Back in her room, Mercedes is finishing Jane Eyre again. She was thankful when Frances returned her favourite volume apparently unscathed. Now, with that mixture of satisfaction and regret with which one comes to the end of a beloved book, Mercedes turns the last page only to find Frances’s unmistakeable scrawl on the flyleaf. It is an epilogue, wherein Mr Rochester’s hand, severed and lost in the fire, comes back to life and strangles their infant child.
Mercedes closes the book and merely sighs. She is past weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is abundantly clear that her two sisters are working their way through everything that is of the slightest value to her and ruining it. Mercedes is resigned. For now. Someday she will marry someone wonderful. Perhaps not Valentino. But wonderful nonetheless. She will have her own family and they will be civilized. Frances will be allowed to live with them, but it will be Mercedes’ castle. And her husband’s too, of course. But not yet. Daddy needs her. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee….
“If you were a fish, how come you couldn’t breathe?”
Frances hasn’t touched her milk. It’s on the bedside table wearing a wrinkled skin.
“I was drownding.”
“Fish don’t drown.”
“You were in it, Frances.”
“In the creek?”
“You were little.”
“… I know.”
“What were you holding?”
“Nothing…. I don’t remember. Go to sleep. It was just a dream.”
Lily’s hand glows red around the Bakelite Virgin — conductive scarlet threads beneath the line of life, of fate, heart and mind, her palm bleeding light.
Later that night Frances is awakened by a weight on her chest. She opens her eyes and looks into Trixie’s intent face staring into her own at a range of about an inch. Trixie’s black paw hovers white-tipped and frozen in mid air. A wizened slimy strand of something like the throw-uppy bit of a raw egg dangles from the corner of Trixie’s mouth. Frances blinks and Trixie turns back to the glass of tepid milk on the bedside table, ignoring Frances, wiping her milky face, dipping and drinking.
The first time Ambrose comes to Lily he is naked except for the decomposing bits of Frances’s old white nightgown in which he was laid to rest. The shreds cling to him here and there, fluttering slightly because there’s a bit of a breeze when Ambrose arrives. Safe and soundless in his garden womb, he has not been dreaming because he has not been asleep. He has been growing. His body is streaked with earth and coal but otherwise he is pale as a root. Although he is exactly the same age as Lily, he is full-grown like a man whereas she is still a little girl. This is because their environments have been so different. What colour is his wispy angel hair beneath the dirt and soot? Reddish. He is standing at the foot of the bed. Frances is asleep. Lily is somewhere in between. She must be; to see such a thing, and not scream? To see such a thing and know it can’t quite be a dream, because there is the foot of my bed; there is my sister sleeping; there is my rag doll; and here is Trixie curled between us with one eye open. And there is Ambrose. Although Lily does not yet recognize her twin.
“Who are you?”
Has she spoken this? She must have because the man who is looking at her from the foot of her bed opens his lips to reply. And as he does so, water gushes from his mouth and splashes to the floor. Now she screams. Now she is “awake” — back in a state which is a definite place on a map. Here is the place called Awake. On the other side of this line is the country of Asleep. And you see this shaded area in between? Don’t linger there. It is No Man’s Land.
Lily is safely back in Awake and expects to see Frances’s exasperated face looming over hers. She expects the overhead light to snap on for the second time and for Daddy to pick her up again and wonder how she could possibly have two nightmares in one night. But there is no light, and Frances is still asleep. Lily did not scream after all. Although the sound of her cry was enough to wake her up, it was apparently no more than a whimper, because the house around her is still breathing regularly, expanding and contracting, dreaming. And see? There is no man at the foot of the bed. There’s no water on the floor as there would be had he truly been here.
Lily doesn’t tell anyone about this dream because it is too scary to tell. Even though the dream of Frances in the creek with the dark bundle and the bright blue fish caused Lily to cry out and wake the whole house, the dream of the Water-Man from which she awoke with a whimper was much more frightening.
A Child’s Prayer for a Happy Death
O Lord, my God, even now I accept from Thy hand the kind of death it may please Thee to send me with all its sorrows, pains and anguish.
O Jesus, I offer Thee from this moment my agony and all the pains of my death….
O Mary, conceived without stain, pray for us who fly to thee! Refuge of sinners, Mother of those who are in their agony, leave us not in the hour of our death, but obtain for us perfect sorrow, sincere contrition, remission of our sins, a worthy reception of the most holy Viaticum and the strengthening of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. Amen.
BY SISTER MARY AMBROSE, O. P.
“Prayer for a Happy Death” is from a children’s paperback called My Gift to Jesus. The prayer is the last one in the book — which makes sense. The book was a gift from Mercedes to Lily for no reason. About twenty minutes ago Mercedes came in and said, “Here, Lily, here’s a little gift for you for no reason in particular.” Then Mercedes went to Helen Frye’s house.
It’s a hot sunny day and Frances and Lily should be down at the shore — Lily in the old English pram and Frances pushing it on the run, careering over rocks and pebbles, splashing through foam, both of them screaming with terror and joy. But instead they are dressed up in togas and turbans from the linen closet, confined to the house because Daddy says it’s not safe to play outside. In fact he has driven Mercedes over to Helen Frye’s house on Ninth Street and he plans to drive her home again too. The miners’ strike has dragged into June and turned ugly.
Special company constables have been on the rampage: drunken goons on horseback wielding sticks and guns, knocking people down in the street — women, children, it makes no difference. The bosses are now a monopoly called the British Empire Coal and Steel Company, “Besco”. This time, not only have they cut off credit at the company stores, they’ve cut off New Waterford’s water and electricity. For the past week, sweating bucket brigades have stretched from the few wells to houses throughout town. At New Waterford General Hospital children lie parched amidst a new outbreak of all the old diseases with the pretty names.
People can’t haul buckets indefinitely with so little to eat to keep up their strength. And the resumption of the almost daily sight of small white coffins has convinced many that their last drop of strength might be better spent hammering the guilty parties.
Once James dropped Mercedes off, he drove to Sydney to buy bottled water and kerosene with strict instructions to the girls to “keep inside”. Apart from missing out on the sunny days, the girls haven’t minded so much. It’s been fun using only lamps and candles again, “like in the olden days”. Frances would venture out on her own, but Lily is so worried by this prospect that she has already sworn to tattle if Frances risks it.
Having tired of playing “Arabian Nights,” Lily and Frances are now poring over My Gift To Jesus. Like her sisters before her, Lily is already a good reader. But she hasn’t had a chance to read the little book herself because Frances grabbed it, turned to the last page — as is her habit with all books — and read it aloud. Lily has understood everything in the happy-death prayer except for one word.