The children are in bed. Teresa has just arrived with Hector, who holds out a date loaf for Adelaide with his big drooly smile.
“Thank you, baby!”
“Where’s your man, Addy?” Teresa asks.
“Out New Waterford telling Piper he’s quit.”
“What’s he quit for?”
“Sit’ll I pour us some tea.”
Thank God for tea, thank God for Teresa who I can talk to. Hector nods in his wheelchair while Adelaide tells Teresa the whole Frances story and finishes up with “I said to’m don’t go out there, but he told me it’s ‘unmanly’ not to look a feller in the eye when you’re quitting him after all these years.” She takes a sip of tea. “At least it’s all over and done with.”
Teresa hasn’t said a word.
“Trese?”
“Yes dear, she’s crazy, they’re all right nuts.” But Teresa is distracted and she gets up. “I just want to look at Carvery before I go.”
Teresa loves to look at Carvery asleep. He looks like Ginger did when he was a baby and Teresa used to look after him. When she married Hector, she wanted to have a baby as sweet as Ginger. Carvery has inherited his father’s nature too. Sound asleep in his tiny sun moon and stars shirt. Sweet, sweet baby boy.
“Aunt Teresa?” It’s Evan whispering.
“Yes darlin?”
“Sticky Leary snuck in the cloakroom and stole my lunch today, he called it nigger food.”
“What did he do with it?”
“He said he threw it away but I saw him eat it.”
“He was hungry.”
“Mumma said I should beat the can off him. Do you think I should?”
“I think he doesn’t have enough to eat.”
“Why doesn’t he just ask for some without calling me dirty names?”
“He’s ashamed so he tries to make you ashamed.”
“I’m not ashamed of anything. I should just beat the holy crap out of him, eh, Auntie?”
“If you want to do the real Christian thing, you put half your lunch in his pocket every day without letting anyone see. And the rest of the time you forget about him and concentrate on getting where you’re going. You’re big and strong. You can beat any boy your age, but you start with that and the game in the schoolyard’s going to be ‘who can beat Evan?’ Then the older boys will get after you and when the teachers come out you’ll be the one gets blamed. You want to be a boxer when you grow up?”
“No, I want to be a veterinarian.”
“Then forget fighting and concentrate on schooling and you’ll beat the lot of them, ’cause, sweetheart, most of them are going nowhere but underground.”
“Or the steel plant.”
“That’s right.”
Teresa comes back downstairs. “I told Evan not to fight, he asked me.”
“Good, I told him to ask you.” Adelaide believes that all children should have enough grown-ups around who love them so that one can tell them to fight, one can tell them not to and one can tell them not to worry so much.
Teresa leaves with Hector. It’s early, they didn’t even play cards. Adelaide stands in the open doorway and watches them go. Talk of anything to do with even an offshoot of Mahmoud must still upset Teresa. I’ll have to think of something nice to do for Trese. I’ll make her a shawl. It’s hard, though, because Teresa wants always to give. It embarrasses her to get.
Teresa pushes Hector home down the alley so as to be totally alone. She is in shock about it being Frances Piper. Mahmoud’s disowned granddaughter. The thin-faced goblin with the unkempt curls and Mrs Mahmoud’s rings. She somehow slithered into the house — she’s small enough — and stole out of revenge in broad daylight. She stole my job. My good name. My brother’s good name. She stole food from his table. And now she’s after stealing him.
Teresa couldn’t tell Adelaide about the jewels just now. To add it up with the Ginger story, out loud with her best friend? No. That would be to have all the bitterness poured into one cup so you could see just how much you had to drink. It makes Teresa dizzy to contemplate it, she will lose her mind with anger — Oh Jesus, sweet Lord, please don’t let me hate. Look after the cruel and the crazy people, and let me look after my family, amen.
Even as she prays, Teresa makes a sickening realization. Frances recognized her that night in the alley with Adelaide. That means she’s been watching me. During the day in Mahmoud’s house when I thought I was alone. The girl who laughed at her mother’s funeral. Teresa shivers. And she was watching while I danced and sang my mother’s song.
The thief you must fear the most, is not the one who steals mere things.
Ginger’s not home yet. Eleven o’clock. Adelaide is uncharacteristically lying to herself. “He stopped at Beel’s for a game of cards, he got a flat, he decided to do one more run for Piper at twice the price, I’ll hear in a minute.” She must be really scared to be doing this when what she knows is “She’s got him.” After the lying phase is the pissed-off phase, “Foolish, head-up-his-arse eejit, he can pack and shack up with the honky slut from hell,” when what she knows is “She’s sick, she’s dangerous, she’s with him now.”
At six o’clock that evening, Jameel and Boutros arrived at the place in the woods where Piper makes the moonshine and cuts the liquor.
“Fuckin nigger up and quit,” says Jameel, getting out on the passenger side.
James despises people who say “nigger”. A civilized man need not resort to bar-room slang for emphasis.
“Plenty where he came from,” is all James has to say as he hands barrel after case to Jameel and Jameel hands them to Boutros and Boutros slings them into the back of the brand-new black 8-cylinder Kissel Brougham where the seats have been removed and curtains put up.
James looks at Jameel as little as possible. He regrets that his line of work necessitates contact with someone like this. Short black whiskers against a yellowish complexion, oily jet hair and the fusty smell of fried bread. James despises Jameel with his “nigger this” and “nigger that” because it’s obvious to him that Jameel is shit-scared of being seen as coloured. A man who wears his fear on his sleeve is a fool. Besides, thinks James, while Jameel is not black, he sure as hell is coloured, ’cause he sure as hell’s not white. James is grateful that all his girls turned out so fair. But there’s obviously a morbid tendency in the blood they inherited from Materia that made Kathleen lean towards colour. James has taken delivery of another crate of books. He has dipped into Dr Freud in an effort to discover where to lay the blame for Kathleen’s perversity. Freud calls women “the dark continent”. James couldn’t agree more. He doesn’t hate blacks, he just doesn’t want them near his bloodline.
“You’re going to have to do it in three or four runs,” says James, counting the money.
“Look Jimmy, we should buy our own truck and get one of my boys driving.” James lets Jameel call him “Jimmy” because it is better than having Jameel’s greasy mouth on “James”. Also, when you let someone call you by not-your-real-name, you are reminded every time he says it of what a foolish arse he is.
“I don’t take partners, Jameel, you buy it, I’ll hire it.”
The back of the car is full and now Boutros closes the brimming trunk. James can see Materia in that boy. The same vacancy — standing there staring at me like he’s going to say something, then doesn’t. Nothing to say, that’s why, not a thought in his head. Creeping idiocy in that family, that’s another thing.