Black Apple (37 page)

R
OSE MARIE SAT
on the edge of her bed, writing on the pad of foolscap she had brought from St. Mark’s. Her hand no longer seemed to be connected to her body; she couldn’t control it, and her words sprawled clumsily across the page, a mess! She scrunched up the paper, flung it across the room, and started again on a new sheet.

Dear Mother Grace . . .

A knock on the door. She dropped her pen, leaving a smear of ink down the page.

Heavens, it was Cyril.

“Rose Marie,” he said, looking her straight in the eye, “I need to talk to you, and you have to listen.”

“I can’t. I’m busy. And exhausted.” Suddenly she was, slumping against the door frame, hardly able to hold herself upright.

“Come outside with me.” He took her hand, and she let him lead her down the stairs. Throwing his huge jacket over her shoulders, he guided her out the front door.

There it was, the porch where, starting back in mid-August, they had met in the evening. Through September and October, when Cyril wasn’t on shift, they had talked—often laughing, sometimes smoking, occasionally sharing a beer—while the sun slid down the sky. Tonight was dark and chilly, the moon a lopsided grin among hundreds of blinking eyes. Rose Marie shivered, watching her breath bloom a white bouquet.

“I’m sorry for what I did. I didn’t plan to . . .” Cyril muttered. “You know.”

Her face grew warm in the porch light, but Cyril’s eyes held hers and she couldn’t look away. She couldn’t run either, though she wanted to. And she didn’t want to.

“You might not believe me, Rose Marie, but it’s true. I didn’t think about you that way, but since that night, you’ve been on my mind every minute.”

She tried to breathe normally.

“I think we’re good together, the way I can talk to you, and you to me.” He reached for her, and she found herself pushing her arms around his thick waist. Pressed against the bulk of his muscle and flesh, she felt protected from the shadows and whispers of the town. She would never end up like Bertha Bright Eye.

“Look.” He cleared his throat. “It’s time I settled down. If you’ll have me.” He nuzzled her hair.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Marriage.”

She hadn’t expected this! Pulling back, she gazed up at him. He smiled and pulled her close again, his lips slow and cool on her forehead.

Glancing at the dark street, she allowed her mind to wander downtown. She saw herself standing at the cash register behind the counter at McBride’s, a confident young woman in a white blouse—brand-new, not a hand-me-down—and a pretty red skirt.

She would get a job at McBride’s, and the women who came in would nod at her in a friendly, familiar way. Maybe not Mrs. Tortorelli and a few of the others, but many of them would. “How are you doing, Rose Marie?” some would ask. “Have you and that man of yours set a date?” Just as she had heard them ask Betty Watson.

“A little house,” he whispered. “I got some savings.”

She would become Mrs. Cyril Brown, married to a big, strong white man. His name just as much as his physical presence would keep Rolfe Mooney, and everyone like him, at bay. She’d have her own little house, and she’d get to know other miners’ wives—Mrs. Rees would have to help with that—and once or twice a week, she’d drop by the rectory to sew while Mrs. Rees gave her tea and lemon loaf, all the while chattering.
“Have you got your living room furniture yet, Rose Marie? I saw a nice sofa in the Eaton’s catalogue.”
It was possible, and she could feel the words start to take shape in her mouth.
Yes, Cyril. I’ll have you
, but she bit her lip to stop them.

“You know how I feel about you.”

A line from the Orphans’ Prayer slipped through her mind:
Give me love in my life, real, true love and a real, true home
.

“How do you feel about me?” she asked him. She needed him to tell her in his best radio announcer’s voice, to convince her that they could make a home together and have a good life, a
meaningful
life. And love.

He cleared his throat. “Well,” he started, but stopped. “I think you know,” he finally said, nervously stroking her hair.

But she didn’t. She wanted more, a complete declaration. She needed it.

They stood on the porch watching the stars. Finally, she pulled away from Cyril.

“You’ll think about it, won’t you?” he asked, and she said, “Yes, I will.”

Together they walked up the stairs and went to their separate rooms.

  *  *  *  

Rose Marie couldn’t get to sleep. Once she was able to get Cyril off her mind, it went immediately to Mother Grace. Who had brought her up since she was seven years old, for crying out loud. But who had kept her from Papa, had not even told her when he was sick, who had made it impossible for her to see him before he died. Whom she wanted to hate but couldn’t seem to.

Why hadn’t Mother Grace sent her room and board or bus ticket? What could be wrong? Finally she drifted to sleep.

The current was strong, but swimming hard for the shore, she was making progress.

She woke up and felt Cyril’s body, strong and protective against hers. And then he was on top of her, crushing her beneath him. She screamed.

She had screamed, the sound ripping through her belly. Too late.

Alone in her room, she was shivering cold, her blankets thrown off. “Hey, little girl,” Cyril had said as she pulled up her underwear, about to leave his room that night. “You don’t have to go, do you?”

“I’m not a little girl.”

“No, you’re not.”

She waded into her creek. Looking at the shore, she saw a man dancing. It looked like Papa, and she called out to him. As he turned towards her, she realized it was a younger man, but the sun flared over his shoulder, and his face was blotted by shadow. Frank?

When her alarm rang, her brain was muddled, and she thrashed at the clock, knocking it to the floor. Her dreams exhausted her, and she was too tired to get out of bed. By the time she made her way downstairs for breakfast, everyone had gone. The only thing on the table was a plate with a congealed egg, a greasy clump of bacon, and cold toast.

Frank came out of his room and watched her eat. As she got up from the table, he said, “I’ll walk you to that church.”

“No, you don’t have to.”

At the door, he handed her a toque. “Wear this. Don’t want to freeze your ears.”

“Won’t you be late for work?” she asked once they were outside.

“I don’t care,” he said, trudging stiffly beside her through the snow. “I’m sick of bucking. Yesterday, I told my foreman to make me a regular miner or I’m quitting.”

“Aren’t you worried about losing your job?”

“I ain’t worried. Besides, I got something to say to you, Sinopaki
.
”

She stopped. He knew her home name! Someone from the Reserve must have told him, but he hadn’t gone back there since she’d arrived. From time to time, friends and relatives passed through, and maybe someone had told him, someone who knew Aunt Angelique, her mother’s sister. Whom she never saw anymore and had all but forgotten. She had forgotten so much. She smiled up at Frank, her old name—her real name—a small treasure between them. Maybe it was time to start remembering.

There is so much I have to tell you, Mother Grace
, she would write that evening.
I hardly know where to begin.

“You belong with me,” he said, taking her hand in his fire fingers. “I know who you are and where you come from.”

I have worked hard at Our Lady of Sorrows. I have prayed, asking the Lord for guidance and the Virgin Mother for intercession. I wanted to be pious and faithful. I have tried.

“We can have a good life together,” he said.

“What kind of life?” She needed him to explain, to convince her.

“A good life,” he repeated. “Maybe in the old way.” He glanced over her shoulder at the cars buzzing by them on the road.

“What do you mean, exactly?” She willed him to look at her, but he just shrugged and started to walk, letting her hand drop.

“Maybe live in the bush like your parents,” he said after a few minutes, as if he were considering the idea for the first time. “We could look for their old house. Or I could build us a place if I can find land no one owns.”

“Is there enough game to live on?” She thought of Papa with his gun, traps, snowshoes, and Mama’s snares. Her parents had been known as skillful hunters, but there were days when winter had dragged its frozen carcass into spring, and the family had nothing left to eat but a few licks of powdery dried meat and shrivelled berries. Now, with the white men hunting too, there might not be enough to go around. She ached for the old life as she remembered it—sun, creek, bush, mountain, and sky with Mama and Papa and their snug bed of hides, with Kiaa-yo too—but she wasn’t sure it was possible anymore. She needed to know. She needed someone who knew.

“The Reserve, then.” Frank sounded uncertain. Then his gunfire laugh. “We could even stay in Black Apple. Union says they’re going to get us accident insurance. If the mine won’t get me out of bucking, we could live on that while you push me around in my wheelchair.” He grinned, but she didn’t grin back.

She went to work, and all day long, she blinked a blizzard from her eyes.

  *  *  *  

She had planned to finish her letter to Mother Grace that night, but she couldn’t. The storm in her head pushed against her skull, and even her eyes throbbed. She put down her pen and crawled into bed. She didn’t even pray.

She was watching the dancer onshore, trying to see his face, when the water began to rise around her. He kept dancing, unbuttoning his white shirt as his thighs drummed, his feet rose and fell. Sliding off the shirt, he unzipped his woollen pants. The water pulled at her knees, splashing up her legs. Floundering, she cried out as it sucked her in.

The dancer wore nothing but a breechcloth. He stopped dancing and looked over. Finally, he saw her. He dove into the water.

She woke up. The blizzard was gone. She stared into the deep night. She knew what she would write to Mother Grace:

I have watched a shape moving towards me. As it gets closer, I can see it more clearly. You would call it my destiny perhaps, Mother Grace. It’s possibility, I think. Possibilities.
There are as many as there are feathers on a bird, and it has not been easy choosing among them, believe me. Believe in me, Mother Grace.

But the dream was pulling her back.

Lifting his face from the river, Joseph snapped his head back, flinging water from his long hair. “Come home, Sinopaki,” he said, reaching for her arm. “Where you belong.”

Laughing, she shook off her brother’s hand. She didn’t need his help. She was quite capable of swimming on her own if she knew where to go, if she really tried. Her arms pulling, legs kicking, she slid through the water like a fish.

She awoke before dawn and finished the letter to Mother Grace.

Love
, she wrote at the bottom, then stared at the word, amazed.

Rose Marie.

M
OTHER GRACE COULD
not sleep. Lying in bed, she felt the pages of the letter she had just received from Rose Marie in her fingers. Dry as shed skin.

That afternoon in her office, she had bent over until she thought her back would break. It took every ounce of her strength to wrench open the bottom drawer of her file cabinet. Pressing one hand against its frame to steady herself, she had reached in and stuffed the letter at the back, her fingers running over the dusty photographs of those two wretched religious she had hidden there twelve years before.

Sister Mary and Father Damien had haunted her for the seven years until Rose Marie’s Visitation had answered her questions and sent them back to the past.

Now, in her dark bedroom, the words of Rose Marie’s letter knocked through her mind.
I hope you can forgive me, Mother Grace. I hope I can forgive you.

She closed her eyes and willed her thoughts away from the weight of those words.
Dieu Tout-Puissant, ayez pitié de moi.

Outside, the wind wailed, a thin, haunting sound.
Come, wind
, she found herself thinking.
Carry me away.

And there it was at her window. As she lay still, she heard it rattle the small panes. The rattling grew louder, more insistent. The storm was picking up. So many storms over the years.
I’ve had enough.

Crash!
Glass shattered and cold air blasted through the tiny bedroom. Despite the bone-chilling gust, she didn’t have the strength to rise and hobble downstairs. She curled herself into as tight a ball as her stiff bones would allow, just as if she were a child.

The wind whirled through the room, trying to find her. Then it was on her bed, swooping at the covers clutched in her fists. It took her temples in its icy fingers and lifted her bed cap.
Mon Dieu!
She felt a frosty breath in her ear, surprisingly gentle. A breeze slid through her mind, blowing her thoughts clean.

The sky was black as ink.
Oui
, black as all the words and numbers she had ever written in letters and ledgers, all the quotations, pleas, revenues, and expenses—the amounts—what she amounted to. But they were fading. Their black-and-white certainty was being swept away.

Up, she rose. She flew.
Immortel!
She was sailing through night to daybreak, flying through the sky from St. Mark’s to somewhere else. Morning sun spilled over the horizon and blanched her old bones. Far below, diamonds glittered in new snow.

The land was different, no longer an expanse of prairie, but well treed. Briefly, she wondered if she had returned to her childhood home, and suddenly she yearned to see her big brothers throwing snowballs, yelling and cantering through the drifts on their strong young legs, the little ones squealing with delight.