by Susan Hahn
When Celeste died before she turned six months, Aunt Sonya shrieked and shrieked, sobbing to everyone, “It was from hell fever—his behavior cursed this family and caused it.” She believed the curse Manny Slaughter put on their house was so strong no voodoo magic could wash it out. No Star of David hung around their necks, no mezuzah nailed to the door, nothing could help. The three of them watched Celeste so suddenly grow hotter than the hottest summer and disappear. Hell fever. It was August when they put her in that little box.
Of course, along with her other sisters-in-law, Aunt Sonya could not stand how my mother always looked so young, so perfect, no matter that she was at least a decade older than any of them. Her long, thick blond hair pulled back and twisted into a neat figure-eight bun. “Eight” as in eternity’s number, for she never seemed to age in anyone’s eyes. Her own included. Nor could they stand their husbands’ deep and obvious attraction to their sister.
People would stop Aunt Sonya and Celine on the street, or anyone for that matter whose last name was known to be Slaughter, just to talk and talk about how lucky they were to be related to my mother. “Her honey beauty—that natural blond hair,” they would marvel. “That Ginger Rogers look.” “American Beauty Rose,” is what they called her, too—something everyone heard from her brothers. An “Aryan Jew” is what Celine thought as she got older and learned more about the war—meaning World War II. “Couldn’t the others see it? Instead of craving such a look, why didn’t it make them sick?” she questioned. Although, now Celine does admit she loves her beauty-shop-blond hair and repeatedly explains, “My goal is certainly not to look like Aunt Rose. Anyway, times have changed.”
How Grandfather Cecil and Grandmother Idyth adored my mother—their firstborn, so beautiful. Idyth, already pregnant with Uncle Emmanuel, would stroll her down Devon Avenue past Manzelman the grocer and Savitsky the butcher, and each would come out of his shop along with his customers and linger over baby Rose, just eight months old. It is all part of the family lore and allure and lure—at least if you are female and a Slaughter.
Everyone standing there, staring at Idyth’s angel fallen to earth, would spit over his or her left shoulder and say a kine-ahora to keep the evil eye away from her. Demonic spirits, diabolic ghouls, and evil sprites can become jealous too, at least that was what many at the time thought—and many now still do.
“God’s gift—a haloed girl,” everyone would say. Some of the women would even drop a little salt or a crumb of bread into her pink knitted booties for further protection. Celine, like the rest of us, had heard all the stories. “As if not just any healthy baby were exactly that,” Celine would angrily think, after Celeste so sadly and abruptly left.
When first married to Uncle Emmanuel, right after the war, Aunt Sonya expanded to Celine, “I dyed my hair blond and grew it long. But the ends split and it looked too frizzy. So I cut it short and went for the Betty Grable look. That didn’t quite work either.” After Celeste died, Aunt Sonya went all gray and almost silent, except for her frequent, frenzied bursts of rage toward Manny.
She found him once—actually found him—with another woman. Straight out found them in their house. Flesh on flesh seesawing together. When Celine got older, Aunt Sonya told her, “That’s what the devils in hell look like—all swelled up, putrid, and naked in their fat, locked together so tight they can never unlatch from each other.” According to Aunt Sonya, “Hell was just one unending fuck. And that’s where Manny Slaughter went.” In his last months, even with all the morphine being dripped into him, he would scream and swear from the pain, as if he were already well on his way to that place of relentless fire.
She made Celine promise that when she died she would be buried far away—a completely different cemetery from Manny, somewhere far across the city. She would tell Celine this over and over. Now they sleep forever separate as they did so much in life—but hopefully with less fury. I have made a point of not checking this out.
Many men are attracted to Celine. She believes it is something she cannot help—that she does nothing to make this so, thinking, “Although I know I don’t look anything like Rose, I am my own flower. Perhaps a pink hibiscus. I know Celie, Cecilia, and Cecily think I’m vain and superficial and, although Cecilia is a poet and Cecily a playwright, I’m as smart as either of them and most certainly have had more success with men. And unlike either, I am no gloom cloud. Aaron adores me and hasn’t a clue about Morris or Lew—or for that matter, any of the others.”
It is true, Aaron just expects her home for dinner—to make the meal and occasionally sit with him while he watches his TV programs. His favorite is Wheel of Fortune. She turns her cell phone off and lets all messages go to voice mail. Early the next day, she picks them up and chooses what she will do from whatever plans are offered to her.
Mostly, she spends mornings with Lew. They travel to the different sites where he owns property. They turn the radio on high to the oldies station. They neck, they pet, and sometimes do it in one of his half-filled condominiums, when an owner is on vacation. Evenings are mostly saved for Morris, but only when Aaron is out of town, or working, or just going to bed early. Again the radio’s on the oldies station. She is always listening to Bobby Vinton, Nat King Cole, the Lettermen—songs filled with longing and love, but nothing too sad, too operatic. Someday she plans to needlepoint a canvas that reads “No Sad Songs Sung Here,” frame it, and hang it on the door of her closet.
Afternoons she tries to stop at the lavish dress shop where Celie works. Often Celie lets her have her discount because—in truth—Celie has no use for such clothes. Celine feels Celie is her best cousin friend however much she gets frustrated with her passivity, her dowdiness. She thinks, “At least I take the time to listen to her and go with her to places, when she asks.” Celine believes Cecilia is usually too sadly sunk into herself to bring much to anyone else and is perplexed and a bit jealous by how much Celie adores her.
Although Celine, too, cares for Cecilia, she cannot stand how mixed up she is. Celine tells a miscellaneous friend, “You only have to read her poems to know this, and now, with whatever is going on with this ‘creature’—real or imagined—she refers to as ‘Herr M’ in more than one of her poems. Well, what’s a person to think? However, Cecily is the one who is just downright crazy. Totally obsessed with trying, always trying, to top Cecilia’s demitasse spoonful of success.”
Though Celine does find Cecily easy to talk to—an awfully good listener—so she tells her things she does not tell the others. Things that she probably should not tell her. Celine knows this, but cannot resist sharing them with someone, and she sees how much Cecily enjoys hearing what she says. She does believe they make Cecily’s life a little richer, distract her from her Cecilia fixation.
On the surface, at least, telling Cecily private things does make some sense for Celine used to be really close with her—both thirteen, they would sit in her Uncle Emmanuel’s gold Chrysler Imperial in the driveway of Celine’s house and talk and talk. Mostly about boys—Celine’s boys. Cecily was shy and not dating, yet. They would laugh a lot, while Uncle Emmanuel would often peer out the window. One day when Celine went inside, he told her he thought Cecily might be a homosexual. He talked about homosexuals a lot, especially after his business trips to Las Vegas. He would tell Celine and Aunt Sonya about the shows he had seen and who was and was not a “homo.” At first when he used the word Celine did not know what it meant and paid little attention to it. But after he said it about Cecily, she asked her mother. When Aunt Sonya told her, Celine just could not agree with her father. It seemed silly, and at the same time startling. It made her feel upset—confused—but she kept it to herself.
However, soon after Uncle Emmanuel said this, Aunt Lillian got a phone call from another mother saying she did not want her daughter to have any more contact with Cecily. When he heard this from Sonya, Manny just laughed. He and his brother Abraham, Cecily’s father, were in business together. Carpets. They had had a terrible
fight, which led him to create the rumor. Manny Slaughter could become very scary when he got angry.
Sometimes when I would see Cecily, I could not help but worry that this gossip had completely overwhelmed her. It was soon after that she began to wear thick eye shadow on her eyelids to give herself a deliberately tormented look. What was said clearly got permanently lodged in her mind all of the time. Celine’s too—but not all of the time, just some of the time. All of the time for Celine was reserved for Celeste. Sometimes she would even wonder if Celeste had been accidentally dropped into the wrong house and got a second chance at life with a more peaceful family. She also thought at lot about how nice it would have been to have her little sister back—have someone with whom she could have shared her thoughts, someone she could truly trust, someone who could have made her feel less alone—help her deal with all the chaos between her mother and father. Whenever she meets a person who has a sister with the name Celeste, she glues a smile onto her too bright lipstick. She knows how to cover the tormented look with cheery color.
Celine was six when Celeste died. Manny Slaughter wept for hours at the funeral parlor over her stilled body, where he had taken Celine, Sonya too broken apart to go. Then, suddenly, he picked Celeste up and shook her. Screamed at her to wake up. “Wake up, wake up.” Celine sat frozen in the corner, watching this. She cannot forget the image of her father shaking that baby—her small sister—and that shout. She hears it when she feels too alone in the dark.
The doctor had to come there and give him a shot. Then he drove both him and Celine home. For a while after, Manny Slaughter went to temple every morning. Gave up the women. For a while. Even after he went back to his old ways, Sonya stayed. Hell fire.
When Sonya and he moved to Key Biscayne, they dug up Celeste and took her with them. Buried her under the hot, rotting sun. Celine stayed here in the Midwest, where the seasons change often enough so that she would never be locked in one forever. Celine has an issue about being closed in—stuck. Stuck in one dress, one place, one thought. She needs diversity and change. She needs light—the sheen on satin, jokes, and cocktail talk.
On her birthdays she would get double the presents from her father. Two bracelets, two rings—whatever. As if he believed he still had two daughters. Her mother sent hers separately. Something for a little girl. Something a little girl would wear. It sort of made Celine sick. But she stayed sweet. “Surface perfect,” is what she called it, toward both of them until each of their ends.
At her father’s funeral she wore a sophisticated black St. John’s knit suit with a Versace silk blouse, the pattern a splash of shocking pink flowers. You could not see it at the service. The jacket covered it, except for the edges of the cuffs. During the service, to distract herself, she stared at them a lot.
At her mother’s funeral she wore a white cotton piqué Dior dress with a cinched waist and full skirt. It was midsummer, but not too hot—at dusk, when they finally lowered the casket into the ground, there was even a chill in the air so Aaron wrapped a light pink Donna Karan cashmere sweater over her shoulders. Then he hugged her and called her “my sweet girl.” From beneath the ground I saw Celie, Cecilia, and Cecily smirking a bit when he did this, while trying hard to stay posed-solemn. They stood across from Celine, all dressed in black Carolina Herrera, which Celine had rejected at the shop. Morris and Lew stood at opposite ends of the roped-in portion of the grave, staring at each other. Several other well-dressed men were there whom nobody seemed to recognize. As she looked around Celine was so pleased when she realized all her men had worn Armani.
THE INTERIOR OF THE SUN
It is the dream of reentering
Eden—innocent and running
up three flights of stairs
through the back door
into the kitchen.
They are there: mother, father.
No death here—not yet—no
lymph glands have swelled, buckled
the skin, lungs easily inhale
the fragrance from the thick brisket
steaming in the pot.
No one yet coughs. The blood
clot in father’s heart is
only a metaphor for
a child’s loss. Later, she’ll beg
her most violent lover to hit her
down there. Up
here dinner’s almost ready. The flowered
oilcloth sweats on the Formica
while she can’t wait to watch the fire-
flies attach and electrify against
the scorched window screen.
How she loves to singe
her fingertips with its prison pattern.
Her mother will insist
that now she must again go wash.
Will she ever get clean of the burnt-
out center of others’ lives? Hit me,
she whispered last night
to her lover—Herr M. There,
pointing to the wiry pit. How it fascinates—
the way the two of them mix
up love with hate. When he bites
her nipples to blood,
she can almost hear him cry
to his dead mama.
Hers just sits quiet and bald,
a million miles away. Chemotherapy
is doing its trick.
The trick is hope
that when she opens
the next door, they’ll be standing there—
waiting for her. She’s come in
from play. It’s summer again
and someone loves her.
c. slaughter
ZIPPING UP THE peach chiffon dress that Deidre Fox bought for her daughter’s early July wedding, she was clear in her mind, once again. She was more interested in getting information from Celie about our family and most especially about Cecilia than in having the dress properly fitted. It is obvious Deidre is obsessed with Cecilia and it is also obvious she thinks Celie is too blanked out to notice. But however delicate, however breakable Celie is, she is hawk-like aware of every move Deidre makes. What Deidre does not know is how protective Celie is of Cecilia, as Cecilia is of her. And, with Cecilia’s growing popularity, Celie sees some of the negative consequences of her success and this makes her all the more concerned for her.
It is evident that Cecilia has become the sun in Deidre’s solar system and that she is desperate to know everything about her interior core—which, quite frankly, is impossible. I do, however, understand Deidre’s need to a point, for she is an unsuccessful poet and most clearly Cecilia is not. And one thing that stands out among our many flaws as humans is how badly we want to be perceived as successful. As if success were an inanimate outer, loud adornment—like a flashy broach or a medal—not an inner, silent bloom to be watered and nourished.
Being that she is one of Celie’s best customers—comes to the shop almost three times a week, mostly looking to see if Cecilia is there—Celie tells her the most superficial things that come to mind. Facts that everyone knows. For Celie, too, in her own small way wants success—though she is satisfied with what many consider a ridiculously tiny portion of it.
Celie goes along with the family myth and tells her that Cecil Slaughter was reportedly a brilliant Jew and she provides some family facts that have been passed down through the years. That he was an émigré from Hungary who, when asked his name upon reaching Ellis Island, thought he was being questioned as to who he was—meaning what he did. He paused, then made an inadvertent hissing sound through the gaps in his teeth—whistle-like, and answered in his best English, “scholar.” (He did have a position as an adjunct lecturer in philosophy at a small institute of advanced learning before he left his country.)
The tired, impatient man behind the desk recorded Cecil from the whistle and from the broken-English scholar, he recorded “Slaughter”; rather prophetic, because the newly invented Cecil Slaughter ended up working in a kosher butcher shop, hacking meat. In the back room he did, however, teach himself to speak pe
rfect English and to read books on literature and history in his new language. When he died of pneumonia at forty-eight his young wife, also from Hungary, went mad. Had to be institutionalized.
Celie tells this to Deidre because, as I said, some things about us are not secrets, are public knowledge. She can see how big-eyed Deidre becomes when she speaks of this—as if Deidre has heard all this for the first time, which Celie believes is not true, given how unendingly inquisitive she is about our family and how she is known to make attempts to find out things about us from others.
What Celie does not tell her is that my mother and her four brothers chose to ennoble Cecil to genius status so as to make up for the shame they felt about their mother’s madness. It was this feeling about her, coupled with the blatant, totally public poverty of their early years—their sweeping self-consciousness about all of this—that made them more determined to create a brilliant Cecil—he who had no equal.
One day when Deidre spotted Cecilia at the shop buying an expensive black lamb’s wool sweater laced with seed pearls around the neck, she bought one, too. Celie does reinforce her. While she wrapped it, she explained to her how when Cecil died and left a daughter and four young sons for Idyth to raise, it became too much for her and the children were separated and shuffled off to distant relatives. Eventually each married, each had a firstborn daughter and named her after their father—all variations of his name, as if to make up for the fact that the child was female. “To watch a daughter blossom was like watching a peony in June, watch it dry up as July closed in, into a nothing to be blown away. That’s how they saw it. No blessing in a daughter.” That is how Cecilia had described it to Celie and how Celie repeated it to Deidre, who truly looked at that moment as if she had been handed a million dollars, because she had been given a Cecilia Quote.
“Some men still believe that,” Celie continued. Deidre replied, “Celie, I know this all too well.” Celie already had heard this, because Deidre had said it to Celine. Celine had taken Deidre to lunch at Cecilia’s request. Cecilia thought this would appease Deidre. Be enough. Celine was also assigned to help figure out if Deidre was dangerous. The best scenario, of course, was that with this connection to Celine, Deidre would stop trying so hard to bump into Cecilia at the shop and quit going to every local poetry event where Cecilia was reading and buying far too many of her poetry books, which gave her extra time with Cecilia as she stood there asking her to sign each book with specific inscriptions to people Cecilia felt she was just inventing so she could hang around her longer. “Sort of stalker-scary,” was how Cecilia put it—reminding her of Herr M and how he was now tracking her every published word.
