Fall on Your Knees

  “What do you mean, it’s kosher, I butcher it, it’s kosher.”

  “I don’t want you to do anything funny to it.”

  “Don’t worry, you see that cow?”

  “Yuh.”

  “That’s the one I’m saving for you. That’s a Presbyterian cow.”

  “I’m Catholic.”

  Benny laughed. James smiled. Compared to Materia’s family, the Luvovitzes seemed downright white.

  1900

  At the eleventh hour, in her ninth month, Materia began looking forward to her baby. That’s because she’d grown to love Abe Luvovitz, who was two, and Rudy, who was six months. She wanted a son of course. Her father would be hard pressed to disown a first grandson even if it came to him through a daughter. That was what she told herself. And then she could see her mother again, and her sisters — she’d be a good woman after all. She began to pray to Our Lady, please, Dear Mary, let it be a boy.

  James named the baby Kathleen, after his late mother. Kathleen wasn’t the first baby of the new century, but she was near enough so that James had to pelt all the way to Sydney on the old nag and drag the doctor from the dregs of a New Year’s party. They arrived back at Low Point in time for the doctor to tell Mrs Luvovitz she’d done a pretty good job. Mrs Luvovitz thought, “You should only pass a turnip through the end of that which you have between the pants over there, then we’ll see who’s done a pretty good job.” But she took care to think it in Yiddish.

  Mrs Luvovitz told Materia how blessed she was. “I love my boys, Mrs Piper, but a woman wants a daughter.”

  Materia didn’t say anything.

  James said, “I love you, Materia.”

  She said, “Baddi moot.”

  He patted her head and gazed at the baby. “Kathleen,” he said. Then, “Look, she knows her name!”

  He had her baptized by a Presbyterian minister.

  “We gotta get a priest,” said Materia.

  “It’s the same God,” said James. It was bad enough he’d had to go through the motions of conversion, he needn’t subject his daughter to any Roman hocus-pocus.

  Mrs Luvovitz looked after Materia and the new baby for the first two weeks. Benny said, “You’re interfering.”

  “I’m not interfering, she has no mother.”

  “You’re not her mother.”

  “She needs a mother.”

  “She needs time with her baby, how’s she going to learn?”

  James felt invincible. He charted the highest sales for two weeks running. He walked into the boss’s office uninvited and demanded a raise.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that just yet, Piper.”

  “I have a child now, sir.”

  “So have the other men.”

  “I’m worth three of those other fellas.”

  “You’ve had a good couple weeks — keep it up, you’ll be employee of the month.”

  James turned on his heel and it felt that good to walk out on the old man — let him try to replace me, he can’t do it, it can’t be done.

  James rode home high on his rickety horse, he was going to give that girl everything. She was going to grow up a lady. She’d have accomplishments. Everyone would see. He felt like a king. A sudden drop and he was standing on the Shore Road, the horse dead between his feet. No matter. As good as a sack of money lying there in the slush, worth its weight in glue.

  He walked the rest of the way and formulated a plan. Pianos only need tuning once in a while, but they need playing much more often. And who plays piano? Country folk who learn by ear, thumping to fiddles and spoons for simple enjoyment. And the children of townspeople who want their kids to have accomplishments. The likes of those uppity losers he’d worked with at McCurdy’s, not to mention the really well-to-do: MR JAMES H. PIPER ESQUIRE offers tuition in the home to young ladies and gentlemen, in the theory and practice of the Piano Forte.

  He wouldn’t bother quitting the job at the Sydney Post. He just wouldn’t show.

  James arrived home in the middle of that day to find Mrs Luvovitz in the kitchen feeding his baby with a dropper.

  “Where’s my wife?”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  He took the stairs two at a time and dragged her up by an arm. Herded her down to the kitchen, whinging and whining every step of the way.

  “Thank you, missus, my wife’ll take over now.”

  Mrs Luvovitz got up, thinking thoughts not in English, and left the house.

  James plunked his wife onto the chair and put the screeching baby into her arms. “Now feed her.”

  But the mother just blubbered and babbled.

  “Speak English, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Ma bi’der. Biwajeaal.”

  He slapped her. “If she doesn’t eat, you don’t eat. Understood?”

  Materia nodded. He unbuttoned her blouse.

  James allowed Mrs Luvovitz over that evening when Materia hadn’t produced a drop and the baby was fit to be tied. The women went upstairs. The howling the mother put up, as Mrs Luvovitz did the necessary. Downstairs in the front room, James unlocked the piano and played the opening bars of various pieces from memory in an effort to drown the sound. He’d have to invest in some sheet music and exercise books. His daughter would play.

  In a few days the pump was primed and the baby was sucking. But the mother cried through every feeding. One evening in the fourth week of Kathleen’s life, James snatched his child from the breast in horror.

  “You’ve hurt her, Jesus Christ, you’ve cut her lip!” — for the baby’s smile was bright with blood.

  Materia just sat there, mute as usual, her dress open, her nipples cracked and bleeding, oozing milk.

  James took one look and realized that the child would have to be weaned before it was poisoned.

  James might be a Catholic convert, but he’d never forgotten his Scots Confession. Feckless Catholics believe in salvation through faith — good enough, sit on your arse and believe all you like, but some of us know that work is the only sure bet, for the night will come, etc., etc…. get on with it, nothing will come of nothing.

  Within a month, James had enough students from Sydney to Glace Bay to start making ends meet. All day into the evening, every good boy deserves fudge and all cows eat grass. And at night, the staring zombie he’d married. Why had he married her? It was when he sat next to twelve- and thirteen-year-olds on the piano bench and watched their eyes glaze over at the mention of middle C that it hit him in the stomach that his wife had been no older than they.

  How had he been ensnared by a child? There was something not right about Materia. Normal children didn’t run away with men. He knew from his reading that clinical simpletons necessarily had an overdeveloped animal nature. She had seduced him. That was why he hadn’t noticed she was a child. Because she wasn’t one. Not a real one. It was queer. Sick, even. Perhaps it was a racial flaw. He would read up on it.

  All Materia wanted to do was get pregnant again so God could send her a son. But there wasn’t much chance of that because her husband wouldn’t come near her. Got angry if she touched him. Materia realized that God would not give her another baby if He saw she was ungrateful for the one she had. So she prayed to the Blessed Virgin. She prayed in the attic because there was no church for miles and miles, and James didn’t like her wandering any more. On her knees, elbows resting on the hope chest, “Please dear Mary Mother of God, make me love my baby.”

  Kathleen thrived. Silky red-gold hair, green eyes and white white skin. Materia wondered where she’d come from. Surely she had been changed in the night. Mrs Luvovitz didn’t care to speculate.

  James watched Kathleen grow more beautiful and hardy every day. And what a set of pipes — he’d carry her out to the stony fields for yelling contests. They’d holler till they were hoarse and hilarious. He loved to hear her laugh. She could do no wrong.

  Feeding the child some lovely mush at the kitchen table, Materia leaned forward and cooed, “Ya Helwi. Ya albi
, ya Amar. Te’berini.”

  The child smiled and Materia said a silent prayer of thanks, because at that moment she’d felt a faint breath of something not far from love.

  “Don’t do that, Materia.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want her growing up confused. Speak English.”

  “Okay.”

  A Miner ’Forty-Niner

  Kathleen sang before she talked. Perfect pitch. James was a piano tuner — he knew: his eighteen-month-old daughter could carry “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms” flawlessly, if wordlessly, after hearing him play it once…. He sat perfectly still on the piano bench and regarded her. She looked straight back at him with adult gravity.

  It was a moment of equal parts anxiety and awe, like the striking of a wide seam of gold. The prospector sinks to his knees — he’s only been looking for coal. At a gush of oil he’d hoot, baptize himself and buy the drinks. But the sight of gold is different. He observes a moment’s silence. Then he rises, eyes watering. How to get it properly out of the earth? How not to be robbed in the meantime?

  Eventually it would require real money. For now, he set aside his own studies and started teaching her himself. He read up on it. He bought a metronome, a gramophone, and began a collection of records. He ordered whole scores and song sheets from New York, Milan and Salzburg. He decided it wasn’t too soon to start in on the Vaccai Practical Method of Italian Singing. Mozart composed at three. At three, Kathleen sang, “Manca sollecita Più dell’usato, Ancor che s’agiti Con lieve fiato, Face che palpita Presso al morir.”

  Materia was permitted to play piano again, this time exactly what was put in front of her:

  scales, intervals, i semitoni

  “this lesson must be sung adagio at first, and the time accelerated to allegro, according to the ability of the Pupil”

  syncopation, ornamentation, literal translation, “The flame fails rapidly/more than usual/even if it flickers/with a light breath”

  appoggiatura, introduzione al mordente

  “the acciaccatura differs from the appoggiatura in as much as it does not interfere with the value or the accent of the note to which it is prefixed,” intervals of thirds, intervals of fourths, salti di quinta, salti di sesta

  “the little bird in a narrow cage/why does one never hear it sing?”

  Lesson XI, The Shake, “I would explain my anguish”

  Lesson XII, On Roulades, “I cannot believe my thoughts”

  Lesson XIII, Per Portare la Voce, “I cannot keep silent about everything.”

  Materia played. Kathleen turned seven.

  Materia watched it all from a great distance, and as the years flew by she missed her father more and more, forgetting everything but that he had once cared enough for her to find her a husband. All memories soften with age, and the good ones are also the most perishable — her mother and sisters had long ago been caressed to disappearing soapstone, conjured up till they faded to nothing. Like cave paintings by candle-light, she could only glimpse them now in the dark from the corner of her eye. But her father’s memory was durable. Obelisk eroded to a dome of rock, the touchstone of her loss.

  “You’re too fat.”

  Materia looked at James from afar and said, “Okay.”

  He shook his head. Other men went strolling with their wives of a Saturday evening. Took them to church on Sunday, sat at opposite ends of a row of children. But not James. He didn’t want people thinking he’d married a woman old enough to be his mother, for one thing. But mainly, what with Materia gone slack in mind and body, he didn’t want his child stigmatized. For on top of everything else, Materia was dark. He tried not to see it, but it was one of those things that was always before his eyes, now that the scales had fallen from them.

  He took Kathleen everywhere. They went on long walks — Kathleen in the beautiful English pram at first, and then hand in hand. Their walking language was Gaelic. With her faery hair and fine deportment, people stared because she looked like a princess. Her clothes came from England. Nothing showy, all quality, like a real-life princess. And James trusted his immaculate shirts to no one but himself, shaved his face clean every morning. Together they turned heads.

  It was 1907 and there was a town now. It had sprung up overnight starting with Number 12 Colliery. Numbers 14, 15 and 16 followed in short order. The railroad came in and so did the miners. At first they came from all over the Maritimes, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. In time they came from everywhere. The Dominion Coal Company bought up land and built a sea of company houses — serviceable clapboard dwellings attached in pairs. There was a school, a Catholic church, Luvovitz’s Kosher Canadian Butcher Shop and Delikatessen, MacIsaac’s Drugs and Confectionery and the Company Store with enough merchandise to mephistophelize a miner’s wife.

  Every Friday night the miners would hand over their sealed pay packets to their wives, who’d open them and fork over the price of a drink. Problem was, come Saturday shopping the pay packet — with or without Friday’s tipple — would barely feed even a small family of six. But the coal company had a solution to this: “company scrip”. This was a form of credit. The missus could spend cash at those shops in town that stocked the odd item unavailable at the Company Store. And she could spend company scrip at the Company Store on food, shoes, cloth and kerosene. Her man’s sealed pay packet grew thinner and thinner, until quite soon it contained only an itemized account of how much rent he owed on his company house, how much interest he owed on his debt to the Company Store and how much was still available to him in scrip to spend there. The Company Store came to be better known as “The Pluck-Me Store”.

  Still people poured in, filling up the streets that ran north-south, and the avenues that ran east-west, every second one named for a Catholic saint or a coal company magnate. Boom Town. It didn’t exist officially and it had no name yet, but the Piper house was suddenly on a street and the street had a name: Water Street.

  Materia hadn’t been in a church since she’d got married. Now that there was a Catholic church right handy there was no reason she couldn’t just walk over. But she felt unworthy. Our Lady had not answered her prayer. Materia still did not love her child, and she knew the fault lay within herself,

  “Kathleen, taa’i la hown.”

  Materia sat the child on her lap and wrapped her arms around it. She sang, unrepeatable and undulating:

  “Kahn aa’ndi aa’sfoor

  zarif u ghandoor

  rasu aHmar, shaa’ru asfar

  bas aa’yunu sood

  sood metlel leyl…. ”

  Materia rocked the child and felt sad — was that closer to love? She hoped. The child felt cool in her arms. “I’ll warm you,” she thought. And kept singing. Kathleen stayed perfectly still, pressed close up against the rolling mass. Materia stroked the fire-gold hair and passed a warm brown hand across the staring green eyes. Kathleen tried not to breathe. Tried not to understand the song. She tried to think of Daddy and light things — fresh air, and green grass — she worried that Daddy would know. And be hurt. There was a smell.

  Materia released the child. It was no good. God could see past Materia’s actions, into her heart. And her heart was empty.

  Materia no longer went up to the hope chest to cry — she cried wherever she happened to be at the time — nor did it any longer interrupt her work or wrench a single muscle in her face.

  “Give us a jawbreaker and a couple of honeymoons,” said James.

  MacIsaac’s Drugs and Confectionery smelt of new pine, bitter herbs and salt-water taffy. Mr MacIsaac reached into a tilted jar brimming with the edible rainbow. Behind him stretched shelf upon shelf of bottles and packets containing powders, essences, oils and unguents. Whatever ails you.

  Mr MacIssac handed Kathleen a sarsaparilla candy cane as an extra little treat, but she hesitated and looked at James, who said, “It’s all right, my darling, Mr MacIsaac’s not a stranger.”

  Mr MacIsaac looked at Kathl
een gravely, lowered his head and said, “Go on, touch it.”

  She touched his billiard-bald head and grinned. Mr MacIsaac said, “I hear you got a set o’ lungs on you, lass.”

  She nodded wisely, sucking on the candy cane. MacIsaac laughed and James beamed. He and Kathleen left the shop together. Mrs MacIsaac said from her perch on the sliding ladder, “She’s beautiful.”

  “Yuh, she’s a pretty little thing.”

  “Too pretty. They’ll never raise her.”

  Mrs MacIsaac watched the shop while Mr MacIsaac limped back to his greenhouse for a drop of “the good spirit”. He’d been in the Boer War.

  At home, Materia stood at the counter rolling out dough for a pie — steak and kidney like James’s mother used to make — and finally twigged to a thing that had been nagging her all along. It was this: Kathleen’s baptism hadn’t taken. It had been done by a Prostestant minister. The child needed to be properly baptized, in Latin, by a Catholic priest. And then everything would be all right. She told James when he arrived home with the girl but he said, “Kathleen has been baptized. It was done by a man of the cloth, a Christian man, and that’s all there is to it.”

  Kathleen’s cheeks bulged with hard candy, her green gaze directed up at her mother. She didn’t look all that baptized to Materia.

  James had taught his daughter to read words soon after she learned to read music. At three and a half she’d shared his lap with a terrifyingly illustrated book more than half her size and sounded out, “‘In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray….’” He’d started her on Latin when she was five, teaching himself at the same time — it would help with her Italian singing. He ordered another box of books. Children’s classics this time, and they read them aloud, taking turns.

  He hadn’t much time for his own reading, though his books now numbered twenty-three not counting the Encyclopaedia Britannica — “Read that end to end,” thought James, as he gazed at his glass cabinet, “and you’d know just about everything. Go anywhere at all.”

  At the local schoolhouse Kathleen learned to sit in rows and not to gawk at those less fortunate, but little else. The lady teacher got the creeps from the porcelain girl with the mermaid eyes. The child seemed to be in disguise. Staring up at a corner of the ceiling or out the window, waiting for something, a sign — what? — yet always ready with the answer: “Wolfe died on the Plains of Abraham, miss.” Hands folded on the desk, spine straight. “The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the other two sides, miss.” Every feature formed to preternatural perfection. “It’s i before e except after c, miss.” It wasn’t right in a child. Perhaps she wasn’t a child at all.