Black Apple (29 page)

“I know about Mrs. Mooney’s past, if that’s what you mean.”

“You do? Who told you, dear?”

“Cyril.”

“Cyril Brown, my, my. Mr. Rees and some of his mates call him ‘Tiny,’ they do. Such a big man but gentle as a lamb. He’d make some girl a lovely husband.”

There was no reason for her to feel embarrassed, but she did.

  *  *  *  

Her first Sunday at Black Apple, Rose Marie slept until noon. With the exception of two, possibly three times over the years when she had been ill, that had never happened before. Thankfully, she hadn’t dreamt the whole night through. She had simply fallen into a deep, black pit, and then climbed out of it, stiff and groggy, at midday. She had missed Mass.

Almost a week had gone by, and she was still confused by the behaviour of the people of Black Apple: the friendliness of Frank, Cyril, Mrs. Mooney, Ruby, and Mrs. Rees, but the suspicion of Father Seamus, the coldness of Mrs. Derkatch and some of the ladies’ auxiliary members too, not to mention the catcalls from men outside the Dominion Hotel as she walked past, always on the far side of the street.

The day Billy Nimsic’s funeral was held at Our Lady of Sorrows, she stayed late to help Mrs. Rees and some of the church ladies wash dishes in the church hall, fold the tables and chairs, and put them away. Then she and Mrs. Rees took the good china back to the rectory to place carefully in the sideboard. It was past seven when she left, and the sun was sliding down the western sky.

Near the Dominion, as she was about to cross to the far side of the street, she noticed two women outside the gents’ door. Both had long dark hair, and one was Indian, she could see, one probably Italian or part Indian—“half-breed,” the miners called it
—
and they were both in tight dresses, their legs exposed to the cool evening. Despite her darkened eyes and bright lipstick, one of the women looked familiar.

Rose Marie slowed to study her, the shrunken yellow sweater buttoned over a stained blue dress, the broad shoulders, a prominent chin dropping as she slumped against the side of the hotel.

“Bertha,” she called before she could stop herself. “Bertha Bright—”

Bertha gazed sleepily over at her, looked away, then jerked her head back, eyes narrowing.

Immediately, Rose Marie regretted calling out to her. From her very first week at St. Mark’s, when Taki stole the name “Anne” from Bertha’s little cousin, all their dealings had been unpleasant. Bertha had stopped physically picking on her after Sister Margaret beat them both, but once Ruth died, she started name-calling and pointing. Then, years later, when Anataki got so sick, Bertha came down sick too. Rose Marie had heard her boast to the other senior girls that she almost died. But she
hadn’t
died. Bertha got better, and Taki died instead. It had taken that terrible equation of loss to neutralize their quarrel. Until right then, when Rose Marie had so stupidly called attention to herself.

“Well, well,” Bertha jeered. “If it isn’t a midget in a school dress. Are those the only clothes you got, Rose Marie Whitewater, who thinks she’s the goddamned Virgin Mary?”

It wasn’t that Rose Marie couldn’t think of anything to hiss back at Bertha. She didn’t have all the words for what Bertha was doing in front of the Dominion, but she had an idea.
Hey, Miss Black Apple, what ditch did you wander out of?
she was about to yell, when, from the corner of her eye, she spotted a man approaching Bertha. Dead Fox Man. Head down, she darted across the street and didn’t stop to look back until she was safely tucked in the shadow under the awning at McBride’s.

Dead Fox Man’s hand reached from his dirty coat and gripped Bertha’s wrist, wrenching her from her slouch against the building. Teetering towards him on high heels, she protested, but weakly. As he clenched an arm around her shoulders, she struggled, but half-heartedly. He steered her towards the side door of the hotel.

Rose Marie fled to the old Mooney house, but once she arrived at the leaning fence, she turned and walked around the block. Breathing deeply, she surveyed the other houses, some jumbled into one another, with old fridges and car parts rusting on leaning porches, others well groomed with harvested front-yard gardens. She was taking a walk, partly to calm down and partly to familiarize herself with the neighbourhood as best she could in the waning light. And partly because no one was supervising her. No one was there to tell her she couldn’t. Again, a faint flutter of excitement in her chest.

Back at the house, she went into the dining room to find the table crowded with boarders talking over each other as they slurped coffee and shoved green Jell-O in their mouths. Mrs. Mooney slapped a plate in front of her—a dried pork chop and a heap of crusted potatoes—and Rose Marie ate silently, rising to help in the kitchen once she was done.

Later, on the porch, Cyril pointed out a group of stars called Orion’s Belt, and she told him about the Wolf Trail, where the spirits of the dead wandered. Mama. Anataki.

  *  *  *  

The next afternoon, on her way home from Our Lady of Sorrows, she kept her eyes lowered as she crossed the street, walking quickly away from the Dominion even though it was only five o’clock and neither Bertha nor her companion was leaning against the building.

“Hey, little lady,” a voice called from the other side of the street. “Wait up. I’ll walk you home.”

She looked up. Frank was running over to her, and for some reason she stood there, waiting for him.

“Explosion at the mine,” he said, moving so close she could feel the heat seeping from his body right through her school dress. “I think Jake Catelli got his eardrums blown out. They closed down operations for the day.”

“Oh dear.”

He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. “Just tryin’ to be friendly. How was work today?”

She told him about Mrs. Rees, the ladies’ auxiliary meeting, and Father Seamus, “who isn’t exactly welcoming.”

“He’s another one don’t like Indians.
Meesy.
”

She raised her eyebrows.

“That’s an important Blackfoot word for people like that priest,” he said, grinning. “You forgot your language while you were at that school.”

“It’s okay. I’m going back in a couple of months. I don’t need it.”

He opened the front door of the house, and at the bottom of the stairs, he leaned towards her. Before she could push past him and run up to her room, he pressed his nose to her forehead. “You never know, you just might.”

Since arriving in Black Apple, she was acting the way Sister Cilla sometimes did: blushing and flustered. For no reason at all!

In her room, she thought about Frank, how he changed around people. Mornings when Reggie or Dwayne, and especially Cyril, were at the table, he was jagged edges. But the times when the other miners were on nights and went straight to bed instead of eating breakfast, Frank seemed serene, his colours falling around him like rain. “How are you, Rose Marie Whitewater?” he would ask her gently.

And Cyril. Easy to talk to, like an older brother or a young uncle. When she was finished with the after-supper cleanup, she chatted with him on the porch about this and that: the mine and the church, people they each encountered, and local gossip. Once she thought she saw Frank peering at them from the parlour window.

So much had happened, was happening around her, all the people, every kind—rough, kind, dead, sad, mean, snobby, and dangerous—Mrs. Mooney, Frank, Cyril, Father Patrick, Bertha Bright Eye, Father Seamus, Mrs. Derkatch, and Dead Fox Man. Whom should she include in a letter to Mother Grace? What should she leave out?

And what could she say about herself? So much had happened to her in such a short period of time she didn’t know if she was coming or going, as Mrs. Rees put it.

First came Papa’s healing dream, which had left her with a sense of calm. For the month or so before Mother Grace had sprung the
assignment
on her, she had felt loved and something else: that the world was larger and more wondrous than she’d ever imagined, and that she even had a place within it. Then she came to Black Apple with its dirt, lack of routine, and strange characters. How could she cope, let alone fit in?

Lead us not into temptation
, she prayed at night.
Deliver us from evil.
She had the uncomfortable feeling that St. Mark’s was receding, shrinking to a dot on the road map that was thumbtacked to the wall at the bus depot, and that the person she had been at St. Mark’s was altering bit by bit, altered by this town.

  *  *  *  

The next day, when Mrs. Rees came back from the post office, her bag full of church letters and bulletins, her face was chalky, her step unsteady. Remembering Sister Lucy’s decline, Rose Marie hurried to her, helping her out of her coat and into a chair. Then she put on the kettle.

“Are you all right?”

The colour started to seep back into Mrs. Rees’s face after she’d had a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit. She reached into the shopping bag at her feet and pulled out the clump of mail she’d taken from the church mailbox. Sifting through it, she withdrew a letter and handed it to Rose Marie, who recognized the flowing script.

“From Mother Grace. Oh, it’s to Father Patrick.” She examined the postmark. “It was mailed the day after I left. Our letters must have crossed.”

“I didn’t know what to do with it,” Mrs. Rees said, sniffling. “You take it, dearie. You can always send it back.”

  *  *  *  

That evening at supper, Rose Marie hardly noticed the squeal of sauerkraut, a food she had never before eaten, or the burn of mustard on her tongue. All she could think of was Mother Grace’s letter.

“You’re miles away, little girl,” Cyril commented.

“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.

R
OSE 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.