Secret Lives

by Amoss, Berthe;

  “You forget. I am—”

  “I know. A Sagoma.” There was no way except to play her game.

  “It means your mother was not lost in the Gulf, and that her brother and Tom’s father and his Uncle Malvern were at her funeral. That’s what it means.”

  “You weren’t there long enough to see all that!”

  “When you travel back in time, it is accomplished in seconds. Everyone knows that. Like dreams.”

  “And if Pasie had a funeral, I’d like to know why everyone thinks she was lost in the sea. And my diary got ruined!” I added pathetically.

  “Your mother’s diary. And it certainly wasn’t my fault,” she said callously, standing up.

  The tomb had lost its scariness. It was just a dusty old place to get out of. It was Holly’s fault the diary was ruined. Everything was her fault, all because she had to play her Sagoma game. She hadn’t once mentioned the code. Sagoma, ha!

  By the time we got home, the paint Pasie had used to hide the prayers had acted like glue and stuck all of the pages together. I had lost my mother all over again.

  Chapter XIX

  Tom!” I called in a stage whisper. I waited outside his window, ready to run if anyone but Tom appeared.

  “Tom!” I called a little louder.

  “Boo!” he shouted in my ear.

  “You scared me!” I said.

  “How could that scare you?” he asked. “In broad daylight?”

  “You didn’t have to poke me in the ribs and scream in my ear! I thought you were inside.”

  “I was on my way inside. You sure scare easy!”

  “I do not.”

  “So, you’re brave. What did you want?”

  “Never mind,” I said haughtily.

  “Oh, come on, Addie, can’t you take a joke? You’re such a girl! I was going to ask you to go out with me Halloween but you’re so scared . . .”

  “I like being a girl and I am not scared of anything!”

  “I bet you’re not! How would you like to go into the graveyard on Halloween night by yourself? You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

  “Ha, you wouldn’t either!”

  “Last Halloween I did, when I was a whole year younger.”

  “I go to the graveyard all the time. Holly and I were there yesterday.”

  “Day. I’m talking about Halloween night. Alone.”

  “Okay. Alone. On Halloween night.”

  “You’ll have to prove that you went all the way to your tomb!” he said, grinning. “You can bring back one of those big white flowers your Aunt Eveline always puts there for All Saints’—and I’ll be waiting at the gate.” He was so pleased he could hardly stand it.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “And I am leaving your premises now.”

  “What did you come over for?”

  “None of your business!”

  “Aw, come on, Addie! Why did you come?”

  I relented. “Has your Uncle Malvern ever said anything about Pasie? Like being at her funeral, maybe?”

  “How could he have been there when she didn’t have one?”

  “I just thought—I don’t know. Did he ever go to Honduras? Or your father—did he go?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Well, I just think your uncle knows something.”

  “What do you care? It’s not your business.”

  “It is too! Look at this, Tom.” I produced the sodden diary and waited for his sympathy, my tears ready. “Just when I’d broken the code, too.”

  “You broke the code? Did you read the diary?”

  “I didn’t get a chance. It got rained on first.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said with a definite lack of enthusiasm.

  “Don’t cry,” I said.

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” I said, turning on my heel.

  “Keep the change,” he answered.

  I marched straight home, my anger laced with self-pity. My two best friends—my only friends—had let me down. Sister Elizabeth Anne was one hundred percent correct—lay up your treasures in Heaven, she said, because you sure can’t count on anyone down here. At least that’s what she must have meant.

  I was pondering these truths as I passed Aunt Eveline’s room. Her door was ajar, and I looked inside and saw her sitting by the window, her back to me. She was bent over something. I didn’t mean to sneak up on her, but I walked across the room and looked over her shoulder in time to see her paintbrush sweep upward in one movement, leaving a gnarled tree trunk in its wake. Quickly she dipped her brush into the paint again and swept it across the top of the paper, creating a darkening sky. I gasped as I recognized my mother’s impressionistic style.

  “Addie!” Aunt Eveline spun around, hugging the wet watercolor to her bosom. “What are you doing here?”

  “You’re ruining it!” I cried. “And it’s beautiful! Don’t smear it! You paint like my mother, Aunt Eveline! I thought you said—Aunt Eveline, how can you bear to do those dogs?”

  “I don’t mind the dogs, dear, and no one buys landscapes. In oil, yes, but not in watercolor.”

  “Aunt Eveline, the watercolor you gave me is yours! You did it!”

  “Oh, no, dear! Your mother was the landscape painter of the family!”

  “Aunt Eveline, it looks just like the painting you’re doing now.”

  She let the smeared watercolor fall on her lap.

  “Oh, Addie!” Tears formed in Aunt Eveline’s eyes. “I wanted you to see something your mother had painted, dear. It was all lost. There wasn’t anything yet. She was still developing, you know, and I only had sketches, exercises really. But she became a great artist in Honduras! And I wanted you to know that, dear. So when you liked my watercolor, why, I just said it was your mother’s.” Aunt Eveline looked at me wistfully. “Funny thing,” she added, “I almost came to believe it was.”

  “Aunt Eveline, the watercolors my mother did are the ones in the attic, in the blue box.”

  “Oh, those. Those are only the exercises she did before she left, dear.”

  “Aunt Eveline, they are finished, worked-over watercolors. And they’re bad.”

  Before she could answer, a new thought came to me. “Aunt Eveline, did you paint the portrait?”

  “Why, yes, dear, I thought you knew.”

  “No, I didn’t.” I had never thought of who had done it. “You are the painter of the family, Aunt Eveline!” I said.

  “Oh, no, dear! Your mother’s watercolors that she painted in Honduras—”

  “Did you ever see one, Aunt Eveline?”

  “Well, she could never actually send one. The minute she finished a painting, someone snapped it up.”

  “Aunt Eveline, my mother didn’t paint anything in Honduras.”

  “Addie! How can you say that? She wrote that the people down there, the wealthy planters, you know, practically fought over her paintings. Your mother was a wonderful painter! Wonderful!”

  I put my fingers in my ears and shouted, “My mother was a paper doll!” and ran out of the room.

  Aunt Eveline didn’t mention the incident at dinner, but it hung between us, heavy as a wet sheet on a clothesline. I felt shy with her, and she seemed embarrassed and formal with me. Then, the next day, she was back to normal, as though nothing had happened. But things had shifted. Now I knew my mother had never been a real artist. I knew, too, that she had not been absolutely perfect and divinely happy. She seemed to need me; she seemed to need a friend.

  I began to badger Aunt Eveline for art lessons. At first she resisted with the same old arguments about proper training, but she couldn’t keep up the pretense of not being a “real artist,” and her arguments couldn’t stand up under my barrage.

  “Aunt Eveline,” I said one day when I came home from school, “please stop writing those notes and let’s go to the park and paint.” The afternoon was beautiful.

  “These notes must be written, Adelaide. All of these people,�
� she held out a long list of names, “came to Kate’s funeral, and each must be thanked personally.”

  “Why should you thank them?” I said. “They came for Aunt Kate’s sake, supposedly. It’s her job.”

  “Addie,” Aunt Eveline said coldly, “it goes without saying that only one of the living can write thank-you notes.”

  “Maybe so,” I snapped back. “But since Aunt Kate is now in Heaven, she can do better than notes, she can personally tell God just how good all those folks were to come to the funeral and eat Nini’s sandwiches, and how they should be rewarded accordingly, and that beats anything you can do from down here!”

  “Ad—” Aunt Eveline’s shocked look collapsed into laughter. “Oh, Addie! How can I be angry with you? If ever you learn to paint as clearly as you think, you’ll be an artist. I’ll get my watercolors and paper. Fill a water jar in the kitchen, and we’ll take the little rag rug in the upstairs hall to sit on.”

  “Okay! Okay, Aunt Eveline!”

  “Addie?”

  “I mean, Yes, indeed, Aunt Eveline!”

  We had a marvelous afternoon. We sat by the lagoon and painted in the changing light.

  “Look for the form, Addie,” Aunt Eveline said over my shoulder. “Feel the roundness of that tree trunk, its strength, the turning that took years. Paint the slow growth. No, no, don’t erase! Let it stand. Put it down true the first time!”

  We didn’t come home until the light was gone. A whole new world had opened up. We would paint every single afternoon. I’d be famous before I was out of high school.

  “Oh, Addie, let’s have an easy supper!” Aunt Eveline said, coming through the front door and throwing off the grey silk scarf she’d tied around her head. Soft curls framed her face. “I don’t feel like cooking meat, rice, and a vegetable.”

  “Let’s have tomato surprise!” I said. “I’ll fix it.”

  Aunt Eveline sat down and watched as I toasted and buttered two slices of bread, and put first a slice of tomato, then a hunk of yellow cheese, and a strip of bacon on each. Three minutes under the broiler and the bacon was curling over deliciously melting, golden cheese and hidden, ripe tomato. I poured two glasses of milk, and we brought our supper to the front porch. We sat in rockers, eating and laughing at George Burns and Gracie Allen on the radio. It had been an absolutely perfect day, the first of many to come, I thought.

  But the next day, Aunt Eveline sat at her desk until she’d finished every note on her list, and no amount of pleading by me could budge her. When she was through the last one, she went into the kitchen and fixed us a huge dinner of pot roast, mashed potatoes, and snap beans. It wasn’t even Nini’s day off but she did it alone. I was painting upstairs. If I couldn’t paint with Aunt Eveline, I’d paint alone in my room. It was like a disease; I couldn’t stop. When I showed Aunt Eveline my work, she hardly looked. “Good, Addie. Splendid,” she said, mashing the potatoes so hard she seemed to be trying to drive them through the pot. She was back to normal. But I knew there was another Aunt Eveline hiding behind the dog portraitist. And I thought I had it figured out why she couldn’t just be herself.

  Chapter XX

  The reason for Halloween,” said Aunt Eveline, throwing her voice as though she were still in the classroom, “is, of course, All Saints’ Day. Halloween is merely the eve of that important feast to honor the dead. And so, on Halloween morning, we will go to Saint Louis #2, tidy up the grave, and decorate it for All Saints’ Day with these lovely chrysanthemums.” Aunt Eveline produced five large, white flowers like the kind Homecoming Queens carry. “Addie, why are you looking so sullen?”

  It was useless telling her. I was sure she didn’t want to give me any more watercolor lessons because she was afraid of stealing my mother’s place in my heart. Besides that, the diary had defeated me, and none of my friends liked me. I could have come up with a dozen more reasons for feeling mean, but I had enough, so I decided to state my philosophy about All Saints’ Day.

  “It’s dumb to put flowers on the tomb for dead people. They don’t know you’re doing it, and if they do, they’re supposed to be playing their harps in Heaven or something and don’t care anyhow.”

  “Addie!”

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it? You really put flowers for all the other people who’re putting flowers on their tombs so the others will say, ‘My, my, look at those gorgeous chrysanthemums. I hope ours look that expensive!’ ”

  “Ah-de-la-eed! Go to your room!” Aunt Eveline’s voice shook and squeaked. I hadn’t meant for her to get so excited.

  Aunt Eveline followed me upstairs. By the time she got to my room she had control of herself.

  “Addie,” she said, “through tragic circumstances, your mother is not actually in the tomb with Uncle Ben and the others, but when you put flowers there you are honoring her. It has nothing to do with the living. You are telling her you love her, and she hears you.”

  “Aunt Eveline,” I said trying to be truthful, but not wanting to risk her anger again, “I don’t even remember my mother. How can I really love her?”

  “Why, simply because she is your mother!”

  “But I can’t! You’re much more like my real mother!” This upset Aunt Eveline almost as much as my opinion of All Saints’ Day customs.

  “No, no!” she cried. “Oh, poor Pasie! You must love her, Addie! Maybe I haven’t told you enough about how lovely she was.”

  “Yes, you have, Aunt Eveline! I know all that. All right, I’ll put flowers on the tomb and I’ll think of my mother. I love my mother.”

  “That’s better, dear,” she said, exhausted. “I know she’ll be happy.”

  For the first time I realized what a strain I put on Aunt Eveline, and how seriously she took her obligation to raise me and keep my mother’s memory alive. I remembered Aunt Toosie was worried about her. She did look tired. I promised myself not to give her any more trouble. Ever. I promised I would be the person she wanted me to be. I lectured myself all the way out to the front porch, where Sandra Lee was sitting.

  “What are you going to be on Halloween?” Sandra Lee asked me.

  “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “I’m going to be the Angel Gabriel.”

  “The Angel Gabriel! That hasn’t got anything to do with Halloween!”

  “It has too. You can be anything you want on Halloween, and I have my costume from the Christmas play.” Aunt Toosie had made Sandra Lee’s costume, all white see-through tulle and golden gauze wings. “I heard Aunt Eveline say you were going to wear your Joseph costume.”

  “I am not! It’s got a beard!” Aunt Eveline had made mine out of burlap sack and a mask Uncle Ben had worn in a Mardi Gras ball. She’d cut off the top part of the mask, leaving the beard and perpetually leering lips. It was a hideous costume and about as comfortable as a hair shirt. I marched into the house and up the stairs.

  “Aunt Eveline!” I shouted. I went to her door and banged on it. “Aunt Eveline!”

  The door opened and Aunt Eveline, very pale, rosary in hand, said quietly, “Addie, do not shout. If you wish to speak to me, come into my room so that you can speak in a normal tone.”

  “Aunt Eveline, I am not going to be Joseph on Halloween.”

  “It’s the only costume you have! You make a splendid Joseph!”

  “I don’t want to make a splendid Joseph. I want to be pretty,” I said desperately.

  Aunt Eveline looked at me. “I thought the object of a Halloween costume was to disguise the real person.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s to try to make them look better than they usually look. At least, that’s what I want to do.”

  “I see,” Aunt Eveline said thoughtfully.

  “Oh, please, Aunt Eveline!”

  “All right, then, Addie. I’ll help you make another costume. What would you like to be, dear?”

  “A Southern Belle. With hoopskirts.”

  “Addie! That’s too complicated! We haven’t time! I couldn’t do that.”
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br />   “We could use the portrait dress.”

  “The portrait dress? You want to wear your mother’s beautiful dress? On Halloween? It’s much too good. We can’t consider it! Besides, there’s no hoop in it.”

  “Please, Aunt Eveline! I’ll make the hoop.”

  “Absolutely not! How can you possibly make a hoop?”

  “I’ll figure it out. With coat hangers! It’s easy!”

  She looked at me again and sighed. I had won.

  “Oh, Addie! You would have to be very, very careful. You wouldn’t want to put a spot on that lovely dress that belonged to your mother. We’d have to sew the hoop in very carefully.”

  “I’ll get it!”

  Aunt Eveline sighed again. “All right,” she said wearily. “Here’s the key.”

  She handed me the key with the blue ribbon. I rushed up the attic steps and tiptoed to the chest. I stopped. Pasie didn’t want me to wear her dress. I told myself to stop imagining nonsense and unlocked the top. The dress was lying between layers of tissue paper. I lifted it out and pressed the soft silk against my cheek, smelling the perfume that clung to all of Pasie’s things no matter how many mothballs Aunt Eveline threw around. I was going to wear the dress that had been too good to take to Belize!

  JANE WHITMORE IN BELIZE

  The ceiling fan hummed over my head as I lay on the bed and dreamed of home. I thought of the high, cool ceilings, the shuttered windows, and my canopied bed at Three Twenty Audubon Street.

  Eveline’s voice and Nini’s drifted up from downstairs where they worked together moving chairs and arranging flowers for my party. I was going to put on the white dress Eveline had made for me when she painted my portrait. I would wear my gold heart around my neck. I started to get up, lifted my head from the pillow, and remembered: the dress was in the attic at Three Twenty, and it wasn’t Eveline and Nini I heard, but Lola and Sussanah. They were coming down the road on their stupid burro from market where, no doubt, they’d bought corn and meat for tortillas, and their stew would smell up the whole house in a few minutes.

  I cannot face another meal. The meat is goat. And— and, I don’t want to look at George. I don’t want to see his sad, heavy face across the table. When he pulls my chair out, if he touches me, I’ll cry. I hate his being nice as though I were an invalid. I want Eveline, and, oh, God, I want Edmond! If only I could talk to him! Just to see him and tell him everything. He’d come if I wrote. If he understood how much I needed him. I could make him understand! Or, I wouldn’t have to say exactly. I could pretend both George and I wanted him to visit us, as a friend, to see the interesting country. Yes, that’s it! A visit from a friend.