Black Apple

by Joan Crate

  Each day she walked to Our Lady of Sorrows Church. Every day but Sunday, when she attended Mass—sitting with Mr. and Mrs. Rees in the second row on the right-side section—she helped Mrs. Rees clean the rectory, bake, wash, starch and iron robes and ceremonial cloths, scrub the church pews, shine the Communion tabernacle and monstrance. Once a week, Mrs. Rees sent her to pick up groceries and supplies at McBride’s and Wong’s; once a month, it was necessary to wash our Saviour on the cross and clean the statue of the sorrowing Virgin with her breaking Sacred Heart.

  After work, if she felt like it, she would explore a part of town she wasn’t familiar with. Sometimes she looked over in the direction of the Mountain That Moves and thought of her old life with Mama and Papa in their little cabin in the woods. Then came Kiaa-yo, and then came the Indian agent and Father Alphonses. It was as if her whole life had collapsed then, just the way the mountain had.

  A month earlier, she had believed that God had planned things this way, that her time at the school was a blessing in disguise, leading her to greater things for His Glory. Now she wasn’t so sure. She walked, she watched, and she prayed, sometimes to the Virgin, sometimes to the Holy Trinity, and every now and then to Mama and Papa. Help me find my place, to belong somewhere.

  Soon she was taking longer walks around the town, going straight home only when she worked late, it was rainy, or she was tired. Then she tidied her room and washed her hands and face before supper. Saturdays, she always removed her white head covering and scrubbed it in the sink, trying to return it to its original white. But coal dust penetrated the cotton, and no matter how hard she scrubbed, knuckle against knuckle, no matter how much bleach and soap she added to the water or how many times she rinsed, she could not get it white. Her vigorous scouring not only formed blisters on her fingers but also frayed the cloth, making it look ratty. By the middle of her fourth week in Black Apple, she threw her head covering away. Mrs. Rees gave her a flowered scarf to tie under her chin for Mass.

  And there was still no word from Mother Grace.

  * * *

  On the first day of her second month in Black Apple, Rose Marie finished dusting the altar and icons in the church, then went to the rectory. As she opened the door, she could hear Father Seamus’s raised voice.

  “I never asked for that girl to come here. We don’t have the resources to support her in this parish.”

  She froze.

  “Father Patrick agreed to take her on,” came Mrs. Rees’s reply. “She’s a very special girl, Father, and she comes from a respectable school.”

  They were at the back of the rectory, probably in Father Seamus’s study.

  “It’s a residential school,” Father Seamus’s voice boomed. “It’s a school built to provide religious and vocational training for Indian youth at the expense of the government of Canada and with the labour of the Church. A lot of good those schools do, if you look around this town. The situation is even worse in Coal River. Drunks and criminals, nearly every last one of them. At church infrequently, yet at Christmas and Easter they expect to be given Communion when they haven’t even been reconciled with God at confession.”

  “I’ve got to know her, and she’s a lovely young woman. Hardworking and devout.”

  “I have to provide spiritual leadership to this town as well as Coal River, Mrs. Rees. That is my responsibility. The church is here to support the real Catholics of the parish. It is the pillars of our community who supply the daily bread for the others. Let us not, in any well-meaning but misdirected way, forget that.”

  “Father Seamus, you’ve seen the article about her in the church paper. The Lord has touched her.”

  “According to the priest and Mother General of her residential school, who, if they’re like the others, are always looking for handouts. No doubt her so-called Visitation has been exaggerated—”

  “Father Seamus!”

  “Never mind, Mrs. Rees, I imagine we’re stuck with her now. You might as well send the month’s room and board over to that, that Mrs.—whatever she calls herself these days.”

  “But she paid last month’s rent from her own pocket, Father, money the sisters at the school gave her. She hasn’t a cent left. Can we not pay back—”

  “No, Mrs. Rees, we will not take the hard-earned money from our parishioners so an Indian can be given free room and board at the house of a harlot. The parish will pay her board for this month only. Please tell her that.”

  Rose Marie slipped out the door, easing it shut, and ran back to the church.

  She began dusting the icons again. Everything she had cleaned just a few minutes earlier had already managed to attract a fine layer of coal dust.

  40

  The Reply

  ROSE MARIE CONFIDED to Mrs. Rees that her papa had died. They were having tea in the rectory, and this time Mrs. Rees’s voice was so kind, her expression so sympathetic when she asked why Rose Marie was glum, that she simply collapsed at the kitchen table, all her grief and bitterness hissing out of her like air from a balloon.

  “Mother Grace should have told me he was sick,” she found herself repeating. “There’s no excuse for not telling me!”

  Mrs. Rees didn’t ask how she’d learned of Papa’s death. Instead she reached over, put her plump arms around Rose Marie’s shoulders, and hugged.

  “She must have had her reasons, love.” Then she told her to write to Mother Grace again. “She’s mourning a death as well, isn’t she?”

  Yes, Father Patrick. But Rose Marie was not ready to write to Mother Grace. Maybe she never would be.

  Six weeks she’d been in Black Apple, a month and a half of getting to know the town and its people, at least some of them. Chatting with Cyril on the porch after supper cleanup when he wasn’t on evening shift had become a ritual, and sometimes when Frank was on days, he met her across from the Dominion Hotel and walked her home. If he reached out to touch her hand or arm with his fire fingers, she shook him off. She looked for him, but she dreaded seeing him. She wanted to be near him, but she was relieved when he wasn’t waiting for her. He made her uncomfortable. He enticed her.

  Surprisingly, she liked Ruby and Mrs. Mooney and looked forward to helping them clean up after supper. It was like summer kitchen duty with Sisters Bernadette and Cilla, but even more relaxed, certainly less censored.

  She was angry, nostalgic, uneasy, confused, and lonely all at once in this town. She was also intrigued. There was a raw energy to life beyond the orderly world of the Sisters of Brotherly Love.

  One evening, just after Mrs. Derkatch, her head held high, had slammed the back door on her way out, Mrs. Mooney remarked, “Maybe I should tell the ‘high-and-mighty kitchen help’ we don’t require her precious services as long as we got you helping us, Rose Marie.”

  They all laughed at that.

  “But don’t forget I’ll be gone in another month and a half,” she reminded them.

  Often in Black Apple, she fell into memories of her before life in the bush. The crackling summer fires outside and the warm comfort of the wood stove on a winter’s day inside snuck up on her without warming. The smell of fresh bread wafting from the bakery at Wong’s made her think of Mama’s bannock, and the meat on display behind the glass counter at McBride’s prompted an image of Papa bowing under a heavy bundle of venison. When she looked up to the tree-draped mountains, she could see the narrow deer trails they had walked and hear the laughter in her parents’ voices as they joked. She was pretty sure that Frank danced to the radio in his room, but the scene that came to mind when she slipped past his door was Papa’s compact body taking on the movements of a wolf, the heartbeat of a drum.

  Yet outside her circle of acquaintances, unfamiliar people and situations confronted her daily, and what was required of her never seemed clear. She needed a friend to talk to, someone who understood her and could help her make sense of everything that had happened since she left St. Mark’s. Although she couldn’t turn to Mother Grace anymore, she had Mrs
. Rees, Ruby, Mrs. Mooney, Cyril, and even Frank to talk to.

  But she wanted Anataki.

  * * *

  Autumn took hold of the town. The shaking trees put on gold costumes and danced until exhausted, then dropped their leaves on the ground. Sunset came sooner, and the evening air was nippy. She wore Sister Bernadette’s raincoat and Sister Simon’s boots when she left the house each morning.

  One evening when she was sitting on the porch with Cyril, he got up to “see a man about a dog,” leaving his cigarette burning in the ashtray. Curious, she picked it up and brought it to her lips. The end was damp, so she held the tip and closed her mouth over her fingers, inhaling deeply. She did that twice more before setting it back in the ashtray.

  Her throat raw and her stomach churning, she felt her head lift from her shoulders like an airborne leaf. Her thoughts teetered back to her work at the rectory that morning: washing Father Seamus’s cassock collar, alb, and amice for Sunday’s Mass, his bedsheets, towels, and underdrawers, then ironing them all in the afternoon. It had been a busy day, and yet insignificant. Seconds, minutes, and hours were dripping from her and falling into a shapeless lump. She wanted more than just the freedom to walk around the town after work. People still told her what to do, making her feel like she was living their lives, not her own. It had always been that way, she saw now. She was sick of having nothing that was hers and hers alone.

  Standing up and leaning against a post, she watched the dirt and gravel street, the houses and front-yard gardens ooze at her feet. Only the mountains, black against the violet sky, were solid, a reminder of the landscape she knew as a child. She wanted something that was just out of reach, but she didn’t know what it was. The only thing she knew for certain was that before another day passed, she must sit down and write to Mother Grace again. She could not put it off any longer.

  Dear Mother Grace,

  Presently I am assisting Mrs. Rees in the upkeep of Our Lady of Sorrows Church, the church hall, and the rectory. She is a kind and pious woman who guides me through my chores. Overall, I am doing fine in Black Apple, but things are not as expected.

  Mrs. Mooney requires eighty dollars a month room and board. I had to make the first month’s payment myself with the money you gave me, every last cent. Mrs. Rees persuaded Father Seamus to make this month’s payment, but I’m sure he won’t make next month’s. Could you please write to Father Seamus concerning this matter?

  Once that was done, she had the urge to ask Mother Grace if she was grieving Father Patrick’s death. She wanted to write, It doesn’t feel so good to be told out of the blue that someone you love has died, does it, Mother Grace? But Mother Grace didn’t know she had read her letter to Father Patrick, and she wasn’t ready to admit to it.

  Setting down her pen, she thought about a phrase Cyril had used a few nights back. He had been warning her of a man named Rolfe Mooney, “Old Tom-cat’s son, a meaner SOB than even Tom was.” As he described Rolfe—his red hair and dirt-coloured trench coat—she recognized him as Dead Fox Man.

  “I know who you mean!”

  “Stay away from him,” Cyril warned, just as Frank had when she first arrived in town. Then Cyril told her how he, Frank, and Dwayne had thrown Rolfe out of the Dominion Hotel last Friday because Rolfe had beat up a whore, excuse his language.

  “Oh” was all she had been able to say.

  She knew what the word whore meant. Mother Grace had used it once when she was referring to Mary Magdalene. “Some say Magdalene was a”—and she had cleared her throat—“a whore. A woman who sells herself to men for money.” Her voice had been stiff. “Don’t you believe it, Rose Marie. The Bible says no such thing.”

  “I put Rolfe in a headlock,” Cyril had told her, chuckling. “I says to him, ‘We’re not going to let you back in the Dominion. Now put that in your pipe and smoke it!’ ”

  That was the phrase she yearned to use in her letter. You wish you had seen Father Patrick before he kicked the bucket, don’t you, Mother Grace? Well, that’s how I feel too. You kept me from Papa, from my brother and all the relatives on Papa’s Reserve. That was your plan. You even kept news of Papa’s illness from me, and for all of that, I’m really mad at you. Maybe I’ll never even speak to you again. So, put that in your pipe and smoke it!

  As she picked up her pen, it occurred to her that though she was still angry, she didn’t hate Mother Grace as she had thought, as she had hoped. But she did want to get back at her.

  She hated Father William, though. The kill-man. She wondered if he had hurt other boys; he could have poisoned, shot, stabbed, or hung them. Just as surely as he had hanged that little boy with the big eyes, the kid who grew up to become a haunted young man. She would avoid Father William when she returned to St. Mark’s. If she returned. The thought darted through her mind, then crawled into a corner to sleep.

  Please remind Father William that I keep his wise words in mind: “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.”

  She moved her pen down the paper, about to write Yours in Christ, but she was not yet ready to be reunited with Mother Grace, even in spirit. And she would not ask Mother Grace to keep her in her prayers either. What good did prayers do?

  Truly,

  Rose Marie

  41

  When Skies Are Grey

  MOTHER GRACE FOUND it hard to continue with her daily routine. Such a large, empty world it seemed without Patrick, and suddenly she was lost within it, left alone with no one to tell of her developing or diminishing philosophies, small blasphemies, and secret hopes. No one cared what she thought. Désolée. Even her favourite student, her protégée, Rose Marie Whitewater, who had delivered the wrenching news to her, was diminished to the size of a fly in her thoughts.

  She should go to confession. Non, she didn’t want to. She always found the process embarrassing. Despite decades of earnest attempts, she had never been able to forget that on the other side of the screen was a priest, one she knew, and now it was undoubtedly Father William. Over the years, she had considered him young, inexperienced, and flawed, though currently, the man was almost a friend. Not like Father Patrick, though. Mon Dieu, she couldn’t put the two names in the same sentence. Father Patrick was her true confessor, her confidant, her love.

  Dead.

  How his letters had felt in her hand as she plucked them from the mail—packets of ink and ideas—substantive, challenging, yet always confirming. Even in old age, a thrill had run through her breast as she opened them, often late at night while the sisters slept. Patrick’s humour—clever, sharp, and sometimes derisive, often delightfully mischievous—unfailingly caused her to laugh out loud in the hushed school. His love too; she had felt it in the texture of the paper—old and strong as a tree, as complexly grained.

  In the past, when busy or ill, he had gone as many as two weeks without corresponding. When running his mission in the Badlands to the east, it had occasionally been as long as a month. She had worried only on occasion, and only slightly. If anything happened to Patrick, she would know deep within her soul. Should he be in danger or pass on, the very configuration of the world would alter, and she would most definitely feel it.

  So she had thought.

  Rose Marie’s note informing her so bluntly of Patrick’s death had hit like a sledgehammer, and she still hadn’t recovered. Would she ever? She looked out the window at the sun, yellow as urine seeping into the white sheet of winter. She glanced at her hands, her once handsome nails, bitten. She couldn’t remember doing it.

  Despite knowing she had things to accomplish, she couldn’t focus. At the very least, she should write to Rose Marie, but damn it, she couldn’t summon the motivation. She wasn’t sure she was even capable of scribbling more than a sentence or two.

  Hélas, her last letter had been to Father Patrick, asking him to inform Rose Marie of her father’s death, she suddenly realized. And what had happened to that letter? If the housekeeper had simply returned it in the mail, she should have received it
by now. Perhaps the housekeeper had read it herself and then told Rose Marie the news. Or perhaps it was sitting on a dusty shelf, unopened. Had she been too familiar with Patrick in the letter, should the interim priest read it? She was unsure. Then again, it was quite possible that Rose Marie had read the letter and was heartbroken. Or furious. She couldn’t deny that she had felt some guilt over the years for allowing Mr. Whitewater only limited access to his daughter.

  She reached across her desk to have a look through the pile of newspapers Father Alphonses had brought her: both regional and national papers at least a week old, but sent to him by the bishop because of their coverage of the new Indian Act. Father Alphonses had driven them out to St. Mark’s for her to read. “I appreciate this,” she had muttered, knowing that normally she would have.

  She ached from neck to wrist and had to position each newspaper in front of her on the desk in order to read it. From what she could gather, this new Indian Act conceded that residential schools had been unsuccessful in their attempts to assimilate the Indian race. Oui, she had known; they’d all known, but exposed in black and white for all to see, the word failure chilled her to the bone.

  She scribbled a note, cancelling her meeting with Sister Cilla. She had hoped to solidify her strategy for the future of St. Mark’s, encouraging Priscilla to rededicate herself for the greater cause. You are the one on whom my hopes for the future of St. Mark’s rest, she had planned to remind her.

  She’d meet with Sister Cilla tomorrow, or possibly the day after. When she had the strength for it.

  She rose from her desk. Two in the afternoon and she was already weary, unable to spend another minute stuck to her office chair. She shook three aspirins into her mouth and, grasping one of her canes, headed towards the long and difficult staircase. On the way, she stuffed her note in Sister Cilla’s mailbox.

  With every step, she heard the creak of death. So much death over the years. Not surprisingly, she was learning of the passing of colleagues often these days, strong young women with whom she had attended the Mother House and sisters she had met during her years on the prairies. Then her oldest brother, Martin, gone just this past month with a heart attack. Her second-eldest brother, Stéphane, fourteen years before, and all those tubercular Indians she had worked with in hospitals. Vieilli, the young feverish students! So many of them. So young. Her father had died haying when she was thirty, and five years later, dear Maman had gone in her sleep. It was as if all the deaths she had ever known culminated in Patrick’s passing, as if she were experiencing every last one of them again. Patrick, cher Patrick, God bless your beautiful self.