“Since you’re so eager to fill your head with garbage,” says Sister Saint Monica, “you may as well have a garbage can on your shoulders.”
Shrieks of laughter.
“That’s enough, girls. Now, Kathleen. Sing for us.”
Kathleen is paralysed. Blinking into the darkness of the metal can, she feels sweat trickling under her arms, between her legs.
“You’re a ‘songstress’, aren’t you?” — whack! — the yardstick against the side of the can.
Kathleen is spared the sight of row after row of girls with their hands clamped over their mouths, plugging their noses against hilarity, crossing their legs — “I said sing!”
Only one song presents itself, perversely, to her mind, and she begins, muffled and echoey: “‘I’ll take you home again, Kathleen … ’” — hysterical laughter, sister gives them free rein — “‘Across the ocean wild and wide —
“Louder.”
“‘To where your heart has ever been — Since first you were my bonny bride’” — a bare thread of a voice is all that’s available to Kathleen, and it breaks.
“Continue.”
“‘The roses all have left your cheek — I’ve watched them fade away and die — Your voice is sad whene’er you speak. And tears bedim your loving eyes…. ’”
Kathleen is finally crying. Helpless, enraged. What’s worse is that she hates this song — old-fashioned, sickly sweet, nothing to do with her but her name: “‘Oh I will take you back, Kathleen, To where your heart will feel no pain — And when the fields are fresh and green, I’ll take you to your home again.’”
The song finished, Kathleen waits in dread to be dismissed — how can she possibly remove this can from her head in front of everyone? She knows she must, eventually. Some day. She has to go to the loo. She feels as though she’s wet her pants with shame. Surely that’s not possible, surely she would know if she had…. Kathleen realizes that she’s been standing there for some time. And that Sister Saint Monica has resumed the lesson.
“… And what occasioned the putting aside of Saint Augustine’s African concubine?”
“Oh, sister, sister, I know —”
“One at a time, girls.”
Kathleen stands motionless until the bell signals lunch and she hears Sister Saint Monica swish out after the last pupil.
Kathleen has no friends. She has her work and she’s grateful for that because friends are simply not to be had at Holy Angels. Not that Kathleen goes out of her way: “Snob.” Seeing her up there, anonymous, with a green metal garbage can for a head, hiding that conceited face — why do people think she’s so pretty, her hair is horrible, it’s red. That’s all it is. Not “auburn,” not “strawberry blonde,” red. Like a demon, like a floozie. Kathleen’s ordeal at the hands of Sister Saint Monica soothes a lot of badly ruffled feathers.
The truth is, Kathleen has no idea how to go about making a friend. She has been trained to live for that glorious place, the Future. Friends are superfluous. This is reinforced by the tacit understanding that she is not to bring anyone home. Something to do with Mumma. She and Daddy would never say it, but they both know it.
Other girls spend nights at each others’ homes, tucked in together talking till dawn. Kathleen overhears them whispering in the lavatory. She never finds out that Daddy would not let her spend a night at a friend’s house, because she is never invited. James is planning to send her all the way to Italy by herself, but that’s different. That’s Life. The other is Nonsense. And who knows what another girl’s father might get into his head? Kathleen is chaperoned every moment but she does not see it that way. Freedom consists of being insulated from the envy and ignorance of the unimportant people who temporarily surround her.
Now, after five years at Holy Angels, Kathleen would not know a friend if one sank its teeth into her wrist — which is more or less what she expects from the mass of other girls. She skirts them cautiously, as if they were dangerous wild animals loitering about a common watering-hole ready to pounce, you’d never know why or what hit you. She fears them, sharp glinting creatures, and hasn’t a clue what they talk about or how they do it. How they merge into gregarious packs. Kathleen is in fact horribly shy, but no one would ever suspect it — after all, she gets up and sings in front of halls full of people.
What seals Kathleen’s fate, however, is the presence of several Mahmoud cousins at Holy Angels. One of them has even been in her class for the past six years. Though Materia hasn’t wanted the girls to know anything at all about the shame of family exile, and has concocted her story about “the Old Country,” James has told Kathleen the truth: Your mother and I were very young. We eloped. It was wrong, but what was worse was the behaviour of the Mahmouds. Barbaric. They are from a part of the world that hasn’t seen a moment’s peace in hundreds of years, little wonder. You have cousins at Holy Angels. Ignore them. Don’t give them the opportunity to snub you. Carry yourself like you own the place.
The Mahmouds are rich and civic-minded. The Mahmoud girls are popular, each of them a gleaming clear-eyed olive in plaid and perfect English. They have been told that Kathleen is the daughter of the Devil, and have duly accorded her a wide berth. To befriend Kathleen is to offend the Mahmoud girls. You can’t have it both ways.
But is there not one potential friend among the horde, one bookish girl, plain as a rainy Tuesday, or so beautiful as to be unafraid? One who does not travel with the pack, who might come forward as a friend for Kathleen? No. Kathleen’s fortress, her tower of creamy white, is steep and terrible. No one comes in or out. Except for her father, Sister Saint Cecilia and a select few minions necessary to support life. Such as her mother. Such as the buggy driver.
The other girls salve their corrosive envy and allay their fear of Kathleen, the antisocial prodigy, with an invigorating dose of racial hatred:
“She may be peaches and cream but you should see her mother … black as the ace of spades, my dear.”
“You know that sort of thing stays in the blood. Evangeline Campbell’s mother’s cousin knows a girl had a baby in Louisburg? Black as coal, my dear, and the both their families white as snow and blond blond.”
“We should’ve never let the coloureds into this country in the first place.”
“My uncle saw a coloured woman driving a cart with a load of coal, the next morning he was dead.”
“They have a smell, they do.”
“Kathleen Piper belongs in The Coke Ovens!”
And they laugh.
Naturally, this remedy is never indulged when the Mahmoud girls are around. That wouldn’t do, they’re nice girls and rich rich. The brothers of Holy Angels have already begun lining up.
No girlfriend has ever made it up to the tower chamber.
Three Sisters
Frances has discovered a new game: exploring the mysteries of the teenager, Kathleen. Unfortunately, she is too young to know how to investigate thoroughly without leaving a trace.
“Come here, you little brat.”
Frances peeks out from behind Mercedes with a guilty twinkle in her eye, her hands folded innocently behind her back, and enters Kathleen’s boudoir.
“If you come in here again I’ll tell Pete to get after you,” says Kathleen, enthroned at her vanity, where she has just discovered the comb where the brush should be and a candy heart gumming up one of her good lace hankies.
“Who’s Pete?” asks Frances.
“He’s the bodechean and he’s going to drag you to hell!”
Frances laughs. Mercedes’s eyes grow round as saucers and she says, “That’s not nice.”
“Not you, sweetie.” Kathleen holds out her arms and Mercedes approaches. Kathleen pops her onto her knee. “He doesn’t get after good little girls. What shall we read?”
“Water Babies.” Mercedes chooses Frances’s favourite out of love for her little sister, who doesn’t mean to be naughty.
Kathleen eyes Frances’s crooked grin. “Come here, you rascal, you can
listen too.”
Frances climbs onto the other knee. The two little girls look at each other and squirm, hands clamped over their mouths, cheeks ballooning with suppressed rapture.
“Quit wriggling or I’ll stick you on a pin and use you for bait in the creek.”
Mercedes composes herself; Frances shrieks with laughter and asks, “Can I play with your hair?”
“What do you say?”
“Please.”
“What else?”
“With a whole bunch of cream and a cherry and fruit and candy.”
“What else?”
“And a sword and a bug and a worm. And a bare bum!”
Mercedes says to herself on behalf of Frances, “Sorry dear God.” Kathleen laughs and Frances giggles passionately, poised to plunge both hands into the red sea, but Kathleen holds out,
“What word am I thinking of?”
“Lantern.”
“Nope.”
“Stick.”
“Nope.”
“Matchbox.”
“No.”
“Teapot.”
“Right.”
“Yay!”
“Don’t pull it or I’ll skin you. ‘Once upon a time there was a little chimney sweep….
Kathleen has taken to spending time with her little sisters. At first she does this for Daddy’s sake, because she knows that otherwise they get nothing but their mother’s barbaric yammer during the day while she’s at school — she can smell it hanging in the air when she gets home. But as the school-days and the war drag along and Kathleen becomes lonelier, she grows to cherish the time with her little sisters every bit as much as they do. Sunday mornings, she allows them to sit on two stools at the threshold of her room — “If I’m in the mood” — and witness her toilette. They sit as still as they can, enthralled, while Kathleen sings the world’s greatest songs in her opera voice, and slips on a white cotton blouse over her lace-embroidered petticoat. She turns the cuffs, fashions a Windsor knot in her striped silk tie, and pulls on her tan linen skirt, flared at the ankle — “My bicycling costume,” she calls it, although she does not possess a bicycle. Evenings after school, she stands with her arms akimbo at the door to the forbidden chamber, and groans, “Oh all right, you can come in. But not a peep! I’m studying.”
The little girls always cross the threshold with a sense of awe, for Kathleen’s room is a temple of sophistication. Its shelves are lined with every girls’ book you could ever think of, from Little Women to Anne of Green Gables. Its walls are plastered with pictures of great artists and beautiful underthings cut from magazines.
There is a picture of a man with wild hair and a flying necktie, pouncing upon the keys of a piano. This is Liszt. Kathleen is in love with Liszt. Kathleen says even his name sounds like a romantic sigh. Mercedes and Frances breathe the name to each other as a kind of all-purpose adjective for everything divine: Jell-O, fresh bed linen, Mumma’s molasses cookies, all are wonderfully “Liszt!”
There is a picture of a beautiful dark woman in a wide hat and an old-fashioned dress cut low, with a rose in her lap. This is Maria Malibran. “La Malibran,” Kathleen says dramatically, “the greatest singer who ever lived.” Kathleen has told Frances and Mercedes the tragic story of how Malibran went out riding on the wildest horse in the stable. She fell, caught her foot in the stirrup and was dragged over stones for a mile. She got up, powdered her cuts and bruises and sang that very night — beautifully, as usual. Then she died of a swollen brain and “she was only twenty-eight.” Mercedes always says a little prayer to herself for Malibran, while Frances tries to put the pretty lady in the picture together with the idea of her being dragged with her head bonking along. It’s terrible.
There is a big poster of “the woman of a thousand faces” — although in the poster she has only one. Her name is Eleonora Duse. She has burning dark eyes and piles of black hair. Daddy sent it to Kathleen from England before he went to the Front. Duse is “the greatest actress who ever lived.” In the poster, she stands inside the front hall of a nice house. She is wearing an overcoat and her hand is reaching for the doorknob. The poster is for a scandalous play called A Doll’s House. Daddy sent it with a letter, “to remind me not to get married and wreck my career,” Kathleen has explained. Mercedes can’t understand why Kathleen would not want to get married and have babies like Mumma, but Kathleen just snorts, “Marriage is a trap, kiddo. A great big lobster trap.”
Every evening when Kathleen opens her door and grudgingly admits them, Mercedes and Frances wait in obedient silence for five endless minutes, after which Kathleen proclaims her homework finished. Then there are just too many treats to choose from.
Often all three of them wind up lying on their stomachs on Kathleen’s bed, chin in hand, going through a priceless issue of Harper’s Bazaar, picking out fashions and accessories “for those in the know”.
“That’s me,” says Mercedes, and Kathleen reads the description. “‘A saucy confection of pale mauve crêpe de Chine touched up with rosettes of pussy-willow silk.’”
“Chic,” says Mercedes wisely.
“Très chic,” says Kathleen.
“I’m that one.” Frances points and Kathleen obliges. “‘She lost her head over this good-looking and comfortable pair of corsets from La Resista. The lacy brassière has the unmistakeable Paris hallmark.’”
Frances giggles and echoes, “Brassière!”
Even though there’s a war on, there’s still plenty of fashion pouring out of Paris — although according to the magazine the designers only keep it up for the sake of their poor seamstresses, who would otherwise be out of a job.
Kathleen teaches her sisters to mimic the effects of rouge by pinching their cheeks, and of lipstick by mercilessly biting their lips. “‘Beauty is a powerful weapon,’” she reads, at once sarcastic and enthralled. “‘To Fashion’s Throne must the free untrammelled girl be brought for sacrifice.’”
The sisters invariably dine at Sherry’s on Fifth Avenue, where Kathleen greets them in a French accent, “Good evening, mesdemoiselles, what would you like? We have Caviar on Toast, Vol au Vent of Sweetbreads, Brandied Peach Tarts and Green Turtle Soup. Or would you prefer Jellied Tongue?”
It’s not all frivolity, however. Kathleen is religious about reading Lady Randolph Churchill’s series on the war, By the Simmering Samovar. The sisters all hold their breath when they come upon a picture of a French casino that’s been converted to a hospital. No … Daddy is not there.
And Kathleen always reads aloud the latest instalment of a racy story while the little girls listen, mystified, and gaze at the illustrations over her shoulder: “‘Go! You are nothing but a brute!’”
Kathleen eagerly awaits every issue of Harper’s Bazaar that Mrs Foss of the Orpheus Society passes on to her, and she savours them with a combination of delight and disgust. For example, there is one picture that Kathleen has cut out for her wall just in order to remind herself that philistines are not confined to her own hometown — they can even be found amid high society: the photograph is supposedly of the great Geraldine Farrar singing Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera House of New York. Yet in the foreground sits a boxful of Astors admiring each others’ jewellery. It had never before crossed Kathleen’s mind that people might go to the Opera out of anything but a passion for opera. “Let that be a lesson,” she thinks, vowing, “When I sing, no one will be allowed to look anywhere but at the stage!”
There always comes a point when Kathleen flings the Harper’s Bazaar across the room and declares herself “fed up with frippery and foppery and the silly chits who fill their heads with all that rot!”
“Rubbish!” Mercedes agrees.
“Foolish burn bottoms!” seconds Frances.
“Frances!”
Mercedes is always shocked and Kathleen always laughs.
Then they return hungrily to fairy-tales and The Bobbsey Twins.
Women of Canada Say, “Go!”
I used to walk the s
idewalks in Nova Scotia town,
There was a man came down, his face was bronzed and brown,
He told us how King George was calling each to do his share,
He offered us a khaki coat to wear.
He told us how the call had gone far over land and sea,
And when I heard that speaker’s word,
I said, “Why, that means me.”
MARCHING SONG OF THE 85TH OVERSEAS BATTALION, CANADIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
His notes arrive quite regularly, on standard military postcards.
Dear Missus,
All is well. Do not worry. Love to the girls.
James.
Nothing is ever blacked out — James never writes enough to give anything away. Materia’s heart leaps at the mail because His Majesty’s gratitude and regret come on a card of the same size. She tears open the envelope, looking for the black border, but it’s never there.
In spring of ’16, Mrs Luvovitz shows up at Materia’s kitchen door with little Ralph in tow. The tables are turned, Mrs Luvovitz is crying. Here, here, come in, sit down, cuppa tea. She slumps over the kitchen table, Materia shoos Ralph away — he hovers in the door with Mercedes and Frances, who wonder what’s wrong with Mrs Luv. Mrs Luvovitz reaches out without looking up and clasps Materia’s hand. Her boys are going, Abe and Rudy. They thought she’d be proud, they’re real Canadians.
“Don’t worry, they gonna be back soon,” says Materia.
For all the papers say there’s bound to be a breakthrough any day; the stalemate can’t last for ever.
Mrs Luvovitz blows her nose, scrapes her face with her hanky. “I know, I know, you don’t understand, we have” — and crumples once more — “we have family there,” her voice creaking upward. “My mother is there —”
“Your people in Poland, they got no fighting in Poland.”
“Benny’s are in Poland, my people are German.”
Materia hugs her while she cries just like a child. Her boys will be fighting their own flesh and blood. The Luvovitzes are real Canadians, and the Feingolds are real Germans.