Fall on Your Knees (5 page)

Materia went upstairs to the attic. She knelt down, opened the hope chest and inhaled deeply. James thought Materia hadn’t filled the hope chest because she had nothing to put in it. But she kept it empty on purpose, so that nothing could come between her and the magical smell that beckoned her into memory. Cedar. She hung her head into the empty chest and allowed its gentle breath to lift and bear her away … baked earth and irrigated olive groves; the rippling veil of the Mediterranean, her grandfather’s silk farm; the dark elixir of her language, her mother’s hands stuck with parsley and cinnamon, her mother’s hands stroking her forehead, braiding her hair … her mother’s hands. The smell of the hope chest. The Cedars of Lebanon. She stopped crying, and fell asleep.

The Jewish Lady

Mrs Luvovitz had seen the pregnant woman sitting on the cliff’s edge. Like a fixture warning ships, or luring them. People around here believed in kelpies. Mrs Luvovitz’s imagination had been infected. What could you expect with so many Catholics? They saw omens in everything. Where Mrs Luvovitz came from they called them
golems
.

Maybe there’s something wrong with the woman, thought Mrs Luvovitz, maybe she’s simple. Because when Mrs Luvovitz had passed by on the Shore Road to Sydney with her cartload of eggs the other day, she had heard the woman singing what sounded like nonsense words. A poor simple-minded woman from down north in the hills perhaps. They marry their cousins once too often. But as yet Mrs Luvovitz had never seen the woman’s face, for she always wore a plaid kerchief that had the effect of blinkers.

Mrs Luvovitz had asked her husband, Benny, if he’d seen the pregnant woman, but he never had.

“Mr Luvovitz, you must have.”

“I haven’t, Mrs Luvovitz.”

“She’s there every day.”

“Maybe she’s a ghost.”

“Get out, Ben.”

Benny laughed. He knew her weakness.

Mrs Luvovitz had resolved to speak to the woman next time, because by now she was beginning to suspect she’d been all too Celtified. She needed to satisfy herself that the woman was human and not an omen. If an omen, it was important to determine certain things: “When do I usually see her? In the morning? Or evening?” A forerunner seen in the morning meant death was still a ways off. Seen in the evening, it meant get ready. A child meant the death of an innocent.

On this day, Mrs Luvovitz was driving the Shore Road from Sydney as usual, having sold all her eggs. — “A dozen Jewish eggs, please.” — She could hardly keep up. Likewise Benny, who delivered meat in his ice-box wagon.

“Hello,” said Mrs Luvovitz, pulling up her horse.

The bright kerchief fluttered in the sea breeze; it was a nice day but that could mean anything.

“Hello there,” Mrs Luvovitz repeated.

“Hello, hello!” cried little Abe beside her.

The plaid kerchief turned and Mrs Luvovitz said to herself,
“Gott in Himmel!”
A pregnant child. A dark little thing, too, she must be from away. Or from Indian Brook maybe. Mrs Luvovitz forgot all about ghosts and
golems
. “Where are you from, dear, who’s your mother?” — falling into the local formula.

“I haven’t got a mother.”

“Get in the cart, girl.”

It was surprising to find out that the child belonged to that big new white house across the way. Mrs Luvovitz had never seen her come or go, just appear, as it were, on the cliff.

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen and three-quarters.”

Ay-yay-yay, and married to that young fella. It was illegal, of course. Where did he get her? — a child bride. From overseas somewhere, was she Eyetalian? A Gypsy? What was the accent? Mrs Luvovitz made tea and entertained these and other questions. All would be revealed, she’d see to that, but first, tea. Where she came from and where she lived now, tea meant a spread. She placed a plate of cookies before Materia, who said, “What’s that?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s that’, that’s
ruggalech
.”

Materia took a bite of the folded-over cookie. It tasted strange and familiar all at once, cinnamon and raisins.

“It’s good,” said Materia.

“Of course it’s good.”

Materia turned her attention to little Abe, playing peekaboo.

“Where’s your family, Mrs Piper?”

“I haven’t got one — you can call me Materia.”

“What’s your maiden name?”

“Mahmoud.”

For God’s sake, everyone knows the Mahmouds.

“Ibrahim?”

“That was my father.”

“And Giselle.”

Materia nodded.

Mrs Luvovitz remembered when the Mahmouds used to sell from a donkey, hampers swaying on each side. Hard-working people, they did what we all hope to do. Now there’s the big dry-goods store in Sydney.

“So what are you saying, ‘You haven’t got a family’? You’ve got a family, they’re your family.”

Materia shook her head. “I don’t belong to them any more.”

“Why not?”

“I’m dead.”

“You’re dead? You’re not dead, what kind of crazy nonsense is that, ‘I’m dead’?”

“It’s a custom —”

“I know from the custom.”

Sitting
shiva
for your own flesh and blood while they’re alive and well, such a custom is better left in the Old Country. “Drink your tea, Mrs Piper.”

“You can call me —”

“And eat. You’re eating for two, eat.”

Mrs Luvovitz taught Mrs Piper to cook.

“What’s this?” asked James.

“Chicken soup with matzo balls.”

He looked at the bland sponge floating in broth. Broke off a fragment with his spoon, ate it. After all, not so different from a tea bisquit dunked in soup. “This some kind of Ayrab delicacy?”

“Jewish.”

They weren’t the first people he would have picked as friends for his wife but, after all, it wasn’t as though they were sacrificing babies over there. And she had finally started acting like a wife, even if the results were on the heathen side. James figured it was just as well the neighbours were foreign; it wouldn’t occur to them that there was anything strange about his being married to such a young girl. And what did he care what a Hebrew farmer thought of him? — although Mr Luvovitz seemed like an all-right type. James had gone over there to make sure.

“Call me Benny.”

“Benny.”

“Taste this.”

“What is it?” Looked like a plug of MacDonald’s Twist.

“Taste it.”

“… hm.”

“You like that?”

“Not bad. It’s good.”

“I smoked that myself — you want, I’ll sell you a whole cow for the winter, fresh off the hoof, pick one, they’re all good.”

Nothing really strange about the Jew except the accent, his black beard and curly sideburns and his little cap. James bought half a cow.

“I don’t want it kosher,” said James.

“What do you mean, it’s kosher, I butcher it, it’s kosher.”

“I don’t want you to do anything funny to it.”

“Don’t worry, you see that cow?”

“Yuh.”

“That’s the one I’m saving for you. That’s a Presbyterian cow.”

“I’m Catholic.”

Benny laughed. James smiled. Compared to Materia’s family, the Luvovitzes seemed downright white.

1900

At the eleventh hour, in her ninth month, Materia began looking forward to her baby. That’s because she’d grown to love Abe Luvovitz, who was two, and Rudy, who was six months. She wanted a son of course. Her father would be hard pressed to disown a first grandson even if it came to him through a daughter. That was what she told herself. And then she could see her mother again, and her sisters — she’d be a good woman after all. She began to pray to Our Lady, please, Dear Mary, let it be a boy.

James named the baby Kathleen, after his late mother. Kathleen wasn’t the first baby of the new century, but she was near enough so that James had to pelt all the way to Sydney on the old nag and drag the doctor from the dregs of a New Year’s party. They arrived back at Low Point in time for the doctor to tell Mrs Luvovitz she’d done a pretty good job. Mrs Luvovitz thought, “You should only pass a turnip through the end of that which you have between the pants over there, then we’ll see who’s done a pretty good job.” But she took care to think it in Yiddish.

Mrs Luvovitz told Materia how blessed she was. “I love my boys, Mrs Piper, but a woman wants a daughter.”

Materia didn’t say anything.

James said, “I love you, Materia.”

She said,
“Baddi moot.”

He patted her head and gazed at the baby. “Kathleen,” he said. Then, “Look, she knows her name!”

He had her baptized by a Presbyterian minister.

“We gotta get a priest,” said Materia.

“It’s the same God,” said James. It was bad enough he’d had to go through the motions of conversion, he needn’t subject his daughter to any Roman hocus-pocus.

Mrs Luvovitz looked after Materia and the new baby for the first two weeks. Benny said, “You’re interfering.”

“I’m not interfering, she has no mother.”

“You’re not her mother.”

“She needs a mother.”

“She needs time with her baby, how’s she going to learn?”

James felt invincible. He charted the highest sales for two weeks running. He walked into the boss’s office uninvited and demanded a raise.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that just yet, Piper.”

“I have a child now, sir.”

“So have the other men.”

“I’m worth three of those other fellas.”

“You’ve had a good couple weeks — keep it up, you’ll be employee of the month.”

James turned on his heel and it felt that good to walk out on the old man — let him try to replace me, he can’t do it, it can’t be done.

James rode home high on his rickety horse, he was going to give that girl everything. She was going to grow up a lady. She’d have accomplishments. Everyone would see. He felt like a king. A sudden drop and he was standing on the Shore Road, the horse dead between his feet. No matter. As good as a sack of money lying there in the slush, worth its weight in glue.

He walked the rest of the way and formulated a plan. Pianos only need tuning once in a while, but they need playing much more often. And who plays piano? Country folk who learn by ear, thumping to fiddles and spoons for simple enjoyment. And the children of townspeople who want their kids to have accomplishments. The likes of those uppity losers he’d worked with at McCurdy’s, not to mention the really well-to-do:
MR JAMES H. PIPER ESQUIRE
offers tuition in the home to young ladies and gentlemen, in the theory and practice of the Piano Forte
.

He wouldn’t bother quitting the job at the
Sydney Post
. He just wouldn’t show.

James arrived home in the middle of that day to find Mrs Luvovitz in the kitchen feeding his baby with a dropper.

“Where’s my wife?”

“She’s sleeping.”

He took the stairs two at a time and dragged her up by an arm. Herded her down to the kitchen, whinging and whining every step of the way.

“Thank you, missus, my wife’ll take over now.”

Mrs Luvovitz got up, thinking thoughts not in English, and left the house.

James plunked his wife onto the chair and put the screeching baby into her arms. “Now feed her.”

But the mother just blubbered and babbled.

“Speak English, for Christ’s sake.”

“Ma bi’der. Biwajeaal.”

He slapped her. “If she doesn’t eat, you don’t eat. Understood?”

Materia nodded. He unbuttoned her blouse.

James allowed Mrs Luvovitz over that evening when Materia hadn’t produced a drop and the baby was fit to be tied. The women went upstairs. The howling the mother put up, as Mrs Luvovitz did the necessary. Downstairs in the front room, James unlocked the piano and played the opening bars of various pieces from memory in an effort to drown the sound. He’d have to invest in some sheet music and exercise books. His daughter would play.

In a few days the pump was primed and the baby was sucking. But the mother cried through every feeding. One evening in the fourth week of Kathleen’s life, James snatched his child from the breast in horror.

“You’ve hurt her, Jesus Christ, you’ve cut her lip!” — for the baby’s smile was bright with blood.

Materia just sat there, mute as usual, her dress open, her nipples cracked and bleeding, oozing milk.

James took one look and realized that the child would have to be weaned before it was poisoned.

James might be a Catholic convert, but he’d never forgotten his Scots Confession. Feckless Catholics believe in salvation through faith — good enough, sit on your arse and believe all you like, but some of us know that work is the only sure bet, for the night will come, etc., etc…. get on with it, nothing will come of nothing.

Within a month, James had enough students from Sydney to Glace Bay to start making ends meet. All day into the evening,
e
very
g
ood
b
oy
deserves fudge
and
all c
ows
e
at
g
rass. And at night, the staring zombie he’d married. Why had he married her? It was when he sat next to twelve- and thirteen-year-olds on the piano bench and watched their eyes glaze over at the mention of middle C that it hit him in the stomach that his wife had been no older than they.

How had he been ensnared by a child? There was something not right about Materia. Normal children didn’t run away with men. He knew from his reading that clinical simpletons necessarily had an overdeveloped animal nature. She had seduced him. That was why he hadn’t noticed she was a child. Because she wasn’t one. Not a real one. It was queer. Sick, even. Perhaps it was a racial flaw. He would read up on it.

All Materia wanted to do was get pregnant again so God could send her a son. But there wasn’t much chance of that because her husband wouldn’t come near her. Got angry if she touched him. Materia realized that God would not give her another baby if He saw she was ungrateful for the one she had. So she prayed to the Blessed Virgin. She prayed in the attic because there was no church for miles and miles, and James didn’t like her wandering any more. On her knees, elbows resting on the hope chest, “Please dear Mary Mother of God, make me love my baby.”