Читать книгу Secret Lives - Berthe Amoss - Страница 9

Chapter III

YOU CAN find your way around Three Twenty Audubon Street with your nose. Downstairs is cabbage, except for the mohair sofa, which is mothball, and the kitchen, which besides cabbage is Nini’s roux, the burnt flour and fat smell that begins her creole cooking. Upstairs is pure cloves.

When I woke up the next morning, I fanned my room to make it clove-free. Aunt Kate’s room is next to mine and she has an ancient potpourri, a jar of faded rose leaves and spices, all completely drowned out by the cloves. The cloves smell was seeping under the door into my room. I could tell Pumpkin was allergic to cloves by the way she was running around sniffing for fresh air. I stuffed the crack with newspaper, but after breakfast, when Aunt Eveline inspected my room to see if I’d made my bed, she pulled the newspaper out with a long lecture on promises made and not kept.

“The dog must remain outside, Adelaide. It smells very doggy in this room.”

“You smell cloves, not Pumpkin. The cloves stink.”

“Addie, do not use that word!”

“But I can’t even smell my Fatal Moment,” I said, unstopping my perfume and dabbing little drops of it behind my ears, at my elbows, and on my wrists. “It’s all covered over by cloves, and Pumpkin almost suffocated last night!”

“Adelaide, I smell no cloves whatsoever, and I am quite aware of your perfume when you douse yourself in that liberal fashion, totally unsuitable for a school day. Kindly put that dog in the shed. I will look in on her while you’re at school,” she added in a kinder tone.

I brought Pumpkin to the shed, curled her up on my pillow, and closed the gate Tom had made from an old crate. On my way back upstairs I saw Aunt Eveline in the kitchen, putting scraps in a bowl for Pumpkin.

Aunt Eveline is not so bad when she tries. Aunt Kate, on the other hand, is just too old to change. She is a whole generation older than my mother and Sandra Lee’s. Part of Aunt Kate seems already to have gone on to her reward, as Aunt Eveline puts it, and the other part is preparing. Never mind, Aunt Eveline says, she is laying up her treasure in Heaven, where her place is being made ready by those who have gone on before. There’s a lot of activity up there, I thought, stepping into my school dress and looking at the photograph of my grandmother, lost among children of all sizes, her own and older ones belonging to my grandfather’s first wife. One of the older girls in the picture is holding the baby of the family. The older girl is Aunt Eveline.

“Addie, you’ll be late for school!” Aunt Eveline called up the steps. “Finish dressing and don’t dawdle!”

The baby in the picture is my mother. I tied my shoes and wondered why I’ve never learned to say “was” instead of “is” for my mother. It has been such a long time since my mother, father, and I lived in Honduras. My father was manager of a banana plantation there and my mother painted landscapes, until one day, a hurricane came along, and a tidal wave swept most of Belize and our house into the Gulf. My father saved me, but, in Aunt Eveline’s version of what happened, my mother was torn from his arms and hurled into the arms of the angels. I can’t remember any of it—a strange, funny thing when I stop to think how dramatic it must have been.

“Ad-die! I see Sandra Lee on the steps already! What are you doing up there?”

“I’m dressing, Aunt Eveline!”

Aunt Eveline says my father died soon after of a broken heart, but the Honduran medical report called it malaria. I try to remember the bearded man whose picture sits on my dresser, but he is a stranger. He looks much older than my mother; I think he was closer to Aunt Eveline’s age. None of it makes any difference, because I lost both of my parents and came to live here at Three Twenty instead of in a normal house with a mother and father.

“Ah-de-la-eed! Are you ready?”

“I’m coming, Aunt Eveline!”

Having Sandra Lee complete with parents and a normal house right next door makes it all ten times worse. Aunt Toosie and Uncle Henry’s cozy cottage is full of chintz, organdy, and fake Early American furniture. They never listen to opera on the radio. They play dance music on the phonograph, and once I even saw them roll back the rug and dance cheek to cheek.

“At last!” Aunt Eveline said at the foot of the steps. “I sincerely hope you don’t make Sandra Lee, who was ready on time, miss the bell. Your hair! But never mind, I see her waiting very patiently in front of her house.”

I don’t like to criticize Aunt Eveline or Aunt Kate, but they could take a lesson from Aunt Toosie and her cute cottage. Three Twenty, although free of cobwebs, is definitely spooky, with carved wood curling around everything you sit on and heavy brocade draperies choking the light out of the windows.

“Now, Addie, be sure and buy milk for lunch. No Coke.”

“Don’t forget to feed Pumpkin, Aunt Eveline.”

I stopped suddenly on my way out the door. A plan had just occurred to me. “Aunt Eveline, we need a giant yard sale. I would start in the attic, if I were you, and work to the ground, and when we have everything out on the lawn, I’ll holler, ‘Come and get it! Then we’ll seal off the attic permanently, fumigate the rest of the house, and then, well, to tell you the truth, the easiest thing will be to sell Three Twenty and move miles away from Sandra Lee.”

Aunt Eveline got all upset and failed to see the benefits of my plan. Aunt Kate said if my mother were alive, I’d be living in a jungle, and how would I like that, and Aunt Eveline calmed down and said that the colors are beautiful in Honduras, and I would have loved to paint there. I left for school before anything else could worry her, and she stood on the porch, smiling and waving, dressed all in lavender.

Aunt Toosie was out on her porch, too, in a dress of pink and white checks. Sandra Lee shook her head so that her yellow curls bounced. She looked at me through her long lashes and twitched her little nose in a shy smile, all for Aunt Eveline’s benefit. I didn’t get another smile out of her the whole school day.

That afternoon I was sitting at my dressing table, doing my nose-shortening exercise. Aunt Eveline says I have my father’s Family Nose and it is very aristocratic, but I’d like it better if it were less aristocratic and more like the one in my mother’s portrait. So I’m shortening it. I had a piece of adhesive tape across the bridge to keep my nose from humping, and another stuck on the sides and looped under like a sling to lift it. I had been sitting there for five minutes and my nose was just starting to shorten, when I heard Aunt Eveline clumping up the steps and heading straight for my closed door. I ripped off the adhesive tape and pretended to be combing my hair.

No knock.

“Addie, dear, I baked cookies for you and Sandra Lee to take to Sister Elizabeth Anne when you go for catechism. ‘Who made me?’ ”

“ ‘God made me,’ ” I snapped back like a parrot.

“ ‘Why did God make you?’ ” Aunt Eveline not only knows the answers, she knows all of the questions in the Baltimore Catechism.

“ ‘God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him in the next.’ ” Not a preposition out of place.

“Good. Your nose is red. What happened to it?”

“Nothing. It’s not red.” If I said I had a cold, she’d give me milk of magnesia and put me to bed.

“It is too red.” Sandra Lee’s face popped around the door. “And swollen! What are those two pieces of adhesive tape for?”

She had come in my house and up the stairs silently, and I knew from the expression on her face that she already knew what the adhesive tape was for, and that, therefore, she must have been looking through the keyhole. You just don’t get any sneakier than that!

By that time, my whole face was red, but Aunt Eveline was off on her favorite subjects, cleanliness and manners.

“Now, Addie, wash your hands after playing with that dog.” Aunt Eveline couldn’t get in the habit of calling Pumpkin by her name. “And please remember to say ‘Yes’ and ‘No, Sister Elizabeth Anne,’ and not ‘uh-huh’ and ‘un-un.’ And, Addie, comb your hair before you leave. It looks like a bird’s nest.”

Before Aunt Eveline could come up with suggestions of what to do so that my hair would look less like “monk in the bush,” I hurried to the bathroom, splashed water on my hands, slapped my hair with a brush, and, tearing back through my room, grabbed my catechism, charged down the steps, and banged the screen door as hard as possible so that, with a little luck, it would hit Sandra Lee as she followed close behind me, smirking and twitching her little nose.

The nuns that teach our school live at the end of our block, and Sister Elizabeth Anne is always waiting for us on the front porch in a caned rocker, her rosary in her hands, her slightly crossed eyes looking more or less in our direction. Aunt Kate says one eye is looking at Heaven, but I have never been able to decide which one. There are two empty rockers next to Sister Elizabeth Anne, and we sit down in a row facing front, rocking and staring through the screen.

The lessons are a special favor to Aunt Kate from Sister Elizabeth Anne, who went to school with Aunt Kate. Sandra Lee and I have already been confirmed after years of catechism, but this, in Aunt Kate’s opinion, is not enough insurance against the ever-present threat of heathenism.

“ ‘Why did God make you?’ ”

“ ‘God made me [rock] to know Him [rock] and to love Him [rock] and to serve him in this world [rock, rock] and to be happy with Him in the next [rock, rock, rock].’ ” I could say it backwards.

“ ‘Who is God?’ ”

“Uh [rock, rock] uh, ‘God is’ [rock] ‘God is the creator of ’ uh, [rock, rock] of uh, [nose twitching, lashes batting] uh . . .”

“ ‘God is the creator of Heaven and’?”

“ ‘God is the creator of Heaven and’ uh . . . [rock, rock] and uh . . .”

“ ‘And earth and’?”

“Uh, ‘and earth and’ uh . .

“ ‘God is the creator of Heaven and earth and all things’!” I shouted.

“You must let Sandra Lee have a turn,” Sister Elizabeth Anne said.

After half an hour of rocking, uh-ing, and nose twitching, Sister Elizabeth Anne stood up, satisfied we knew the lesson. I tried to pretend I wasn’t in a hurry to leave and edged forward in my rocker slowly. Sandra Lee pretended she was having such a good time she hated to leave. Gazing up through her lashes and smiling shyly, she leaned back in the rocker and rocked forward on my toe.

I leaped in the air, banging into Sister Elizabeth Anne. Something fell to the floor with a tinkling sound. The silver heart that is supposed to hang from Sister Elizabeth Anne’s starched white scapula was lying at my feet.

“An omen!” she cried, smiling at me. “Someday, perhaps, you will become a nun!”

Sandra Lee piously crossed herself and said sweetly, “Amen!”

I stared in horror at Sister Elizabeth Anne, draped in black, every hair on her head trapped inside a kind of religious helmet. Me, a nun? What about Edmond? My art? My mouth hung open while I silently prayed, Please, God, don’t make any mistakes about me. Let my secret life come true and let me develop and—and make Sandra Lee a nun.

I forgot to say good-bye and thank you, and ran home.

“Holly’s coming!” Nini said before I could get the screen door open. “And Tom says he took Pumpkin to the park. And ain’t it wonderful that Holly’s coming?” Usually, you can sit in Nini’s kitchen, thinking your own thoughts while she moves around singing “Pack Up Your Troubles” or some other World War song, but today, she couldn’t stop talking about her granddaughter from Chicago. She sipped her cafe au lait and nibbled at bread spread with cane syrup, her steady diet.

“Wait till you see Holly! That’s some girl! Smart, just like you!”

“Nini,” I asked, bored with Holly, who wasn’t coming for another week, “when my mother was growing up, was she like me?”

“No,” she answered shortly.

“Sandra Lee said she was quite a girl.”

Nini looked at me sharply. “What she mean by that?”

“I’m asking you what she means.”

Nini’s dark eyes, matted in pure white and framed in her black face, took in all of me. “You just keep to your business,” she said. “Ain’t no use digging at the past.”

“Well, I’d just like to be like her, that’s all, my own mother, and how can I be when you won’t tell me what she was like and I never knew her?”

“How you ever gonna know her when she’s dead? You just aim to be like your Aunt Eveline, that’s what,” Nini said crossly.

“Why?”

“A happy woman, that’s why.”

“I don’t think I want to be like Aunt Eveline,” I said carefully. “I am sure I will never wear lavender.”

“Lavender means grieving. Nothing wrong with grieving when the time comes.”

“Yes, but Aunt Eveline and Aunt Kate are always grieving—they’re always mourning for somebody! They start off in black, which has to be worn exactly one year for fathers, mothers, husbands, or wives, six months for sisters and brothers, and three for cousins, then they ‘go into lavender,’ and they never do get past lavender to real colors before black sets in again!”

Nini laughed at me. “Your Aunt Eveline was young once—just like you—and your mama—and she had a laugh like this.” Nini tapped a crystal glass with a spoon. “Until—but if you want to stand there gabbin’, hand me that polish and here’s your cloth, and we’ll get this silver shining before Holly comes.”

The very thought of her granddaughter put Nini back in a good humor, but I was tired of hearing about Holly since I had never even seen her. I gobbled my peanut butter, mayonnaise, and banana sandwich, rubbed one spoon, and went upstairs to draw.

I started off drawing clothes for Jane Whitmore. I remembered a snapshot Aunt Kate has of my mother that she keeps in her tin box of souvenirs. In the snapshot, my mother is waving from the deck of the ship that took her across the ocean. She is wearing a fur coat, and a hat so low on her forehead that her face is in shadow. I drew a cloche hat for Jane Whitmore.

It bothers me that I have to look at pictures to know what my mother looked like and ask other people to tell me about her. I wish I could remember her for myself, but I can’t remember anything before my sixth birthday—nothing about my mother, my father, or the hurricane. It doesn’t bother me as much about my father. I guess I miss him. I know I would if I could remember him, but it’s as though my memory was born the day I sat down at the heavy oak table at Three Twenty Audubon Street and saw a pile of neatly wrapped birthday presents surrounded by a garland of butterfly lilies and four-o’clocks. I remember exactly that one of my presents was a lace-trimmed handkerchief with A embroidered in the corner and a paper sticker that said PURE IRISH LINEN. Everything that happened before that is lost, as though the tidal wave had swept it away with our house. A terrible dream about the wave comes again and again, so real I can’t tell if it’s a nightmare or a memory.

Suddenly, I realized I had stopped drawing clothes for Jane Whitmore and was drawing male profiles, and, yes! there he was, Edmond Hilary de St. Denis, cleft chin, blue, steady eyes (or eye, I should say, since it was his profile), sensitive mouth, and short straight nose. He was absolutely beautiful, the best thing I had ever done. I pulled out a Photoplay magazine from the stack I have, ripped the inside out, and pasted the tops and bottoms of the cover to form an envelope. I hid Edmond inside and slid the cover in between two other Photoplays.

I heard Aunt Eveline coming out of her room, so I quickly slid Jane Whitmore and her new clothes into the envelope with Edmond and picked up a book.

When Aunt Eveline came in I asked, “Aunt Eveline, did my mother learn a lot in Florence?”

“Oh, yes! She loved Florence, and her professor considered her most talented. Most talented!”

“I wish I had one of her paintings.”

“Unfortunately, dear, she did her mature work in Honduras and her watercolors were all lost in the hurricane when your house was washed away. Naturally, your father only had time to try to save you and your mother. We have only her early watercolors! Exercises, really.”

I had seen the exercises in a box in the attic.

“All of the good ones were lost?” I asked. “Every single one?”

“I’m so sorry, dear! But—well—as a matter of fact, I do have one! Yes, one. In my armoire. I’ll get it.”

Just like that! I followed Aunt Eveline into her room. It was a place I seldom entered. There was not a trace of cloves. Only fresh air and the expensive scent of Roget and Gallet soap, Aunt Eveline’s one concession to luxury.

Aunt Eveline opened the heavy armoire door, and I saw a pile of watercolor papers neatly stacked on a shelf. Aunt Eveline picked up the top one and then, noticing for the first time that I was standing right behind her, she quickly closed the door.

“Here, dear. Your mother did this.”

I held a landscape of the lagoon in Audubon Park. The colors were pastel and overlapped in some places, blending together into deeper shades that gave me the feeling I could walk right into the painting. It was a fresh and happy watercolor, a moment caught forever by an artist who knew how to paint.

“Oh,” was all I said.

“You don’t like it?” Aunt Eveline asked anxiously.

“I love it,” I said unhappily. “It’s just that—I’ll never be that good.”

“Of course you will, my dear! You have her talent and you will get training—the very best. Don’t forget, this is your mother’s mature work, at the peak of her power. She didn’t do anything as finished as this at your age.”

“Could I have it?”

Aunt Eveline hesitated only a minute before saying, “Of course, my dear. We’ll have it framed.”