“Frances” — quivering lip, this is the worst thing Frances has ever said — “Mumma loved me, she wouldn’t hurt me.”
“You were a dark baby. You and Ambrose.”
“Frances, Daddy says —”
“He’s not your daddy.”
“He is so!”
“Shutup, Lily, or I won’t tell you anything.”
Whispering, “He is so!”
Frances gets up and heads for the door. “Never mind, Lily, ’cause obviously you don’t even want to know who your real father is.”
“Yes I do.”
Frances takes a long look at Lily, as though assessing her ability to withstand the truth. Then: “Your father is a black man from The Coke Ovens in Whitney Pier.”
Lily takes it in.
“Mumma tried to drown you ’cause you were dark.” Every time Frances tells the true story, the story gets a little truer.
“I saved you, Lily.”
Lily bites her lip. Frances’s lips have gone white-hard. Her throat is a white rope.
“From drownding?”
“Drowning, not drownding, stupid.”
Frances tosses the dolls onto the floor and begins to make the bed. Lily’s silky black eyebrows tremble. “Mumma killed Ambrose?”
“That’s right.” Suddenly offhand, an efficient plump of the pillow.
Lily starts to cry.
Frances points out reasonably, “She was afraid Daddy would kill her.”
“But he wouldn’t!” Lily sobs.
Frances watches for a moment. She always feels immensely relieved when Lily starts to cry. She sits beside Lily, puts an arm around her and strokes her sweet head. Dear Lily.
“It’s okay, Lily…. Daddy couldn’t ever hurt anyone.”
“Ever.”
“I won’t tell you any more, you’re too little.”
“I am not!” Lily pulls away, swatting the tears off her cheeks.
“Yes you are, Lily. You’re a sweet little girl.”
“Tell me, Frances! I’m big.”
“Little.”
“Big!”
“Tiny.”
“NO!”
“Oui.”
“TELL ME!” Lily bright red, fists pounding the bed.
Frances flops back on the pillow, hands folded behind her head, and casually sings, one foot resting on the other knee and bobbing time, “Mademoiselle from Armentières, pa-a-arlez-vous?” Lily starts tearing apart the freshly made bed. “Mademoiselle from Armentières, pa-a-arlez-vous?” — bedspread yanked out from under Frances — “Mademoiselle from Armentières” — strewn sheets, rosary attached with a safety-pin — “hasn’t been kissed in forty years” — Lily could pass out with rage — “inky-dinky parlez-vo-o-ous” — she whirls around the room, grabs a big book and tears off the spine. She rips up hunks of pages and throws them out the window. She whips the gutted binding down after them like a blown-off shingle, spins back on her sturdy leg, her steel brace propelling out to the side, and spots The Old-Fashioned Girl that plays “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”. It holds a yellow parasol. It lives on Mercedes’ dresser on a doily all its own. Lily grabs it.
“Tell me, Frances, or I’ll smash it.”
“I’m not telling you anything, you’re a maniac.”
Lily’s arm swings up, “Tell me.”
“No.”
Lily pauses — the enormity of the idea of throwing The Old-Fashioned Girl to the floor threatens to sink in so she simply lets the figurine drop. It hits the floor. The parasol and the head. Clink. Roll, roll, ruddle-ruddle. Lily looks in shock at what she’s done. Frances delivers the punchline.
“If you were doing all this to get back at me, you didn’t, all you did was wreck Mercedes’ precious things.”
Again. Oh no. Lily stands with parted lips and puckered forehead. Oh no, oh no, oh no.
“Okay, Lily. I’ll tell you” — Lily can’t remember what Frances is talking about — “but you have to swear.”
Lily just stands there.
“Don’t worry, Lily, we’ll clean it all up.”
“But some things are broken.”
“We’ll fix them, don’t worry. Swear.”
“I swear.”
“You have to swear on something.”
“Um … on Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley.”
This makes Lily feel teary because she imagines how she’d feel if someone came along and did to Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley what she has just done to The Old-Fashioned Girl. Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley with her head off. Little bits of grey material coming out. But Frances has other stakes in mind.
“Swear on your bootleg.”
“On my little leg.”
“May it be cut off if you speak of this again.”
Lily looks down at her legs: the strong right one, and the wispy left one. In its sincere beige wool stocking, which sags like empty skin within the steel harness; its high narrow shoe with the mild horse’s face, the iron bit clamped under the sole. Her heel is much better now, there’s just a scab from Armistice Day.
“Okay,” says Lily. Don’t worry, little leg, I’ll keep my vow.
“Okay. Well. Mumma went crazy from shame of what she did with the man from The Coke Ovens. Plus she was dying of a wound she got because Daddy had to cut you and Ambrose out of her stomach with his bayonet.” Make yourself cosy, now. “It was the middle of the night. Daddy left her sleeping and went to get the doctor. But she got up even though she was cut open.” Frances has slipped into the eerie voice of the stray-orange-cat story. It’s the voice she uses when she is telling the truth. “I was at my bedroom window wearing my tartan housecoat. I saw Mumma down in the creek. Ambrose was lying on the bottom. She was just about to do the same thing to you. But she looked up and she saw me watching her so she stopped. There was a bright bright moon and I just looked her in the eye like that till Daddy came and dragged her back to the house with you. Then she died.”
“Poor Mumma,” Lily weeps.
Frances blinks, finally. “Poor Mumma? She tried to kill you, you idiot, I’m the one who saved you.”
“Why didn’t you save Mumma?”
“No one could save Mumma.”
“You saved me.”
“Yes, you dunce, I saved you.”
“Thank you, Frances.” Lily hugs Frances. “Does Daddy know?”
“That I saved you? Yes.”
“Does he know he’s not my real daddy?”
“Yes, but you can never mention it, Lily, it would really hurt him. ’Cause even though you’re not his, he loves you more than the rest of us.”
“He loves you too, Frances.”
“Yes, but he loves you the most.”
“I want him to love you the most too.”
“It’s all right, Lily, it’s supposed to be this way.”
“I love you the most, Frances.”
“What about Daddy and Mercedes?”
“I love them the most too.”
“There’s no such thing as loving everyone the most.”
Mercedes spent the morning at New Waterford General Hospital. She read aloud to a veteran who had been gassed in the war, emptied bedpans, changed the water in vases and generally made herself useful. She’d have brought Lily, but Daddy wants to make sure Lily’s foot is completely healed before she ventures out. After the hospital, Mercedes went to Mount Carmel Church and helped the nuns polish the communion rail and dust the altar. She lit a candle, knelt at the base of the beautiful eight-foot Mary and said a few prayers for Mumma and Kathleen and Valentino and all the poor captive souls in purgatory.
Valentino died three years ago. The day she heard the impossible news it was all Mercedes could do to keep from running to Helen Frye’s house. She found the strength to forbear. It’s simple, really: just don’t move, and you won’t do anything you’ll regret later. Mercedes spent that day sitting, enervated, on the edge of her bed, staring at Valentino’s picture. When she got up, it was to replace his face in the frame with a poem she had come across in Reader’s Digest called “Don’t Whine”.