Secret Lives

by Amoss, Berthe;

  I gave Sandra Lee a look that said children should be seen and not heard.

  “I invited Tom’s uncle and his mother as well,” Aunt Eveline said. “After all, Malvern and Mable are close friends of this family, and they live next door. They’re really not guests at all.”

  “Don’t tell me Mable’s coming!” Aunt Toosie cried.

  “Mable declined.”

  “Of course she did! She hasn’t set foot out of that house since Louis left home. She’s Malvern’s slave! Tom’s at school all day and—”

  “Yes, and he leaves his dog at our house,” said Miss Butinsky.

  “My house,” I said.

  “Please, girls!” Aunt Eveline said. “Now, Toosie, Malvern is working on his perpetual motion machine.”

  “You mean he’s working on seeing how much alcohol the human body can take! And Mable waits on him hand and foot—cooking and scrubbing the house.”

  “She might try scrubbing Tom for a change,” Sandra Lee butted in again.

  “Just what is meant by that?” I asked. “At least Tom doesn’t grease up his hair like some people I know.”

  “Harold does not ‘grease up his hair.’ He smooths it down with a very expensive, nongreasy tonic!”

  “It smells like old bubble gum!” I said. “It stinks like an old train station!”

  “Adelaide!” cried Aunt Eveline, all excited. “I cannot abide that word! There will be no further discussion, and you’re, bruising the butterfly lilies you have clutched in your hand.”

  “How does this look, Aunt Eveline?” asked Sandra Lee sweetly, standing back from the garland we’d both made.

  “Lovely, dear! Addie, please go into the garden and pick fresh lilies to replace those you’ve crushed.”

  I tried to catch Sandra Lee’s eye on my way out so she’d see how I felt about her, but she had her eyes demurely cast down.

  “I just haven’t liked Malvern ever since he went to—” began Aunt Toosie again.

  “Don’t dawdle, Addie, dear,” Aunt Eveline interrupted in the loud voice she uses to drown out interesting things I’m not supposed to hear. “Toosie, I’m certain Malvern will be the life of the party.”

  At one o’clock, we all sat down in the cabbage dining room. Aunt Kate’s place looked special with the garland Sandra Lee and I had made, and a pile of presents to be opened before soup was ladled out of the tureen. Aunt Kate slowly unwrapped each present, saving for last the annual box of monogrammed handkerchiefs from Aunt Eveline.

  “Exactly what I wanted, my dear!” she said, although she had a drawerful upstairs.

  Cousin Jeannette, who, like a Christmas ornament taken down from the attic, appears on special days and disappears afterward, squeaked, “I have a little thought for you on my armoire shelf, Katie, dearl” There are thoughts on Cousin Jeannette’s shelf for everyone’s birthday, but not one has ever materialized.

  I watched Uncle Malvern slurp his soup. I wondered if Tom missed his father as much as I missed my mother. I’d seen a picture of my mother with Tom’s father. “Louis and me,” she’d written on the back. Uncle Malvern was a poor substitute for a father, even one who had left home for no good reason.

  Uncle Malvern was showing no signs of being the life of the party. In fact, the party was barely alive when, in the middle of the first course, orange-colored soup, Aunt Kate put her heavy spoon down and cried, “Give it to Esther!” There was no one named Esther at the table or anywhere else, as far as our startled guest, Edgar, could tell, but a thousand years ago when Aunt Kate boarded at the convent, there had been a girl called Esther who ate everything no one else wanted. The family knew Aunt Kate meant she didn’t want any more soup.

  Politely trying to cover up the general embarrassment, Edgar asked, “Is that lovely girl in the portrait you, Miss Eveline?”

  Before Aunt Eveline could answer, Tom’s uncle said, “Oh, no, that’s Pasie. Lovely, isn’t she?” He raised his wineglass. “To Pasie!”

  Aunt Eveline was beaming. She raised her glass, but Uncle Malvern wasn’t waiting for any of the others. He drained his glass as Aunt Eveline wound up for her model-of-perfection speech: “And a talented artist—”

  Uncle Malvern, red-faced and chuckling, interrupted, “Yes, she may have been an artist, but she seldom drew the line! Ha, ha, ha!”

  There was a terrible stillness, filled with Aunt Eveline’s shocked anger. Uncle Malvern, still smiling stupidly, was the only one who didn’t notice.

  Uncle Henry jumped in quickly. “That one came straight out of College Humor, Malvern! Read it last week. By the way, Edgar, did you see where Drew Pearson, that Washington journalist, said Huey would have been President if he hadn’t been assassinated?”

  Everyone was happy to start arguing over whether or not the former governor of our state, Huey Long, had really had a chance for the presidency. “A lunatic!” Aunt Eveline said. The rest thought she meant Long, but I knew she hadn’t paid a bit of attention to the conversation. She meant Uncle Malvern.

  If all that wasn’t embarrassing enough, just as Edgar was complimenting Aunt Kate on the Haviland china, Aunt Eveline turned to him and said, “Will you stay for tea? We always have coffee at Three Twenty around five.” The poor man stared at her, then at his watch, while Aunt Eveline smiled and waited for an answer, and Sandra Lee choked on a laugh.

  “It’s the house number,” I said, having trouble keeping my voice even. “We live at Three Twenty Audubon Street and tea means coffee.” I stood up quickly and rushed from the room, so embarrassed I wanted to die.

  I shoved open the swinging kitchen door before anyone could see my tears and ran into Nini carrying a serving dish full of peas. They rolled all over the floor. I tried to pick them up, and my fingers met a dirty saddle shoe. I looked up at a brown leg, a blue and green plaid dress, and a face that was Nini’s minus about forty years. It was Holly. She didn’t say anything; she handed me the broom and stood waiting with the dustpan. I smeared some tears and a pea across my cheek and started sweeping. Still not speaking, Holly squatted down and held the dustpan while I swept up the mess, and Nini put new peas in the vegetable dish.

  That evening, after Holly and I had helped Nini with the birthday and tea dishes, we sat at the kitchen table drinking cafe au lait and eating bread soaked in cane syrup.

  “You have a nice name,” I said to Holly. “Like Christmas. I wish I had a name like that. How could anyone call a child Adelaide Aspasie?”

  “You were named after someone, weren’t you? Your mother?” Holly asked.

  “My mother and some great-aunt or something like that. Isn’t that dumb?”

  “It’s nice. Holly stands for Hollywood.”

  Nini sighed. “Your mother wanted to be a movie star!” she said.

  Holly looked embarrassed so I asked, “Can you come with Nini next Saturday?” Saturday, the one perfect day of the week. No school, no catechism, no church, and no middle-of-the-day crazy Sunday dinner. “I have lots of movie magazines and we can have a picnic in the yard.”

  “I can come,” she said. “I’ll bring my stories.”

  “Now, Holly,” Nini said, “I know them stories of yours! Don’t you go filling Addie’s head with nonsense about folks you don’t know nothing about and things that ain’t your business!”

  “Oh, Nini, Addie will like the stories, and you know they’re true!”

  “I don’t know no such thing! But I know whose business they ain’t!”

  “All right, all right. I won’t bring the stories!”

  But as I left the kitchen, Holly whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ll bring them.”

  I wasn’t worried. But Nini had made me curious. The way she’d said they weren’t Holly’s business made me think they might be mine.

  Chapter VII

  Saturday began like the other six days of the week. Two orange-colored pills lay next to my dish of wrinkled stewed prunes.

  “Good for what ails you,” said Aunt Kate cheerfully on her way to
the Joyful Mysteries.

  “Eat the prunes before you get up from the table, Addie,” said Aunt Eveline, folding her napkin into its initialed silver ring. “Before you go out to feed that dog.”

  “Tom fed her. I don’t have to go out. He’s got her in the park. See how easy it is to take care of Pumpkin? No trouble at all.”

  “And don’t forget your cod-liver oil pills.” There was no distracting Aunt Eveline from what mattered. She followed Aunt Kate out of the dining room.

  I stared at the prunes lying in their own brown juice. The problem was to get them down with a minimum of gagging.

  The kitchen door swung open. “I’m here,” said Holly, drops of rain sparkling in her dark hair. She took in the prune situation at a glance. “Get ’em down, Addie. Want me to go upstairs now?”

  “No, wait for me,” I said, taking a deep breath. In went a prune. Out came the seed. I didn’t swallow. In went another. I spat the seed in the dish. I got all four slimy prunes in my mouth before I lifted my glass of ice water and washed them down before I could taste. I hardly gagged at all. The pills were easy and I stood up, the daily ordeal over.

  Holly looked at me with admiration.

  “Let’s go,” I said. We ran up the stairs and down the hall past the attic door.

  “Where does that door go?” Holly asked.

  “To the attic.”

  “What’s up there?”

  “The past,” I said making a joke. “Old everything. Old clothes, old letters, old broken clocks, my mother’s cedar chest, even Uncle Ben’s old uniform and gas mask from the war, and somebody’s Confederate sword—every single thing that was ever in this family and grew too old to live downstairs lives in the attic. It’s all up there with the family ghosts!”

  “What’s in your mother’s cedar chest?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” I said, surprised that Holly wanted to know.

  “Let’s go in the attic,” Holly said.

  “No!”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “A little,” I admitted. “Oh, I help Aunt Eveline air the attic every spring and fall, but I don’t like going up there alone, or with a friend.”

  “I’m not afraid,” said Holly. “I live in the past.”

  I let that go by, but Holly kept up. “Let’s go in the attic. Come on!”

  “No! I won’t go!” I said, surprised at my own vehemence.

  “Oh, all right, then,” Holly said, surprised, too.

  Feeling suddenly awkward together, we went in my room. We sat down in chairs and began looking at magazines. Outside, the rain teemed down, making it so dark we had to turn a light on.

  “Did you bring the stories?” I asked.

  “Yes. I hid them in the kitchen. I’ll get them later.”

  “Do you want to play something? I love Tarzan! You could be Tarzan and I’ll be Jane,” I said generously.

  “I don’t like Tarzan or Jane,” Holly said.

  “How about witches? I love casting spells. You could be—”

  “No. That’s baby. And, anyhow, I’m not that kind of witch.”

  “What kind of witch are you?” I asked, making another joke.

  Silence while I tried to figure out what was wrong.

  “What did you mean?” I asked.

  “Do you want to hear about my other life?” Holly peered over the top of her magazine.

  “In Chicago?”

  “No. I mean the life I led a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  I smiled knowingly.

  Holly looked down.

  “All right. You can tell me about it,” I said.

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “No. You think I made it up.”

  “I don’t think you made it up. Tell me.”

  “Are you positive you really believe?”

  “Positive.”

  Holly sat down on the floor, crossed her legs, straightened her back by stretching her neck, and closed her eyes. She looked ridiculous.

  “The Sagoma,” she began dramatically, “squatted under the mango tree and gazed into the gourd. The goat bladder hanging in his ocher-matted hair was filled with spirits, and he switched the animal-tail whisk across the gourd, dusting evil away from truth.” Holly slit her eyes to see how she was doing. Obviously she had memorized the whole thing out of a book. Satisfied with my expression, she continued, “Suddenly, he turned his blood-shot eyes on me and shouted in the guttural voice of his ancestor, ‘You have been chosen! I see the snake! You will be a Sagoma!’ ”

  Holly opened her eyes and looked at me.

  “What’s a Sagoma?” I asked.

  “A witch doctor. I’m a witch doctor. I can see the future and the past!”

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say to that.

  “It’s true, you know. It’s one of my stories, but it’s true.”

  Another silence while I tried to make up a sincere remark. It took too long.

  “I have to go now,” Holly said coldly.

  “Wait, Holly!” I cried, desperate to hang on to my new friend. “I have something to show you.”

  I took Edmond out of the secret Photoplay envelope and handed him to Holly. I hoped she’d know what a big secret I was sharing with her, so I said, “No one’s ever seen Edmond before.” She didn’t say anything, but she looked interested enough to stay, so I pulled out Jane Whitmore.

  “She looks like you,” Holly said.

  “She does? It is me, really. I mean, I imagine myself being her, Jane Whitmore. It’s my secret life. Like yours. Except,” I added quickly, “mine is made up.”

  “Listen! I really did live a hundred and fifty years ago. I’ve put it all in stories and they’re true. I’m going to put you in my stories, too.”

  “But my other life isn’t true.”

  “It could be.”

  “Oh, no! And anyhow, if I thought it was, I might go around acting like Jane Whitmore and people would think I was crazy.”

  “What do you care? You made up Jane Whitmore; she’s just as much you as Addie is, so you can act like either one.”

  “I have to act normal.”

  “What’s normal?”

  “Normal is obedient, well-mannered, and unpopular.”

  “Is that what you want to be?”

  “No. But I don’t see how you found out about your other life if you didn’t make it up.”

  “I just concentrate on being in my other life. I told you—I’m a Sagoma.”

  “I bet! You can’t do that.”

  “I can.”

  “How?”

  “Believe. You’ve got to believe. Like church.”

  “Church doesn’t have anything to do with that kind of believing.”

  “Yes, it does. If you believe hard enough, it’s true.”

  “What if I try to believe?”

  “You have to know.”

  “Okay. I know.”

  “You’ve got to be sure.”

  “I’m sure.” I have the makings of a first-class hypocrite.

  “Well, we’ll try. But I don’t know . . . if your faith isn’t strong enough . . . meet me after lunch and we’ll go to the attic.”

  “Why there?”

  “Didn’t you say the past was there? Your mother’s things and all?” Holly looked at me in disgust. “If you’re afraid, it won’t work. After all, it’s your own mother’s things up there. You’re not afraid of your own mother, are you?”

  “No. Of course not!” What did my mother have to do with it?

  “I have to help Nini now. After lunch.”

  Holly, the Sagoma, rose and marched off to the kitchen, leaving me wondering exactly what it was I was supposed to believe and be sure of, and why she was so interested in my mother.

  Holly came back after lunch wearing a once-white silk scarf wrapped around her head like a turban. She had a thick, scruffy notebook and a feather duster, and whether by accident or not, flour was smeared across her
nose. I realized she was supposed to look like a Sagoma and I had to cough to cover up a laugh. Ceremoniously, she led the way down the hall. I opened the attic door and we started up the steep stairs.

  A funny feeling came over me; I almost expected to see my mother standing at the top of the stairs, dressed in white like her portrait. I was afraid to look, afraid she’d be there and afraid she wouldn’t. I could almost hear Fifi yapping a silly bark at her heels as she turned quickly away.

  “Come on,” said Holly quietly, as though she, too, had heard. “Nothing can hurt you.”

  A memory comes back to me: I am very small and I have fallen and scraped my knee. Someone with quick gentle movements has washed and bandaged my knee, and holds me in her arms. She rocks me, and sings a song with the words:

  Lindy, did you hear that mockingbird sing last night?

  Oh, Lord, it was singing so sweet in the moonlight!

  Singing round my cabin door . . . My little Lindy Lou!

  The voice is sweet and true, but I can’t see a face; I can only feel firm, round arms hugging me close.

  “The first thing you have to do is concentrate,” Holly said, breaking into my thoughts at the top of the stairs. We wove our way around old trunks, old chairs with broken caned seats, tables black with too many coats of varnish, an old grandfather clock that bonged slightly as we stepped over the loose floorboards. The rain beat on the roof and the wind whistled around the attic corner.

  “This is my mother’s cedar chest,” I said.

  “What’s in it?” Holly asked, trying to open it.

  “It’s locked. Aunt Eveline has the key. Her portrait dress for one thing, and a Panama hat, I think. One she sent to Aunt Eveline that Aunt Eveline loves so much she won’t wear.”

  “Do you think Aunt Eveline would give you the key?”

  “Never. This chest is practically sacred. Even when we air the attic, Aunt Eveline won’t let anyone help her with it.”

  “I’ll bet there’re some good things in there!”

  “Like what?”

  “Like love letters! Things like that.”