Coloured in with crayons. Every ancient name has been obliterated by a shiny red apple, each right angle beguiled into a serpent twist of bark; each vertical stroke has evolved into a leafy stem bearing fruit. The largest apples strain the lower boughs all in a line. These are the only apples with names, printed in an awkward childish hand: “Daddy,” “Mumma,” “Kathleen,” “Mercedes,” “Frances,” “Other Lily,” and “Lily”. The Mumma and Kathleen apples have little golden wings and the Other Lily one has silver wings. Trixie’s black face and yellow eyes peek out from a high branch amid emerald leaves. Meanwhile, at the base of the trunk, grass sprouts on the surface of the earth and a little blue creek flows by all innocent of the continued drama below, for a cross-section of the earth reveals tree roots thrusting down and branching out into the surrounding soil studded with glistening chunks of coal and worked by a sightless army of worms. And there, nestled among the pale subterranean branches, is a golden chest encrusted with diamonds. Buried treasure.
Mercedes’ tears fall and bead on the shiny wax colours of the new revised edition of the family tree. She has never cried so bitterly or so quietly in all her life.
People have been known to go grey or snow-white overnight due to a fright or a sudden loss of all joy. But Mercedes’ hair simply fades. Frances sees it happen. She was thinking of sneaking out of the house when she passed Mercedes’ door and saw her light.
“Mercedes? … Are you awake?”
Mercedes is slumped over the desk, perfectly still. Has she died? Turned to stone? To salt? “Mercedes?” Frances approaches, leans down and looks. Golly Moses. How long has she been like this? Her gaped-back mouth all tight and wrinkled at the corners, her eyes crunched and seeping, perfectly still. Frances touches Mercedes’ shoulder and Mercedes takes a big gulp of air, emerging from her silent picture to cry in a real-life way.
“What’s wrong? Mercedes, what is it, what happened?”
Mercedes speaks from the back of her throat: “I hate her. I hate her so much. I wish I could kill her. I wish it weren’t a sin, I wish she were dead, I wish she had died, I hate her, hate her.”
Frances understands Mercedes and so does not embrace her but lightly strokes her newly pale braids. What on earth is Mercedes going on about?
“She wrecked everything,” says Mercedes, “everyone was happy before she came along, everyone died, everything went wrong when she was born, she’s spoiled rotten and I’m going to have to look after her for the rest of her life because she’s a cripple, oh God I hate my life, I hate my life.”
Mercedes sobs. Frances comforts her the way you would a dear and delicate moth, if moths could be comforted.
“Shshsh. Shshsh, it’s okay now. It’s all right now.”
“What’s wrong with Mercedes?” Reverent, worried, Lily asks from the door. How long has she been standing there? How much did she hear? Frances answers gently without missing a beat,
“She had a bad dream, Lily. Go back to bed.”
Mercedes doesn’t acknowledge Lily’s presence. She just goes on crying. Lily retreats. Frances looks down at the brilliant scroll.
In bed, under the covers, there is a small unearthly glow. It emanates from a tiny grotto formed by sheets held up by Lily’s knee. The source of the glow is the Virgin Mary. She is made of white phosphorescent Bakelite and towers four inches above a tin sedan in which Lily, Frances and Mercedes have lost their way in the middle of the night out in the country. They saw a glow in the distance a little way off the road, in a farmer’s field. And there she was. Our Lady. Everywhere there is the smell of lily of the valley. They must be right in the middle of a field of it but it’s too dark to tell. Either that or the lovely smell is coming from her. The Blessed Virgin has a message for each of the sisters that they must never reveal. Not even to one another. Lily’s message is this: Her leg will never heal. It will never be like the other one. She will always have one boot-leg and one good leg. There is a reason for this. Our Lady does not say what it is. “Now get back into your car and love one another.”
“Yes, Our Lady.”
“Lily.”
It’s Frances. Oh no. Lily has used her perfume without asking. But Frances doesn’t even say anything about that.
“Lily.”
Lily drives the car away from the grotto and out from beneath the sheets. She looks up at Frances. Frances has the scroll.
“What happened here, Lily?”
Tears form in Lily’s eyes and roll down but she’s not crying that she knows of. “I coloured in the family tree.”
“That was Mercedes’ special thing.”
“It was a surprise.” Now she’s crying.
“You know you shouldn’t touch other people’s things, Lily, especially when they’ve worked hard. You should have drawn your own.”
“I couldn’t help it.”
Frances knows this to be true. She sits down on the edge of the bed.
“I’m sorry, Frances.”
“Don’t cry, Lily.”
Lily tumbles into Frances’s arms for a good snoggling cry and Frances hugs her.
“Frances?”
“Mm-hm?”
“Everyone didn’t die.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone didn’t die when I was born.”
“Of course they didn’t.”
“Daddy didn’t die. Mercedes didn’t die. You didn’t die.”
“Mercedes’s feelings were hurt, that’s all, Lily, she didn’t mean it. She loves you. We all do.”
Lily can’t resist another look at her artwork. She peels open the scroll and reaches under the sheets for the phosphorescent statue. She and Frances look at the scroll together by the light of the Virgin Mary.
“You’re a good artist, Lily. I like the worms.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s inside the treasure chest?”
“Treasure.”
“What kind of treasure?”
“Ambrose.”
“Lily. Ambrose is just a story.”
“I know.”
The Virgin is losing her glow. The picture is no longer visible. It’s time to go to sleep. Frances rolls up the scroll.
“What are you going to do with it, Frances?”
“We don’t want Mercedes to see it any more. I’ll have to take it to the dump or burn it.”
“No!”
“Shsh. We can’t keep it.”
“We could bury it.”
Frances considers…. “In the garden.”
Frances and Lily are crouched in the garden, working by the cautious light of a candle stub. The Virgin Mary is in Lily’s pocket. Together they manage to dislodge the big rock — a catastrophe for a whole community of soft-shell creatures that go scrambling in all directions. Lily marvels at how they all managed to thrive under that rock without being crushed by it:
“For them the rock is the sky.”
“Come on, Lily, we haven’t got all night.”
Even though Mercedes is the gardener of the family, she is unlikely to go digging under the rock, so the garden is actually quite a good hiding-place. Daddy put the boulder in this spot, “the year he decided to make it a rock garden,” says Frances. “Up to then there was a scarecrow, but one night it pulled itself out of the ground and walked away.”
Lily pauses and looks at Frances, but Frances is calmly digging with a spoon, not using a spooky voice or anything.
“Nobody knows where it went. Maybe it’ll come back and visit us someday if you’re lucky, Lily. Anyhow, Daddy never made the rock garden because Mumma died around that time and he didn’t have the heart to continue.”
“Around the time that I was born, eh.”
“That’s right. You and Ambrose.”
“Frances, you said Ambrose was just a story.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Frances, don’t!”
“Don’t be a baby Lily, jeez, you’re so easy to scare.”
“He was ju
st a story, Frances,”
“All right Lily, he was just a story.”
“He was, Frances!”
“Lily, you think what you want to think and I’ll think what I want to think. And if you’re not mature enough to help me here then we’ll just burn your stupid drawing in the furnace and Daddy will know about it, is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Then quit whining about Ambrose, he was just a story.”
Silence. Lily, satisfied, picks up a spoon and digs obediently.
Frances grins; “No he wasn’t.”
Lily controls herself and manages not to respond. Frances starts laughing. They keep digging. Frances calls softly, “A-a-ambro-o-ose…. Ambro-o-ose, Lily wants you-ou-ou.”
Giddy gales of laughter. Prickly lights in her eyes and the little white stripe. Frances rolls over in the dirt and shakes her hands and feet in the air like a dog and giggles demonically. The only thing to do when Frances gets like this is to ignore her until it wears off, otherwise you make it worse. Lily just keeps digging.
“That’s deep enough.” Frances is suddenly back in command. “We don’t want to dig up the bones of the orange cat.”
Lily draws back. She had forgotten about the cat, now only inches below. Frances lays the scroll in the shallow hole. “Rest in pieces.”
Lily looks up sharply but it’s okay; apart from a gleam in her eye, Frances is safely this side of the verge.
They each toss in a handful of dirt, then bury the scroll and roll the rock back into place. A perfect job. Just place these loose bits of dry corn husks around its base and no one could ever tell in a million years.
“Okay Lily, go on inside now, I’ll be right there.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to say a little prayer.”
Lily obeys. Out of the garden and onto the little foot-bridge over the creek in her steady uneven gait and whap, she catches a dirtball right in the back of the head. She turns. Frances is doubled over in the centre of the garden. She’s off again. Oh no.
“Frances, come on. Someone will see you.”
Frances runs in a crazy limp out of the garden, down the bank and right straight splash through the creek, waving her arms, doing her impression of Lily — “Fwances come on, come on Fwances!” laughing, limping all the way back to the house. Lily follows slowly. Frances can’t help it, Lily knows that. She just hopes Daddy hasn’t heard them out at this hour. Because if he has, Frances will get a good talking-to. And there won’t be anything Lily can do about it, except to bring her warm milk after and let her sleep with Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley.
But it’s all right. Daddy is out. He isn’t working, he just couldn’t sleep. He went for a walk and wound up at the graveyard, longing for a drink. He drank salt air instead. Now at dawn he turns homeward, listening for the sound of pit boots along Plummer Avenue, expecting to hear the mine whistle. Then he remembers the strike. For no reason his throat tightens. His eyes sting but he isn’t going to cry, there isn’t time. He wants to be home when his girls wake up.
Porridge
“Here, Daddy.”
Breakfast. It’s a new day and the night is gone and I’m here with my girls. “Thank you, Mercedes. Eat up, Frances.”
“I’m not hungry, Daddy.”
“Eat.”
Frances skims her porridge. It’s still hot underneath but the surface has congealed to a thin skin and a few viscous strands cling to the end of her spoon.
“Don’t play with your food.”
“It’s cold.”
Daddy gestures to Mercedes, who adds another steaming spoonful to Frances’s bowl. Frances grimaces.
“Men in the trenches would have given an arm for what you’re turning your nose up at.”
Frances pictures the severed arm. She sees an apple-cheeked young Tommy; he smilingly detaches one of his arms, sleeve and all, and says in a fetching cockney accent, “No ’arm done mate, can Oy ’ave yo’ gruel now?” Don’t laugh. Just stare down into the glistening grey muck. There are dead men under there.
“I said eat.”
Frances places her spoon in her mouth. Snot.
“Swallow it.”
Who will save Frances? Lily is eating every bite of her own porridge, little brat. Is there any way to sneak some into her bowl? Will Mercedes intervene discreetly? Frances racks her brains for a diversion. She knows her throat will not open again. It will gag and she’ll spew and Daddy will —
“Answer your sister.”
“What?”
Mercedes quietly repeats, “Are you all right, Frances?”
“Yes thanks, it’s really good, Mercedes.”
Who will save Frances?
“That godforsaken cat is in your garden again, Mercedes.”
“That’s okay, Daddy.”
“It’s digging.” He sets down his spoon, “We shouldn’t eat a thing from that garden with that animal around.”
“Trixie never relieves herself there, Daddy.”
Everyone turns and sees Trixie out the window, her tail bobbing around the rock. James tolerates Frances’s cat because Lily is attached to the thing. But he is running out of patience, already composing a kind lie about how Trixie had a long and happy life but cats sometimes just run away. He gets up from the table.
Frances watches him head for the back door — oh thank God, thank Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the saints, I will never sin again — she waits till he’s halfway across the yard, then jumps up and empties her bowl into the garbage by the stove. Mercedes doesn’t comment, but Lily looks suddenly worried.
“Relax Lily, he’ll never know,” says Frances.
But Lily isn’t worried about the porridge. She’s been watching Daddy bending over the rock in the garden.
He comes back into the kitchen, but does not sit down. He stands at the head of the table with his arms folded and asks quietly, “Who moved the rock?”
Frances feels sick. She knows now that life was easy when there was just porridge. Lily turns bright red.
“I did, Daddy.” Nice try, Lily.
Daddy strokes her hair. Mercedes is at a loss — if she knew what Frances’s crime was, perhaps she could — “Perhaps I dislodged it while gardening, Daddy.” That was pretty lame.
“I did.” Frances speaks clearly.
“When?”
“Last night.”
Silence. How is it possible to feel so cold and yet to be sweating at the same time? How long have we been sitting here? What’s the big deal anyway?
Whack across the side of the head.
“I’ll tell you what the ‘big deal’ is” — oh no, Frances, you said it out loud, you thought you just thought it but you said it — “the big deal is, you had your sister out in the middle of the night and she could have caught her death of pneumonia.”
Frances: “So could I.”
“You have the gift of health. Your sister is delicate.”
“I’m fine Daddy,” says Lily, and sneezes.
Frances almost grins, but Mercedes looks down. She does not believe in accidents. James has not taken his eyes off Frances. “What in God’s name were you doing?”
Frances considers. And answers, “We planted something.”
“What?”
Lily saves Frances. “We planted a tree. For the family.”
Mercedes looks at Frances as the penny drops.
James asks Frances, “Under the rock?”
“It’s a really strong tree.” Thank you Lily.
James looks at Frances. He should pave over the garden plot and park the car on it. But that wouldn’t seem right. He should dig up what’s there and put it elsewhere. But he can’t. And perhaps, after last night, it is no longer there. He looks at Frances. Surely she was too young to remember. But if she does…. What kind of person takes her baby sister out at night to exhume infant remains?
Frances meets James’s eyes and says, “I told Lily that if we dug in the garden we migh
t find treasure. But we didn’t find anything.”
James resumes his seat. He rests his eyes on the tea-leaves at the bottom of his cup. Mercedes pours him some hot. He sips. Frances can’t believe her luck. Mercedes says a prayer of thanks and apologizes to God for being ungrateful about her family. James says to Frances, “Eat.”
“I’ve already finished, Daddy, look.”
“So you have.”
No. She could not possibly remember.
Water Babies
From breakfast on through all the day
at home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the Land of Nod.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, “THE LAND OF NOD”
A very young Frances is standing in the creek in the middle of the night staring out. At us. Or at someone behind us. She is holding a bundle in her skinny arms. You can sort of almost see it from the corner of your eye but you can’t see it at all when you look right at it. Like trying to look directly at a dim object in the dark. It’s annoying. What is it? And just when you thought this was a still picture in black and white, the water around Frances’s white nightgown lights up blue. The source of this light is a bright blue fish that’s flicking and swimming about her ankles. It’s beautiful. Lily wakes up screaming.
“Lily, Jesus Christ Almighty!” Frances is blanched and staring at Lily’s shell-shocked form, silent now, and ramrod-straight beside her in the bed.
The overhead bulb goes on — it’s James in a plaid panic. “What’s happened?”
Mercedes appears behind him, a new line hovering at her brow.
“It’s okay, she had a nightmare,” says Frances, petting Lily’s rigid back.
Lily turns and looks at James. He comes to her and picks her up. She wraps her arms and legs around him and lays her head upon his shoulder, eyes wide open. He rocks her gently from side to side, wondering a little at the recent rash of nightmares under his roof.
Lily says, “I dreamt I was a fish.”
Frances shivers. Mercedes smooths her temples.
“In the creek,” Lily continues. “And I couldn’t breathe.”
Mercedes heads down to the kitchen to make hot milk all around. Frances rolls over and rescues Lillian Gish from the icefloe. James leaves the room but returns a few minutes later, just ahead of Mercedes. He has Trixie. Trixie looks terrified but knows enough not to move a muscle when in this particular embrace. He puts Trixie down gently next to Lily, who buries her face in the astonished black fur. When Mercedes passes around the warm milk, James pours a little of his own into his hand and offers it to Trixie. Trixie gives him a look, then bends and laps it up.