Lily's Story (19 page)

“
Bridie, this is serious.
We’re just askin’ you to think about the girl, about her
future.”

“
In Heaven or Port
Sarnia?”

The sudden edge to Aunt Bridie’s voice
silenced the bumptious Mrs. Salter and the satiated Mrs. McWhinney.
They hadn’t expected it to come to this. Mrs. McHarg, being Orange,
had more ancient claim on self-righteousness.

“
Both,” she
said.

Mrs. McWhinney coughed, a portion of crust
caught in her throat.

Aunt Bridie leaned forward,
occupying the silence. At last she looked over at Lily, who could
not read the emotions held in check by that awesome will. “Well
then,” she said. “We’ll let
the
girl
decide. Lily, dear, what do you
say?”

Lily, concluding it was time to find out
once and for all who this God was, answered, “Yes.”

It was agreed that Lily Ramsbottom’s
religious education would begin a week Sunday with an interview
with the Reverend McHarg himself. In his study, in the Manse – for
the purpose of determining the status of the girl’s ‘natural’
inclinations to religious sentiment, after which she would be
placed, for a time, exclusively in the hands of Mrs. McHarg for
special tutoring before being released to the general influence of
Sunday School and Service.

On the Saturday before the scheduled
interview, a parcel arrived from McWhinney’s haberdashery addressed
to “Miss Lily Ramsbottom.” It was one of the new-fangled corsets
worn by ladies of good standing and generous figure. Auntie said
gruffly, “We don’t take charity in this house,” but Uncle Chester,
buoyed by a nap in his stall, said, “The gift is for the lass,
woman, not you,” and Auntie cut back with, “Go back to your bottle
an’ button up.” But she didn’t order the trembling delivery boy to
return the goods, and he left at a gallop.

Lily was overwhelmed.
Somehow she had been able to read her name on the parcel before a
word had been spoken. She stared at the penciled block letters
pretending to say each of them over in order. Maybe I
am
Lily Ramsbottom, she
thought.

Naturally the corset was a disaster though
not a disappointment. The springs and whalebones and stiff cloth
converged mightily to push the bosom upward and athwart, but Lily’s
breasts were small and intractable, preferring their own
propensities. And where the instrument was meant to chastise any
amplitude of buttock, it swung freely, devoid of purpose. “We’ll
send it back,” Lily said. “Not at all,” said Aunt Bridie. “We’ll
just put it away till the time is ripe. After all, the lady meant
well.” Auntie put the contraption safely away in her room, but Lily
kept the brown paper package with the writing on it.

So, attired in her furbished gingham
rendered decent by the addition of a muslim camisole and proper
slip, Lily stepped down from the cart in front of the imposing
red-brick Manse where one of God’s spokesmen awaited. Uncle Chester
held her hand, squeezed it, and tried to say something, but
couldn’t. Lily watched the rig move west down George Street and
stop in front of the Anglican Church whose spire glinted above the
horizon. Uncle Chester got out and, a bit like a thief entering a
shop, went in.

“Come in, come in, my child!” boomed the
Reverend Mr. Clarion McHarg, swivelling in his desk chair and
waving the deaf housekeeper away.

Lily obeyed. The woman had taken her shawl
somewhere. She peered across the dimly-lit room embroidered with
walnut and cherrywood and leather-skinned tomes of impressive
dimension.

“
Sit,” said the Reverend
pointing to a padded, armless chair perched on a scatterrug a few
feet from the littered secretary. “My, don’t we look pretty,
today,” he added, finishing up a sentence and blotting it. Adjusted
now to the poor light, Lily saw that his features were all crags
and cliffs and deep coombs, with eyebrows that bunched and released
parenthetically – a pair of singed caterpillars. Despite the eager
teeth of his smile, his eyes burned through you, like gallstones.
The only thing soft about the man that was visible were his plump
fingers, which lay during the first part of their conversation as
motionless as raw sausages.

The gallstones at last took her in. He had
just remembered who she was. “You’re the…young lady from the
township my wife was telling me about?”

“
Yes, your
reverence.”

While he was casting about for a suitable
exordium, his stare consumed her, at a gulp.

“
I ain’t been baptized,”
Lily ventured.

“
Haven’t
been,” he said automatically.

“
Yes, sir. Auntie says I
ain’t had a proper upbringin’.”

“
Do you know what being
baptized in the Lord means?”

“
No, sir.”

“
Well, then, let’s find
out, shall we, how much you
do
know.” The caterpillars hunched forward. “First of
all, why don’t you remove that bonnet and give those pretty tresses
some air?”

Lily obeyed.

“
Much better. God will be
pleased, I’m sure, to have you join His congregation of the
Saved.”

“
Yes,” Lily said. “I come
here to find out about him.”

“
What do you know about Him
now?”

“
Can I talk to
him?”

The good Reverend smiled as
if charmed by the naiveté of such a remark. “You may
pray
to Him.”

“
What’s that?” Lily wanted
to hear it from the source.

My word, the corruption of some of these
country folks was complete! “You get down on your knees, close your
eyes, and tell God about your sins and ask Him to offer you
strength and succor.”

“
What’s sin?”

The Reverend stared at Lily as if trying to
catch her out at some trick. “You don’t know?”

“
No, sir.”

“
Well, I can see that Mrs.
McHarg has some tough cloth to cut here.”

“
Can I talk to God, like
this, like we are?” Lily said.

“
Of course not,” he
snapped. “The Lord will answer your prayers if and when He decides.
Our role is to try to be good, and obedient, and free from
sin.”

“
When he does talk back to
me, will it be in English?”

The caterpillars jumped, even the sausages
began to quiver. “Are you being blasphemous, child?”

“
What’s blasphemous,
sir?”

“
God speaks to each man in
his own tongue; He hears, sees and knows everything.”

“
Uncle Chester says that
his Bible says that God talks in Hebrew.”

“
Damnation to Uncle
Chester!”

Lily looked at the floor, unable to contend
with the fiery fusillade.

“
Excuse me, child. You see
why we must all pray.”

Lily didn’t. She straightened up, charily.
“Would God, if I prayed to him real hard, talk to me in
Pottawatomie?”

The caterpillars popped close to the
butterfly stage; the sausages sizzled. “Who put you up to this, eh?
That heathen aunt of yours?” He had both of her shoulders in his
grip.

“
No, sir. I just thought if
your god can talk in every tongue, then he could if he wants talk
to me in Pottawatomie. Or Chippewa or Attawan –”

“
Cease this
sacrilege!
Now
!”

Lily quaked before the upheaval of the
Reverend McHarg’s notorious temper. She pressed the tears back into
her head where they smouldered, unattended. His pulpy hands had now
slipped down so that they were squeezing her exposed forearms.
Suddenly he let go of her as if she were quarantined. He sat down
again, gathering the frayed ends of his composure. Lily didn’t
move. He seemed surprised, even discomfited, by the fact that she
had not dashed out in disarray. He felt her presence in his room –
the Lord’s anteroom, as it were – as something indefinably
dangerous, something darkly feminine, and intricately tempting.

“
Mrs. Beecroft will show
you out,” he said at last. When she reached the study door, though,
he shouted in a desperate whisper, “Whatever becomes of you, miss,
just remember this:
God is not a
Pottawatomie!
”

As best she could, Lily told Aunt Bridie
what had trespassed at the Manse. Auntie listened with interest,
not once interrupting. Then she said, “You may’ve had no upbringin’
an’ little educatin’, but you’re as smart as a June bug in July!”
She scanned Lily’s face as if realizing for the first time that
this was her brother’s flesh and blood, that they did indeed share
lineament and lineage.

“
God’s not there,” Lily
said. “I know it.”

Auntie’s face clouded. “Just remember one
thing, though. If you turn away from all the churchin’ these folk
’round here can’t do without, they’ll never ever forgive you.
You’ll have to pay for that little luxury all your life.”

“
But you –”

“
Yes, I did it, I know. As
far as I’m concerned, the god they pray to was invented by
landlords and greengrocers. An’ now that I look at you, I see
somethin’ in your face, somethin’ from that mad father of yours or
the wild bush you was let roam in –” She didn’t finish, as if on
principle she’d already said too much. Then: “Well, don’t just
stand there with your legs in a knot, get that frumpery off, we got
corn to shuck!”

When they were again working side by side,
Lily said, “Will you teach me how to read?”

“
Yes, honey, real soon.
That’s a solemn promise.” And she tore at the stubborn shocks in a
frenzy.

6

Aunt Bridie was off to cook at the camp “for
the last time between now and kingdom come.” As many of the workers
brought their families to be with them and moved to more permanent
quarters, Bridie’s business followed them. Already she was plotting
the use of the new acres cleared, cut and sold by Cam before he
left, not even taking his last week’s pay. Two sets of orders were
left with her subordinates: Lily was to bake two dozen pumpkin pies
for a special Thanksgiving celebration at the camp, courtesy of the
soon-to-be-announced candidate for mayor of the newly incorporated
town: Maurice Templeton, Esquire. “I’m trustin’ you to do as I’ve
showed you; somethin’ big could come outta this,” Auntie said.
Secondly, Uncle Chester was to give the north coop a thorough
scrubbing and white-washing as several hens had recently died from
some mysterious cause.

Lily was delighted; but
Uncle Chester’s back went on leave. Lately Auntie had been more
than usually stern and grumpy, snapping at her and Uncle Chester
with little or no provocation. At night her deep snoring rattled
the kitchen pots and often drove Uncle to the barn. Most of her
wrath was directed towards him, though Lily failed to see why.
Seldom would he talk back, and even then the rebellion always
collapsed after a single strike. Sometimes he would look over at
Lily, aggrieved and helpless, as if to say, “See, this is what it’s
really like.” Once in September when Cam was still occupying his
sanctuary, Uncle Chester, unaware he was being observed by Lily
from her bed, picked up Auntie’s pince-nez – which she used to
read
The Observer
and “do the books with” – and hid them under the mattress.
Aunt Bridie searched high and low for them, more than routinely
disturbed that she had been so careless as to mislay them. Uncle
Chester meantime made a great fuss about helping her locate them:
“Thought they might’ve fallen off in the fruit cellar when you was
labellin’ the jars, but not so, I’m afraid,” he said solicitously.
“Not like you to be so careless with your valuables.” Three days
later when the spectacles turned up magically between two
butter-boxes on the kitchen shelf, Aunt Bridie gave Uncle Chester
the oddest look, then went about her business.

Uncle Chester, grumbling about his lumbago,
went off to the north chicken coop, tools in hand. Lily went to the
pumpkin patch and started the laborious task of loading the ripest
ones into the barrow and pushing it through the loose soil to the
dooryard. On the very first load Lily saw she had been too
ambitious: the wheel buried itself in the ground, and when Lily got
angry with it, it lurched sideways and sent the pumpkins thumping
overboard. Uncle Chester was suddenly beside her. “I’ll help you
with that,” he said. “Damn woman oughta know better’n to make you
push a thing like this. There’s times I think she just forgets
you’re a girl…a young lady,” he said, puffing and huffing a huge
pumpkin into the barrow.

“
Be careful of your heart,
now,” Lily said, but she was happy to have help. Together they
managed to get three loads of the unwieldy fruit safely to a pile
beside the stoop.

“
There now, my lass, you
can go on with your woman’s work,” said Uncle Chester.

Lily leaned over and kissed him on the
cheek. “Maybe I can get this done an’ come help with the coop.”

He sighed: “That’s a dog’s work,” and
trudged off.

Lily hummed to herself as she split and
removed the pulp from the pumpkins. Beside her were three large
kettles and just inside the door several dozen tin plates delivered
by pony-cart from Mrs. Templeton. She felt useful and content, and
let the Indian summer cast its blessings abroad.