The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter (12 page)

If the rumors as to what he has done to Cecilia are true (which she tries hard to believe are not) she feels she would have to lunge at him in some way and directly destroy him. Not like when she followed her grandmother around with her book with Eva saying, “No, Celie, not today,” and Celie's too sweet response, “Tomorrow, Grandma Eva, tomorrow?” It was their circle in hell—albeit a shallow one. With Herr M, if the gossip proved to be true—that he had attacked Cecilia, Celie believes Herr M's and her circle would reach into the depths of hell. Of course, she keeps this all to herself, just listening to what the others are saying—trying to sift through all the stuff being flung
at her—and also continuously observing Cecilia's increasingly jittery behavior and reading her poems for more mentions of Herr M.

Adele threw up a lot when she was little. Celie's mother told her this. Eva had bought a baby grand piano that sat front and center in the apartment's living room. It was the only piece of furniture not sealed in plastic, although Celie was forbidden to touch it. Eva had wanted Adele to be a great pianist. Adele tried—tried to be what her mother had dreamed for her. But she would vomit too much before each recital. So much so that the doctors said she would have to quit because she could die. According to Esther, her whole digestive tract would become inflamed. Between performances she would eat and eat and look like she might burst. No one in that 1930s neighborhood analyzed it much—just concluded the recitals would have to stop. After that, the piano stayed quiet. The lid on the keyboard slammed shut. No music.

Esther was to be a famous actress. She
was
written up in several newspapers and called a child prodigy. Starting when she was five, she gave recitations all over the city. At sixteen she auditioned at the Goodman Theatre for the part of Juliet. She got it. Except when the director asked her to meet him later at the Palmer House and she said, “Yes,” adding, “I'll have to bring my mother.” He replied, “Don't bother.”

Soon after, Esther met Benjamin and never went on stage again. She was relieved. All those memorized lines in her small child's mind became a cage of gnarled rope that imprisoned her brain. She believed Benjamin Slaughter would help cut her free, but that was not to be and she grew into an all-too-silent woman.

Adele hated her sister—her suburban home, her three children who actually loved her. She thought Esther had it so easy—which she did not. But she did have it easier than Adele. Adele was left in the apartment of her mother with her screams—“You're so ___,” “You'll never ___.” And throughout her life, at least the part I witnessed, Adele was “so ___” and she “never ___.”

Celie once heard Adele had stolen a bicycle. When Celie was seven, she told Cecilia and me, with such a flourish, “I hope it's true and that she rode it really fast before she got caught!” Both of us hoped so, too.

However, something Celie does know to be absolutely true is the memory, when she was four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine, of watching Adele get ready—ready for the Yom Kippur Night Dance. After our most solemn day—made up of fasting and silence and prayer for what bad people we had been in the past year, Celie would watch Adele put on thick makeup, pink rouge, and red lipstick. How she gussied herself up with flaming colors—silky dresses that clung to her. What a night of promise it was as Adele prepared to find her beau. Celie's grandfather, Levi, and her father would come out of the back room where they would sit and smoke and say how nice she looked. Even Eva was chatty.

Year after year Adele would leave and return late into the night—her purse probably already stuffed with things she would have to repent for next year. Celie thought about that a lot as she got older. She would wait for her key to open the lock of the apartment door, then she would fall asleep so happy because she knew the next day Adele would tell her stories about the
dance
—the music,
the food, the clothes, and the best part, about the
beau
she had found. Adele always had one to talk and talk about. Then Celie would watch her wait by the telephone in the weeks after for him to reappear. Celie would grow sadder and sadder as she sat next to her.

On Mother's Day Celie always made sure to give Adele a present. Those were the days when she thought she could save her. She even thought she could save her grandmother, and, of course, her too quiet mother. She was always very busy with wrapping paper and ribbons trying to tie everything together into a big, bright, perfect bow. Now, Eva's gone, as is Esther—wrapped in some eternal package Celie cannot unknot no matter how much she thinks about ways to do it, all the time wondering if Adele's in there, too—and if her grandmother is still screaming at Adele.

As Adele grew older, it was easier to deal with her when she got depressed. I know it is terrible to say this—but it is true. Everyone in our extended family experienced this—never knowing which Adele would show up. She would become timid and sweet, weepy-sweet to be sure, but that was better than her open-blister rage or her all-knowing PhD, Nobel-Prize-winning arrogance when she was manic. In that state, she would go into stores and buy up everything as if she were an heiress. Eva was called frequently by the local owners, and when she eventually refused to deal with it and then passed away, all the burden went to Esther.

When Esther got so finally sick, Adele became one hundred percent manic—a horrible happy manic. Refused to take her pills, called every day to tell Esther of all her activities—how busy she was, all the places she had gone from morning to night. What fun she was having. Esther
listened with good patience. Every day Celie would hear her mother on the phone positioned next to her bed saying, “Oh Adele, how wonderful!” Until one day, coming up the stairs to visit her completely bedridden, bald mother, she heard its crash into its cradle. Celie stood in the doorway and saw her mother smiling a huge smile.

Esther told Celie with such gusto—not at all like a sick person—“Your Aunt Adele just reported on her
busy, busy
day and after forty-five minutes of babbling, she finally asked what I'd been
doing.
I replied, ‘Well, Adele, if you haven't noticed, I'm very busy, too. I'm very busy
dying.'”
It was then Esther bashed the phone into Adele's ear and smiled that stunning smile. When Celie remembers this, it still makes
her
smile. Esther never talked to Adele again. Refused her calls. Had a few weeks of peace from her sister before she left.

That time was also the beginning of Celie losing Adele, of not knowing or wanting to know where her mother's sister was. She visited her only once in the hospital after she had a surgery. Adele seemed overjoyed with her newfound illness. Her affect so impossibly off, it made Celie want to run back into the coat closet. Adele believed being sick would get her more attention. She wanted the love Celie and her brothers had for their mother. She demanded it. She said, “It was their duty.” When she left the hospital, Celie just sent her flowers. Joshua and Jeremy distanced themselves further, as did Celie's father—just disappeared from her. She did not figure into any of the equations that made up their lives.

The next and last time Celie saw Adele she seemed physically fine, yet furious. She called from across the room, “Celia.” Not “Celie,” and from just this Celie knew trouble was heading toward her. She wanted to turn away,
but Adele was quick—approached and kissed her. Then, she dug her long, red-painted nails into Celie's arm and thanked her for the flowers. Then, digging deeper, she screamed, “Was that the best you could do?” Before Celie could answer, she added, “Well it just isn't good enough, Celia. Celia, do you hear me?” Celie stared at her, then ripped her arm from Adele's grip and ran out of the house where they both were guests. She ran and ran until she threw up. Her heart was pounding outside her chest. She thought she was going to break. In fact she did.

Even with therapy and pills, sometimes when Celie closes her eyes and the room is completely dark—the TV off—Eva's screams roar through her head and she does not know if
she is
dead or alive. No man has ever asked to marry her and she is overweight. She just goes from the upscale dress shop, selling party clothes to the suburban women on the North Shore to her apartment to eat carryout and watch old movies. She particularly likes the silent ones.

However, she does know she is very good at her job. She can always find her customers the perfect outfit. When they say, “Celie, I need your help,” she likes that. She knows a lot about their lives. She finds them outfits for their children's bar or bat mitzvahs, confirmations, graduations, weddings, and for the Opera Ball—all the charity benefits. Their festivities are endless. She likes to hear about each event—the food, the music, how they danced and danced through the night.

Yet sometimes, when a client accepts her offer of hot coffee or a cold drink while waiting for a fitting, Celie has the urge to throw the drink into her client's face. This impulse frightens her. It makes her feel she
could do
anything to anyone. She has worked on this in her therapy sessions
and now realizes that this is similar to what Adele felt toward Esther.

Unlike Adele, however, Celie is a terrible dancer. Adele was really great. She would even show Celie steps and tell her she needed to relax. Celie thinks about her often—I guess this is obvious. And sometimes Celie dreams of both of them at the Yom Kippur Night Dance. They are twirling with their beaus, so bright and flushed they are with life—forever freed from all sin, all guilt, all of the past. The only rage they know of is in the flamboyant colors of their clothes.

Ointment rubbed over the skin—

3 drops Frankincense,

2 drops Peppermint,

1 drop Clove, 1 drop Pine—

could not bring on the exorcism.

All hands blunt clumsy.

Too much food had been eaten.

Egg and chop and leg of duck

were placed on the breast

of the dead one,

then passed to my lone figure

in the corner—
the sin-eater

of the family
chewing, chewing

so the beloved's soul could be free,

made light to have

an easy journey.

c. slaughter

I
N THE YEAR BEFORE
Great Aunt Eva died she cared less and less to understand, fix, or tell anything to anyone about her own troubles—and if she got angry she no longer yelled, just suffered silently. She also did not care to hold anyone close or captive. This is one way some people prepare for their above-the-ground exit—quite the opposite of Uncle
Manny's fury to grab anyone near and try to take them with him into his wretchedness.

Eva believed she had been a kind, generous person and to people who did not get too near to her, there was no one finer. She gave Mario the handyman large tips—even though money was terribly short—and on his holiday, Christmas, a present and she still, “at her age,” made a hot lunch for Odette and served it to her, when Odette came twice a month to help Eva clean her apartment and move the heavy furniture. And when the young, handsome, Catholic president was shot, how Eva grieved, and lit a
Yarzheit
candle for him on the first Yom Kippur after his death—the rabbi at the temple telling her this was a
mitzvah.
True, she had not voted for him, since she never realized her good intention to learn to read English and consequently never became a citizen of her “new country”—but she was dazzled by his Hollywood image, his star-like family, and was stunned for a long time by what had happened to him, similar to when her son-in-law Benjamin's sister, the “perfect Rose,” as Eva called her in a sour way, had lost a daughter—meaning
me.

Mostly alone, she took long walks on her avenue no matter what the weather. Always with her huge, worn, black leatherette purse and orange nylon net bag to carry a few groceries—an apple, a pear, whatever—both hooked on to her left arm. The net bag matched the color of her hair. Once she was a true redhead.

Often her daughter Esther came down from the suburbs to walk with her. Celie sometimes came too, but then Celie began to visit less and less and that was okay with Eva. So different from years past, when she would clutch Celie so tightly, Celie thought she might break.

In truth, it sort of made Celie sick to be with her grandmother, because she felt her grandmother was walking with Death and Celie is petrified of Death—goes to a psychiatrist because of this and other terrors. He gives her pills that open her up to the day and others that close her down at night. The pills help too with the rituals—obsessions, compulsions are what the doctor calls them—the repetitive checkings and numbered spinnings that she does for safekeeping before she leaves her apartment. She has tailor-made them for herself to keep Death away.