by Joan Crate
“Rose Marie,” she automatically corrected him.
Later, in the kitchen, she was as dismissive of Mrs. Derkatch as the woman was of her, snatching each dish from Frizzy’s hand as soon as she had scraped it clean. She didn’t hear a word of Ruby and Mrs. Mooney’s conversation, nor did she say anything herself.
When Cyril tried to draw her to the porch for their usual chat, she told him, “Can’t tonight,” and climbed the stairs two at a time, going straight to her room. Sitting on her chair, feet propped on the bed, she tore open the letter from Mother Grace to Father Patrick and read:
Dear Patrick,
I know that Rose Marie will be with you now, safe in your care, and I thank God for that.
Nevertheless, I need your help. I just received a letter from Father John the Baptist from the Reserve on which Rose Marie’s father lived after the death of his wife, his original Reserve. It is the second letter I received from Father John. The first, which informed me of Mr. Whitewater’s tuberculosis, arrived over a month ago. I have long suspected he had the illness, though over the years, it never seemed to progress.
Father John noted that Mr. Whitewater still appeared vigorous, but since he went on and on about the “heathen practices” Mr. Whitewater was engaged in and his “substantial following,” I surmised that his concern had more to do with getting Mr. Whitewater from the Reserve and to the hospital than with any imminent danger to his life. That, Pat dear, was my mistake.
At the time, I was busy seeking an indulgence for Rose Marie, one that would allow her to go straight to the Mother House. With all the writing back and forth, I’m afraid I did not give the news the attention that, in hindsight, I see it deserved.
The day before Rose Marie was to board the bus for Black Apple, I got word that Michel Whitewater had died on the Reserve without ever setting foot in any hospital. Rose Marie was in no condition to hear that, as she had just learned she had to leave St. Mark’s.
Patrick, could you possibly break the news to her in a gentle way? As I said, she knows nothing of her father’s illness, so his death will come as a shock.
Rose Marie stopped reading. Papa. She stood, but suddenly dizzy, she fell back on the bed. He had died the night he came to her, she had no doubt. When he told her he loved her.
Mother Grace—whom she had trusted above all others, whom she relied on, would give her any news of Papa—had told her nothing. She had as good as lied!
Grief hit her in the stomach and seeped, hot, through her eyes. She threw the letter on the floor and stumbled across the room to the window. Peering out, she watched the sun setting behind the mountains, garish as an open wound.
Dear, dear Papa, Blessed Wolf. Since Mama’s death, Mother Grace had kept her from him. She had denied her wish to go up north to live with him and Kiaa-yo, Papa’s relations, hers too, where she should be, where she belonged. And even if Mother Grace had told her of Papa’s illness before she left for Black Apple, she would never have allowed her to visit him. The witch, the bitch would have been afraid that if she left to see Papa, she would not return to St. Mark’s; she would not become a holy sister. And maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe she wouldn’t now!
She snatched the letter from the floor, tore it up, and threw the pieces in the air. She hated Mother Grace and all the nuns at St. Mark’s, including Sister Cilla, and especially Sisters Joan and Margaret. She hated Brother Abe the disabled, and she despised Father William, the dirty kill-man!
She used the sleeve of her dress, her horrible school uniform, to wipe her nose and eyes. She would never ever write to Mother Grace again.
All night long, she prayed for Papa’s soul.
37
Confession
ROSE MARIE KNEW she could not miss another Sunday Mass, and if she was going to Mass, Father Seamus insisted that his parishioners must first go to confession or be unfit for Holy Communion. “He’s a mite rigid,” Mrs. Rees said.
Even though Rose Marie was weighed down by grief—yes, with confusion and anger thrown in—and even though she desperately wanted to unload her burden, she didn’t know what to confess to Father Seamus. Everything in her heart, mind, and soul was stuck together in an ugly black lump.
The anguish she had felt when she read of Papa’s death persisted. She scarcely knew what she was doing as she moved from pew to pew in Our Lady of Sorrows, haphazardly wiping at the wooden seats.
Behind the thick blanket of fog in her head, a storm was building. She was afraid it would rip through and overwhelm her. Images of confronting Mother Grace darted through her mind. She yanked the old woman’s beloved wooden cross—the one Father Patrick had made—off her office wall and threw it in her face. Then she stood at the top of the staircase on the third floor, just behind Sister Margaret as she started to descend, Sister Joan a few steps below. She shoved Sister Margaret with all her might, and the fat tub plummeted headlong into Sister Joan. Both of them crashed to the landing, their heads striking it with the same sound Billy Nimsic’s skull had made on the sidewalk outside the Dominion.
She burned with hatred.
And hatred was against one of the greatest Commandments of all, she knew. After loving the Lord, it was imperative that Christians love thy neighbour as thyself. How was she to tell Father Seamus that she hated Mother Grace, she despised Father William, and she disliked even him, her confessor? She would have to admit that she was ablaze with anger and vengeance.
As she swept the church aisles, she thought of her upcoming confession. Where to begin? Aside from breaking any of the Ten Commandments, a sin was an offence against reason, truth, and conscience. Yes, wilful thought, word, deed, or omission against God’s law. But her brain was a smouldering black lump, and she didn’t know where to start.
Finally, instead of trying to figure out which of her thoughts and actions were actual sins to confess, she decided to organize everything into a kind of parade to march before Father Seamus.
She had felt a twinge of conscience just before she read the letter Mother Grace had written to Father Patrick. As she unfolded the crisp pages, she had suddenly worried that Mother Grace would somehow know what she was doing. But since she wasn’t contrite about that offence, she would stick it on the end of her confession.
She felt a glimmer of heat dance over her skin whenever she was near Frank, but that was like the rash Susanna Big Snake got from eating strawberries, a reaction but hardly a sin. Or, again, was she simply not contrite? And how about the conversations she had with Cyril? “Harmless enough, dear,” according to Mrs. Rees, but would Father Seamus agree? That would go at the end of her confession as well.
There was just so much to confess!
* * *
Friday afternoon, after Father Seamus had arrived from Coal River to hear confessions in Black Apple, she waited in a pew close to the crucifix, praying for strength. In the past two days, she had grown calmer, and she had decided to start by confessing the most troubling issue of all: Billy Nimsic’s fight or accident or murder—whatever it was—which pooled in her brain and sometimes seeped like sewage into her dreams. She had to confess so it would drain away. Then she could proceed with the rest of her confession—her grief and terrible anger.
She entered the confessional.
“Father, I witnessed an act of violence outside the Dominion Hotel,” she said after the initial welcome and response, her voice trembling. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she recognized that not trying to help Billy Nimsic was sinful. Love thy neighbour. But she had run in the opposite direction; she had not thought of him, gone to him, assisted him in any way. “Father, I did nothing—”
“Nothing?” Father Seamus’s voice throbbed through the screen. “Don’t excuse yourself. You did nothing? Why then were you anywhere close to the Dominion Hotel?”
“I was walking. I had just arrived in Black Apple, and—”
“And the first thing you did was head to the Dominion Hotel. That is no place for a respectable young woman
,” Father Seamus told her sternly. “You must stay away from drink. You must stay away from men. You must not court temptation of any sort. Do you hear me?” The priest’s voice was loud, louder than it should be to remain unheard by the other penitents, and while she felt chastened, she also felt a spasm of humiliation, yes, and anger. Again, anger.
“Forgive me, Father, for my anger,” she began, but Father Seamus, now talking about “dens of iniquity,” didn’t seem to hear.
“What is it about your kind,” he demanded, “that you knowingly entice men from the path of righteousness?” His voice rose and fell in waves, just as Father William’s did when he was in the throes of a sermon. “If the serpent, the Devil, bites someone secretly, he infects that person with the venom of sin.”
“Father?” she tried, but he talked over her, demanding she make an act of contrition. She had gotten to “I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin . . .” when he was giving her penance and sending her from the confessional.
He hadn’t allowed her to make a complete confession. He hadn’t even listened, the stupid, stupid man. They were all against her, the religious. Every last one.
38
Mass
ON SUNDAY MORNING, Rose Marie left the old Mooney place at ten so she would have plenty of time for prayer before eleven o’clock Mass. She was still shaken by her incomplete confession and by Father Seamus’s harsh judgement, so she wanted to arrive at Our Lady of Sorrows early in order to set things right with God.
First, she would contemplate the mysteries of the most holy rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary. Not only was the church named after her, but Mother Mary was a parent, and with Papa’s death, Rose Marie was short of parents. She would beg for forgiveness of all her offences against God, intentional or not. Then she would give St. Francis’s prayer of Spiritual Communion, and, as well as more forgiveness, she would ask for guidance, then meditate about her vocation. What was she even doing in this town?
She walked down the centre aisle of the empty church, smelling the oil soap that she and Mrs. Rees always used. Even the Lord Jesus Christ, hanging from the cross, gleamed. After confession on Friday, angry and restless, she had waited for Father Seamus to leave, then retrieved the ladder kept under the basement stairs, propped it against the wall, climbed it, and dusted and washed the Saviour head to toe. The task had calmed her. Up on the ladder she had felt close to both God and Papa. And far away from Father Seamus.
Now she desperately needed to be close to God again. She stopped at the third aisle from the front, genuflected, and took a seat in the centre of the pew. Hands folded, eyes closed, she knelt on the prayer bench and fell into the words and motions she had memorized, repeated, read, and prayed forever, it seemed. She didn’t need a prayer book; she had twelve years at St. Mark’s and thousands of Matins, Vespers, novenas, devotions, litanies, petitions, invocations, acts, meditations, and intercessions planted in her brain, their rhythms pumping through her heart, surging at wrist, throat, thigh, and temple. The emotions they served and expressed—longing, hope, love, fear, despair, and grace—formed a spiritual entrance that she slipped effortlessly through.
Praying at length, and in such depth, at Our Lady of Sorrows was easier than she expected, like breathing, an involuntary act as much as a duty. Biblical phrases and prayer fragments entwined with her own words, dancing through her in a language of supplication and repentance. She prayed as the religious of St. Mark’s did when they were at their most humble, most sincere, and most inspired. She prayed like a saint.
After entering the spiritual realm, and reaching out to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Madonna, and all the angels, Mama, Anataki, and Papa, she vaguely heard, at the edge of her consciousness, oxfords plodding, high heels snapping, and steel-heeled leather soles clicking. There were huffs, exclamations, throat clearings, and coughs, but Rose Marie, still in a state of holy meditation, was only vaguely aware of the sounds.
Finally, she opened her eyes. People were seated all around her in the church, but none in her pew. No one was directly in front of her, and no one directly behind. She saw gentlemen in dark coats, ladies in elaborate hats, and well-dressed children in shiny shoes, slicked hair, curls, and bows, but none sat close. An empty space encircled her.
As she peered around, faces looked back, some with raised eyebrows, scowls, or flared nostrils; others turned elaborately away. Mrs. Tortorelli, wearing a veiled wide-brimmed black hat with black roses, each one almost as big as her head, glared at Rose Marie from the front row, and the small, grey man beside her frowned. As if Rose Marie were contaminated. Or trespassing. Or both. It came to her that she was being shunned.
From the back of the church came a troop of white-gowned altar boys flanking Father Seamus, who swung a thurible, the incense rising in suffocating gusts. She spotted Mrs. Rees walking softly down on the right-side aisle, leading a man with wavy white hair. Mr. Rees, she assumed—oh, but struggling, his face pale. He had been doing poorly, Mrs. Rees had told her at the beginning of the week. “Emphysema, he has, but that’s just a fancy word for black lung, from working in the coal mine.”
Mr. and Mrs. Rees sat near the front of the right-side section, not in the centre section as she had. Rose Marie looked over to the left-side section. As on the right, the front rows seemed to be inhabited by miners, their wives and families. The men wore white shirts, most with suits, many of them shabby, and the women had scarves or small, plain hats on their heads.
Behind the couples and families on both side sections were single men and a few women, mostly older—bachelors, widows, and widowers, probably. She noticed a family: a man—white—most likely a rancher, judging from his plaid shirt and overalls, with an Indian wife. Between them sat a string of four shiny-faced kids, half-breeds. There were two other, similar families, and in the rows behind them was a sprinkling of ragged, unshaven men, and one crazy-looking woman with wild grey hair who wore men’s clothing. In the two rows behind them—oh, Indians. She understood. The church was another version of the Greyhound bus. And Indians belonged at the back.
She wasn’t sure what to do. Should she get up and hurry over to the back of a side section? But Father Seamus was approaching the altar; it was too late. Then she saw Bertha Bright Eye slumped in the back row on the right. She wore a dingy cotton dress; her eyes were lowered and her face distorted somehow. As Bertha raised her heavy chin, turning slightly to the dishevelled man beside her, Rose Marie saw that her jaw was swollen on one side, her eye black, her puffy bottom lip split. Dear God.
Bertha, glancing past the man, saw Rose Marie and turned abruptly away.
Heavens, she was staring at Bertha, but she couldn’t stop.
Having regained her composure, Bertha looked back up and fixed her with an expression of pure hatred. Hatred again. Then she set her swollen jaw and turned to the altar.
Rose Marie looked to the front. As Father Seamus welcomed the congregation, it seemed that he too glowered at her.
“And also to you,” she started to say, but as she raised her voice with the others, Mrs. Tortorelli turned, her immense hat slipping to one side, her eyes on Rose Marie, dark slivers. She shrank down in her seat, for once glad to be small, but in the centre of the empty pews, she was both isolated and conspicuous.
Once Mass ended, she couldn’t get out of her seat fast enough. She fled to the aisle, but had to bunch behind others, everyone staring at her, she was sure. From the corner of her eye, she spotted Mrs. Rees waving, and she gave as much of a smile as she could manage. She was desperate to leave.
She ran all the way back to the Mooney house. Breathless, she hurried through the front door and climbed the stairs two at a time. Closing her bedroom door, she flung herself on the bed, allowing the tears she had been holding back to slip down her face. Holy Mother of Heaven and Earth.
Someone knocked. “Rose Marie?” It was Frank’s voice. “You in there?”
For a fraction of
a second she thought of opening the door and sinking into Frank’s arms. She wondered if she had dreamt a similar scene, because she could see herself—taller, with larger breasts and wider eyes, almost beautiful. Frank too looked different, like a movie star on one of the posters outside the Lux Theatre downtown.
Then the fantasy vanished, leaving only anger. “Go away!” she yelled.
This time she had betrayed herself.
39
Coal Dust
THE COAL DUST in Black Apple was devious as sin itself. Rose Marie found that it soiled everything in Our Lady of Sorrows: the baptismal font, the stained glass windows, the Bible—Word of the Lord, God Almighty—Father Seamus’s just-washed hands, his voice, his words at baptisms, weddings, and Sunday Mass. Outside, it dirtied the clean laundry hung on wash lines, the fresh paint on Mrs. Tortorelli’s “respectable” boardinghouse, the coats of stray dogs, and the leers of men loitering outside the Dominion Hotel.
The necks of milk bottles left outside the rectory were always gritty. She imagined that the cheeks of children would feel mealy under the touch of their mothers and fathers at bedtime. The weekly Black Apple Bulletin had to be shaken out before being taken indoors, and the potatoes unearthed from the small corner garden at the rectory tasted of coal—that recipe of rotted plants, decomposed animals, pressure, and time. The town spent, breathed, ate, and drank coal.
Miners dug up a lost world from the belly of the mountain, heaped it in coal cars that jittered up the tipple, where it was sized, then dumped into railcars and carried away to factories in Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver. From there, it was shipped across the wide sea to sprawling, spewing factories full of people working like machines, synchronized to sirens like the one at the mine. Men shovelled coal into belching furnaces that spewed its remains, black and sooty, into the air. It seemed to Rose Marie that the extinct past was burning its way into the future.