Fall on Your Knees by Ann-marie MacDonald Page B

— he tries not to think it but there it is: bovine. Kathleen nibbles her cheese toast and leaves the crusts. The princess and the pea.
    If James has forgotten the demon, Materia hasn’t. She saw it. It looked at her. She knows it’s coming back. Materia has two real daughters now, she loves them, so it’s all very clear. One novena gives way to another, she logs miles along the Stations of the Cross, meditates upon the Mysteries — Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious — of the rosary. Gains partial indulgences, does not hope to gain a plenary indulgence, being never free from attachment to sin despite frequent confessions.
    The beautiful eight-foot Mary with her blue robe and sweet sorrowful face has been moved from Lingan to New Waterford’s newly built Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, and there, in her own grotto, she presides with her Holy Infant and serpent.
    In the cool darkness, sweet chafing incense faint upon the air, Materia kneels at Our Lady’s feet and prays that James be kept free of his demon for as long as possible. She prays to the demon. And lights another candle for it.
    It’s a freak spring, so hot Materia can hardly move; she’s huge. What can be in there, wonders James. Looks like she’s incubating a twelve-inch cannonball. Nonetheless, she walks to church every morning with her two children in Kathleen’s old English pram. Mrs MacIsaac watches her inch by the drugstore window and worries for her: no one should be that close to God. Mr MacIsaac beckons her in for raspberry soda. Materia declines, everything makes her queasy, but the little ones drink till they sport pink moustaches.
    The bigger she gets, the harder she prays, for James has once again ceased to come near her, and Kathleen grows lovelier and more careless every day. Materia watches their heads mutually inclined over a sum on a slate; sees Kathleen prance before him in her newest frock. Watches his face when the girl sings just for him.
    Swamped in flesh, Materia can’t seem to get a clear deep breath. By June she’s sleeping on the kitchen cot, no more stairs. This baby is sapping the life out of her — no more spot-checks on her husband and daughter, not at this rate.
    She hasn’t a thing to fit her any more so she takes three old dresses and cuts them into one: rosebud print in front, green taffeta sides and plaid back. She spends a comfortable day but when James comes home it’s “What in the name of God have you got on?”
    She asks him for money. She buys a remaindered bolt of crazy floral calico and, with the help of Mrs Luvovitz, fashions three roomy dresses. Mrs Luvovitz offers her several yards of pale blue muslin instead but Materia declines. She likes the flowers. James shakes his head but doesn’t comment.
    Materia’s always murmuring these days, her lips constantly moving whether she’s mending a sock or changing a nappy. Worst, while making her glacial way through town to church.
    “Don’t be traipsing up Plummer Avenue nattering to yourself, woman.”
    “I not talking to myself.”
    “Then who’re you talking to?”
    “Mary.”
    Jesus Murphy.
    Materia sees the demon grinning at her again from the mouth of its furnace. Night and day she secretes and spins a gauzy shroud of prayer in which she swaddles Kathleen. She sees the body of her daughter cocooned, suspended, green eyes open. But no one can spin for ever, and cocoons must yield, whether to release a butterfly or a meal. What has she left to sacrifice? She offered up her music long ago. She would mortify her flesh, but that might harm her unborn child. She has no vanity left to mortify, so she offers up her fat, her shabby shifts, her curly hair gone thin. But the demon isn’t satisfied.
    In the cool dark of Mount Carmel Church, Materia looks into the narrow green face of the serpent and makes the sign of the cross. Beside her kneels tiny Mercedes, little white-gloved hands folded around her very own rosary beads. Behind them baby Frances crawls