James gets her wrists in a vise grip. His other hand clamps across her mouth. Her eyes roll back. James tells her, “Who’s the killer eh?! Who’s the killer?! God damn you, God damn you, damn you —” He begins to punctuate the curses by slowly slamming her head into the wall. Her eyes are trying to reason with him, but without the help of words her eyes become a horse’s eyes, as mute, as panicked. His tears are flowing now. His lips tripping on salt and snot, his nose bleeding, he’s retching out the most agonizing man-sobs, the wall is starting to conform to her skull. This time, however, he hears the tiny cries from inside. Like kittens. He picks up Materia and carries her three flights down to the coal cellar and locks her in. Then he goes for a walk. And many fast drinks, of course. Some of us are just not equipped for suicide. When we’re at the bottom, suicide is too creative an act to initiate.
Which leaves little Frances. At the bottom of the attic stairs. Based on her upbringing, and from what she has heard and seen tonight, one thing is clear: the babies up there must be baptized. But she has to be careful. She has to hurry. She mustn’t get caught. She stands at the bottom looking up.
The attic room has been a place of absolute peace and quiet for the past many months. Until tonight. Her oldest sister has lain up there not saying anything. Frances and Mercedes have been allowed in to read to her and to bring her trays of food. They have read Black Beauty, Treasure Island, Bleak House, Jane Eyre, What Katy Did, Little Women and every story in The Children’s Treasury of Saints and Martyrs. The two of them decided to look up the hard words next time around, rather than break up the reading aloud. They also got their mother to search out recipes for the invalid food found in What Katy Did and Little Women. “Blancmange” seems to be the favourite of languishing girls. They never do find out what it is. “White eat.” What would that taste like?
Frances knew Kathleen must be very ill because of the huge lump in her stomach. Mercedes told her it was a tumour. “We must pray for her.” Together Frances and Mercedes have prayed for Kathleen. They have made a little shrine and given up sweets for as long as it takes her to get well.
So here’s Frances at the bottom of the narrow attic staircase. She is almost six. She is not afraid of the dark. Besides, there’s a little light coming from that room. And she’s not alone. Her big sister, Kathleen, is up there. And so are the babies. The babies, which sound exactly like kittens. Frances is very fond of kittens. She’s in her bare feet. She’s got her white nightgown on and her hair is in two long french braids. She gets to the landing. She’s too small to be on eye level with the new depression in the wall; just as well. But what does it matter, she saw how it got there, and now the child is entering the room and she’s going to see everything. She’s stepping over the splintered caved-in door with her bare feet.
The difference between Frances and James is that, although she sees a version of the same horrible picture, Frances is young enough still to be under the greater influence of the cave mind. It will never forget. But it steals the picture from her voluntary mind — grand theft art — and stows it, canvas side to the cave wall. It has decided, “If we are to continue functioning, we can’t have this picture lying around.” So Frances sees her sister and, unlike her father, will forget almost immediately, but, like her father, will not get over it.
What Frances sees: the gore. The pictures over the bed. The scissors. And the babies, squirming slightly and mewing between Kathleen’s legs, where they have been wedged for safe-keeping until the priest can be dug up. So … the secret contents of Kathleen’s tumour, revealed; this gets filed under “Normal” in Frances’s mind.
Frances devises a way of carrying both babies: she spreads the front of her white nightie on the bed and places the slippery babies on it. She folds them into the fabric, making a cosy bundle. She cradles her bundle of babies and walks carefully all the way down two flights of stairs with her underpants showing, through the kitchen, out the back door, across the pitch-dark coal clinkers in the back yard, until she comes to the bank of the creek. There is one scary thing: the scarecrow in the centre of the garden on the other side of the creek. If toys come alive at midnight, what happens to scarecrows? Frances avoids looking at it. “It’s just a thing.” But she doesn’t want to offend it. She lovingly empties the tiny children onto the grass. It’s a nice warm evening.
Frances regrets that she didn’t think to rifle the hope chest for the white lace gown and bonnet — the outfit that she, Mercedes and Kathleen were all baptized in. Too late now, there’s no time, I have to get this done before Daddy comes home.
Frances loves her little niece and nephew already. There is nothing she would not do to make sure their souls are safe. She knows that otherwise they die with Original Sin on them and go to that non-place, Limbo, and become no one for all eternity. Frances has never been up close at a baptism, but she’s heard the priest mumble, barely moving his lips, she’s seen him dip the baby’s head into the water. The priest is praying, that’s for certain, so Frances must pray too. Hurry Frances. Frances makes the sign of the cross, In nomine padre…. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. She looks at the wee babies in the skimpy moonlight; “Ladies first.” She picks up the girl baby, and shimmies on her bum down the embankment to the creek. She wades to the centre. The water is waist-deep. On wee Frances, that is. Her nightgown puffs and floats on the surface before taking on water and silting down around her legs. She makes the sign of the cross with her thumb on the baby’s forehead.
Now’s the part where you pray. Frances takes a stab at it: “Dear God, please baptize this baby.” And then her favourite prayer from bedtime, “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light, to guard, to rule and guide. Amen.” Now’s the part where you dip the head in the water. Frances tips the baby carefully towards the water. The little thing is still slick and slips through her hands and sinks. Oh no. Quick! Hen, rooster, chicken, duck! Frances plunges down, grabs the baby before it hits the bottom, then breaks the surface clutching it to her body. It’s okay. Frances’s little heart is beating like a bird in the jaws of a cat, she catches her breath, the baby lets out a tiny holler and the sweetest little sputtering coughs. It’s okay, it just swallowed a bit of water, it’s okay. It’s okay. Frances rocks it gently and sings to it a small song composed then and there, “Baby, baby … baby, baby … baby baby.” There. At least it’s nice and clean now.
Frances crawls up the bank again, lays the girl baby down on the grass, kisses her little hands and head and picks up the boy. She knows that you have to be extra careful with new babies because their heads aren’t closed yet. Like a ditch or something along the top of their skulls. It’s called a “soft spot” even though it’s in the shape of a line. You can see it stretching along beneath the layer of bluish skin that’s draped across it. Frances didn’t see it on the girl baby’s head because the girl baby has a weirdly dense thatch of black hair. But there it is on the boy baby’s feathery pate: a shallow trench dividing his head in half. Frances enters once more the waters of the creek and lightly traces the pale blue fault line in the infant’s skull. What if someone just came along and poked their fingers in there, what would happen? He would die. Frances squirms at the thought that just anyone could come along and do that. What if her fingers just went ahead and did that? Oh no, hurry, you have to get him baptized before it’s too late. Before Daddy comes home, or before anyone’s fingers can press in his head.