Fall on Your Knees

  “And who will stand as godmother?” enquires the priest.

  James opens the door to where Mercedes is waiting. He has her stay on the threshold, well back from the seething crib. Mercedes’ hair is freshly though unevenly braided, she’s not yet used to doing it herself. A blue gingham pinafore, stockings of red because blue and red match.

  The priest doesn’t flinch. In the eyes of the Church a child can stand as sponsor in an emergency, and besides, it is fairly clear this baby will soon be with God.

  Godparents must promise that, should anything happen to the child’s parents, they will bring the child up in the Roman Catholic faith. This is usually a hypothetical vow, but not for Mercedes because Mumma is already dead. “I’m the mother now,” she tells herself. “And I’ve had my confirmation so I’m ready.” Last May Mercedes put on an immaculate white dress and veil and, along with the rest of her shiny clean classmates, was ritually slapped by the bishop. Three of her classmates have since died. Dottie Duggan died, she sat next to Mercedes. Dottie had the disgusting habits of eating glue and picking her nose, but now she is one of God’s angels. Mercedes chose Saint Catherine of Siena as her saint’s name even though she badly wanted Bernadette, but Bernadette isn’t a saint yet, when oh when? Frances told Mercedes to take Veronica as her saint’s name because of Veronica’s magic hanky. “Not magic, Frances. Miracle.”

  The priest leans over the crib where the infant lies on its little bed of coals and he asks it, “Quo nomine vocaris?”

  In the doorway, Mercedes and James answer together on behalf of the baby, “Lily.”

  James hasn’t thought of a middle name. There hasn’t been time. He just prays that she’ll grow up to use this one.

  The priest continues, “Lily, quid petis ab Ecclesia Dei?”

  Mercedes and James reply, “Faith.” They have a special dispensation to reply in English because Mercedes is too young to have learned all that Latin — though she would have tried had there been time.

  Mercedes is longing for a look at her new baby sister. She watches as the priest bends down and blows softly three times into the crib. He is blowing away the unclean spirit to make room for the Holy Spirit. The Consoler.

  “Exorcizo te, immunde spiritus … maledicte diabole.”

  The priest spends a long time blessing Lily and praying over her. Mercedes and James say the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. And then the priest resumes his questions. “Lily, abrenuntias satanae?”

  “I do renounce him.”

  “Et omnibus operibus eius?”

  “I do renounce them.”

  The priest anoints Lily’s head with oil as the godparents attest to her faith in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Finally, he sprinkles holy water onto the burning forehead. It beads into the oil and simmers there as he baptizes her, “in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

  When the priest turns to Mercedes, she trembles with the gravity of the moment and hands James the precious white satin bundle she has been holding neatly folded in her arms. It is the family baptismal gown. James takes the gown over to the priest. Lily is too sick to wear it, so the priest merely lays it over her and tells her to accept this white garment, and never to allow it to become stained.

  Thus, along with her father, and at the age of almost seven, Mercedes assumes responsibility for the soul of Lily Piper.

  Now it’s the doctor’s turn. He peers into the crib, shakes his head, gives James the it’s-in-God’s-hands-now look, pats Mercedes on the shoulder and leaves with the priest.

  Babes in the Wood

  “Frances,” said Mercedes, handing her a mug of cocoa, “Mumma’s gone away.”

  “Where?”

  “To God.”

  The graveyard was scary even though it was a sunny day with a breeze off the water. They watched Mumma’s coffin go into the ground. They each threw down some dirt. It made them feel a bit funny doing that — it didn’t seem like a very nice thing to do. Kathleen’s grave was right next to Mumma’s. Kathleen is down there, thought Mercedes and Frances — although Mercedes tried to remind herself that Kathleen was not down there, she was with God. Frances was very worried about Kathleen — it’s dark down there. How can she breathe? Is she scared of the other dead people? Most of them are skeletons by now. Are there worms?

  Afterwards they went home and Daddy took a steak-and-kidney pie out of the ice-box and heated it in the oven. How could it be that Mumma’s cooking was on the table when Mumma was in the ground? James ate, but the little girls couldn’t touch a bite. They tried to stop breathing until they were allowed to leave the table. Frances tried not to picture Mumma cutting raw kidneys with the scissors. The snip-snap sound.

  That night of Mumma’s funeral they couldn’t sleep. They crept out of bed and knelt outside the door to Kathleen’s old bedroom, where their new baby sister lay. How many Lilys can there be in one family, Mercedes asked herself. Frances was worried; babies called Lily lay perfectly still, then were taken away. Daddy called her Lily because of something I did, thought Frances. It’s to remind me. Of something. They prayed.

  “Angel of God, my guardian dear, please save our baby sister, amen.”

  They sang to her:

  “‘Oh playmate! Come out and play with me. And bring your dollies three, climb up my apple tree. Shout down my rain barrel, slide down my cellar door, and we’ll be jolly friends for ever more…. ’”

  And they told her all the nice things they would do together when she got well.

  “We’ll have candy for breakfast,” promised Frances.

  “We’ll join the choir,” Mercedes pledged.

  “We’ll put on a beautiful ballgown.”

  “We’ll cook lovely things for Daddy.”

  “We promise, Lily.”

  “We swear.”

  “On our graves.”

  “On our bones.”

  “On our kidneys.” Which made them burst out laughing and Daddy called upstairs for them to go straight to bed, which made them both start whisper-singing at the very same time, “‘The doctor sighed and he shook his head, and he said, Miss Polly put her straight to bed! ’”

  Mercedes tucked Frances in with her favourite doll, a beautiful flamenco dancer in a red dress. Frances made the doll dance quietly for a while. She made her go home and make molasses cookies for her children. “Now be good,” said the dancer to her children, “I am going to study. And afterwards, if I’m not too tired, maybe we will go to the Old Country. Inshallah.” After a while Frances said, “Mercedes?”

  “What?”

  “What if Daddy dies?”

  “Daddy’s not going to die, Frances.”

  “We would be orphans.”

  “Daddy’s not going to die.”

  But Frances was crying, her twinkly face all crumpled, her tears hot like hot water from the kettle.

  “Frances, I wouldn’t let you be an orphan.”

  “I don’t want Daddy to die,” Frances sobbed, inconsolable because of poor Daddy, his two little girls lost in the woods with leaves for a blanket and no food. She cried because of the kind birds and the sad squirrels and poor Daddy can’t save his dear children. It was the warmest she’d been in days.

  “Frances, I wouldn’t let you be an orphan.”

  Frances was crying so hard now that Mercedes got worried.

  “I want my Mumma to come ba-a-a-a-ack.”

  Mercedes stroked Frances’s fuzzy braids and whispered tenderly, “It’s all right, baby, Mumma’s here.”

  Frances stopped crying.

  “I’m your mumma now,” said Mercedes.

  Frances lay still for a while, then she said, “No you’re not.”

  “Yes I am, sweetheart.”

  Frances curled up into a tight ball.

  “Mumma’s here,” Mercedes cooed, “Mumma’s here.”

  Frances hugged her knees til
l her bones met one another. She turned her limbs into strong little tree branches. She made her spine into a springy switch and her skin into new bark. Not crying.

  Frances never cried for Mumma after that night.

  “It’s a good thing Mumma’s gone,” Frances would say to herself, going over and over in her mind all the terrible things she couldn’t quite recall — weaving the threads together into an ingenious cloak of motley. “Because if Mumma were here, she would know what a bad girl I’ve been.”

  Lily Who Lived

  The morning after Materia’s funeral dawns joyfully. James says to Mercedes, “Come and see your godchild.” Frances follows. They walk into the sick-room, now stripped of everything but the glorious sunlight pouring through the open window, bathing the crib in a dazzle of dust sprites. Frances and Mercedes approach and look through the bars. Daddy beams. The little girls expect to see a plump and peachy version of their doll babies, but lying there is a thin-cheeked thing under a mass of black hair that looks like a fright wig. Dark eyes full of intense and watchful concern — they seem to have seen plenty already.

  “What’s wrong with her?” asks Frances.

  “Nothing, she’s perfect,” says James.

  She looks like a golliwog, thinks Mercedes, and Frances says, “There is so something wrong with her.”

  For which she gets a clip on the ear.

  Mercedes says, “She’s beautiful,” and makes a mental note to confess the lie.

  James picks the baby up. “She’s a prize-fighter.”

  Frances follows Daddy and the baby and Mercedes downstairs. They’re going to feed her now. Coming from the kitchen is sweet tinkly music. They enter to see a six-inch porcelain girl revolving on the table. She wears kid button-boots and a lime-green silk dress over several petticoats, and holds a yellow and white parasol over her golden ringlets. On the base is an inscription, An Old-Fashioned Girl. It’s for Mercedes, “For being such a good grown-up girl.”

  “Oh Daddy, thank you.”

  Frances is pleased, happy that there is happiness in the house.

  “It can be both of ours, Frances.”

  “No, it’s your special thing, Mercedes.”

  Mercedes lets Frances wind it up, “Careful, not too tight.”

  Frances treats it reverently, but can’t suppress a craving to know what makes the music.

  The baby lies limp but alert in Mercedes’ arms while James feeds her milk from a dropper. He says, “She’s going to be fine. It’s a miracle.”

  I am holding a miracle, thinks Mercedes.

  “There is so something wrong with her,” says Frances under her breath.

  I’ll take you home again, Kathleen…

  Making love with the New Yorker is an experience which announces to Kathleen that the present tense has finally begun. It’s summer now. For Kathleen the Present is a new country, unassailable by the old countries because the Goths and Vandals of the old countries don’t even know the Present exists. But it is assailable. It will be breached. Kathleen is too young to know that. Right now, in summer, she is making love. She is just being born.

  My love

  I love you

  Oh

  Sweet honey

  I love you

  Sweet, oh

  Oh

  It’s a first-love conversation. Mouths can’t kiss each other enough or find enough of the beloved to be kissed enough. The invisible ocean holds the room and the bed and the lovers suspended and treats them like aquatic plants, arms can never stop moving, fronds in the liquid breeze, hands never stop waving slowly side to side, caressing the loved one, hello … fingers never stop fanning, tendrils in a ceaseless bouquet, all parts sway and sway sometimes violently sometimes almost not at all. A small grazing gesture ignites the need for closer, and breaks the surface of the water, never in you enough, gulping air, never contain you enough, on dry land now, never hold you enough, the desert heat, drink you, oasis lover shimmering under a palm, I will burn to ashes here then blow away — until that merciful peak is discovered, and once that is discovered, the slow tumble back down the hill, buckets of water spilling in slow motion, streaking the sand along their way until again the gentle sway, the ocean floor, the grazing touch that reignites the sea.

  I want you

  want you to

  want you too

  want to

  oh you

  so, so

  sweet

  Oh

  Oh

  like honey

  I love you

  taste like honey

  my love

  That fall James got a letter. He went down there and brought Kathleen home the day the war ended.

  across the ocean wide and wild….

  Book 3

  THE SHOEMAKER AND HIS ELVES

  Bootleg

  1925. April Fool’s Day — although Frances never needs an excuse. She and Lily are playing in the attic surrounded by a rabble of dolls. The room is otherwise empty except for the hope chest. Lily is going on six. Frances is eleven. She is Lily’s self-appointed babysitter, playmate and tormentor. Lily wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Lily no longer resembles the strange baby she was. The only trace is in the particular attentiveness of her lovely green eyes, as though always prepared to take in a solemn truth. This is a quality that Frances especially enjoys. Lily’s black hair has acquired an auburn sheen and, although nowadays a lot of little girls and boys have Buster Brown haircuts, Lily’s hair falls down past her waist when loose. Her skin is peaches and cream and honey, she looks to have been kissed by the sun even in winter. She has lips like Rose Red, and an adorable little bump that appears in her forehead when she is perturbed. Frances has told her it is a horn that will soon grow out through the skin.

  Today Lily is dolled up in a frilly knee-length dress of light green taffeta with a crinoline — no special occasion, just because she is our darling sweet Lily and Daddy likes to see her prettily turned out. Most girls, both little and big, have long since renounced crinolines and petticoats — women no longer need all that nonsense tripping them up, they’ve had far too much to do since the war. But Lily doesn’t have to do anything but be happy.

  Today, as usual, she wears a gleaming crown of french braids scraped so tight by Mercedes that the corners of her eyes are slightly stretched. Mercedes is in charge of Lily’s hair, but Lily doesn’t like anyone but Frances to dress her or give her a bath. That’s just the way it is. Even though Lily never knows when Frances will do or say something alarming — “Honest, Lily, you were adopted. We just found you in the garbage one day. You had potato peelings stuck all over you.”

  Frances is a wiry girl. And white as a sheet, usually. Except for the freckle on her Roman nose. And except for when she is laughing, or thinking up something really good. Then the bits of green glass in her hazel eyes light up, her nose goes pink and a little white stripe appears across its bridge. Lily watches Frances’s nose as a sailor might watch for a lighthouse beam. When the stripe appears, it means Frances is about to go overboard.

  And what has become of Frances’s beautiful dark blonde curls? They have given way to an invasion of wild undergrowth. “Naturally curly” is a euphemism. In brilliant sunlight it is possible to catch a hint of the blonde halo she used to wear. Otherwise it has been obliterated by a riot of rust and brassy browns. Frances wears her hair in braids too, just like Lily and Mercedes, although hers writhe with escape-artist locks that by the end of the day bounce free. She cuts her own bangs.

  Mercedes doesn’t much care for dolls any more, but Lily is passionate about them and so is Frances. She still has all her dolls from when she was little. When the dolls are not sleeping on the bed, they live in the attic. At the moment, they are all nicely lined up against the hope chest: there is Maurice, the organ-grinder’s monkey; there is Scarlet Fever, the girl baby with the porcelain head; there is Diphtheria Rose, whose velvet dress Frances has shortened fashionably; there are the twin sailors, Typh
oid and TB Ahoy, and the little boy doll, Small Pox. There used to be a lovely lady doll in a ballgown, Cholera La France, but she got lost somewhere. In pride of place is the flamenco dancer with her crimson dress and castanets. Spanish Influenza.

  Lily reveres Frances’s dolls, but the one she loves with all her heart is her very own Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley. Mrs Luvovitz made her and Lily named her in honour of Frances’s favourite perfume. She has lovely thick brown woollen locks, perfect for braiding, except where Frances gave her a bit of a haircut. Today, Lily takes Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley and picks the mouth off her for no reason. Regret is bitter and instantaneous. But what is to be done now?

  “You’ve wrecked her,” observes Frances.

  “No I haven’t.”

  “You sure have, here, give her to me.”

  “What are you going to do to her?”

  “I’m going to fix her.”

  “Don’t wreck her.”

  “She’s already wrecked.”

  Lily hands over the rag doll.

  “It’s okay Lily, we can just pretend she had leprosy —”

  “No!”

  “— but then she meets Jesus and he heals her.”

  Frances takes a fountain pen from the pocket of her plaid jumper. Lily watches, poised to grab and rescue if need be. Frances calmly holds the doll just out of Lily’s reach, but reassuringly tilted in such a way that Lily can watch the careful restoration of Raggedy’s smile. Frances sings as she works, “‘Miss Polly had a dolly who was sick sick sick, so she called up the doctor to be quick quick quick. The doctor sighed and he shook his head, and he said Miss Polly, she is dead dead dead.’”

  Lily howls, “No, Frances those aren’t the words!”

  Frances hands the doll back, “There.”

  “How come you gave her a blue mouth?”

  “She stayed in the water too long and her lips turned blue.”

  “But what about when she gets warm?”