He doesn’t want to holler, doesn’t want Jameel in on this. He goes round the front. No waiting car, and he’s heard no engine. Overhead, the rat-a-tat of a stick along the railway ties. He looks up through the trestlework at the shadow feet flying between the slats and follows at a trot below. The ground rises to meet the rail line and he runs up the bank, getting winded, but she’s still sprinting ahead, taking the ties three at a time with her arms flying out from her sides. By now they’re on the edge of town, she tosses away her stick. He bends over to get his breath — he’s not the sporty type. When he straightens up he can see her way ahead in the moonlight, seeming to jump up and down on one spot in a wild step-dance but getting smaller, smaller. He trots on.
To his left the water gleams dark silver beyond the cliff, the sound of his breath and pounding chest drown out his own footfalls along with the crickets and frogs singing now in the high weeds that line the tracks. They’re travelling parallel to the Shore Road. She’s running the whole way, this is how she gets home. Lord. They’re way past town, it should be safe to call, “Fra —” and he’s flat on his face on the piss-reeking tracks, his gut shocked airless, his back only now registering the impact that sent him flying forward — something grabs a fist of his hair and slams him into the gravel again and again and again, and darkness.
Tonight, Frances extinguishes her candle before she steps into the attic. It’s the moon. Four rectangles of light have swooned through the latticed window onto the floor. The moon may drive men mad but it can calm a savage girl, for it is cool, precise, it is lucid. Especially in such an empty room. Frances pauses and allows herself to be soothed. Then she goes to the window. It’s a good night for gazing.
One floor below, at the rear of the house, Lily is at her bedroom window watching the creek. Her lips are moving slightly as though whispering to someone down there, but there’s not a soul to be seen, just shimmering segments of the moon in the water. Across the hall, and directly beneath the attic window where Frances has just seated herself, James is sound asleep, dreaming plentifully, the way he has since Frances receded from his life. He is a little boy again, and it’s just he and his mother in a field of wildflowers. Mercedes is sleeping too, in her spare room, the whites of her brown eyes just showing in slits through nearly closed lids. She dreams of steel, of the colour grey, of skeins of grey hair on a loom.
Frances strokes Trixie in her lap and realizes she’s been followed home. She can see Boutros down there, though he can’t see her. He’s peering up, waiting for her candle to appear and warm the room. He’s staring at the windowpane, but all he can see there is the moon.
Frances hasn’t kept herself a technical virgin just to be raped by something the size of that — and why else did he follow me home? In her head is The Catholic Wife. Years ago she rifled Ralph Luvovitz’s room when they were all supposed to be playing Klesmer music downstairs, and robbed him of What Every Boy Should Know. The Catholic Wife was easier to come by but is much more complicated. A Catholic wife must keep a graph in her head at all times, plotting the ponderous journey of the ovum, stolid as an ice-breaker, to its point of intersection with a zillion speedboats. On average, there are six or seven days a month when this is fairly likely to happen, whereas the rest of the time it’s fairly likely not to happen. That’s the rhythm method. Like comedy, it’s about timing. Rhythm is a sin, of course, but only a venial one and sanctioned by the Holy Father in Rome, provided you are without lust when performing the generative act and not hoping not to get pregnant. (Unless you are performing the generative act in order to ward off your husband’s lust for another woman, in which case it is a sin for you to give in to his lust, but one mitigated by your intention of preventing him from committing a worse sin with a woman not his wife. Go to confession, you’re fine.) Every other type of birth control is a mortal sin for which you go directly to hell if unshriven at the hour of death.
Frances gets her period almost not at all but its scantiness is completely regular. Tonight is the first of the five or six probably fertile days. And this makes her shudder at the thought of Boutros loitering down there in the yard, because it’s bad enough thinking about him going up her, much less a chip off that massive block coming out her nine months from now. She’ll have to speed things up. She is irritated. Why did Ginger Taylor have to turn out to be a nice man?
Via Dolorosa
“Coupla drunks jumped me outside Jameel’s.”
The third lie.
“Ow, Addy, easy!”
Adelaide picks out another wood splinter and jabs carbolic at Ginger’s chewed forehead. Luckily, that’s the strongest part of the skull. Lucky too that his nose and teeth only grazed gravel while his forehead took the railway tie. Luckiest of all was being lulled awake by the warm buzz of the steel rails beneath him in time to roll over and let the noon coal-train pass. Who’s his guardian angel?
“I want to know who she is and no bullshit.”
“What?” But it’s useless to pretend. Why did he for one second think she’d buy it? “She’s one of the Piper girls from New Waterford.”
Adelaide gets a chill, but she just nods and says, “Frances.” She knows the bad one is called Frances.
“I don’t know what she wants. I went after her last night but I got jumped before I could ask her, I don’t know by who or how many.”
Adelaide looks at him. Waiting for the rest.
“I’m sorry, Addy. I gave her a drive once, that’s all, I don’t know why I lied before.” He’s feeling suddenly tired. “She’s the little girl at the speak and I wanted to help her. I thought we could help her.”
Adelaide folds a soft white dressing for his brow. “There’s a lot of trouble in that family, Leo. That girl is not right in the head. She’ll see you in jail for rape.”
Ginger is shocked. “I would never, never —”
“The Pipers have money. You’re a coloured man, and that girl is after you.”
With the dressing round his head and his face scabbing over nicely, he knocks at the steel door.
“You want a fuckin raise, b’y, is that it?”
“No, Mr Jameel, I just quit, tell Piper I quit him too.”
“Tell him yourself.”
Ginger turns to leave, saying, “Then I guess he’ll find out when I don’t come for your order.” Ginger wants a wide berth between him and all things Piper.
“Fuckin nigger, get the fuck off my property — Boutros!”
Ginger is already leaving but he won’t run. He glances behind him to see the big son in the doorway. Ginger’s not scared of Boutros, despite the crack on the neck he got when he grabbed Jameel that time — the boy was just protecting his father. Ginger knows fellas like that are sooner pussycats than fighters.
“Fuckin nigger,” mutters Jameel. “Get the car, b’y,” to Boutros without looking at him.
“Daddy, I’m going to get married.”
Jameel wheels and swats Boutros across the face, “Get the fuckin car!”
That was around five o’clock.
“What kind of trouble?” Ginger asks.
Ginger knows the basic facts about the Pipers — what everyone knows and what he picked up driving to and from their house for years. Nowadays he hauls Piper’s booze, but that only ever takes him to the still in the woods and all Piper ever says is “Thank you, Leo, drive safe.”
But Adelaide knows what Teresa has told her. Teresa would never dream of telling such things to her little brother. Ginger was a sweet child, and keeping him from everything unpleasant is second nature to her. Besides, there are some things that are right to tell a woman friend, but otherwise indecent to repeat. Some things, when discussed with a dear husband or brother, are only poison. Good women discuss these things the way epidemiologists identify and track disease without alarming the public. This is woman’s work. Men are unfitted for it by nature and should be protected from it the same way women shouldn’t have to go down the mines. Men are so innocent.
?
??Tell me Addy.”
The time has come for inoculation. Adelaide takes a deep breath.
“The mother committed suicide. That was Mahmoud’s daughter, Materia, who ran off with Piper. Mahmoud disowned her. Their daughter, the one with the voice who you drove —”
“Kathleen —”
“She had a baby out of wedlock, the little crippled gal. Piper killed his daughter by not calling the doctor when she was dying in childbed. Pearleen Campbell works at Ferguson’s Funeral Parlour, she washed the body, there was a homemade cut in the belly, Pearleen and Teresa were girls together that’s how Teresa knows. Years ago, Teresa took a big cheque to Piper from old man Mahmoud. Next thing you know, the singer girl goes to New York City, meantime her mother’s in rags. The singer girl was a bitch. The mother died the day after her daughter was put in the ground, not a mark on her but her hair reeking of gas when they brought her to Ferguson’s. Teresa went to the mother’s funeral and saw the girl Frances laughing. That’s what I know, so God knows what else there is, or what that Frances girl was b’ought up with. She’s got a reason to be crazy, b’y, but that don’t make her innocent.”
That was after supper. Ginger had changed into his sun moon and stars shirt for the meal to mark his release from everything bad. Johnny-cake and molasses, beans and Cape Breton steak — take a pound and a half of baloney; slice it; now scorch it. A celebration, even though quitting the rum-running business means less money again. Ginger never realized how important the Mahmouds were to his family until Teresa lost her job, and Adelaide lost customers, and he lost most of the legitimate side of his trucking business. And now here goes the illegitimate side of her…. Things have been worse than usual for everyone lately; the Taylors have had it good by comparison. At least they have a future saved up for their kids. They can start living on that.
The children are in bed. Teresa has just arrived with Hector, who holds out a date loaf for Adelaide with his big drooly smile.
“Thank you, baby!”
“Where’s your man, Addy?” Teresa asks.
“Out New Waterford telling Piper he’s quit.”
“What’s he quit for?”
“Sit’ll I pour us some tea.”
Thank God for tea, thank God for Teresa who I can talk to. Hector nods in his wheelchair while Adelaide tells Teresa the whole Frances story and finishes up with “I said to’m don’t go out there, but he told me it’s ‘unmanly’ not to look a feller in the eye when you’re quitting him after all these years.” She takes a sip of tea. “At least it’s all over and done with.”
Teresa hasn’t said a word.
“Trese?”
“Yes dear, she’s crazy, they’re all right nuts.” But Teresa is distracted and she gets up. “I just want to look at Carvery before I go.”
Teresa loves to look at Carvery asleep. He looks like Ginger did when he was a baby and Teresa used to look after him. When she married Hector, she wanted to have a baby as sweet as Ginger. Carvery has inherited his father’s nature too. Sound asleep in his tiny sun moon and stars shirt. Sweet, sweet baby boy.
“Aunt Teresa?” It’s Evan whispering.
“Yes darlin?”
“Sticky Leary snuck in the cloakroom and stole my lunch today, he called it nigger food.”
“What did he do with it?”
“He said he threw it away but I saw him eat it.”
“He was hungry.”
“Mumma said I should beat the can off him. Do you think I should?”
“I think he doesn’t have enough to eat.”
“Why doesn’t he just ask for some without calling me dirty names?”
“He’s ashamed so he tries to make you ashamed.”
“I’m not ashamed of anything. I should just beat the holy crap out of him, eh, Auntie?”
“If you want to do the real Christian thing, you put half your lunch in his pocket every day without letting anyone see. And the rest of the time you forget about him and concentrate on getting where you’re going. You’re big and strong. You can beat any boy your age, but you start with that and the game in the schoolyard’s going to be ‘who can beat Evan?’ Then the older boys will get after you and when the teachers come out you’ll be the one gets blamed. You want to be a boxer when you grow up?”
“No, I want to be a veterinarian.”
“Then forget fighting and concentrate on schooling and you’ll beat the lot of them, ’cause, sweetheart, most of them are going nowhere but underground.”
“Or the steel plant.”
“That’s right.”
Teresa comes back downstairs. “I told Evan not to fight, he asked me.”
“Good, I told him to ask you.” Adelaide believes that all children should have enough grown-ups around who love them so that one can tell them to fight, one can tell them not to and one can tell them not to worry so much.
Teresa leaves with Hector. It’s early, they didn’t even play cards. Adelaide stands in the open doorway and watches them go. Talk of anything to do with even an offshoot of Mahmoud must still upset Teresa. I’ll have to think of something nice to do for Trese. I’ll make her a shawl. It’s hard, though, because Teresa wants always to give. It embarrasses her to get.
Teresa pushes Hector home down the alley so as to be totally alone. She is in shock about it being Frances Piper. Mahmoud’s disowned granddaughter. The thin-faced goblin with the unkempt curls and Mrs Mahmoud’s rings. She somehow slithered into the house — she’s small enough — and stole out of revenge in broad daylight. She stole my job. My good name. My brother’s good name. She stole food from his table. And now she’s after stealing him.
Teresa couldn’t tell Adelaide about the jewels just now. To add it up with the Ginger story, out loud with her best friend? No. That would be to have all the bitterness poured into one cup so you could see just how much you had to drink. It makes Teresa dizzy to contemplate it, she will lose her mind with anger — Oh Jesus, sweet Lord, please don’t let me hate. Look after the cruel and the crazy people, and let me look after my family, amen.
Even as she prays, Teresa makes a sickening realization. Frances recognized her that night in the alley with Adelaide. That means she’s been watching me. During the day in Mahmoud’s house when I thought I was alone. The girl who laughed at her mother’s funeral. Teresa shivers. And she was watching while I danced and sang my mother’s song.
The thief you must fear the most, is not the one who steals mere things.
Ginger’s not home yet. Eleven o’clock. Adelaide is uncharacteristically lying to herself. “He stopped at Beel’s for a game of cards, he got a flat, he decided to do one more run for Piper at twice the price, I’ll hear in a minute.” She must be really scared to be doing this when what she knows is “She’s got him.” After the lying phase is the pissed-off phase, “Foolish, head-up-his-arse eejit, he can pack and shack up with the honky slut from hell,” when what she knows is “She’s sick, she’s dangerous, she’s with him now.”
At six o’clock that evening, Jameel and Boutros arrived at the place in the woods where Piper makes the moonshine and cuts the liquor.
“Fuckin nigger up and quit,” says Jameel, getting out on the passenger side.
James despises people who say “nigger”. A civilized man need not resort to bar-room slang for emphasis.
“Plenty where he came from,” is all James has to say as he hands barrel after case to Jameel and Jameel hands them to Boutros and Boutros slings them into the back of the brand-new black 8-cylinder Kissel Brougham where the seats have been removed and curtains put up.
James looks at Jameel as little as possible. He regrets that his line of work necessitates contact with someone like this. Short black whiskers against a yellowish complexion, oily jet hair and the fusty smell of fried bread. James despises Jameel with his “nigger this” and “nigger that” because it’s obvious to him that Jameel is shit-scared of being seen as coloured. A man who wears his fear on his sleeve is a fool. Besides, thinks
James, while Jameel is not black, he sure as hell is coloured, ’cause he sure as hell’s not white. James is grateful that all his girls turned out so fair. But there’s obviously a morbid tendency in the blood they inherited from Materia that made Kathleen lean towards colour. James has taken delivery of another crate of books. He has dipped into Dr Freud in an effort to discover where to lay the blame for Kathleen’s perversity. Freud calls women “the dark continent”. James couldn’t agree more. He doesn’t hate blacks, he just doesn’t want them near his bloodline.
“You’re going to have to do it in three or four runs,” says James, counting the money.
“Look Jimmy, we should buy our own truck and get one of my boys driving.” James lets Jameel call him “Jimmy” because it is better than having Jameel’s greasy mouth on “James”. Also, when you let someone call you by not-your-real-name, you are reminded every time he says it of what a foolish arse he is.
“I don’t take partners, Jameel, you buy it, I’ll hire it.”
The back of the car is full and now Boutros closes the brimming trunk. James can see Materia in that boy. The same vacancy — standing there staring at me like he’s going to say something, then doesn’t. Nothing to say, that’s why, not a thought in his head. Creeping idiocy in that family, that’s another thing.
Boutros starts the car. Jameel slides in next to him. “See ya in a coupla weeks, Jimmy.”