Fall on Your Knees

  So I told her about Sweet Jessie Hogan and her Harlem Rhythm Hounds. Rose listened while I described the size of the Sweet’s voice. How can a voice that big be so agile, how can it groan gravel, then fly up and outdance the band? Not to mention her costumes — look out, Aida. But best of all, the dancing. The cake-walk is tame compared to what goes on there. It’s not for the faint of foot. Rose looked at me as though she were seeing me for the first time and said, “You’re not exactly a good girl, are you?”

  I felt myself blush, I was actually a bit annoyed. “I haven’t thought about whether or not loving all kinds of music and loving to dance means I’m bad.”

  She said, “I’m sorry. What I mean is … you’ve got moxie. You know. Guts. You make me feel like a coward.”

  I was struck dumb because I can’t imagine Rose being afraid of anything.

  “Then come with me,” I said. But she just shrugged. “What can your mother do to you?”

  She wouldn’t answer me, she just said, “You don’t understand.”

  “Then tell me. Let me understand.”

  She clammed up and looked down. Her profile under the fedora. Three dark pyramids. “Tell me, Rose. Please.”

  She looked away and I thought, oh no, I’ve done it again. But the next instant she said in an icy voice, “The fact is, I’m not terribly interested in Darktown music.” Then she turned to me with a polite smile, “But if you’d like to come to the symphony with me, I have tickets for Thursday evening.”

  I didn’t want to upset the apple-cart again so I said, “Oh thenk you. I’d be uttehly delighted, rally I would.” At which she grinned.

  She doesn’t have a boyfriend, I asked. I told her a bit about David. She asked me if I was in love with him and I said, “At times I thought I was. But now I know I wasn’t.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I couldn’t look at her, but I did say the truth. “Because if he came back right now, I wouldn’t leave this fire escape to go meet him.” My face started to prickle because I didn’t feel like that came out right, and I could feel Rose watching me, ready to hate me all over again, so I pressed on, “I’m a lot happier to have a friend.” I finally looked at her but she turned her eyes forward and nodded. “Me too.” I was so relieved. Thank God I didn’t do anything really foolish the other day in the park. Thank God I only mortified myself in front of you, Diary.

  Tues — 20 — Symphony divinely dull. Schumann. People stared at Rose. I’m beginning to understand why her normal expression is so forbidding. She has concert tickets but lives in a three-room apartment. Built like an Ethopian queen with a dimple and a Roman nose. Draped in a flowered dress from 1905 fit for little girls and old ladies. La Mystère de la Rose.

  Wed. — I’m not ashamed of my mother.

  Thurs. — Stayed in bed today.

  Fri. — I have no friends. I have only colleagues. The Kaiser is right. I suppose most people would run home about now but what is there to run to? It’s the capital of nowhere. Only Daddy is there and when I’m rich and famous I’ll sail him first class to all my performances. I feel so lethargic. I can’t even muster any ambition. It all seems dead and flat. Yes, I will work hard and get to all those places. I can see it stretching out, straight through to the triumphant end. I hate it when I can see through to the end of something. All that’s left is the plodding to get there. Knowing too much is a kind of death. I pray that I don’t know everything. That’s my religious faith: to believe I really don’t know. But it’s so hard sometimes. And in my religion, the only mortal sin is boredom.

  Sat. — My feelings about Rose that I wrote down seem like a dream. They happened to someone else in some other country.

  Sun — Nothing ever happens.

  mon — Ditto.

  tues. — Ibid.

  fri. — plus ça change

  Saturday, August 31, 1918

  Dear Diary,

  I don’t know where to begin. I have to get it all down now while it’s fresh, I’m here under my tree in Central Park and we have all afternoon till supper-time. I’ll have to go back a few days because despite all that whining about nothing happening, I realize now that tons was happening and it was all leading up to what I have to tell you which is EVERYTHING.

  But first things first: I’m working up Carmen. The Kaiser “objected strenuously” but gave in, for what choice does he have after all? He still snipes that I’m being “perverse” working against my “natural freshness and youth” — “My God, Miss Piper, you are an ingénue, Carmen is a whore.” Thinks the idea that I’m a mezzo is professional suicide, “witches and bitches, dahling,” he says, but I refuse to get stuck anywhere. I don’t intend to be Gilda for ever. Not when I’m a wizened thirty-two, and I certainly don’t intend to take my final curtain a moment before I absolutely have to. Mezzos live longer. I’ll sing Carmen and I’ll sell Tosca. And there will not be a single pair of trousers left unsung. Kaiser doesn’t know whether he is witnessing my first divinely inspired diva fit, or me falling on my face. Neither do I, but at least I’m no longer bored! He does see the wisdom in showing Gatti-Casazza the extreme outposts of my range, however, not just vertically but dramatically. Because that’s where it really counts. It’s not enough to have the most beautiful voice. If I have to sing ugly to put the feeling of a scene across, I’ll do that. Opera isn’t supposed to be “pretty”. Women stabbing themselves and everyone else half the time isn’t pretty, it’s wild, it’s passionate and gruesome and beautiful and you can’t tell me that such women don’t snarl as much as they sing. And that’s not counting the comic roles, which are even more grotesque. But I digress….

  All right. Oh dear. Here goes. I have no shame in front of you, Diary, for you are me. You won’t squirm, you can’t be shocked, you know that nothing in love is nasty so I will try to be as free with you as I am in my own thoughts. Lest I forget, let me offer up a sincere orison of thanks for Giles. She is the least curious person on the face of the earth. Without her total lack of vigilance my life could never have got started. If Daddy knew what a lackadaisical gatekeeper she is he would be down here in a second to board me with the nuns. Which reminds me, I’d better write him. Oh but I’m teasing you, aren’t I, Diary? You’re in an agony of anticipation. Be still, open your heart, and I will begin at the beginning and unfold it for you as it unfolded for me. The joyful mystery of the Rose….

  On the ferry in the middle of the Strait of Canso, Lily puts the diary down and looks behind her at Cape Breton because she will never see it again. She takes her last scent of salt island air, harsh, coniferous and cool, the indescribable grey that contains all things. Home. Farewell.

  She wonders about the soles of her new red boots. Eleven days of gravel on Highway 4, a hundred miles to the Strait of Canso. Many people are kind so Lily is only a bit hungry. It is important not to spend any of the money in her boots. Not until she has arrived. She has sucked water from bright moss and slept beneath the low boughs of pine trees, their needles soft and young with May. The nights are cold but Lily is not. Every night as she falls asleep, she feels someone walk through the soft dew and cover her. And every morning she is warm and dry.

  The ferry-man took her coin and gave her a worried look. “What’s your name dear? Who’s your father?”

  … My first class after our “tryst” on her fire escape, I was afraid Rose would treat me like a stranger again. But she didn’t. She wasn’t exactly warm, but she called me Kathleen and said, “Let’s get to work,” and that’s what we did for days and days like riveters on a skyscraper.

  I finally got her over for supper again — tore her away from her daughterly duties — and again Giles slept while Rose played and I sang the old-fashioned songs that Giles likes. Then I brought Rose to my room and tried to get her to take the ribbons out of her hair and do something less childish with it. But she wouldn’t let me touch it. I decided I’d like to meet her mother and have a talk with her. Why should she have a grown daughter who’s as tall
as a man, and more beautiful than a woman, decked out like a kewpie doll?

  I waited for Rose to spot the framed photograph of Daddy and Mumma on my dresser. She said, “Who’s that?” I said, “That’s my father.” She said, “Who’s that with him?” And I said, “That’s my mother.” And she just stared at the picture, then looked back at me and said, “Not your natural mother.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not your blood kin.”

  “Yes.”

  Then she looked back at the picture. “I can’t see it.”

  “No one can.”

  “What is she?”

  “Canadian.”

  Rose blushed. Hurray! But I put her out of her mystery; “She’s Lebanese.”

  “She’s an Ayrab?”

  “They don’t like to be called Arabs. Especially not ‘Ayrabs’.”

  “What’s wrong with that, that’s how I’ve always said it.”

  “Well. Anyhow, a lot of Lebanese come from the coast and they’re more Mediterranean, more European, you know. Not like Arabs.”

  “She musta come from inland.” Then she looked at me and said, “Coulda fooled me.”

  I said, “I’m not trying to ‘fool’ anyone.”

  “You look pure white.”

  “I am pure white. My mother is white.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Well she’s not coloured.”

  She smiled — sneered is more like it — and said, “Don’t worry, honey, you plenty white for the both of you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Now you’re mad ’cause I called you white.” She was laughing at me.

  “I like to be called by my name. Please.”

  She stopped laughing and looked at me for a moment and said, “Kathleen.”

  But I wanted her to get the point. “I’m not ashamed of my mother, but I take after my father. My mother is devoid of ambition and not terribly bright, although she is a devoted parent.”

  “Goody for you.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say “To hell with you” or worse when she got serious all of a sudden and said, “I’m sorry but you’re not being honest with me. You are ashamed of your mother.” I got a hot sick feeling in my stomach. “And I think that’s a sorrowful thing,” she added.

  The feeling was coming up through my skin. I was sure Rose could smell it.

  “Kathleen?” She looked so sorry for me, and that’s what made me feel strange. In a sticky dream with my eyes on sideways and can’t stand up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  I had to lean over.

  “Are you okay?”

  I thought, please God don’t let me throw up.

  “Want me to get Giles?”

  I must have caught a bug. The floorboards were shifting. She put her hand on the back of my neck. “Breathe,” she said. Her hand was cool.

  “Good,” she said. “But the idea is, once you’ve breathed out, it helps to breathe in again in the near future…. That’s it.”

  I breathed and she kept her hand there until my head stopped spinning and my stomach cooled down.

  “I’m okay now.”

  We lay on my bed and played Chinese checkers for an hour and Giles brought us cocoa and oatmeal cookies. I wanted Rose to stay overnight so we could tell ghost stories but she has to be home by nine or her mother worries.

  The next day I told Rose she was in a state of social mortal sin because she had yet to invite me to her home. I have to come like a thief in the night and even then she doesn’t ask me in. I asked her point-blank why not. She said, “My mother is an invalid.”

  She was lying, I could tell by the veil that came down over her eyes, but I went along with it.

  “I wouldn’t make any noise. You could just show me your room.”

  She said, “We’ll see.”

  “Say yes.”

  “… Okay.”

  “When?”

  “I’ll check.”

  Days went by and she still couldn’t say when so I gave her the cold shoulder, but that didn’t work — she’s immune to her own methods. So last night I went over uninvited. At the decent hour of seven-thirty, when I knew supper would be through and it would be early enough to take the streetcar instead of a leering cab ride.

  There were lots of kids playing in the street, and mothers everywhere, sitting on their porches in the cool of the evening. Men too, in white shirt-sleeves, some leaning against the buildings in twos and threes, others playing checkers, everyone chatting. It reminded me of New Waterford, except Harlem is really prosperous. Not to mention that here I’m the odd one out. Everyone stared at me as I slunk by till I felt like something out of P. T. Barnum, “See the white slave princess, raised by wolves in darkest Canada!” A couple of young fellas sang a little song at me as I passed — softly, not nasty or anything, but it made me blush anyhow, calling me “sugar” and “baby,” oh what I’d give to be invisible. Or to be taken for a man.

  Before I got to her building I could hear Rose playing. It was coming from the church window, but church was not in session and this was definitely not church music, it was pure Rose. So this is where she practises. In exchange for playing on Sundays, I guess. I stayed under the window, sheltered by Rose’s music, but I was soon disturbed by three women seated on kitchen chairs on the front stoop of her building. They didn’t shoo me away, they gave me the low-down on Rose! They didn’t know whether to feel sorry for her or to think she was nuts. I know the feeling. “Poor little girl,” they were saying, “she bears her cross.” “We all bear a cross.” I wanted to say, “She’s not a little girl,” and I had to laugh because they went on, “And practising twenty-four hour a day, but never can learn a piece of music top to bottom no matter how hard she try.”

  “That’s right, just wandering on the keyboard, lost to the world.”

  “’Cept Sunday, she plays like the angels come Sunday.”

  “That’s the Lord’s work.”

  “Thank you, Jesus.”

  Then one of them prayed that Rose would get some humility and they made jokes because they considered her too strange and — of all things — “homely” to get a husband, and what’s the good of pride in a homely woman? I excused myself but the women didn’t seem to notice, they just kept chatting as I picked my way past them up the steps and in through the front door for the first time.

  The entrance has an echoey vaulted stone ceiling with turquoise and white tile mosaic. Maybe it was once a Turkish bath. I smelled a delicious stew. I followed a wide brass rail up marble steps worn to soft curves by a hundred years of footfalls, up to the second-floor landing, and was about to enter the church to surprise Rose when I had a flash. An evil one. I continued up to the third-floor landing and knocked at the door of what I knew must be her apartment. For a minute I thought there was no one home and I was halfway back down the stairs when a woman’s voice stopped me.

  “What can I do ya for, honey?”

  I turned to the woman and said, “Sorry, wrong apartment.”

  “Who you lookin for?”

  “Rose Lacroix.”

  “Rosie’s downstairs practising.”

  “Okay, I’ll just pop down and say hello.”

  “She doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

  “It’s all right, she knows me.”

  The woman smiled in a sly kind of way and said, “You don’t know her too well though, do you? Come on in and wait, she’ll be up for dinner in a few minutes.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” I was confused. “I don’t want to intrude on your dinner.”

  “You won’t if you join us.”

  I followed the woman into the parlour. It was fancy and shabby at the same time. Like a rich lady who’s slept in her clothes. Velvet everything. A plushy plum sofa with shiny patches. Dusty curtains drawn — burgundy with gold tassels. And a huge gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. The stew smell mixed with her perfume and made me feel a bit queer.

&
nbsp; I said, “I’m Rose’s friend from singing class, Kathleen Piper.”

  “Oh yeah? I didn’t know Rosie had a little friend.”

  I felt she was being ironic, not to mention rude, but I couldn’t figure out why, no more could I figure out who she was. Although she clearly knew Rose.

  “I’m sorry, honey, I’m Rosie’s mother, Jeanne. Do sit down.”

  I guess my chin must’ve dropped a mile but I couldn’t help it, I was speechless. She lit a cigarette and laughed at me in a lazy way. She was wearing a full-length evening dress — dull red satin, slim and loose with skinny little straps and a deep V-neck, black sequin flowers. And obviously no underthings. I think that shocked me more than the fact that she was white, with straight yellow hair falling anyhow onto her shoulders, and thin blue eyes. Tiny lines, she must be close to forty, but it was so dim in there I couldn’t tell. You could see she used to be pretty. No face paint, oddly enough. She was enjoying my amazement. She offered me a cigarette.

  “No thank you.”

  “Good. Keep your voice clean. Drink?”

  “Yes please.”

  She smiled that rudely familiar smile again, as if my accepting a drink made us lowly conspirators, for there was something low about her and yet she acted like bored royalty. I don’t go in for drinking but I didn’t want this woman calling me “Rosie’s little friend” again. She gave me a whiskey and leaned back in the sofa across from me. Her left strap slipped down but she didn’t seem to notice.

  I said, “Thank you.”

  “I know you’re surprised, honey, everybody is at first, my God you’re pretty.”

  I hate myself that I blush so easily. She was making me madder by the second, I thought, so this is what Rose lives with, I’d go around like a hornet too if she were my mother. But I said, “Thank you, ma’am.”