Fall on Your Knees (51 page)

“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 thunder-head 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 pedalled 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 behaviour, 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 travelling 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 colours 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 blonde child at her feet, she was married to — it’s Materia Piper’s dress. A strip of goose-flesh 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 parallelled 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.