Fall on your Knees

At Materia’s funeral, six-year-old Frances struggles to understand what has happened to her family. “What a week” (136)—three deaths in just a few days: her sister Kathleen, one of the twins (she does not share the circumstances), and then her mother. Frances has also learned how to keep a secret. Her father has instructed them to say that Materia was the mother of the surviving twin, whom they have named Lily. And she must never tell how Ambrose, the other twin, died.

Readers are given the circumstances of Ambrose’s death. During the delivery of the twins, the attic bed is bloody from the difficult birth. James comes in and is stunned by the horrific image, “freeze-framed by James’s eye” (139).

Materia is adamant that the twins need to be baptized. James forbids it. The two argue loudly, and the argument comes to blows. James slams Materia’s head into the wall and storms down the stairs and out the door.

Frances, listening at the bottom of the attic stairs, understands what she must do. She will take the twins to the creek behind the house and baptize them herself. She steps around her mother, collapsed on the floor, and sees her sister dead on the bed. She struggles to carry both babies. At the creek, she first dips the girl Lily into the swirling brackish water, saying, “God please baptize this baby” (142). But when she tries to do the same for the boy Ambrose, her father interrupts her. Fearing Frances is trying to drown the baby, James pulls the baby boy away. Frances accidentally drops the baby into the water, and before James can pull him out, the baby drowns.

After Kathleen’s funeral, Frances, who has been fasting for two days because of the death of Ambrose, suddenly has a craving for blancmange, a sticky cake. She goes to the kitchen to prepare the dough with Mercedes. But their mother is cleaning the oven with unusually diligent attention. They must wait until their mother is finished with the oven to bake the dough.

Readers return to the night of Kathleen’s delivery. Six-year-old Mercedes hears all the commotion and decides that the house has been invaded by a devil. She studies the backscratcher that leans against her mirror, a gag gift from a friend, three monkeys doing the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil thing.

When at last the house quiets, Mercedes creeps down the hallway wondering where Frances is. She returns to her bedroom and looks out the window, where she sees her sister down by the creek with “something cradled in her arms” (149). Mercedes sees her father come down and thinks Frances will be reprimanded for playing with her dolls at the creek at this hour.

James struggles against the creek’s current to rescue the bundled Ambrose, but he knows the baby is dead. In shock, enraged in grief, he rips off the scarecrow’s head, and with his bare hands digs a hole where he can bury the dead baby. He demands Frances give him her nightshirt. He swaddles the dead baby in it and buries him in the shallow grave. Meanwhile, Materia burns all the bloody bedding in the basement furnace. In the morning, James, recovering from the horrific events, tells Frances and Mercedes that Kathleen has died (Frances assumes her sister’s swollen belly was a tumor) and that their mother has given birth to a girl named Lily. This way, the family can keep secret the baby’s illegitimacy.

Kathleen is buried in a beautiful white dress. Materia’s father attends the service, struggling to understand the senseless death of such a young and talented girl. James promises himself the night of the funeral to stop drinking.

Two days later, James finds Materia dead in the kitchen, her head in the oven. He drags her body up to the bedroom and calls the doctor, telling him she died after days of fighting the flu to keep secret that she died by suicide. He tells Frances and Mercedes only that their mother is dead.

Mercedes, taking over the responsibilities of being mother, summons a priest to baptize the surviving infant. Fearing the baby might also be infected from the fetid creek water, the priest stays far apart from Lily even as he performs the ceremony. Mercedes agrees to stand in as godmother and understands she is now responsible for the baby’s soul. But it is Frances who notices how oddly the infant struggles in her bedding: “There’s something wrong with her” (167).

Book 2 ends with an entry from Kathleen’s diary describing the ecstasy she feels when she finds love in New York City.

Prohibition gives James a way to make money: Concocting hard liquor out in his shed. Despite economic hard times on the island during the frequent strikes, James provides his daughters with nice clothes, meat for dinner, and even a car. The girls know that their father is not a boot-maker, but a bootlegger. James dotes on baby Lily “in the right way” (179). While Mercedes plays mother and runs the house, Lily and Francis play dolls up in the attic. Lily, who has been diagnosed with polio, increasingly turns to her Catholic faith for hope in healing her leg. James is concerned about signs that Frances is acting up in school.

Swearing off alcohol after Kathleen’s death, James works every night in the shed mixing up bootleg whiskey. He is happy that he is able to provide for his daughters. Lily is home-schooled, and James buys the girls lots of books. He visits Kathleen’s grave, but never his wife’s.

The girls are growing up. They go to the movies for escape. Each girl has a crush on a movie star. When they are home, they stage plays based on their favorite book, Little Women. At times, they act out the lives of saints: “They were always excited about these passion plays of ecstatic faith and glorious martyrdom in the stories in which they all starred simultaneously” (190).

Frances sends a gushy fan letter to Lillian Gish asking for an autographed picture, but signs the letter “Kathleen Piper.” The girls know that Kathleen is never to be mentioned around their father. Frances mentions to Lily that she had a brother who died. Lily is puzzled, and Frances tells her the cat smothered her brother and tried to do the same to her, but their father saved her.

Mercedes experiences her first period and believes that she is now an adult. She takes seriously her job as her sisters’ surrogate mother. She keeps tabs on them when they play, makes sure they get to school, fixes meals for them, and calms them whenever they have bad dreams or see any of the ghosts they believe haunt their house. Mercedes works for months on an elaborate family tree on a scroll of special paper.

Lily grows certain that only the Virgin Mary, whose sighting at Fatima has created so much excitement, can heal her polio-stricken leg. As she watches Mercedes work on the family tree, Lily struggles with guilt because according to the dates on the tree “everyone died” (202) when she was born. Frances takes Lily out to the garden where she knows Ambrose is buried and tells her to dig around to find treasure—the bones of the cat who tried to kill her. Mercedes buries the family tree.