Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

Lily picks up the bloody cloth and touches it to her tongue. Mercedes shoots her a sharp look. Lily tastes and says, “I think Frances is in trouble.”

“Oh God,” thinks Mercedes as the dry sobs fight for air, “I will do my best, O Lord, but when will you let me rest?”

Mercedes calls the hospital, then grabs her hat, “Stay here, Lily.”

“When’s Daddy coming home?”

But Mercedes is already out the door.

Mercedes falters at the sight of the Taylor truck parked out front of the hospital. She enters and comes face to face with Mrs Taylor and a man who must be her husband, as well as an unknown woman with her hands folded round a teacup.

“What happened?” Mercedes asks, standing at attention with her back to the grief-green wall. Teresa is lost in a prayer world of her own. Mercedes pegs her as a good woman. The only one un-streaked with blood. My sister’s blood.

“She’s been hurt,” Adelaide answers. “We found her and brought her here. I’d have called you but there’s been no time to think.”

Mercedes turns to Adelaide, whose cotton dress is spattered scarlet with guilt. “You can tell your story to the police,” she says, forcing the tremor from her voice, “Once you’ve thought it through.”

Teresa starts praying audibly. Mercedes closes her eyes and joins in the prayer. She does not allow herself the luxury of tears. Tears won’t keep Frances here. Mercedes’ stomach is spuming, her throat is in spasm. She recedes from the turmoil of her body, to that uncontaminated place just above her brow where prayer is forged. Prayer will keep Frances here.

A young nursing sister from reception appears.

“Your sister is still in surgery, Miss Piper. Would you like a cup of tea?”

When the young nurse returns with three more steaming cups, Mercedes is seated next to Teresa. They are holding hands, praying silently together, eyes closed, heads bowed. Adelaide takes the tray from the nursing sister and thinks to herself, “I could write a book. I really could.”

Lily arrives carrying a carpet-bag. Ginger notices the black tail trailing out from between its wooden handles. He gets up and gives her his chair.

“Thank you, sir.”

Lily places the carpet-bag on the floor beneath her chair. It stirs slightly. Adelaide and Ginger exchange a look. Lily doesn’t ask about their bloodstains. She will know soon enough if she has two sisters, or one. Mercedes has heard Lily’s unmistakeable clanking entrance but she doesn’t open her eyes. She does not wish to leave hold of her unknown partner in prayer. This good strong woman. You can feel the power of her faith.

The thing about an abdominal wound is the blood loss. The head nurse has performed some lovely field surgery on Frances but timing is everything and now it’s touch and go. Nurse comes out to the motley crew waiting in reception and asks Mercedes, “What’s your blood type, dear?”

At the far end of the recovery room, Lily has got an IV tube growing out of her right elbow, feeding a bloated bag that hangs from a metal stand and sprouts a second tube that runs into Frances’s hand. Mercedes is standing straight as a virgin soldier at the foot of the bed staring at her sisters. The white curtains are pulled back from the bed since the room is empty of neighbours.

Frances hasn’t moved, her eyelids haven’t fluttered during her silent meal of blood. Mercedes is trying to think what else to promise God in exchange for Frances’s life when it occurs to her that Lily’s third miracle may be under way. But no, don’t think of it, don’t admit pride, ambition, into the sick room, pray only. Mercedes treads softly the fifty feet to the door and leaves so as not to disrupt Lily’s work.

In reception, Mercedes’ and Teresa’s hands are praying together once more. A young nurse places a hand on Mercedes’ shoulder because she has twice failed to hear her own name. Teresa looks up at the touch.

The nurse says, “Your sister is awake, Miss Piper.”

Mercedes jumps up but the nurse continues, “She’s asking for a woman called Teresa.”

Teresa rises, lets go of Mercedes’ hand and follows the nurse up the stairs. Mercedes watches Teresa ascend the stairs and wonders how it is that Frances knows her.

“Who is she?” Mercedes asks the nurse at the desk.

“She’s my sister,” Ginger answers.

There is a blessing in all this, thinks Mercedes, looking at him. If Frances is pregnant, she is sure to miscarry as a result of the wound. He doesn’t look like a bad man. But the wife looks like a woman who could kill. Came to insult me on the pretext of Christian charity, left my home, hunted my sister down and shot her like a dog. She’ll pay. She’ll hang.

Adelaide looks away.

Mercedes rises. “Sister?”

The young nurse looks up from the desk; “Would you like more tea, Miss Piper?”

“May I use your telephone please?”

“Of course.”

Adelaide and Ginger wait and watch as Mercedes calls the police.

The head nurse tweaks the blood bag, tells Teresa, “Be brief,” and closes the curtains in accordance with Frances’s request. She withdraws to sit within earshot and arm’s length, poring over her racing form.

Teresa is surprised to see a cat curled at the foot of the bed.

“Frances. Teresa is here.”

The crippled girl with the sea-green eyes turns from whispering in Frances’s left ear to stare up at Teresa. Frances opens her eyes but doesn’t turn her head.

“You should go round where she can see you, ma’am,” says Lily.

Teresa crosses to the right side of the bed thinking how much Lily looks like her singer-girl mother.

“Teresa.” Frances’s voice is mostly air.

“Yes?”

Teresa reluctantly crouches down until she’s squatting at the side of the bed — she is not going to kneel, no matter what she has done. She looks into Frances’s close-up eyes. Hazel. Rather, brown with broken bits of green lodged or floating.

“Teresa. Tell me about my mother.”

“… I didn’t know your mother.”

“You came to her funeral.”

“Yes.”

“You must have known her a bit.”

“A little bit.”

“What did you know?”

Teresa takes a breath. “I felt sorry for her, that’s all,” and she is surprised to find sorrow in her throat. For whom? Someone she never even knew.

“You gave me a candy.”

“I did?”

“Peppermint licorice.”

“I don’t remember you.”

“I had blonde hair then.”

Teresa thought the blonde had been the other one, the one she’s just been praying with. “You were too small to remember that.”

“I remember everything.”

Frances closes her eyes for a moment, retaining the picture of Teresa’s magnificent face on the insides of her lids. Teresa waits. She looks for the little girl to whom she gave the candy. Frances opens her eyes again.

“And I remember you came and stood over my bed and touched my head so I wouldn’t be afraid.”

“I didn’t do that.”

“Who did, then?”

And Teresa does a nice little thing of the type she always meant to do but never did. “It was your mother, child.”

Frances closes her eyes till it seems she has fallen back asleep, then she smiles and says, “Thank you, Teresa.”

And falls asleep.

Downstairs, Mercedes paces with a gait slightly less formal than a military slow march. The reassuring footfall of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police interrupts the bagpipe lament in her head.

“Miss Piper?” He’s awfully young, isn’t he? “What seems to be the trouble?”

Mercedes arches one eyebrow slightly, foreshadowing the type of schoolteacher she is destined to become.

“My sister is in critical condition with a bullet wound inflicted by the woman you see sitting there.” She gestures without looking.