Blackened knees and torn silk were the stuff of high spirits, and James never scolded her for ruining her clothes, but when Kathleen came home and said, “Pius MacGillicuddy gots a finger in a jar what his da found in the mine, that he b’ought up from a wee tiny sprout,” it was time to send her to Holy Angels in Sydney.
The Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame were in the business of educating the whole girclass="underline" from grammar to botany, physics to French. But above all, Holy Angels offered an excellent music program. James had been going to wait a few years, till Kathleen turned twelve and he’d saved enough for tuition, but there was no help for it, she’d be tarnished by then. He’d find the money.
He started a garden in the backyard on the far side of the creek. He bought a new old horse and cart. He travelled across the island to the Margaree and collected topsoil with no trace of coal-dust. The missus would have to learn to make soap, butter and her own clothes. From now on they’d have to pay only for meat, and Benny always gave them a special price. Benny gave James a special price on manure too.
“For you, free. That’s kosher cow shit, mind you, you’re going to have kosher carrots and potatoes, you’ll be a Jew in no time — you want, I’ll throw in a circumcision, no charge.”
James went out to the woods and cut down a young apple tree. Stripped it of branches, sharpened it at both ends and drove it into the centre of the garden. Nailed a plank of driftwood across it, and dressed it in one of Materia’s old frocks that she’d grown out of and a fedora he found blowing over a field. It wasn’t effective till he fashioned a head and torso from two flour sacks stuffed with straw to fill out the clothes, and impaled them on the stake. Every so often he changed its attire, now a dress, now a pair of trousers, but always the hat, keeping the birds on edge.
“Kathleen, come.”
Materia no longer spoke Arabic to the girl. What for? Kathleen followed her mother into the kitchen. The big tin tub was full and steaming. Tomorrow was Kathleen’s first day at Holy Angels and James wanted her spick and span. That meant hair. Materia used to dread washing the child’s hair because of all the fuss. James would holler from outside the kitchen door, “Are you trying to kill the poor child?” But Materia was used to the girl’s hysterics, and performed the task briskly, scouring the scalp, dunking the head, wringing the tresses, getting the comb through, keeping her still. James could holler, but he would never intrude on his daughter’s ablutions.
This evening there were the customary protests — “Don’t pull! — my eyes are stinging! O-o-ow, stop i-i-it!” — but when Materia took Kathleen by the hair as usual and plunged her head backwards for the first rinsing, she kept it under long enough to say into the submerged green eyes, “Do you renounce Satan? Yes. And all his works? Yes. I baptize you in nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, amen.” There. In an emergency, any Catholic can baptize a child. And after nine years, Materia considered it an emergency. Now the child would be safe. Now God could love her, even if Materia couldn’t, and the nuns wouldn’t think ill of her. Materia let go and Kathleen’s face broke the surface, gasping.
Kathleen didn’t cry or complain. She stood unwontedly docile as her mother towelled her dry, careful to attend roughly to the bad parts of the body.
In the wee hours of that night, Kathleen woke up screaming. She was still screaming when her daddy picked her up, and she clung to him as he walked her up and down the hallway, struggling to make out what she was saying.
“Who’s coming to get you?” he asked.
And when he had deciphered some more, “Who’s ‘Pete’?”
And she told him through her sobs.
He carried her downstairs, out the kitchen door, across the coal clinkers in the back yard, over the little foot-bridge to the garden and right up to the scarecrow.
“Now beat the can off him,” James ordered.
Kathleen was shaking uncontrollably, almost gagging with fear. The scarecrow’s hat cast a shadow over its featureless face. She couldn’t see if it was smiling or frowning.
“Make a fist, go on,” said James.
She did, still crying.
“Now whack the bejeesus out of him!”
She struck out and knocked the scarecrow’s head to the ground, hat and all.
“That’s the stuff!” said James, and he tossed her into the air and caught her with a war whoop.
Kathleen laughed as wildly as she’d been crying a moment before. It wound up in one of their yelling contests, only there were neighbours now and before long the lights came on in a nearby row of company houses and cries of protest, obscene and otherwise, were raised. James replied at the top of his lungs, “Shut up the lot of you and listen to this!”
And he had Kathleen sing:
“Quanto affetto! Quali cure!
che temete, padre mio?
Lassù in cielo presso Dio,
veglia un angiol protettor.
Da noi toglie le sventure
di mia madre il priego santo;
non fia mai divelto o franto
questo a voi diletto fior.”
That’s how James got a reputation as a drinker, although at that point he was a teetotaller.
The next day he stuck the straw head back onto the stake and jammed the hat on the head. There were no more nightmares.
What great love! What care!
What do you fear, my father?
In heaven above, with God,
I have a guardian angel.
We are protected from all misfortune
by the holy prayers of my mother.
This flower that you love so much
will never be uprooted or destroyed.
The Pit
Even though it was just an old cart, he painted it red with gold trim so she’d have something handsome to ride back and forth to school in. He did her initials in fancy gilt on the side and their joke was “Your carriage awaits without, ma’am.” It meant giving up some piano pupils, but he drove her the nine miles to Holy Angels every morning and he was there every afternoon when the big double doors opened and she came running down the steps to meet him. On Friday afternoons they’d linger in Sydney, wandering down to the yacht club wharf to look at the ships in the harbour.
“One day you’ll get on one of those liners, my darling, and go.”
She wanted him to come with her, of course, but he didn’t patronize her. “You’re going to sing for people all over the world. I won’t always be there, but I’ll always be your daddy.”
At which she would cry and he would take them for ice-cream at Crown Bakery, her eyelashes still wet but her eyes smiling once more. She never stayed sad for long. People stared wherever they went because she was beautiful, and the two of them were so obviously the best of friends.
James knew that someday he’d have to hand her over to professionals, send her far away, but for now…. There was a God. James consecrated his life to being a worthy caretaker of God’s gift. It was how he could endure teaching the offspring of the petty bourgeoisie to mangle “Für Elise.” I’ll do anything, he told God and himself. I’ll cut off my arm, I’ll sell the teeth in my head, I’ll enter the pit. I’ll allow my wife to get a job.