Secrets

by Marthe Jocelyn

  To a movie that had the very same name as my grandma – Anna.

  Or to a Chinese restaurant, where we drank tea in thick little cups.

  Grandma had lived a very long time, she said, and she had learned a thing or two.

  Sometimes, as I grew older, she would look at me in a certain way and say, “Let me give you a few friendly words of advice.” This was always followed by what she called a Law of Life.

  One law was all about how to draw people: Always color their cheeks bright pink and give them big red smiles so they look healthy.

  Another law was about crossing your eyes: Don’t – because the cords will snap and they’ll stay that way forever.

  And whenever I had a question but there was no answer right away, Grandma told me her very best Law of Life: “Don’t worry. Sooner or later, for every pot there’s a lid.”

  Most of our time was spent quietly under the willow tree, just the two of us. There were occasional visitors under our willow tree – other children in a quiet mood, the next-door cat on its way somewhere else, the mailman, and two tall nuns who lived around the corner.

  And every Thursday afternoon the Sunshine Ladies came.

  Grandma missed the excitement of her old gambling days, so she organized the other grandmas in the neighborhood into the Sunshine Ladies Card Club. They met in our backyard.

  At first they played canasta just to win pennies. Then, to make it more interesting, my grandma suggested they play for what she called trifles – gold lipstick cases, compacts, pillboxes, charms, brooches, lockets – anything that was shiny and gold.

  My grandma won everything.

  Every year Grandma took a long train trip straight out across the country to California to visit her son. She traveled on the Santa Fe Chief. And that train was so luxurious, she said, that she spent the whole trip soaking in a big white tub full of fresh orange juice.

  When she arrived in California, “Bright orange,” she said, her son picked her up at the train station and brought her to his little pink stucco bungalow. He arranged a giant-sized, two-week-long poker game in her honor.

  All his friends came. They played poker, chewed gum, ate potato chips, and drank celery tonic without end. My grandma had a wonderful time.

  And she brought back a fabulous prize she had won in the poker game. It was a big bright shiny gold ring with two glittering diamond chips.

  She let me hold the ring for a while and told me that when I grew up it would be all mine. Then she dropped the heavy ring into a little green velvet bag and put it in her bedside table drawer with the other treasures.

  It was just around then that Grandma decided it was time for me to learn how to play cards. After supper one night Grandma cleared the dining room table quickly. She lined up little piles of pennies and set out a fresh deck of cards. She taught me how to play go fish, old maid, and gin rummy.

  At first we played just to win those dusty pennies brought down from her drawer.

  But after a few weeks of lessons, when I had learned how to hold my cards close to my chest so no one could see them, and to not bounce up and down yelling “Guess what I have!” every time I got a good hand, then she taught me how to play what she called real cards – straight poker, five-card stud, three-card monte, Chicago, and blackjack.

  Grandma kept using the old pennies from her drawer. I used my allowance. “To make it more interesting,” my grandma suggested.

  Grandma wiped me out.

  Any part of my allowance that I hadn’t lost playing poker, I put in a shoebox in the bottom of my closet. I was saving up to buy a Ping-Pong-Pow Gun, a giant plastic bazooka that shot real Ping-Pong balls.

  I saved and saved and saved and at last I had enough money to buy the gun.

  Grandma took me downtown to Macy’s toy department. I rushed to the Ping-Pong-Pow display and grabbed a gun. My grandma picked up a pink-cheeked Betsy-Wetsy doll.

  She had the same look on her face as when she had warned me about the Gypsies and the Cossacks and the holes. She looked down at my giant bazooka and slowly shook her head. “Let me give you a few friendly words of advice,” she said. “Guns are for boys. Girls play with dolls. Buy the doll.”

  I had never disagreed with my grandma before.

  But–a doll!

  “No!” I said. “Anyone can play with anything!”

  And that was the only real argument my grandma and I ever had.

  Guess who won?

  Every day I came home from school for lunch. Grandma sat waiting for me at the dining room table.

  I only ate sandwiches that were cut into four long pieces with the crusts cut off. My grandma understood this because her favorite sandwich was a banana rolled up in a piece of rye bread. I never sat down to eat. Instead, while my grandma listened to the soap operas on the big brown radio, I marched around and around the living room rug, stepping only on the roses. Every once in a while, I’d make a loop into the dining room to take another tiny sandwich from my grandma’s outstretched hand.

  One day Grandma got sick. Her eyes turned bright yellow and my parents took her to the hospital.

  When I came home for lunch the door was locked. A neighbor called to me, saying my mother said I should have lunch at her house.

  I sat in a chair in her silent kitchen, with no soap opera, and ate a sandwich cut only in two. Then I went back to school.

  When I came home at three o’clock the front door was open. I went into the house and into the darkened dining room. My mother was sitting at the table.

  She said, “I have something very sad to tell you.”

  And I said, “Yes?”

  And she said, “Your grandma died this afternoon.”

  And I said what I had heard other people say sometimes: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” And I went upstairs to my grandma’s room.

  I opened the drawer of her treasures and made sure that everything was there: the pennies, the bottle of cologne, the snapshot, her hairpins and false teeth, and the little bag with the ring.

  Then I opened her closet door and stepped inside. I closed the door behind me and hugged and smelled all my grandma’s great big dresses.

  And that’s the story of my grandma’s life as she told it to me and as I remember it.

  When I grew up, my mother gave me my grandma’s gold and diamond ring. And though I found out that it wasn’t made out of real gold at all and that the diamond chips were only glass, I wouldn’t trade my grandma’s ring for all the gold and diamonds in the world.

  How It Happened in Peach Hill

  Marthe Jocelyn

  Mama told me to lie.

  She said it would be best, when we got to Peach Hill, if I practiced the family talent of deception; I was likely to hear more if I appeared to be simple. So, I perfected the ability to cross one eye while my mouth stayed open. I breathed out with a faint wheeze so that my lips dried up, or even crusted. Once in a while, I’d add a twitch.

  People would take a first look and shiver with disgust. Then they’d look again and think, Oh the poor thing, thank the heavens she’s not mine. And then they’d ignore me. I got the two looks and became invisible. That’s when I went to work. People will say anything in front of an idiot.

  I gathered gossip and brought it home to Mama. She put it to use in little ways, giving it back to the very same people, only shaped differently and in exchange for money. Lots of money, over time.

  I thought of us as gardeners. I prepared the soil; Mama decided on the arrangements and planted the seeds. The customers decided if it was flowers, vegetables, or weeds they were going to harvest.

  That’s the kind of thinking that floated through my brain while I was trying to act daft.

  We arrived in Peach Hill toward the end of summer and there was not a peach tree in sight. There was a hill, though, dotted with fancy houses that might have had peach trees before they had swimming pools and rose gardens. We took a ground-floor apartment down in the town, knowing our stay would be tempora
ry.

  The front room, where Mama received company, was set up in the most careful and lovely manner. There was a cushy red armchair for the customer and a smaller one for Mama, with a polished table in between. An ivory lace curtain dappled the light and a sign in the window, lettered in pearly script, announced Madame Caterina, Spiritual Advisor.

  Mama was sharp, I’ll give you that. She was a fake as far as hearing from the dead, or even seeing the outcome of a situation ahead of time, but she had a sensitive way about her, when required professionally, that drew out secrets. With a little background information, she could easily appear to see straight into the hearts of forlorn and desperate women – it was usually women – who would spend heaps of money to hear the advice of a stranger. While she seemed to be reading a palm, she examined the watch and assessed the jewelry. Certain services were offered when the rings had bigger stones. Services that cost a little more.

  Mama claimed we had Gypsy blood, that wanderlust and fortune-telling came naturally. But she also promised me we were getting rich and that, someday soon, we could buy a house all of our own.

  Peach Hill was our sixth town, Mama’s and mine. It didn’t take long for word to flutter around like a flock of birds. People might scorn us in public, but nearly everyone had a reason to seek us out on the quiet. The women were quickly convinced that Mama had the second sight, the things she knew.

  My acting daft seemed to be working. The main benefit for me was that schools don’t take loonies, so I was off the hook for education as far as Peach Hill was concerned. The downside was that I had no friends. Who would be friends with a wonky-eyed, chapped-lip moron?

  After a few days of experimenting, I pinpointed the two best places in town for eavesdropping: the benches in the square, out front of Bing’s Café, or one of the shaky wooden stools at the Cosmos Launderama.

  We hired what Mama called a girl, though she must have been nearly twenty. At first I thought she was as slow as I pretended to be, the way she shook her head from side to side while Mama gave instructions. Then I realized she just couldn’t control her disbelief at the things asked of her. Mama always tossed in extras so that Peg would have something to whisper about.

  “Leave the pillowcases inside out on the beds, Peg. Makes the spirits restless and readier to communicate.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “We’ll need fifty-two mushrooms, with the stems at least two inches long. And a new deck of cards.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “And Peg?”

  “Yes’m?”

  “Call me Madame, Peg. Not ‘Yes’m.’ I’m a clairvoyant, not a butcher’s wife.”

  “Yes’m.”

  And off went Peg, head swaying.

  “What are we going to do with fifty-two mushrooms?” I asked.

  “Sauté them and eat them on toast during Peg’s day off.” Mama winked at me.

  I didn’t have friends, but I knew the name of every kid in town. That’s not bragging; that’s collecting data. I had a tiny notebook especially adapted. One of those little diaries that six-year-olds have, with a pony on the cover and a slim gold pen attached in a snug leather loop. I hammered a hole through the top of the spine and it hung around my neck on a length of blue ribbon.

  I worked out my own code. The townspeople thought it was part of my disability, the way I’d coo like a dove and scribble marks in my book.

  “Do you suppose she thinks she’s writing poems?” I heard Mrs. Ford say to Mrs. Romero. “Poor thing, she sees the other children with their schoolbooks and wants to be the same.”

  Ha. Ha-ha-ha.

  No, Mrs. Ford, I was making a note to tell Mama about the letter you received from your husband’s ex-wife. And she’ll hear about your unhappily married daughter, Mrs. Romero, because nothing is better for business than misery and longing.

  But, I would think to myself, you can cluck your tongues if it makes you feel better, and I’ll just make my doodles.

  It was harder to sit near the kids. Kids do not welcome idiots into their circle and they either chased me with stones and nasty names, or slunk off to a place I couldn’t follow. But, after a time, they got used to me. They could see I was only stupid and harmless. They finally ignored me, just like their parents.

  There was one boy, named Sammy Sanchez. They always called him Sammy Sanchez, as if there were other Sams he might be confused with. Not a chance. I might as well say it – he was the most wonderful boy I ever saw. He’d been away at his aunt’s farm for the summer and the first time he showed up in the square, I forgot myself and stared with both eyes, looking straight at him. Of course he was not looking at the loony girl and nobody else was either, so I could have blown him a kiss and not been caught. But I didn’t. I recovered myself and stumbled off my bench with hot cheeks. I heard a ripple of choked-back laughs as I loped home, looking as dim-witted as I possibly could.

  Peg found me crying in the kitchen. I sobbed that they’d teased me, that I was ugly and wanted to die.

  “Ah, now,” said Peg. “There, there.” She stroked my head and patted my back till I settled down. “You’d be quite pretty if you wore sunglasses. Never mind there’s a vacancy between your ears. Try closing your mouth, if you can. And wash your hair once in a while, for pity’s sake!” She had me lean over the side of the sink while she gave my head a scrubbing, and then doused it with something smelling of lemons.

  Nearly all our patrons were female, as I said. We’d get the odd young man on a matter of romance, and one fellow, Bobby Pike, who begged Mama to help him bet on the horses. But, when Mr. Poole arrived, middle of September, along with golden light in late afternoons, we knew the season was changing in more ways than one.

  Mr. Poole lived halfway up the hill, in a house with a lily pond, all wrapped round with a wrought iron fence. Mr. Poole fancied himself a very dapper fellow, and used an oil to sculpt his rippling gray hair that smelled like a sunny island. His wife, Mrs. Poole, had died a year ago, from an ailment that had her looking like a skeleton long before she passed. I knew this the same way I knew everything, from listening.

  Mama didn’t like me nearby when she was working, but I found a way around that. I inched the big chair in the front room into such a position that I could sit behind it with my knees scrunched up and my back in the crook of the wall.

  Thanks to this, I knew from the start how things stood with Mr. Poole. He was certain that his wife had returned to haunt him. She didn’t like the new crockery he’d chosen and she’d broken four teacups, jumping them off their hooks to the floor. She didn’t approve of his putting new fish into the pond and she’d left two of them gasping on the bank. Mr. Poole wanted Mama to contact Mrs. Poole and tell her to stop.

  “You remind her that I’m alive and she’s not,” he said. “I’ve been drinking out of teacups covered in primroses for twenty-two years and it’s time for a change.”

  He was pretty ruffled. Mama soothed him into the big chair I was tucked behind and said she could see how important it was for her to reach Mrs. Poole.

  “They usually respond quickly when they’re upset,” lied Mama, in her sweetest voice. “Though she’ll expect a little coaxing to move on quietly. I can set up a ‘calling,’ but I’ll need a cup of dirt from your garden and a small advance to pay for other particular materials. How would Friday night suit you?”

  Friday would be just fine with Mr. Poole and out came his billfold, with Mama murmuring right next to him all the way to the shoe shop on the corner. I slipped to the window and saw him patting her arm more than once, he was that grateful. She came back humming and slid the dollars into her purse.

  Mama wasn’t the only one thinking about where a romance might lead.

  I knew I had it bad the morning I got up early to watch Sammy Sanchez walk past on his way to school. I’d figured out we were on the path from his house near the rail yards to the school at the bottom of the hill.

  Sammy didn’t wear a baseball cap like the other boys. His black
hair flopped and blew in the autumn wind like … well, like shiny black hair. As the week ticked by, I got bolder with my spying. On Friday morning, I left the spot behind the lace curtain and moved to the doorstep. I put on Peg’s sunglasses and tossed my hair. I was cheating on being daft, and Mama would likely strangle me if she knew.

  I licked my lips and let them form a tender smile. Sammy Sanchez wheeled along on his skateboard and hopped off just as he came to the cracked sidewalk in front of our building.

  “Hey,” he said, maybe surprised for a second before he realized it was me. He gave me a wave and took two steps. Then whoosh – back on the board and he was gone. I about fainted. He’d spoken to me!

  I was in heaven. And then immediately in the darkest pit. There is no wonderful, black-haired boy on earth who wants a wonky-eyed, chapped-lip moron for a girlfriend.

  It was time to move on. I had to tell Mama. We were rich enough. We could find a little cottage in a town by the ocean, with a boardwalk and a concert in the bandstand on Sunday afternoons. I’d go to school with clean hair and have friends and find another boy.

  But, at supper, Mama had something to tell me first.

  “I like Peach Hill,” she announced. “What would you think of moving into a house with a lily pond?”

  “What?” I shouted. “No! We can’t stay here! You think I want to be an idiot for the rest of my life?” I couldn’t believe she would suggest such a thing.

  “I’ll not be hollered at by my own child,” said Mama.

  “You only ever think about you!” I got louder. “What about me?” I was mad as a trapped wasp.

  Mama scraped back her chair and stood up, her hands clenched. “Calm down at once.” Her voice had an edge like a cleaver. “Peg will be back any moment. You go to your room and settle down. I need you to help with the ‘calling’ for Mr. Poole’s wife.”

  “Are you going to tell Mrs. Poole what your plans are? Why should you get to have a greasy-haired boyfriend while I’m the ugly duckling? You want me to drool and stammer at your wedding?”