  whispering to someone down there, but there's not a soul  to be seen, just shimmering segments of the moon in the  water. Across the hall, and directly beneath the  attic window where Frances has just seated herself,  James is sound asleep, dreaming plentifully,
  
the way he has since Frances receded  from his life. He is a little boy again, and it's just  he and his mother in a field of wildflowers.  Mercedes is sleeping too, in her spare room,  the whites of her brown eyes just showing in slits  through nearly closed lids. She dreams of steel,  of the color gray, of skeins of gray hair on  a loom.
  Frances strokes Trixie in her lap and  realizes she's been followed home. She can  see Boutros down there, though he can't see her.  He's peering up, waiting for her candle to appear  and warm the room. He's staring at the windowpane,  but all he can see there is the moon.
  Frances hasn't kept herself a technical  virgin just to be raped by something the size of that--and  why else did he follow me home? In her  head is The Catholic Wife. Years ago  she rifled Ralph Luvovitz's room when they  were all supposed to be playing klezmer music  downstairs, and robbed him of What Every Boy  Should Know. The Catholic Wife was easier  to come by but is much more complicated. A Catholic  wife must keep a graph in her head at all  times, plotting the ponderous journey of the ovum,  stolid as an icebreaker, to its point of  intersection with a zillion speedboats. On  average, there are six or seven days a month  when this is fairly likely to happen, whereas the  rest of the time it's fairly likely not to happen.  That's the rhythm method. Like comedy, it's about  timing. Rhythm is a sin, of course, but only  a venial one and sanctioned by the Holy Father in  Rome, provided you are without lust when performing the  generative act and not hoping not to get pregnant.  (unless you are performing the generative act in  order to ward off your husband's lust for another  woman, in which case it is a sin for you to give in  to his lust, but one mitigated by your intention of  preventing him from committing a worse sin with a  woman not his wife. Go to confession, you're fine.)  Every other type of birth control is a mortal  sin for which you go directly to hell if unshriven  at the hour of death.
  Frances gets her period almost not at all but  its scantiness is completely regular. Tonight is  the first of the five or six probably fertile  days. And this makes her shudder at the thought of  Boutros loitering down there in the yard, because it's  bad enough thinking about him going up her, much less a
  
chip off that massive block coming out her  nine months from now. She'll have to speed things up.  She is irritated. Why did Ginger Taylor  have to turn out to be a nice man?

            Via Dolorosa

  "Coupla drunks jumped me outside  Jameel's."
  The third lie.
  "Ow, Addy, easy!"
  Adelaide picks out another wood splinter  and jabs carbolic at Ginger's chewed forehead.  Luckily, that's the strongest part of the skull.  Lucky too that his nose and teeth only grazed  gravel while his forehead took the railway  tie. Luckiest of all was being lulled awake  by the warm buzz of the steel rails beneath him in time  to roll over and let the noon coal train pass.  Who's his guardian angel?
  "I want to know who she is and no bullshit."  "What?" But it's useless to pretend. Why  did he for one second think she'd buy it?  "She's one of the Piper girls from New  Waterford."
  Adelaide gets a chill, but she just nods and  says, "Frances." She knows the bad one is  called Frances.
  "I don't know what she wants. I went after  her last night but I got jumped before I could  ask her, I don't know by who or how many."
  Adelaide looks at him. Waiting for the  rest.
  "I'm sorry, Addy. I gave her a  drive once, that's all, I don't know why I  lied before." He's feeling suddenly tired.  "She's the little girl at the speak and I wanted  to help her. I thought we could help her."
  Adelaide folds a soft white dressing for  his brow. "There's a lot of trouble in that family,  Leo. That girl is not right in the head. She'll  see you in jail for rape."
  Ginger is shocked. "I would never, never--"  "The Pipers have money. You're a colored  man, and that girl is after you."

  With the dressing round his head and his face scabbing  over nicely, he knocks at the steel door.
  "You want a fuckin raise, b'y, is that  it?"
  
  "No, Mr. Jameel, I just  quit, tell Piper I quit him too."
  "Tell him yourself."
  Ginger turns to leave, saying, "Then I  guess he'll find out when I don't come for your  order." Ginger wants a wide berth between him and  all things Piper.
  "Fuckin nigger, get the fuck off my  property--Boutros!"
  Ginger is already leaving but he won't run. He  glances behind him to see the big son in the  doorway. Ginger's not scared of Boutros,  despite the crack on the neck he got when he  grabbed Jameel that time--the boy was just protecting  his father. Ginger knows fellas like that are sooner  pussycats than fighters.
  "Fuckin nigger," mutters Jameel. "Get  the car, b'y," to Boutros without looking at him.
  "Daddy, I'm going to get married."  Jameel wheels and swats Boutros across the  face, "Get the fuckin car!"
  That was around five o'clock.

  "What kind of trouble?" Ginger asks.  Ginger knows the basic facts about the Pipers--  what everyone knows and what he picked up driving  to and from their house for years. Nowadays he hauls  Piper's booze, but that only ever takes him to the  still in the woods and all Piper ever says is  "Thank you, Leo, drive safe."
  But Adelaide knows what Teresa has told  her. Teresa would never dream of telling such things  to her little brother. Ginger was a sweet child, and    keeping him from everything unpleasant is second  nature to her. Besides, there are some things that are right  to tell a woman friend, but otherwise indecent  to repeat. Some things, when discussed with a dear  husband or brother, are only poison. Good  women discuss these things the way epidemiologists  identify and track disease without alarming the  public. This is woman's work. Men are  unfitted for it by nature and should be protected from  it the same way women shouldn't have to go down the  mines. Men are so innocent.
  "Tell me, Addy."
  The time has come for inoculation. Adelaide  takes a deep breath.
  "The mother committed suicide. That was  Mahmoud's daughter, Materia, who ran off with  Piper. Mahmoud disowned her. Their daughter, the
  
one with the voice who you drove--"
  "Kathleen--"
  "She had a baby out of wedlock, the little  crippled gal. Piper killed his daughter by not  calling the doctor when she was dying in childbed.  Pearleen Campbell works at Ferguson's  Funeral Parlor, she washed the body, there was a  homemade cut in the belly, Pearleen and  Teresa were girls together that's how Teresa knows.  Years ago, Teresa took a big check  to Piper from old man Mahmoud. Next thing you  know, the singer girl goes to New York City,  meantime her mother's in rags. The singer girl was a  bitch. The mother died the day after her daughter was  put in the ground, not a mark on her but her hair  reeking of gas when they brought her to Ferguson's.  Teresa went to the mother's funeral and saw the girl  Frances laughing. That's what I know, so God  knows what else there is, or what that Frances  girl was b'ought up with. She's got a reason  to be crazy, b'y, but that don't make her  innocent."
  That was after supper. Ginger had changed into his  sun moon and stars shirt for the meal to mark his  release from everything bad. Johnnycake and  molasses, beans and Cape Breton steak--  take a pound and a half of baloney; slice it;  now scorch it. A celebration, even though  quitting the rum-running business means less  money again. Ginger never realized how important  the Mahmouds were to his family until Teresa  lost her job, and Adelaide lost customers, and  he lost most of the legitimate side of his  trucking business. And now here goes the  illegitimate side of her. ... Things have been  worse than usual for everyone lately; the  Taylors have had it good by comparison. At least  they have a future saved up for their kids. They can  start living on that.
  The children are in bed. Teresa has just arrived with  Hector, who holds out a date loaf for  Adelaide with his big drooly smile.
  "Thank you, baby!"
  "Where's your man, Addy?" Teresa asks.  "Out New Waterford telling Piper he's  quit."
  "What's he quit for?"
  "Sit'll I pour us some tea."
  Thank God for tea, thank God for Teresa  who I can talk to. Hector nods in his
  
wheelchair while Adelaide tells
Teresa the whole Frances story and finishes up  with "I said to'm don't go out there, but he told  me it's "unmanly" not to look a feller in the  eye when you're quitting him after all these years."  She takes a sip of tea. "At least it's  all over and done with."
  Teresa hasn't said a word.
  "Trese?"
  "Yes dear, she's crazy, they're all right  nuts." But Teresa is distracted and she gets  up. "I just want to look at Carvery before I  go."
  Teresa loves to look at Carvery asleep.  He looks like Ginger did when he was a baby and  Teresa used to look after him. When she married  Hector, she wanted to have a baby as sweet as  Ginger. Carvery has inherited his father's nature  too. Sound asleep in his tiny sun moon and  stars shirt. Sweet, sweet baby boy.
  "Aunt Teresa?" It's Evan whispering.  "Yes, darlin?"
  "Sticky Leary snuck in the cloakroom and  stole my lunch today, he called it nigger  food."
  "What did he do with it?"
  "He said he threw it away but I saw him  eat it."
  "He was hungry."
  "Mumma said I should beat the can off him. Do you  think I should?"
  "I think he doesn't have enough to eat."  "Why doesn't he just ask for some without calling  me dirty names?"
  "He's ashamed so he tries to make you  ashamed."
  "I'm not ashamed of anything. I should just beat the  holy crap out of him, eh, Auntie?"
  "If you want to do the real Christian thing, you  put half your lunch in his pocket every day without  letting anyone see. And the rest of the time you forget  about him and concentrate on getting where you're going.  You're big and strong. You can beat any boy your  age, but you start with that and the game in the  schoolyard's going to be "who can beat Evan?"'  Then the older boys will get after you and when the  teachers come out you'll be the one gets blamed. You  want to be a boxer when you grow up?"
  "No, I want to be a veterinarian."  "Then forget fighting and concentrate on schooling
  
and you'll beat the lot of them, 'cause,  sweetheart, most of them are going nowhere but  underground."
  "Or the steel plant."
  "That's right."
  Teresa comes back downstairs. "I told  Evan not to fight, he asked me."
  "Good, I told him to ask you." Adelaide  believes that all children should have enough grown-ups around  who love them so that one can tell them to fight, one  can tell them not to and one can tell them not to worry so  much.
  Teresa leaves with Hector. It's early,  they didn't even play cards. Adelaide stands  in the open doorway and watches them go. Talk of  anything to do with even an offshoot of Mahmoud must  still upset Teresa. I'll have to think of something  nice to do for Trese. I'll make her a  shawl. It's hard, though, because Teresa wants  always to give. It embarrasses her to get.
  Teresa pushes Hector home down the  alley so as to be totally alone. She is in  shock about it being Frances Piper. Mahmoud's  disowned granddaughter. The thin-faced goblin with the  unkempt curls and Mrs. Mahmoud's rings.  She somehow slithered into the house--she's small  enough--and stole out of revenge in broad daylight.  She stole my job. My good name. My  brother's good name. She stole food from his table.  And now she's after stealing him.
  Teresa couldn't tell Adelaide about the  jewels just now. To add it up with the Ginger story,  out loud with her best friend? No. That would be to have all  the bitterness poured into one cup so you could see just  how much you had to drink. It makes Teresa  dizzy to contemplate it, she will lose her mind with  anger--Oh Jesus, sweet Lord, please  don't let me hate. Look after the cruel and the  crazy people, and let me look after my family,  amen.
  Even as she prays, Teresa makes a  sickening realization. Frances recognized her that  night in the alley with Adelaide. That means  she's been watching me. During the day in  Mahmoud's house when I thought I was alone. The  girl who laughed at her mother's funeral.  Teresa shivers. And she was watching while I  danced and sang my mother's song.
  The thief you must fear the most is not the one who  steals mere things.
  
  Ginger's not home yet. Eleven o'clock.  Adelaide is uncharacteristically lying to herself. "He  stopped at Beel's for a game of cards, he  got a flat, he decided to do one more run for  Piper at twice the price, I'll hear in a  minute." She must be really scared to be doing this  when what she knows is "She's got him." After the  lying phase is the pissed-off phase,  "Foolish, head-up-his-arse eejit, he can  pack and shack up with the honky slut from hell,"  when what she knows is "She's sick, she's  dangerous, she's with him now."

  At six o'clock that evening, Jameel and  Boutros arrived at the place in the woods where  Piper makes the moonshine and cuts the liquor.
  "Fuckin nigger up and quit," says  Jameel, getting out on the passenger side.
  James despises people who say "nigger." A  civilized man need not resort to barroom  slang for emphasis.
  "Plenty where he came from," is all James  has to say as he hands barrel after case  to Jameel and Jameel hands them to Boutros and  Boutros slings them into the back of the brand-new  black 8-cylinder Kissel Brougham where the  seats have been removed and curtains put up.
  James looks at Jameel as little as  possible. He regrets that his line of work  necessitates contact with someone like this. Short  black whiskers against a yellowish complexion,  oily jet hair and the fusty smell of fried  bread. James despises Jameel with his  "nigger this" and "nigger that" because it's obvious to him  that Jameel is shit-scared of being seen as  colored. A man who wears his fear on his  sleeve is a fool. Besides, thinks James,  while Jameel is not black, he sure as  hell is colored, 'cause he sure as  hell's not white. James is grateful that all  his girls turned out so fair. But there's  obviously a morbid tendency in the blood they  inherited from Materia that made Kathleen lean  toward color. James has taken delivery of  another crate of books. He has dipped  into Dr. Freud in an effort to discover where to lay  the blame for Kathleen's perversity. Freud  calls women "the dark continent." James couldn't  agree more. He doesn't hate blacks, he just
  
doesn't want them near his bloodline.
  "You're going to have to do it in three or four  runs," says James, counting the money.
  "Look, Jimmy, we should buy our own  truck and get one of my boys driving."  James lets Jameel call him "Jimmy"  because it is better than having Jameel's greasy  mouth on "James." Also, when you let someone  call you by not-your-real-name, you are reminded every time  he says it of what a foolish arse he is.
  "I don't take partners, Jameel, you buy  it, I'll hire it."
  The back of the car is full and now Boutros  closes the brimming trunk. James can see  Materia in that boy. The same vacancy--standing  there staring at me like he's going to say something, then  doesn't. Nothing to say, that's why, not a thought in  his head. Creeping idiocy in that family, that's  another thing.
  Boutros starts the car, Jameel slides in  next to him. "See ya in a coupla weeks,  Jimmy."
  "I better see you in an hour."  "What for?"
  James bends into the open passenger window.  "I hired Leo Taylor because I knew I could  trust him with merchandise, and until I'm convinced  about a replacement I want you personally  responsible."
  "What are you talkin about, b'y? Boutros'll  do the runs."
  "You'll accompany him."
  "You trust a nigger over my boy, is that it?"  "This is business, Jameel. I expect  to see you back here in an hour or not at all."  James straightens away from the window.
  Jameel sticks his head out, "Fuck you  Piper, you fuckin uppity sonofabitch, did you  know you're supplying my place with Piper  pussy, eh boy? And that she's fuckin your  precious spade, Leo Taylor?"
  James glances through the windshield at  Boutros, who's still staring at him. Jameel  smirks. James can't lay a hand on him with the  big fella sitting there.
  "Who are you talking about, Jameel?" he  asks evenly.
  "Your daughter Frances, b'y," with a good buddy  grin.
  "I don't have a daughter by that name."
  
  Man, he's cool.
  "If I don't see you here in an hour,  Jameel, I'll assume our deal is  terminated."
  He turns and walks calmly towards the  shack.
  Jameel is enraged, head and shoulders out the  window, "Everyone's had her, b'y! Everyone but  you, I guess, or have you had her too?"
  Boutros floors it and Jameel's head  cracks against the outer chrome. "Shit!"  Boutros gets a row of knuckles to the ear but  he doesn't seem to notice, he's concentrating  on James in the rearview mirror disappearing  into the shack.
  Inside, James has his first drink in  thirteen years. He'll get this Jameel  transaction over with in a few hours. Then  he'll get hold of a rifle and go over to Leo  Taylor's place for a talk.

  "Slow down, you'll have the Mounties on us."  Boutros doesn't register the order.
  "I said slow down."
  But Boutros takes Low Point at a steady  seventy. Boutros doesn't say a word throughout  the next three runs, which makes it no fun for  Jameel, who can usually count on "Yeah Pa,  that's right Pa" whenever he leaves space for a  breath. Jameel sulks in the car while  Boutros takes the booze from Piper, who is  drunker every time and likewise dead silent. That's  how an enklese gets you, thinks Jameel, with  silence. Ice, they use, they're smart but  they're not quite human. No feelings. When it comes  to his son Boutros, however, Jameel  doesn't think "silent," he thinks "dumb."
  Boutros is calm because he has decided that  tonight is the night. He'll take money, what  he's rightfully earned, from his father's safe, then  he'll go get Frances and they'll drive.  Wherever she wants to go. Forget the farm, forget his  mother, that was the dream of a child, the grown-up knows that  he has to get Frances off this island right away.  There are too many men here who need to be killed,  first among them her own father. What kind of a man  disowns his daughter? Frances is a diamond,  passed from filthy paw to paw but never diminished.  The men who handle her can leave no mark because her  worth is far above them. Hard, helpless,
  
buried. You can hear it in her voice and  see it in her eyes, she is waiting for a strong and  fearless miner to go way down and rescue her up to the  surface where she can shine for all she's worth.
  Boutros has to get her away tonight, before something  happens, he doesn't know what. He had a  terrible feeling when his father taunted Piper about  having had his own daughter. Boutros knew it must  be true. For Frances to do what she does right under  her father's nose, Piper must know she's already  ruined, and he knows because he ruined her. But  Boutros knows that no one is that powerful to be able  to ruin something God created good. That was proven  by Job. The Devil can try, but he can't  triumph.

  Why did Adelaide believe Ginger when he  said he was going to square things like a man with  Piper? Because she was tired of not believing him.  When people get tired they sometimes do things they wouldn't  normally do. Materia went for a nap with her head  in the oven. That's not in Adelaide's line. When  she gets tired, she stops tasting for truth. In  a moment of fatigue she wanted everything to be  all right, but wishing never made anything right. This  is what happens when Adelaide stops being tough  for a second.
  If Adelaide weren't in such a hurry she  would run out and lose her supper into the toilet, but  there isn't time, so she walks shaky to Beel's  Grocery on the corner. "Have you seen my man  tonight, missus?" is a rhetorical question. Mrs.  Beel goes straight to Adelaide's house  to mind the children while Adelaide takes care of  her trouble. Wilfrid Beel is there with his  philosophical white hair. He offers her a  drive wherever she might need to go.
  "I'll let you know, Wilf."
  She leaves and walks to Teresa's house.

  Earlier that evening, Ginger had just laid Carvery  in the crib when he saw a light down in the  garage. He went out and opened the double doors  onto the blazing headlights of his truck. He  stood for a moment, temporarily blinded, and heard  a soft crying.
  "Hello?" he said.
  Again the soft whimper.
  It's coming from the cab. Ginger opens the driver's  side and sees a dark shape huddled against the
  
opposite door. A small voice  says, "Don't tell on me."
  His gullet leaps in fear. It's her.  Instinctively he hits the lights and they go out in  slow motion.
  "I'm scared," she says, her voice muffled  behind her hands.
  "I'm not going to hurt you."  She says something he can't understand, barely  audible and obscured by sorrow.
  "You can't stay here, Frances."  The crying starts again--quiet, rhythmically  regular, drained of passion. Like a child who's already  cried itself to sleep, then reawakened and is now no  longer crying to be heard, having given up on that.
  "What's wrong?"
  Soft hiccup, the voice is drenched and  exhausted, "... hurt me."
  "What?" he says, stepping up on the running  board. She rustles away from him in frightened  reflex.
  "Shshsh, shsh, I'm not going to hurt you, what's  wrong?"
  "I already got hurt."
  "What happened?"
  "I can't tell you."
  "Yes you can. But, Frances, you can't stay here,  come into the house."
  "No-o-o." Fresh tenor, fresh tears.  "How can I help you if you won't come  inside?"
  "Take me to a safe place."  "Where?"
  "A place I know where he can't get me."  "Who?"
  "My father."
  "Frances. Did your father hurt you?"  No answer. Sound of a hand wiping a wet  nose.
  "What did he do?"
  She sounds more grown-up now. Brave. "I  made him mad."
  "Tell me what he did to you."  Her voice goes cold. "It's my own  fault"--sniff--"I'm no good, he's right.  Why should anyone care about me, why should you, I'm  bad for everyone."
  Ginger has found a match in his pocket. As  he lights it, she recoils and covers her face  with her hands, "No!"
  
  He looks at her, curled up in the  corner, so fragile. He reaches out, gently  pries a hand away from her face and, just before the  flame dies, "Oh my Lord." He's shocked.  Who could do such a thing?
  "Don't look at me, I'm ugly."  "You're not ugly."
  "Yes I am, go away."
  "You're hurt. I'm going to help you, I'm  going to get my wife."
  "No!" she hisses.
  Her life depends on this. "No one can know.  I came here tonight cause you're the only one I  can trust. If anyone knows, if he finds out where  I am, he'll come and kill me." She takes  a deep breath. "I can understand if you're not  willing to help me, you have enough troubles, thank you  anyway." The passenger door clunks open in  the dark.
  "Wait, wait--"
  She pauses, her feet dangling.  "--where do you need to go?"
  "It's about five miles out of New  Waterford. No one knows about it, it's an old  mine. I've got food and money. If I can  stay there a couple of days, he'll think I'm  already off the island. Then it'll be safe to hitch a  ride to the ferry and go."
  "Go where?"
  "Just go."
  He hesitates.
  "Forget it," she says. "Sorry to bother you,  Mr. Taylor."
  "I'll take you."
  Silence.
  "I said I'll take you there, Frances."  "... God bless you."
  "Just wait here a minute."

  Boutros is serene behind the wheel. They're  heading back to Sydney, it's the last run of the  night, the sun's long gone, it was a too-hot  day. If Frances agrees, they'll drive  to British Columbia. He wants to grow  things. Cherries. And grapes, for wine. The thought  of his own orchard, and Frances free and flourishing  among rows of gnarly trees in bloom, full  fruit, heavy vines--he pictures stuffing their  own grape leaves with rice and lamb, he loves  to cook, anything that consists of something wrapped around
  
something else. Driving is a wonderful  place for dreaming.
  Boutros doesn't enjoy violence. It's just  the job he's always done for his father. Mostly it  consists of walking into other men's violence and  turning it off for them, like groping for a switch in a  dark cluttered basement. To do this he often has  to hurt them. He rarely gets angry. Though  he got angry last night with Taylor on the  rail tracks. Boutros spared him for Mrs.  Taylor's sake. She's a hardworking woman and  doesn't deserve to be a widow. And Taylor  seems to have learned his lesson and backed off.
  "Slow the Jesus down, ya moron!"  Jameel's nerves are shot.
  Up ahead comes Leo Taylor's truck.
It whizzes past them on the land side of the Shore  Road. The one-second aperture of his  headlights has taken a picture for Boutros  which is just now coming up in black and white through the  film on his eyes: Frances in the cab, looking  straight at him, her face a battered mess.  Taylor at the wheel, laughing at her.
  "What the fuck are you doing!" Jameel  grabs the dashboard and goes slamming into the  passenger door as glass collides in the back  --"Shit!"--and the Kissel fishtails out of the  U-turn, speeding after the truck in a wake of  rye whiskey.
  "Leo Taylor's got Frances."
  Jameel screams, "So what the fuck what?"  and begins slapping Boutros.
  Boutros puts up a hand to keep his line of  vision clear, they're gaining on the truck.
  "She's my cousin."
  "She's a whore!"
  "Don't talk about her like that."  Jameel starts laughing. Boutros trembles.
  "You sweet on her, b'y? Eh? You sweet  on the whore? You smelled her? Ha ha."
  Boutros blinks hard.
  "You gonna cry now, crybaby?" Boutros  does have tears in his eyes. "Eh, little  sissy-boy, sooky-baby, eh, little mama's  boy gonna cry now, eh? Go ahead, go on--"
  The windshield explodes with Jameel's  head, shattering Boutros's view of the road.    He sticks his face out the window just in time  to swerve out of the way of an oncoming carload of  nuns. His hand is still around the back of his father's
  
neck as the Kissel hurtles off the  road, over the ruts and along the cliff at  eighty till the terrain changes abruptly  to silent air. Jameel is dead before they hit the  rocks below.
  The nuns turn around and drive back,  dropping off three of their number to investigate  while the other three drive back to New  Waterford to get an ambulance. By the time the  rugger-playing one picks her way down to the  water's edge, there is only one man, his neck  all but severed. The other man is found the next  day. The engineer didn't quite manage to stop the  coal train in time, but the big man lying on the  tracks was already dead.

  "I'll just talk to Piper and turn right around and  come home," Ginger had told Adelaide just after  nine.
  "I love you. ..."
  It gave him a twinge when she said his private  name, but he wasn't lying for his own sake, and this  time there was a reason--to protect that poor  beat-up girl waiting for him in the truck. In a  couple of days she'd be gone right off this rock, and  that gave him a light feeling even as he told the  lie.
  It's a cloudy night but Ginger gets a good  look at Frances as they pass the fires of the  steel plant. There's blood crusting her nose  and filling the gully that meets her upper lip.  The lip is split and fat on the left side.  Her left eye is likewise puffy and  blacked. That Piper is more than just a negligent  father. This explains everything.
  "What happened to you?" she asks, and for a  second he isn't sure what she means because  he's been concentrating on her injuries.
  "Last night," he says, "fella got  me." He feels himself blushing. "I was following  you home, along the tracks. I wanted to ask you  something."
  "What?"
  "Well I know the answer now, I was just going  to ask you why you kept coming around me."
  "Because you're the only good man I know."  Ginger feels ashamed. Sydney is behind them  now. He picks up speed on the Shore  Road.
  "I'm sorry I ignored you at the picture
  
house," she says. "It's better for  Lily's sake if she doesn't know anything."
  "That's your little sister?"
  He turns. There's just enough dark to swallow her  wounds and light her eyes. She gives him a  calm, knowing look. It's like an invitation to rest  --it says, don't try any more, stop fighting,  I know. I understand something that's so deep you think  it's behind you. But it isn't. It's inside you.  Let me touch it.
  "Lily," he says. "That's a pretty  name." He sounds foolish to himself. Something has  hit his stomach like a fiery drink and it's spreading  out through his limbs. He shakes it off. "You and me  make a fine team, eh?" he chuckles.
  "What do you mean?"
  Her voice is so grown-up he feels  callow but he presses on. "I mean the two of  us with our wracked-up faces, what a sight."  He turns to her and laughs, and she smiles  slightly, as he's glad to see by the light of an  oncoming car. Frances keeps one eye on the  road as the headlights of the Kissel slice by the  truck.
  "Can this thing go any faster?" she wants to know.

  At Teresa's house, Hector rocks  quietly by the kitchen stove and follows the  conversation with his eyes. Adelaide is sick with  worry.
  "I have to go out there, Teresa, she's got him,  oh my God," she leans over and holds her  stomach.
  "Settle down now, I'll tell you what  we're going to do, Addy. First we're going to find  out if she's home, 'cause if she is there's  nothing to be worried about--we'll get Wilf  Beel to drive us out and, okay, here's what  we're going to do, listen now: I'll go up to the  door and say old Mahmoud is dying and wants  to see his granddaughters at the last minute, and if  Piper says forget it, I let him know there could  be money in the will, you know? And then I say  Mahmoud also says for them all to come or none, so  we'll know if Frances isn't there--what're you  doing, girl, sit down."
  "Where's Hector's gun?"
  "What do you want with it?"
  "Don't ask foolish questions and shut up with your  foolish ideas."
  
  Hector stares wide-eyed at
Adelaide and points a finger at the top  cupboard. Adelaide climbs onto the kitchen  counter and Teresa seizes her around the knees.
  "I'm warning you, Trese."
  "Addy, come on now--"
  Woomph, a back foot to the stomach.  "I'm sorry, dear." Adelaide fishes the  rifle from on top of the cabinet. "Thank you,  Hector."
  "That thing doesn't even work anymore," says  Teresa, still on the floor.
  Adelaide fires it into the ceiling, Teresa  screams.
  "It works." Adelaide hops down from the  counter, calm the way people are when they've gone over  the edge.
  Teresa talks fast. "All right, Addy,  we'll get Wilf and we'll drive till we  find them, no point going out to their house, you're  right, she's not there, she's with him, so let's calm  down and go get a ride."

  By the time the Jameels left with their last  load, James was stone-cold drunk. He  climbed into his immaculate 1932  close-coupled Buick sedan and started it up.  It's a tan color. Gangsters have black  cars. He drove at a moderate speed back  to New Waterford. He had decided not to bother  finding a rifle. The best close-up killing is  done with a bayonet. A rifle is really just an  appendage, useful if the blade gets stuck in  the ribs and you have to shoot free. But once you've  been around for a while you know how to avoid making  noise. Under and up.

  "Stop."
  Pine branches bend and squeak against Ginger's  truck. This isn't even a road. He cuts the  engine.
  "We have to walk from here," Frances says.  "Take my hand."
  He does. It's necessary, after all she knows the  way, he doesn't and it's such a dark night.  Such a slim soft hand.

  Mercedes is dusting the piano. She has  taken all the figurines and doilies off it and  she is about to apply the lemon oil when Daddy
  
comes in, "Give me the keys to the  hope chest, Mercedes."
  He reeks of liquor. Mercedes is scared.  "What's wrong, Daddy?" But she knows enough to have  the keys in her outstretched hand while asking.
  "Don't worry, my dear, I won't be  long."
  He takes the stairs two at a time without  hurrying. Mercedes screws the lid back on the  lemon oil, wipes her hands and follows him up  two flights to the attic. He's on his knees  with the contents of the hope chest scattered over the  floor.
  "What happened to The Old-Fashioned  Girl?" he asks gently, holding it in his hand.
  "I knocked her over while dusting, Daddy,  I didn't want to hurt you by saying so."
  "I'll get you a new doll, Mercedes."  He goes back to rummaging. "I'm sorry about  this mess."
  Trixie hops down from the window ledge and  hugs the wall on her way out. Mercedes feels  icy cold. He sounds so strange, just two  inches off to the side of his normal self, how  does it add up with how drunk he must be? The  smell reminds her of how sick she always feels  even when she's feeling fine.
  He finds what he's looking for at the very  bottom, "Ouch." He was prepared to find it in  need of a quick grinding, but it's razor sharp, though  he remembers laying it in the chest dull with the war.  Just as well, he thinks, as he sucks a bead  or two from his fingertip.
  "Where are you going, Daddy?"
  He pats her heavily on the head, this man  who never touches her. "You stay and look after your  sister."
  "What are you fellas doing up there?" Lily  from the bottom of the attic stairs.
  "Go back to bed," Mercedes orders.  James trots down the attic stairs,  calling back to Mercedes, "I have to find  Frances."
  "No!" Mercedes has shrieked it.
  Lily is shocked--the sound is stranger than  Daddy kissing the top of her head with a long  knife in his hand. Mercedes leaps into the dark  shaft of the attic stairway, catching and  propelling herself by the palms of her hands against the  walls. James seizes her by the wrists as she
  
lands in the hallway, and nearly drops  the bayonet, now at an angle. Lily  doesn't take her eyes off it.
  "I'm not going to hurt Frances. I'm after the  man who's been at her, that's all." He's  starting to feel the liquor now. "My little girl  ..."
  He wheels to face the top of the stairs leading  down to the front hall and he puts his bayonet  hand on the railing, "I'll be right back."
  Mercedes puts a hand over Lily's eyes.  Then she pushes her father down the stairs.

  The ground slopes sharply upward. They've  reached the hill with the drift mine cut into it.
  "There's a bit of a climb," says Frances.  "I'll go in front." He bends to the hill  and they start up.
  She gasps and her hand slips from his, he  flings out an arm catching the sleeve of her  uniform, "You okay?"
  "Yes." She gets up. "... Ow."
  "Wait now." He lifts her into his arms.  Light as a feather. She slips an arm around his  neck of necessity and, with quiet dignity,  "Thank you." He carries her up the hill.
  "There." He places her gently on the ground  before an arch of complete darkness.
  "You can go now, Mr. Taylor."
  He is nonplussed. He can't just leave her  here, in the dark, can he?
  "Wait, Frances, don't you have a  flashlight, have you got a blanket or something in  there?"
  "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine.  Goodbye."
  She turns, becomes pure shadow, then is  swallowed by the mouth of the mine.
  "Frances?"
  But she doesn't answer. He shifts his  weight. He leans into the darkness, "Frances."
  He hesitates. He enters the pit.  Feeling his way with one hand along the damp  wall, the other hand outstretched, walking slowly,  slowly, listening for her steps, "Frances?" Why  is he whispering, and why does she not answer?  Step, step, step over the uneven floor. He  lets go of the wall and lights a match--nothing but  the dank shine to one side of him and below, his dusty  boots looking up at him so trusting. The light
  
goes out. Step. Step. Both hands  outstretched now, he walks for two long  minutes. He stubs his toe on a stone sending it  scudding for an instant, then three counts of silence  before a wet plonk. That sound is called cutting  the Devil's throat--no splash, deep water.  His heart kicks, he claws for the wall but it's  farther away than he thought, which pitches him to the  void in the opposite direction--he throws himself  toward his feet, hurting his shoulder. The floor was  closer than he thought. He lies curled on his  side for a moment almost sick with relief. To fall  into God knows how deep a flooded shaft in the  dark--the first heavy sinking, then panicking, losing  up from down, that's how you drown even when you're quite  a good swimmer.
  He takes a big breath and no sooner  returns to his feet than "What if she's  fallen in?" He didn't hear a splash, but  then she slipped away so quickly, it could have  happened before he stepped into the mine, either that or--  he lights his last match, yes a wide pool,  black water--she may have slid beneath the  surface, intending all along to drown herself tonight.  The match goes out. He lowers himself carefully  to the floor, stretches out on his stomach and dips  an arm down into the water, a prayer in his head, his  heart full of dread, feeling around. Cold.  Nothing. Something silky. Oh Jesus! He  travels screaming over cinders, yanked along  by a sudden vise grip round his wrist, down into the  water, plunging head and shoulders, waist, his  knees grab the lip as he clutches an unseen  arm in both his hands hauling her up along with himself,  breaking the surface with a torrent the sound of a  hefty rag mop.
  She's naked. He finds her armpits and  lays her on the rough ground, she doesn't  answer, her eyes are closed, he can feel that,  he fumbles for her mouth, opens it, gasps for his  own breath--drowning people try to drown their saviors  --slips a hand beneath her head and presses his mouth  onto hers, opening the cut in her lip, he  tastes blood and it reminds him of life, still  warm, he breathes into her, she coughs and starts  to cry.
  "Are you all right, Frances, I didn't mean  to hurt you, honey, here." He wants to tear off  his jacket, shirt, wrap her up, but his clothes  are soaking wet so he folds her in his arms
  
instead.
  "I'm sorry," she cries, "I'm  sorry," and clings to him.
  "It's okay, it's okay," he pats her  shoulder blade.
  After a moment her shivering subsides and she  strokes the back of his neck, kisses his cheek,  grazing his ear, "Thank you," she rests her thigh  between his legs and brushes his mouth accidentally with her  lips, "sorry."
  "That's okay."
  "Don't leave me, please, I'm so frightened  of the dark," closer.
  "I won't leave you, but--" he's  embarrassed to find he's hard, he didn't know  till now he wanted her, still doesn't know,  "excuse me," and he moves to release her.
  "That's okay," she whispers, kissing his mouth,  moving next to him, "ohhh," she says and her  fingers sink into his shoulders. He pulls her a  little closer without meaning to, she sighs again and  reaches down, "that's okay little Ginger Man," her  voice is so gentle, she undoes his pants and  slides against him, "that's okay ..." and she  says his secret name. He moans. Misery and  desire, because with that she's onto him and all around  him and he can only move inside her.
  Ginger's private name must not be written down.  It's bad enough that Frances knows it.

  When Mercedes' hand uncovers Lily's  eyes, Lily sees her father lying bunched up at  the foot of the stairs. The bayonet has landed a  safe six steps above him. In retrospect,  Mercedes calculates that he was highly  unlikely to land anywhere near the blade, considering  the position of his hand on the railing and its loose  grip on the weapon at the time of the fall.  Furthermore, he was sufficiently drunk  to render the fall likely nonlethal. But  Mercedes faces the fact that she merely pushed.  And calculated later. She has not read Dr.  Freud. She takes no solace in the  subconscious. She takes responsibility.  She decides in that moment to stop her penance in the  coal cellar. It appears to her suddenly as so  much whining. Yes, she will confess this sin of pushing  her father. But she knows now that no good act is ever  unaccompanied by evil. That is what original  sin has done to us. That is what makes us
  
human. The necessity of sin itself is the  cross we must bear.
  God did not put me on this earth to stand by while  my sister Frances is killed. Beaten is one  thing. Wrongly touched is one thing. Stabbed with a  bayonet is another. Push. Be strong enough  to carry the burden of sin that goes with doing the right  thing. There is only one saint in this family and  I'm not it.
  God has made Mercedes a judge. No  one loves you for that. Not like a crippled child who's  prone to visions. Whom Mercedes prizes. Not like  a fallen woman who makes people laugh. Whom  Mercedes loves.
  Mercedes is standing straight as steel, staring  down at James. Brown-eyed people are popularly  believed to be soft somewhere. And warm. Look again.
  Lily walks carefully down the stairs in her  bare feet, holding onto both railings. She  bends over James. A line of spit runs from  the corner of his mouth. She strokes his hair and  gives him a kiss on the cheek. His eyelashes  flutter. She looks up at Mercedes, and  says, "He's not dead."
  "Good. Now go to bed."

  Curled deep in the hope chest left open  by James, Trixie hears Frances call her  name and leaps out, padding down the stairs, across the  hall and into the room Frances used to share with  Lily. But Frances is not here. There's just  Lily kneeling at the window, her hands folded  on the ledge, looking out. Trixie brushes the  soles of Lily's feet as Mercedes swishes  past the bedroom door, the bayonet flashing in  her hand. Up in the darkness of the attic, Mercedes  dumps everything back into the hope chest as quickly as  possible, pressing its lid down snug against air  and moths.

  Frances's eyes burst open. She had a  dream about Trixie just now. Frances was calling and  calling her but Trixie was locked in a box and  smothered. It was just a dream. Don't move.  Don't wake this man who's crushing me now.
  Frances doesn't want to have to stand up and lose  any of his goodness down her legs. And she'll have  to stand up if he awakens because he'll be clamoring  to get out of here, wondering what in the name of God  he's done, and if he leaves she'll have to go with
  
him because she sure as shooting doesn't  intend to walk the five miles home. Not in what  she hopes is her delicate condition. She'll  lie still for another couple of hours.

  "Wiggle your toes."
  James groans and lolls his head. Mercedes  pours more ice water on his face and he  uncrumples with a jerk.
  "Good," she says. She gets behind him,  hooking her hands under his arms, and yanks him into a  sitting position.
  "Help me now," she orders. He slumps  onto his knees. She gets him standing, then  hauls him like timber into the front room, where he  collapses onto the couch and passes out again.  She looks at him with her arms folded for a  moment, then leaves and returns with a blanket.  She tosses it over him.
  Advancing steadily toward the front of her  mind is the memory of what she and Frances can't  know together out loud. She has kept this memory on  top of a pile of things at the back of her mind.  Not buried. Right there where she can see it every time she  passes the open door. But as long as she keeps  it in the back room, she can believe that it belongs  with the rest of the old junk. As long as she  doesn't talk about it, it can remain overlooked  by amateurs and experts alike: the gilt frame  covered with dust, the painting gummed over with  neglect--who would guess what a piece of work  lies dormant there.
  But it has stirred. Torn itself from its frame,  and now it's coming closer and closer--stop. That's  far enough.
  Mercedes takes the cap off the lemon oil and  picks up her dust rag. If she's going  to look at what just arrived behind her eyes, she  has to have something to occupy her hands.
  It was here in the living room. The painting from the  junk pile is called Daddy and Frances in  the Rocking Chair. But there never was a rocking  chair, in this room or any other. Just the pale  green wingback. Mercedes' white rag goes  round and round, bringing up the mahogany sheen on the  piano.
  It was the night of Kathleen's funeral. I  got up because Frances was gone from our bed. You could  see her imprint in the snow sheets and pillow.  I looked out at the creek but she's not there.
  
Good. Maybe she's gone downstairs for  something to eat. She must be hungry by now, she  hasn't had anything but imaginary food for two  days. I will go downstairs too, and make  cinnamon toast. I pictured myself and Frances  eating cinnamon toast and drinking cocoa at the  kitchen table, but I didn't put on my tartan  housecoat or my slippers, which is how I know  now I didn't really believe in the cinnamon  toast. Bad things happen when Frances gets out  of bed. I'm not afraid of the dark. I had two  long french braids. On my way down the  stairs I heard a sound like a puppy. I  walked down the stairs towards the light spilling  through the front-room archway on the right. To the  left is the dark kitchen and a smell like the inside  of someone's body. In the front room the reading  lamp will be on, the yellow one with the pleated shade  that stands over the wingback chair. I get to the  archway. I was right, it is the reading lamp.  Frances is there looking at me already. I wonder  how long she's been waiting for me. She had  blond ringlets then and no laugh lines. She's  sitting on Daddy's lap, sideways, facing  me. Rocking. He's rocking her. But it's not  working, she's wide awake. He doesn't see  me because he's looking into her hair. His mouth is  open a little, an upside-down new moon.
He's making the sound. The skin on his face  looks pulled back by an undertow, his head is  straining forward not to drown. His right hand hovers,  barely touching the halo of yellow fuzz Frances  gets from turning on her pillow, and his left hand  is under and up her nightgown like a puppeteer's.  He says something I can't hear, then breathes up  hard through his nose, then "my little girl," and the  chewed-up word "beautiful," then he shoves her  down between his legs and pins one hand across her chest,  the other one still operating underneath, they're both  facing in the same direction now but Frances  turns her face to keep our eyes together. His  head snaps back and he jams her up between his  legs once, again, three times and a half, until  he trembles at the ceiling. That's when the fear  goes out of him and he crumples around her and  cries into her hair. Frances and I keep  looking at each other until he falls asleep  like that, then she crawls out from behind his arms and walks  over to me. "It doesn't hurt," she says.
Now I see a piece of him behind the narrow opening
  
in his pants. I go get the crocheted  comforter from the sofa and I put it over him without  looking again, it's rude to stare. Sizzling comes from  the kitchen across the hall. I don't like that smell  of kidneys cooking. "Me neither," says  Frances. We go back upstairs to bed and I sing  songs to her until I fall asleep. The next  day, Frances sucked on dough and Mumma died in  the kitchen.
  The piano is a mirror but Mercedes is not  staring at herself, she's staring at her father passed out  beneath the crocheted blanket.
  "Mercedes?"
  "What are you doing up, Lily?"
  "Is Frances home yet?"
  "No."
  "Are you worried this time?"
  "Yes."
  "I know where she is. Ambrose told me."  Lily can't tell Mercedes how she knows where  Frances goes when she doesn't come home. That  would mean tattling on Frances for scaring the pee out  of her that day at the old French mine when they were  supposed to be at Brownies and Guides. It  would also mean revealing that it was Frances who told  Lily about Ambrose in the first place, and where  he lives now and what he does at night. If  Mercedes finds that out, she might start treating  Frances as though she too were special to God.  Frances wouldn't like that. She might run away.  Or worse, if Mercedes finds out that  Ambrose is a gift from Frances, she might  think Ambrose is evil.
  Mercedes knows Frances is bad but loves her  anyway, because however hard it is to be the good one in  the family, it is harder still to be the bad one.  Lily understands that. Who in the world does Lily  love more than Frances? Not even Daddy. Who in  the world does she fear more than Mercedes, whose  cocoa tin has filled twenty times over against  Lily's fourteenth birthday, when they will journey  to Lourdes along with throngs of other special people  who come to bathe in Our Lady's own creek and  leave their specialness behind for ever? Lily has  promised herself, her little leg, that--number one--  she will never let it be cut off. And--number two  --she will never let it be obliterated by a  miracle. The idea of betraying so valiant a  limb, which has carried and marched beyond the call of  duty. To say, here is your reward: to cease to be
  
--to become, instead, a false twin for the  good leg. Her bad leg is special because it is  so strong. Lily has learned, however, that to others  it is special because it is weak. No one, not  even Our Lady, will get their holy waters on  her little leg.
  I can't tell Mercedes the true history of  Ambrose, thinks Lily. Mercedes loves me  because I'm special to God. If she thinks  I'm special to the Devil, I might have to run  away. I saw through the cracks in Mercedes'  fingers how Daddy wound up at the bottom of the  stairs.
  "Where?" Mercedes has no expression on her  face.
  Lily looks up at Mercedes and the bump  appears faintly in her forehead. "Ambrose  says not to worry. It's not a bad man she's  with."
  Lily is fairly sure that at least the  latter part is true. Daddy was away at work  today, Mercedes was off cleaning the sacristy at  Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church and Lily  was in her room starting a diary--"Dear Diary,  Allow me to introduce myf"--when Frances  ran down from the attic and past the bedroom door,  where Lily caught a glimpse of her and cried,  "Frances!"
  But Frances clattered down the front hall  stairs, catapulting over the last five steps,  hitting the floor with a thump and a spring to the door.  Lily took the stairs as fast as she dared,  "Frances, what happened to you?" stumbling and clinging  to the railing halfway down. "Frances!" cried  Lily.
  "Fwances!" she mocked back, yanking open the  door and turning to grin up at Lily, the left  side of her face all bloody, her Guide  neckerchief soaked. Tears sprang to Lily's  eyes but Frances said as though stating the obvious,  "Don't worry, Lily, it's not real  blood."
  And she was gone.
  Lily went up to the attic but all she found  there was the empty coal scuttle. She touched the  lip of it and her finger came away red. She  tasted it. Salt and iron. She washed the  scuttle in the bathroom and took it back down  to the cellar.
  Lily can't tell Mercedes that Frances beat
  
herself up. Mercedes might think Frances  is crazy. That too can be grounds for specialness  to God.
  "Go get dressed, Lily."

  Mercedes has never driven the car before.  James always parks it in second gear so it has  stayed in second the whole way, Mercedes  gripping the wheel and peering forward into the lit-up  darkness.
  "She has a beat-up face, but the man  didn't do it."
  "I know, Lily."
  Lily looks sharply across at Mercedes and  tests her cautiously; "I saw how it  happened."
  Mercedes returns the look. "Did he see  you watching?"
  "I don't think so."
  "Don't worry, Lily, he'll never touch  her again"--It's on the tip of Lily's tongue  to say, "It wasn't Daddy," but she doesn't.  The fog has settled and they are in the midst of a  soft void--it's as though they've ceased to travel  forward at all, the car just rocking gently side  to side. Mercedes returns her eyes to the blind  windshield--"I won't let him."
  They crawl along in silence for a while. You can  tell where the edge of the road is by reaching out through the  passenger window till you feel the pine needles  going by. Lily loses herself in this task but  gives a start when something chilly alights on her  other hand.
  "Say a little prayer with me for Daddy,  Lily." And Mercedes closes her hand around    Lily's. "Let us ask God to forgive him."
  "Because he knows not what he does ..." says  Lily.
  "Let's say a decade of the beads."  "Did you bring a rosary?"
  "We don't need a rosary, Lily. We have  faith."
  But Mercedes needs to count something, so she counts  the nubs of the wooden steering wheel, a nub for each  whispered prayer, allowing them to slip beneath her  fingers. One. By one. By one.
  By the time Mercedes' left hand has gone three  times around the steering wheel, her other hand has  drained the warmth from Lily's and they both of them  are cold. An increase in the pressure of their
  
backs against the seat tells them that the  road has started to ascend. The last strands of  fog caress the car, releasing it back into time and  space and night.
  "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the  Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and  ever shall be--"
  "Turn here."
  "That's not a road, Lily."
  "I know."
  They lurch and rumble through squealing branches  till the back of a truck appears in their  lights. Mercedes feels her eyes and stomach go  watery. She reads the name stenciled there, "Leo  Taylor Transport."
  "He's not a bad man, Mercedes."
  Their lights fade from the rear of the truck. They  get out of the car. Mercedes has brought Daddy's  old pit lantern. She lights it.
  It's a sin for Lily to let Mercedes think it  was Daddy who beat up Frances. But he has  done it in the past. Surely truth can be borrowed  across time without perishing. Shelf life, so to speak.  Though Lily knows the man in the mine with Frances  did not hit her, she is nevertheless worried. In  the movies, when a girl is interested in a man  she gets dressed up, powders her nose and  puts on a little lipstick. But what kind of man  is it for whom a girl would see fit to render herself  more attractive by bashing in her own face?
  Lily and Mercedes walk slowly, scraping  their way through the woods, pinning back boughs for  each other. Lily strains to spot the trail that  Frances blazed in the trees that November day  almost three years ago. She hasn't mentioned the  trail to Mercedes. After all this time, you'd never  notice the marks unless you knew they were there.  Frances carved each one with the kitchen scissors.  Scissors have not changed since ancient  history. The Egyptians had scissors and  eyeshadow and jewelry and pet cats just as we do,  it's in a beautiful golden book that Lily got  for Christmas from Daddy, Secrets of King  Tut. But they didn't have the wheel.
  "Do you think the Egyptians had the wheel,  Mercedes?"
  "I'm sure I neither know nor greatly care."  "I think they did but it was too holy to them  to draw it. Or else they wanted to keep it a  secret."
  
  Mercedes stops. "How much farther?"
  "We're halfway there." They've just passed  the tree marked with an R--the fourth of seven  letters, each spaced seven trees apart.
  "After all," Lily continues, "they worshiped  the sun and the sun is round." Lily counts seven  trees and stops again.
  Mercedes holds the lantern up to a gouge in  the bark where Lily is peering.
  "What are you looking at?"
  "O" Lily reads. Then turns  to Mercedes. "We're almost there."
  Mercedes knows only that her sister is being  guided. She looks down into Lily's eyes, and  Lily feels her back open up like a book on  either side of her spine, onto a dark and endless  corridor full of something Mercedes craves.  This is the look of Reverence. Like the look of  Pity, it is frightening. But Lily has learned  how to remain Lily while receiving such a look.  She holds her eyes the way you might hold your  arms when looking up at someone who is in danger  of falling from a high place: still, steady,  outstretched. This discourages the person from jumping  and killing you both, for perhaps they just wanted to know there  was someone waiting below to catch them. The way Lily  looks when she calmly holds out her eyes in this  manner is what the lookers of Pity and Reverence  call "beatific."
  "Are you tired, Lily?" Mercedes asks  gently, allowing Lily's back to close up  again.
  "No. We're almost there."
  And they walk on. S. And finally, E.  "Up there." Lily points.
  Mercedes raises the lantern to the sudden  incline of the hill. "You'd better wait here,  Lily."
  "No. I better come."
  They hold hands and traverse the hill.  Unlike Frances, Mercedes paid attention at  Guides and learned how to climb a steep hill  without falling, how to swim safely across a  current.
  Mercedes knows that Frances is no stranger  to men, she only wonders how Frances has  avoided pregnancy for so long. But tonight is  different. For Daddy to be upset, it has to be.  "Different how?" Mercedes wondered, as soon as  James was prone at the foot of the stairs. She
  
has been going over that question and she has  come up with an answer. It was Lily saying that  Frances was not with "a bad man" that tipped  Mercedes off. It must be that Frances is in  love. Planning to elope with this man, whoever he  is. But why elope? There must be some obstacle.  The man must be married.
  What would become of Frances, on the run with a    man not bound by law to look after her? How long could  anyone, man or woman, put up with Frances?  Who else but Mercedes knows how to love  Frances? And where would Frances and her lover be by the  time he'd had enough? Hundreds, perhaps thousands of  miles away, maybe in another country.  Frances stranded, without money or love, would die  far from home. Mercedes can't bear the thought. It  burns her throat and salts her eyes. Dear  Frances. My little Frances, alone, dying and no  one there to love her because no one there remembers.
  Mercedes bends to the hill, they're almost there,  "Hurry, Lily." Thank you God, thank you  Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints,  for Lily, who is divinely inspired. If  Lily's premonition proves correct and  prevents Frances from running away, then that will be  a miracle indeed. Time enough to contact the  archdiocese once Frances is safely home.
  The old pit lantern lights up the rim of the  arch--torn earth, a fringe of tangled grass, a  limestone gash and, within, the gleaming textures of the  walls. Cave paintings would never last in here,  too damp.
  Mercedes calls softly, "Frances."
  Lily whispers, "The tunnel goes around a  bend, then there's a pool of deep water."
  Please God, let it be a good man.
  They walk in.
  "Frances."
  Frances will hide, Mercedes thinks, so she  proceeds slowly, casting the lantern from side  to side, examining every nook and cranny. Lily  keeps her eyes on her feet, waiting for the  yelp of fear when Mercedes sees the dead miner,  the dead soldier. But it doesn't come. As with so  much else of what she remembers, Lily  wonders, was it just a dream? Did that happen? Was  that really me?
  The corridor begins to curve to the left.  Frances has heard her name and shoves Ginger  off her. He wakes, cold with misery, full of
  
apology.
  "Shut up," she says. "Someone's coming."  She feels around for the rock under which she hid her  uniform.
  "Stay here, Frances, I'll go and see who it  is."
  "It's my sister and Christ only knows who  else," scuffling into her clothes.
  He's bewildered. The water of the pool was not as  cold as this.
  "Frances, I didn't mean to take  advantage of you."
  She laughs, hauling on her shoes.  This time they both hear her name.
  "Sweet Jesus." He feels for his fly and  buttons up. Her footsteps start away.  Ginger flails out and catches her bicep, so  fragile.
  "Ow." She writhes but he won't let her go.  "Where are you going?"
  "Home."
  "What's the matter with you, girl?"  "Get your hands off me."
  "I'm sorry I touched you, if I got you in  trouble, if I hurt you--"
  She laughs. He lets her go.  "Look"--she's all business--"just forget about  it. We both got what we wanted."
  "You wanted me to help you."  "You did, thank you. If this doesn't work then  I'm probably infertile, since you obviously  aren't."
  At this he seizes her again, pinning her elbows  against her ribs. "What do you mean?" He's  shocked by his own anger.
  "Relax, buddy, I don't want anything  else from you. And I won't tell anyone if you  don't."
  But he doesn't let her go. His hot breath  is on her face. He feels he could break her  in two right this instant, just like that, and it scares him.  Frances knows better. If a man is going  to hurt you badly, the first blow will come within three  seconds. It's been over ten now, and he's still  just hanging on and heaving air.
  "Come on, Leo. You liked it, I could  tell."
  "I saved your life."
  "My fuzzy arse, you did."
  He falters, not wanting to take it in just yet.
  
  "What about your daddy, you can't go  back, he'll kill you."
  She goes all haughty and upper crust.
"My father has never laid a hand on me." He  lets her go. A light appears around the bend.  Frances walks toward it.
  He never does see who or how many have come for  her. Of everything, perhaps he's most ashamed of  staying behind, cowering in reliance on her promise not  to tell. But what would happen to his family if  he were killed here tonight? Disgrace and destitution.
  At the thought of his family, Ginger emerges from  what seems to him now to have been a narcotic  haze. There in the dripping mine, his head feels  clear and whole for the first time in he doesn't know  how long. Since New York. His heart is  heavy, leaking and frayed, but it is his own. He  feels acutely present in every particle of his  body and his body is more worn than it was last time  he looked--like the body of a loved one, long thought  dead, who returns looking older but so much more like  himself than anything recorded in memory or  photographs. He is filled with the joy and  sorrow of the reunion with himself. Forgiveness.

  The sun is about to show. The rifle jiggles on  Adelaide's knees and she can't help a  yawn. Teresa exchanges a look with
Wilfrid Beel. Wilf says, "There's a  hunting cabin down this road I used to use, if  it's still there it's a likely spot--"
  "Never mind, Wilf," says Adelaide.
"Let's go home, he's probably there waiting  on me by now."
  Teresa is relieved. They've been driving  Addy around all night wearing her out with dirt  roads, they drove halfway to Meat Cove, and  it's finally worked. Teresa wasn't worried that  their search would turn up anything. She just wanted  to keep Adelaide away from the Piper house with  that rifle. She's got a short wick, her  sister-in-law, God love her. No good  telling her that Ginger wouldn't touch that ghost of a  girl with a ten-foot pole.
  Adelaide is right. When they pull up in  front of her house it's light enough to see through the  windows of the locked double doors that Ginger's  truck is safely inside the garage.
  
  When Frances greeted Lily and Mercedes in  the mine she just said, "Did you bring the car?"
  Mercedes was so relieved she didn't at first  notice Lily straying round the bend whence  Frances had appeared. "Lily, we're going  home now."
  "What about the man?"
  "He has his own vehicle," answered  Mercedes. She did not wish to see what lay  around the bend. It was enough for her that Frances was content  to leave it behind.
  Once home, Frances refuses to take a  bath, "I had one last night." When Mercedes  tries her strong-arm matron thing, Frances  resists like a cat, clinging hands and feet to the  sides of the tub till Mercedes gives up.  Then Frances washes her hands, her face and  feet while Mercedes stands waiting with a fresh  towel.
  "Are you in love with him?"  Frances just snorts.
  "Do you plan to see him again?"  "What, are you jealous, Mercedes?"
  "I don't want you to get hurt."  "Maybe you're a lezzy, Mercedes, did you  ever think of that? Have you tried it? Want to? We  could." Frances laughs without finding it funny,  nothing seems that funny anymore, she has a  delicious tired feeling creeping up.
  "Are you hungry?" asks Mercedes.  "Yes."
  "I'll make us some cinnamon toast." And  she turns to leave.
  "Mercedes?"
  Mercedes pauses in the bathroom door but  does not turn. Frances continues, "I'm going  to be good from now on. I'm going to have a healthy  baby."
  Mercedes takes a breath and lowers her head.  "Mercedes?"
  "Yes?"
  "Can we have cocoa too?"
  "Of course."

  "Come in for a cuppa?"
  Wilf and Teresa politely decline.  Adelaide enters her house, dog tired.
  Ginger has made tea and tea biscuits, and  he is freshly bathed and changed. He says
  
to his wife, "Addy, I'm going  to tell you everything, and then you can tell me if you  want me to leave."
  "Gimme a cuppa tea first, Leo." She  sinks onto a kitchen chair with a physical  relief that would make sense if she had spent the  night walking instead of driving.
  By the end of his story Adelaide's freckles  are more prominent than before, but that could be because she's  tired. He breaks the silence that follows with "You  want me to go?"
  "No."
  "I can only stay if you can forgive me,  otherwise there's no point."
  She looks at him across the tea. It's as  though a mist had cleared from his face. He's  back. She gets a retroactive shiver at the  thought of how he's been lost and wandering in a  wilderness not his own.
  "Can you forgive yourself?" she asks.  "I think I have. Because, you see, she's gone  right out of me."
  "I believe you."
  "But do you forgive me?"
  "That's what I said."
  "You said--"
  "I forgive you." She never cries. So when  she does, the tears are hot pepper.
  "I'm sorry," he says.
  She wraps him up with her long muscles,  graceful bone blades, reddish halo.  "Don't ever leave me."
  "I never, never will."
  "I love you."
  "I love you."
  She runs a hand over his half-inch of soft  rough hair, squeezes his shoulders, loses her  narrowness in the fold of his belly and feels her  back supported by his arms, which are as strong as  they look. They hold each other and think about all  their children and feel in themselves no limit to what they can  make together, what they can give to each other. She  slips her hands onto his hips. Upstairs the  baby awakens. Morning.

       A New and Glorious Morn

  Across town, Camille makes her first pot of  tea as a widow. The word isn't in yet about her  son but she knows about the loss of her husband. A
  
very young Mountie banged on the door just  before midnight. She hadn't been going to open up  for him, thinking it was a raid; then she figured,  what's the difference? It's not as though her husband  has kept her in the style to which a successful  gin-slinger's wife might reasonably expect  to become accustomed. So she opened up and the  Mountie said with a long face, "I'm sorry,  missus, but I have some bad news for you." Then  he came out with the anticlimax of a lifetime.
  The first of Camille's sons to arrive home  had difficulty opening the front door against the  weight of her steamer trunk.
  "Ma, what's going on?"
  She lumbered down the stairs with a hatbox in  one hand and a suitcase containing her wedding gown in  the other. "Your father's dead, I'm going home."
  Now Camille fixes a cup of tea the way  Pa likes it and carries it up the stairs to his  bedroom. It's dawn. He doesn't know she's  here. She's going to surprise him.

  Mercedes sits on the piano bench and watches  James until his eyes snap open at dawn.  It's a habit he got in the war. She takes  a reading on his position.
  "What do you remember from last night?"  James blinks, crystal-blue and innocent.
  "Wake up," she says. The last thing  Mercedes wants right now is to see him as a  tousled little boy. He jerks to a sitting  position, where he finds his headache waiting for  him. It tightens over his scalp and he ages the  forty years back to reality.
  "What happened?" he asks.
  "You got drunk and fell."
  He winces and looks at the floor. Then he  remembers, "Where's Frances?"
  "Frances is sleeping, sit down."
  He's fully awake now and has registered  Mercedes' unaccustomed tone. He looks at  her, and sits back down slowly. "What did  I do?"
  "You tried to touch Lily."
  His hands fly up to keep his shattered face from  spilling onto the carpet, a moan oozes out between  his fingers. Mercedes feels a twinge of  compunction, then thrusts the point of her lie under and  up, "I had to drag you off her."
  He doubles over, caught in the ribs, his moan
  
turns to a squeak. Mercedes gives  quarter. "She didn't wake up."
  His head starts shaking no behind his hands, he  leaves the sofa without straightening up, to do so might  be to lose his guts, and he staggers out of the room,  out of the house like that. Mercedes hears the car engine  start. If her father chooses to drive himself over a  cliff, so be it. And if Mercedes burns an  extra millennium in purgatory as a  result, that's simply the cost of doing business  with God. The bottom line is that she has  rescued Frances. Finally. Mercedes is neither a  saint nor a sinner. She is somewhere in between. She  is why purgatory was invented.

  Over a late and unusually hearty breakfast,  Frances reads about the accident in the Cape  Breton Post. Jameel, well, that  doesn't much matter either way, her days as a  booze queen being over, but Boutros--that is a  relief. The way he looked at her. Not like the  other fellas. Brooding, as if he wanted  something she didn't have for sale. What that could be,  she could only imagine as rape.
  "Are you sure you want more porridge,  Frances?"
  "Look, Lily, that's our cousin and our  uncle by marriage."
  Lily refills Frances's bowl and reads the  headline, ""Hero's Death For Whitney Pier  Man."" The story reports that the brand-new  1932 8-cylinder Kissel swerved to avoid a  carload of Congregation of Notre Dame nuns  on their way back to Holy Angels from an  evening spent at a massed choir practice.
  "Mercedes was there!"
  "So what, Lily?"
  "Well she said Sister Saint Monica  offered her a drive home but she said she wanted  to walk, but if she'd taken the drive then the  sisters wouldn't have passed the car with our cousin and  uncle in it and they wouldn't've crashed."
  "Yeah, Lily, and if a zillion  invertebrates hadn't died around here a  trillion stupid years ago, we wouldn't have a  gravel driveway."
  Lily reads on. "It says the Mounties  got to the car and knew someone else was driving because  "Mr. Jameel was lodged in the passenger  side of the vehicle. Boutros Jameel was found
  
on the rail tracks. After having  crashed to avoid the nuns, he walked two  miles toward New Waterford in the throes of  death, presumably in order to fetch a doctor  for his father.""
  Frances is thoroughly creeped. Imagine that  enormous living dead man slouching toward New  Waterford, set to heave himself on her with his dying  breath. Just how hard it was for him to be killed is  a measure of what she would have been in for if he  had ever got his massive mitts on her.

  The young Mountie guides his cruiser over a  well-worn dirt track through the woods,  following a crudely drawn map. Jameel was  a half-decent businessman. He kept a  strict account of all his transactions in a  small leather-bound notebook that the Mountie found  tucked in his breast pocket at the crash site.  Jameel had been careful not to use any real  names, however. His code name for James: The  Enklese Bastard. The penciled map leading to the  distillery of The Enklese Bastard was an  incautious but temporary measure--he drew it  according to James's instructions over the phone when  Taylor quit.
  X marks the spot, but when the young Mountie  pulls up this morning expecting either to nab his man  or to lie in wait, all that's left of X is  a charred patch of earth and some smoking planks.  So much for corpus delicti. The Mountie  turns round and heads back to Sydney. He  doesn't see the tan Buick sedan parked in a  gully nearby.

  "Is she going to holler rape?"
  "No."
  The Cape Breton Post is on
Teresa's kitchen table. She and Adelaide have  agreed that Ginger picked as good a time as any  to quit Jameel's. Hector is in his usual  place, rocking. Teresa pours Adelaide more  tea.
  "What makes you so sure?" Teresa asks.  "'Cause she got what she wanted, so she  said."
  "What's that?"
  "A baby."
  Teresa is struck dizzy but doesn't let  on. She sits down carefully and commences to stir
  
and stir her tea, asking, "Do you  believe that?"
  "If she timed it right, sure. You can tell if  it takes, you know, I always could right from the first  one."
  Adelaide feels bad suddenly because here she  is talking to Teresa about how a woman knows when  she's pregnant, while Teresa herself is bound  never to be so, though it's what she wanted most.
  Adelaide has always wondered how a head  injury could injure a man's sexual power. That  steel bar never fell on Hector's  privates, his seed must be good as ever, and he's not  downright paralyzed, just all over reduced. If it  had been Adelaide, she'd have seen if he still  worked, then she would have got a baby from him.  Hector loves children. They could have managed. She  and Ginger would've helped look after it. But  Adelaide knows Teresa is different, altogether  finer. She's like royalty, the real kind, not  snobbish, just innately fine. You can't picture  Teresa straddling a broken-down man for his seed.  So if Hector still does work in that way,  Adelaide's certain Teresa hasn't tested  him out. Teresa's in her forties. Soon she'll  be too old, if she isn't already.
  "Addy, what if it's true?"
  "Don't worry, Trese, I've got  something in mind."
  "Addy--"
  "Trese, don't ask, 'cause I'm not  telling anyone beforehand, I don't want anyone  changing my mind this time or driving me all over  hell's half acre." Adelaide gives
Hector a pat on the head and goes home  to get supper. "Thanks for the tea, girl."
  Teresa sees her to the door and returns to the  kitchen, where Hector is staring up at the top  cupboard with a worried look in his eye.
  "Don't worry, honey," she tells  Hector, "it's still there."
  But she goes to the back room to fetch the  stepladder, intending to take a look just to be  sure. Teresa is not one to clamber on kitchen  counters.

  Adelaide has told no one of what she  intends to do. She has forgiven Ginger. She has  forgiven Teresa for taking her off the scent last  night. But it has been demonstrated that, in this
  
matter, she can trust only herself. She  has planned it carefully and this time no one is  going to stop her.
  Just after supper, she gets on her bicycle  with the long wicker baskets attached to the sides.  When her business was thriving she could carry whole  bolts of fabric in them. Today she carries  something else in one of them. She rides the Shore  Road to New Waterford. The beginnings of a  beautiful sunset.
  Adelaide could wait three months and find out  if Frances really is pregnant before doing what  she means to do. But what's the point? If she's  not pregnant she's likely to start harassing him  again. Coming around. The most disturbing part of Leo's  disturbing story was that Frances knew  Adelaide's secret name for him. She'd  practically have to have been in bed with them to know that.  And a girl who would inflict an injury on herself,  risk drowning to get what she wants--wouldn't such  a girl also use blackmail? Accuse Leo of  rape if he doesn't give her what she  wants? Adelaide pumps the pedals harder,  ignoring the blazing sky to her right and the sparkling  water to her left.

  Mercedes is walking home from her talk with the  priest. He has agreed to inform the bishop. His  Grace will then decide whether it is  appropriate to interview Lily with regard to the  growing list of remarkable events--without, of  course, letting Lily know the reason for his  inquiry. Mercedes lifts her face to the  slanting sun. Everything has turned a ruddy  gold, God's blessing at its most gentle,  "all's right with the world." The calamities of  Frances have peaked just as Lily's sanctity is  at its most evident and Mercedes is grateful  to find herself up to handling both. Tomorrow she will go  to confession and obtain absolution for wronging her  father.
  When she gets home she is disturbed to see that  the car is still gone, and she withstands a wave of dread  at the sight of Sister Saint Monica waiting  for her in the front room. Mercedes knows Sister  Saint Monica via the massed choir, where they  struck up an immediate, if formal, rapport. But  "bad news" is all Mercedes can think at the  sight of wimple and robes at this particular  moment. Lily has shown the sister in and given her
  
a cup of tea and a date square.
Mercedes seats herself in the wingback chair and  gently dismisses Lily, steeling herself to receive the  news of her father's death.
  But no. It's something else altogether. Sister  Saint Monica was at the wheel when Boutros  went careering across their path to his death, and she had  seen, moments earlier, Frances in a truck with a  colored man.
  "I meant to tell you immediately, Mercedes, but the  accident temporarily removed it from my thoughts."
  Mercedes confides in Sister Saint Monica  as to Frances's likely predicament.
  "God forgive me."
  "Sister, you are blameless in this situation."  But both women know that no one is blameless.
  "Had I reacted swiftly, it is likely  Frances would not have succeeded in putting herself in the  way of temptation."
  "Sister, I would not have burdened you with this knowledge,  except for the fact that I must make plans for  Frances and I don't know where else to turn for  sound advice."
  "Of course."
  It's the least Sister Saint Monica can do.  There is much to discuss. At what point Frances  ought to leave New Waterford, the place of her  lying-in ... "I'll arrange for the convent at  Mabou. They have an excellent infirmary."
  The knowledge that it is to be a colored child is most  useful in determining its future. First of all,  there is now no question of keeping it.  Illegitimacy is a terrible but invisible  blot, whereas miscegenation cannot be concealed. Neither  mother nor child deserves to live thus doubly stained.  Such is the charitable view. Therefore, the second  issue becomes the selection of an  appropriate orphanage, bearing in mind that  adoption is unlikely under the circumstances, for  how many good Catholic white families would be  willing to take a colored child? Particularly if  it turns out to be a male child. As to good  Catholic colored families, there are few, that  community being predominantly Anglican on the  island and Baptist on the mainland. And perhaps it's  as well, thinks Mercedes, for doesn't that  branch of the human family commonly have  difficulty raising its own children, never mind those of  other people?
  "Thank you, sister."
  
  Sister Saint Monica glides  down the street in black and white, past  Adelaide on her bike. Adelaide can't for the  life of her imagine how anyone could take a vow  of cha/y, then she flashes on Teresa and has  no trouble picturing her as a nun. She lifts  the lid on her wicker basket to check her cargo  as she dismounts in front of the Piper house.

  Back at Teresa and Hector's, the rifle  is gone from on top of the kitchen cupboard.  Hector is beside himself, making squeaks that  generate a little drool down his chin, all his  language in his eyes. Somewhere inside his head  he's still all there, but moved into a cramped rear  apartment overlooking the old brain. Teresa  tries to reassure him. "Hector honey, now  settle down, everything's going to be all right."

  "Mercedes," calls Lily from the  front-room window, "there's a lady coming up the  walk."
  "Don't holler, Lily, who is it?"
  "I don't know."
  Mercedes opens the door and is about to explain  that deliveries are taken at the back when one  look indicates that the woman is not here selling  anything.
  "May I please see Miss Frances  Piper?"
  Mercedes knows now precisely who this is.  "My sister is indisposed. Won't you step  in?"
  Adelaide casts a glance back at her  bike and Mercedes adds, "I can assure you it will  be safe there, but you're welcome to bring it onto  the porch if you'd rather."
  "Yes, I'd rather do that."
  In the front room, Adelaide takes up  the spot on the sofa lately vacated by Sister  Saint Monica.
  Frances spotted Adelaide from the attic  window. Her stomach is still squirting fear as she  creeps down to the upstairs hall. She would  climb from a second-floor window but she dares  not do anything to dislodge the new growth within her.  Frances is no longer dressed as a Girl  Guide. She has put on an old shift of  Mumma's from the hope chest. Shapeless and  roomy. Although only one day pregnant,
  
Frances considers it none too soon  to dress the part. Faded floral print in  tropical reds and greens. It still smells like  Mumma--dough, rose water, moist skin and  cedar. In order to escape the house it will be necessary  for Frances to descend the stairs and pass the  front-room archway. But how? She hovers at  the top of the stairs.
  Mercedes doesn't take her eyes off the  visitor.
  "Lily, go and make a fresh pot of tea,  please."
  Lily leaves reluctantly. She has  rarely seen a black person up close. She  is fascinated by Adelaide's freckles.  Adelaide takes a good look at Lily  too, the baby that came out of the gash in Kathleen  Piper's belly.
  When Lily leaves the front room she is  hit on the side of the head with  Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley. She looks up  to see Frances at the top of the stairs miming a  zipper across her mouth. Lily picks up  Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley and goes  quietly up the stairs.
  In the front room, tea has failed  to materialize but Mercedes has forgotten it,  mesmerized by what Mrs. Taylor is saying.  "We would welcome the child into the family as our  own. It would never know, and neither would anyone  else." Adelaide's eyes sharpen ever so  slightly when she adds, "But you'd have to take  responsibility for your sister, miss."
  With this last remark, Mercedes is stung out of the  feeling of awe that stole up on her at the  woman's astonishing offer--out of the question, of course,  but Christian in its intent, however misguided.  A little moisture deserts Mercedes for all time  and evaporates to fall as rain elsewhere.
  "Mrs. Taylor. Insofar as it is possible  for anyone to be my sister's keeper, I am that.  As to the possibility of a child--and it is yet to be  confirmed--I should likewise assume  responsibility for its welfare."
  "Could you love it?"
  Mercedes is, again, astonished. Her anger  travels in like a thunderhead on a clear day.  Adelaide isn't afraid. She's waiting for  an answer.
  "You may go now, Mrs. Taylor."
  
  Mercedes gets up but Adelaide  remains seated and says, "You see, I could  love it. And I have less reason to than you do,  dear."
  There is nothing endearing in the "dear."  "I don't need you to show me where my duty  lies, Mrs. Taylor."
  "Girl, duty is your problem." Now  Adelaide gets up and leaves, adding, "Keep  your sister away from my man or I'll shoot  her, pregnant or not."
  And she goes. Mercedes starts shaking.  Luckily there's sherry in the medicine cabinet.
  On her way through New Waterford,  Adelaide reflects on the strangeness of the  Piper family. As if there weren't enough  indications, on her way out of the front room she  encountered the girl Lily pushing a big old  baby carriage, jam-packed with dolls and a  live cat, out the door. She must be thirteen or  fourteen and still playing house. Adelaide watched  as the lame girl clunked the carriage down the  porch steps, the rusty wheel-springs straining under  what seemed to be an enormous weight. What the  hell else has she got in there, wondered  Adelaide--jugs of moonshine?

  Teresa has a bicycle too. It's
Hector's old one. It's got a crossbar,  of course, and Teresa is none too pleased to have  her dress draped astride it but that can't be  helped. At least she's tall enough not to look  completely ridiculous. She used to ride this  bike in the old days, but as a passenger on the  handlebars in front of Hector, who pedaled and  swerved to make her squeal and giggle. As she  wobbles along now she marvels, was I ever that  girly? She was a real girly girl. A  princess. Everything had to be ladylike, the table  set just so when he came to her mother's house for  supper. It was perfect because Hector was a  gentleman too, or at least was growing up  into one, because at that time he was still a waggy boy.  They were not too young, though, to plan for the future.  His education and ordination as an Anglican  minister. Moving south of the border. They wanted  lots of children. People like us are the ones who should have children,  they agreed. Teresa had a dream of founding a  dynasty of people who would be a high example not  only to their own race, but to all who knew them.
  
  Way down beneath this noble aim, at the  bottom of the well, was a voice stranded without a  rope or a ladder, howling up, "I'll show them!  I'll show them all!" Exultant, exuberant;  its ferocity was the strength behind her ladylike  dignity and determination, though she could barely hear  it. She had no awareness of the power of the hopeful  rage within, which could move mountains, climb out of  wells in triumph. She did not know her own  strength. With Hector's accident the voice got  louder but it was still muffled by her determination to bear  all patiently with the help of the Lord. At the  unjust loss of her job there ceased to be any  competition for the voice at all, and she could hear it  plainly. It no longer said, "I'll show them,"  it was saying, "I'll get them." It had changed  to hate. The hate that she prayed for Jesus  to take away. But it was also part of what had kept  her going so how could she do without it now? That kind of  hate is a species of animated scrap  metal. Rusting, corroding inside, leaching into the  vital organs. Teresa is sick with it. It can  kill.

  Adelaide pulls up in front of  MacIsaac's Drugs and Confectionery. Mr.  MacIsaac is closing up for the evening, she  catches him on the way out.
  "Mr. MacIsaac, I'm Addy Taylor  from the Pier."
  "Hello, Mrs. Taylor."
  He extends his old red hand and she shakes it.  His eyes are clear these days but still kind.
  Adelaide reaches deep into her wicker  basket. "Have a swig of this, Mister Mac."
  She uncorks a brown bottle.
MacIsaac shakes his head, being two years on  the wagon.
  "It's the best ginger beer you ever tasted," says  Adelaide.
  He smiles. Takes it and drinks. It is.  Sweet up front, then sears the back of your  throat till your earwax tinkles.
  "What do you call it?"
  ""Clarisse's Island Brew.""
  "Are you from the islands, Mrs. Taylor?"  Adelaide laughs, "I'm from Halifax for a  hundred and fifty-six years, mister, where're you  from?"
  "From here for eighty or ninety years, and as far
  
as I know before that it was the Isle of  Skye, the Isle of Man and, let's see now,  the Isle of Wight."
  "Your people had a taste for islands."  "You'd think we'd've learned by now, eh?"
  He wheezes and she laughs. He orders  three cases for the store to see how it goes.

  Frances is risen from the baby carriage now that  Adelaide has ridden off on her bike. "Like  a witch on her broom," thinks Frances with a  shudder. She has sent Lily home, claiming the  need to "commune with nature."
  Part of Frances's new health regime is  moderate exercise. It's hard to know what  to believe about pregnancy when, in movies,  miscarriages are a narrative convenience as  close as the nearest flight of stairs, while in  books like Great Pioneer Women the broads  all fight bears and harvest corn right up to their  accouchement. Frances has decided upon the happy  medium of regular oceanside walks.
Romantic heroines are always being ordered to take  the sea air. Unless they are tubercular, in which  case they are banished to the land where the blood  oranges grow. Frances hasn't noticed any  tubercular tendencies in herself. In fact, with the  conviction of her pregnancy her self-image  has evolved into that of a much larger woman. Slow  and curvaceous, with a bosom instead of a chest.
  Trixie has come along for the walk. Something  about her attentive behavior, as well as the  trotting gait necessitated by her missing paw,  makes Trixie seem more canine than feline.  And she is in the habit of casting quick glances up  at Frances, checking in the way a dog does.  They arrive at the edge of the cliff. Trixie  follows as Frances traverses the stony slope,  eschewing her former habit of skidding headlong on  her hands and heels. At the bottom, Frances  pauses and takes a deep salty breath.
  She turns north and begins to stroll as though  through warm water, or as though rhythmically across the  endless wet sand of a beach she has never visited but  would know instinctively how to tread. This kind of  walking goes with her new hips, which have become  what is commonly described as "child-bearing."
  They walk on. This is the best of the summer.  Not yet eight in the evening, the sun has brought out  the green of the ocean and bathed the sky in a soothing
  
balm of fire. Days like this are so  precious. Frances stops and looks out at the  sea, which trembles at the caress of the sun.  Mumma feels near ... as though she had never  gone away. Frances is feeling a familiar  yet unnameably old feeling. One she hadn't  known was ever hers to forget. Happiness. Unlike  her imaginary new body, this feeling is genuine.
  Trixie looks up and sees Teresa standing  on the ridge above. Backlit, Teresa is  magnificently darker and brighter than ever. Seen  from far below like this, her great height is higher still.  In this light, at that height, everything becomes a  precise charcoal line. Teresa's body is a  bold vertical stroke. Bisecting her middle  is a horizontal line half as long as she is  tall. Against the red-gold blaze of evening.  Frances looks up and experiences an arrow through  her heart at the crucivision. The arrow is  love, its pain spreads outward and the pain is  faith, the source that launched the arrow was sorrow.  "Teresa," thinks Frances, and her lips move  around the name as she stretches her arms up and  holds them out to the woman standing far above.
  The horizontal line across Teresa  revolves like the needle of a compass till it  disappears into the vertical stroke of her body,  and the next instant a shot rings out. Frances  jolts through the air and onto her back against the  gravel shore.

           Precious Blood

  No one knows just how much Hector understands, not  even Teresa. She long ago ceased to look for  signs of dear Hector, it being the only way  she could come to terms with his loss. And besides, the  doctor said Hector was brain-damaged into a  cheerful vegetable. Although his only memories from  before the accident are smell feelings, Hector  has learned to understand English again the way a child  learns, in nouns and verbs and concepts. He could  learn to read again too if someone thought of teaching  him. Unlike a child, however, he will never be able  to speak the words himself. What's left to him is the  speech of dogs.
  "Hey, hey, Hector, what's the matter  b'y?"
  Old Wilf Beel has caught up  to Hector's wheelchair and pulled him to the side
  
of the road. Hector makes his sounds and  paws at Wilf's jacket, his mouth foaming with  panic, and Wilf asks, "Are you lost,  Hector?"
  Hector groans in frustration, then erupts  into rage when Wilf actually points the  wheelchair back homeward and starts pushing.
  "Whoa, whoa, whoa, b'y--" says Wilf.  But Hector flails at the armrests and wrenches  his head around in an effort to see Wilf.
  "Did you want to go visit Leo and  Adelaide, is that it, Heck?"
  And Hector can only bob his head and beam  joylessly to get the message across loud and clear,  YES! JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY,
YES!
  "Oh, well, I don't mind taking you there."  And Wilf turns the chair around again and pushes  Hector along, if more slowly than Hector was  traveling under his own steam, at least in a much  straighter line.
  "Where's Teresa at, eh Hector?"
  Hector ignores the question but Wilf doesn't  notice.

  Teresa is in a state of disbelief.  Minutes ago she was gliding along the Shore  Road on the bike, having got the hang of it in  the course of eight or so miles. She caught  sight of the figure on the beach below because of the bright  colors it wore, kindled by the full light of the  setting sun. The dress looked familiar.  Teresa laid down the bike and walked to the edge  of the cliff for a better look. The sight of the  dress awoke an emotion detached from context.  Sympathy--and ... pity. Yes. She felt  sorry for her. The woman who answered the door  in that dress, oh, long ago, a blond child at  her feet, she was married to--it's Materia  Piper's dress. A strip of gooseflesh  streaked down Teresa's left arm at the  recognition of the dress and of the wearer, whose aimless  rhythm and bearing also said Materia. There was a  small black dog down there too, trotting at  the woman's heels. Did the Pipers have a dog  back then, Teresa tried to recall as she  slowly paralleled them along the cliff, the  rifle threaded through her folded arms.
  That poor woman ... Teresa always wished she
  
had done some nice little thing for Materia,  since she was the only person Teresa had ever  met who truly seemed worse off than herself.
  Teresa doesn't believe in ghosts, nevertheless  she expected any moment the figure to shimmer and  disappear into ocean light.
  "Perhaps it is a sign," she thought, "asking me  not to harm her daughter."
  And Teresa took pity on the woman who was not  strong enough to live, but was strong enough to pierce through death  to protect her child.
  Teresa had resolved to go in peace when the  figure ceased walking, turned and looked up at  her. The Devil's face housed in a shape of  pity. Teresa watched Frances raise her arms  in triumph, a mocking smile twisting her  lips, and hiss the name "Teresa." Teresa  swung the rifle through a hundred and eighty  degrees, caught it with her shoulder, aimed and  fired. The demon jerked back and flopped like a  rag doll.
  Now Teresa is suspended with the smoking rifle  floating out in front of her, trying to get ahold  of what she's done.

  Hector is exhausted by the time he's in  Adelaide and Ginger's kitchen.
  "Hector, honey, just settle down now,  we're going to go find Teresa, okay?"
  Ginger has already headed over to check Teresa's  house. It's alarming. Hector does not go  places unattended. But he won't settle  down.
  "Hector, did something happen to Teresa?"  He shakes his head "no" in a way that's  understood only to those who know him. Then he nods  his head "yes" twice as urgently till finally  it dawns on him. He points. Up to the top of  Adelaide's kitchen cupboard.
  "What is it, Hector? You want something?  There's nothin up there, b'y, what d'you want?"
  He gives a series of frustrated groans  but does not lower his pointing arm, though it begins  to waver. Adelaide shrugs, moves to the counter  and is halfway climbed onto it when she  freezes in recognition.
  "Oh Jesus, Hector."
  She turns and he nods solemnly, "Yes.  Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes."
  
  "Good boy, Hector," she says as  she grabs her sweater, "stay here with the kids," and  she's out the door.

  Teresa starts breathing again and the rifle regains  its weight against her shoulder and in her hands. It's  done. Her heart starts making a racket in an  effort to wake up her mind. She reaches out,  grasps the barrel in both hands and hurls the  rifle end over end onto the beach below, where it  discharges again in a hail of pebbles. This second  shot is the one she hears, and it sets her running  like a starting pistol in the ears of a sprinter. She  pounds along the cliff, running and running, she  doesn't think where until she swings with the rail  tracks toward New Waterford, and still all she  knows is what she sees flashing by, not what she  intends. Number 12 Colliery, colossally  idle to her right, the little company houses, whipping  by like telephone poles past a steamed-up train.  She's not running like a lady, she's running like a  champion. The next thing she notices is that  she's bounding up the steps of New Waterford  General Hospital, and from this she surmises that  she has come to get help for the girl she has  killed.
  Thundering toward New Waterford beside Ginger in his  truck, Adelaide shouts, "Stop!"
  It's Hector's bike lying near the tracks  on the ocean side of the road. Adelaide hops  down from the truck before it has rolled to a stop and  dashes across. Ginger follows and joins her where  she's standing at the edge of the cliff staring down.
  "Oh my Lord."
  Trixie is curled around Frances's head.  She has spent the ten minutes since the shooting  painfully kneading Frances's scalp with her  never-trimmed claws. Two people have come sliding  down the hill and now they're crunching toward her and  Frances.
  At their approach, Frances repeats the words  she has been mumbling, "Ow. Trixie, stop  it."
  Frances's eyes have gone to slits, the only  color on her face is her tiny nose mole,  she has become scrawny once more, a little  woman in a big dress.
  In each hand there is a stone of equal weight.  It is time for sleep.
  "Should we move her?"
  
  "We ain't got much of a choice,"  Adelaide replies.
  It's hard to know where the wound is and therefore where  to take hold and lift her up because there's so much  blood. Trixie keeps kneading and for once she  can't stop talking. Ginger slips his arms under  Frances and lifts her carefully. She's so  clearly not faking this time that he wonders again how  he could possibly have bought her earlier performances.  He decides to give himself a break and admit that  she is a great actress. Adelaide picks  up the rifle and they start back up the slope.  Trixie follows, her eyes full of  mendicant pleading. She watches the truck  pull away, then streaks across the field for  home.
  Frances bleeds into Adelaide's dress with  her feet resting across Ginger's knees. He  tries for a compromise between speed and smoothness.

  Teresa has been given a cup of tea in the  front hall of New Waterford General  Hospital. The head nursing sister was the first  to come across her. If it had been that nice young  intern from away, the hysterical woman would have been  given a shot in the vein instead of a cup of tea.  The head nurse, however, has noticed that, whether  they drink the tea or not, the mere act of reaching out  to receive something that must not be spilled seems to have a  profoundly calming effect on all but the downright  insane.
  "Now dear, if the girl is dead, why does  she need an ambulance?"
  Teresa balances the teacup in both hands and  puts her first real sentence together since the shooting,  "There's a chance she may still be alive. She's  down by the shore. She's been shot."
  This is an example of how tea can work better  than narcotic oblivion.
  The head nurse rises immediately and swishes  away to get the ball rolling. Teresa adds,  "I shot her."
  Nurse hears her, thinks, "First things first,"  and keeps walking toward Emergency.
  The wasted ambulance is dispatched in time  to narrowly avoid a collision with Ginger's  truck, Ginger having abandoned smoothness in  favor of speed. Frances's eyes have started to go  fishy, and though Adelaide and Ginger have been  shouting to her throughout the brief drive, Adelaide
  
had no way of knowing that pricking  Frances's scalp might keep her from slipping  away.
  Teresa has raised the teacup to her lips for a  first sip when Adelaide breaks through the front  doors and hollers, "Can we get some service  around here?" Two young nurses run to support  Adelaide, who is soaked in blood, and she  snaps, "Not for me!" She swivels to indicate  Ginger coming through the doors carrying Frances, and  catches sight of Teresa hunched in a chair  against the wall, drinking tea. The head nurse  returns on silent shoes. She has a trained  eye so she walks past Adelaide without turning  a hair, takes Frances from Ginger's dripping  arms and carries her to meet the gurney now  hurtling toward them powered by the two younger sisters.  Nurse lays Frances down on the move, they  ram through a set of swinging doors and disappear into the  operating theater.
  Luckily the head nurse was in the war. She  has a way with bullet wounds.

  This time, Lily hasn't a clue where Frances  might be. Ambrose has not come through. Mercedes  shoos Trixie from the wingback chair to find a  smear of blood in her place. Still wet.
  "Trixie, come back here."
  But everyone knows cats don't come. Mercedes  searches the house till she finds Trixie in the  cellar between the furnace and the wall. If anything  has happened to the cat, Frances will be  devastated.
  "Come here, Trixie."
  No.
  Mercedes reaches but Trixie scurries  farther back. Mercedes goes up to the kitchen and  returns with a saucer of salted kippers, but that's  the bait Frances always used to get Trixie in  trouble.
  Lily joins in the effort. "She might come if  you speak Arabic."
  Mercedes has a kink in her neck. "Oh for  heaven's sake, Lily--"
  "Trixie. Inshallah."
  Trixie puts forth a paw.
  "Trixie," says Mercedes, "taa'i la  hown, Habibti ... ya Helwi."
  Trixie slinks forward.
  Mercedes examines Trixie on the kitchen
  
counter--"Te'berini"--daubing the  blood with a damp cloth until it becomes clear  "there's no wound."
  Lily picks up the bloody cloth and touches  it to her tongue. Mercedes shoots her a sharp  look. Lily tastes and says, "I think  Frances is in trouble."
  "Oh God," thinks Mercedes as the dry  sobs fight for air, "I will do my best, O  Lord, but when will you let me rest?"
  Mercedes calls the hospital, then grabs  her hat, "Stay here, Lily."
  "When's Daddy coming home?"
  But Mercedes is already out the door.

  Mercedes falters at the sight of the Taylor  truck parked out front of the hospital. She  enters and comes face to face with Mrs. Taylor  and a man who must be her husband, as well as an  unknown woman with her hands folded around a  teacup.
  "What happened?" Mercedes asks, standing at  attention with her back to the grief-green wall.  Teresa is lost in a prayer world of her own.  Mercedes pegs her as a good woman. The only  one unstreaked with blood. My sister's blood.
  "She's been hurt," Adelaide answers.  "We found her and brought her here. I'd have called  you but there's been no time to think."
  Mercedes turns to Adelaide, whose cotton  dress is spattered scarlet with guilt. "You can  tell your story to the police," she says, forcing  the tremor from her voice, "once you've thought it  through."
  Teresa starts praying audibly. Mercedes  closes her eyes and joins in the prayer. She  does not allow herself the luxury of tears. Tears  won't keep Frances here. Mercedes' stomach  is spuming, her throat is in spasm. She  recedes from the turmoil of her body, to that  uncontaminated place just above her brow where  prayer is forged. Prayer will keep Frances here.
  A young nursing sister from reception appears.  "Your sister is still in surgery, Miss  Piper. Would you like a cup of tea?"
  When the young nurse returns with three more steaming  cups, Mercedes is seated next to Teresa.  They are holding hands, praying silently together,  eyes closed, heads bowed. Adelaide takes  the tray from the nursing sister and thinks to herself, "I
  
could write a book. I really could."
  Lily arrives carrying a carpetbag. Ginger  notices the black tail trailing out from between its  wooden handles. He gets up and gives her his  chair.
  "Thank you, sir."
  Lily places the carpetbag on the floor  beneath her chair. It stirs slightly. Adelaide  and Ginger exchange a look. Lily doesn't  ask about their bloodstains. She will know soon enough  if she has two sisters, or one. Mercedes  has heard Lily's unmistakable clanking  entrance but she doesn't open her eyes. She  does not wish to leave hold of her unknown partner  in prayer. This good strong woman. You can feel the  power of her faith.

  The thing about an abdominal wound is the blood  loss. The head nurse has performed some lovely  field surgery on Frances but timing is everything  and now it's touch and go. Nurse comes out to the  motley crew waiting in reception and asks  Mercedes, "What's your blood type, dear?"

  At the far end of the recovery room, Lily  has got an IV tube growing out of her right  elbow, feeding a bloated bag that hangs from a  metal stand and sprouts a second tube that runs  into Frances's hand. Mercedes is standing straight as  a virgin soldier at the foot of the bed staring at  her sisters. The white curtains are pulled  back from the bed since the room is empty of  neighbors.
  Frances hasn't moved, her eyelids  haven't fluttered during her silent meal of  blood. Mercedes is trying to think what else  to promise God in exchange for Frances's  life when it occurs to her that Lily's third  miracle may be under way. But no, don't think  of it, don't admit pride, ambition, into the  sickroom, pray only. Mercedes treads  softly the fifty feet to the door and leaves so as  not to disrupt Lily's work.

  In reception, Mercedes' and Teresa's hands  are praying together once more. A young nurse  places a hand on Mercedes' shoulder because she  has twice failed to hear her own name. Teresa  looks up at the touch.
  The nurse says, "Your sister is awake,
  
Miss Piper."
  Mercedes jumps up but the nurse continues,  "She's asking for a woman called Teresa."
  Teresa rises, lets go of Mercedes' hand and  follows the nurse up the stairs. Mercedes  watches Teresa ascend the stairs and wonders  how it is that Frances knows her.
  "Who is she?" Mercedes asks the nurse at  the desk.
  "She's my sister," Ginger answers.  There is a blessing in all this, thinks Mercedes,  looking at him. If Frances is pregnant,  she is sure to miscarry as a result of the wound.  He doesn't look like a bad man. But the  wife looks like a woman who could kill. Came  to insult me on the pretext of Christian  charity, left my home, hunted my sister down  and shot her like a dog. She'll pay. She'll  hang.
  Adelaide looks away.
  Mercedes rises. "Sister?"
  The young nurse looks up from the desk; "Would  you like more tea, Miss Piper?"
  "May I use your telephone please?"  "Of course."
  Adelaide and Ginger wait and watch as  Mercedes calls the police.

  The head nurse tweaks the blood bag,  tells Teresa, "Be brief," and closes the  curtains in accordance with Frances's request.    She withdraws to sit within earshot and arm's length,  poring over her racing form.
  Teresa is surprised to see a cat curled  at the foot of the bed.
  "Frances. Teresa is here."
  The crippled girl with the sea-green eyes  turns from whispering in Frances's left ear to stare  up at Teresa. Frances opens her eyes but  doesn't turn her head.
  "You should go around where she can see you, ma'am,"  says Lily.
  Teresa crosses to the right side of the bed thinking  how much Lily looks like her singer-girl mother.
  "Teresa." Frances's voice is mostly  air.
  "Yes?"
  Teresa reluctantly crouches down until  she's squatting at the side of the bed--she is not  going to kneel, no matter what she has done.
  
She looks into Frances's close-up  eyes. Hazel. Rather, brown with broken bits of  green lodged or floating.
  "Teresa. Tell me about my mother."  "... I didn't know your mother."
  "You came to her funeral."
  "Yes."
  "You must have known her a bit."
  "A little bit."
  "What did you know?"
  Teresa takes a breath. "I felt sorry  for her, that's all," and she is surprised to find  sorrow in her throat. For whom? Someone she never  even knew.
  "You gave me a candy."
  "I did?"
  "Peppermint licorice."
  "I don't remember you."
  "I had blond hair then."
  Teresa thought the blonde had been the other one,  the one she's just been praying with. "You were too  small to remember that."
  "I remember everything."
  Frances closes her eyes for a moment,  retaining the picture of Teresa's magnificent  face on the insides of her lids. Teresa  waits. She looks for the little girl to whom she  gave the candy. Frances opens her eyes again.
  "And I remember you came and stood over my  bed and touched my head so I wouldn't be afraid."
  "I didn't do that."
  "Who did, then?"
  And Teresa does a nice little thing of the type  she always meant to do but never did. "It was your mother,  child."
  Frances closes her eyes till it seems  she has fallen back asleep, then she smiles  and says, "Thank you, Teresa."
  And falls asleep.

  Downstairs, Mercedes paces with a gait  slightly less formal than a military slow  march. The reassuring footfall of the Royal  Canadian Mounted Police interrupts the  bagpipe lament in her head.
  "Miss Piper?" He's awfully young,  isn't he? "What seems to be the trouble?"
  Mercedes arches one eyebrow slightly,  foreshadowing the type of schoolteacher she is destined  to become.
  "My sister is in critical condition  with a bullet wound inflicted by the woman you see  sitting there." She gestures without looking.
  The Mountie looks at Adelaide and asks,  taking out his notebook, "Is that correct,  ma'am?"
  Mercedes snaps, "Of course it's  correct, look at their clothes!"
  And as she turns she finally reads their  bloodstains and cross-references them with the  spotlessness of the woman upstairs. "Oh my  God." Her scaffolding of pride collapses  and her face falls so far that even Adelaide  might begin to forgive her, but there's no time for that  because Mercedes is traveling up the stairs, leaving  the Mountie at a bit of a loss. He turns  to Adelaide, "Ma'am, I'll have to ask you  to come with me down to the--"
  "In a minute, b'y," she says, brushing  by him and up the stairs.
  Ginger follows, then so does the Mountie.  It's been a rough couple of days for the rookie.  Last night he broke the news to a woman of  her husband's death in a car wreck and she took  it like a weather report. Today he failed to obtain  evidence of illegal alcohol production and just  now he nearly fainted--he can handle the sight of  blood so long as he isn't ambushed by it. He  follows the procession up the stairs, determined  to redeem himself with an arrest.
  Mercedes is running now, slipping on  beeswax, she reaches out and catches the  doorjamb of the recovery room, propels herself  through, sees the curtained bed at the far end standing like  a draped chalice. She hurries toward it  praying. There's a sound coming from within. The head  nurse sees the look in Mercedes' eyes at  twenty feet, rises, sets aside her racing  form and catches Mercedes' wrists before she can tear  at the curtains. Mercedes starts breathing again under  the nurse's iron gaze, and listens. Someone is  singing. The head nurse releases Mercedes and  gently parts the curtains.
  Teresa towers over Frances, singing softly, a  West Indian lullaby. One hand rests  lightly on Frances's forehead. Frances and  Lily and Trixie are all asleep. Nurse  and Mercedes look on and are joined  by Adelaide, then Ginger, then the Mountie.  "Now, what seems--" Mercedes silences him  with a look.
  Teresa finishes the song. She turns to the  constable. "I'm ready to go."
  Lily and Trixie open their eyes. Teresa  goes to move from the bed but is prevented  by Frances's grip on her hand. Frances, her  face still marked from the self-administered beating of the  day before, turns to her audience filling the parted  curtains and speaks, "Mercedes?"
  Why does Frances suddenly have an English  accent, wonders Lily.
  "I am truly sorry to have brought shame and  anguish upon my family. Officer, arrest me,  do your worst, for finding myself with child and without a  husband, I betook me to the brink of the roiling  deep where I did shoot myself. O, that I had  died."
  Frances turns her face upstage and allows  a sob to escape her. Then the nurse clears the  sickroom. "Show's over, folks."

  And that's how Frances took Teresa's hate  away.

  Nine and a half months later, Teresa  gives birth to a perfect baby girl she  calls Adele Claire. Adelaide was right.  Hector still works.

Oh I will take you back, Kathleen to where your  heart will feel no pain ...

October 29, 1932

Dear Mr. Piper,
  As executrix of the last will and testament of the  recently departed Miss Giles M.  MacVicar, and in accordance with that lady's  wishes, I hereby enclose certain effects of  your late daughter, Kathleen.
    Yours truly,
    Miss Lucy Morriss

And when the fields are fresh and green I'll  take you home again, Kathleen.

                       Book 7
             THE BULLET

      Blessed Art Thou amongst Women

  The head nurse's stitches were a thing of  beauty. They've been out for a month or so now,  leaving only a shy smile below Frances's  ribcage on her right side. It is the sly  widening of this smile that indicates forces at work  within Frances. She strokes her belly and  returns the smile, Hello.
  Mercedes notes with approval, "You're  putting on weight." Frances has just risen from the  steaming bathtub and Mercedes has wrapped her in  a big towel warm from the radiator. It's the first  of November but Mercedes has been burning  coal since "the accident" in July, knowing  Frances to be prone to chills. And Frances has  permitted herself to be immersed, bathed and dried,
  
docile as a drugged child.
  It's been so peaceful, Frances's  convalescence. She sits at the table without  jittering and eats large meals. She smiles  instead of grinning. She has ceased her roaming and  spends the days under a light blanket on the  veranda and, when well enough, strolling of an evening  to the sea cliff with Lily and Trixie. Frances  has become clean and soft, sweet to smell. And  her face. It is fuller. Her eyes are  calm, no longer furtive. The white stripe  across her nose, emblem of glee, has not  appeared, not once. She has breasts. Ripe.  At their centers, mauve haloes resolve  into walnut erections, the only part of her body  not in lush repose. And her  hair-of-all-directions has begun to shine. A  bonnet of crackling copper lights and pure  blond threads. Frances is pretty. Yes,  that's what it is.
  "It's been four months, high time I had  something to show," replies Frances, tranquil beneath  the comb Mercedes is drawing through her wet curls.  Mercedes stops, looks down and plucks a  golden strand from the comb.
  "Frances, that's not possible."
  The nurse told Mercedes that, what with the  shooting, nature would take care of Frances's  predicament. It would be like a  particularly bad period. Mercedes has been  waiting for Frances's cramps to start, but Frances  must have suffered in silence, because how could she  possibly still be--
  "Look at me." Frances stands naked, serene  on the bathroom tiles.
  Mercedes looks. And blushes with a prickly  flush. No good pretending she has been looking  after a child. She has been washing, stroking, feeding,  drying a woman who is blooming like a hothouse  rose. The nipples look ready to burst and  scatter seed, the russet pubic hair hangs  proud like a bunch of grapes. A fig leaf would  not do in this case--ripe and uncooked, pink and  grainy as that fruit, Frances's whole boatful  of genital cargo, from lip-wrapping-lips  to clitoris in the prow, is in constant rockabye  motion in response to the new deeper tides of  her body. She is almost always somewhat aroused, can  feel her soft-sided barque opening, closing,  taking on water from within. Her body is making
  
love to itself. Until now, Frances had no idea  what all the fuss was about.
  For once, Frances is stripped of irony.  She is in the presence of something bigger--namely  Herself. Or at least the self implied by her new  body. This is how the Blessed Virgin visits  us. She inhabits our own flesh and makes love  out of it. Nothing is ironic in the moment of first  love. And Frances is in love. With her body,  and what it is bringing forth.
  "Frances. You couldn't still be pregnant. Not  after what happened."
  Frances replies, "Especially after what  happened." She takes her white nightgown from the  radiator and slips it on over her head,  saying, "Thank you, Mercedes."
  Mercedes aches after Frances leaves the  bathroom. Suddenly bereft, she sinks to the  floor and leans her cheek against the enamel tub.  The last of the water sucks down the drain and, before  she knows why, her tears are flowing. It's the  same grief that's been waiting, bottled, against  the day of Frances's death. Why has it been  uncorked and sampled now? "Frances ... my little  Frances." Mercedes manages to get the bottle  stoppered, hurriedly fumbling as though unaware that  it is a magic bottle, capable of refilling  itself eternally.
  She splashes cold water on her  face and realizes she cried because Frances really  has gone away--her Frances, that is. This new  Frances says thank you; is careful of her  health, looks forward to being a mother. My Frances  is not a mother. My Frances is a child. Naughty  but so dear. My child.

  James has had his first stroke. But no one  knows it, not even James. He just looks, and  feels, older. One side of his face has  slid a bit on its foundations. His left eye  now always slightly sleepy, the left side of his  mouth permanently triste. And he can't make a  good fist with his left hand. A state of "just woke  up" along that whole side of him.
  The stroke itself was actually a pleasant, if  strange, experience. It happened after he torched  the still in the woods that day of the disasters four months  ago.
  James soaked the still in gasoline, lit it and  ran. The thing blew sky-high, which is why the young
  
Mountie found little more than smoldering earth. Perhaps  it was the boom that triggered James's stroke--  set a delicate patch of artery wall  to trembling till it caved in and flooded a  small surrounding area of his brain. Neurons  drowned.
  When he awoke, he was disoriented as to time.  He noted the sun was in the same place as it had  been when he ran and dived from the explosion. He  got up and walked a few steps before the new  imbalance of his body caught up with him and he  fell to the left.
  James had plenty of reasons to feel dizzy  at that particular moment, considering all he'd  recently been through. The idea that he might have had  a small stroke would have seemed absurd to him.  Overkill. He picked himself up and walked  carefully from tree to tree until he reached the  exploded fringe of the clearing, then he got down and  crawled to the blackened spot on the ground where his  industry had been. It was cold. That was how he  knew at least twenty-four hours had passed.
  He fell asleep. Or passed out. He  opened his eyes next on a sky full of stars  and a high new moon. For a moment he had no    past. He was no one, no man. He was the clear  night air. The next instant, however, he was a  pit full of memory. Corroded shapes of  used-to-be things, now twisted beyond  recognition. He got onto his hands and knees,  his head a wrecking ball, blind with pain. Molten  glue sludging through the veins of his left side where  his blood should flow. The right side of him had its  first taste of dragging the left side like a wounded  comrade as he struggled to his feet and, with his right  hand, gripped a tattered sapling for support.  He stayed there long enough for the sap to fuse his hand to the  slender trunk and he left a layer of skin behind  when he freed himself and staggered on.
  He dropped carefully to his knees every so  often when gravity got the better of his new  inner-ear alignment. He'd hang his head to let  a fresh wave of blood assault his brain. It  hurt like hell but it was the only way to avoid  fainting. Sometimes he'd fall farther with the weight  of his head, from his knees onto his hands, his left  hand failing to open on impact, taking the stony  earth on bare knuckles. After this moment's rest,  the healthy soldier would lift the wounded one back  up and continue the next few yards, the right palm
  
seeping blood, the left hand torn at the  knuckles.
  His car was a hundred yards from the site of the still.  He had covered twenty-five when dawn broke.  Then he slept. Or passed out.
  But the stroke itself was blissful. He had a  dream, only more so. He saw his mother. He was a  grown man just as he is now:
  As in other dreams of her, she is accompanied  by distant but everywhere music. An old-fashioned  tune on the piano, ineffably sweet and full  of meaning, unnameable and yet as familiar as the  beating of his own heart. He knows his mother is in the  music. His tears well up and fall, refreshing  him. He is in a clearing of bright green woods.  Not pine, not dark like around here, but old deciduous  growth, tall and embracing. There is a birch  tree among the oaks and elms. He knows this is  his mother. He looks at the white bark of the tree  and recognizes her dress.
  He lies down, curled beneath the birch, and he  hears her voice, Hello. He knows that if  he turns to look into her face she will go away,  so he concentrates on a blade of grass before his  eyes, and she speaks to him, calling him by his  Gaelic name, Hello, Seamus. Mo  ghraidh. M'eudail. His tears soothe his  face, parched to kindling.
  He speaks to her. He tells her  he is sorry. He feels her hand, cool on  the side of his face. He knows she is healing  him, but he also realizes that with this she is preparing  to send him away from her, "No!" He feels she  is condemning him back to a hell he can't quite  recall, "No!" He opens his eyes.
  Then shut them against the sun. And resumed his  journey to the car.

Try as I like to find the way
I never can get back by day
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

  "If Daddy is dead, it will be up to me  to look after this family."
  It was dusk of the day after the shooting. Frances was  in the clear thanks to the nurse who'd seen  worse, but James was still missing. Mercedes was  allowing the possibility of her father's death  to surface in her mind. She was sitting on the
  
veranda, watching the street and peeling a  pomegranate--an extravagant impulse,  purchased from an old West Indian woman at  the corner of Seventh Street.
  "If Daddy is dead, I'll have to start  teaching. I'll sell his tools."
  Mercedes was reassured by her logical train  of thought, though a little startled by the caboose: "If  Daddy is dead, we'll be better off."
  She bit into the sweet wine cluster. "If he  isn't dead"--for Mercedes had to face this  possibility too--"my job will simply be more  demanding."
  By the time she discerned the outline of the Buick behind  the headlights, Mercedes' plans were firm enough  to withstand the recognition. She observed the car  creep along in second gear, genuflecting at  every pothole in the street, and her first thought was  "I'll have to learn to drive."
  She folded her arms and watched as the car  pulled into the driveway and jerked to a halt. As  its lights died, she saw James's head loll  back and his mouth fall open. A moment later she  heard him fumbling for many seconds with the door  handle. It opened and he got out. In the falling  dark, she saw him descend slowly to his  knees. He walked like that up the stone path to the  veranda.
  The one thing Mercedes hadn't counted  on was that her father might return a penitent. Such  a thing might interfere with her plans. She had no  energy left to be the daughter of a good man. She  had only energy enough to be the head of this family.
  By the time he reached the steps and began to drag  himself up them on all fours, she was near enough to hear  the effort in his breath and realize that he was not  penitential but merely sick. She had assumed  he didn't see her so she jolted in her skin  when he spoke, "Hello, my dear."
  He was by now in a heap against the front door.  Her reflexive mortification was replaced by the  cool sense that it was just as well to have everything in the  open between them. Yes, I watched you fall and did  not stir to help.
  James raised his eyes and looked at her.  His eyes had turned younger, bluer. Or maybe  that was only an illusion created by his face  having got older. Mercedes couldn't see that  yet, all she saw was that his eyes looked young and  half his face was in shadow. It wasn't until
  
she saw him under electric light later that night  that she realized it wasn't a shadow at all, at  least not in the usual sense.
  She rose from her spare wooden chair and got  her father into the dark house.
  "Daddy!" Lily swung wildly down the  stairs, barefoot in her nightgown, and wrapped  herself around him, "Daddy, my daddy."
  Such a baby still--Mercedes tried to think it  fondly.
  James patted Lily's head more awkwardly  than usual.
  "You hurt your hands," Lily cried, holding  them in hers and feeling: his left one curled  defenseless with its serrated knuckles, his right one  strong but scabbed over at the palm.
  "I'll make some tea," said Mercedes,  gaining an inch in height en route from the front  hall to the kitchen stove, shivering slightly at the  unaccustomed breeze passing through the new spaces  in her spine.
  James swayed a little with just Lily to hold  him, it was time for him to fall again but she didn't    let him.
  "Watch out now!" Afraid he'd injure her.  "It's all right, Daddy, put your hand on my  shoulder."
  He resisted, preferring to teeter toward the  wall, but she caught him round the middle  and held him fast, guiding him to the living room,  trusting her strong right leg.
  He found himself laid out for the second time in  two days. Lily lifted his legs onto the couch  and turned on the reading lamp. She saw at  once the blow to him and her tears welled. She  sat by his side and placed her cool hand on his  injured face. He closed his eyes, too  exhausted not to allow himself the relief of tears.  They formed between his long blond lashes and rolled  through the new hollows of his face.
  "I love you, Daddy."
  Mercedes arrived in the archway of the front  room with the tea tray and stopped in the pool of  light cast by the reading lamp. She fell through a  crack in time without spilling a drop. When she  returned, the tea was still piping hot and Lily was  exhaling the same warm breath across James's  chest where her head lay sleeping. James was  stretched out on his back, asleep or comatose,  and Lily had laid herself like a cool leaf
  
alongside him, her right hand closed beneath his chin like  a nighttime flower.
  James slept for most of the following week.  When awake, he would eat a little of whatever  Lily brought him, then listen while she read  aloud. Fairy tales and Freud, until he  was well enough to realize that he had lost interest in his  old favorites and preferred to have her read the  Halifax Chronicle cover to cover. Things  were getting interesting in Europe again.
  By the time Frances got home from the hospital,  James was sitting up and whittling himself a cane.
  Lily and Mercedes had their hands full with two  convalescents but they thrived on it. And the  patients themselves were angels--uncomplaining,  appreciative, recovering. Mercedes could not  remember a happier time, for even when Mumma was  alive there had been a cloud, a constant threat of  turbulence. But now all is calm. All is  bright.
  The only distressing thing about these halcyon days  was James's tendency to talk about Materia.  It's normal to speak affectionately of the dead.  But because it had been delayed for fourteen years,  Mercedes experienced it as something of a painful  intrusion. She was grateful that he hadn't yet  mentioned Kathleen.
  James carved the top of his cane into a dog's  head and went for a slow walk with Lily.  He started a new project out in his workshed. He  picked up his shoemaker's tools again for the first time  in many years. The work goes slowly, he's having  to retrain himself around his bad left hand. And he  won't say what he's making. The shed is off  limits to everyone but Trixie. It's to be a  surprise.
  All this and heaven too--until the day that  Frances rises in the tub and Mercedes can no  longer deny that her sister is still pregnant.

            Sisters of Mercy

  "The sisters will be ready when the time comes,  Mercedes."
  "Thank you, Sister Saint Monica."  Mercedes has conferred with Sister Saint  Monica in the geography classroom at
Holy Angels, beneath the color print that still has  pride of place over the blackboard. Saint  Monica: patron of mothers. Scourge of
  
African concubines.
  "Have you discussed it with Frances?"  "Not yet, sister. I'm concerned she may  refuse to part with the child."
  "In that case, it's probably best not  to discuss it with her."
  "That's what I thought."
  "There are other ways."
  "Kinder ways."
  "Quite right."
  Wheels have been set in motion. Five months  from now, Frances will lie in at the convent infirmary  at Mabou. Then the infant will be relayed to an  appropriate orphanage.
  "That's a lovely print, sister."  "Thank you, Mercedes."

  It's time Mercedes had a talk with Lily.  Lily is thirteen. Mercedes had been going  to delay the talk until the onset of menstruation  but it looks as though Lily is going to be late  starting--perhaps it's another sign. Perhaps she'll  never bleed at all. That certainly would be an  indication of God's favor. In any case,  what with Frances's condition soon to be all too  apparent, it's high time.
  "Lily. Do you know where babies come from?"  "They come from God."
  They're in the kitchen making tea  biscuits, arms powdered white to the elbows like  ladies' opera gloves.
  Mercedes reddens. "That's right. But God works  through our flesh to create new life." That's rather  good. Mercedes relaxes. This may not be so bad  after all.
  "I know that, Mercedes," says Lily,  looking decently down at the dough beneath her fists.
  "How do you know?" snaps Mercedes.  "Frances told me."
  This is going to be difficult after all.  "What did she tell you, Lily?"
  Lily blushes a little, very prettily too, and  continues to knead the dough.
  "Well?" Mercedes is waiting.  "It's a private thing, isn't it?" says  Lily, and she glances sideways, biting her  lip.
  "Yes. It's very private. It's between two people  and God."
  Lily says nothing.
  
  "Lily, I'm not--I don't--I'm not  trying to make you feel ashamed or embarrassed,  I just want to prepare you for certain ...  wonderful--things that will occur as you mature."  Lily's hands have kept working but Mercedes has  stopped and gone to the pump to hide her  embarrassment.
  Lily answers with natural delicacy,  "It's all right, Mercedes. I got my period  for the first time last March and Frances told me what  to do."
  S. What else is it not given me to know around  here, wonders Mercedes, pumping vigorously.  Lily steals a look at her older sister.  Suddenly she is aware of having hurt  Mercedes' feelings. It hadn't occurred to her that  Mercedes might feel left out of such a thing. It  had only occurred to her that Mercedes might  prefer to be left out. Lily would apologize but  feels that would only intensify her sister's  humiliation.
  "Mercedes, is Frances really going to have a  baby?"
  "So she's told you."
  "Yes, but I wasn't certain it was true."  "It's true." Mercedes rinses away all  traces of flour and dough, then reaches for a cake  of lye and asks, "Did Frances tell you how  she came to be with child?"
  "Yes."
  Lily is quite flushed by now, not with guilty knowledge but  with the delicate mortification of one whom it pains  to trespass on the privacy of another.
  Mercedes scrapes a bristle brush over the  moistened lye and scrubs her way from fingernails  to elbows.
  "Well? What did she tell you, Lily?"  Lily works the dough reverently, shaping it with  care.
  "She told me that she became pregnant after  the night she passed with Mr. Taylor in the  mine--"
  Mercedes' hands are sterile.
  Lily continues with dignity, "But that she  miscarried as a result of the shooting."
  Mercedes turns off the pump with her wrist and  holds her hands up, allowing them to drip-dry  towards the elbows. She asks, "Then how does  Frances explain her present condition?"
  Lily answers, "The bullet." And goes
  
on molding the dough.
  Mercedes contaminates her hands with a clean tea  towel, drying, drying, drying them. "She told you  that in order to avoid telling you the truth,  Lily."
  "No. She believes it."
  Mercedes pauses. Folds the towel.  "Well that's not how women get pregnant."
  "I know, Mercedes."
  Mercedes has lost patience. "Well will you  tell me then what in the name of Our Lord Jesus  Christ on the Cross it is you altogether do know of the  factual acts of life!"
  Facts, Lily thinks but doesn't say.  Instead, she removes her apron and leaves the  kitchen saying, "Excuse me."
  Mercedes is flummoxed. That girl is a  cipher. Saint or no saint, why can't anyone  in this house ever just have a straightforward conversation?
  Then she sees the sculpture:
  Modest penis and vagina in coital  embrace, already beginning to sag owing to the dough being  overworked.

  "Frances, why did you tell Lily that story  about the bullet?"
  "Because it's true."
  This is the last thing Mercedes expected to hear.  She was ready for an obscene joke or  another lie, not this. What Frances is this? The  same strange one who rose from the tub the other  day.
  "Do you really believe that, Frances?"  Frances is bundled supine on a camp cot  on the front porch watching the afternoon street go  by. Trixie is chasing moths in the yard.  Frances does another un-Frances thing. She  reaches out and takes Mercedes' hand. Frances's  hand is warm. She smiles.
  "I'm happy, Mercedes. I'm happy."  Frances's smile is true. It contains the  memory of all her other smiles, the false  grins of a lifetime, nothing has been banished from  her face--but something immeasurable has been added.
  "Everything's going to be all right, Mercedes."  Mercedes squeezes Frances's hand and tucks  the blanket up around her.
  "Don't worry, Mercedes, I'm not  crazy."
  "I'm not worried." Frances will always need
  
me.
  "Don't be sad, Mercedes."
  "I'm happy, dear." And Mercedes smiles  through tears as she smooths back the curls from her  sister's brow.
  "Mercedes."
  "Yes, dear?"
  "Don't be upset about Lily. She was too  shy to say the words so she made a sculpture."
  "You're right," says Mercedes, serene, rising  to leave, "Lily's a complete innocent."
  "Either that or she's possessed by the Devil."  Mercedes turns sharply.
  "Just kidding, Mercedes."
  And the white stripe appears across Frances's  nose, momentarily ruffling Mercedes' best-laid  plans.

  "When can you start, Mercedes?"
  "I can start today, Sister Saint Eustace."  Mercedes savors the wood-polish smell of the  principal's office at Mount Carmel High  School. The well-worn books ranged upon the  shelves, Jesus on His varnished cross,  broad oak desk with immaculate inkwell and  pen, crisp memos scrolled into pigeonholes.  This is the type of office Mercedes would like some  day. Someday I will cut off all my hair and  enter the convent. I will teach. Or perhaps  I will join a contemplative order.
  Mercedes nips this fantasy in the bud, for it  strikes her that her whole family would have to be  dead or married before she herself could become the  bride of Christ. And since marriage is  extremely unlikely for any of them, her dream  is tantamount to wishing them all dead. Or no.  Frances could come with me as an invalid. Couldn't  she?
  "How is Frances?"
  "Oh she's grand, Sister Saint Eustace,  hale and--"
  "Is she going to keep the child?"  Mercedes is flustered at the frankness of the  question, even though she does not delude herself that the  whole of Cape Breton Island is not fully  apprised of the latest Piper scandal.
  "Well I think--I should say quite possibly  Frances may decide to put it up for adoption."
  "Really."
  Mercedes feels suddenly hot beneath the glare of
  
Sister Saint Eustace's spectacles. Why?
I haven't done anything wrong.
  Sister continues, "God works in mysterious  ways. Frances might finally come into her own.  Raising a child."
  "Oh quite possibly, sister, without a doubt."  Mercedes smiles and knows she is lying but is  uncertain how to frame it as a confession of sin this  Sunday, for is it one? Yes. And no. My  head hurts.
  "Shall I proceed to the grade ones, sister?"  "Yes."
  Mercedes rises. "Thank you, Sister Saint  Eustace."
  But Sister Saint Eustace has returned  to her paperwork.

  James is enjoying his retirement. The  wingback chair is surrounded by a growing turret  of books. This is his other project, along with the  secret one in the shed. He has opened the last  of the crates and emptied the shelves of all the  books he never had time to read. First he counted  them all: a hundred and three. Then he began  stacking them in the order in which he intends to read  them, the last ones forming the foundation. It is a slow  ruminative process. He knows what he  intends to read first, however, and has set it aside  accordingly for the pinnacle of his wall:  Dante's Paradiso. Having gone through  Inferno years ago, he has decided to cheat and  skip over Purgatorio, eager for the beatific  vision and the reunion with Beatrice.
  He rests now from his labors, in his chair behind  his partially constructed parapet of words, and allows  his mind to drift in place. His capable eldest  daughter making things go. His wild middle  daughter settling down to raise her colored  child--oh yes, he hasn't forgotten that. He has  simply forgotten how such a thing was ever able to call  murder into his heart; the birth of an innocent  child. And Lily. My consolation.
  He is startled from his reverie by the distant boom  of a cannon. Lily is standing beside his chair combing  his hair, "It's okay, Daddy--"
  "Wha--?"
  "It's eleven o'clock." But James is still  bewildered. "In the morning." Lily gathers up  a lock of his hair and begins to braid it,  explaining gently, "It's Remembrance Day."
  
  "Oh."
  They observe two minutes' silence together, then  James calls in his voice that has faded  to straw, "Frances."
  Frances and Trixie enter slowly. "Yes,  Daddy?"
  "Play something, my dear."
  "What would you like me to play?"  "Any old thing."
  She starts, ""Swing low, sweet chariot,  comin for to carry me home--"'"
  "That's lovely."
  ""Swi-+ low, sweet cha-ario-ot,  com-in for to carry me home. ...""
  At four-thirty, Mercedes arrives home from  her first day as a schoolteacher to witness the latest  phenomenon: Frances playing "The Maple Leaf  Rag" while Daddy dozes in his chair, his head  sprouting a mass of tiny braids. Frances  breaks off from playing and leaves; "I'll get  supper, Mercedes."
  Mercedes has no objection. Frances has  recently revealed a natural talent in the  kitchen. She cooks and cooks. Roasts and  curries, stews and casseroles. It's  mystifying. Frances is like one of those strange  persons who awake one morning and play the  complete works of Bach with never a lesson.
  "Daddy," says Mercedes. He  uncrinkles his eyes and blinks in several  directions before focusing on her. She's standing  over him with a brown paper package. "This came  for you." She deposits it in his lap and leaves.
  James looks at the postmark. New York  City. The address is written in a spidery  hand--old-ladyish. He notes with relief that it  is not the same hand that formed the infamous letter of  years ago. Who could it be, then? It takes him  a while to undo the strings.
  Inside is a lavender note folded on top  of a bundle wrapped in white tissue paper.

  Supper.
  Mercedes takes her seat at the head of the  table. Lily places a platter of kibbeh  nayeh in the center, followed by a bowl of  tabooleh, a brimming casserole of stuffed  koosa and a pot of bezzella and roz.  Mercedes unfolds her napkin and wonders where  Frances learned to cook--or not cook, as the
  
case may be--their mother's food. The kibbeh  looks just like Mumma's except that in the center  there is the impression not of a cross, but of a  jack-o'-lantern grin--
  "Frances."
  "Yes, Mercedes?"
  "Oh, never mind."
  James's slow foot is heard in the hall  together with the syncopated clunk of his cane. He  makes his way into the kitchen and over to his chair  at the end of the table opposite Mercedes.  Mercedes catches Frances's eye but Frances  doesn't register anything unusual, oh for  Pete's sake--"Daddy," says Mercedes.
  "What's that?"
  "... Nothing."
  Fine. Let him eat with his hair in braids.  Whom does it injure? Better than provoking  a scene at table. As in the bad old days.
  They say grace. James does not express  surprise at the Lebanese feast spread out before  him. He presses his portion of kibbeh flat  with his fork, drizzles it with olive oil, tears  off a bite-size piece of flat bread,  wraps a bite of kibbeh in it and eats.  Modestly, the way he always has, even when he  worked in the pit, aware of how intimate an act  eating is.
  "You've outdone yourself, Frances," he  says. "It's every bit as good as your mother's."
  Mercedes knows she ought to be glad but this  strange new peace between Daddy and Frances  unnerves her.
  "Thank you, Daddy," Frances replies,  pulling up her chair, "I learned by watching."
  "Then you've got a photographic memory.  That's a sign of genius."
  Mercedes' eyebrows approach the ceiling--  let's just say it's been a day full of  surprises. She picks up her fork and gingerly  tastes the kibbeh. It is more than delicious.  It's as though Mumma were here. Mercedes closes  her eyes for a moment in reminiscence of a precious  time she knows could not have been: when Mumma was  alive and we were all so happy. When was that time,  where was that country? Rain begins to drizzle against the  kitchen window, Frances lifts the lid from the  steaming pot of bezzella and roz and Mercedes  remembers: it was during the War. In the kitchen with  Mumma and the Old Country. So happy.
  
Mercedes opens her eyes again.
  "What's wrong, Mercedes?"
  "Nothing at all, Lily."
  Mercedes permits herself to relax a little. She  leans back in her chair and observes with  satisfaction the flawless table manners of her  family. She basks in their warm but civilized  conversation. Everyone, it seems, has had an  interesting day. Frances apportions second  helpings. Lily reaches with her napkin and  removes a spot of food from the left corner of  James's mouth, a small service for which neither  thanks nor embarrassment is required. All  quiet at the kitchen table.
  Frances pours boiling water into the teapot and  Mercedes is alarmed to notice James catch  sight of himself in the kettle. Bristling with  braids. The right side of his mouth breaks into a  smile big enough to make up for the left side having  lost the knack, and he laughs so hard that he  falls dangerously silent between wheezy  exhalations. Frances and Lily laugh too,  until their throats ache and the tears stream,  elbows thunking onto the table rattling the  cutlery. Even Mercedes joins in and, once  started, is unable to stop even after the others have  recovered, then caught it again from her.
  Exhausted, they fortify themselves with a pan of  succulent Nellie's Muffins straight  from the oven. They sip tea. Listen to the rain.  Outside, the whole world is hungry and forlorn.  But in here is a little island of contentment.
  At last, Mercedes thinks, we are a  family. Daddy is senile, Frances is  crazy, Lily is lame and I'm unmarried.  But we are a family. Soon to be one more.  And for the first time it crosses Mercedes' mind  to keep Frances's child.

            Certain Effects

  "Frances," said James after the glorious  Lebanese supper, "come here. I have something for  you."
  Frances joined him in the front room. She  sat on the piano bench and he handed her the white  tissue-paper bundle.
  "What's this?" she asked.
  "One or two things that belonged to your sister  Kathleen." Then he left the room.
  
  Frances fishes a new candle from a kitchen  drawer. She walks up the attic stairs, where  the voices are louder than ever. She pauses,  wishing they would speak one at a time and stop  yelling. "I'm listening," she says. But the  hollow din rages on, so she continues up.
  Now she and Trixie sit on the floor of the  attic with the lighted candle. Frances looks down  at the bundle in her lap. She parts the tissue  folds. Lying on top of a soft pile is an  old exercise notebook. The cover is  imprinted with the Union Jack, the flag of  Nova Scotia and the crest of Holy Angels  Convent School. In a space marked "Name:"  a grandiose signature spells "Kathleen  Piper." And in the space marked "Subject:"  in equally florid strokes, "La vie en  rose!"
  Frances picks up the notebook. Turns  to the last page first, and reads:

  O Diary. My loyal friend. There is love,  there is music, there is no limit, there is work,  there is the precious sense that this is the hour of  grace when all things gather and distill to create the  rest of my life. I don't believe in God,  I believe in everything. And I am amazed at  how blessed I am.
                                  
  Then Frances turns back to the first page and  begins:

8 pm, February 29, 1918, New
  York City

Dear Diary,
  No, I will not use that form of address. That is  a relic of childhood. This book will serve as a  record of my progress as a singer. I will  record only relevant facts which will prove  useful as my training progresses. No gush  ...

  Wax drips from the guttering candle stub by the time  Frances arrives once more at the last page.  She closes the diary. "Goodnight, Kathleen."
  She turns her attention to what remains in the  tissue-paper package.
  Then she opens the hope chest.
  
  The next day, James joins Frances on the  veranda.
  "Are you warm enough?"
  "Yes thanks, Daddy."
  But he has brought an old tartan blanket  and spreads it over her and Trixie anyway.  "There." He sits to the right of her on a kitchen  chair next to her camp cot. He looks off  at nothing in particular and starts talking, "I  went down to New York because I got a letter."
  Frances doesn't interject. She doesn't  look at him. She knows he will fly away if  she does that, so she relaxes and listens to his  story.
  "It was the day of the Armistice. I got off at  Grand Central Station and I walked all the way  to where she was staying because I couldn't get a cab.  There were crowds. I didn't know the war had ended.  ..."
  He trails off. They sit still and silent for a  long comfortable time until he says to the middle  distance, "Well it's time I did a tap of  work." He picks up his cane and shuffles off  to the shed. Trixie follows.
  It takes six days. Mercedes leaves them  each morning on the veranda and every afternoon she sees them  when she returns up the street. It's as though  they hadn't moved--although Lily assures her that  they have been duly fed and watered. They  look so peaceful sitting side by side, with their  eyes settled on separate pieces of sky.  Like old friends. Daddy and Frances.
  Mercedes would like to sit and chat with an old friend,  but she doesn't have one. She had Helen Frye.  And most of all, she had Frances. Where is  Frances now?
  Mercedes can see James's lips moving as  she approaches. What is he telling Frances?  Day after day? He has always fallen silent by the  time Mercedes is within earshot.
  Walking home from school up Water Street  on the chill seventeenth of November, Mercedes  can see his breath. He is talking and talking, but  by the time she reaches the veranda his words have given up  their steamy ghosts. She greets them as usual on  her way into the house, and finally hears something.
  "How did the babies get in the creek,  Daddy?"
  Mercedes freezes on the threshold. Then  walks briskly into the hall and, without removing
  
her coat, runs up the stairs to her room. She  leans against her door, slips a hand inside her  blouse and feels for her opal rosary.
  James reaches out his curled left hand without  looking. He finds Frances's head and bonks  it, saying kindly by way of answer, "That's all  over and done with."
  "I was there," says Frances. "Wasn't  I?"
  James rises. "Think I'll do a tap of  work." And makes his slow way to the shed. His story  is done.
  Frances stays looking at the sky in fifteen  shades of gray.

  Benny Luvovitz takes James and Lily  out in a sleigh and helps James cut down just the  right tree.
  On her way home from school, Mercedes  opens MacIsaac's jingle-bell door to find  Frances sucking on a cinnamon stick chatting and  chortling with the old man, who's nursing a ginger  beer. He looks up, "Merry Christmas,  Mercedes." His shelves are not as full as they were  in better days, but he reaches down a dusty box  of peanut brittle.
  "Thank you, Mr. MacIsaac."
  "It won't be long now, eh?"
  "What's that?" asks Mercedes.
  "The great event." Mr. MacIsaac looks  at Frances and beams. Mercedes stuffs the candy  into her schoolbag, saying, "Come, Frances, time  to go home." She forgets to buy the headache  powders that she went in for.
  Mercedes takes Frances's arm and sets a  rapid pace down Plummer Avenue past shop  windows with nothing for sale but empty space, "for  lease, for lease, for lease"--at least there are no  prying eyes behind those counters.
  Frances wants to pop into Luvovitz's to buy  raisins for mincemeat.
  "I'll get the raisins, Frances, you go on  home. It's cold."
  "No, I'd like to say hi."
  Mercedes has the exact change ready in her  hand, but Mrs. Luvovitz sets out a stool for  Frances, saying, "When it's your time, taier,  you call me," and offers her expert opinion as  to the sex of the infant, "You're carrying high so  probably it's a girl, or else maybe just
  
an extra-smart boy." Mrs. Luvovitz  winks. Frances smiles and asks, "How's  Ralph?"
  Mercedes picks up a tin of Magic Baking  Powder to avoid Mrs. Luvovitz's  mortifyingly considerate glance in her direction.  Mrs. Luvovitz hesitates, then produces  a photograph of the world's most perfect  grandson. Jean-Marie Luvovitz.
  Frances hoots, "He's got the sticking-out  ears!"
  "What're you saying, "sticking-out ears,"  I'll "sticking-out ears" you!"
  But Frances laughs and so does Mrs.  Luvovitz. Mercedes holds her head up and  comes to the counter. She glances at the photo, then  looks straight at Mrs. Luvovitz and says  politely, "Congratulations."
  Finally outside, Mercedes says, "It's  probably best that you not leave the house these days,  Frances. It's too cold for you to be out  traipsing, you'll catch your death."
  Frances doesn't answer. She turns up  Ninth Street.
  "Frances." Where on earth--his Oh good Lord.  Frances knocks on Helen Frye's door.  Mercedes watches from the darkness of the street as the  door opens and Helen appears in the square of  light. Frances turns sideways,  setting off her shameless silhouette, and looks  back toward Mercedes as though waiting for her.  Mercedes sees Helen slowly raise her hand in  greeting. But Mercedes makes no move in  reply. After a moment, Helen's hand drops  once more to her side. Mercedes hears Frances  say, "Merry Christmas, Helen."
  Frances rejoins Mercedes in the street and they  turn homeward again. Frances slips an arm through  Mercedes'. Mercedes shivers.
  At home, Daddy and Lily have begun  decorating the tree. "This time next year,  there'll be a wee holy terror crawling under the  tree," says James, painstakingly threading a  kernel of popcorn. Frances starts baking. In  the front room, Mercedes catches sight of a  check on the piano; made out by James in his  wavery handwriting, to Our Lady of Mount  Carmel Relief Fund--three zeroes. She  crumples it up and tosses it into the fire.  Bootleg money or no, this family cannot
  
survive on a female junior teacher's  salary. Daddy may wish to ease his conscience  by giving away his ill-gotten gains, but Mercedes  puts the welfare of her family first. Someone's  got to.
  Immediately after supper that evening, Mercedes  pleads homework and a headache, and retires  upstairs. A small lie. It's not her head that  hurts. Once in her room, she switches off  the light and lies fully clothed on her bed.  She can hear Christmas carols from downstairs--  Frances at the piano, singing along with Daddy and  Lily, ""God rest you merry gentlemen, let  nothing you dismay. ..."" Tears fill  Mercedes' eyes. It is not fair that Frances  should bask in Daddy's affection and the approval of  sundry shopkeepers for something that ought to have her  hiding her face in shame. It is not fair that  Sister Saint Eustace managed to make
Mercedes feel like the bad one--when everyone knows  that she's the good one. It is not fair that Frances  will have a baby, while Mercedes was denied a  husband. None of it is fair, but that is not why  Mercedes is weeping freely against her pillow.  She does not begrudge Frances the new affection  she has inspired on all sides--Mercedes was  the first to love Frances, after all. She knows she  could even find the strength to bear the mortification of  raising the child. But she cannot bear to lose  Frances. And that's what hurt this evening on their  walk home. The new Frances is no longer a  wayward child. Or even a scarlet woman. The  new Frances is at home everywhere--especially  in her own growing body--and does not lack for  friends. Everyone seems to think that motherhood is the  best thing that could possibly happen to her. Everyone  but Mercedes. For she knows that once Frances has  a child, Frances will no longer need a mother.
  Mercedes covers her face with her arm and  allows her heart to open up along its oldest  wound. Where will my baby Frances go? She will  disappear. She will die and I'll have no one  to love and look after. Little Frances will become a  forlorn ghost child, crying on the stairs at night,  cold and transparent, with her fuzzy golden  braids and her brave stare, "It doesn't  hurt." And I won't be able to comfort her.
  Mercedes cries until she is dry and  empty once more. Then she rises and sits on the  edge of her bed. Downstairs they're singing "O
  
Holy Night." She reaches into the drawer of her  night table, finds a fresh hanky and blows her  nose. She rebraids her hair in the dark.  There. Don't whine. Fix it.

  January gales freeze the ocean waves  midcrest, pine trees tinkle in their glass  dresses, and it's warm inside.
  ""Hitler Appointed Chancellor.""  Lily is scanning the headlines for James.
  "There's going to be another war," he says.  And adds another book to his wall.
  Frances bellies up to the piano and plays  "My Wild Irish Rose."
  "Sing, Lily," says James, dropping  into the wingback chair.
  Upstairs, Mercedes studies  by correspondence with Saint Francis Xavier  University. Upgrading her earning power.

  February will never end, but never mind.  Lily holds the newspaper at the proper  distance from James's new glasses so he can  make out the photograph: Chancellor Hitler and  His Holiness Pope Pius XI. Shaking  hands.
  "Yup," says James. "You watch."  And he drops off suddenly to sleep the way  he does now.

  March comes in like a lion.  ""Franklin D. Roosevelt  Inaugurated President." Do you want to see  the picture, Daddy?" Together they look at the  photograph of the tall bespectacled man standing  on a hustings swagged in the Stars and Stripes,  waving. ""Pledges to Put America Back  on Its Feet.""
  April Fool's Day. The morning sun  floods through the attic window.
  "Diphtheria Rose," says Frances.  Lily hands her the tattered, still pretty  doll. Frances holds Dippy Rose over the  open hope chest, and recites: ""Golden  lads and girls all must, ar As chimney  sweepers, come to dust.""
  Frances lays her next to Spanish  Influenza, Typhoid and TB Ahoy,  Small Pox, Scarlet Fever and Maurice.  Trixie and Lily look on reverently. On the
  
floor next to the open hope chest, the  baptismal gown is laid out.
  "Music please, Lily."
  Lily winds up The Old-Fashioned Girl  and sets her down to turn on the floor, her head  balanced prettily on her hand. She tinkles,  ""Let me call you sweetheart, I'm in  lo-o-ve wi-ith you-out. ..."" Trixie  follows the figurine with her eyes, ready  to pounce should it stray from its circumference.
  Frances picks up the baptismal gown and  lays it gently over her dolls. "Next time  I open this box, it will be to dress my baby in this  gown."
  "And to get your dolls again."  "No."
  Frances moves to lower the lid but Lily stops  her halfway.
  "You forgot this, Frances."  "That's yours, Lily."
  The photograph of Kathleen. The one that  Mercedes kept in Jane Eyre until  Lily tore the book apart, it seems so long  ago. Lily contemplates it for a moment.  Mumma is in the background, in the window.
  "What's that in Mumma's hand?" Lily  asks.
  "Scissors."
  "She's waving."
  "Yes."
  Her eyes still on the photograph, Lily  sucks in her upper and lower lips by slow turns,  releasing them gently through her teeth.
  "This picture belongs to Mercedes," she  says, finally.
  "No it doesn't."
  "I don't want it." Lily looks away.  "She's pretty, isn't she?"
  Lily doesn't say anything. Doesn't  look up.
  "She's your mother, Lily."
  The Old-Fashioned Girl has stopped  turning but Trixie keeps watch just in case.  Frances continues gently, "She died. It  wasn't your fault."
  Lily sits very still and listens, veiled by her  hair which she has been wearing loose of late, it  sweeps to the floor around her like a curtain of  fire.
  "She went to New York," says Frances.
  
"She was an opera singer. Something happened there.  Daddy brought her home. She lay in this room and  never said a word. Ambrose drowned in the creek.  It was an accident. You didn't drown, you got  polio instead. I was there."
  The more Frances tells, the more she remembers.  As though it were all parked, waiting behind the  flimsiest of stage scenery--a scrim perhaps--and  suddenly exposed by a trick of light; the  countryside dissolving to reveal the battlefield,  present all along.
  "The night you were born. I don't know why I  brought you to the creek. I loved you. It wasn't  because I didn't love you. I carried you into the  water. I held you and I prayed." Frances  strokes her belly, feeling for a kick inside,  but it's all quiet.
  "Did you baptize Ambrose too?"
  "Yes."
  They sit for a long moment together, not talking,  breathing in the soft cedar cloud.
  Frances puts The Old-Fashioned Girl  back in the hope chest, then turns and looks at  Lily, who is growing up.
  "Lily. If you want to ask me something,  I'll tell you the truth."
  Lily has dropped the photograph of the  laughing girl. She looks up.
  "Ambrose loves you, Frances."
  Frances takes Lily's hand and places it  against her belly. "Here. You can feel him.  He's awake now."
  Lily feels the ripple. She presses her  ear against the site.
  "What do you hear, Lily?"
  "The ocean."
  The car horn blasts outside; Mercedes has  learned to drive. Frances and Lily go to the window  and wave down. Daddy is standing by the car, leaning  on his cane, he smiles up. Lily turns  away from the window, intending to close the hope chest  before going downstairs, but she sees that Frances  has already done so. She pauses at the top of the  stairs and says, "Are you coming, Frances?"  Frances turns and goes directly to join her  sister at the top of the stairs. No need to close  the hope chest, for she sees that Lily has done  so already.
  It's a lovely day for the drive to Mabou.  Frances would rather have had her baby here at home with
  
Mrs. Luvovitz, but she relented because it  seemed to mean so much to Mercedes--"They're  equipped for emergencies, Frances, it's safer  even than going into hospital, please dear, if  only for my sake."
  James stands holding the passenger door open.  Mercedes pulls on a pair of kid gloves as  Frances climbs in beside her.
  "Frances, I have to tell you a secret."  "What?"
  "I'm pregnant too."
  Mercedes' smile trembles for a moment, then she  bursts out in a high-pitched giggle, "April  Fool!"
  The car lunges in reverse down the  driveway. Frances watches her sister's  laughing profile and reflects that Mercedes has  been under a strain.

             Blue Dress

  Daddy and Lily are very happy together at home  alone. It's so peaceful. Three and a half  weeks pass. Lily doesn't realize the  extent of James's latest limitations until  he starts to smell a bit rank. She helps  him into the bath once a week. She lays out  fresh underwear daily and bleaches the rest. Fresh  and clean. She checks on him if he's  too long in the toilet. He sometimes falls  asleep there. She tidies him, then wakes him  up. He still spends an hour a day working in the shed  but he misses Trixie's company. They  haven't seen her since Frances left. Lily  expects Trixie to show up at the foot of  Frances's bed in Mabou. Meantime, Lily has  had to put mousetraps in the cellar and kitchen.
  On April 25 the telegram arrives:  it's a boy stop coming home wed stop. Lily  and Daddy toast the new arrival with milk. They  consider a battery of names--Isador,  Ignatius, Malcolm, Rupert, Bingo,  George, Sebastian, Christopher, Pius,  Lief, Horace, Romulus, Patrick,  Pierre, Cornelius, Michael, Alec,  Eustochium, Felix, Augustus, David--and  decide on all of them. Until Lily comes  up with Aloysius, which seems to say it all.
  "Aloysius," says James. "...  Aloysius. Yes."
  
  "Aloysius," replies Lily.

  The first of May, month of Immaculate  Mary. Lily is still in her white dress and  headgear from the noon procession up Plummer  Avenue to the church. It seems an  appropriate outfit in which to greet her sisters  and her new nephew. She has strewn the stone  path to the house with Queen Anne's lace and  daisies. "Welcome Home" in Gothic  script hangs from the veranda eaves. In the  kitchen, bread sculptures cool on the table--  Madonna and the Infant of Prague, and a  piet@a. She has prepared a feast: a roast  cooked to the size of a wallet with raw turnip  slices, cranberry sauce, baked potatoes  --the two that failed to detonate in the oven--tea  biscuits and molasses. Date squares,  pits in. Upstairs, lily of the valley  exhale on Frances's pillow. All is in  readiness. Last but not least, a big blue cake  with white writing, "Happy Birthday  Allowishes."
  The morning rain has turned to evaporating  diamonds in the afternoon heat. Lily has had her  eyes peeled on the street for the past three  hours.
  "Here they come!"
  James joins her on the veranda. As  soon as the car gets within range, Lily waves  and runs back into the house to get the new camera.  She gets a shot of the car as it turns into the  driveway. Mercedes is waving now too but in the  background Frances is, of course, more concerned  with the bright blue bundle at her breast. Click.  The car pulls to a stop. Mercedes' hand goes  up to her window. Click. The driver's side  opens. Click. Mercedes steps out, still waving,  click. She runs up the path to Lily,  click, click, click. And grabs the camera,  jerking Lily's head forward at the same time because  the new camera comes with a strap. She hisses at  Lily, "Not a word, do you hear me? Not a word."
  Mercedes glances up to include James in this  proviso but he's on his way down the steps with his  cane, walking to meet Frances, who has stopped  halfway up the flowered path. Mercedes moves  to overtake him but "No, Mercedes," says  Lily.
  Mercedes is surprised. But she obeys,
  
understanding that Lily is up to something saintly.
  James reaches Frances, puts out his arm for  her, and she takes it. Together they walk to the  house. Frances is wearing a sky-blue dress  to go with the darker blue bundle she cradles with her  free arm. When they reach the foot of the veranda,  Lily sees that it is not a bundle at all, but  Frances's breasts. Huge and leaking. Staining her  pale dress a royal blue.
  By evening Frances is still asleep upstairs on  her bed, her face crushing heavy scent from the  lily of the valley. In the lower reaches, the  decorations are down. They have eaten no supper.  Mercedes consents to a cup of tea.
  "The birth went smoothly." Mercedes lifts  her cup but her hand shakes so badly that she sets  it down again on the kitchen table. "Frances was very  brave. The sisters said it was as though she felt  no pain."
  Lily and James wait for her to continue.  "It was a boy. He was, of course, quite  dark. And very healthy."
  "You saw him," says James.
  Mercedes nods and the tears come. "He was  beautiful. A beautiful baby with a lusty cry."  She smiles a little at the recollection.
  "Did you hold him?" Lily asks.  Mercedes nods yes.
  "Did Frances?"
  "He took to the breast right away, there was no  problem."
  Mercedes catches James's eye and he  looks down, shaking his head.
  "What happened to him?" Lily is confused.  She seems to be the only one who doesn't  understand. Mercedes turns to her and explains  tenderly, "He just died, Lily. Sometimes it  happens, a baby just dies in its sleep, they  don't know why."
  James nods, his mouth tightening. He says  in a would-be matter-of-fact voice, "Crib  death. That's what happened to the first Lily."
  "Other Lily?"
  "That's right," says James, rising to leave.  "Was he baptized?"
  Mercedes nods, starting to cry again. As  James shuffles past he bonks each of them  affectionately on the head with his bad hand and says  without looking, "Night-night, girls."
  "Good night, Daddy."
  
  He shambles from the room. They hear him clear  his throat once or twice when he reaches the  hall.
  Mercedes puts forth a hand and strokes  Lily's hair, "Sometimes, if a child is very  special, God might choose to spare it the pain  and temptations of this world, and take it straight  to Him."
  "What was wrong with him?" Lily is  suspicious.
  "Why, nothing, Lily. He was perfect."  "You said he was "special.""
  "Yes, specially beloved of God."  "That means there was something wrong with him, he was  crippled."
  "He wasn't crippled."
  "I don't believe you."
  "Lily. Look at me." Mercedes continues  gently, "I have some nice news too."
  Lily waits, not trusting. Mercedes takes  Lily's hand and leans forward. "While I was at  Mabou I saw the bishop. He'd like to have a  talk with you."
  Lily looks up. "What for?"
  "He wants to hear about your visions."  "You mean Ambrose?"
  "Yes. And other things."
  "What other things?"
  Lily's hand cools and moistens in  response to Mercedes' gathering warmth.
  "Your special way with the sick and the lost."  "Who?"
  "The veterans, for example. And Frances.  And Daddy--" Mercedes' eyes have begun to shine,  giving Lily the old creepy feeling of being a  front for some figure situated immediately behind her,  a figure she knows will disappear no matter how  suddenly she turns--"And your special knowledge of  God's plan."
  The soft fur at the nape of Lily's neck  stirs. She can no longer resist, she turns  around in her chair but there is no one behind her--  nothing to see but the oven, standing where it has always  stood.
  "What are you looking at, Lily?"  "Nothing. I thought I heard something."
  Mercedes' gaze follows Lily's to the oven.  And now the filaments at the back of Mercedes'  neck likewise bristle to life.
  "What does he want?" asks Lily,
  
turning round again.
  "Who?"
  "The bishop."
  "He wants to interview you. To find out if  God has a special plan for you."
  "How's he going to find that out?"  "By listening to you tell your story. And--Lily,  this is the most wonderful part--you know how I've  been saving so that we could go to Lourdes for your  fourteenth birthday?"
  Lily waits.
  "Well, God has provided. There's more  than enough money for us to go together and to stay as long as it  takes to petition Our Lady for a cure."
  "I'm not sick."
  Mercedes flushes slightly and her eyes  return to this world.
  "Lily. Don't you want to have two good  legs?"
  "No."
  Mercedes had not counted on this.  "But Lily. If you are blessed with a cure, it  will be proof that God really does have a special  plan for you."
  "I don't need proof."
  Mercedes is vexed, for Lily is, of  course, right. She requires no proof because she  has faith. But the bishop requires proof.  Rome requires proof. And Mercedes  requires that Lily's goodness--the essential  goodness of this family--be revealed for all to see.
  "Lily ..." Mercedes lifts a lock of  Lily's hair and slowly starts to wind and weave,  "Do you know how pretty you are?"
  Lily begins her habit of sucking in her  lips one at a time, passing them back and forth  over her teeth.
  "I know you're afraid, Lily." Lily's  hair is so smooth, her honey cheeks tinted  rose, her lips flushed and full. "Change is  frightening even when it's for the good. But Lily, I  also know that you love your family and that, in the end,  you'll do what's best for everyone." Mercedes  strokes the long gleaming braid and lets it  fall.
  Lily remains still as Mercedes rises and  takes her tea from the room. After a moment,  Lily hears the piano and Mercedes' slender  voice floating above it,  ""A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-ve
  
Mari-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ia ...""
  Like "Londonderry Air"--or, as Frances  always called it, "London Derri@ere"--many people  find it impossible to hear this hymn and not swell with  sweet guilt at how they ought to have been nicer  to their parents while they still had the chance. But for some  reason it only makes Lily angry. Perhaps  because she has always been so nice.
  Lily rises and leaves the kitchen, past the  front room--""gra-a-a-a-a-a-zi-ia-a  ple-ena-a-a-a-a-a""--where she can just see the  top of Daddy's dry flaxen head above his  parapet of books. She proceeds up the  stairs, past the room where Frances has not  stirred among moist sheets and up to the attic to do  the one thing she can for Frances.
  Lily is set to break the lock on the hope  chest with her bare hands--she intends to remove the  baptismal gown and dispose of it for good so that  Frances need never come across it. But the hope chest  isn't locked. The lid is down but not quite flush  to the frame of the box itself. Lily lifts the lid.  The cedar smell wafts up cloaking a second  smell--in all likelihood another mouse  entombed and decomposing. What light there is  reflects feebly from the yellowed satin of the old  baptismal gown. Lily remembers the garment  spread lightly over Frances's beloved dolls,  not wrapped about them, but she must be  mistaken because, when she slips her hands beneath and  lifts, the gown feels full and heavy. Too  heavy for dolls. Cool fur. Trixie.
Swaddled and entwined.
  "Trixie." She must have leaped in for a nap and the  lid shut. Oh Trixie. Oh no. She must have  panicked and tangled herself up, winding and twisting  until she finally came to rest. "Poor  Trixie." Lily strokes the yellow eyes  shut, but there is nothing to be done about the gaping  jaw.
  A truly terrible smell now, the body having  been disturbed. Lily takes the shallowest of  breaths to avoid her gag reflex as she carries  Trixie down the attic steps. On her way  past Frances's room, she sees Mercedes by the  dancing light of a candle, seated on the edge of  Frances's bed with an empty tray in her lap.  Lily continues down the front hall stairs.
  In Frances's room, Mercedes hears the  kitchen door slam. She makes a move toward
  
the window but stops when she sees Frances coming  awake at the sound. "Frances?"
  Frances looks up at Mercedes.  "Frances, it's time to make you fresh and dry,  dear."
  Frances blinks. Mercedes smiles.  "I've brought you your favorite dishes.  Look."
  Frances looks at the tray while Mercedes  identifies its contents, "Blancmange,  treacle, mead and mutton--"
  "It's empty."
  "Frances--" Mercedes' head starts to shake.  "Mercedes, what's wrong?"
  Mercedes' fingers begin a blind search of her own  face, probing her eye sockets--Frances  reaches up and gently lowers her hands. Mercedes  takes a breath and pulls herself taut. "I'm  sorry, I didn't want him to--" but  trembles and cracks all over like spring break-up  --"die!--I--" Frances reaches up and draws  Mercedes down into an embrace, soaking them  both. Mercedes smells the new milk. "I'm  sorry, Frances."
  "He died. It's not your fault."  Mercedes grieves into Frances's neck.  "Maybe if we had stayed here and let Mrs.  Luvovitz--"
  "Hush," patting her back. "Hush  now, it's all right."
  Mercedes mangles many words against Frances's  neck, unintelligible to her sister but for "I  love you, Frances."
  "Shsh."
  "Can I sleep here tonight?"
  But Frances is looking past Mercedes'  shoulder out the window. "What's Lily doing?"
  Mercedes looks up.
  They can see Lily on her hands and knees in  the garden. Somehow she has rolled the big rock  aside on her own. There is an object lying  nearby--a brighter patch against the ground. Lily  is scooping debris from a freshly excavated  hole.
  "She's digging," says Mercedes.  They watch Lily pause and rest for a moment  against the garden stone.
  "She's praying," says Frances.  They see Lily rise from her knees and pick  up the dimly glittering bundle. She cradles
  
it for a moment in her arms before lowering it into the hole.  Mercedes rises and straightens her shoulders.
  "I'm worried about Lily, Frances."  "Leave her be."
  "You know, Frances, one thing looks very much like  another."
  "Mercedes--"
  "What kind of a creature prefers to be  crippled, Frances? Answer me that." Mercedes  has entered a mad classroom, i before e  except after c, the time has come, the Walrus  said, to give you forty whacks instead.
  "Mercedes, come back."
  But Mercedes has left the room and now she  is almost fainting at the evil smell enshrouding the  hall. She follows the putrid cloud  downstairs and into the darkened kitchen before Lily is  halfway across the yard on her way back to the  house. Mercedes waits with her hand on the  electric light switch, trying not to breathe. One  thing looks like another, but nose knows. There is the  odor of sanctity. And there is the stench of hell.
  The kitchen door opens and Lily steps into the  sudden light.
  "What have you done?" demands Mercedes.  Lily's hands are cupped together around a  secret. She looks like a child with a robin's egg,  it fell out of the nest, I rescued it, really  'n' truly.
  "I've buried Trixie," Lily says.  Mercedes waits. Gives her one last chance.  Lily walks to the kitchen table and deposits her  treasure. Blackened with coal, nestled in a  remnant of stained linen, a tiny human skull,  fragile as a shell, with sutures still agape.  Along with a few slender twig and pebble bones, the  stuff of birds' nests.
  "And I've found my brother."
  She watches as Mercedes gets down on her  knees, squeezes shut her eyes and, in a  stage whisper, implores God to cast the  Devil from Lily--""exorcizo te,  immunde spiritus, maledicte  diabole""--repeating the words until they are  no longer words but sounds. She makes the sign  of the cross over, and over, and over--Later she will  contact the bishop so that Lily may be taken  away to a place where a special priest will  drive the unclean spirit from her by force of prayer and  perhaps other means, cruel to the body but so kind to the
  
soul. Later Mercedes will beg God's  forgiveness for having flattered herself that she was the  sister of a saint.
  Lily walks past Mercedes, whose mouth is  twitching and hissing like a puncture, and into the  front room. She is ready to ask James a  question. She has already forgiven him for what she does  not yet know. The reading lamp is on. She steps  through a breach in his wall of books to find him  slumped as usual in the wingback chair with his mouth  half open. Dante's Paradiso has fallen  from his hands. Lily picks it up and places it  carefully in his lap. She bends and kisses his  forehead, but she doesn't ask him the question, because he  is dead.
  She returns to the hall, where Mercedes'  whispers have risen to a buzz and whirr. Lily  mounts the stairs and walks into Frances's  bedroom, full of the scent, the innocent passion of  wildflowers.
  "Frances, I've buried Trixie and said a  prayer for her. I've found Ambrose."
  Frances says, "Lily, reach up and hand me  Wuthering Heights."
  Lily hands Frances the book.  "Remember when we buried the family  tree?" asks Frances with a small grin.
  "It decayed," answers Lily. "It was  only made of paper."
  "Did you find my nightgown?"
  "A little piece of it."
  Frances opens Wuthering Heights. The  pages have been excavated in the center and  replaced with a wad of cash. Frances hands Lily  the money.
  "Is this the Lourdes money?"
  "No. I earned it honestly."  "Daddy is dead."
  "I have a present for you, Lily. I was going  to wait for your birthday but I want you to have it  tonight."
  "What is it?"
  "It's in the hope chest."  "Frances--"
  "What's that sound?" Frances tilts her head  to listen. "Do you hear that? It sounds like a swarm  of--"
  "It's Mercedes. I'm afraid of her."  "She thinks you're a saint."
  "Not anymore."
  
  "I know."
  "I don't believe in the Devil,  Frances."
  "Mercedes does."
  "So?"
  "I can't look after you anymore."  "It's okay, Frances, I can look after  myself, I'm not scared of Mercedes."
  "It's not just Mercedes. You have to go, Lily.  Don't worry, I'll tell you where."
  "No."
  Frances cups Lily's face in her hands and  looks her in the eyes. "Oh yes."
  How can a person look into her own face and  consent to be banished from it? For Lily, Frances  is as first and familiar as the sky, as the palm of  her own hand. The freckle on the nose, the green  jewels in the eyes, the smart mouth, what does  it mean to be banished from the face that first looked you  into existence?
  "I don't want to leave you."  Lily's forehead buckles but Frances  insists, "You have to go, little gingerbread boy, "run  away and whatever you do, don't look back.""
  "This isn't a story, Frances." Anger  ignites Lily's grief.
  "Yes it is, Lily. Hayola kellu  bas Helm."
  "It is not!"
  "Taa'i la hown, Habibti--"
  "No!"
  "Te'berini."
  "Stop it!"
  Frances reaches for Lily, but Lily flies  into a rage, beating off the embrace until she  forgets that Frances is not a book, or a  porcelain figurine. Frances doesn't move  except to protect her face and breasts while  Lily exhausts herself.
  When Lily crumples finally, the undertow gets  ahold of her face and contorts it into a grieving  clown. The same tide distends her voice "I  don't want to leave you, Fra-anc-ees." The  corners of Lily's mouth run with clear  saliva, she is incapable of closing her mouth or  of taking the next breath. Frances touches  Lily's fist, unlocking her throat. The air  pours scraping in, and corrosive sobs begin.
  "Come here, Lily."
  Frances opens her nightgown and guides
  
Lily's mouth to drink.

  Shortly before dawn, Lily kneels before the  open hope chest for the second time that night. She  reaches deep down and withdraws a soft bundle  wrapped in white tissue-paper. She lifts out  a beautiful flowing dress of pale green silk.  Then picks up the notebook that has fallen from  its folds. Holy Angels Convent School.
  Ten minutes later, the shed door opens and  Lily walks in. It is not necessary to search, for  there it is. Daddy's project. Finished. They  are still mounted on the lasts. Two bright red  boots. The small one, perched on its  built-up sole, smiles out at her as does  its big brother. Lily removes the new  boots from their iron feet. She pulls them on,  harnessing with care the left boot for its first taste  of the bit. She wraps her ankles in the money  Frances gave her, pulls tight the candy-cane  laces and stands up. Calf leather. They enfold  her feet like a second skin, no need to break  them in. They go nicely with her beautiful new  green silk dress--a little big for her, to be  sure, and missing a sash as you can see from the  empty belt loops, but lovely all the same.  With her notebook under her arm, Lily leaves the  shed.
  The air is cool and moist with a hint  of salt. The night is turning gray. It's the  best time to see this town--the collieries, the  tracks, the coal carts and company houses look  best in the pewter dawn, likewise the ocean and the  rocky shore. Farewell. Lily feels  refreshed. As though she could walk for ever.  Farewell to Nova Scotia. She closes  the door behind her, and heads for the Shore Road.  She looks back once. And keeps walking.

               Book 8
               HEJIRA

8 pm, February 29, 1918, New
  York City

Dear Diary,
  No, I will not use that form of address. That is  a relic of childhood. This book will serve as a  record of my progress as a singer. I will  record only relevant facts which will prove  useful as my training progresses. No gush.  Let other girls record their crushes and their  dresses, their tresses and trousseaux. I am  here to work. I will note scientifically everything I  learn as in a lab book.
    I will be objective and unflinchingly  self-critical. I will not be distracted by the  bustle of this city. And in this, my record book,
    I will not allow emotion to color my  perceptions.
  1:12 am--I am burning. I have to live,  I have to sing, I want to transform myself into a  thousand different characters and carry their life with me  onto the stage where it's so bright and so dark at the  same time, just knowing there are three thousand  people out there longing to be swept away by the passion  that's about to flood out from scarlet curtains, to this  I consecrate my body and my soul, I can    give no more than all of myself, I feel my  heart is a throbbing engine and my voice is the  valve, like a wailing train, it has to sing or  blow up, there's too much fuel, too much fire,  and what am I to do with this voice if I can't let  it out, it's not just singing. I am here as a speck,  but I don't feel scared or about to be blown  away, I feel like all New York is a  warm embrace just waiting to enfold me. I am in  love. But not with a person. I am passionately  in love with my life.
  Friday March 1, 1918--My voice  teacher is someone I will simply call Herr  Blutwurst. He is rude and, if my first  lesson is any indication, utterly devoid of  qualifications. I can only conclude he is a  fraud. I will give him to week's end. He is  a dry stick of a person. I feel dust in my
  
throat just thinking about him. I was perfectly  polite. He looked me over as though he were  buying a horse. He has a horrible accent.  He ordered me to "zing zomesink." I did,  and he got an expression on his face as though  he'd just et a bad oyster. Why did it ever even  occur to this man to enter any field remotely  connected to music since he obviously hates  music? He said, after I had sung my  Quanto affetto, "Vee haf a lot off  verk to do." I should have said, "Ich weiss  das, K@asekopf, das ist warum Ich  hier bin." He wants me to cry but I  won't, my daddy just finished killing a lot of his  countrymen.
    My first advantage: I have everything. My  second advantage: this is just another island.  My third advantage: I am bigger than it  all.
  March 2--I took a walk in Central  Park. I didn't cry in front of Herr  Kaiser. I didn't sing in front of Herr  Kaiser because he hates singers who sing, he  claims to be Hungarian but I know he's  Fritzy, why hasn't he been arrested, there's  supposed to be a war on.
  Monday March 4--I ate the most  delicious thing today. A pretzel. It's a  baked thing tied in a knot. You eat it  with mustard. Sounds unremarkable but is  brilliant. Wrote pointless surprise theory  exam for Kaiser.
  Tuesday--Could someone please tell me what  the point of "hissing" is? We have progressed,  dear Diary! I am now forbidden, not only to sing,  but to make any vocal sound whatsoever!
  Wednesday--Museum of Natural
History with Giles and fossilized lady friend  Miss Morriss. Tea, then took me to see  six girls doing modern dance in bedsheets  swishing knives around. Maybe I should be a  dancer. Take that back about Miss Morriss,  they're both so nice and I'm so bored.
  Thursday--Kaiser crept up behind me and  put his skeleton hands around my lower back  ribs and said, "For the purposes of these lessons  I must ask you to loosen or discard your corset."  Filthy bodechean.
  Fri. March 8--Wearing my hair  loose like Lady Godiva to feel less naked
  
with no corset. Excellent feeling, though  strange, like I'm always ready for bed or  swimming. Came all the way to Island of  Manhattan just to shed outmoded undergarment.
  Sat.--Got perfect on stupid fake  theory exam. Killed him to admit that. "You have  virtually perfect pitch, Miss Piper."  There's no "virtually" about it and he knows it.  Asked him when I could sing again. He said, "As  far as I can tell, Miss Piper, you have never  sung in your life."
  Sun.--Giles asked if I wanted to come  sightseeing. No. Thank you.
  Monday, March 11, Eighth Ave  elevated train, squashed like sardine--"That which  does not kill me, only makes me stronger."
  tues.--My lower back is always aching. I  have not cried, I'm past that, I'm numb, but I  have almost fainted. "Nein," he says. "Start  again. Inhale, ja, und ..." And then I  "hiss."
  Wed.--Oh joy! Today I got to make a  sound! With my mouth closed. I have no idea what  he's talking about most of the time and it isn't the  language barrier: "Think that you must hold a  boiled egg in the back of your throat." With or  without the shell? Halfway through the lesson, as I  was making a feeble little humming sound with my mouth  closed, with my tongue in the n  position, while I was trying "to put a smile  into the sound," he said, "That's it." Apparently  he has found the true placement of my voice.  On the rear shelf of a disused library.
  @?--I wonder if anyone has ever committed  suicide out of sheer boredom? Today I was  permitted to open my mouth ever so slightly and  release the faintest of "ee's." Then he told  me to put an "ae" inside the "ee." "Ah" and  "oo" come after but he wouldn't let me finish--he  informed me that I had run out of air. I said I  had plenty of air left and he told me that perhaps  I had air enough to sustain life, but not the note.  I have to learn to sing "on the breath," he said.  Give me strength!
    Giles just called me for supper. Everything  she cooks is white or light brown. Except  the boiled greens, which are gray. She said, in this  voice that reminds me of dust on a doily,  "Before you know it you'll have lots of friends and it will  seem like a different city." I don't want
  
friends, I didn't come here to make friends. She's  nice, though. Why can't I just be grateful that  there's at least someone who speaks kindly to me.  Sometimes, though, she gives me a bit of the  creeps. She'll look at me like she knows  something and then she'll say something completely  innocuous. This whole apartment reeks of lavender,  there are lace curtains and praying hands everywhere.  It's all like a fading photograph except for  me. I keep seeing myself whirling around, breaking  everything without even touching it, it makes me want  to talk louder, breathe deeper, commit carnal  acts!
    I look at myself naked. Yes, this is my  confession. In the full-length mirror in the  armoire in my room. I look at myself just  to remind myself that I'm there. No, I look because  I like to look and that's how I know it's wrong. But  how could it be? I feel an ache.
    I want someone to see me and touch me before  I'm old. Before it wrinkles and fades and  falls, I can't believe that will ever happen to me.
  14th--Intervals of seconds. Up and down  and up and down and up and down and lasciatemi  morir
  15th--spent a month's carfare on a new  dress--pale green silk chiffon, tr`es  chic, tr`es moderne, I look about  twenty-five. I have no place to wear  it.
  16th--Intervals of thirds
  Sunday, March 17--No lesson today,  no torture chamber. Also, I didn't have  to get up at the crack of dawn to WALK there  on time owing to the fact that I squandered a small  fortune on that stupid dress I'll never wear.  But oubliez all that! I am happy as a  clam because I'm in Central Park all on my  own, it's sunny, life is long,
    I have all the time in the world and I will sing.  He has put my voice into a sad solitary  cell but she will fly. I know because I can feel her  beating, getting stronger the longer she is silent.  Could it be that the Kaiser's training is working? Or  is it possible my voice is thriving on  adversity? That is the perverse unbreakable Piper  spirit. Thank you Daddy.
    There is a couple "spooning" in broad  daylight not three steps away from me in full  view of a nanny and a six-year-old girl with a
  
face full of freckles who keeps grinning at  me--reminds me of Frances. Little imp just  whipped her rubber ball at me, it bounced off the  bench, now it's landed in the pond
    Fished the ball out, played like an idiot with  her for the next hour and a half much to Nanny's  relief.
  apr`es diner:--Because this is my diary,  I will ask this question:
    Do you think Giles has ever been impure  in thought and deed? Why do I have to think that about a  perfectly innocent old lady?! But no one is  perfectly innocent. A good singer knows that. I  am terrible. I don't care. I want to make  love with my voice to three thousand four hundred  and sixty-five people at a time.
  Tues. 19--I have been exiled to the  mezza di voce. Il passaggio. He  calls it "the no-man's-land of the voice." It  is another of his sadistic techniques. I am  being held prisoner an octave and a half above  middle C between E and G.
  Wed. 20--He wants to ruin my voice.  Fri.--Il passaggio is abandoned.  Il passaggio is all but silent.
    Il passaggio is another word for  limbo.
  sat.--I was late this morning. Couldn't get  to sleep last night and couldn't wake up  this morning. Herr K worse than usual as a  result.
  Monday March 25--It seems Il  passaggio is inhabited after all. Haunted  is more like it. Full of ghostly sighs and groans.
  2:00 am--I dreamt of Pete. He was  wearing Mumma's apron and Daddy's pit  boots and he was crying and wanting me to hug him.  There is no such thing. The lights are on now.  No such thing as Pete.
    I want to go home. I want to see my  daddy.
    Kathleen, grow up.
  3:30 am--don't write it down
    I can't stop crying.
    What if there's someone outside my door?  Oh God. If I think about it, my door  will open.
    "Let nothing disturb you; nothing frighten you.  All things are passing." Saint Teresa, ora  pro nobis.
  
  thurs. 28--Giles made me drink a  special tea so I could sleep last night. It  worked. Has she been spying on me?
  fri.--One heck of a middle C today.  Felt like I was gorging on a chocolate  @eclair. Kaiser none too pleased--after all,  I'm a soprano. Sopranos don't sing in  chocolate.
  sat--Today I cried. he told me to sing the  C-major scale, my first time allowed to put more  than two notes together at a time. But still no  consonants, just "ah." I felt like I was  climbing stone steps in the dark and when I got a  glimpse of light toward the top I started crying  but I finished the ruddy scale.
  APRIL FOOL'S DAY--Today Herr
Knibs gives me that bloodless vulture eye  and--no, he's more amphibian, he's probably  covered in dry scales (scales, ha ha!) from  collar to cuffs and dines furtively on furry  creatures thrice daily. I can just see the  squirming lump making its way down his narrow  throat. Does he regurgitate bones every  evening? Well today he says to me, "I vill  accept you as a shtudent, Miss Pipah." Why  didn't I say the perfect icy thing? I said--  and I am being completely honest here, so I'll  tell you--I said, "Thank you, sir." May I  be struck dead.
  Wed.--Daddy sent me a book today and  Mercedes and Frances sent me saltwater taffy!  I never thought I'd miss my little elves so much.  I wish Daddy would put them in a special  crate and mail them to me like kittens for a day or  two.
  Thurs.--"La voix mixte": In every  head tone, the resonance of the chest. In every chest  tone, the rarity of the head. Ascend directly  to heaven.
  Fri.--Giles asked me to sing something for her  this afternoon and I had to say, "I'm sorry, I'm  not allowed to sing anything but scales and arpeggios."  The Kaiser says he can tell if I've been  singing "ditties" on the sly. It's like I'm  committing adultery with my voice or something,  he's disgusting.
  Mon.--He's making me wear my hair in  a scalp-tight bun. What does he think I  am, a ballerina?
  Tues.--I have had an epiphany. I now
  
know what people mean when they say you have to suffer for your  art. I always thought they meant rehearsing till you  drop, performing when you're not in the mood, starving  until you get discovered and I always thought,  "Great, I can't wait to suffer" but that's not it at  all. The real suffering is this teacher trying to kill  me with boredom by marching me up and down every scale  known to man. Fine. I will beat him at his own  game. I have begun repeating the entire morning's  lesson three times every day.
  Wed.--"Your vocal range is a freak of  nature, Miss Piper, no more or less  impressive than Mount Everest. It remains  to be seen whether or not you have the stamina and skill  to scale it." Scale!
  Thurs.--I love the buildings. They're  called skyscrapers. They're the closest thing  to an ocean here. But it's an ocean that goes  straight up, not flat out. They say that the body  of water stretching away to the east of Manhattan  is the ocean but it isn't. Not my ocean,  anyway. It's weird because back home I just  took it for granted, my gray-green sea. Now  I have a granite ocean. It gives me the  same happy-sad feeling I need sometimes. When  I look straight up at the buildings I can  feel alone in a good way. Not in that horrible  way of no one knows me.
  fri--This is not a city. This is a  world with whole countries in it. You could go mad here  if you were the type of person who thought you were sane  in the first place. I have found something past the  granite ocean. It's a whole amazing world. You  can walk for an hour and never hear a word of  English, you can eat in five different countries  in five blocks, you can hear music everywhere.  Why am I studying, why do I want to be caged  on a stage when the real singers are out here, singing  about fish, hollering out rhythm across wheelbarrows  full of fruit to the timpani of Tin Pan  Alley, a chorus of trains, horseshoes,  knives and live animals, this is where the opera  is. The Met is a mausoleum. The music  room is a funeral parlor. God I don't  want to wind up in a museum.
  Mon.--There are places in Central Park  that are better left unexplored and I won't  scandalize you by telling you why.
  Tues. April 16--Coney Island!
Ate only pink things. Threw up. It was worth
  
it.
  Wednesday--Start at the South St. docks.  Halifax times twenty. They better hope it  never blows up. I see horses being winched up  by their bellies in slings onto ships. They've  been conscripted. That's what most of the ships are  for. New York feeds the war. New York  goes to the whole world and the whole world comes to New  York. I love seeing huge crates with  Chinese writing swing through the air and pile up on  the dock alongside every other language known  to man. I'd like to spend a whole day just watching the  men and the cargo but I can't linger too long 'cause  of all the tough customers wondering what a nice  girl like me is doing ... etc. What would they do  if I said, "Hey pal, I think you're  beautiful, you move like Nijinsky, you're my  idea of a Greek god, in overalls." But
I'm not allowed to say anything at all because they'd  think I was asking for it. Men get to chat  to strangers and learn all kinds of things. Women  get to take a book out of the library. When I  am a famous singer, I will talk to whomever I  please.
    On foot up through the Bowery, the Italian  quarter--kids, carts, food, women in black,  good-looking guys but don't let them see you  looking, opera verismo--Greenwich
Village, ladies and gentlemen,  Tenderloin--get hungry here, buy a  pretzel, have lunch in Hell's Kitchen--  really! Why do they call it that? Seems  perfectly nice, in fact you can have a free  lunch at Devlin's Saloon Bar. It's  true, a sign said "Ladies Entrance" so I  entered and there were a whole bunch of women with red  faces and gristly elbows and all you have to do is  pay a nickel for a beer that comes with a hot heaping  plate. Up Broadway a bit tipsy--not  used to beer--the golden mile, Union Square,  Madison Square, Herald Square, past the  Met--genuflect--promenade through Times  Square, Columbus Circle, buy popcorn  for the pigeons to keep them in the statue business  (where they perform a valuable civic service  by keeping the glorious past in perspective),  into the Park, zigzag through that immense chunk of  countryside smack in the middle of the greatest show  on earth, past the Pond, the Lake, the  Castle, skip the Reservoir it's too big and
  
too small, promise to go to the Metropolitan  Museum next time, Haarlem Meer (sit down  and decide I've walked far enough), out onto  Central Park North, up Lenox  thirty-seven blocks to the Haarlem River.  It's night.
    Take the Eighth Avenue elevated back,  dead happy tired with the whole city around my head  like a halo. There are no Dutch people in Haarlem.  I have noticed on walks that colored people and  foreigners in general are totally different here. In  New York it's not like they're in someone else's  city, at least not in their own neighborhoods. The  neighborhoods are whole cities themselves. At  home when I passed by the Pier or Fourteen  Yard I always felt sorry and thought how lucky  I was not to be born into that, but here when I went  into Haarlem I felt weird for being white.  It's full of churches, and families just out  strolling in the evening. I felt conspicuous. But  I never fit in down home either so what's the  difference?
    Everything in New York is a  photograph. All the things that are supposed  to be dirty or rough or unrefined are the most  beautiful things. Garbage cans at the ends of  alleyways look like they've been up all night  talking with each other. Doorways with peeling  paint look like the wise lines around an  old feller's eyes. I stop and stare but can't  stay because men always think I'm selling something. Or  worse, giving something away. I wish I could be  invisible. Or at least I wish I didn't  look like someone they want to look at. They stop  being part of the picture, they get up from their chess  game and come out of the frame at me, blocking my  view. What do they see when they look at me?
  Fri April 19--Jesus, Mary and
Joseph, last night I snuck out at  midnight when Giles was asleep. Why didn't  I do this weeks ago?
    I thought there was music during the day, but the  night consists of nothing but. The problem is I  can't get into any of the interesting-looking places  unescorted. But so far it's enough to drink up the  night, the streetlights, the life on front  stoops off Broadway, behind curtained windows,  private clubs with shuttered doors, the faint  sound of trumpets and drums, and the longest  automobiles I have ever seen. I thought
  
Haarlem would be asleep by the time I got up  there, considering the number of churches, but maybe the  churches turn into clubs at night like toys coming  alive 'cause it was a different city--on the  main streets anyhow. Daddy always says that in  Ireland the number of churches is exceeded only  by the number of pubs. Lenox Avenue was gorged  with people dressed to the nines, lines of limousines, a  fair number of white people, even mixed couples  pouring in and out of places. It whitens somewhat at  night. I'm on the verge of answering the next  man who says, "Hey, sweetheart, where's your  boyfriend?" just so's I can step inside somewhere,  anywhere, so long as there's music, music,  music. I did go to one place though. Jerry  Chan's Chop Suey House at Canal and  Bowery. Delicious. Here's my fortune: "You  will meet a tall dark and handsome stranger."  Tr`es romantique, n'est-ce pas?
  tues--Today the Kaiser made me stand  barefoot in a basin of ice water while  vocalizing.
  Friday--This morning he brought out the  Vaccai Practical Method of Italian  Singing! I could have wept to see my childhood  friend. I never thought I would be so happy to start at  the beginning all over again. How the mighty have  fallen. Kaiser opened to page one, "The  Scale"--at least it's set to words--and  said, "Vowels only, if you please." I told  him I can read Italian, but he ignored me.  S. It is still not yet given to me to chew solid  food. NO CONSONANTS. I plot his death.
    Have an accompanist now. She is a machine  he imported to plod through the Vaccai while I  gum the vowels. Why bother? And he has the  nerve to tell me to pay attention to the "music"  she is plunking out.
  sat--I can tell when a piano is out of  tune and, yes, it does matter.
  mon--Why am I wasting my time and anyone  else's? I can't sing, forget how, forget why I  ever wanted to. Giles says I look pale  --good. I'm staying in bed tomorrow.
  wed, May 1--The Kaiser went nuts  when I came in today, "Vere in Gott's name  haff you been?!" "I was sick." "I don't  care if you come here shpitting blood, you vill  come! Next time you are indisposed I had better  learn off it wia your obituary in ze papahs,
  
do you understant me?" "Ja, mein  Kaiser." He said he'd fling me out if I  missed another class.
    I didn't say, "Ja, mein
Kaiser," I said, "I'm sorry sir."
Then I thought, what the heck, he's already wild  at me, so I added, "Sir, I didn't think  one day more or less of scales would be any  grievous loss to the music world." And he  slapped me. I looked over at the accompanist  --that girl is made of stone. She didn't  look at me. She just waited for him to give the  command, "E minor, Miss Lacroix." And she  started in like a player piano you couldn't give  away. I sang but I don't know where it came  from. If I told my father, he would come and kill  this man. Why didn't I hit him back? The  strange thing is, today I felt like I was singing those  ruddy scales for the first time. I can't explain it,  it wasn't in words, it was this knowledge all of a sudden as  though I knew it all along but didn't know I  knew it, and it was: all the music is in this  scale. The scale is just a safe place where  all the music can fold itself down and get stored.  Like seeds.
    And the scale sounded so pure to me. Like in the  end, if you had to be stranded on a desert island,  you wouldn't take Traviata or Boh@eme,  you'd take one scale. Because it has  everything in it. I hope I don't have to be  whacked every time just to learn one crummy, measly,  huge lesson.
  Thursday, May 2--Singing words!  Saturday--He asked me today if I knew  the difference between sentiment and emotion.
  Monday--Today he said, "Your voice is a  beautiful face. Which you manipulate with the  coarseness of a circus clown." My first compliment  from the Kaiser.
  Thursday, May 9--The Kaiser has    set up an audition for me with Mr.  Gatti-Casazza, il numero uno of the  Metropolitan Opera! November 12. He  is going to let me sing an aria! Aria? What's  that? The Kaiser said if I'm lucky Mr.  G-C will put me in the Met chorus next  season. And I finally got up the guts to say  I'd rather go back to New Waterford and have ten  babies than tote notes in the Met chorus  behind some Franklin stove of a superannuated
  
diva. No, Diary--I must be honest. I said,  "Sir, I am not chorus material." And he  said, "That is the correct answer, Miss  Piper."
  Saturday--"Listen to the piano, you're not  listening, Miss Pipah." I'm sick of the  piano. It's time the piano started listening to the  voice.
  Monday--I asked the accompanist,  perfectly politely, how long she had been  playing piano and she raised one eyebrow and said,  "I've always played." Oh, allow me  to prostrate myself before thee, oh sphinx of the  keyboard!
  Tuesday--Miss Lacroix is in league  with the Kaiser. She can do no wrong. She plays  like an automaton and I'm supposed to follow  her. I told the Kaiser I might as well go  down to the Henry Ford plant and sing to the rhythm  of the assembly line. I said exactly that and he  just shrugged a bit. Maybe he's mellowing.  Maybe I'm wearing him down a little, or maybe  --oh horrors--he likes me. She still never  looks at me much less says good morning, who  does she think she is? Where did he dig her  up? I thought colored people were supposed to have  rhythm.
  Friday--She has a first name: Rose. If  you could meet her you'd know how unlikely  that is. And what's more, she can actually play the  piano.
    I came early today. I saw the Kaiser  chatting with His Most Terrible Majesty Signor  Gatti-Casazza out front and I slipped by and  up the stairs. That's when I heard the most  sublime, the most beautiful music. I thought it  was Chopin at first, it was that romantic and thoughtful,  but I knew it wasn't quite that, then I thought  Debussy, it was dreamy enough but there was too much  space in between some notes and not enough between others and time  changes that slipped by before you could pinpoint them and  sudden catches of achingly sweet melody that would  just end like a bridge in midair or turn  into something else, and though there were many melodies, you  could never hum the whole thing, nor could you figure  out how they could all belong in the same piece and  yet somehow they do, and you have no idea how or when  it should end. In fact it doesn't end, it stops.  Some modern composer I guess.
    Anyway it was her playing! The sourpuss
  
accompanist. She didn't see me. Someone should  do something about her clothes. She dresses in pink,  with puffed sleeves, pleated skirts and a hemline  one inch above the ankle. Looks like she just came  out of church around twenty years ago.  Hand-me-downs maybe, from some rich battleaxe  in the Temperance League. Anyhow, when she  stopped playing I said, "That was nice, who  wrote it?" And she just glared at me. If  looks could kill. Just then the Kaiser came in,  so our delightful conversation was cut short. He  said his usual "Let's start with C Major,  Miss Lacroix," and you'd never know she was a  musician. But I know.
  Wednesday--Miss Lacroix and I have a  game we play. It's called Kathleen
Arrives before the Kaiser and Listens to Miss  Lacroix Play Piano Who Pretends Not  to Know Miss Piper Is There. Why are the  only people I've met in this city either senile,  sadistic or eccentric?
  Thurs.--After listening to Miss Lacroix  play in the mornings before class I feel like a  total impostor with no musicianship. (she'd  love to know that.) I have figured out one of her  secrets. She is the composer of the beautiful  strange music she plays. If she even  "composes" it--I think she just makes it up as  she goes along because her pieces always  come to an end the moment before I hear the street  door open downstairs, which means she has seen the  Kaiser through the window.
  Saturday--This morning I got there even  earlier and broke the Kaiser's rules. I  sang whatever I darn well pleased. I sang  Tosca! I felt like a criminal or a  nymphomaniac. And when Miss Lacroix  arrived I was dying to see the look on her face  when she discovered she'd been beaten at her own  game, but I didn't want to acknowledge her  presence any more than she does mine. She left  and I could have killed her except I suspect  she just went out into the hall to listen, not wanting  to give me the satisfaction of an audience.
  Friday, May 31--Got her! This  morning I came to the end of "Let the Bright  Seraphim," then I got up silently and  crept to the door and there was Rose, sitting on a  chair tilted against the wall with her eyes closed.  Her profile is imposing. I wish I could
  
draw it. She is arrogant even with her eyes  closed. Especially with her eyes closed. She  has a tall round forehead and a high straight  nose that flares out at the base of the nostrils, and  her lips sit against each other like dark pillows.  Almost purple. The only way my lips could  remotely look like that would be if I puckered up  for a kiss, but she doesn't look like she's  expecting anyone to kiss her. Her eyes go up  slightly at the outside corners almost as if she  were Oriental. She has high cheekbones and a  dimple in her chin which is entirely wasted on  her, dimples being accessories to girlish charm.  She reminds me of the pictures of African  women on P. T. Barnum posters except she  hasn't got the rings around her neck. And she's  not wearing a colorful turban, she has her  hair pasted to her head in two pigtails with little  ribbons that look utterly perverse on her. Not  to mention her Pollyanna dress with the ruffles.  Doesn't she have a mother? Or a mirror? I  noticed all this in the three seconds before she  opened her eyes and looked at me. She didn't  say a word, just got up and went into the studio and  started playing. SCALES. Then she spoke, and  I should have slugged her. She said without even looking  at me, "You embellish too much. That's a thing  of the past." Have I mentioned she's five foot  ten?
  2:30 am--The Harlem Rhythm Hounds!!
But the sun is coming up, good night.  Sat.--Can you wail like that saxophone, can you  walk like that bass guitar, can you talk like the  trumpet and beat like the drum? Then what are you  doing so far from home, little girl?
  Mon, 3--David is too embarrassed  to dance but there are lots of fellas willing to dance  with me and I feel perfectly safe doing so because,  after all, I have an escort! He was scandalized  when I danced with a colored man named Nico but  he got over it as well he should, I fail  to see why color should cause such a commotion. I  wonder if there's anything like this going on back in  the Pier or Fourteen Yard? I was too much of a  priss then to find out. Tomorrow night David's  taking me to the Ziegfeld Follies. Maybe  I'll introduce him to Giles.
  tues--I want to be a show girl, I'm  going to take tap-dancing lessons, forget the  opera. I think this is an enchanted city where you
  
hear with different ears and see with different eyes.  I feel like I've been living in a graveyard  till now. Reading dead books, listening to dead  music, singing dead songs about dying. Beautiful,  yes, but dead, like Snow White in her glass  coffin--except the music I've been singing  doesn't move when you kiss it. Or at least,  if it could, I haven't found how to make it.
  wed--I am so irresponsible, dear Diary,  how could I not tell you who David is?
    He's my soldier. He said, "Excuse  me, miss, is this seat taken?" He's nineteen  and he's on his way to the front. He is so  debonair. At least his uniform is. To listen  to he's very sweet. He's a farmer and his father is  angry at him for enlisting but he's determined.  He wants to live a little before getting hitched to a  plow for life and who can blame him? I met him  at Chan's, where I go to read and eat something that  goes crunch. (d. is tall and quite  nice-looking, but I don't think he could be the  one from my fortune cookie because his hair is sandy  and his eyes are blue.) Anyhow, we must have gone  to fifteen clubs and we ended up at a place that  was half theater, half bar, called Club  Mecca. It's up in Harlem on Seventh  Avenue and I had to drag my soldier in there.  And that's where I heard JAZZ.
    How can I describe it? I  heard my mother play ragtime at home but jazz  is something else.
  fri. June 7--Sweet Jessie
Hogan is a singer. I am not a singer.  Sun.--Had David over to meet Giles.
He liked her. Ate everything on his plate.  She showed him a decrepit photo album--a  gallery of spinsters--and either he's a great actor  or he was actually interested.
  tues--Jazz.  wed--Razzmatazz.
  thurs--I can truck. I can ball the jack,  I May Be Crazy but I Ain't No Fool  so Rock Me in the Cradle of Love.
  fri-June 14--A riddle: how can I be  singing scales for the Kaiser on the upper west  side, while several blocks northeast of here,  Sweet Jessie Hogan, the Diva of Club  Mecca, is sleeping off last night's jazz?  Has Miss Hogan ever sung scales? Would  she put up with this?
  
  sat--She sings like twelve saxophones and a  freight train, she wears about a pound of gold,  the band just tries to keep up with her. She's no  lady. Her songs are all unbelievably  unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues.
She sings about sore feet, sexual relations,  baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men  called Daddy, women who dress like men, working,  praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and  morphine. She tells stories between verses and  everyone in the place shouts out how true it all  is. Imagine--the more interruptions, the higher the  praise, like a real chorus. Picture
Sweet Jessie Hogan at the Met. The  best opera is just high-tone Blues.
  Sun--David said what if he gets  killed in the war, he doesn't want to die  "never knowing what love is." Translation: he  doesn't want to die a virgin. I don't  believe he was a virgin, but I was, but that's  all taken care of now. I don't want any  fella thinking he's got anything special to  "teach me" and besides, David is nice. We  got a room for two hours. He said we were  newlyweds but the man at the desk looked like he  didn't care. Well, I liked the kissing part  and the next part. And I didn't mind the rest too  much but he seemed more--well, he went to the moon  and I stayed here on earth. And he  looked totally overcome like a sweet stupid  puppy and said, "I love you." I felt like  we'd just been to two different moving pictures and  didn't know it.
  Tues.--"Do not pretend to things that are  outside of your experience, Miss Pipah. If  you have never suffered, do not manufacture an  imitation of suffering. If you have never been in  love, do not insult your listeners with cloying  counterfeit."
  wed--I think I'm in love with David.
Or at least, when we're alone together I feel  like I'm in love with him. But then I don't think  about him again until I see him so can that be love?  I realized something funny yesterday, I realized  I haven't even told him I'm a singer. I  wonder what he thinks I do all day?
  sat--Sex is good for the voice. Why don't  they teach you that in school?
  Sunday--As for sin. I honestly can't  believe God is so bored or so lecherous as
  
to care how close my body and its various parts  get to someone else's various parts.
  Mon--I can't stop thinking of David  you-know-how.
  Tues.--Today I got a letter from Daddy  asking me if I'm okay because I haven't  written in so long, I felt so badly, I  wrote right away. Not about Mecca of course.  Or David. About everything else. And I sent  my two pets two matching sailor-boy  dolls, one for Mercedes and one for Frances.
  Fri-28--Today I started crying on the  streetcar for no reason. It was crowded and I was  looking at a little girl with dark blond braids  like my own little Frances when a pair of woman's  hands reached down to stroke the child's hair. They were  Mumma's hands. With the soft wrinkled knuckles  and the veins, and lines on the palms like blood  dried in the sand. My throat got sore and I was  crying before I knew it. And then I got a  shock. The streetcar started to empty and I saw  the woman's face. She was a colored woman.  I am starting to not be able to picture Mumma's  face anymore but I can picture her hands  exactly. "Salaam idEyyik," she used  to say. Bless your hands.
  sat--Today Rose Lacroix was there waiting  for me when I arrived and she asked me why I  hadn't been coming in early the past while.  I said, "Did you miss me?" She blushed.  You'd think it would be hard to tell because she's quite  dark, but it wasn't hard at all. She wouldn't  speak to me for the rest of the day and I regretted my  flippancy, but at least I finally got some  sort of human response out of her. David  left for France. He cried but I didn't and that  made me feel so mean so I told him I  loved him. That's not really a lie, I loved him  sometimes.
  Mon-July 1--The Queen of Sheba still  won't speak to me. Yesterday I asked if  she'd like to come for a cup of coffee with me and she  said, "No thank you," and I asked her again today and  she said the same thing. I said, "Why not?" And she  gave me one of her haughty looks like the cat just  talked to the queen and answered, "I have  responsibilities." As if I don't have  responsibilities. As if conquering in the  footsteps of Malibran and Patti were not a  responsibility. As if animating the genius of
  
composers from Monteverdi to Puccini were child's  play. Lacroix will always have an excuse if she  does not become the Paganini of the piano, but I  have no such luxury.
  tues--Got my period today, thank you,  Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the saints.
  wed--The Kaiser says to me this morning,  "Velcome back, Miss Pipah." I  haven't been away and I said so, but he said,  "Yes you have," and that if I couldn't be present in  both body and mind from now on, he would cancel my  audition. I will swear off all nocturnal  ramblings until after November 12.
  sat--Working.  mon--Working.
  tues--Got a letter from David. He asked  me to marry him!! I'm going to have to write him  back as nicely as possible--but really. I'd as  soon marry a coal miner. Can you picture me  as a farm wife? In Montana? My God,  that's under Winnipeg! But this is what gets me:  for a while I thought more about playing with David in  our pee-reeking hotel room than I did about  my work. I cared more about a colored woman singing  in a hundred-seat dive with a bunch of  musicians who probably can't even read  music, than my own career in the greatest opera  houses of the world. My father did not send me here so  I could get dragged down, I could have  done that at home. From now on I'm only going  out to hear real music at civilized hours.  What really gets me is that I never even told  David I was a singer, nor did he ever ask.  He doesn't know anything about me but he's ready  to marry me!
  fri-12--She catches up with me on my  way from the lesson and says, "You're working too  hard." Who asked her? I pretended she hadn't  said anything. She had her chance to be friends and she  wrecked it.
  sat--"Miss Piper, ze song is not your  enemy."
  tues--I have no pride. I asked Miss  Music Authority what she meant by "You're  working too hard" and she enjoyed it, I could tell.  She paused, just to see me writhe a little on the  pin, then she said, "I have to go straight home today,  but tomorrow afternoon we could go somewhere and talk."
  wed-July 17--She is the smartest  person I have ever met! Except for Daddy.
  
She's not like anyone else. She doesn't have a  New York accent or a kind of Harlem  southern accent. I wonder where she is from?  Maybe she's rich.
  sat--We go to Abernathy's Cozy Coffee  every afternoon. She thinks music is already out there  floating around and it's up to us to give it an opening  into our world so we can hear it. As though the world were    full of music we can't hear with "the naked ear."  So today in class I thought, okay, the song as it  should be sung is shimmering around me like air in the  desert, and all I have to do is welcome it. So  I closed my eyes and opened myself up and let the  song pass through me and I thought, "Don't sing the  song, just release it." When I finished, the  Kaiser nodded. I looked at Rose and she  gave just the most minute smile down at the  keys.
  mon.--She says I'm really a  mezzo!!!! She must be out of her mind.
  tues--I asked her if she likes chop  suey. But she can't go anywhere or do anything  except our half-hour coffee and she won't  tell me why or where she lives or anything.  She pretends it's boring and changes the  subject but I am determined to find out what her  secret is. Maybe she's so poor that she's  ashamed to let me see where she lives. Maybe  she's married. Maybe she has an  illegitimate child.
  wed--She said, "Malibran was basically a  contralto with a very tough attitude." Malibran  sang Desdemona and Otello. And Romeo  and Giulietta. And everything in between. But that was  almost a hundred years ago, no one's allowed  to do that anymore. "They weren't allowed to do it then  either," she said.
  thurs 25--I invited Rose for supper.
I thought, maybe she doesn't have money to spend  on chop suey. She didn't even think about it,  she just said no thank you.
  fri-July 26--I followed her. She  lives in apartment three at 85-1/2 135th Still  between Lenox and Seventh Avenue, over a  second-floor church that's over a butcher shop  that's tucked between a dentist and a haberdashery named  "Dash Daniels Harlem Gentlemen's  Emporium." Take the Eighth Ave.  elevated.
  sat--I followed her again today and she nearly
  
caught me because she came running back out of her  building five seconds after she went in. I  ducked in a doorway and saw her make a phone  call in the butcher shop. A little kid offered me  a taste of his raspberry ice cream. I licked  it and for some reason he thought I was hilarious.
  The Lord's Day--Blessed Sunday. Church  with Giles and Miss Morriss the only  ordeal. I went up to 135th Still to see if I  could see Rose, and if she left the  neighborhood I could follow her until she  got far enough away for us to be able to meet  "by accident."
    I got there and there was music rollicking out  the second-floor window--if church were like that where  I come from, I'd be religious. It was  fantastic. Someone was playing piano and there  was, I presume, a minister leading the songs,  and the congregation joined in, back and forth, back and  forth, people taking solos, embellishments like you've  never heard in a baroque opera, and I swear I  saw the building rock. I guess that's  rapture. The crowd in their Sunday best started  pouring out onto the street and a big lady, in a  hat with more flowers than grow in New Waterford in  an entire summer, shooed me away saying, "This  is a decent neighborhood."
    But the church-sized lady served her  purpose because she hid me from you-know-who,  who also came out with the crowd, wearing an  ice-cream-sundae version of her usual  embarrassing clothes, and I wondered if that had  been her whomping on the piano up there. Somehow  I can't picture it--although I'd like to. Rose  headed west and I followed her. She got on the  Eighth Ave. I shadowed her all the way  to West 14th, where she got off, walked down  Greenwich, turned onto my street and went  straight up to my building! I felt like I was in  a play. The doorman was giving her a hard time  so I went in and said in my snobbiest voice,  "Thank you Ernie, that will do." And he said,  "I'm sorry, miss, I thought the young lady was  mistaken."
    I was dying to tell her that I had just followed  her all the way from her place, but something told  me she wouldn't see the humor in it--I've seen  her smile exactly one half a time. And never  laugh. So I tried not to smile, and she was  serious as usual when she reached into her leather
  
schoolbag and brought out some sheet music. She  handed it to me and said, "I think you ought to take a  look at these." So I said thank you, and she said  goodbye. She was going to go right home! But I said  come for a walk, and she did.
    I opened the sheet music when we got  to Washington Square and it was Carmen's "Oiseau  Rebelle" and Rosina's "Una Voce Poco
Fa." She said they were a good contrast to Cherubino  and "Let the Bright Seraphim"--to say the least--  and Mr. Gatti-Casazza will probably ask  me to sing something of my choice as well as what  I've prepared and I should just happen to have one of  these. She gives a person a present like she was  giving them a black-edged telegram. I said,  "Setting aside for a moment the fact that I am a  soprano, not a mezzo, why are you helping me?"
    And she said, "You're going to be a star one  way or another, it's obvious." I said it's not  obvious to me, at least not lately, and she said,  "Your teacher knows it, he's already told  Gatti-Casazza what to expect. There are a  lot of singers but you don't get a voice like yours  very often. As well as everything else." What    everything else, I asked. "Presence."
    She said all this as though she were a doctor  diagnosing me with a rare disease. I said, "You still  haven't told me why you're helping me." And  she said, "People pay money to go and listen  to stars. I think they should at least hear the music  the way it was meant to be heard." So she's just  doing a public service? She's awful sure of  herself. I asked her if she didn't agree with  everyone else that the Kaiser is one of the best  teachers in the world. She said, "He's a  brilliant technician. You can learn a lot from  him. And you can unlearn a lot from him, all that  nonsense you were doing before. Now you're ready to stop  singing the words and music, and start hearing them." She  could sell the Eiffel Tower to a Frenchman.  What she says is smoke, you can't get ahold  of it and it's basically meaningless. But it works.  She couldn't stay for supper. She's nineteen;  I asked.
  Thurs.--I ran quickly after the lesson again,  to catch her and get her opinion on the day's work.  She said to me, "You should be paying me for this," so  I offered to. I expected Rose to be  insulted by the offer of money but she actually looked  as though she was considering it. She said, "Do you
  
really think I could teach for money?" So I said  yes, but that it would be an awful waste. "Why?"  Because of your gifts as a composer and musician,  I said. Then she started walking again and said to the  sidewalk, "I'm not a composer. I just make it  up." I told her that's what is called  composing, but she said she doesn't write it down.  That it's different every time.
    "So write it down," I told her. And  she said, "No." "Why not?" I asked. "Because  then you kill the bird," she said.
    She is so strange. But I know exactly  what she means. I've never heard anyone talk  like her or play like her but then, when I hear her  play, I feel as though I'm hearing music for the  first time. And the sound is so beautiful it hurts  me. I asked her to come back to Giles's  apartment and play. "Please," I said, "please,  please, please." And she didn't say no right  away, she said after a moment, "I'd like that. I'd  like to take you up on your dinner invitation too. But  I can't this evening." How about tomorrow? "I'll  ask," she said. Ask who, I wondered, but did  not inquire. I don't want the bird to fly.
  evening--Frances sent me her own crayon  drawing of me singing. It's adorable. And you know the  strangest thing? Along with musical notes coming out  of my mouth, there are little birds!
  Friday August 2, 5:45 pm
--She's coming for supper! She'll be here in  fifteen minutes.
  later:--At least Giles isn't  prejudiced. She didn't act surprised when
I introduced Rose as my friend, the  accompanist. Rose--she finally told me  to call her Rose, I told her to call me  Kathleen weeks ago and she stopped calling me  Miss Piper but now she doesn't call me  anything at all--Rose was extremely  polite, asking Giles all sorts of dull  questions about her volunteer work at the convent.  Giles has the most morbid job in the world.  She looks after nuns who are on their way out.  I'd be terrified if I were one of those old  girls and saw her coming at me with a tray.  Confession: I've had some wine. Giles  actually poured us wine--apparently it doubles as a  medicinal and a celebratory libation. So whether  it's your birthday or you're having your leg  amputated you can count on a swallow of
  
Giles's chokecherry wine. I wonder if
Rose was scandalized? We played the  phonograph for a bit, then Giles took the  needle off and asked Rose to play and me to sing.  We were both embarrassed, but Rose asked  Giles if she had a special request.
"Yes, my dear," said Giles, ""My
Luve's Like a Red Red Rose.""
    I thought I would die! I couldn't look  at Rose. But she didn't bat an eye, just  turned to the song and started playing. And I sang.  And after a while it didn't seem so silly at  all, and I was glad Giles had requested it  because it made me think of Daddy and of home.
    Giles had her eyes closed at the end and  she said, "Lovely, girls. Just lovely." I  was going to ask Rose what she wanted to play  next but she was already playing. Her pieces start  like that--before you know they've started, they're just there and  gathering. I can't talk about it. I don't know  how long the piece went on because, remember when  I said about how the time signature slipped and  slid around imperceptibly? Well, all of time  did that while she played. I lost time. I  wanted to live in that music, no, to wear it  loose around me instead of skin, and after a while  I had this flooding thought that this was Rose just thinking.  I'm sounding far too Irish for my own good. It  couldn't be the Lebanese side could it?  What's blarney in Arabic? B'el
Arnay?
    I thought it might be the wine. But it's the  music. Giles was asleep when Rose stopped  playing. I had tears all over my face, but it  didn't feel like crying. Rose sat for a few  bars of silence, then turned and said she had to go.  I wanted her to stay and talk but I knew it would  be wrong to ruin the music, so I walked her to the  streetcar stop and we didn't say anything at  all. At first it felt so right to be silent. Then  it felt awkward, but I of all people couldn't think  of anything to say. So I just said thank you. Finally  the streetcar came and she slipped away.
  Sat--You'd think we were total strangers.  She called me "Miss Piper"! I wanted  to catch her after the lesson but Kaiser kept me  back to give me a present! It's a beautiful  book, Emma Albani's memoirs, Forty
Years of Song. He said it would inspire me,  "she being your countrywoman," and at any other time
  
it would have been the highlight of my whole life, but  today it meant Rose had already caught the streetcar  by the time I finished thanking the Kaiser.
    He wrote in it, "For Miss Piper.  One poised to clasp the torch. May you carry it  another forty years." Wow.
    Emma Lajeunesse changed her name to Emma  Albani. Maybe I should change mine to something  Italian-sounding too. Kathleen New  Waterfordi. From Capo Bretoni.
  mon-5--She barely looked at me the  whole lesson. So afterward I wouldn't let her  get on the streetcar, I grabbed her schoolbag  with all her music in it and ran into Central  Park. I was laughing my head off but she was  furious. And she is very strong. Nearly took  my arm off grabbing the thing back. Thought she was  going to kill me but she stomped away with her  silly hair ribbons bobbing so I made a  scene. First I yelled at the top of my  lungs, "I like you, I want to be your friend, why  are you such a silly goose?" But she just kept  walking. Then I caught up to her and started singing.  I was laughing so hard by then I could hardly get the  song out, "My Luve's Like a Red Red  Rose." I don't know why I was laughing, I  felt like a demon and I couldn't stop. She  ignored me until we reached the park gate again,  then she turned and clapped her hand hard  over my mouth so water sprang to my eyes. It  made me wild. I bit her hand, that got her  moving, and I grabbed the schoolbag again and this time  I didn't fool around, I ran all the way  to the pond with her right on my heels, I knew  she'd beat the can off me if I let her catch  me. Thank God I got to the pond just barely  ahead of her, I leapt on a rock and dangled  the schoolbag over the water.
    We were out of breath and I felt badly right  away when she said, "Please." But I pressed  on, "Please what?"
    "... Please, Miss Piper, don't  drop it."
    And I screamed back at her like a  banshee, I don't know what got into me,  "Please WHO?"
    "Please ..."
    "What's my name?!"
    "Kathleen."
    I felt suddenly ashamed and she wasn't
  
mad anymore, she was something else, I don't  know what. But I didn't want to let her off that  easy, I said, "Maybe I'll just have a wee  look, find out what's your big mystery."
    "No!"
    She lunged and I dropped it. But just into my  other hand, which made her yelp. I started  to unbuckle it. And the strangest thing--she turned  and started walking slowly away. I didn't have the  heart to open it then. I followed her saying,  "Here, you can have it back." But she wouldn't answer  me. I caught up to her easily and that's when I  saw she was crying. For the first time she actually  suited the clothes she wears. I felt terrible.  I wished she'd get mad again. I put the  schoolbag back into her hand and I said, "I  didn't open it." But she just wiped her free hand  across her eyes and didn't look at me. I  gave her my hanky and she blew her nose. I  walked her all the way back to the streetcar stop  and stood beside her, waiting, even though she never  looked at me or said another word.
    I tried not to watch her because she didn't  stop crying. I couldn't stand the sounds she was trying  not to make, or that she held her head up, why  didn't she at least look down? I would. I  felt so ashamed. I did it on purpose, I  wanted her to cry. Why? There must be something wrong  with me. She should never have to cry in front  of anyone, beautiful Rose. I'm sorry. I  love you.
    Rose would hate me if she read this.  No wonder I don't have any friends.
  tues--She didn't come today. Kaiser said  she resigned. Said, "It's to be expected."  I asked why, and he said, "She has a great  deal of natural ability but she is essentially  feckless." I said I didn't agree and she's  the most feckful person I know. He said,  "She's gone as far as she could go and it's best she  redirect her gifts for her own sake." I  said, "Music has no color." He smiled.
I could have killed him.
    But you know, he's right, music does have  color but it shouldn't matter who plays it.  Does Brahms turn black when Rose  plays him? If he does, then it looks good  on him and he should be so lucky. Why should she  play that moldy old tripe anyhow, who cares?  I care. I love Brahms. I love Verdi
  
and Mozart, but I love the Rhythm Hounds and  I love Sweet Jessie Hogan, she is the  reigning diva of this city but the horse's arses  who run this bloated burg would never know it and  don't deserve to. This whole city stinks of  music that the Kaiser has no idea about. I  love it all. But I love Rose's music  best.
    She doesn't need any of them. I couldn't  find my voice today and the Kaiser let me go,  saying of course it put me off my stride to be  so rudely dealt with by an accompanist who'd been  lucky to have the job. I wanted to go see Rose  but I know she hates me and it's my fault she  quit. It's my fault the Kaiser thinks those  awful things about her, so who do I think I am  to say she doesn't need anything? She needed this  job.
  4 am--Just got home. Rode Giles's  bicycle all the way uptown. Sat in a  doorway across from Rose's building. What did  I think she would do? Look out the window and invite  me up for cinnamon toast?
    There was phonograph music coming from the  front room, scratchy ragtime, hot red and  yellow lamps. The curtains were open. The  windowpane was cloudy but I could see shadows of a  man and woman dancing. They embraced. I  heard laughter. Then they disappeared.  Does Rose have a boyfriend? A husband?
  wed-Aug 7--I told the Kaiser I was  quitting today. I thought he'd get mad at me but  he didn't. He was silent a moment, then asked  me why. I told him I couldn't continue without  Rose. He asked me to sit down, he's never  done that before. I was beginning to think his furniture  was all just stage props. I sat on a  loveseat with pink and gray stripes and he told  me quite calmly that I couldn't fixate on an  accompanist, that I would have to learn that people come and go,  it's part of the life I've chosen to lead. I have  to realize that being a prima donna means being  alone most of the time despite crowds of  admirers. He makes it sound so horrible and  romantic at the same time. Why should it mean being  alone? He just said, "Do you want to sing?" I said  it's the only thing I want to do. And he said,  "Then don't ask any more of life, because you can either  sing, or you can live."
    He's trying to scare me but it won't work.
  
I will sing. And I will live too. I've already  had a whole life without a friend, with nothing but my  music, it's not as though that's a big diva  mystery waiting to unfold for me--the sacrament of  loneliness. So I told him what I thought he  needed to hear: "I'm prepared to make those  sacrifices, sir. But I am also prepared  to demand the best. That is why I am studying with you.  And that is why I will not continue my studies without  Miss Lacroix." I thought it all up at that  moment and I said it just like that. He thought for a moment.  And in that moment I wondered, just how far can I  push him? I studied his black and navy  cravat. He's really quite a natty  individual, I don't know why I was so frightened  of him. He said, "I'll see what I can do."  And I wonder how much he can do, she's that  stubborn.
  Thursday--She's back. He must have bribed  her good. But now I don't know why I bothered.  She won't talk to me. Or look at me.
  Sun.--I wrote Daddy and the girls a  long letter. I told them all the good stuff. And  there is mostly only good stuff. I don't care  about that piano-plunking lump. I told Daddy  how excited I am about my audition in  November. It's coming up fast. It's my chance  to show what I can do and when I think of that, it  wipes away all thoughts of ingrate  exfriends.
  Monday--I've been working harder than ever and  I've never been happier. I feel like a new  sheet of steel fresh from the coke oven in the  Pier. The sun goes blind when it looks at me.
  Tues.--The revenge of quanto  affetto. Welcome back, Gilda.
Kaiser is pleased, I can tell. The corner of  his mouth gets a small spasm like he's having a  little seizure. And he adopts a manner that on  most people would indicate anger, but with him it means  he's happy. The more he barks, the more jerky his  movements, the more he says, "Nein, nein,  nein, nein," as though I were sticking pins in  him, the happier I know he is. He doesn't  look like an albino lizard to me any more, he  looks like an Afghan dog.
  Thurs.--Kaiser asked me today what I would  sing if Mr. G-C asks me for another  piece. He said it could be a piece of my  choosing and he would help me prepare it. So I
  
said I would prepare Cherubino's love poem from  Le Nozze. I looked at Rose but she  pretended I hadn't said anything. Kaiser nodded  and said I had made a good choice, "Entirely  appropriate."
    Today she was still at the streetcar stop when I  passed by so I said, "Aren't you going to tell me  I'm making a mistake?" She looked at me  from a great height and said, "How should I know?"  "Well you know so much about music, you're the  authority on future stars or so I'm told."  "Well that wouldn't apply to you, now would it?" That  stung all right. But I couldn't care less what  she thinks about me, and anyhow I know she's lying,  it got to her that I didn't choose Carmen, that's  all.
    I knew I was digging my own grave, but  I couldn't help it, I can't leave anything  lie. "Why do you hate me?" I said. And she  answered, cool as anything, "Girl, you ain't  worth hatin'." "How come you have an accent all  of a sudden, whatever happened to "I'd be  delighted to come foh dinnah, Miss  Pipah"?" And she said this: "Fuck you."
    I couldn't say anything back because no one's  ever talked to me like that before, nor will they ever again,  especially not some uppity dark brown girl in a  borrowed dress.
  Fri.--I could get her fired if
I wanted to. I told her that today and she said,  "I don't give a shit." And I said, "That's  your problem, you don't give a shit about  anything." "You don't know shit," she said. And  I thought, here I am having a conversation in which every  sentence contains the word "shit," if Holy  Angels could hear me now! I can give as good as  I get, she better look out, "I do so know  shit," I said, which was a stupid thing to say and ...  she laughed.
    Not snorted, laughed. Then caught herself.  So I said, "And I want my fucking hanky  back." At which she laughed some more. Fine, I'm  hilarious, it's better than being utterly  dismissed by the likes of her. I said, "Did you  hear me? I want it back." And just as the  streetcar pulled up she whispered to me, "I'll  give it back to you. Just as soon as I've wiped  my black ass with it." Then she was gone, puffed  sleeves, ribbons, schoolbag and all.
Maybe she's possessed by the Devil.
  
  Saturday, August 17--This morning my  hanky was neatly pressed and folded with the  monogram facing up, all prim and proper on  the piano when I arrived. Rose was warming up  and the Kaiser was already there. I picked up the  hanky and when I knew Rose was looking at me  out the corner of her eye, I raised it to my  nose and sniffed it. It was incredibly rude of  me and so juvenile. Rose couldn't believe it.  She forgot her policy of ignoring me, her chin  dropped and she gawked straight at me and I  grinned. She grinned back. And the Kaiser  turned to us and said, "Miss Piper, shall we begin  with a few deep breaths?" I got the giggles and  Rose clapped her face into her hands. The  Kaiser asked me what was wrong and that did it,  I burst out laughing, which made Rose laugh which  made me collapse onto his Persian rug.
I could see the Kaiser's shiny black shoes a  few inches away and that made it worse because  who'd've thought my nose would ever be that close  to his dainty feet? I sobbed into the carpet,  Rose was howling, I thought we were going to die, I  couldn't even remember what we were laughing at.  The Kaiser gave up and I saw his fussy  pant legs swish out the door and that made me  scream.
    Finally, when I could take a breath, I  rolled over and looked up at the sober  ceiling. And Rose dried her eyes and began  to play--a piece that started slow, sad and  foursquare like an Italian funeral, then  became a big thumping tune like I'd heard coming  out her church window, heavy on the left hand. She  just went wild, bar after bar of variations, crazier  and crazier till the only thing I could think of  doing was dancing, because how could I possibly sing  to that? Look out Isadora, we were groovin. I  whirled like a dervish around the whole room,  following the music, just doing what it made me do,  I jerked like a catfish, my shoulders had two  different lives of their own, my feet went  crazy, zig-zaggy, I waggled my pointing  fingers like I've seen the hep cats do, I brought  Mecca into the classroom! We went faster,  faster, faster, till I was just jumping, not even  doing steps anymore--then the Kaiser came  back in.
    He said in a quiet voice, "The  temperature outside is ninety-seven
  
degrees. It is somewhat warmer indoors.
Miss Piper, would you prefer to adjourn for the  day?" I apologized and agreed that the heat had  indeed overcome me. Rose didn't give any  excuse, just stared at the keys, but I saw a  drop of water splash onto F sharp.
    I thanked him and agreed that it would be better  to resume tomorrow. I was streaming sweat.
    We went outside together and I started running  ahead, not looking back, just knowing she would follow  me, willing her to. Into the park all the way to the  pond and I didn't hesitate, I ran  straight in. My dress puffed up like a big  balloon with me floating in the center of it like a  ballerina in a music box. It was so refreshing.  I looked back at the bank and Rose was leaning  forward with her hands on her knees, "You're  crazy!"
    She stood there laughing at me, so I  walked onto the bank streaming wet and I put  my arms around her and soaked her. She tried  to push me away but I thought of a vise and didn't  budge. She even walked a few steps but she  took me with her like a boa constrictor. She  tried tickling me but I know how to make myself  dead. Finally she gave up and just stood there while  I hugged her. My face was against her neck.  She smells like a spice in Mumma's rack  at home but I can't remember which one  because I never did any cooking. She smells like  she looks. A tall timber ship full of  precious spices and silks from somewhere beautiful,  bound for somewhere drab.
    Finally she put her arms around me. I  stopped squeezing the life out of her and we hugged  each other for a long time. She was so warm. I said,  "I love you." But not out loud. I felt her  breath rise against my chest, and feeling her heart  beat made her so human that I didn't know how  I could ever have thought she couldn't be hurt by me or  anyone else. Dear heart. I felt her cheek  against mine. I've never felt anything so soft.  I kissed her lips. In my mind. It felt so  natural, but I knew it couldn't be right. Even  a kiss on the cheek--and anyone's allowed  to kiss someone on the cheek--but even that wouldn't be  right because it would be an impostor for the kind of kiss  I want to give her. For that matter, it wasn't  right to stand hugging each other for so long like that with other  people around in broad daylight. She is so
  
beautiful. My Rose. Finer than  sculpture, softer than sand. Rose, I'm  kissing you now. Oh God, I have to kiss her.  I will die if I don't kiss her, I know that    now. It is a fact. I will die. It will kill  me. When the hug ended I told her I was  sorry about everything and she said she had been worse  than I had and I said no she hadn't and let's  not fight about that too. She smiled--her smile  is ... genius.
    We walked back to the gate arm in arm just like  any other girlfriends would, except I was drenched  and she was damp. I was afraid of electrocuting  myself because of the shocks that leapfrogged up and down me  every time I glanced at her. Could she see my skin  jumping? What would she think if she knew what  I was thinking? I remember Sister Saint  Monica warning us against "overly strong  attachments." That doesn't apply to Rose. Not  to adore her is the sin.
    And, because this is my Diary and I tell you  everything: I felt like I did sometimes when I was  with David. Wet. Not just from the pond. That's how  I know how bad I really am. Why can't I just  love her with a pure love?! Not drag in things that  don't belong?
    I am going to be normal with her from now  on. Because if I can never kiss her, that would be  bad enough. But if I lost my first friend  because of that, it would be even worse. If I don't  know how to have a friend, maybe I can find out how  by pretending I do. And one other thing: no more  mooning about her in this Diary.
  12:17 am--I can't sleep. I'm going  over there.
  1:03 am--Giles's bike bloody  flat. The cab driver didn't want to let me  off here. He's Italian and kept rattling on  about his horrible daughters back home in their beds  and what kind of a girl was I anyway? Why,  simply because I am awake while others are  asleep, because I am white when the neighborhood  is black, need it follow that I am either in  trouble or looking for it? If I were a boy, he  wouldn't look twice.
    It's finally cool. I'm sitting on the  steps in the doorway across from her building and  there's no one here to shoo me away. Everything's very  quiet. There are no clubs around here, "this is a  decent neighborhood." The street has been
  
washed today, it's glittering back at the moon like  black diamonds, and windowboxes are giving off  scent and scarlet. Harlem is cozy and  dramatic at the same time. Rose's building  is of burnt gray stone with an ornate entrance  arch that bears a Latin inscription: "Ora  Pro Nobis." Pray for whom? I wonder  what the place was originally. Maybe a  hospital of some kind. In the window of Dash  Daniels Harlem Gentlemen's Emporium  there's an empty suit and hat arranged like a  jaunty scarecrow waving, a pipe stuck in his  empty face. The butcher-shop window is full  of upside-down carcasses, stripped of their skin  and heads. In the dark it could be people hanging there.  Pray for us. I just got a shiver. That's  silly. This window would be a good place to hide a  body in a penny thriller--right out in the open  along with all the other meat. Ghoulish. Ha ha.  But I'm not scared. The sky is almost purple.  The moon is wearing a yellow veil. There is a  cart full of watermelons parked nearby, cool  green I can feel against my face. No one's  afraid of it being stolen.
    Someone just came out! I've tucked myself as  far back into my doorway as possible. It was a  man. I couldn't see his face under his hat. He  walked away briskly. Bouncily, you could  say. Her boyfriend? I can't imagine  her with a boyfriend. I can't imagine her with anyone.  But me. I'm going round the back of the building.  That's where her bedroom must be.
  4:53 am:--Giles is asleep, thank
God. I'm not the slightest bit tired. I have  a friend.
  Glorious Sunday--I think the most  beautiful sculpture in the world consists of fire  escapes long-legging down buildings with their  fancy fretwork, skinny black dancers creeping  out their windows to the street below. By lamplight under  a smoky moon. I'm on my favorite bench  in Central Park. It's raining but there's a big  chestnut tree over me, I have my umbrella  perched on my shoulder and I've got my  gumboots on. It's a perfect place to talk  to dear old Diary. Utterly private and the world  smells wonderful.
    LAST NIGHT!
    I walked down a pitch-black alley to a  little courtyard behind her building with clotheslines
  
crisscrossing overhead. The windows were all  dark. I looked up to wonder which was her room and  there was a man sitting on the fire escape  outside the open window! He was wearing a fedora  and nothing else but his long striped nightshirt. I  froze because he looked right at me and said, "What  the hell are you doing here?" My eyes jolted in  my head as Rose's face took the place of the  strange man under the hat, and I answered I  couldn't sleep and she said neither could she. And we just  stood there for a moment looking at each other, not  knowing if she would come down or I should go up or go  home or what.
    She stood up, walked down in her bare  feet and swung the bottom steps to the ground for  me so I climbed up. She was smiling. We  didn't hug or anything. We sat outside the  church window. I peeked in. It has Bible  sayings painted on the walls but otherwise it's just  chairs, a piano and, instead of an altar, a little  stage with a pulpit in the center. It's her father's  hat. She wears it when she needs to think. I  asked, "Think about what?" And she said, "It's more  like ... It keeps the world out so I can be in my own  thoughts." It's a charcoal-colored hat. Her  father died before she was born. The hat suits her  down to the ground. It brings out her cheekbones and  her jawline. A hat can do that for you. She is not  only beautiful, she's handsome too, but I'm not  going to gush anymore, I have a friend and  all wrong feelings are banished, they are not  needed!
    We talked for three hours, which sped by till  I had to run halfway back downtown before I  could find a cab. I don't care. The more I  run the less tired I get, the less I  sleep the more awake I feel. Rose was  classically trained on the piano by tutors from the  New York Conservatory. I was right. Child  prodigy. She started playing when she was three  years old. Her father was a musician. That's  all she knows. And that he died of TB. Her mother  has a friend who I guess is a quite prominent  conductor who's been paying for Rose's  lessons and connecting her to the right people since she was  a kid. Rose is supposed to be the first  colored woman to play with the New York  Symphony at Carnegie Hall. She wouldn't  tell me the man's name, though, and she wouldn't  tell me why she wouldn't tell, either, she'd just
  
say "a friend of my mother's." That girl keeps her  secrets, but one by one they will be mine. I had such  a great time.
    If she were a boy we would be in love, but  it's better this way. We can tell each other  everything. She wanted to know all about home but I  made her guess. She guessed that I came from  parents I call "Mother and Dad," that I had  "equestrian" lessons, that "Mumsy" is a  "frosty blonde" with arch blue eyes and  impeccable taste in porcelain and that "Fathah"  is a judge from "old money." I played her  own game right back at her and didn't tell her  if she was right or wrong. I'll let her think  she's smart for now. Then I'll show her my  family photo. AND she thinks I have an  accent! She said, "Where you from, girl?" And I  said, "There you go again, sometimes you have an accent and  sometimes you don't, how come?" And she said, "I  asked you first." I said, "Cape Breton  Island." And she said, ""C'Bre'n
Ireland"?" I said, "I don't talk like that."  She said, "That's exactly how you talk."
    "Cape Breton is in Canada, not
Ireland, what do they teach you in school here?"  She said, "Useful stuff like how anyone can  grow up to be president."
    I said, "Don't you know anything about  Canada?"
    "Freeze your ass off, right?"
    I never know when she's fooling but I do know  now that she likes to get me riled. What a  pair! I told her I'd been to Club Mecca  and she was speechless. I love it when I can hit  her with a zinger and she stops looking like there's nothing  new under the sun. I asked her to come with me next  time because I can't go alone. She said she couldn't do  that to her mother. I asked her how her mother was ever going  to find out if neither of us told her. She answered  after a moment, "My mother knows a lot of people."
    So I told her about Sweet Jessie
Hogan and her Harlem Rhythm Hounds. Rose  listened while I described the size of the    Sweet's voice. How can a voice that big be  so agile, how can it groan gravel, then fly  up and outdance the band? Not to mention her costumes--  look out, A@ida. But best of all, the dancing.  The cakewalk is tame compared to what goes on  there. It's not for the faint of foot. Rose looked  at me as though she were seeing me for the first time and
  
said, "You're not exactly a good girl, are you?"
    I felt myself blush, I was actually a  bit annoyed. "I haven't thought about whether or  not loving all kinds of music and loving to dance  means I'm bad."
    She said, "I'm sorry. What I mean  is ... you've got moxie. You know. Guts.  You make me feel like a coward."
    I was struck dumb because I can't imagine  Rose being afraid of anything.
    "Then come with me," I said. But she just  shrugged. "What can your mother do to you?"
    She wouldn't answer me, she just said, "You  don't understand."
    "Then tell me. Let me understand."  She clammed up and looked down. Her  profile under the fedora. Three dark  pyramids. "Tell me, Rose. Please."
    She looked away and I thought, oh no,  I've done it again. But the next instant she said  in an icy voice, "The fact is, I'm not  terribly interested in Darktown music." Then  she turned to me with a polite smile, "But if  you'd like to come to the symphony with me, I have  tickets for Thursday evening."
    I didn't want to upset the applecart  again so I said, "Oh thenk you. I'd be uttehly  delighted, rally I would." At which she grinned.
    She doesn't have a boyfriend, I asked. I  told her a bit about David. She  asked me if I was in love with him and I said,  "At times I thought I was. But now I know I  wasn't."
    "How do you know that?"
    I couldn't look at her, but I did say  the truth. "Because if he came back right now, I  wouldn't leave this fire escape to go meet him."  My face started to prickle because I didn't  feel like that came out right, and I could feel Rose  watching me, ready to hate me all over again, so  I pressed on, "I'm a lot happier to have a  friend." I finally looked at her but she turned her  eyes forward and nodded. "Me too." I was so  relieved. Thank God I didn't do anything  really foolish the other day in the park. Thank  God I only mortified myself in front of you,  Diary.
  Tues-20--Symphony divinely dull.  Schumann. People stared at Rose. I'm beginning  to understand why her normal expression is so
  
forbidding. She has concert tickets but lives in  a three-room apartment. Built like an  Ethiopian queen with a dimple and a Roman  nose. Draped in a flowered dress from 1905  fit for little girls and old ladies. La  Myst@ere de la Rose.
  Wed.--I'm not ashamed of my mother.  Thurs.--Stayed in bed today.
  Fri.--I have no friends. I have only  colleagues. The Kaiser is right. I suppose  most people would run home about now but what is there  to run to? It's the capital of nowhere. Only  Daddy is there and when I'm rich and famous  I'll sail him first class to all my  performances. I feel so lethargic. I can't even  muster any ambition. It all seems dead and  flat. Yes, I will work hard and get to all those  places. I can see it stretching out, straight through  to the triumphant end. I hate it when I can  see through to the end of something. All that's left is  the plodding to get there. Knowing too much is a kind  of death. I pray that I don't know everything.  That's my religious faith: to believe I really  don't know. But it's so hard sometimes. And in my  religion, the only mortal sin is boredom.
  Sat.--My feelings about Rose that I  wrote down seem like a dream. They happened  to someone else in some other country.
  Sun--Nothing ever happens.  mon--Ditto.
  tues.--Ibid.  fri.--plus @ca change

Saturday, August 31, 1918

Dear Diary,
  I don't know where to begin. I have to get it all  down now while it's fresh, I'm here under my  tree in Central Park and we have all afternoon  till supper-time. I'll have to go back a few  days because despite all that whining about nothing  happening, I realize now that tons was happening and  it was all leading up to what I have to tell you which is  EVERYTHING.
  But first things first: I'm working up Carmen. The  Kaiser "objected strenuously" but gave in, for  what choice does he have after all? He still  snipes that I'm being "perverse" working against my  "natural freshness and youth"--"My God,  Miss Piper, you are an ing@enue, Carmen
  
is a whore." Thinks the idea that I'm a  mezzo is professional suicide, "witches and  bitches, dahling," he says, but I refuse  to get stuck anywhere. I don't intend to be  Gilda forever. Not when I'm a wizened  thirty-two, and I certainly don't intend  to take my final curtain a moment before I  absolutely have to. Mezzos live longer.  I'll sing Carmen and I'll sell Tosca. And  there will not be a single pair of trousers left  unsung. Kaiser doesn't know whether he is  witnessing my first divinely inspired diva fit,  or me falling on my face. Neither do I, but  at least I'm no longer bored! He does see  the wisdom in showing Gatti-Casazza the  extreme outposts of my range, however, not just  vertically but dramatically. Because that's where it  really counts. It's not enough to have the most beautiful  voice. If I have to sing ugly to put the feeling  of a scene across, I'll do that. Opera isn't  supposed to be "pretty." Women stabbing themselves  and everyone else half the time isn't pretty,  it's wild, it's passionate and gruesome and  beautiful and you can't tell me that such women  don't snarl as much as they sing. And that's not counting  the comic roles, which are even more grotesque. But  I digress. ...
  All right. Oh dear. Here goes. I have no  shame in front of you, Diary, for you are me. You  won't squirm, you can't be shocked, you  know that nothing in love is nasty so I will try  to be as free with you as I am in my own thoughts.  Lest I forget, let me offer up a sincere  orison of thanks for Giles. She is the least  curious person on the face of the earth. Without her  total lack of vigilance my life could never have  got started. If Daddy knew what a  lackadaisical gatekeeper she is he would be  down here in a second to board me with the nuns. Which  reminds me, I'd better write him. Oh but  I'm teasing you, aren't I, Diary? You're in  an agony of anticipation. Be still, open your  heart, and I will begin at the beginning and unfold it  for you as it unfolded for me. The joyful mystery  of the Rose ...
               * * *
  On the ferry in the middle of the Strait of  Canso, Lily puts the diary down and looks  behind her at Cape Breton because she will never see  it again. She takes her last scent of salt
  
island air, harsh, coniferous and cool, the  indescribable gray that contains all things.  Home. Farewell.
  She wonders about the soles of her new red  boots. Eleven days of gravel on Highway  4, a hundred miles to the Strait of Canso.  Many people are kind so Lily is only a bit  hungry. It is important not to spend any of the  money in her boots. Not until she has  arrived. She has sucked water from bright moss and  slept beneath the low boughs of pine trees, their  needles soft and young with May. The nights are  cold but Lily is not. Every night as she falls  asleep, she feels someone walk through the soft  dew and cover her. And every morning she is warm and  dry.
  The ferry man took her coin and gave her a  worried look. "What's your name dear? Who's  your father?"
               * * *
  ... My first class after our "tryst" on her  fire escape, I was afraid Rose would treat  me like a stranger again. But she didn't. She  wasn't exactly warm, but she called me  Kathleen and said, "Let's get to work," and that's  what we did for days and days like riveters on a  skyscraper.
  I finally got her over for supper again--tore  her away from her daughterly duties--and again  Giles slept while Rose played and
I sang the old-fashioned songs that Giles  likes. Then I brought Rose to my room and  tried to get her to take the ribbons out of her  hair and do something less childish with it. But she  wouldn't let me touch it. I decided I'd like  to meet her mother and have a talk with her. Why should she  have a grown daughter who's as tall as a man, and  more beautiful than a woman, decked out like a  Kewpie doll?
  I waited for Rose to spot the framed  photograph of Daddy and Mumma on my  dresser. She said, "Who's that?" I said,  "That's my father." She said, "Who's that with him?"  And I said, "That's my mother." And she just stared at  the picture, then looked back at me and said,  "Not your natural mother."
  "What do you mean?"
  "Not your blood kin."
  "Yes."
  Then she looked back at the picture. "I
  
can't see it."
  "No one can."
  "What is she?"
  "Canadian."
  Rose blushed. Hurray! But I put her out  of her mystery;
  "She's Lebanese."
  "She's an Ayrab?"
  "They don't like to be called Arabs.  Especially not "Ayrabs.""
  "What's wrong with that, that's how I've always  said it."
  "Well. Anyhow, a lot of Lebanese come  from the coast and they're more Mediterranean, more  European, you know. Not like Arabs."
  "She musta come from inland." Then she looked at  me and said, "Coulda fooled me."
  I said, "I'm not trying to "fool"  anyone."
  "You look pure white."
  "I am pure white. My mother is white."  "Not quite."
  "Well she's not colored."
  She smiled--sneered is more like it--and said,  "Don't worry, honey, you plenty white for the  both of you."
  "What's that supposed to mean?"  "Now you're mad 'cause I called you  white." She was laughing at me.
  "I like to be called by my name.  Please."
  She stopped laughing and looked at me for a  moment and said, "Kathleen."
  But I wanted her to get the point. "I'm not  ashamed of my mother, but I take after my father. My  mother is devoid of ambition and not terribly bright,  although she is a devoted parent."
  "Goody for you."
  It was on the tip of my tongue to say  "To hell with you" or worse when she got serious  all of a sudden and said, "I'm sorry but you're not  being honest with me. You are ashamed of your mother." I  got a hot sick feeling in my stomach. "And  I think that's a sorrowful thing," she added.
  The feeling was coming up through my skin. I was  sure Rose could smell it.
  "Kathleen?" She looked so sorry for me, and  that's what made me feel strange. In a  sticky dream with my eyes on sideways and can't  stand up.
  
  "I'm sorry," she said.
  I had to lean over.
  "Are you okay?"
  I thought, please, God, don't let me  throw up.
  "Want me to get Giles?"
  I must have caught a bug. The floorboards were  shifting. She put her hand on the back of my  neck. "Breathe," she said. Her hand was cool.
  "Good," she said. "But the idea is, once  you've breathed out, it helps to breathe in again in the  near future. ... That's it."
  I breathed and she kept her hand there until my  head stopped spinning and my stomach cooled down.
  "I'm okay now."
  We lay on my bed and played Chinese  checkers for an hour and Giles brought us cocoa  and oatmeal cookies. I wanted Rose to stay  overnight so we could tell ghost stories but she  has to be home by nine or her mother worries.
  The next day I told Rose she was in a  state of social mortal sin because she had yet  to invite me to her home. I have to come like a thief  in the night and even then she doesn't ask me  in. I asked her point-blank why not. She  said, "My mother is an invalid."
  She was lying, I could tell by the veil that came  down over her eyes, but I went along with it.
  "I wouldn't make any noise. You could just show  me your room."
  She said, "We'll see."
  "Say yes."
  "... Okay."
  "When?"
  "I'll check."
  Days went by and she still couldn't say when so I  gave her the cold shoulder, but that didn't work--  she's immune to her own methods. So last night  I went over uninvited. At the decent hour of  seven-thirty, when I knew supper would be through and  it would be early enough to take the streetcar instead of a  leering cab ride.
  There were lots of kids playing in the street, and  mothers everywhere, sitting on their porches in the cool  of the evening.
  Men too, in white shirtsleeves, some leaning  against the buildings in twos and threes, others  playing checkers, everyone chatting.
  It reminded me of New Waterford, except  Harlem is really prosperous. Not to mention that here
  
I'm the odd one out. Everyone stared at me as I  slunk by till I felt like something out of P. T.  Barnum, "See the white slave princess,  raised by wolves in darkest Canada!" A  couple of young fellas sang a little song at me  as I passed--softly, not nasty or anything, but  it made me blush anyhow, calling me "sugar"  and "baby," oh what I'd give to be invisible.  Or to be taken for a man.
  Before I got to her building I could hear  Rose playing. It was coming from the church window, but  church was not in session and this was definitely not  church music, it was pure Rose. So this is where  she practices. In exchange for playing on  Sundays, I guess. I stayed under the window,  sheltered by Rose's music, but I was soon  disturbed by three women seated on kitchen chairs  on the front stoop of her building. They  didn't shoo me away, they gave me the  low-down on Rose! They didn't know whether  to feel sorry for her or to think she was nuts. I  know the feeling. "Poor little girl," they were  saying, "she bears her cross." "We all bear  a cross." I wanted to say, "She's not a little  girl," and I had to laugh because they went on, "And  practicing twenty-four hour a day, but never can  learn a piece of music top to bottom no  matter how hard she try."
  "That's right, just wandering on the keyboard, lost  to the world."
  "'Cept Sunday, she plays like the angels  come Sunday."
  "That's the Lord's work."
  "Thank you, Jesus."
  Then one of them prayed that Rose would get some  humility and they made jokes because they considered  her too strange and--of all things--"homely"  to get a husband, and what's the good of pride in a  homely woman? I excused myself but the women  didn't seem to notice, they just kept chatting as  I picked my way past them up the steps and in  through the front door for the first time.
  The entrance has an echoey vaulted stone  ceiling with turquoise and white tile mosaic.  Maybe it was once a Turkish bath. I  smelled a delicious stew. I followed a  wide brass rail up marble steps worn to soft  curves by a hundred years of footfalls, up  to the second-floor landing, and was about to enter the  church to surprise Rose when I had a flash.
  
An evil one. I continued up to the third-floor  landing and knocked at the door of what I knew  must be her apartment. For a minute I thought there was  no one home and I was halfway back down the  stairs when a woman's voice stopped me.
  "What can I do ya for, honey?"
  I turned to the woman and said, "Sorry,  wrong apartment."
  "Who you lookin for?"
  "Rose Lacroix."
  "Rosie's downstairs practicing."  "Okay, I'll just pop down and say  hello."
  "She doesn't like to be disturbed."  "It's all right, she knows me."
  The woman smiled in a sly kind of way and  said, "You don't know her too well though, do you?  Come on in and wait, she'll be up for dinner in a  few minutes."
  "Oh. Thank you." I was confused. "I  don't want to intrude on your dinner."
  "You won't if you join us."
  I followed the woman into the parlor. It was  fancy and shabby at the same time. Like a rich  lady who's slept in her clothes. Velvet  everything. A plushy plum sofa with shiny patches.  Dusty curtains drawn--burgundy with gold  tassels. And a huge gilt mirror over the  mantelpiece. The stew smell mixed with her  perfume and made me feel a bit  queer.
  I said, "I'm Rose's friend from singing class,  Kathleen Piper."
  "Oh yeah? I didn't know Rosie had a  little friend."
  I felt she was being ironic, not to mention  rude, but I couldn't figure out why, no more could  I figure out who she was. Although she clearly  knew Rose.
  "I'm sorry, honey, I'm Rosie's mother,  Jeanne. Do sit down."
  I guess my chin must've dropped a mile but  I couldn't help it, I was speechless. She lit  a cigarette and laughed at me in a lazy way.  She was wearing a full-length evening dress--  dull red satin, slim and loose with skinny little  straps and a deep V-neck, black sequin  flowers. And obviously no underthings. I think that  shocked me more than the fact that she was white, with  straight yellow hair falling anyhow onto her
  
shoulders, and thin blue eyes. Tiny lines, she  must be close to forty, but it was so dim in there I  couldn't tell. You could see she used to be  pretty. No face paint, oddly enough. She was  enjoying my amazement. She offered me a  cigarette.
  "No thank you."
  "Good. Keep your voice clean. Drink?"  "Yes please."
  She smiled that rudely familiar smile again,  as if my accepting a drink made us lowly  conspirators, for there was something low about her and yet  she acted like bored royalty. I don't go in for  drinking but I didn't want this woman calling  me "Rosie's little friend" again. She gave me a  whiskey and leaned back in the sofa across from me.  Her left strap slipped down but she didn't  seem to notice.
  I said, "Thank you."
  "I know you're surprised, honey, everybody  is at first, my God you're pretty."
  I hate myself that I blush so easily. She  was making me madder by the second, I thought, so this  is what Rose lives with, I'd go around like a  hornet too if she were my mother. But I said,  "Thank you, ma'am."
  And she laughed at me again. The word  "languid" is always used in books, but I  finally found a use for it in real life. Mrs.  Lacroix was "languid."
  "Call me Jeanne, baby."
  I'm not your baby, I thought, but I said,  "Jeanne."
  And she chuckled again and looked me up and down  and said, "Oh yes. Yes indeedy."
  She made me most uncomfortable, the way she  lounged there scrutinizing me like a bird of prey  that's too full with its recent meal to be bothered  to eat what's in front of it.
  Rose came in. She paused when she saw  me. I couldn't read her face, she just said,  "Hi."
  "Hi."
  Jeanne grinned and said, "Rose, darling, your  friend is simply charming. I insist you stay for  dinner, Miss Piper."
  "Please call me Kathleen, ma'am--  Jeanne."
  She winked at me. I blushed again. I  looked at Rose, expecting her to be scowling
  
at me, but she just said, "Want to see my  room?"
  I got up, relieved, although it crossed my  mind that maybe Rose would murder me silently  with a pillow once I got in there. Her mother  stopped us on our way. "Did you get my  prescription, Rose?" she asked without turning  around.
  "Yes, Mother, I got it."
  "Good. We'll wait till after dinner, I'm  actually feeling quite spry today."
  "Good."
  "You girls have a little gossip, I'll call  you when dinner is laid."
  "Thank you, Mother."
  This was the strangest thing of all. To find out that  Rose has not a "Mumma" but a "Mother."
               * * *
  It's raining on the Bay of Fundy. There's  no particular ferry man this time, there's a crew.  No one speaks to her as she boards, or asks  her who her parents are, no one looks worried  --although they do look a little askance.  Twenty-eight days since New Waterford.  What is Lily to do about the soles of her  boots? She hugs the diary and looks over the  rail. The Nova Scotia mainland is behind her,  New Brunswick is in front.  Farewell to Nova Scotia, your sea bound
  coast,  let your mountains dark and dreary be.  For when I'm far away on the briney ocean
  toss'd,  will you ever heave a sigh and a wish for me?
               * * *
  Rose's room is as different from the rest of the  apartment as can be. She has a single bed with an  absolutely plain white cotton spread and no  headboard. There's not even a rug on the floor.  A wooden chair, a small desk with a pen and a  blank sheet of paper and, of all things, the  Holy Bible open at--but I didn't get a  chance to see because she flipped it shut the moment I  glanced at it. You'd think I'd caught her  reading a racy novel. It looks like the nuns'  rooms at Holy Angels. (i know because I  snuck into their wing on the last day of school,  hoping to find a long luscious wig in Sister
  
Saint Monica's room but no such luck.) The  only difference is, instead of a crucifix on the  wall, there's a picture of Beethoven. And do  you believe this? She hasn't got a mirror!
  Rose closed her door behind us and said, "S.  Want to play Chinese checkers?"
  "Why didn't you tell me she's white?"  "Why should I?"
  "I told you about my mother."  "What about her?"
  "You said she's not white."  "She got a year-round tan, that don't count  for colored."
  "You said it did the other night."  "Yeah, well that's a moot point, isn't  it, considering how you come out."
  "I can't win, can I?"
  "Oh yes you can, there ain't nothin stoppin you,  girl."
  "You hate me 'cause I'm white."  "I hate you 'cause you're so fuckin  ignorant."
  "Then enlighten me."
  "Why should I bother?"  "Because I'm your friend."
  "Friends don't spy."
  "I'm sorry. You give me no  alternative."
  "There's an alternative. Leave me  alone."
  "No."
  "Why not?"
  "I like you."
  "Why?"
  "You're the smartest person I know, except  for my father."
  "Is that supposed to be a compliment?"  "And you're beautiful."
  That shut her up. She looked at me as though  I'd told her she had a year to live. So I  added, "But your mother dresses you funny."
  "It doesn't matter what I wear."  "You're right, you're so gorgeous it doesn't  matter."
  "Shut up."
  "Come to Mecca with me tonight."  "I told you I can't."
  "Do you do everything your mother tells you?"  She sat down on the bed, folded her hands in  her lap and quoted scripture, "She has my
  
best interests in mind."
  "Oh really? What are those?"
  "Getting out of this dump."
  I sat down next to her, I tried to be  delicate. "What's wrong with her?"
  "Nothing. She does her best."
  "You're the one who's ashamed."
  Rose got quiet and looked at me as though  she were holding a puppy and begging me not to hurt  it. "You think, because she lives here, she's not a  fine person. Well it's only because of me that she  has to live here. Do you know what that's like for her?  They treat her like trash, they don't know anything  about her. Ignorant niggers."
  I couldn't speak. Rose went on, "She's  given up everything for my sake."
  "She seems pretty satisfied to me."  "She's too polite to seem otherwise."
  "I didn't think she was the slightest bit  polite."
  Rose really looked bewildered. How can she  know so much about so many things yet know so little about her  own mother? But I just said, "Where's your hat?"
  I followed her out across the parlor and past the  kitchen, where Jeanne was setting the table. That is,  she was standing there with a fork in her hand, staring  into space. Rose took me into Jeanne's  bedroom--I should say boudoir. A mess of  satin sheets in a huge mahogany bedstead with  claw feet. A big oil painting over  the bed of a fat white woman getting out of a tub.  A vanity littered with silver brushes, pots of  paint and clumps of yellow hair--a crystal  cocktail glass with lipstick smears, an  ashtray crammed with red-tipped butts, a jumble  of jewelry, tweezers and an eyelash curler.  Clothes strewn everywhere, and too many smells for  one room. Rose opened a big wardrobe,  rummaged through the top shelf and pulled down the  charcoal fedora.
  "Rosie!"
  It was Jeanne from the kitchen. She sounded like  she'd just hurt herself. Rose whipped the hat  back onto the shelf and shot from the room. I  got it down again and put it on, and went back out  to the parlor. Rose's back was to me. But  Jeanne was looking straight at me from the sofa where  she lay. She looked like she was in pain, but somehow  still slightly amused to see me in the hat. It  gave me the creeps. Rose was reaching into her
  
schoolbag. I could see the sheet music  inside. She brought out a needle that she filled from  a tiny bottle. Jeanne had her left arm  flung out and she was pumping her fist. The vigor  of that action didn't go with the swoon in her body.  Her face was starting to tighten and go even paler,  she was looking at the ceiling now. Rose injected  her and Jeanne closed her eyes as though she were  lost in prayer like the nuns. Her fist relaxed,  she gave a little moan, reached up and stroked  Rose's face. She murmured something then nodded  off. Rose folded Jeanne's arm across her  stomach, stood up and saw me.
  "She suffers a lot of pain."
  I felt embarrassed for Rose having to lie  again.
  "Did she see you in the hat?" she asked me.  "I think so."
  "Please don't do that again. It upsets her."  "I'm sorry." I handed her the hat. "Do you  have a picture of him?" I asked.
  "No."
  "Don't you have anything besides his hat?"  Rose looked at her mother on the sofa--out  cold--and led me back into the boudoir. And  disappeared into the wardrobe. I had this crazy  idea that she might be gone forever into another time and  place. But she came out a moment later with a  suit of men's clothes on a hanger.
  Black and tan pinstripe trousers.  Black waistcoat and tails.
  Tan cravat with black polka dots.  Starched white shirt with diamond studs.
  "Goes with the hat," I said.
  And she said "Yeah."
  And I said, "Try it on."
  She didn't pretend to be shocked, which is how  I know that in her heart of hearts it had occurred  to her before. It's also how I knew that certain things  between us were behind us now. Thank goodness. She just said,  "I couldn't do that."
  "Why not?"
  "It would be like--sacrilege."
  "He wasn't God, he was just some fella."  "He was my father!"
  "And all he left you were his clothes."  She hesitated. So I started to undress.
  "What are you doing?"
  I didn't answer because I didn't know, I  just pulled my dress over my head and got to work
  
on my stockings and for some reason it worked, and she  said, "All right, all right." And I put my  dress back on as she undid the millions of  buttons on hers and said, "Turn around."
  I obliged. She took forever.  "Don't peek!"
  "I'm not peeking."
  Finally she said, "Okay. You can look now."  I turned around. Oh my.
  She is a tall slim young man in a curious  suit of black and tan. There is nothing to beat  her leaning against the bricks of any building  'twixt here and Battery Park.
  She said, "How do I look?"
  "You're coming out with me."
  "I--"
  "Look at yourself."
  She hesitated so I closed the closet  door to expose the full-length mirror on the  outside. I stood behind her as she looked at the  beautiful young man with the fine-cut face between hat  and cravat. She looked at herself for a long time.  And finally--"Do you think ...?"
  "Oh yeah."
  She nodded to herself and turned sideways.  I said, "Your own mother wouldn't recognize you.  Much less your mother's friends."
  "Do you have any money on you?"  "Two dollars."
  "I've got carfare."
  "Let's go."
  "No."
  I thought, "Oh brother, she's got cold  feet," but she offered me her arm with a smile and  said, "Let's dine first."
  Jeanne had somehow managed to lay the table. It  was just a kitchen table between the sink and the icebox but it  was covered with a snowy lace cloth and set with  silverware engraved with "J.b." Rose lit the  candles. She filled our crystal goblets with  bubbly root beer and heaped the bone china plates  with what we call boiled dinner down home.  Potatoes, carrots, pork hocks (she  calls them "pig's feet"), doughboys, but  instead of cabbage there were green leaves of some  kind. Daddy was right. There has come a time when I  think it's the most delicious dish in the world. We  sat across from each other and clinked our glasses,  "To Mecca."
  "To Mecca."
  
  And drank. There was a place set for Jeanne  too.
  "She doesn't eat much anyhow," said  Rose.
  "It's good luck to set an extra place at  table."
  "Why?"
  "In case your guardian angel wants  to join you."
  "Don't spook me."
  "They're not spooky, they look after you."  "You don't believe that."
  "Oh yes I do."
  "Why, what's your guardian angel ever done  for you?"
  "Sent me to New York. Made me meet  you."
  "Lucky you."
  "We're going to know each other for the rest of our  lives."
  After a moment she said, "I don't think I have  a guardian angel. I think I'm on my  own."
  "You have one as long as I'm around."  She listened and I could tell she wanted  to believe me, and I didn't think about what I  was saying, I just said it, "And if I die before you,  I'll come back."
  She got tears in her eyes and so did I, it  always happens when you talk about ghosts.  I had two helpings of stew. Would you believe  Jeanne cooked it? "She does all the  cooking." So I guess she's not a completely  useless mother after all.
  "What does J. B. stand for?"  Rose hesitated, then said, "Julia  Burgess."
  "Who's that?"
  "My grandmother."
  "She alive?"
  "Yuh."
  "Where's she at?"
  "Long Island."
  "Do you visit her often?"  "I've never met her."
  "I've never met my grandparents either."  "To hell with them all."
  "I'll drink to that."
  We toasted again, then I raised my goblet for the  third time. "Let's drink to the twentieth
  
century," I said. "Because it's ours."
  "To the twentieth century."
  Do you think it's possible to get drunk on  root beer?
               * * *
  Lily plucks big waxy leaves from a  maple tree and replaces the lining of what's  left of the soles of her boots. She walks  across the United States border into Maine and the  road turns from gravel to pavement. She  kneels down by the side of the road and says a little  prayer because, after all, she has entered a foreign  country. This is at a spot near Calais, and  if you go there now your watch will stop.
  Lily knows where she is going, it is only  necessary to keep to the coast. If she can see the ocean  on her left she can't get lost.
               * * *
  We quickly washed the dishes, then Rose fixed  a silver tray with two glasses, an ice  bucket, a canister of soda and a bottle of  whiskey, and put it on the coffee table next to the  sofa where Jeanne lay. I was nervous that Jeanne  would wake up and catch us but Rose said,  "Don't worry. She won't wake up till  her company comes." I didn't ask "What  company?" because I didn't want to make Rose  lie to me again. She led me to the door and opened it  for me, tr`es galante, saying, "Ladies  first." As I stepped through the door, I  turned my head to smile at Rose and caught  sight of Jeanne in the mirror over the  mantelpiece. She was lying perfectly still on the  sofa, staring straight at me.
  Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who  masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there  are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but  whose souls are already in hell?
               * * *
  Lily loses sight of the water for days at a  time, stopping to inquire, "Where's the water?" She  is far from the only one walking the roads. She  shares a meal of boiled potatoes with a slow thin  man from Oklahoma, he's not going anywhere in  particular. She asks him where the water is. He  leads her to railway tracks that swing southeast  until the ocean comes in view. That night, between the  trees and the track, under a pure black sky,  he talks about his home in the land of milk and  honey and Lily asks why he left. "It blew
  
away," he says. "What's that you're reading?"
  "My mother's diary."
  "Where's your ma?"
  "She's dead."
  "Well you hang on to that book, that's a  precious remembrance."
  And he shows her a picture of his wife and  baby.
  "Are they dead?" Lily asks.
  "Not so far as I know."
  Lily is awakened by his bad chest. She  watches him sleep and his wheezing stops, but when  she nods off his torment resumes. So she stays  awake. At dawn he sits up and forgets  to cough. He scoops her up by the waist and  pelts, years younger, toward the line of  prehistoric boxcars lumbering by, all rust and  thrust.
               * * *
  I didn't tell Rose that her mother had seen  us.
  What a feeling to walk arm in arm with Rose as  a fella. People stared in a whole new way. I  guess I've found the one thing that could make me  look even more suspicious in this neighborhood.  It was a breezy evening. Rose had polished her  old black lace-ups to a high shine and I  wished like crazy I had my new dress on.  Oh well, next time.
  I had to force her through the door of  Mecca as though at gunpoint. The great thing about  Mecca is that there's all kinds. I'd never  soaked the place up like I did last night with  Rose. I saw it all through her eyes and I was  able to point out the regulars. It's mostly young  colored men and not that many women. The fellas are  all slick dressers except for the holes in their  pockets where the money's burned through. They're  earning more than miners, building tanks and  artillery for "over there," I know because I've been  told by the guy in the silk tie called  Aldridge. I've never seen guys preen and  present themselves the way they do. They lean against the  bar like honey-drenched stamens, waiting for the women  to buzz around, and you just know they're all breaking their  mothers' hearts. They wear secret smiles and  chuckle a lot when they chat with the white guys.
  There are a couple of middle-aged men too, a  famous jockey who eats five heads of  lettuce a day, and a retired heavyweight
  
champion with a bald head from Halifax. They're  the only ones who bring their wives, two very  serious looking women of a certain age who spend  the whole time with their heads glued together, chatting.  There's a group of West Indian fellas who  stick together and wear pencil-thin mustaches. One of  them's a lawyer and another is my acquaintance  Nico, a little live wire who has made a  fortune in real estate and can't stop smiling. He  calls me "ch@erie." There's a studious young  man who always sits alone and writes in a  notebook and there are two tables pushed together of  motley individuals who are delighted with each  other and everything else and who turn out to be  actors. There's a Chinaman who holds court  at the same table in the far corner every night.
  Tonight I notice three or four other white  girls sitting with their colored boyfriends and I  say to Rose that at least we're not the only  mixed couple in the joint and she says, "Yes  we are." I say, "They don't look  colored." And she says, "Say Negro."
  As for the white denizens: a handful of  tough-looking Irishmen in fifty-dollar suits  with "dames" on their arms. A Jew who brings his  barrel of hats into the club with him--he's a very  formal older man who closes his eyes and nods  slowly to the music no matter how wild the  tune. Tonight there's also a high society table out  for a low time--girls and boys who have no  idea where they are and think themselves awfully clever for  being there. They probably think the same thing of  me.
  There are also a few "working girls" of every shade  who arrive alone and leave escorted several times  throughout the evening under the watchful eye of the  game-keeper, who lounges in the corner consulting  his solid gold watch. I sometimes wonder, can it  be any harder than washing floors? Or having  seven babies?
  Business must be booming because the management has  installed a small stage, footlights and a  sparkly purple curtain with "MECCA" written  @a la Araby in gold sequins against a  silhouette of minarets. Ten minutes after we  sit down, a man in a tuxedo comes out from behind the  curtain and announces, "Ladies and gentlemen,  Club Mecca proudly presents "Ali
Baba and his Forty Follies!""
  The curtain parts on a harem. Light-skinned
  
girls and a very fat dark sultan lounge on  striped pillows. The girls dance the seven  veils while he sings a song of illicit lust  for one of them--the lightest one--and the band plays  snaky music. The tent flaps part and handsome  Prince Ahmed pokes his turbaned head through and  kisses the heroine. Then, bingo, you're in Gay  Paree doing the cancan, and then the same young  lovers flee the evil sultan all through the world's  capitals while the chorus girls quick-change and  outdance Ziegfeld's. We went to Hawaii,  Japan, Holland and Canada, where they  pretended to be Eskimos and Mounties! And although  the girls changed costumes and countries every five  seconds, they never wore more than half a dozen  square inches, even when they were fur-clad in  Canada's frozen wastes.
  After the show the band played dance tunes but I  couldn't for the life of me get Rose up on her  feet. She did, however, graciously nod when  other gentle and not so gentlemen requested her  permission to dance with me. I danced with the  busted-nose Irishman, built like a tree  stump but light on his feet, boy. With the Jewish    haberdasher, who made a waltz out of everything.  With a lily-white boy from Long Island--I  asked him if he was acquainted with the Burgesses  and he answered importantly that they were his dear  friends. I asked him if he knew Jeanne and he  got a blank look--then said come to think  of it there was a daughter years ago who "died  tragically abroad." I laughed and he didn't  ask for a second dance--just as well, he was like  shifting sticks.
  All the while, Rose slouched over her beer  in that lovely suit. She didn't bat an eye  until I danced with my pal Nico. It bothered  her, I could tell, although why it should be any  different than with the white fellas I don't know.  Only difference I can see is, except for the  stocky Irishman, the Negro men are the best  on their feet. When I sat back down at the  table while the band took a break, Rose said,  "I'll dance with you if you teach me."
  It was the first thing she'd said for an hour. I  realized I had wanted to make her jealous. It  bugged me that we had made it all the way to this  club with her looking so gorgeous but all she  wanted to do was sulk. I asked her how she liked  the show.
  
  "Irredeemably puerile."
  "The dancing was great."
  "The outfits are an outrage."
  "Look who's talking."
  "At least I'm fully clothed."
  I made her take a sip of my whiskey,    then I did something crazy--I kissed her on the  lips. Just quickly, you know, but we both blushed.  She didn't object, she simply raised her  hand for the waiter and demanded two more drinks in a  deep voice to make me laugh, then whispered  desperately in my ear, "Do you have enough money?"  I brushed my ear against her lips. She stayed  perfectly still. I kissed her neck between the stiff  white collar and her earlobe. I slipped my  hand round the back of her head below her hat and  stroked that gentle dip at the base of the skull.  She turned slightly and kissed my mouth. So  softly. I forgot where we were. That we were  anywhere. We just looked at each other ... so  that's who you are.
  The drinks came. And Rose looked away,  shy again. What will happen to me if Rose ever  ceases to be shy? I will have an attack of all the  shyness I've been saving up.
  Then something happened that I'd never seen before.  The place flooded and turned overwhelmingly  black, men and women both. I'll bet if  I'd looked hard enough I'd've seen the ladies  from Rose's front steps braving the  Devil's music. The word must've spread since  I'd been here. The house lights dimmed and the  footlights shimmered on the minarets of Mecca.  Silence fell over the whole joint and the  impresario stepped up to invoke the Goddess of  Blues, "Ladies and gentlemen, the star of our  show: The Empress of the Blues. Cleopatra  of Jazz. The Lowest, the Highest, the  Holiest, the Sweetest, Miss! Jessie!  Hogan!"
  Applause and shouts to outdo the  bravissimas of a grand finale though the curtain  has yet to open. It parts purple and gold  to reveal: pearls and peacock blue. Fourteen  carats wink at every compass point. She starts off  in a spotlight and emits a single moan. It  goes on for minutes--growing, subsiding,  exploding, until you're not sure if she's  praying or cursing. She drags her voice over  gravel, then soothes it with silk, she
  
crucifies, dies, buries and rises, it will  come again to save the living and the dead. People  spontaneously applaud and shout, sometimes all  together, sometimes singly. La Hogan is  absolutely silent after the opening sacrament  while God descends invisibly to investigate.  Then, once He's split and the coast is clear,  she spurts like a trumpet till the trumpet  can't take it anymore and hits her back--they  fight blow for blow till she raises her arms and  calls a truce. She takes a step off the  stage. The audience yelps, the trombone belts  a shocked comment and she bursts into her song without  words, quadruple time, strutting to the center of the  hall, dancing, the band following her like obedient  treasure bearers--except for piano--the  drummer beats on every passing surface, people start  clapping time as The Hogan somehow threads her  stuff between the spindly tables and throngs of  faithful. At the end of that first number she says,  "Welcome and good evening," just as though she were an  ordinary mortal. Sweat streams from her pearl  headband and she flashes her ivory and gold  smile. I guess she must weigh a good two  hundred pounds.
  I looked over at Rose. While everyone  else in the place was swaying and rocking and beaming,  she sat perfectly serious, listening and watching.
  Afterward, you know what she said about the music?  "Crude but compelling."
  High praise indeed.

  Under a smoky streetlamp I stood face  to face with my beloved and pricked my fingers against  the diamond studs of her immaculate shirt  front. Being tall, she slipped her hands  naturally about my hips and pulled me close.  And being bold, I put my mouth on hers and this  time went inside and told her all the things I'd  been longing to. Dark and sweet, the elixir of  love is in her mouth. The more I drink, the more I  remember all the things we've never done. I was  a ghost until I touched you. Never swallowed  mortal food until I tasted you, never  understood the spoken word until I found your  tongue. I've been a sleepwalker, sad  somnambula, hands outstretched to strike the  solid thing that could awaken me to life at last.  I have only ever stood here under this lamp, against your  body, I've missed you all my life.
  
  She kissed my face like fire. And it  happened, I grew shy and could only give her the  top of my head, which she kissed anyway. She  said in a voice I'd never heard before, "I  didn't think you had a scent, but you do." Which  made me laugh because what a thing to say! But she  explained, "No. Everyone has a scent and you  either like it or you don't or you're indifferent. And  you had no scent. And I thought that was spooky."
  "You're easily spooked."
  I love talking with our arms around each other.  "It made you seem not quite human," she said.
  "I'm not--"
  "Don't--"
  "Scaredy-cat."
  She kissed me again and we didn't stop for a  long time, except to lean out of the light when we  heard horses coming. We slipped into an alley  and I pulled her shirt out from her pants. I  pressed my center into her and she sighed. It made  me flood from inside, the sweetest music. We  were finally dancing. I slid my hands under and up  her smooth sides, I wanted to be slow  to savor but we couldn't, she gripped me and moved  under me. I felt her nipples under my palms  and I think I died. Rose gasped as though  I'd stabbed her and I felt like a savage robbing  a sacred tree, her thigh between my legs. I  found her hand and led it to a place I know, I  kissed it with the mouth that I keep hidden,  then took her inside and sucked her like the greedy  tide that can't decide to swallow or disgorge.  I lost track of everything. And even after I  finally could stop, I knew that I would never be  finished.
  Oh Rose, it's not enough until I have all of  you inside me, then give you back to the world fresh  and new from my belly. She just said softly,  "Oh," for the longest time.

  Imagine, in an alley. It's not very  romantic. But somehow it was. Terribly.

  Crude but compelling.
               * * *
  The sign says "Lebanon." Could I really  have slept so long? Lily wonders.
  "I said out!"
  Lily emerges from the gloom of the boxcar and the  signalman is remorseful.
  
  "Need some help there?"
  "Thank you, sir."
  "Where you going, missy?"  "New York City."
  "Well you're a bit off course in that case,  ain't ya."
  "I'm in Lebanon. Where's New York?"  "Eighty or so miles back the way you come,  to Portland then turn right, heh heh--hey, where  you going?"
  "Back."
  "You can't walk."
  "Yes I can, don't worry."  Two hours later:
  "Hello again, missy."  "Hello, sir. I forgot my mother's diary  on the train."
  He hand-pumps them over the rails twelve  miles to the lumberyards. He climbs  into twenty-nine boxcars.
  "This it?"
  "Yes. Thank you."
  "You're welcome."
  "Bye."
  "Here."
  "Thank you, sir."
  "Don't wait too long to eat it, there's  mayo in it."
  "Don't worry."
               * * *  September 6--Music class every  morning. Mecca every night. It's clear which Rose  is in disguise.
  Sat.-7--Yesterday Jeanne leaned in  close to me and said, "You remind me of someone,  peaches."
    I bit, I said, "Really, Jeanne?  Who?"
    And she said with her crooked smile that is,  apparently, worth paying for, "Me."
    I didn't say anything. She took a  big drag off her fag, held it in, then  exhaled. "I'll bet your Daddy's just crazy  about you."
    I've taken to saying a Hail Mary before  I come into the apartment.
  Mon-9--You have never seen two such  professionals. The Kaiser is delighted with my  progress. Sometimes he just says to me, "Sing,"  and to Rose, "Miss Lacroix, play if you
  
please." And sits back. How the mighty have  mellowed. We're just gently sculling till  November.
    I do sometimes get a jolting sensation--no  sooner do I take leave of Rose in the afternoon in  her ribbons and bows and dead composers, than I  meet my lover in the snazzy suit for a night of  jazz and jive. We tried it. It's made from a  plant. Lovely aroma. Bought it from the  Chinaman. Makes you lose time, makes you hear  each note of music from every direction at once.  Makes you make love slowly. But I haven't  bought any more because I don't want my awake  senses dulled. If all music is  fascinating, then none is. And there's plenty of  time to slow down, there's the whole rest of our  lives.
    For three nights we didn't go to Mecca.  I went to Rose's place and waited while she  doctored her mother and changed clothes. (i've  given her the sash from my new green dress. I  wound it around her charcoal hat to remind her. She  said she doesn't require reminding. Then she  kissed me in that way that makes me hate time.)  We dined and went out. We can't stay at her  place because of Jeanne's "company." We passed  one of her gentlemen on the stairs the second  night. An older light brown man with a paunch  and a monocle. "He runs the credit union,"  Rose told me. I guess Jeanne  does pretty well. Covers her doctor  bills, anyhow. Enough men will pay for a blonde  princess even if she's washed up and strung  out. It's not her job that bothers me, it's her.  What I get from Jeanne is a big echo. Where  is she really? She still hasn't said a word about  having seen us. I'm used to being there now when  Rose gives her her shot. That's all she  cares about. She still cooks and sets the table for  three every night, even though she is always  horizontal by suppertime--come to think of it, I  have never seen her eat. And I'm used to her  sleazy stuck-up manner. The other evening she  drawled at me, "I'm a Burgess, you know--  I don't know if Rosie told you--one of the  Long Island Burgesses. My father was  George Morecombe Burgess."
    And I drawled back, "Oh really. I'm  a Piper, one of the Cape Breton Island  Pipers. Perhaps you've heard of my father,
  
James."
    Her smile is now more sneer than leer, which  is how I know she respects me somewhat. She  plays cat and mouse: "Kathleen, dear, don't  you have a young man waiting for you in torment somewhere?"  And after a few more drinks, "Beware the dark  fruit, darling. He'll leave you high, oh so  high, but dry, baby, to the bone."
    How am I different from Jeanne? She is  addicted to morphine. I am addicted to Rose.  A rose is not a poppy. That is how I am  different from Jeanne.
               * * *
  Something happened after Boston. Lily kept  to the highway with the water blinking on her left, and  all was well until she noticed water on both  sides. Then there was no more land. "Is this  Manhattan?" It took a while before someone would  answer her. A boy whipped a handful of sand and  shells, "Fuckin moron." A clutch of  ringleted predebs giggled behind their hands and ran  away holding their noses. A long open  automobile whizzed by.
  The sea was very pretty here, so Lily sat  down on a wharf to read and wait until things  became clear. A lobster fisherman told her  where she was and gave her a juicy claw out of his  cauldron.
  "The water's so blue," she said.
  "Is this your first time seeing the ocean?"  "No. But my ocean is gray and green."
  "Where you from?"
  "Canada."
  "Oh yeah? I have a cousin in Vancouver,  maybe you know her."
  "Maybe I do."
               * * *
  Our first three nights after that first night: We  stroll to Central Park. A place near the  Pond. Rose brings a blanket and I bring  chokecherry wine. There's a thicket that you enter like  a rabbit. You crawl for ten feet or so, then you  can stand up and see the stars. And only the stars can  see you back. We spread the blanket, then we  always share a glass of wine before we touch. I  thought I would get calmer, surer, but each time we  come close I feel almost sick at first. As  though each time vibrates with the times before. I feel  a terrible sorrow coming up my throat, I don't  know why. And it can only be consoled against the length
  
of her body. Lying down with her for the first time--all  the pain I didn't know I had, till at her  touch it disappeared like smoke. Is this what  purgatory feels like? To burn painlessly? If  so, why isn't it called heaven?
  When my fingers slide against beautiful Rose,  when they swell her to a sweet unfolding and she  puffs out like a sail at my every breath, when they  glisten into her and disappear, it's as though she were a  soldier fallen in the field getting healed by me,  her head to one side. I take off her uniform and  she can finally come home. You don't know how  beautiful she is. Her hair finally released,  black foam. Her skin, nocturnal waters  worshiped by the moon, her white lover. I fold  her clothes carefully and dress her with my  tongue, my hands, my wet center, the true  balm of Gilead. Did you know it closes wounds  and opens hearts?
  My pale green silk dress is what they'd  call an undergarment at home. I wear only it.  It slips like skin and conforms to the slightest caress  like the shirt of a Mongol warrior meant to smooth  the piercing arrow's exit from the wound. It casts an  arboreal shade when I kneel above Rose and  invite her to refresh herself in this cool glade.  "Look," I say. And I can feel the caress  of her eyes. "Touch me." And it's the closest  thing to having no skin. "Kiss me." She  guides my hips, lowering me to her  lips as though to sip from a legendary flask. The  more you drink the fuller it gets.
  Rose was a bit shocked at first. But I have  discovered something about modest people. They're just waiting  for the call. Then they are the first over the wall and  into the temple. When she's inside me I sometimes  think of her fingers on the piano. Wicked, I  know, but I can't help it. She is endowed with a  span of a tenth. I sometimes sing a line of  Traviata between her thighs, which scandalizes her  because she is as serious about sex as she is about  music. Reverent.
  When will she discover that I am from a lesser  race of immortals? But the high deities have  always needed pixies to persuade them down to earth.  When she no longer needs an intermediary, will she  still love me?
  "I love you, Rose."
  "I love you, I love you, love you."  "Who?"
  
  "Kathleen."

  Then we bathe in the Pond.

  When I arrived home on the third night--  morning actually--Giles was up already with the coffee  perking. I thought, oh no, this is it. She was in  her heavy brocade dressing-gown with the Louis  IV sheep frolicking--somewhere there is a parlor  with a naked armchair. But really, what am I  to make of her? She put the marmalade on the  table and said wispily, "Kathleen, dear, I'd  really rather you brought your friend home nights."
  I'm acting cocky here on paper but I  nearly spewed. She said, "I know you two have  formed an attachment and naturally friends lose  track of time. There just seems to be so much to talk  about."
  My throat closed, I couldn't swallow the  coffee. How much does she know? Does she  imagine that we talk Verdi till dawn? That  we plan to enter the convent together? But I said,  "Thank you. It would be nice if Rose could  spend some time here. Her home situation is not the  most wholesome."
  "Poor thing. She's welcome to stay and use  the piano too, any time."
  Jesus Murphy! "Gosh," I said, "that's  awfully generous of you, Giles."
  "No, Kathleen. It's selfish." She  twinkled at me, sipped her coffee and crinkled  the newspaper. I decided not to look a gift  horse in the mouth.
               * * *
  "No wonder people in Cape Cod thought I was  crazy," thought Lily. "No one would ever  mistake the Island of Manhattan for any other  place once they'd seen it."
  The highway had become Broadway. She had  crossed the Harlem River and asked, "Where's  Central Park?" This time she was confident that it was  a sensible question. But people still didn't want to answer  for some reason, they looked quickly away. Finally,  a big white lady with fruit on her hat said,  "Come with me, child."
  Lily wound up at a mission in the East  Village where a volunteer lady tried to get  her into a bath and a new dress. Lily bargained,  "You may wash my dress, but I do not want a
  
new dress, and you may wash me but I will not  remove my boots, thank you."
  "Your ankles are badly swollen."  "I've been walking a lot."
  "You're actually quite pretty under all that  grime, aren't you?"
  "Thank you."
  "Poor little thing."
  "I'm not poor."
  "God loves you."
  "I know."
  Lily's green silk dress began  to disintegrate at the first hint of water. "This is  fit for the trash," said the lady and the next instant  shrieked in pain.
  "What happened?" asked the matron, who  came running, and the charity worker replied, "Little  bitch bit me."
  But by then Lily had her dress, her brace and  her diary, and was out the door.
  A pale man with long black hair, a top  hat and curly sideburns pointed north.
  She entered through the south gate of Central  Park and found the pond as evening fell. She  looked for the thicket but couldn't find it. She found  an untenanted bench, curled up, hugged the diary  and fell asleep. She moved several times,  awakened by the crack of a billy stick on the  soles of her feet, "Move along."
  And more than once, as she rose and  began to walk away, "I'm sorry, little girl,  don't you have anywhere to go?"
  "Yes, thank you, don't worry."  "Are you all alone?"
  "No. My brother is with me."
               * * *
  Sept 23--She said, "There's a tree  growing inside you."
    In my little room with the Greenwich roofs beyond  the window. Red geraniums, cool  metropolitan night air, industrial blue.  We lie next to each other a long time, looking.  Lightly touching, as involuntary as breath.  Black and white. Except she thinks I'm  actually green.
    "There ... see?" She traces the green  shoots of this alleged sapling, starting from behind my  ear, down my neck, where it submerges then  surfaces at the base of my breast, reaching up,  cleaving in two twigs to encircle my nipple.
  
She finds more evidence at my inner thigh.
    "It's growing up to your belly button. I  wonder where the roots are."
    "It depends whether I'm a shade tree,  or an aquatic plant."
    "You're green."
    "My eyes are green."  "You're so white, you're green."
    "You say the sweetest things."  "You're beautiful."
    "I'm green--"
    "The Green Diva, la Diva Verde--"  "And I smell--"
    "You have a scent."
    "So do you," I said.  "What's mine?"
    "... Trade winds--"  "Ha--"
    "--everything that's ever been worth stealing."    "H'm."
    "What's mine?"
    "... Mineral."
    "You know, it's because I know you that I'm able  to translate. I know that what you're really saying  is, "Darling, you're ravishing, milk and honey  are under your tongue--"'"
    ""And the smell of thy garments is like the  smell of Lebanon.""
    "Ha!"
    She kissed me. And after a while  she said, "Actually, you smell like the sea."
    "What do you know from the sea, there's no sea  in New York, there's a grubby harbor."
    "I know you."
    "Then what's it smell like?"  "Like rocks. Like an empty house with all  the windows blowing open. Like thinking, like tears. Like  November."
    "What about the tree?"  "It's the part that goes on living."
    "... Are you cold?"
    "No ... Here."
    "Thanks."
    "I'm never going to leave you, Kathleen."  "Don't ever leave me."
    "I never will."

November 1, 1918

Caro Diario,
  
  This is my swan song. It's happened. I  am too happy to write any more. There is one  last event to record before I kiss and close you  forever. Today the Kaiser took me to the  Metropolitan Opera House.
  Custodian let us in. All is calm,  all is dark, awaiting the opening night of the  season on November 11. The custodian  raised the gold curtain and I stood center  stage on the set of Samson and Delilah  and looked into the house.
  Beyond the pit, the dress circle and orchestra  swept out before me, a varnished sea of gilded red  rushing to the back and sides of the house to meet  balcony upon balcony fanning up and around me like  the decks of a grand seagoing vessel. Three  thousand four hundred and sixty-five passengers,  not counting the crew. This afternoon there was an audience of  two. Rose and the Kaiser. Center orchestra.  I sang Quando m'envo from Boh@eme.
And received a standing ovation. I'll sing for  Gatti-Casazza on the twelfth. I'll  make my debut on this stage this time next year.  But I had my maiden voyage today.
  O Diary. My loyal friend. There is love,  there is music, there is no limit, there is work,  there is the precious sense that this is the hour of  grace when all things gather and distill to create the  rest of my life. I don't believe in God,  I believe in everything. And I am  amazed at how blessed I am. Thank you.
    Love, Liebe, Amore,
    Kathleen Cecilia Piper

               Book 9
         THE FAMILY TREE

     "The sands of Mecca shape a rose"  THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD

  The inscription in the stone archway says,  "Ora Pro Nobis." So Lily does,  folding her hands on the diary in her lap and bowing  her head.
  She has been sitting here for the past hour reading  in the doorway opposite 85-1/2 135th  Street. She is glad after all that the mission  lady found her because, although her dress and boots  are worse for wear, Lily's hair is clean and  silky and her face is shining. Across the street,  the church is still on the second floor, with four  new stained-glass windows: the Holy Bible  closed, the Holy Bible open, Jesus standing  attended by sheep, Jesus sitting attended  by sheep. The butcher shop is likewise there,  renamed "Harlem's Own Community Green  Grocer and Butcher Shop," but "Dash  Daniels Harlem Gentlemen's Emporium"  has been replaced by "Joyce and  Coralee's Beauty School:
Bonaparte System," the "A2As Auto  School" "Renaissance Book Store,"  "Johnson's Photo Studio,"
"Johnson's Barber Shop" and "R. W. J.  Johnson, Notary Public."
  There are nests like this everywhere of buildings  richly subdivided, bursting with business and smart  signage yet flanked by those boarded-up and  empty, "Danger Keep Ou." The survivors  seem to be clinging to each other for warmth, hoping  to avoid the next sweep of the scythe through a  neighborhood where at one time there seemed never  to be enough space to house the dreams, the energy, the  buzz of enterprise and thunderclaps of faith and  music. More and more, Harlem depends on the  tourist trade. The harder times get, the higher  they get up here at a movable feast of dingy  wangdangs and a string of glittering clubs where  genius enters by the back door.
  Lily watches three little boys in fedoras and
  
long coats gathered round a wooden crate  playing a mysterious game. A woman dressed  like some type of nun passes by and scowls at her,  then does a double-take and says, "God bless  you." Little girls skip rope, there are children  everywhere.
  For a while now, the butcher has been leaning in  his doorway across the street, considering Lily.  He is a good-looking man of about thirty and he  calls, "Are you waiting for someone?"
  "No, sir."
  He smiles. "Who's your momma, girl,  where's she at?"
  Lily smiles back--not since Cape  Breton has she heard words to that effect.
  "She's dead."
  He nods. "You hungry? You look  hungry."
  "It's all right, thank you, I'm expected."  Lily rises, crosses the street and walks  past him up the steps, through the stone archway and into the  cool vaulted foyer. Up the stairs, her  brace ringing out on the worn white marble.  Second-floor church on the left. Lily  pops her head in just to see what a Baptist  church looks like. Three older ladies are  cleaning and yakking, but stop dead when the oldest one  looks up to see Lily's head inquiring around the  door and screams the way anyone would if the  Devil showed up in church. The other  two women cry, "Sweet Jesus!" "Dear  Redeemer on the Cross!"--they would bless themselves  but they're not Catholic.
  Lily withdraws, "Excuse me."
  The bravest lady steals over to the door and  watches Lily climb toward the third floor.  Then she turns to her cronies and explains,  "That red-haired devil who ruined our Miss  Rose has come back to life as a shrunk-down  raggedy cripple."
  It's true.
  Third floor. Open doors, a gauntlet  of staring faces, mostly children, an old young woman  on the verge of barking out the usual interrogation  till she sees it's a lame girl. Hostility  is replaced by curiosity. Lily makes her  lopsided way in a wake of whispers and one  giggle followed by the sound of a slap. Apartment  Three. Lily knocks. And waits, turning  to her audience, now silent. She smiles. The
  
old young woman shoos the kids back into her  apartment and slams the door. Lily knocks again.  She knows there's someone home, she can hear a  piano--soft, one-handed, as though that hand had  fallen asleep and were now dreaming.
  She knocks a third time. And finally gets a  muffled reply: "Fuck off."
  Lily puts her mouth to the crack of the door and  formulates politely, "Miss Lacroix?
It's Lily Piper. I've come to visit you, and  I have something for you."
  Silence.
  Lily waits. It's a long silence but far from  empty. Finally the scrape of a chair. Slow,  firm footfalls. A voice just on the other  side of the door says, "There's no Miss  Lacroix here."
  Lily waits.
  The door opens. A man looks down at  her. His face is all angles, handsome and  severe, he's perhaps a bit too lean. Black  hair shorn to the scalp, long neck, white  shirt open at the throat. His baggy black  trousers are worn to a shine, his impossibly  articulated hands dangle, waiting to get back  to their real life. But his eyes say he's  forgotten music for the moment.
  Lily waits while he looks and looks.  One of his hands rises and a finger touches Lily's  forehead--traces her eyelid, cheek,  lips, chin. The man is crying. Lily asks,  "May I come in?"
  She enters when the man steps back. He  closes the door behind her and she stands in the middle  of the room looking round. There is a piano, a  piano bench, one chair and a table. Lily turns  back to the man and says, "Hello, Rose."
  Rose takes a half-step toward her.  Lily approaches. Rose puts forth her hands,  slowly fingering the air as though searching for something in  a dark wardrobe. Lily enters the embrace.  When Rose shakes and shudders, Lily does not  let her stumble. While Rose grieves,  Lily takes more and more weight--she has held people  up before when they were stricken and besides, she is in good  shape from her walk.
  Rose soaks Lily's neck and shoulder and  groans into her ear as though something jagged and wrong  were being drawn out of her body. She moans,  "Oh no, no, no," because for Rose it has just
  
happened.
  It's important to attend funerals. It is  important to view the body, they say, and to see  it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the  loved one dies for you again and again.
  "No, no, no ..."
  Lily pats Rose gently on the back, the  way you would a baby. Rose whimpers into her  shoulder, "I'm sorry."
  But what has she to be sorry for? A body  doesn't need a reason to feel sorry.  Sorry is a free-floating commodity.
  "I love you," says Rose.
  "I know."
  "Never leave you."
  "It's okay."
  "Kathleen."
  The word becomes a keening and Rose crumples  in agony at the extraction of that last mortal  shard. It's the one that hurts the worst, she tried  to leave it where it was so it could kill her slow and  numb, that last lethal fragment. Her name.
  Lily guides Rose to the floor retching,  past crying, until finally she begins to rock on  her heels.
  "It's okay. It's all right now, Rose."  And Rose takes her first unfettered breath.

  Lily has made tea. She pours some hot  into Rose's cup and asks, "Why  didn't you save her?"
  Rose could retreat to her usual safe  cynical distance, but at this moment she can't  remember what she ever had to lose or gain. She  answers the question.
  "I wrote and my letters came back unopened.  I figured to hell with her. That's 'cause I  wanted to think she was the one sending them back. I  couldn't believe anyone could lock her up. Even  though I'd seen her father."
  Lily doesn't ask.
  Rose stirs and stirs her tea, looking down  until she picks up the thread again. "She always  did what she wanted, you see. That was the great  thing. It was better to think she was finished with me  than to think anything could get the better of her. I  thought, give her a couple months, she'll be  back--her brilliant career, you know. She could  quit me but not her music. ..." Rose looks  up. "But she didn't come back. By the time I
  
got money for a train ticket to that what the hell  island--"
  "Cape Breton."
  "Yeah," smiling, ""C'Bre'n"--  Giles found me and told me she was dead. Never  said nothing 'bout babies. Said flu."
  Rose looks out the window at a line of  small clothes. Lily says, "You could've  walked."
  "Yeah. I could've walked."
  They sit in silence for a bit. Then Lily  asks, "What's the date today?"
  "I don't know. June something--twenty-first.  No, twentieth."
  "It's my birthday."
  Rose squeezes shut her eyes for a moment.  Then opens them. Her voice is kind when she  speaks. "Happy birthday, Lily."
  "I'm supposed to be at Lourdes."  "You don't say."
  There's a charcoal fedora with an emerald band  hanging from a hook on the back of the door.  Lily goes and gets it and hands it to Rose.
  "Would you play me something?"  Rose sets the hat beside her on the bench, and  plays.
  When there is finally more silence than music,  Lily looks up and says, "Thank you."
  Rose returns to her cold tea and watches  as Lily unbuckles her brace,  pulls off her boots and turns them upside  down on the table. A wadded heap: when the maple  leaves wore out, Lily lined the sole of her  left boot with newspaper photos of  President Roosevelt because she trusted him, and  reinforced her right sole with promises of "a new  deal." The rest of the wrinkled papers on the table  bear the likeness of King George Very, which is why  it takes Rose a moment to register the fact of  three thousand dollars in hundreds.
  "What do you figure it's worth in American  money?" asks Lily.
  "Where the hell'd you get this, child?"  Lily answers, "My sister Frances."
  Rose nods and smiles and says,  "Everybody should have a sister Frances."

      St. Anthony, Patron Saint
           of Lost Objects
  
  The beautiful color print of Bernadette and  Our Lady of Lourdes has been nicely  framed. It hangs over the blackboard in  Mercedes' classroom at Mount Carmel High  School. Mercedes never tires of telling the  wonderful story of Bernadette, nor does she  let many weeks go by without quizzing the class at  random--"And how many times did Our Lady  appear to Bernadette?" Bernadette is a  saint now. She was canonized on the Feast of the  Immaculate Conception, December 8,  1933--the year Lily went away. "And what  did Our Lady answer when Bernadette  asked, "Who are you?"'"
  Mercedes stands ramrod-straight on her  platform at the front of the class, anticipating  the forties in her economy of line and preference for  angles. April 1939.
  "What's wrong with this sentence?"  She raps the blackboard with her pointer,  taut hickory, parade-square quality.  Chalked in her textbook longhand: Do like your  mother says.
  Her grade tens. Seventeen of them. God  knows there'll be few enough by the time they hit grade  twelve, and likely not a single boy among the  graduating class. Only three left now.  One of them, Bernie "Moose" Muise,  shoots up his hand. Mercedes casts a withering eye  and purses her lips, unaware that this  has made her an easy schoolyard takeoff.  Who am I? Old leather-lips!
  "Well, Bernard?"
  "See miss, it's like this: if every girl did like  her mother said, the population of Cape Breton  Island would be cut in half."
  A burst of laughter bitten off and swallowed  short by the class. Nervous titters as Mercedes  strolls to the big boy's desk--he's grinning,  actually kinda fond of old leather-lips. The  blows rain down on him hard and fast, a  hickory blur, before he can get his arms over his  head he's bleeding from an eye, occasioning a new  nickname.

  "You need a bit of a rest, Mercedes."  "Yes, Sister Saint Eustace."
  "Perhaps a brief change of scene."
  "I have friends in Halifax."
  
  Halifax County.
  "Anthony, come here please."  The matron at the Nova Scotia Home for  Coloured Children waits with her hands folded as the  little boy throws a last clutch of grain to the hens.  This is Mercedes' first trip to the mainland. She  stands next to the matron. The little boy wears a  red checkered shirt and brown corduroy pants with  suspenders, sturdy boots. He looks  healthy. The matron picks a little straw from his  hair and says, "Anthony, this is Miss  Piper."
  The little boy looks down, on the bashful  side, and says, "... Hello."
  "Hello, Miss Piper," prompts the  matron.
  "Hello, Miss Piper."
  Mercedes waits till he looks up. Then  she begins: ""Who made the world?"'"
  He hesitates, parts his lips, then,  ""God made the world.""
  ""Who is God?"'"
  ""God is the Creator of heaven and earth and of  all things.""
  ""What is man?"'"
  ""Man is a creature composed of body and  soul and made to the image and likeness of  God.""
  ""Why did God make you?"'"  ""God made me to know Him to love  Him and serve--"'"
  ""--and to serve--"'"
  ""--and to serve Him in this world and to be happy  with Him forever in heaven.""
  ""What must we do to save our souls?"'"  ""To save our souls we must worship God  by faith hope and charity that is we must believe in  Him hope in Him and love Him with all our  hearts.""
  ""--heart.""
  ""--heart.""
  Mercedes nods. "That is all. You may go,  Anthony."
  The little boy watches as Mercedes turns  to walk away with the matron, then he stops her with a  question. "Are you the nice lady?"
  Mercedes turns back, at a loss. The  matron helps. "The nice lady who sent you  here and makes sure you have clothes and food?  Yes."
  
  Mercedes remains expressionless. Anthony  says, "Thank you, Miss Piper."
  And scoots, tickled and shy, back to the  chickens.
  "Lovely farm," says Mercedes to the  matron.
  "Come, I'll show you the school section."  Mercedes arranged for Anthony to be sent here  before he was born. The first Nova Scotia  Home for Coloured Children blew up along with  half of Halifax in 1917, but they built  another one out on the Preston Road. Mercedes  did not expect Anthony to grow up as a charity  child, even though this is a charity organization    courtesy of the African United Baptist  Association--some of the best women you'd ever want  to meet on the Ladies' Auxiliary. There are  even music classes. Anthony is learning  violin. Mercedes pays for him out of the Lourdes  money, asking only that he be raised a  Catholic. The Baptist ladies have been as good  as their word, as Mercedes ascertained just now.
  He is six years old. Mercedes can see  there is no devil in him. He has his mother's  eyes.

                                  
             Armistice Day

Of wicked and most curs@ed things to speak I now  commence.
Ye daughters and ye parents, all go, get you  far from hence;
Or if ye minded be to hear my tale, believe  me nought
In this behalf, nor think that such a thing was ever  wrought.
      OVID, METAMORPHOSES, BOOK
      It, MYRRHA AND CINYRAS

  James got a letter from "An Anonymous  Well-Wisher." He left that night. Three  and a half days later, at 6:05 A.m. on  November 11, 1918, he walked out of Grand  Central Station. He walked all the way to where  she was staying in Greenwich Village because he  couldn't get a cab. There were crowds.
  
  He knocks but no one answers. The apartment  door is unlocked, in fact slightly ajar when  he arrives. He pushes it open and calls, but  no one answers. He enters the little vestibule and  listens. "Hello? ... Anybody home?"
He looks into the old-lady parlor, "Giles?  ... Kathleen?" Quiet as the grave. He  sets down his small black case. Cocks his  head to a sound. Giggling. Removes his hat and  hangs it on the hall tree. A shriek and  muffled laughter from ... across the parlor, down the  hall--the smell of lavender--past the WC,  treading softly. A closed door. He hovers.  He places his ear to the panel of opaque  glass.
  It's Kathleen making those sounds. Impossible  to see through the wavy glass. Shadows. He  closes a hand over the china knob--pink  rosebuds in milk. Turns silently. Opens  the width of a human eye. Sees.
  Spray of red-gold hair upon the pillow. His  daughter's hands traveling over a black back,  disappearing beneath the waistband of a pair of striped  trousers moving between his daughter's bare thighs, his  daughter's voice and not her voice, "Oh,  oh-have, ohhh ..."
  A roar of blood behind his eyes and he's in the  room, yanks the bastard off her with one arm  to belt him across the face with the other and fling him  into the wall, his daughter leaps naked at  his back because he is going to kill her lover with the  flat of his foot but no, James would never kill  a woman. Arms up to cover herself, bleeding mouth,  sliding down the wall, Jesus. James tears  the spread from the bed, descends upon the dazed  girl, enveloping her as though she were in flames,  slings her from the room, down the hall, out into the  corridor where he flings her, a mummy-sack of  bones. Then he locks the door and slides the  safety chain into place.
  In the bedroom his daughter is crying, pawing the  floor for her clothes.
  "Why, Kathleen?" He is not feeling  angry.
  She looks up, a blind choking mess. He  puts a hand down to her, she takes it, legs  shaking badly, onto her feet, clutching the  floor mat for cover.
  "Why?"--the back of his hand--"Why?"--his  speeding palm--"Why?"--closed fist.
  
  Her head comes to rest facing forward, already puffing  up. He looks at what he has done. He  takes her in his arms. She is racked with shame,  just wants some clothes, please--
  "Shshsh," he says, kissing her hair, her  injured face. It's his own fault--I should have  never let her go far from home--an ecstasy beneath his  hands, "It's all right, my darling--"
  "Don't," she says.
  He can't speak just now, he loves her too  much--closer--oh so soft--
  "Daddy--"
  He will tell her after how much he loves her  --her palms against his shoulders, fighting to stay  on her feet-
  Ohh my darling
  --falling, fists against his back, enmeshed between his  weight, the mushy bed, struggling only shakes the  web, the sheet and all its threads conspire, she  can no longer find her feet--
  The iron taste of her mouth where he's made it  bleed, dreadful sorry, I'll take you home  again--"Be still," he pleads.
  "Stop it."
  I'll never let anyone hurt you again  "No!"
  never let anyone touch you  "NO!"
  No one No one No. One. Will every-ver  every-ver
  She has stopped screaming.
  Hurt you Ever  she is lying perfectly still now
  Again!
  He shudders. "Shshshsh. It's all right now.  Hush, my darling. It's all right."

  James unhooks the safety chain and lets  Giles in. "Hello, Giles."
  "Who ...? Excuse me--"
  "I'm sorry, it's James."  "James!"
  He takes her net bag of groceries and  helps her off with her coat.
  "James, why I haven't seen you since--"  A little flustered. "Was I--his Am I  forgetting?"
  "No, no, I'm here unannounced--thought  I'd look in, see how the world-famous singer's  making out." He smiles and blinks twice in quick
  
succession.
  "Does Kathleen know you're here?" Suddenly  alarmed lest--
  "Yes, oh yes, we've already had a  visit," says James.
  Giles starts down the hall, "Kathleen,  dear--"
  James stops her. "She's having a bit of a  nap--not feeling too spry."
  "Oh." Giles hesitates. "Oh dear.  Was--did you meet Rose?"
  "Yes, oh yes."
  Giles strip-searches his face. Then says,  "I'll just look in on the girl."
  "She's sleeping, really, look, I've  made myself useful." There's a pot of tea and  two cups set out in the tiny dining room.
  "Oh. Well. That's lovely, James,  thank you ..."
  On their way to the table, Giles chats  politely, "You know I just popped out to the corner  to get some--where did I put my--?"
  James holds up the net bag, "Right here."  "Oh good, thank you, James, yes I just  popped out for a jiffy but I was delayed, you know,  caught up in the celebration, swept quite out of my  way."
  "Oh?"
  "Oh yes. Haven't you heard?"  James gives her a sociably  blank look, pours tea, his hand shaking only  slightly. Giles breaks into a big papery  smile. "Oh James, the war is over. This  morning at eleven o'clock. Oh wait till I  tell Kathleen it's over. It's all over."

  Rose fought her way through the victory crowds  and holed up in Central Park till dark,  ticker tape in her hair, confetti drying on  her bloody face.
  Around nine, she walks into the apartment on  135th, past Jeanne, who's reading on the couch,  something in French. Jeanne actually sits up.
  "What happened to you?"
  "I got beat up."
  Rising, "Who did this thing?" Summoning her  upper-crust command, "Answer me, Rose."
  Rose splashes water on her face at the  kitchen sink. "Kathleen's father."
  Jeanne swallows the smallest of canaries.
  
Then slides back into her sweet drawl,  "Don't worry, honey. Momma will make it  all better."
  Rose watches as Jeanne heats water on the  stove. She sits still while Jeanne dabs at  her fat crusty lip. "Poor baby."
  "Don't you want to know why, Mother?"  "Oh honey, you don't have to talk right now."
  Jeanne doesn't comment on the bloodstained  bedspread or the trousers peeking out below its  fringe. She picks up the phone and cancels tonight's  visitor. She lights candles and lays the table  for "a prodigal feast." She postpones her  injection--"The pain is a little better tonight."
  Jeanne sits across from Rose. And eats.  She talks with well-bred animation of Rose's  brilliant future. It is as though she had  never left Long Island--she can almost feel the  phantom servant at her right elbow poised with his  crystal decanter.
  "You'll be more celebrated than Portia  Washington Pittman, darling."
  Rose does not reply but Jeanne seems not  to notice as she enumerates the triumphs that  lie ahead: Rose will perform for royalty as did  Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, the Black  Swan. She will perform for the president as did  Sissieretta Jones, the Black Patti who  came so close to singing at the Met. She will  play with the greatest orchestras of  Europe, and Carnegie Hall will be on its  knees, begging. "After all, Rosie, someone's  got to be first and it may as well be you." Jeanne  gives two pats to her lips with her linen  serviette. "And Mother will be so proud of you." She    reaches out to squeeze her daughter's hand. "Not that  I'm not proud already, I am, Rosie, you're  my life, you're all I have left and I love  you." Jeanne gives Rose her most wi/l  look across the candles. "Really I do, dear."
  "What's the occasion, Mother?"
  Jeanne looks politely baffled. But she's  in too good a mood to dissemble. She is feeling  girlish tonight. Positively flirtatious. She  shoots Rose a cupid's-bow smile and leans  forward in the candlelight.
  "Listen to me, my love. You have more talent in  your little finger than twenty Kathleen Pipers, and  one day you'll thank your pauvre petite  maman."
  
  "For what?"
  Jeanne winks and lights a cigarette,  inhaling with a sly eye on Rose, shaking the match  well after the flame has gone out. An  Anonymous Well-Wisher.
  Rose begins a mental list of things to do and  starts with item one, "Who was my father?"
  A pained smile from Jeanne--an unfortunate  remark from her dinner guest. "Rose, dear  heart, you always did love to hear the story--"
  "I know the story, I want the truth."  Jeanne taps her cigarette, arches her  brows slightly and sighs, really this is a little  tiresome.
  "Who was he?"
  "He was Alfred Lacroix, darling, as you  perfectly well know."
  "And what did he do?"
  "He was a preacher, a man of the cloth and a  credit to his race."
  "And where is he now?"
  "He's in heaven, my treasure."  The catechism finished, Rose leaves the  table. It's a long list. There is no time  to lose.

  "Kathleen has gone home, Rose."  "When's she coming back?"
  "Her father didn't say."
  "What did she say?"
  Giles looks tired. "She didn't say  anything."
  Rose gets up. "I think I left some  clothes here."
  "By all means dear, have a look."  "Did he hurt her?"
  Giles looks away. "I don't know what  he did. She wouldn't speak."
  Rose pauses, momentarily forgetting her  errand.
  "Rose. Do you need a place to stay?"  "Thank you, Giles. I'll be okay."
  Rose stands in front of the bathroom mirror  at home and cuts her hair to the scalp. She  changes out of a dress for the last time, wakes up  her mother and says, "I'm going now."
  Jeanne takes a while to come out of a bad  dream that starts when she opens her eyes. Rose  doesn't wait, just conveys information, "I'll  let you know wherever I'm playing. I'll send you
  
money every week whether I have it or not. When you  die, I'll come back and live here."

  The road starts at Club Mecca. Sweet  Jessie Hogan loves spaghetti and  meatballs and beer and sweet young things who tear  up the keyboard and don't know when to stop. A  hot blues streak, the twenties.
  Until boom goes bust and Rose starts  playing her own stuff. Doc Rose. And his  trio.

      "a garden inclosed is my sister  ... a spring shut up,
            a fountain sealed"
                THE SONG OF SONGS

  When Frances dies it's safe for Mercedes  to put Anthony's picture on the piano.  Framed in filigreed silver, he stands proudly  at attention in the uniform and broad trooper's  hat of the Boy Scouts of the Zion African  Methodist Episcopal Church. He is still a  Catholic.
  Mercedes contemplates the cover of the record  album in her lap. Frances amassed quite a  collection. Ralph Luvovitz sent her one every  Christmas and whenever he visited his mother, always the  same request. Frances died early this morning.  The kitchen counters are still heaped with her  baking.
  Mercedes never was a big eater and Frances  less so. Through the thirties, people came to the kitchen  door and carted it away--big stews, pork and  beans by the bucket, molasses cookies,  oatmeal cookies, date squares, Nellie's  Muffins, johnnycake, rhubarb upside-down  cake, jelly-rolls, pies, blueberry  grunt, yards of shortbread, hundreds of tea  biscuits. Nowadays there aren't as many people going  hungry but Frances still cooks for an army--  Mercedes has had to organize pickups by the  hospital, the rectory, the convent. Young single  miners have been taking care of the rest, wolfing down  huge meals, hardly noticing the old girl at  the oven with her three cigarettes on the go and her  glass of Irish. Frances looked very old at the  last, though she took care to henna her hair from  time to time.
  For twenty years Frances listened to her
  
records. Cooked. Smoked. Drank.  Watched the street. Slept on the attic  floor. Walked the shore. She no longer  walked the Shore Road because it fell into the sea  --they've replaced it with a paved one that runs a  sensible distance from the water, but it's just not the same.  She read newspapers and saved them all. Scared  children without knowing. Led home cats. Tried never  to change her clothes. Spoke little. And then  yesterday she up and said, "Don't you ever wonder  where Lily is?"
  And when Mercedes didn't reply, Frances  got up from the sofa in the front room--  "Frances, what do you need, dear, I'll get  it." But Frances made her way to the piano bench  and bent down, which made her cough--"Frances,  dear, use your hanky"--opened it and took out her  newest long-playing record album. She handed  it to Mercedes and lay back down on the sofa,  exhausted.
  Mercedes pushed a blotched tabby off  Frances's chest and looked daggers at a  cross-eyed Siamese who never shut up--  "Shut up," said Mercedes. And glanced down at  the album cover: Doc Rose Trio,
Live in Paris: Wise Ch. A handsome  black man, the angles of his face reprised  by a fedora wound round with a gleaming emerald band.
  "You might want to look her up someday,  Mercedes, you never know."
  "Why would I want to do that?"
  "So you can die in peace."
  Mercedes hates it when Frances says things like  that. She's usually so good except when she's  drunk and then Mercedes just lets her alone,  shutting the door on whatever room it is so she  doesn't have to hear what Frances is saying  to herself.
  "My conscience is quite clear, Frances."  "Daddy died in peace."
  Mercedes gets up to leave and close the  door--
  "I'm not drunk, Mercedes. I quit  drinking."
  "Since when?"
  "This morning."
  "Oh Frances, here, have one, I'll join you,  perk up the appetite."
  "I've quit. I want to die sober."  Mercedes turns stony. "You're not going
  
to die."
  In the schoolyard Mercedes is no longer  "old leather-lips"--there is not enough affection  to inspire a nickname anymore. Just fear.  Everyone fears Mercedes, except Frances.  If Mercedes could have terrified Frances into going  to a sanatorium, Frances would be well now.  Frances could have gone to the best sanatorium money  could buy, in the States, in Switzerland, but  Frances refused. And Mercedes has had  to watch. And now it is too late--damn you,  Frances, how is that any different than  suicide?
  "Don't be ridiculous, Frances, you're not  going to die."
  "Daddy died in peace because he made his  confession." Frances reaches a hand to the floor for a  white blue-eyed kitten. "He confessed to me.  And I forgave him."
  "You are not invested with the power to dispense the  Sacrament of Penance--"
  "Yes I am."
  "Frances, I don't know about you but I'm just  going to have a wee dram--"
  "I want to make sure you know who Lily's  parents were."
  Mercedes covers her ears. Frances uses her  last sprint of energy to pry the hands away, and  to speak the words.
                                  
  A hacking agony of basins and blood and  mucus--little songs, the two bright spots on  Frances's cheeks, a trip upstairs to get the  dolls. A story about two tiny girls with  tartan housecoats and cinnamon toast, "I  love you Frances." A flagon of port or would  you prefer blancmange?--a kiss on the cheek,  ring around the rosy, "Forgive me."
  "Don't cry, Mercedes."
  "Don't be afraid."
  "Will you sleep with me tonight?"  "Frances, remember the time you dressed  Trixie up in the baptismal gown?"
  "Don't make me laugh!"
  A cool cloth, Frances your eyes are so  pretty--always so pretty--feel better in the  morning, Habibti ... "Te'berini."
  "Mercedes, remember that song?"  Forgive me, Frances.
  "Sing it, Mercedes?"
  
  ""Oh playmate, come out and play with me,  And bring your dollies three, climb up my  apple tree. Shout down my rain barrel,  Slide down my cellar door, And we'll be  jolly friends, for evermore. ...""
  In and out of sleep--that's right, you rest now.  "It's all right, Mercedes."
  Forgive me, Frances.
  Frances is so thin it's no problem for  Mercedes to stretch out next to her on the couch, so  light in her arms like a child, so hot like coals. The  terrible wheezing starts and goes on for a long time,  how can such a small body make such sounds--  don't be afraid. All things are passing,  love never changes. Angel of God, my  guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me  here, ever this day be at my side. ... The last  of Frances leaks out her mouth warm and thick.  Mercedes has never been sick a day in her  life, is unafraid of disease as her father was of  bullets, holds Frances all through the dawn  though her chest has stopped heaving. Stroking her  damp forehead, cool now like the grass; kissing  her temple no longer throbbing. A child asleep,  my sister.
  Mercedes puts the picture of Anthony on  the piano, closes the piano bench over the  record album, kneels down and folds her  hands upon the lid. She asks the Blessed Virgin  Mary what she must do.

       MAY JESUS HAVE MERCY
          ON THE SOUL OF

       Frances Euphrasia Piper
        Died April 25, 1953
               Age 40

  "We have loved her in life. Let us not  abandon her, until we have conducted her by our  prayers into the house of the Lord." ST.  AMBROSE
    Solace Art. Co.--202 E. 44th
    St. N.y.

  Sister Saint Eustace attends. Mr.  MacIsaac attends. Mrs. Luvovitz  attends, she is a widow now. Ralph and an  altar boy carry the coffin. Teresa meant  to keep a low profile but it's difficult amid
  
so few people. Mercedes pointedly ignores her--  don't come to me asking for forgiveness. Among  Frances's absent former cohorts there is  surprise--not that she up and died, but that "I thought  she died years ago."
  At the cemetery, Mrs. Luvovitz bends  and places fresh flowers on Materia's  grave, as is her habit. Benny is buried  at the far end in a little patch blessed by a rabbi from  away. Mrs. Luvovitz comes and chats  to Benny every day when she's not in Montreal.
  Ralph helps his mother back to her feet.  Mercedes finds the sight of him indescribably  sad. He is almost bald. He has a paunch  and a foolish smile. Ralph is happy. He  is an obstetrician. He loves his family  and he survived the war. The second one. When it  broke out, he joined up as a medical officer.  He promised his mother he would not fight and he  didn't--although by 1936 it was clear to Mrs.  Luvovitz that, although she had always considered herself  a German, Germany no longer considered her so.  Nonetheless, she armed Ralph with a slew of  addresses of relatives in Germany and Poland.  Ralph spent the aftermath of the war treating people in  DP camps and it was there that he came to realize  that the addresses his mother had given him were of no  use.
  Now Mrs. Luvovitz squeezes her  son's arm and remembers birthing the  woman who is being buried today. Born with the  caul. Mrs. Luvovitz looks at the sea and  thinks, when did this become my home? When I  buried Benny here? When the second war came?  She cannot discern the moment. She just knows that every time  she returns to Cape Breton, she feels in  her bones, this is my home. That is why she has  declined to move permanently to Montreal. She  spends half the year there. She loves her  daughter-in-law, would you believe? And her five  grandchildren who are only each perfect. They speak  French at home, English at school and  Yiddish with every second shopkeeper. Real  Canadians.
  Mrs. Luvovitz watches the casket being  lowered into the ground and says a prayer for the wild  girl. She was smart. Maybe the smartest.  What happened? I should have done something. Gone  over there. He didn't deserve to have daughters,  there was something wrong there. ... Mrs. Luvovitz
  
looks east at the horizon and reminds herself of  what she has learned: that nothing in life is not  mixed. That it is something to know where your dead are  buried. That they are buried. Little Frances.  Aleiha Ha' Shalom.
  Dirt hits the casket. Mercedes listens.  She watches the ocean. She will go on teaching, of  course. Pray for the souls of her loved ones, for  their speedy release from purgatory into heaven. But  who will be left to pray for her? To speed her  reunion with her sister? No one, thinks  Mercedes. Hopeless.
  Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it.  To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside  a fountain. Mercedes watches the ocean. Chill  green today, and rough. Purple farther out. She  wonders when it was that she began to despair. All  these years she mistook it for pious resignation.  Now she sees the difference. Such a fine line between  a state of grace and a state of mortal sin.  What is the good of believing fervently in God  if you wind up hating Him? How long have I  hated God, Mercedes wonders. When did I  first believe it was all up to me?
  Which are the sins against hope?
  The sins against hope are presumption and  despair.
  What is despair?
  Despair is the loss of hope in God's  mercy.
  Mercedes says to herself, "I am damned."  Her face has eroded to shale, her brown  eyes are dry with sorrow. The ocean sorely  tempts her like a lover--she longs to shave her  body and walk stinging into salt, naked and  anonymous, battered and embraced by rage, nothing  personal. Drown. The word is melodious.  Beckoning.
  Standing back from the gravesite, Teresa  looks at Mercedes looking at the ocean and  starts to pray for her. For the sake of the girl in the  ground. Teresa stays and prays until everyone  but she and Mercedes have left the grave and night  has begun to fall. Finally Mercedes  hesitates ... then turns away, and walks  home instead of into the ocean.

  That night, the Virgin Mary tells her what  to do.
  
             Sudden Light

I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,  The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.  "SUDDEN LIGHT" BY DANTE
    GABRIEL ROSSETTI

  Rose is sixty-five. Ancient for a  jazzman. Rock 'n' roll reigns and there are  fewer gigs now. She has attained that thankless  high status, to wit: Doc Rose is the jazz  pianist most often cited by famous jazz  pianists as their favorite jazz pianist. Knowledge  of Doc Rose is a litmus test of  connoisseurship. The records are hard to come  by now and cherished by those in the know. The rarefied fan  club knows everything about Doc Rose except that  he and his manager live hand to mouth on 135th  Street.
  Lily cleans churches, including the one on the  second floor. Rose plays chess and  checkers on the corner with the other old men. Lily  has never cut her hair. It hangs down to her  knees, streaked with gray. There are lightweight  aluminum braces available nowadays, but she  never thought to buy one when they had the money. Her  face is fallen but still sweet, her  eyes the same. She is forty-five.
  It's just after eight on Sunday night.  They're watching "The Ed Sullivan Show" on  television when the knock comes at the door.  Lily opens it and Anthony smiles,  embarrassed.
  "Hello. Miss Piper?"
  "Yes."
  "You don't know me, although we actually have the  same name, I knew your sister, Miss  Mercedes Piper. My name is Anthony  Piper."
  Lily looks at the young man. Rose  doesn't take her eyes off Topo Gigio  while growling out the side of her mouth, "Someone  cack and leave us money?"
  "I, no, I don't think so, heh."  "Then go away."
  Eddie, kees me goodnight.
  Lily says to him, "Aloysius."
  
  Anthony says, "I beg your pardon?"  convinced now of his mistake, wrong apartment, a  senile old couple, ancient smell of cabbage  ...
  Lily says, "Come in."
  He says, "You are Lily Piper?"  "That's right."
  "In or out, make a decision," Rose is  beginning to enjoy herself.
  He steps in. What a day. His first time in  New York City. Subway to the black  metropolis so strange and familiar, he  belongs everywhere and nowhere. Anthony has  experienced the feeling before--no matter where he  is, there is something about people's struggles to keep their  memories that bruises his heart, because it's too  soft to break. The world is his orphanage. Why  he should feel so sorry for the other people on the  planet is a mystery to him. He's actually a  very happy person. It's just that he doesn't know  there's a difference between love and empathy, nor  does he question why he should be overcome so  frequently with nostalgia for times and places not  his own. He can't see differences. Only  variety. He travels well.
  The soft heart feeds a wire frame that is  never still. He plays spoons, fiddle, mouth  harp, and is learning the bones from a man called  Wild Archie--odd, Archie came out of an  orphanage too--whom he met at the  Cape Breton Club in Halifax.
Anthony is wearing desert boots, white  jeans, a black turtleneck and an Afro.  Slim and eager, a bright penny. Green lights  in his hazel eyes.
  "You grew up to be happy," says Lily.  He looks at her more closely, not trusting his  sense that he's met her before, which happens to him so  often. As does the reverse. So familiar.
  "I guess you must know," he says carefully,  "Miss Piper passed away. Quite recently."
  "No, I didn't know that."
  Lily mourned Frances long ago, on the  night she left, but she never imagined Mercedes  dying, although she has prayed for her soul every night.
  "I'm sorry," he hands Lily his  handkerchief.
  "That's all right ... she was my sister. ..."  "I don't know what you're blubbering for,"  snarks Rose, "she tried to have you extradited."
  "Exorcized."
  Where am I, thinks Anthony, and who are these  people?
  Lily blows her nose, "Aloysius, did  you know Frances? Did Frances ever get to see  you?"
  "Actually, my name is Anthony. Um--  Frances who?"
  "What do you do for a living, Tony?" Rose  probing for a percentage.
  "I'm a musician--"
  "Shit," shifting back to the TV.  "--and I teach ethnomusicology."
  Rose turns up the volume. Another damn  rock 'n' roll band from England.
  Anthony is not giving up. "I should explain  that Miss Piper more or less adopted me from  afar, if you know what I mean, and when she died  she left me her house, and she asked me to--"
  "Any money?" Rose's last attempt.  "No. I think she spent all her money on  me. I don't know why. She was a nice  lady."
  "Our Lady of Lourdes," says Lily.  Our Lady of Loonies, thinks Anthony,  instantly contrite, can't help the things that pop  into his head, his love of humanity notwithstanding.
  "The cocoa tin," says Lily.  Cuckoo, thinks Anthony. Then he  remembers his errand. He opens his  knapsack and takes out a sealed cardboard  tube. "When Miss Piper died, she left me  a note with your name and address, and instructions for  me to give you this personally."
  He hands the tube to Lily. She breaks the  seal at one end and withdraws a paper scroll.  She spreads it out on the table.
  Anthony asks, "What is it?"
  "It's the family tree," Lily says.  "Look. We're all in it."
  Rose flicks off the TV, scuffs over on  her dilapidated slippers, fishes for her  glasses.
  "See?" Lily tells Anthony. "You have quite  a few brothers and sisters. Your father's still  alive, although, oh that's too bad, your stepmother  Adelaide is gone."
  ""Leo (ginger) Taylor,"" he reads  aloud.
  "That's your father, dear. And your Aunt Teresa  too, she's still living according to this--and look, you have a  cousin too. "Adele Claire.""
  "I don't understand."
  "There you are, there."
  Lily points to the issue of Frances  Euphrasia and Leo (ginger). Sprouting from the  union of their branches is his name in green ink,  "Anthony (aloysius)."
  Ambrose is there too, twinned with Lily, and  under his name the words "died at birth." Brother and  sister hang by a twig from a branch that joins  James to Kathleen. Rose looks at Lily.  But Lily just folds her hands.
  Next to Kathleen, an "equals" sign  joins her name to Rose's. Rose takes off her  glasses.
  It could be the stale air, the reeling sense of the  familiar awash with the foreign, the ocean finally  giving up her dead--Anthony is suddenly  seasick.
  "Sit down," says Lily.
  He drops to his haunches and puts his head  between his knees. Lily gets a cool wet cloth  from the kitchen and places it on the back of his  neck.
  "Breathe," she says.
  He does.
  That's better.
  "What the hell is ethnomusicology?"  Rose wanders off to the piano.
  Anthony stands up carefully. "Sorry--"  "Here, dear," says Lily, "sit down and have  a cuppa tea till I tell you about your mother."

               THE END

              Permissions

  Every effort has been made to contact copyright  holders; in the event of an inadvertent omission  or error, please notify the publisher.

Ambrose, Sister Mary, O.p., "For a  Happy Death," from My Gift
  to Jesus, copyright 1929 by Adrian  Dominican Sisters. All rights reserved.
  Reprinted by permission.
Baum, Bernie, and Stephan Weiss,  "Music! Music! Music!" copyright
  1949 (renewed), 1950 (renewed)  by Cromwell Music, Inc., New York
  and Warner/chappell Music, Inc., Los  Angeles, California. All rights
  reserved. Reprinted by permission of the  Richmond Org. (Tro).
Florence, Nellie, "Jacksonville  Blues," copyright by Enterprise Music
  Corp. All rights reserved. Reprinted  by permission.
Grainger, P., and E. Robbins, "'That Ain't  Nobody's Business (if I Do),"
  copyright 1922, 1949, 1960  by MCA Music Publishing, a division of
  MCA, Inc. All rights reserved. Used  by permission. Copyright renewed. International
  copyright secured.
Lashley, Clarence, "Sly Mongoose," from  Cape Breton's Magazine, no.
  18, copyright 1977 by Ronald Caplan.  All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission
  of the publisher.
Ledbetter, Huddie, and John A. Lomax,  "Goodnight, Irene," copyright 1936
  (renewed), 1950 (renewed) by Ludlow  Music, Inc., New York, N.y.
  All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission  of the Richmond Organization (Tro).  Mercer, Johnny, and Harry Warren,
  "Jeepers Creepers," copyright 1938  (renewed) by Warner Bros., Inc. All
  rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of  Warner Bros. Publications U.s., Inc.  Montrose, Percy, "Oh, My Darling
  Clementine," copyright 1884.  Paton, John Glenn, Vaccai:
  Practical Method of Italian Singing (for  Mezzo-Soprano [Alto] or
  Baritone) vol. 1910, copyright 1975  by G. Schirmer, Inc. (Ascap)
  International copyright secured. All rights  reserved. Reprinted by permission of Music
  Sales Corp.
Rexford, Eben, and Hart P. Danks,  "Silver Threads Among the Gold,"
  copyright 1873.
Verdi, Giuseppe, "Rigoletto," copyright  1955, 1986 by EMI Records Ltd.
  Translated by Dale McAdoo, copyright  1956 by EMI (u.s.) Ltd. All rights
  reserved. Reprinted by permission.  Westendorf, Thomas P., "I'll Take You
  Home Again, Kathleen," copyright 1876.  Whitson, Beth Slater, and Leo Friedman,
  "Let Me Call You Sweetheart,"  copyright 1910 (renewed) by Shawnee
  Press, Inc. (Ascap) and Shapiro  Bernstein and Co., Inc. New York.
  International copyright secured. All rights  reserved. Reprinted by permission of Music
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  She Sweet?" copyright 1927  (renewed) by Warner Bros., Inc. All
  rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of  Warner Bros. Publications U.s., Inc.

             About the Author

  ANN-MARIE MACDONALD is a  Toronto-based writer and actor. Her play,  Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning  Juliet won the Governor General's award  for Drama, the Chalmers Award for Outstanding  Play and the Canadian Authors' Association  Award for Drama. She also appeared in the  feature films I've Heard the Mermaids  Singing and Where the Spirit Lives. This is her  first novel.