Fall on Your Knees

  And she laughed at me again. The word “languid” is always used in books, but I finally found a use for it in real life. Mrs Lacroix was “languid”.

  “Call me Jeanne, baby.”

  I’m not your baby, I thought, but I said, “Jeanne.”

  And she chuckled again and looked me up and down and said, “Oh yes. Yes indeedy.”

  She made me most uncomfortable, the way she lounged there scrutinizing me like a bird of prey that’s too full with its recent meal to be bothered to eat what’s in front of it.

  Rose came in. She paused when she saw me. I couldn’t read her face, she just said, “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  Jeanne grinned and said, “Rose, darling, your friend is simply charming. I insist you stay for dinner, Miss Piper.”

  “Please call me Kathleen, ma’am — Jeanne.”

  She winked at me. I blushed again. I looked at Rose, expecting her to be scowling at me, but she just said, “Want to see my room?”

  I got up, relieved, although it crossed my mind that maybe Rose would murder me silently with a pillow once I got in there. Her mother stopped us on our way. “Did you get my prescription, Rose?” she asked without turning around.

  “Yes, Mother, I got it.”

  “Good. We’ll wait till after dinner, I’m actually feeling quite spry today.”

  “Good.”

  “You girls have a little gossip, I’ll call you when dinner is laid.”

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  This was the strangest thing of all. To find out that Rose has not a “Mumma” but a “Mother”.

  It’s raining on the Bay of Fundy. There’s no particular ferryman this time, there’s a crew. No one speaks to her as she boards, or asks her who her parents are, no one looks worried — although they do look a little askance. Twenty-eight days since New Waterford. What is Lily to do about the soles of her boots? She hugs the diary and looks over the rail. The Nova Scotia mainland is behind her, New Brunswick is in front.

  Farewell to Nova Scotia, your sea bound coast,

  let your mountains dark and dreary be.

  For when I’m far away on the briney ocean toss’d,

  will you ever heave a sigh and a wish for me?

  Rose’s room is as different from the rest of the apartment as can be. She has a single bed with an absolutely plain white cotton spread and no headboard. There’s not even a rug on the floor. A wooden chair, a small desk with a pen and a blank sheet of paper and, of all things, the Holy Bible open at — but I didn’t get a chance to see because she flipped it shut the moment I glanced at it. You’d think I’d caught her reading a racy novel. It looks like the nuns’ rooms at Holy Angels. (I know because I snuck into their wing on the last day of school, hoping to find a long luscious wig in Sister Saint Monica’s room but no such luck.) The only difference is, instead of a crucifix on the wall, there’s a picture of Beethoven. And do you believe this? She hasn’t got a mirror!

  Rose closed her door behind us and said, “So. Want to play Chinese checkers?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me she’s white?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I told you about my mother.”

  “What about her?”

  “You said she’s not white.”

  “She got a year-round tan, that don’t count for coloured.”

  “You said it did the other night.”

  “Yeah, well that’s a moot point, isn’t it, considering how you come out.”

  “I can’t win, can I?”

  “Oh yes you can, there ain’t nothin stoppin you, girl.”

  “You hate me ’cause I’m white.”

  “I hate you ’cause you’re so fuckin ignorant.”

  “Then enlighten me.”

  “Why should I bother?”

  “Because I’m your friend.”

  “Friends don’t spy.”

  “I’m sorry. You give me no alternative.”

  “There’s an alternative. Leave me alone.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I like you.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re the smartest person I know, except for my father.”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

  “And you’re beautiful.”

  That shut her up. She looked at me as though I’d told her she had a year to live. So I added, “But your mother dresses you funny.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I wear.”

  “You’re right, you’re so gorgeous it doesn’t matter.”

  “Shutup.”

  “Come to Mecca with me tonight.”

  “I told you I can’t.”

  “Do you do everything your mother tells you?”

  She sat down on the bed, folded her hands in her lap and quoted scripture, “She has my best interests in mind.”

  “Oh really? What are those?”

  “Getting out of this dump.”

  I sat down next to her, I tried to be delicate. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing. She does her best.”

  “You’re the one who’s ashamed.”

  Rose got quiet and looked at me as though she were holding a puppy and begging me not to hurt it. “You think, because she lives here, she’s not a fine person. Well it’s only because of me that she has to live here. Do you know what that’s like for her? They treat her like trash, they don’t know anything about her. Ignorant niggers.”

  I couldn’t speak. Rose went on, “She’s given up everything for my sake.”

  “She seems pretty satisfied to me.”

  “She’s too polite to seem otherwise.”

  “I didn’t think she was the slightest bit polite.”

  Rose really looked bewildered. How can she know so much about so many things yet know so little about her own mother? But I just said, “Where’s your hat?”

  I followed her out across the parlour and past the kitchen, where Jeanne was setting the table. That is, she was standing there with a fork in her hand, staring into space. Rose took me into Jeanne’s bedroom — I should say boudoir. A mess of satin sheets in a huge mahogany bedstead with claw feet. A big oil painting over the bed of a fat white woman getting out of a tub. A vanity littered with silver brushes, pots of paint and clumps of yellow hair — a crystal cocktail glass with lipstick smears, an ashtray crammed with red-tipped butts, a jumble of jewellery, tweezers and an eyelash curler. Clothes strewn everywhere, and too many smells for one room. Rose opened a big wardrobe, rummaged through the top shelf and pulled down the charcoal fedora.

  “Rosie!”

  It was Jeanne from the kitchen. She sounded like she’d just hurt herself. Rose whipped the hat back onto the shelf and shot from the room. I got it down again and put it on, and went back out to the parlour. Rose’s back was to me. But Jeanne was looking straight at me from the sofa where she lay. She looked like she was in pain, but somehow still slightly amused to see me in the hat. It gave me the creeps. Rose was reaching into her school-bag. I could see the sheet music inside. She brought out a needle that she filled from a tiny bottle. Jeanne had her left arm flung out and she was pumping her fist. The vigour of that action didn’t go with the swoon in her body. Her face was starting to tighten and go even paler, she was looking at the ceiling now. Rose injected her and Jeanne closed her eyes as though she were lost in prayer like the nuns. Her fist relaxed, she gave a little moan, reached up and stroked Rose’s face. She murmured something then nodded off. Rose folded Jeanne’s arm across her stomach, stood up and saw me.

  “She suffers a lot of pain.”

  I felt embarrassed for Rose having to lie again.

  “Did she see you in the hat?” she asked me.

  “I think so.”

  “Please don’t do that again. It upsets her.”

  “I’m sorry.” I handed her the hat. “Do you have a picture of him?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Don’t you have anything besides his ha
t?”

  Rose looked at her mother on the sofa — out cold — and led me back into the boudoir. And disappeared into the wardrobe. I had this crazy idea that she might be gone for ever into another time and place. But she came out a moment later with a suit of men’s clothes on a hanger.

  Black and tan pin-stripe trousers. Black waistcoat and tails. Tan cravat with black polka-dots. Starched white shirt with diamond studs.

  “Goes with the hat,” I said.

  And she said, “Yeah.”

  And I said, “Try it on.”

  She didn’t pretend to be shocked, which is how I know that in her heart of hearts it had occurred to her before. It’s also how I knew that certain things between us were behind us now. Thank goodness. She just said, “I couldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would be like — sacrilege.”

  “He wasn’t God, he was just some fella.”

  “He was my father!”

  “And all he left you were his clothes.”

  She hesitated. So I started to undress.

  “What are you doing?”

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t know, I just pulled my dress over my head and got to work on my stockings and for some reason it worked, and she said, “All right, all right.” And I put my dress back on as she undid the millions of buttons on hers and said, “Turn around.”

  I obliged. She took for ever.

  “Don’t peek!”

  “I’m not peeking.”

  Finally she said, “Okay. You can look now.”

  I turned around. Oh my.

  She is a tall slim young man in a curious suit of black and tan. There is nothing to beat her leaning against the bricks of any building ’twixt here and Battery Park.

  She said, “How do I look?”

  “You’re coming out with me.”

  “I —”

  “Look at yourself.”

  She hesitated so I closed the closet door to expose the full-length mirror on the outside. I stood behind her as she looked at the beautiful young man with the fine-cut face between hat and cravat. She looked at herself for a long time. And finally — “Do you think …?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  She nodded to herself and turned sideways.

  I said, “Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you. Much less your mother’s friends.”

  “Do you have any money on you?”

  “Two dollars.”

  “I’ve got carfare.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “No.”

  I thought, “Oh brother, she’s got cold feet,” but she offered me her arm with a smile and said, “Let’s dine first.”

  Jeanne had somehow managed to lay the table. It was just a kitchen table between the sink and the ice-box but it was covered with a snowy lace cloth and set with silverware engraved with “J.B.” Rose lit the candles. She filled our crystal goblets with bubbly root beer and heaped the bone china plates with what we call boiled dinner down home. Potatoes, carrots, pork hocks (she calls them “pig’s feet”), doughboys, but instead of cabbage there were green leaves of some kind. Daddy was right. There has come a time when I think it’s the most delicious dish in the world. We sat across from each other and clinked our glasses, “To Mecca.”

  “To Mecca.”

  And drank. There was a place set for Jeanne too.

  “She doesn’t eat much anyhow,” said Rose.

  “It’s good luck to set an extra place at table.”

  “Why?”

  “In case your guardian angel wants to join you.”

  “Don’t spook me.”

  “They’re not spooky, they look after you.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “Oh yes I do.”

  “Why, what’s your guardian angel ever done for you?”

  “Sent me to New York. Made me meet you.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “We’re going to know each other for the rest of our lives.”

  After a moment she said, “I don’t think I have a guardian angel. I think I’m on my own.”

  “You have one as long as I’m around.”

  She listened and I could tell she wanted to believe me, and I didn’t think about what I was saying, I just said it, “And if I die before you, I’ll come back.”

  She got tears in her eyes and so did I, it always happens when you talk about ghosts. I had two helpings of stew. Would you believe Jeanne cooked it? “She does all the cooking.” So I guess she’s not a completely useless mother after all.

  “What does J. B. stand for?”

  Rose hesitated, then said, “Julia Burgess.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “My grandmother.”

  “She alive?”

  “Yuh.”

  “Where’s she at?”

  “Long Island.”

  “Do you visit her often?”

  “I’ve never met her.”

  “I’ve never met my grandparents either.”

  “To hell with them all.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  We toasted again, then I raised my goblet for the third time. “Let’s drink to the twentieth century,” I said. “Because it’s ours.”

  “To the twentieth century.”

  Do you think it’s possible to get drunk on root beer?

  Lily plucks big waxy leaves from a maple tree and replaces the lining of what’s left of the soles of her boots. She walks across the United States border into Maine and the road turns from gravel to pavement. She kneels down by the side of the road and says a little prayer because, after all, she has entered a foreign country. This is at a spot near Calais, and if you go there now your watch will stop.

  Lily knows where she is going, it is only necessary to keep to the coast. If she can see the ocean on her left she can’t get lost.

  We quickly washed the dishes, then Rose fixed a silver tray with two glasses, an ice-bucket, a canister of soda and a bottle of whiskey, and put it on the coffee table next to the sofa where Jeanne lay. I was nervous that Jeanne would wake up and catch us but Rose said, “Don’t worry. She won’t wake up till her company comes.” I didn’t ask “What company?” because I didn’t want to make Rose lie to me again. She led me to the door and opened it for me, très galante, saying, “Ladies first.” As I stepped through the door, I turned my head to smile at Rose and caught sight of Jeanne in the mirror over the mantelpiece. She was lying perfectly still on the sofa, staring straight at me.

  Do you think there’s such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?

  Lily loses sight of the water for days at a time, stopping to enquire, “Where’s the water?” She is far from the only one walking the roads. She shares a meal of boiled potatoes with a slow thin man from Oklahoma, he’s not going anywhere in particular. She asks him where the water is. He leads her to railway tracks that swing south-east until the ocean comes in view. That night, between the trees and the track, under a pure black sky, he talks about his home in the land of milk and honey and Lily asks why he left. “It blew away,” he says. “What’s that you’re reading?”

  “My mother’s diary.”

  “Where’s your ma?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Well you hang onto that book, that’s a precious remembrance.”

  And he shows her a picture of his wife and baby.

  “Are they dead?” Lily asks.

  “Not so far as I know.”

  Lily is awakened by his bad chest. She watches him sleep and his wheezing stops, but when she nods off his torment resumes. So she stays awake. At dawn he sits up and forgets to cough. He scoops her up by the waist and pelts, years younger, towards the line of prehistoric boxcars lumbering by, all rust and thrust.

  I didn’t tell Rose that her mother had seen us.

  What a feeling to walk arm in arm with Rose as a fel
la. People stared in a whole new way. I guess I’ve found the one thing that could make me look even more suspicious in this neighbourhood. It was a breezy evening. Rose had polished her old black lace-ups to a high shine and I wished like crazy I had my new dress on. Oh well, next time.

  I had to force her through the door of Mecca as though at gunpoint. The great thing about Mecca is that there’s all kinds. I’d never soaked the place up like I did last night with Rose. I saw it all through her eyes and I was able to point out the regulars. It’s mostly young coloured men and not that many women. The fellas are all slick dressers except for the holes in their pockets where the money’s burnt through. They’re earning more than miners, building tanks and artillery for “over there,” I know because I been told by the guy in the silk tie called Aldridge. I’ve never seen guys preen and present themselves the way they do. They lean against the bar like honey-drenched stamens, waiting for the women to buzz around, and you just know they’re all breaking their mothers’ hearts. They wear secret smiles and chuckle a lot when they chat with the white guys.

  There are a couple of middle-aged men too, a famous jockey who eats five heads of lettuce a day, and a retired heavyweight champion with a bald head from Halifax. They’re the only ones who bring their wives, two very serious looking women of a certain age who spend the whole time with their heads glued together, chatting. There’s a group of West Indian fellas who stick together and wear pencil-thin moustaches. One of them’s a lawyer and another is my acquaintance Nico, a little live wire who has made a fortune in real estate and can’t stop smiling. He calls me “chérie”. There’s a studious young man who always sits alone and writes in a notebook and there are two tables pushed together of motley individuals who are delighted with each other and everything else and who turn out to be actors. There’s a Chinaman who holds court at the same table in the far corner every night.

  Tonight I notice three or four other white girls sitting with their coloured boyfriends and I say to Rose that at least we’re not the only mixed couple in the joint and she says, “Yes we are.” I say, “They don’t look coloured.” And she says, “Say Negro.”