Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

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 leapt 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, athough 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, athough 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 enquired 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.