Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

“So what are you saying, ‘You haven’t got a family’? You’ve got a family, they’re your family.”

Materia shook her head. “I don’t belong to them any more.”

“Why not?”

“I’m dead.”

“You’re dead? You’re not dead, what kind of crazy nonsense is that, ‘I’m dead’?”

“It’s a custom —”

“I know from the custom.”

Sitting shiva for your own flesh and blood while they’re alive and well, such a custom is better left in the Old Country. “Drink your tea, Mrs Piper.”

“You can call me —”

“And eat. You’re eating for two, eat.”

Mrs Luvovitz taught Mrs Piper to cook.

“What’s this?” asked James.

“Chicken soup with matzo balls.”

He looked at the bland sponge floating in broth. Broke off a fragment with his spoon, ate it. After all, not so different from a tea bisquit dunked in soup. “This some kind of Ayrab delicacy?”

“Jewish.”

They weren’t the first people he would have picked as friends for his wife but, after all, it wasn’t as though they were sacrificing babies over there. And she had finally started acting like a wife, even if the results were on the heathen side. James figured it was just as well the neighbours were foreign; it wouldn’t occur to them that there was anything strange about his being married to such a young girl. And what did he care what a Hebrew farmer thought of him? — although Mr Luvovitz seemed like an all-right type. James had gone over there to make sure.

“Call me Benny.”

“Benny.”

“Taste this.”

“What is it?” Looked like a plug of MacDonald’s Twist.

“Taste it.”

“… hm.”

“You like that?”

“Not bad. It’s good.”

“I smoked that myself — you want, I’ll sell you a whole cow for the winter, fresh off the hoof, pick one, they’re all good.”

Nothing really strange about the Jew except the accent, his black beard and curly sideburns and his little cap. James bought half a cow.

“I don’t want it kosher,” said James.

“What do you mean, it’s kosher, I butcher it, it’s kosher.”

“I don’t want you to do anything funny to it.”

“Don’t worry, you see that cow?”

“Yuh.”

“That’s the one I’m saving for you. That’s a Presbyterian cow.”

“I’m Catholic.”

Benny laughed. James smiled. Compared to Materia’s family, the Luvovitzes seemed downright white.

At the eleventh hour, in her ninth month, Materia began looking forward to her baby. That’s because she’d grown to love Abe Luvovitz, who was two, and Rudy, who was six months. She wanted a son of course. Her father would be hard pressed to disown a first grandson even if it came to him through a daughter. That was what she told herself. And then she could see her mother again, and her sisters — she’d be a good woman after all. She began to pray to Our Lady, please, Dear Mary, let it be a boy.

James named the baby Kathleen, after his late mother. Kathleen wasn’t the first baby of the new century, but she was near enough so that James had to pelt all the way to Sydney on the old nag and drag the doctor from the dregs of a New Year’s party. They arrived back at Low Point in time for the doctor to tell Mrs Luvovitz she’d done a pretty good job. Mrs Luvovitz thought, “You should only pass a turnip through the end of that which you have between the pants over there, then we’ll see who’s done a pretty good job.” But she took care to think it in Yiddish.

Mrs Luvovitz told Materia how blessed she was. “I love my boys, Mrs Piper, but a woman wants a daughter.”

Materia didn’t say anything.

James said, “I love you, Materia.”

She said, “Baddi moot.”

He patted her head and gazed at the baby. “Kathleen,” he said. Then, “Look, she knows her name!”

He had her baptized by a Presbyterian minister.

“We gotta get a priest,” said Materia.

“It’s the same God,” said James. It was bad enough he’d had to go through the motions of conversion, he needn’t subject his daughter to any Roman hocus-pocus.

Mrs Luvovitz looked after Materia and the new baby for the first two weeks. Benny said, “You’re interfering.”

“I’m not interfering, she has no mother.”

“You’re not her mother.”

“She needs a mother.”

“She needs time with her baby, how’s she going to learn?”

James felt invincible. He charted the highest sales for two weeks running. He walked into the boss’s office uninvited and demanded a raise.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that just yet, Piper.”

“I have a child now, sir.”

“So have the other men.”

“I’m worth three of those other fellas.”

“You’ve had a good couple weeks — keep it up, you’ll be employee of the month.”

James turned on his heel and it felt that good to walk out on the old man — let him try to replace me, he can’t do it, it can’t be done.

James rode home high on his rickety horse, he was going to give that girl everything. She was going to grow up a lady. She’d have accomplishments. Everyone would see. He felt like a king. A sudden drop and he was standing on the Shore Road, the horse dead between his feet. No matter. As good as a sack of money lying there in the slush, worth its weight in glue.

He walked the rest of the way and formulated a plan. Pianos only need tuning once in a while, but they need playing much more often. And who plays piano? Country folk who learn by ear, thumping to fiddles and spoons for simple enjoyment. And the children of townspeople who want their kids to have accomplishments. The likes of those uppity losers he’d worked with at McCurdy’s, not to mention the really well-to-do: MR JAMES H. PIPER ESQUIRE offers tuition in the home to young ladies and gentlemen, in the theory and practice of the Piano Forte .

He wouldn’t bother quitting the job at the Sydney Post . He just wouldn’t show.

James arrived home in the middle of that day to find Mrs Luvovitz in the kitchen feeding his baby with a dropper.

“Where’s my wife?”

“She’s sleeping.”

He took the stairs two at a time and dragged her up by an arm. Herded her down to the kitchen, whinging and whining every step of the way.

“Thank you, missus, my wife’ll take over now.”

Mrs Luvovitz got up, thinking thoughts not in English, and left the house.

James plunked his wife onto the chair and put the screeching baby into her arms. “Now feed her.”

But the mother just blubbered and babbled.

“Speak English, for Christ’s sake.”

“Ma bi’der. Biwajeaal.”

He slapped her. “If she doesn’t eat, you don’t eat. Understood?”

Materia nodded. He unbuttoned her blouse.

James allowed Mrs Luvovitz over that evening when Materia hadn’t produced a drop and the baby was fit to be tied. The women went upstairs. The howling the mother put up, as Mrs Luvovitz did the necessary. Downstairs in the front room, James unlocked the piano and played the opening bars of various pieces from memory in an effort to drown the sound. He’d have to invest in some sheet music and exercise books. His daughter would play.

In a few days the pump was primed and the baby was sucking. But the mother cried through every feeding. One evening in the fourth week of Kathleen’s life, James snatched his child from the breast in horror.

“You’ve hurt her, Jesus Christ, you’ve cut her lip!” — for the baby’s smile was bright with blood.

Materia just sat there, mute as usual, her dress open, her nipples cracked and bleeding, oozing milk.