“Come on Trixie.”
Frances has to get Trixie undressed quickly, because if Daddy finds her like this again it will be into the creek with her.
“Trixie, please.”
Trixie vigorously licks her front paw and washes her face.
“Trixie, taa’i la hown, Habibti.”
Trixie looks up, then suffers herself to be hauled from the corner. Frances unties the bonnet. “You looked so pretty, Trixie.” And undoes the thousand buttons of the baptism gown. “Stay still, I’m almost—”
Trixie scratches the rest of the way out and bounds up the steps. Frances follows more quietly. When she reaches the top step, her lamp light splashes across Daddy’s shoes. Trixie is long gone, thank goodness; she’ll be back in two or three days.
James waits until Frances has washed and hung up the gown and bonnet.
Upstairs, Mercedes finishes the rosary. Even as she screamed, her mind had already identified what she had seen, but it had to wait for her body to catch up. The apparition explained, however, is not expunged. It was a demonic vision whatever the earthly agency. God works in mysterious ways, but the Devil’s ways are even more arcane and often spiced with the absurd. Some would say funny. Mercedes would not. Funny is a fat lady playing the ukelele. Funny is a man dressed up as woman in a Gilbert and Sullivan musical. Funny is not a crippled black cat got up like a devil baby in the family christening gear at midnight. Frances is a vessel. Like that morning before Mumma died and Mercedes and Frances both had coal smudges on their foreheads and Frances said she was visited by a “dark lady” in the night. Please, dear Mother of God, hear my prayer and accept the offering of thy holy rosary for the preservation of the soul of my sister Frances, amen.
No sooner is Mercedes back in bed than the light slices on again and she squints up to see Frances’s head bobbing and lurching, he’s got her by the back of the neck, Punch and Judy.
“Now apologize to your sister.”
Mercedes looks away. She can’t stand it when Frances grins with a bloody lip.
Later, when all is calm, Mercedes slips into the room overlooking the creek. She crawls into bed and spoons around Frances’s chill back and encircles her thin waist. On the other side, Lily feigns sleep. All the sisters tucked up in one bed — this wonderful thing only ever happens these days on sad occasions. Frances has had another talking-to from Daddy, Lily knows that.
Mercedes feels ease. This is as close as she gets to a state of grace, curious as she knows this to be. It’s a mystery. To experience the gift of peace with your bad sister in your arms. Nothing can get you now, Frances, te’berini.
Mercedes casts a net of thought prayers over Frances’s sleeping form, lighter than air, than gossamer wings, finer than the finest silk to keep my little sister safe. Hush baby, sleep, thy mother tends the sheep….
The Family Tree
Three and a half weeks later, Mercedes has unearthed another fossil. It was beached beneath a quarter-inch of dust on a forgotten page of a crumbling chapel registry. Another name. Perfectly preserved in its desert grave, waiting to be exhumed and grafted onto Mercedes’ family tree; granted eternal still life in a meaningful context.
Late at night when all is blessedly quiet, when she’s got a moment to herself alone, she sits at her desk, straightens her spine and begins to unscroll the family tree. She squints as though against a sudden light — it’s … unscroll a little more … what is it? A riot of golds and greens and ruby-reds swirls and ululates across the page, what is it? … scroll it slowly open all the way and … where there was once a sober grid etched in ink with loving and dispassionate care, there is now a swaying, drunken growth, a what, a tree! A tree. Yes, she can see that now, it is in fact a tree.
Coloured in with crayons. Every ancient name has been obliterated by a shiny red apple, each right angle beguiled into a serpent twist of bark; each vertical stroke has evolved into a leafy stem bearing fruit. The largest apples strain the lower boughs all in a line. These are the only apples with names, printed in an awkward childish hand: “Daddy,” “Mumma,” “Kathleen,” “Mercedes,” “Frances,” “Other Lily,” and “Lily”. The Mumma and Kathleen apples have little golden wings and the Other Lily one has silver wings. Trixie’s black face and yellow eyes peek out from a high branch amid emerald leaves. Meanwhile, at the base of the trunk, grass sprouts on the surface of the earth and a little blue creek flows by all innocent of the continued drama below, for a cross-section of the earth reveals tree roots thrusting down and branching out into the surrounding soil studded with glistening chunks of coal and worked by a sightless army of worms. And there, nestled among the pale subterranean branches, is a golden chest encrusted with diamonds. Buried treasure.
Mercedes’ tears fall and bead on the shiny wax colours of the new revised edition of the family tree. She has never cried so bitterly or so quietly in all her life.
People have been known to go grey or snow-white overnight due to a fright or a sudden loss of all joy. But Mercedes’ hair simply fades. Frances sees it happen. She was thinking of sneaking out of the house when she passed Mercedes’ door and saw her light.
“Mercedes? … Are you awake?”
Mercedes is slumped over the desk, perfectly still. Has she died? Turned to stone? To salt? “Mercedes?” Frances approaches, leans down and looks. Golly Moses. How long has she been like this? Her gaped-back mouth all tight and wrinkled at the corners, her eyes crunched and seeping, perfectly still. Frances touches Mercedes’ shoulder and Mercedes takes a big gulp of air, emerging from her silent picture to cry in a real-life way.
“What’s wrong? Mercedes, what is it, what happened?”
Mercedes speaks from the back of her throat: “I hate her. I hate her so much. I wish I could kill her. I wish it weren’t a sin, I wish she were dead, I wish she had died, I hate her, hate her.”
Frances understands Mercedes and so does not embrace her but lightly strokes her newly pale braids. What on earth is Mercedes going on about?
“She wrecked everything,” says Mercedes, “everyone was happy before she came along, everyone died, everything went wrong when she was born, she’s spoiled rotten and I’m going to have to look after her for the rest of her life because she’s a cripple, oh God I hate my life, I hate my life.”
Mercedes sobs. Frances comforts her the way you would a dear and delicate moth, if moths could be comforted.
“Shshsh. Shshsh, it’s okay now. It’s all right now.”
“What’s wrong with Mercedes?” Reverent, worried, Lily asks from the door. How long has she been standing there? How much did she hear? Frances answers gently without missing a beat,
“She had a bad dream, Lily. Go back to bed.”
Mercedes doesn’t acknowledge Lily’s presence. She just goes on crying. Lily retreats. Frances looks down at the brilliant scroll.
In bed, under the covers, there is a small unearthly glow. It emanates from a tiny grotto formed by sheets held up by Lily’s knee. The source of the glow is the Virgin Mary. She is made of white phosphorescent Bakelite and towers four inches above a tin sedan in which Lily, Frances and Mercedes have lost their way in the middle of the night out in the country. They saw a glow in the distance a little way off the road, in a farmer’s field. And there she was. Our Lady. Everywhere there is the smell of lily of the valley. They must be right in the middle of a field of it but it’s too dark to tell. Either that or the lovely smell is coming from her. The Blessed Virgin has a message for each of the sisters that they must never reveal. Not even to one another. Lily’s message is this: Her leg will never heal. It will never be like the other one. She will always have one boot-leg and one good leg. There is a reason for this. Our Lady does not say what it is. “Now get back into your car and love one another.”