Fall on Your Knees (68 page)

“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.”

“Hm.”

“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 harbour.”

“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 for ever. 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 centre 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 sea-going 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. Centre orchestra. I sang
Quando m’envo
from
Bohème
. 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 distil 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

T
HE
F
AMILY
T
REE

“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 ½ 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 “A2Z 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 Out”. The survivors seem to be clinging to each other for warmth, hoping to avoid the next sweep of the scythe through a neighbourhood 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 wang-dangs 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 enquiring round 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 towards 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.”