Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

“Of course.”

It’s the least Sister Saint Monica can do. There is much to discuss. At what point Frances ought to leave New Waterford, the place of her lying-in…. “I’ll arrange for the convent at Mabou. They have an excellent infirmary.”

The knowledge that it is to be a coloured child is most useful in determining its future. First of all, there is now no question of keeping it. Illegitimacy is a terrible but invisible blot, whereas miscegenation cannot be concealed. Neither mother nor child deserves to live thus doubly stained. Such is the charitable view. Therefore, the second issue becomes the selection of an appropriate orphanage, bearing in mind that adoption is unlikely under the circumstances, for how many good Catholic white families would be willing to take a coloured child? Particularly if it turns out to be a male child. As to good Catholic coloured families, there are few, that community being predominantly Anglican on the island and Baptist on the mainland. And perhaps it’s as well, thinks Mercedes, for doesn’t that branch of the human family commonly have difficulty raising its own children, never mind those of other people?

“Thank you, sister.”

Sister Saint Monica glides down the street in black and white, past Adelaide on her bike. Adelaide can’t for the life of her imagine how anyone could take a vow of chastity, then she flashes on Teresa and has no trouble picturing her as a nun. She lifts the lid on her wicker basket to check her cargo as she dismounts in front of the Piper house.

Back at Teresa and Hector’s, the rifle is gone from on top of the kitchen cupboard. Hector is beside himself, making squeaks that generate a little drool down his chin, all his language in his eyes. Somewhere inside his head he’s still all there, but moved into a cramped rear apartment overlooking the old brain. Teresa tries to reassure him. “Hector honey, now settle down, everything’s going to be all right.”

“Mercedes,” calls Lily from the front-room window, “there’s a lady coming up the walk.”

“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.