Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

“Watch out now!” Afraid he’d injure her.

“It’s all right, Daddy, put your hand on my shoulder.”

He resisted, preferring to teeter towards the wall, but she caught him round the middle and held him fast, guiding him to the living-room, trusting her strong right leg.

He found himself laid out for the second time in two days. Lily lifted his legs onto the couch and turned on the reading lamp. She saw at once the blow to him and her tears welled. She sat by his side and placed her cool hand on his injured face. He closed his eyes, too exhausted not to allow himself the relief of tears. They formed between his long blond lashes and rolled through the new hollows of his face.

“I love you, Daddy.”

Mercedes arrived in the archway of the front room with the tea tray and stopped in the pool of light cast by the reading lamp. She fell through a crack in time without spilling a drop. When she returned, the tea was still piping hot and Lily was exhaling the same warm breath across James’s chest where her head lay sleeping. James was stretched out on his back, asleep or comatose, and Lily had laid herself like a cool leaf alongside him, her right hand closed beneath his chin like a night-time flower.

James slept for most of the following week. When awake, he would eat a little of whatever Lily brought him, then listen while she read aloud. Fairy-tales and Freud, until he was well enough to realize that he had lost interest in his old favourites and preferred to have her read the Halifax Chronicle cover to cover. Things were getting interesting in Europe again.

By the time Frances got home from hospital, James was sitting up and whittling himself a cane.

Lily and Mercedes had their hands full with two convalescents but they thrived on it. And the patients themselves were angels — uncomplaining, appreciative, recovering. Mercedes could not remember a happier time, for even when Mumma was alive there had been a cloud, a constant threat of turbulence. But now all is calm. All is bright.

The only distressing thing about these halcyon days was James’s tendency to talk about Materia. It’s normal to speak affectionately of the dead. But because it had been delayed for fourteen years, Mercedes experienced it as something of a painful intrusion. She was grateful that he hadn’t yet mentioned Kathleen.

James carved the top of his cane into a dog’s head and went for a slow walk with Lily. He started a new project out in his work-shed. He picked up his shoemaker’s tools again for the first time in many years. The work goes slowly, he’s having to retrain himself around his bad left hand. And he won’t say what he’s making. The shed is off limits to everyone but Trixie. It’s to be a surprise.

All this and heaven too — until the day that Frances rises in the tub and Mercedes can no longer deny that her sister is still pregnant.

“The sisters will be ready when the time comes, Mercedes.”

“Thank you, Sister Saint Monica.”

Mercedes has conferred with Sister Saint Monica in the geography classroom at Holy Angels, beneath the colour print that still has pride of place over the blackboard. Saint Monica: patron of mothers. Scourge of African concubines.

“Have you discussed it with Frances?”

“Not yet, sister. I’m concerned she may refuse to part with the child.”

“In that case, it’s probably best not to discuss it with her.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“There are other ways.”

“Kinder ways.”

“Quite right.”

Wheels have been set in motion. Five months from now, Frances will lie in at the convent infirmary at Mabou. Then the infant will be relayed to an appropriate orphanage.

“That’s a lovely print, sister.”

“Thank you, Mercedes.”

It’s time Mercedes had a talk with Lily. Lily is thirteen. Mercedes had been going to delay the talk until the onset of menstruation but it looks as though Lily is going to be late starting — perhaps it’s another sign. Perhaps she’ll never bleed at all. That certainly would be an indication of God’s favour. In any case, what with Frances’s condition soon to be all too apparent, it’s high time.

“Lily. Do you know where babies come from?”

“They come from God.”

They’re in the kitchen making tea biscuits, arms powdered white to the elbows like ladies’ opera gloves.

Mercedes reddens. “That’s right. But God works through our flesh to create new life.” That’s rather good. Mercedes relaxes. This may not be so bad after all.

“I know that, Mercedes,” says Lily, looking decently down at the dough beneath her fists.

“How do you know?” snaps Mercedes.

“Frances told me.”

This is going to be difficult after all.

“What did she tell you, Lily?”

Lily blushes a little, very prettily too, and continues to knead the dough.

“Well?” Mercedes is waiting.

“It’s a private thing, isn’t it?” says Lily, and she glances sideways, biting her lip.

“Yes. It’s very private. It’s between two people and God.”

Lily says nothing.

“Lily, I’m not — I don’t — I’m not trying to make you feel ashamed or embarrassed, I just want to prepare you for certain … wonderful — things that will occur as you mature.” Lily’s hands have kept working but Mercedes has stopped and gone to the pump to hide her embarrassment.

Lily answers with natural delicacy, “It’s all right, Mercedes. I got my period for the first time last March and Frances told me what to do.”

So. What else is it not given me to know around here, wonders Mercedes, pumping vigorously. Lily steals a look at her older sister. Suddenly she is aware of having hurt Mercedes’ feelings. It hadn’t occurred to her that Mercedes might feel left out of such a thing. It had only occurred to her that Mercedes might prefer to be left out. Lily would apologize but feels that would only intensify her sister’s humiliation.

“Mercedes, is Frances really going to have a baby?”

“So she’s told you.”

“Yes, but I wasn’t certain it was true.”

“It’s true.” Mercedes rinses away all traces of flour and dough, then reaches for a cake of lye and asks, “Did Frances tell you how she came to be with child?”

“Yes.”

Lily is quite flushed by now, not with guilty knowledge but with the delicate mortification of one whom it pains to trespass on the privacy of another.

Mercedes scrapes a bristle brush over the moistened lye and scrubs her way from fingernails to elbows.

“Well? What did she tell you, Lily?”

Lily works the dough reverently, shaping it with care.

“She told me that she became pregnant after the night she passed with Mr Taylor in the mine —”

Mercedes’ hands are sterile.

Lily continues with dignity, “But that she miscarried as a result of the shooting.”

Mercedes turns off the pump with her wrist and holds her hands up, allowing them to drip-dry towards the elbows. She asks, “Then how does Frances explain her present condition?”

Lily answers, “The bullet.” And goes on moulding the dough.

Mercedes contaminates her hands with a clean tea towel, drying, drying, drying them. “She told you that in order to avoid telling you the truth, Lily.”

“No. She believes it.”

Mercedes pauses. Folds the towel. “Well that’s not how women get pregnant.”

“I know, Mercedes.”

Mercedes has lost patience. “Well will you tell me then what in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross it is you altogether do know of the factual acts of life!”

Facts, Lily thinks but doesn’t say. Instead, she removes her apron and leaves the kitchen saying, “Excuse me.”