Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

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 sleep-walking? 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 any more, okay? I won’t swear, I won’t make my fuckin maniac father mad any more, 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 shrivelled 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… .