Читать книгу Secret Lives - Berthe Amoss - Страница 7

Chapter I

My mother is sixteen in her portrait. Only four years older than I am now. Her portrait dress is painted so carefully you can see little waves in the white silk, and threads in the scooped-out lace collar. A gold heart hangs from a chain around her neck, and her curls, almost as golden as the heart, are tied back with a velvet ribbon. Her smile makes you wonder if someone she loved was standing to the left of the painter.

In one hand, she is holding a prayer book with a mother-of-pearl cover; the other hand rests on Fifi, her little white dog. Fifi is looking straight out of the portrait, so real and cute I wouldn’t be surprised to see her tail wag. There they sit, the two of them, absolutely perfect forever, on a creamy white sofa, the very one I’m sitting on. Only now, the sofa is covered in scratchy mohair, worn and old like everything else in this house.

It just seems to me that, this being 1937, there ought to be a hint of modern times around here, but Three Twenty Audubon Street and its occupants have been lifted straight out of the Dark Ages and placed in the middle of New Orleans. Not that I’m ungrateful for all of the things Aunt Eveline and Aunt Kate do for me, especially Aunt Eveline, but if it hadn’t been for the tidal wave, I wouldn’t find myself in a practically haunted house being raised by two old ladies dressed in lavender, who think more about dying than living.

Aunt Eveline had closed the shutters at noon to keep the September heat out, but now the sun was low and bright stripes slanted into the gloomy room across my feet to Aunt Kate, fast asleep in her chair. In a little while Aunt Eveline would bring Aunt Kate her coffee, and Sandra Lee would prance in to hear her favorite radio program. I opened my drawing pad. There was just enough time to copy my mother’s portrait dress for Jane Whitmore.

I held my pencil and studied the portrait.

I must have been swapped in the hospital. I don’t look anything like my mother. I wonder if I’m adopted and Aunt Eveline doesn’t want to tell me for fear it will warp my personality. That can’t be it. Aunt Eveline has never even heard of personality.

“Posture is most important, dear,” she says. “Most important. Hold yourself straight!”

If only I could let go! Nature is holding me—my hair, my nose, and my figure—in absolute, perfect straightness. I could double for a telephone pole. That doesn’t bother Aunt Eveline. It’s character that counts with her. “Turn the other cheek, dear,” she says. She means to Sandra Lee, of course.

Unfortunately, Sandra Lee does look like my mother’s portrait, even though she is only my cousin. Same yellow curls and cute turned-up nose, and the beginnings of a real figure. The resemblance stops there. The real Sandra Lee, under all the fakiness, is meaner than sin, and my mother, Aunt Eveline says, was as good as she was beautiful.

I sighed and drew the scooped-out lace collar. I made the skirt wide, with a hoop, and started cutting out. If my mother were here, I might be downtown with her this very minute. Instead of sitting on scratchy mohair making a paper-doll dress, I might be shopping for a dress of my own to wear Friday nights.

“If only you were here,” I whispered to the girl in the portrait.

“Darling Pasie!” Aunt Eveline cried out, so loud I almost stabbed myself with the scissors. She was standing right next to me, looking at the portrait, Aunt Kate’s special cup in her hand. “Oh, Addie,” she said, “if only your darling mother were—”

“Darn!” I interrupted. She’d made me cut a tab off Jane Whitmore’s dress.

“Never say darn if you mean damn, and never say damn if you’re a lady, dear,” Aunt Eveline said, proving how up-to-date she is on bringing up girls in 1937. “I thought you’d outgrown paper dolls.” Aunt Eveline doesn’t like Jane Whitmore’s curves and skimpy underwear.

“I have outgrown paper dolls, but I’m going to be a fashion illustrator someday and I’m practicing.” It was almost the truth. I am going to be an artist but I don’t know what kind, and I have outgrown paper dolls, but Jane Whitmore is more than just a paper doll.

Aunt Eveline sighed heavily and carried the Haviland cup to Aunt Kate, still fast asleep over her rosary. “Tea-time, Katie, dear,” she said cheerfully.

Aunt Eveline stood waiting for Aunt Kate to bob awake, but Aunt Kate’s slightly hairy chin continued to rest on her lavender shoulder.

“Katie, dear, your coffee!” Aunt Kate didn’t budge, and the Haviland cup began to rattle in the saucer.

“Katie, dear?” Aunt Eveline asked anxiously.

“Aunt Kate! Wake up!” I hollered.

Aunt Kate’s eyelids fluttered open, and her fingers moved on along her rosary beads.

“Oh, what a scare!” Aunt Eveline said, one hand on her heart, the other still shaking as she gave the coffee to Aunt Kate. “I knew something was amiss the very minute I saw your fingers only as far as the second decade of your beads!” Aunt Kate always finishes the Glorious Mysteries before napping, the Sorrowful Mysteries before bedtime, and the Joyful Mysteries before rising. “What a good thing that when the Lord called you, you just told Him He’d have to wait a bit.”

Aunt Kate chuckled. “For a vacancy in our second family home!” she said.

“Yes, indeed!” Aunt Eveline said happily. “Our second family home! But we have to move in one at a time! Everyone has to wait his turn. After all, Kate, Ben’s only been gone six months, and even in our climate, that’s just not long enough!”

It might as well have been a conversation in Chinese for all someone outside this house would understand. But I knew they were talking about our tomb in Saint Louis #2 Cemetery.

“You mean Uncle Ben hasn’t departed yet,” I said. “Departed. Get it?”

“Addie!” Aunt Eveline cried. “That is not an amusing pun.”

“Well, it’s the same thing you were just saying. There’s only room for one body in the tomb, and if Uncle Ben hasn’t turned to dust yet and sifted through the grating to the ground, there’s no room for Aunt Kate.”

“That will be quite enough, young lady!” Aunt Eveline swished her lavender skirt away from me.

I didn’t really want to make her mad, so I tried again. “You’re absolutely right about the second home part, Aunt Eveline. Those tombs in Saint Louis #2 look just like little houses. Sister Elizabeth Anne told us they had to build them above ground in the old days because New Orleans was so marshy we’d have floated away underneath. Can’t you just see all those people we’ve buried floating away, right on out to the Gulf of Mexico where my mother—”

“Adelaide! Not another word!” Aunt Eveline’s voice shook and squeaked.

Aunt Kate’s white, pincushion head bobbed in a jolly way as she sipped her coffee and said, “What a crowd of people will come out of our tomb on the Last Day!”

“If only darling Pasie were with us!” Aunt Eveline said. She didn’t mean with us on the mohair sofa, she meant with us in the crowd at Saint Louis #2.

“Just the same, you’re always putting flowers on the tomb for my mother,” I said. “It would make a lot more sense to throw them into the Gulf.”

“Just like Harold’s father!” piped up Sandra Lee, coming through the door, yellow curls bouncing. I slipped Jane Whitmore out of sight into a magazine and casually put the scissors on the table. “Harold’s father is going to sprinkle his ashes in the Mississippi River because he’s a river pilot.”

“Pagan!” Aunt Eveline glared at me as though I’d suggested it.

“I am sick to death of hearing about Harold,” I snarled. Harold is in love with Sandra Lee and vice versa.

“I am speaking of Harold’s father. I wonder what ever became of Tom’s father?” Sandra Lee knows perfectly well that he just up and left home when Tom was a baby.

“It’s not my business, I’m sure,” I said. I am not in love with Tom or vice versa. “And I just meant sprinkling flowers, Aunt Eveline, into the Gulf, where my—”

“Adelaide, I do not wish to pursue the subject! An absolutely heathen thought! And please wear your hair so that it does not impair your vision.” I glared at Sandra Lee and anchored my straight black hair at the sides with the bobby pins that had slipped. I can’t help it if my bangs, which are in the process of growing out, do not look their best at the moment.

Sandra Lee smiled her dimples at me and tossed her golden curls. I tried to turn the other cheek, but I had run out of cheeks. “Harold must need glasses !” I had to whisper so Aunt Eveline wouldn’t hear. “I’ve never seen a meaner-looking girl than you!”

Sandra Lee’s lips curled at the corners and she looked at me with my mother’s portrait eyes. “Heathen!” she mouthed so that only I could see.

Aunt Eveline helped Aunt Kate upstairs, and Sandra Lee skipped to the radio, singing off-key:

Who’s that little chatterbox?

The one with pretty auburn locks?

Who can it be?

It’s Little Orphan Annie!

“Why is it,” I asked, “that although you have a perfectly good radio right next door at your own house, you never miss listening to Little Orphan Annie here at my house?”

Cute little she,

It’s Little Orphan An-nie!

Sandra Lee croaked the theme song, not even looking in my direction, and plopped down in what she considers her chair.

“My, my!” she said. “A paper doll! What would Tom say?” Jane Whitmore had fallen out of the magazine and was lying with her portrait dress on the floor. Sandra Lee snatched them up before I could.

“I don’t care what Tom would say! Give it back! It’s not a play doll! It’s practice! I’m going to be—”

“I know. An artist. Just like your mother, Aunt Pasie.” Sandra Lee was putting the portrait dress on Jane Whitmore. “Is this supposed to be Aunt Pasie? You’ve got her curves right, anyhow. Quite a girl. So I hear.”

“What are you talking about? What did you hear?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Did Aunt Toosie tell you something about my mother?”

“My mother wouldn’t say anything about her own sister! Hush! It’s starting.” Sandra Lee threw Jane Whitmore at me and unpinned her Little Orphan Annie Secret Society decoding badge.

Sandra Lee is a member of the Secret Society, and she got her badge by mailing two Ovaltine tops and ten cents to Little Orphan Annie. She got a book, too, with secret codes and Seven Golden Rules, which she obeys like the Ten Commandments, especially the Sixth, about drinking Ovaltine three times a day. Even if it weren’t for the Sixth, Aunt Toosie would make Sandra Lee drink Ovaltine because she says Sandra Lee needs building up. It seems to me that if anyone needs “building up,” it is a person built like a pencil, namely me, but Aunt Eveline says, “Golden Rules notwithstanding, Ovaltine is far too stimulating for young people.”

At the end of the program, I watched Sandra Lee write down the numbers Little Orphan Annie broadcast. She spun the wheel on her badge and wrote letters next to the numbers. She saw me watching and hugged her paper to her chest. “I’m so sorry, Adelaide,” she said, “but Outsiders aren’t allowed to know the Secret Message.”

I tried not to care, but I did. “Sandra Lee,” I said humbly, “could I please have two of your extra Ovaltine tops to send off?”

“You’re supposed to save your own,” she said piously. “I have to be fair to Little Orphan Annie.”

A wave of pure hate washed over me. “Why don’t you just go home, then, to your old Ovaltine and your cute little organdy cottage and get out of my house!”

“I was leaving anyway,” she snapped back. “And Three Twenty’s not your house, it’s Aunt Eveline’s and Aunt Kate’s, and they’re as much my aunts as yours!”

“You can have this whole place for all I care!” I shouted. “It’s practically haunted. You can take every last thing in it! All except the portrait.”

“I don’t even want the portrait!” Sandra Lee shouted back. “I wouldn’t want a mother like that!”

“How’s a body to cook with all that carrying on?” Nini cried, coming out of the kitchen. Nini, who has been our cook for twenty years, is the only sane person at Three Twenty Audubon Street.

“Oh, Nini,” I wailed. Sandra Lee had made a quick exit, and I was fighting a losing battle with tears. “What was wrong with my mother?”

“Not one thing, honey,” Nini said. “Not one thing wrong with your mother!”

“But didn’t everyone love her?”

“Yes, indeed, they loved her! All your aunts, they loved her! Toosie, Kate, Eveline, especially your Aunt Eveline. Yes, indeed.” Nini’s dark face was serious, as if she were way back in time remembering how they all loved my mother. “And now, my girl, I fixed lost bread with plenty sugar for your supper. You just eat and pop up to bed. Your mother was a good girl. Yes, indeed. And what you needs is a good night’s rest.”

“If she was so good, what was Sandra Lee talking about?” I asked.

“How I know what that child got in her mind?” Nini said crossly. “You just get your rest. Eight whole hours your Aunt Eveline says. Your Aunt Eveline knows what’s good for you.”

If anyone in this house knows what’s good for a girl practically thirteen, they’re keeping it from me. My secret life as Jane Whitmore is absolutely the only thing that saves me from going mad. Every night after I go to bed, I block out my pencil figure, the straight black bangs, the Family Nose . . . I am Jane Whitmore. I smooth my golden curls and run my hand over my little turned-up nose, down my well-developed bust to my tiny waist. My favorite scene is Jane Whitmore in the Hurricane, in which, against incredible odds, Edmond Hilary de St. Denis rescues me from the giant waves. As he swims for shore, holding me half dead in his arms, I whisper in his ear, “Edmond, I cannot leave you! Your love is the bridge over which I trod back to life and to you!” His tears of joy are saltier than the waves.

Another good scene is Jane Whitmore Defies Death, in which I miraculously recover from a near-fatal disease, but not before I have soaked my pillow with real tears. I love the line, “Jane, my darling, you have returned to earth like Spring following Winter!”

After I finished seconds on the lost bread, I went upstairs and did my homework. After that, I went straight to bed to do Jane Whitmore Returns. I got so deep into it, I didn’t hear Aunt Eveline come in. In this new scene, Edmond does not know I have come home after my two years of studying art in Florence, and he wanders into my one-man show by chance.

“Masterly,” he murmurs, admiring my landscapes. Then, he sees my self-portrait and recognizes me! “Jane!” His manly voice breaks as he gazes at my likeness and realizes how much he wants to see me.

“Edmond!” I say, coming up behind him and placing one small hand on his arm. “I hardly knew you! You’ve grown a mustache!”

“What?” cried Aunt Eveline, making me jump a mile. “I may have a few hairs on my lip, but certainly not a mustache! Why is your hand dangling in the air?”

“My hand? Oh. I was half asleep. Talking in my sleep!”

“You’ve been crying!” Her voice softened. “Is it your mother, dear?”

“Yes.” I produced more tears.

“Poor angel!” Aunt Eveline prepared to sit on the edge of my bed. “How could you help mourning your loss— that lovely girl, so young and beautiful! Her career and life in front of her! What a tragedy! If only she were in—”

“I’m all right now, Aunt Eveline,” I said hurriedly. “I’m just fine now. I’m sure I’ll sleep.”

“We’ll visit the Delgado, tomorrow, dear. Would you like that?”

“Oh, yes, Aunt Eveline!” Aunt Eveline knows I like going to the museum with her. She tells me about the lives of the artists and their paintings, because she used to be the art and debate teacher at Allen School until she retired to look after me. She still paints dog portraits, but they are pretty awful, even though they look like the dogs and make the owners happy.

“Well, good night, then, dear.”

“Good night, Aunt Eveline.”

Jane Whitmore doesn’t work after interruptions, so when Aunt Eveline left, I tried to sleep, hoping I would not dream of the tidal wave that swept me, my mother and father, and our whole house into the Gulf of Mexico.