Secret Lives

by Amoss, Berthe;

“Maybe.” If anyone was going to read my mother’s love letters it was going to be me, not Holly. “But I can tell you, Aunt Eveline would never let us look inside.”

  “Oh, well, this is a good place to concentrate, anyway,” Holly said, passing her feather duster over the chest like a wand. “I’ll sit on this side and you sit on the other. Put your hands on the lid.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, concentrate.”

  “On what?”

  “On nothing.”

  “On nothing? How can I do that?”

  “Pretend your brain is being washed clean. Empty.” “Okay. I can do that.”

  “Do it.”

  “I’m doing it.”

  “Now, let it fill with the spirit.”

  “What?” I felt foolish.

  “Your other self. The one that was you in another life is filling you. That spirit is flowing into the clean, empty places. You are the other you!” Holly’s voice wobbled dramatically.

  I giggled.

  “Now look,” she said in disgust, “you ruined it.”

  “I couldn’t help it. You sounded so fake.”

  “I am not fake. Listen, one day I was helping Ma cook. We were making Nini’s chicken gumbo and just before the rich brown soup boiled, Ma turned off the fire and said, ‘Add the filé.’ For a second I was in another place stirring a pot and a voice said, ‘Now add the asafetida,’ and it was another time, and I was making a potion, and then, it flashed off. That was all the first time, but it was so real, I figured a way to add to it: every night from then on I concentrated, and I believed, and in the morning, I wrote stories about my other whole life!”

  “But my secret life isn’t like that. I make it up.”

  “It’s another life. Maybe your mother’s. Did you ever think of that? Maybe you were your mother before you were you!”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “You’ve got to believe!”

  I concentrated. “Nothing happens.”

  “Believe!”

  I concentrated for all I was worth, empty, empty, empty. The light in the attic was failing. I felt tingly, peculiar. Something was going to happen. I waited—I was drifting away! I was—I was going to sleep.

  “Holly,” I said, snapping awake. “What are you scribbling?”

  “I’m writing about your other life.”

  “You mean I was talking out loud?”

  Holly was smiling her Sagoma smile. “No, you didn’t talk out loud.”

  “Then how do you know what to write?”

  Holly scribbled a few more words. “I know,” she said maddeningly.

  “Then tell me.”

  “You don’t believe me but I’m a Sagoma. Even in my second life, I’m still a Sagoma. Next time when I come over, I’ll have your secret life in stories for you.”

  The last thing I wanted was my secret life exposed to the public.

  The rain had stopped and we could hear Nini calling. She wanted Holly to help with dinner. Holly jumped up and I caught a glimpse of her notebook, all lines and squiggles.

  “Pure gobbledygook!” I said.

  She was furious. “Only I can understand the stories!” She ripped the stained white scarf off her head and swatted the cedar chest with the duster as she turned away. “They are in a special code and I was going to teach it to you,” she added, stomping past the bonging clock.

  “I don’t even want to learn it,” I answered, following her. “And you’ve got flour on your nose.”

  “It’s a secret code,” she yelled, rubbing her nose angrily. “You couldn’t possibly figure it out!”

  “I’m sick of secret codes,” I said, but I followed her all the way to the kitchen, where Nini put us to work chopping onions, garlic, and sweet peppers. Holly wouldn’t speak to me as we chopped and chopped. Nini noticed the silence.

  “Holly, you fillin’ Addie’s head with your nonsense?” Nini asked suspiciously.

  “If you are referring to my stories,” Holly said, “they are not nonsense, as you should know.”

  “Humph!” said Nini, chopping harder. She inspected what we’d done and ordered, “Finer!” and we chopped some more. I was wishing I hadn’t told Holly about Edmond and Jane Whitmore.

  Chapter VIII

  Aunt Eveline,” I said in my sweetest voice, “may I air the chest with my mother’s things in it?”

  I was helping air the attic for autumn. No matter that the thermometer still hit ninety degrees in the middle of the day, it was October, and if Aunt Eveline waited for a real “cool snap,” she might find herself digging for the Christmas tree ornaments the same week she shook mothballs from our sweaters and wool skirts. When I was younger, I had thought Aunt Eveline made the cool weather happen. “Summer’s over,” she always announced. “We’ll air the attic today, Addie,” and sure enough, the next day when I put on my dark cottons, Aunt Kate would sniff a fresh breeze and say, “There’s a definite touch of fall in the air this morning.”

  Aunt Eveline didn’t stop sorting clothes as she answered me, “Thank you, dear, but I’ve already aired your dear mother’s things and locked the chest.” She held up a little key tied with blue ribbon and dropped it into her apron pocket.

  “Could I just peek inside the chest, then?” I asked very meekly, looking longingly at her apron pocket.

  “No, dear, we wouldn’t want to expose darling Pasie’s things to any unnecessary poking around. You may sort this pile of sweaters from Kate’s chest. Some of them go clear back to the war!”

  I looked at the heavy, dull-colored pile and wondered if she meant the Civil War. But I wasn’t going to be sassy. I wanted to charm Aunt Eveline into giving me the key tied with blue ribbon.

  We had divided the clothes into three stacks: one to put away for next spring, one for Aunt Kate to mend, and another to hang outside to air. I piled all Aunt Kate’s things in the hang-outside stack, doing my best not to breathe. Nini had already washed the gauze curtains and the white linen slipcovers worn by the furniture in summer. Aunt Kate had mended them, and they were folded in attic chests, ready to be starched at the spring airing. The furniture downstairs was naked, scratchy, and dark, and the windows were smothered by a fringed kind of tapestry cloth that my grandfather had bought in Belgium.

  I looked around the attic for something else that might have been my mother’s. There was only the box of watercolor exercises I’d seen before. I thumbed through them. One was of the lagoon in Audubon Park, exactly the same view I had framed, only in this one, the colors were muddy and there was a swan drawn so badly it took me a minute to figure out what it was.

  “Look, Aunt Eveline,” I said, holding up the lagoon scene. “Terrible, isn’t it?”

  “Well, not terrible, but definitely still in the learning stage. She hadn’t matured as an artist yet, Addie. As I told you.”

  “But this is worse than I do now! There’s hope for me.”

  “Of course, dear. I’ve said all along: If you want to be an artist, I’m going to see to it you get the best training possible. Carry Kate’s sweaters outside, please.”

  “Are you sure there’s nothing in my mother’s chest for outside?” I asked hopefully.

  “Positive, dear. Come along now.”

  Defeated again, I trotted after Aunt Eveline, hugging the pile of dark sweaters, overpoweringly mothball, and itchy under my chin. “Aunt Eveline,” I asked, gasping for clean air, “how did you start being an art teacher?”

  Aunt Eveline stood still, wool skirts clasped to her bosom. “When I was quite small, I drew a portrait of Alphonse—he’s that little china bulldog you play with, the one with the derby on. I drew him for Papa’s birthday and Papa said, ‘Eveline, you are a born artist!’ And so, I knew I was! Everything Papa said was right.” Aunt Eveline smiled, a remembering look on her fate. “Your mother was the real artist, Addie. She would dress in something flowing, and with one of her beaux trailing behind her, carrying her paints and the picnic basket, she’d go to the park for
a few hours and return with a landscape. She got the training she needed in Florence, and when she married and went to Honduras, she produced her mature work.” Aunt Eveline sighed.

  “And you, Aunt Eveline?”

  “While I,” Aunt Eveline laughed, “I outlined a plan of study for myself and I followed it. So many hours of anatomy, so many on color theory—I disciplined myself right out of any creativity that might have crept in. The trouble was, how could I, a lady, earn a living as an artist? And the truth was, someone had to earn money! But a lady? Why, I could teach, of course. It was the only work my father would hear of. So, now I can paint dog portraits that look exactly like dogs! Now, let’s get these sweaters and skirts outside to air before the evening damp sets in.”

  I lingered behind, my thoughts on the future, the hours I would spend drawing live models and mixing paints from raw pigments, moving T-squares and triangles across the drawing board. I would do landscapes like my mother’s, impressionistic watercolors that made you want to step into their soft greenness.

  “Aunt Eveline,” I called, “could you give me a few lessons now? Just to start?”

  “Addie, child, that is what I’m trying to tell you. I’m not really an artist. Oh, I know the rules, but I might spoil your talent! Draw what you like now, and when you graduate from high school, you can go to a really fine art school to study.”

  I was about to answer when I smelled cloves. I shifted an old lavender sweater away from my nose, and a letter slipped out of the pocket. It was addressed to Aunt Kate in my mother’s handwriting, and postmarked Florence, October 5, 1921.

  “Aunt Eveline, may I stop for a while now? I have sort of a headache.”

  “You’ve done too much! Of course, do stop, dear. Lie down in your room. I’ll bring you a lemonade with a little mint. Mint helps—”

  “No, Aunt Eveline, I don’t want a thing. It’s not really a headache. I’m just a little tired.” I escaped to my room to read the letter before Aunt Eveline could think up another remedy.

  Dearest Katie, darling sister,

  Here I am in “Bella Italia”! Can you believe it? Your own baby sister so far away? The sky is blue and cloudless, and the sun is bright—perfect weather. For days it has been so absolutely gorgeous, I hate to admit it, but I long for a good New Orleans rain. Darken, Heavens! Let the blue-black thunderheads batter the roof with their teeming rain, so loud I have to shout to hear my own voice! Oh, Katie, remember the day we found George’s letters to Eveline and were reading them? (By the way, has he popped the question yet? What slowpokes they are!) That day the rain was coming down so hard on the roof, we didn’t hear Eveline until she saw us. She was really angry, don’t you think? Even though she just stood there, so pale.

  I have started a diary, Katie darling, and you’ll never guess where! I’ll give you a hint: what is white and must be opened every day? You’ve guessed! Ah, but you won’t be able to read it! It’s in my secret code. No one can know my secret thoughts.

  How is Fifi? Does she miss me?

  How is—you know who? Pining away, he writes. He’d better. Was he “pining” at Mable’s picnic? Did you go? Has Mable trapped Louis yet? Write me! Tell me all.

  Katie, darling, I don’t really like Florence much. I’ve tried but I still don’t like it. All those museums full of statues and old paintings. Do you think Eveline might let me come home at Christmas? Say a good word for me. I really can’t paint a thing in this place. I don’t even think I like to paint at all anymore, but don’t tell Eveline that. Please, please, Kate dear, put in a good word for me. I shall die if I have to stay. I can hold out if she says I can come home for Christmas. Try, try for Christmas, Katie, darling.

  Your loving little sister,

  Pasie

  It was as though my mother had come out of her portrait and was standing in front of me. Look, Addie, she was saying, I’m real—not the perfect princess of the portrait, and not Sandra Lee’s mystery woman either. I’m a girl like you. She was calling me as clearly as if I’d heard her voice. I reread the letter.

  She had been homesick and lonely, still far from being the artist she was to become. She had missed her little dog, and she had missed—you know who. Could that have been who she was looking at when her portrait was painted? And the part about Mable and Louis, Tom’s parents—it didn’t sound as though she’d liked Mable. Maybe none of it really mattered anymore to most people, but it did to me.

  Aunt Eveline had forgotten the truth, if she’d ever known it, and Aunt Kate was too busy preparing for the next life to remember this one, but Aunt Toosie—she had been the sister closest to my mother in age. She would have known her best of all.

  Since I was supposed to be recovering from a headache, I had to sneak out of my room. I took the shortcut Sandra Lee and I had worn through the cherry laurel hedge.

  Aunt Toosie was sitting at the sewing machine, her hands guiding soft green wool under the needle, her foot working the pedal, toe forward, heel back, toe forward.

  “What was my mother like, Aunt Toosie?”

  “Beautiful,” Aunt Toosie answered, not breaking the rhythm. Heel back, toe forward.

  “Everyone says that. And anyway, I can see it in the portrait. But besides—I mean, what was she really like?”

  Aunt Toosie’s foot stopped and she looked at me. “Addie, your mother was absolutely the most selfish person I have ever known. She thought only of herself. Maybe Eveline spoiled her and made her that way. I don’t know. But I do know she spoiled Eveline’s whole life. And do you know what? Everyone thought Pasie was so beautiful, but Eveline was beautiful, too. It was just that Eveline was so busy trying to take care of all us younger sisters and brothers, trying to run the house (with no help from Father, I might add), hold down a job . . . good heavens, she had no time for herself! If she’d dressed well and done her hair carefully, she’d have outshone most of the girls in town. As it was, George wanted to marry her.”

  “George who?”

  “Your father! Didn’t you know? Oh, Lord, I’ve said too much.” Aunt Toosie looked flustered.

  “My father wanted to marry Aunt Eveline?”

  “Yes. He was Eveline’s beau, much older than your mother.”

  “But—but—” I was speechless. “But how did it all happen?”

  “Well, your mother was quite pretty, you know. With very winning ways. I think she convinced your father that Eveline’s health couldn’t stand up in the tropics. And Eveline never denied Pasie anything—she just withdrew herself. She’d kill me for telling you this. But you should know it. You’d appreciate Eveline more if you’d lived with your mother longer.” Aunt Toosie’s toe and heel began to go to work as she turned back to the pretty material. “Go along now, Addie. I’ve gotten into a heap of trouble, I bet!”

  I walked out of the house, stunned. My mother had suddenly turned into another person, the opposite of everything I’d always been told. What could have made my mother steal her own sister’s beau? And how could Aunt Eveline forgive her, much less tell me she was a saint?

  If I could get into my mother’s cedar chest I might find clues, love letters, like Holly said. Aunt Eveline would never let me, but I could borrow the key. It was still in her apron pocket. Maybe borrow wasn’t quite the right word. But Pasie was my own mother. They had no right to hide things about her from me.

  Aunt Eveline was still dashing up and down the attic stairs, her curly hair damp around her flushed face.

  “I feel much better now, Aunt Eveline,” I said, scrambling back into bed just before she came into my room.

  Aunt Eveline reached over to put her hand on my head, and there was the blue ribbon poking out of her pocket. I pulled it out the rest of the way and closed my hand on the key.

  “Cool as a cucumber,” she said.

  “Why don’t you rest awhile, Aunt Eveline?” I asked.

  “I think I will,” she answered, sitting down on the edge of my bed and fanning herself with the new Photoplay. Her rosy ch
eeks and damp curls made her look young and different.

  “You look pretty, Aunt Eveline,” I said shyly.

  “Why, Addie,” she said, embarrassed, “I’m—I’m not pretty! No one ever thought so! At least, it’s been a long time since . . . No, dear, I was never pretty. Your mother, now . . .”

  Chapter IX

  It was now or never. If I didn’t get the key back before Aunt Eveline finished airing the attic, she’d miss it. I sat in my room pretending to do my homework, amazed at how much nerve I’d had stealing the key and how little of it was left now that I had to go into the attic. Alone. At night. Suppose my mother’s spirit was guarding the chest? I’d been listening to Holly too much. I looked at the little key in my hand, and the thought of all the secrets the chest might hold banished my fears. I stood up, ready to sneak into the hall.

  A tap on my door. Holly, the white scarf around her head and a Sagoma look on her face, walked in.

  “I have a new story !” she said proudly. “Would you like to hear it?”

  “Yes, I’d love to hear your story,” I lied. The sooner she got it over with, the sooner she’d go home.

  Holly stood up, chin high, notebook in her left hand, right hand ready for gestures.

  “Jane Whitmore,” she began, “was a young girl, beautiful and talented, and she loved a young man, handsome but dumb—”

  “Now, listen, Holly—”

  “Wait, Addie! This is true!—handsome but dumb, whose name was Edmond. Although Edmond loved Jane, he loved himself more and did not want to marry her, so—”

  “Now, look here, Holly, that’s not true! He does want to marry her. I don’t want you meddling—”

  “Will you listen? I am a Sagoma. I know. Edmond never marries! That’s the whole trouble. Poor Jane never gets him. She—”

  “I won’t listen!” I put my fingers in my ears. “Holly,” I said, calming down and speaking in the carefully modulated tone I use to make Aunt Eveline happy, “you’ve got to understand that this is my secret life. You don’t have anything to do with it. It’s my Jane Whitmore and my mother and I don’t want you getting them mixed up like I know you’re trying to do—for your own amusement!” I ended less modulated than I had intended.