When Mercedes can get up, she crosses to her dresser and removes Ralph’s picture from the frame to reveal the poem with which she replaced Valentino’s picture almost five years ago. She returns to her bed and sits perfectly still, willing all her leaping blood back to low tide until, even if she tried, she could not so much as make a fist. Little by little her temperature drops as she stares at the words of wisdom in the frame, erasing Ralph.
By evening she is perfectly calm. Lucid, in fact, for the first time since she conceived her little crush on the grocer’s son. A Hebrew. Heavens. Meanwhile there are those who need me whom I have neglected.
Mercedes walks downstairs with her head perfectly balanced on her neck, one hand lightly gracing the balustrade. Tonight Frances will get a bath, no two ways about it. Mercedes enters the kitchen, goes directly to the Lourdes tin and counts the money. Hmm. We’ll have to do better than that, now won’t we? She lights a burner on the stove and dispatches the crumpled photograph of the boy with sticking-out ears. She cooks a large supper for Daddy. It pains her to realize how she has neglected her culinary duties of late. And Daddy is so kind about it, saying only, “I’ll pick up some cold cuts on the way home, Mercedes, don’t you go to any trouble.” Mercedes plans to keep the table groaning from now on. Poor Daddy.
Mercedes has told no one of the letter, so when Mr and Mrs Luvovitz drive into Sydney for the joyous reunion with their son early in June they are unprepared to meet his wife. Marie-Josée is petite and plump in just the right way. Dark and pretty. Catholic and pregnant. This dire accident in no way obscures the fact that she and Ralph are very much in love.
Don’t Whine
Today I saw a lovely girl with golden hair,
envied her and wished I were so fair.
When she rose to go, she hobbled down the aisle.
She had one leg, wore a crutch and a smile.
Oh God forgive me when I whine
I have two legs, the world is mine.
Then I stopped to buy some sweets.
The lad who sold them had such charm.
I talked with him — my being late was no harm.
As I left he said to me, “You’ve been so kind.
You see,” he said, “I am blind.”
Oh God forgive me when I whine
I have two eyes, the world is mine.
Later, I saw a child with eyes of blue.
Watching others play, not knowing what to do.
“Why don’t you join the others, dear.”
He stared ahead, he could not hear.
Oh God forgive me when I whine….
AUTHOR UNKNOWN
Dark Ladies
Frances is changing into her Guide uniform in the freezing back room of the speak one March night in 1932. Although she feels the cold more than many people, she welcomes it because it makes her outfits seem so fresh. Tonight she gets a bit of a start: a flaccid female voice plops against her like a jellyfish, “You’re no good.”
Frances looks up. The darker patch of gloom is unmistakeably Camille.
“Oh hi, Aunt Camille.”
“You’re trash.”
Frances pulls on her ripe woollen stockings. “We’re all sisters under the mink, honey.”
“Why don’t you kill yourself.”
Frances bursts out laughing and leaves.
At first glance, in her guide uniform, it’s hard to believe Frances is eighteen and not a child of twelve. At second glance, it’s hard to believe Frances was ever a child. Camille watches her go and wonders, what did my sister ever do to deserve that? But then, what did I ever do to deserve my life?
When Mahmoud’s eldest daughter Materia ran off with the enklese bastard, Mahmoud gave his second eldest daughter to Tommy Jameel, thinking that his being Lebanese was enough. It was not enough. Mahmoud knows that now; Jameel is no son-in-law of his.
Luckily there were three daughters left so he was able to make up for the first two. They’re all happy. Two married nice Lebanese Canadian boys from Sydney and the youngest married a doctor — enklese, but a good one. And his sons all married well: three got wives from the Old Country, which is ideal. Three married Canadian girls: one Lebanese, two Acadian. One son is a priest, God is great. That makes forty grandchildren so far, twenty-four of whom are Mahmouds, and fifteen of those are male. Mneshkor allah.
Camille could have had her pick of husbands. She really was the most beautiful in that many-sons sort of way. She could have been Camille MacNeil, Camille Shebib or Camille Stubinski. Instead she is Camille Jameel. She doesn’t blame Pa — Pa she reveres. And how could she blame Materia, whom she idolized? So she hates Frances, the slut who lives only to dishonour the memory of poor Materia.
Camille is a simple woman who wanted a simple life. Instead she got a complicated one. She giggled and batted her eyelashes and where did it get her? Jameel’s gin joint. Pa gave Jameel a big dowry, God only knows where that money went. Camille is not talented. She would have been good at the things she was raised to be good at. The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear we should not judge. We should just say, poor Camille, she turned into a bitch the way most people would have — and stay out of her way.
In her heart, though, there is still expectation. A clearing in the woods. Not when she looks at her five sons, who were absorbed by their father as soon as they were big enough to carry a crate or run with a message. Not when she looks at her husband, who never even bothered to shave on their wedding night — he examined himself and the bedsheet right after to make sure he hadn’t been cheated. No. The clearing in her heart is where Camille pauses like a deer, and waits for Pa to see her.
The following night, the inky spectre waits once again in the back room. Frances actually gets a bit nervous — Camille is the type of woman who sits like a lump, then picks up an axe one day.
“Hi, Aunt Camille, what can I do for ya?”
“You’re shit.”
“My, that’s a lovely ensemble you’re wearing.”
“You’re a disgrace to my father.”
“How’s he doing, I keep meaning to drop by.”
“You’re not fit to set foot in my father’s house.”
Frances snaps shut her bulging Guide pouch and leaves. Camille has just given her an idea.
The address is in the phone book. Frances finds her way to a house on the hill. She flits from hedge to tree. From shrub to side wall — the coal chute is just big enough for a child. Once she is inside her grandfather’s house, there are quite a number of secret vantage-points. And plenty to steal, one hardly knows where to begin.
There’s a grate on the inside wall of the opulent front room. Frances’s face can often be seen there through wrought-iron vines, but no one ever thinks to look. The closet beneath the stairs is full of soft dark things. When its door stands open a crack it is possible to discern a thin white stripe interrupting the sliver of gloom. That’s Frances peeking out. Hands seeking furs and shawls have brushed right past her curls, hardly pausing to register them as just so much more mouton. And if, one night, the occupant of the master bedroom upstairs awoke and looked under the bed for no reason, he might see her lying there with her arms folded across her chest, staring up at the spot where his heart sleeps. That is, if she is not peering at him through the brass bars at the foot of the bed.
Frances drinks in her grandfather’s long lean frame, his skin the tone and supple texture of aged deer-hide. She can’t see Mumma anywhere but in the colour of him, in the liquid ebony of the eyes — though his are sharp — and the waviness of the steel-grey hair. She is pierced with a sudden longing for her grandmother and wonders how it is possible to miss what you never had. She is surprised to locate one family resemblance, however: there is something of Mercedes in the angles of Mahmoud’s body, his carriage and immutable spine. Frances concludes, not for the first time, that she herself is a changeling.
She always brings back a present for Lily. A s
terling silver tail-comb with tortoiseshell teeth. A moonstone ring. A braid.
Lily strokes the dry black braid as though it were a creature prone to sudden death by fright.
“It was Mumma’s,” says Frances.
“Can I keep it?”
“It’s yours.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I found a trapdoor like in Arabian Nights. It leads to an underground garden. There’s everything you can think of down there just growing on the trees. Jewels, hair…. And babies that haven’t been born yet.”
Lily assumes this is Frances’s way of talking about the old French mine. She doesn’t like to think of Frances there alone, looking for treasure. Robbing the dead. Lily begs to accompany her but Frances says the Arabian garden is a “solo mission”. When Frances brings Lily back a single pearl, however, Lily starts to worry because it means that Frances has been diving. She is afraid Frances might decide to drown in the pool at the old French mine. Lily knows how tempting it can be to breathe water so she asks Ambrose to watch over Frances. Please, dear brother, deliver our dearest Frances from drowning as you delivered me.
The first time Frances stayed out all night, Mercedes was frantic. She changed in and out of her nightgown, wrung her hands and several times was halfway out the front door — but with no idea where to search she soon returned to her vigil at the kitchen table. Besides, what if Frances should telephone while she was out?
Mercedes did her fretting silently so as not to worry Daddy, who was in a much-needed and uncharacteristically deep sleep in the wingback chair. In the morning, Lily came down to find Mercedes peeling onions at the kitchen table.
“What are you cooking, Mercedes?”
“Nothing, Lily, go back to bed.”
“It’s morning…. Is Frances home yet?”
Mercedes wiped her eyes with her onion hand by mistake and found herself unable to do anything but gulp.
“Mercedes —”
“I’m just slicing onions, Lily, don’t be foolish.”
“Don’t worry about Frances, Mercedes, I asked Ambrose to look after her.”
Mercedes seized Lily and hugged her. Lily felt something hard pressing across her spine — Mercedes had forgotten to put down the paring knife — but Lily was too polite to say anything. James came into the kitchen rubbing his hands together, refreshed despite a night in a chair in his clothes, “Who feels like bacon and eggs? I’ll cook.”
“Oh Daddy,” said Mercedes, “don’t worry about Frances, she’s sure to turn up.”
And she did, that afternoon, with a tiny carved ballerina for Lily.
Now Mercedes has ceased to worry when Frances disappears like a cat for days, confident that she is being watched over through the special intercessions of Lily. Mercedes puts it down as another sign and adds it to the lengthening report she will one day soon make to the bishop.
Mahmoud never misses the braid because he has no idea it survived the Materia purge. Frances found it under the red velvet lining at the bottom of Giselle’s jewellery box. It was a close call.
Mahmoud was in bed and out like a light at the other end of the room. Frances stood at her late grandmother’s vanity and surveyed the loot laid out before her. Silver brushes, combs and hand mirrors. A rosewood jewellery box. She lifted the lid and up struck a hurdy-gurdy orchestra along with a pink ballerina. Frances shut the box instantly and turned back towards Mahmoud, who groaned, rolled over and looked straight at her. They just stayed like that, staring at each other, until she realized he was still asleep. She waved at him. She gave him the finger. She returned to the jewellery box and opened it a hair’s breadth — yes, now she could see the little dancer lying flat on its face. Frances slipped a finger through the crack and pinned the thing in dead-swan position while she opened and plundered the box. She checked for a false bottom in case of cash, lifting the red velvet lining, and that was how she stumbled upon the black braid lying coiled in its jewelled nest. It must have been Mumma’s because why else would it be hidden? Artefacts of lost girls are always forbidden. Frances stuffed the braid and the jewels into her Guide pouch leaving only a strand of genuine pearls. She extracted the ballerina by its roots, little red bits of velvet trailing from its pointed feet. She considered laying it on Mahmoud’s pillow like an eldritch gift from the tooth fairy, but decided Lily might like to have it. Finally, she picked up the strand of pearls and carefully severed its string with her teeth. She removed one pearl, then coiled the rest back into the otherwise empty rosewood box and tiptoed from the room with her booty.
What Frances really wishes she could steal or be stolen by, however, is Teresa, who still works for Mahmoud. Teresa of the black and white candy. Queen Teresa, disguised as a maid. Frances is not fooled by her big purse and simple dress. It almost seems vain for someone with a face like Teresa’s to dress in clothes so humble that they serve only to highlight the beauty of the wearer. When Frances first spied Teresa letting herself in through the kitchen door with her own key she had the wild certainty that Teresa was now Mrs Mahmoud — my step-grandmother! But Teresa left at six that evening, having set out Mahmoud’s supper, and Frances realized she had her own home to go to — with lucky children in it, no doubt.
There’s a kitchen door to the cellar and Frances loves to sit behind its splinter of light and watch Teresa work. She does this for hours, until she turns into the dough that Teresa is kneading, or the glass that Teresa pours milk into, or the apron that she wipes her hands on. It’s so peaceful that one time Frances fell asleep and tumbled all the way down the cellar steps. She hid when Teresa came down to see what the commotion was, and even though Frances was longing to say, “It’s me, I hurt myself,” all she said was, “Meow.”
One day, a man comes and eats lunch at the kitchen table while Teresa works. His name is Ginger — “Come on in, Ginger, darlin.” He is her darling but not her husband — Teresa calls to Mahmoud in the living-room, “My brother’s here, sir.” Ginger wears overalls but he’s not a miner, he’s too healthy-looking. Frances recognizes him right away — he is the one who used to drive Kathleen back and forth to school in a black Model T Ford. He dropped off Kathleen the day Teresa gave Frances the black and white striped candy. He called to Teresa and they drove away together and Kathleen took Frances’s candy and threw it into the creek. Frances even remembers what they had for supper that night — steak-and-kidney pie. Frances wonders why stupid details like supper stick in her mind when there are other things that she’d give anything to remember, like the last time she felt her mother’s touch.
Mr Mahmoud comes in while Ginger is there and says, “Hello, Leo” — and Frances nearly loses her balance on the steps again, jolted by the collision of two men in her mind. Frances sees the name stencilled on the back of the booze truck, parked out front of James’s still, then the truck dissolves into the Model T Ford but the stencilled name remains: “Leo Taylor Transport.”
He says, “Hello, Mr Mahmoud.”
Mahmoud asks in his dusky accent, “Have you got my special order?”
“I sure do, Mr Mahmoud, and strong like you like it.”
The surprise of recognizing Leo Taylor outweighs the surprise of seeing her grandfather guzzle a brown bottle of “special order”. Frances would never have pegged him for a drinker. He isn’t, of course, it’s only ginger beer. And when Teresa pours out glasses for herself and her brother, Frances realizes that, along with the fact that she too is thirsty. When she watches the fizzy gold slide past Teresa’s lips and ripple down her throat, Frances feels a craving. Leo Taylor sips his slowly.
Frances watches and remembers when she told Lily that her real daddy was a black man from The Coke Ovens. It was Leo Taylor she was thinking of, having seen him at James’ still. She told Lily this story in order to find out if it was true. Like the old orange-cat story — how it smothered Ambrose, and Daddy buried it in the garden. Like the story of how Mumma drowned Ambrose in the creek, and the one about the old French mine. France
s needs to say a story out loud to divine how much truth runs beneath its surface.
On her narrow journeys up the attic stairs by night Frances has seen a picture she did not know she owned: Kathleen with a black-red stomach, sweaty hair, two tiny babies alive between her knees. There is no one else in the picture except the person who is looking at it — that must be me. There is a voice way at the back of Frances’s mind, hollering into a wind. She can’t make it out yet, it’s just a sighing sound, it’s sighing a question. The question is, how did the babies get in the creek, Frances? The voice is getting closer. It’s on the first step. Partly to drown the voice and partly to enlist help in travelling to meet it, Frances tells herself another story.
There at the top of her grandfather’s cellar steps, behind the crack of the door, watching Teresa and her brother drink ginger beer, Frances murmurs aloud, quickly and under her breath like Mercedes saying the rosary: Kathleen is Lily’s mother, Ambrose drowned because we don’t know why, Kathleen was not married, she had a tumour in her belly but she didn’t really, there was a secret father, it was Ginger — he drove her and they fell in love on the way to school, that’s why Daddy says don’t play that coloured music from the hope chest — he sent Kathleen to New York Town but Ginger followed in his truck, Daddy took her home again but it was too late, she died of twins — do you know the Ginger Man, the Ginger Man, the Ginger Man, do you know the Ginger Man he lives in Ginger Lane. Amen Lily and Ambrose.