“What’s a viaticum?”
“It’s a holy word for clean underwear.”
“Can I see the book now Frances?”
Lily reaches, but Frances pulls the book away and explains, “When you’re about to die and the priest comes and gives you extreme unction, he takes a set of clean underwear out of your drawer and blesses them. Then he puts them on you. Or if it’s an emergency and there’s no priest, anyone can bless the clean underwear. That’s where Fruit of the Loom underwear comes from, it comes from the Hail Mary when you say, “Blessed is the fruit of thy loom, Jesus.”
“Did I get clean underwear that time when I almost died when I was a baby?”
“Yup.”
“Blessed by Father Nicholson?”
“No, by me — Lily, look!” Frances has just noticed the name on the title page of My Gift to Jesus. “This book was written by a nun called Sister Mary Ambrose!”
Lily gasps obligingly, “Does she know our brother?”
“It could be a message to us from Ambrose himself.”
Lily gazes in wonder at the title page while Frances deduces.
“Ambrose is working through that nun, and he also made Mercedes buy this book and give it to you so you’d know he’s watching over you.”
They look at one another, united by the discovery.
“Does he always see me?” asks Lily.
“Yes.”
“When I’m bad?”
“Yup.”
“Is he going to tell God?”
“God knows everything anyhow.”
“Oh yes.” This had momentarily slipped Lily’s mind.
“Ambrose sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake.”
“Like Santa Claus.”
“That’s blasphemous, Lily.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t tell me, tell God.”
Lily folds her hands, squeezes her eyes shut and whispers, “Sorry dear God,” following it up with a rapid sign of the cross. Making the sign of the cross after a prayer is as essential as putting a stamp on a letter. Otherwise your message isn’t going anywhere but prayer limbo.
“Frances, you know what? God is really Santa Claus and Santa Claus is really God.”
“No he isn’t, Lily.”
“But God gives us gifts and knows everything and so does Santa.”
“Yeah, but Santa Claus doesn’t give people leprosy and earthquakes, stupid, he doesn’t give them the Titanic sinking or people getting their legs chopped off!”
Frances turns her attention back to the book and ignores Lily.
“Frances?”
No response.
“Frances?”
“What!” Slapping down the prayer-book.
“Is Ambrose going to bring me presents?”
“A lump of coal if you’re bad.”
“But what if I’m good?”
“Ambrose doesn’t really care if you’re bad or good, Lily.”
“Oh.”
“He just cares if you’re okay. If you’re happy.”
“How come?”
“Because he loves you.”
Frances looks straight at Lily. Lily puts on her most seriously attentive face.
“Don’t you know who Ambrose is, Lily?”
“He’s our wee baby brother who died.”
“He’s your guardian angel.”
Lily’s forehead puckers. “Everyone has a guardian angel, don’t they, Frances?”
“Yes, but most people don’t know who theirs is. You’re lucky. You know who yours is. And that he’s your very own brother, and he’s watching over you. And he loves you. He really loves you, Lily.”
“Don’t cry, Frances.”
“I’m not crying.”
“Yes you are.”
Frances wipes her eyes. Her throat constricts. Yes, she’s crying. Why? She didn’t feel sad until she started crying.
“Frances? … Frances, let’s go up and look in the hope chest.”
But Frances is crying.
“Frances, do you want to give Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley a bath? You can. I’ll let you give her a bath if you want…. Do you want to wear my brace? You can, I’ll let you.”
Frances has dropped My Gift to Jesus. Lily picks it up and reads silently, poring over the bright pictures. When Frances feels better, Lily will ask her what INRI means. It’s the thing written on the scroll that’s always nailed at the top of Jesus’s cross. INRI.
I’ll ask Frances, thinks Lily. Frances will know.
Late that afternoon, Mercedes comes home crying too, but for a different reason. In the car she told Daddy it was because she and Helen had been talking about all the poor children in the hospital. James simply nodded. Mrs Luvovitz has informed him that girls of this age are likely to become emotional. The last thing one ought to do is tell them not to cry. He watched Mercedes get safely into the house, then he turned the car around and headed back downtown, having forgotten to drop by the post office.
Mercedes tiptoes up to her room and closes the door quietly. She doesn’t want to have to see anyone or explain anything. She lies face down and weeps into her pillow. Today a miner called Mr Davis was shot dead. There was a riot at the power plant out on Waterford Lake. The miners went there to flush out the company police and turn the water and lights back on for the town. The miners had sticks and stones and cinders. The police had guns and horses, but the miners won. Except that some got shot and poor Mr Davis who wasn’t even in the fight was killed. He was on his way home with milk for his youngest, they found a baby bottle in his pocket. Now there are seven more fatherless children in New Waterford.
But that’s not why Mercedes is crying. This afternoon, Helen Frye’s daddy came home with a bullet in his wrist. While Mrs Frye took the bullet out, Mr Frye took a long drink from a medicine bottle and told Mercedes that he was “most regretful, because I know you’re a nice girl, Mercedes. But I only have the one child, see, and I can’t have her associating with the Pipers.”
Mercedes’ eyes filled up and her face felt scalded. She felt mortified, as though someone had caught her in a shameful private act, but she could not think of anything she had done wrong. Mrs Frye just continued digging in Mr Frye’s wrist, while he turned white but didn’t flinch and spoke in a kindly voice, words that cut Mercedes apart. He said Mercedes’ father was a bad man. A bootlegger. A scab. An enemy of this town. Then Helen was told to go upstairs and Mercedes was asked to wait in the front room until her father came to pick her up in his automobile.
Now Mercedes curls onto her side and catches sight of Valentino perched in his frame on her dresser next to the china figurine of The Old-Fashioned Girl. Valentino invites fresh tears but they are tears of consolation. At least I still have you, my love. And The Old-Fashioned Girl reminds her how nice her daddy is. He is, he is a kind good man. And if — if — Daddy is forced to do certain things, it is only because he loves us so much and we don’t have a mother to look after us. Fresh tears. Mercedes can hear Mumma singing, and this is too much. She covers her head with the pillow and forces the sound from her mind. She banishes the memory and focuses on what is important: my family. Helping my father, who is a good good man; who looks after his crippled daughter all day long. If Mr Frye and everyone else could see Daddy with Lily, then they’d know.
Mercedes has grown calmer and her eyes drift now to the picture of Bernadette in the grotto with Our Lady of Lourdes. Bernadette has been beatified. Someday she will be a saint. They dug her up and she was sweet as a rose — that’s the odour of sanctity. She was a little crippled girl too. Maybe people hated her father as well.