The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter (21 page)

Maybe you have to be dead (be that distant a witness to all the unending irrational havoc we cause ourselves and each other) to truly understand what an awful idea it was for Celine to agree to go with Celie that day. Here, beneath the ground, I can watch the people above just going along—passing time—not giving others' requests or behaviors too much thought. Or maybe in this particular instance, and more likely, Celine is just too self-absorbed and had it been anyone else who knew Celie well, the response would have been an emphatic “No.” Anyone else would have questioned her in very precise ways as to what she planned to do with such an item. It was certainly not a secret that Celie could self-destruct.

Clearly an extra layer of fatty tissue surrounds Celine's brain, resulting in a huge gelatinous involvement with herself, blocking any thought of how dangerous an excursion this could become for Celie. Cecilia never would have allowed it and would have made sure Celie got better help. And if she had known the gun purchase was on her behalf—because of what she had finally told Celie about Herr M—she would have been horrified. Even Cecily, with all her contorted thoughts, would have known that a gun in Celie's hands would serve no one any good purpose.

Cecilia would be at her mother's grave the day Celie would go to the gun shop and that was the very reason Celie had chosen it. On October 4, the anniversary of Aunt Lettie's birthday, Cecilia devotes the whole day to traveling here to lie next to her mother. It is one of the frequent times during the year that she is determined to be at the cemetery. The first thing she does when she arrives is to curl over
her grave. This autumn, her hair will blend into the russet color maple leaves that still warm us. For now, these visits are the only time that Aunt Lettie's agitated sleep lifts and she calms—in “eternity time” her rest will soon become peaceful.

After about twenty minutes Cecilia slowly gets up and speaks to each of us as she carefully positions white lilies next to our inscriptions. Then she carefully traces the embossed letters that make up each of our names with her fingertips, as if she is caressing us.

Celie knew that on this day Cecilia would not check in with her until late at night and since she was the only one who called her daily, there would be no one else who would worry if she could not be immediately found. Some, including Celie's brothers and their wives, would go for months without getting in touch with her. She had taken a sick day from the dress shop to go to the gun shop, so no one there would bother her.

All Celine could think of after Celie invited her was that she had never been to a gun shop, and it intrigued her because she would have to pick something extra special to wear, something
different
from that which she normally wore, and she was excited to see how she would appear in the mirror in a new and possibly spectacular look.

What she ultimately chose were black blue jeans, a black belt with highly polished silver studs, and a black spandex three quarter sleeve T-shirt with a cowl neck that could be pulled to one side to expose a shoulder—all from Victoria's Secret. She told the woman taking her order to send the clothes overnight, which added forty percent to the cost. But she needed to know quickly if the look worked. And anyway, she convinced herself, she rarely did catalogs and was amazed by how little each item cost.

After she ripped open the delivery and put everything on, she looked at herself in her huge, ceiling-to-floor-length mirror and said, “Cool. Yes, very cool,” out loud and thought, “unlike the visibly unhappy Cecily, who always dressed in dark clothes, I don't look Goth. More teenager, trim and quite slim, actually thin”—except for her hiked-up breasts, which she raised her hands to cup—held in place by a firm, thickly padded, pointed-tip bra. “Yes, young,” she said to her reflection. She then ran to the local upscale shoe store and bought some black Frye cowboy boots with beautifully sculpted wooden heels.

The fact was, her face looked prunelike and her behind sagged and seemed disproportionately wide and flat, like badly poured pancake batter. However, not studying herself too closely from the back—too taken by her frontal image—she did not realize this as she happily picked up her black Gucci purse and put it next to the outfit. Dissatisfied with that choice, she ultimately chose the uninitialed, less ostentatious, more expensive Bottega.

Five days later, on the gun shop trip day, Celie put on baggy khakis and a rumpled gray cotton pullover. She never gave her clothes any thought when away from the shop, and as she dressed she realized how very much she had begun to detest all clothes—how much she enjoyed being alone in her apartment completely naked and how this was becoming more and more of a habit because of the pleasure it brought her. She also did not seem to care if anyone could see her this way through her windows. Increasingly, she liked the freedom of wearing just her skin, for its lack of pretence.

She had come to hate the way her customers fussed over what they wore—how they tried to cover up bad feelings
about themselves and masquerade as someone else—someone who had great confidence. And since the clothes could never give them a strong, permanent identity, rather quickly they would return for another something—most likely a more expensive item, thinking the higher the price, the higher their feeling of self-worth.

Of course, being the top saleswoman at the shop, she kept such thoughts to herself. She knew Cecilia would have laughed and agreed with her—that keeping these thoughts to herself on the “sad purchases for a
faux
confidence”
was
smart. However, Celie also believed that unlike herself, Cecilia's own nakedness frightened her and that these past many months she had noticed that Cecilia used more and more layers of clothes to cover herself. Cecilia's description of Herr M's attack on her naked being, how she “shivered, then shook, then finally fully quaked into a seizure near the end,” now never left Celie's mind.

Celie knew she was not attractive, but she also felt she had wonderfully smooth skin and she loved to cover it with thick Kukui Nut Coconut moisturizer, and then lie on her bed, curve her head onto her arms and smell the soft richness of herself—the pleasure of her own silkiness. She believed her skin's perfection was because it had never been passionately touched. She never saw its sad pallor.

The day Cecilia bowed her head and slowly, somberly, and fragilely detailed what had happened to her with Herr M, Celie went home and took two showers, put extra lotion on her skin, and curled into the purity of her virgin nakedness, draping herself in her one great indulgence—an expensive, pure white satin comforter—and appreciated her unmarked self a little more.

When Celine arrived, Celie handed her a meticulously drawn map with directions on how to get to the gun shop. Celine was driving her white Mercedes two-seat convertible that Aaron had given her several years ago for her fortieth birthday. “To cheer you up for all the years that really didn't show
at all,”
was what he said to her, with a nervous laugh.

In truth, the years had not been kind to Celine and she fully looked her age, plus ten. Too much sun. It was an addiction for her, as were the men. As Cecilia had put it to Celie, “Celine is always in need of a tan and a man.” It was true that when she walked into a room, people looked. That flash of shoulder length, overly-bleached blond hair and the startlingly bright colors she wore were always good for a double take.

On her way to pick up Celie, Celine fantasized about the rough, muscled men who would be at the shop and how their heads would turn when she entered; which in fact they did, but again not for her imagined reasons, but rather for her high-pitched giggle coupled with a naiveté, which could have been interpreted as stupidity, and for the too-loud questions that she asked. “Why do you need a permit? I thought this was a
free
country?” she said in a sassy voice, as she batted her lacquered eyelashes at the hardened man with his work-worn wrinkles and tough skin who stood behind the counter. He took his guns quite seriously and looked like he would not mind shooting her after her barrage of childlike questions and flirtatious mannerisms.

Finally, he took out a shotgun and said, “Perhaps you'd prefer this?” Then he snapped its pump, which made a
loud noise, and pointed it at her. Everyone there suddenly stopped what they were doing to look at what was going on. Celine acted unfazed, telling the man in her best Mae West impersonation, “I can handle
anything
I'm a
worldly
woman.” This made him smile in a way that puzzled Celine, but she chose at the moment to see it as a compliment—which it was not. He had known women like her from his private detective days and found all of them pathetic clichés—deflated balloon creatures, whose authentic feelings had been sucked out of them or never truly existed, and all they did was play at strong. He remembered how much trouble they could cause the people who got too close to them—their demands, and the sometimes frightening, dangerous lengths they would go to get attention.

He also knew that the instant when he pointed the shotgun at her would come back to haunt her. She would wonder why he had done this to her and she would worry that it was possible he did not like her—or worse, that he wanted to hurt her for some unknown reason. He knew insecurity and paranoia ran high in such women.

He was right, for when Celine slipped into bed that night and pressed herself against Aaron's exhausted, flabby body and shut her eyes, she saw the barrel of the shotgun pointing at her and the sinister looking narrow tunnel of its darkness froze her. She neither slept nor moved until sunrise, just lay there in a cold sweat that rose from deep within her—a place of terror and pain she sealed the door to years ago with the death of her baby sister and the image of her father shaking Celeste to
wake up.

Celie came prepared. She made sure she had a pen and paper in her purse and took notes while she listened to the man behind the counter. She studied the application form
and worried about the question, “In the past 5 years, have you been a patient in any medical facility or part of any medical facility used primarily for the care or treatment of persons for mental illness?” After a pause of almost a minute, she decided that sometimes you just need to lie and proceeded to put a large X in the
no
box.

She also decided that however interesting the pump action of the Remington 820 shotgun was—the one that had been pointed at Celine—she preferred the Colt semiautomatic pistol. It looked just like the one Uncle Abraham—Cecily's father—had from World War II, which Cecily had shown to her, Celine, and Cecilia. Celie also thought the handgun could be carried so easily in her purse, unlike the other, which looked like it would need at least a violin case.

She learned from the man behind the counter that the shotgun was more successful in scaring a person and, if need be, more accurate for hitting the target. “The shotgun shells—their spray—would be better for someone inexperienced, better than a single bullet.” But to her the pistol seemed a more private purchase. “The shotgun,” she told him, “seems too glamorous,” which made the man with the reptilian skin grin at her. She was more than happy to take the slip of paper he offered with the addresses of firearm ranges where she could practice once her application had cleared, which she had convinced herself it would.

After she completed it, the shop's photographer—a strong, pretty, young woman—positioned Celie in front of a screen to take her picture. When both the man and the photographer questioned her as to exactly why she wanted a gun—Had there been some trouble where she lived? Was someone bothering her?—she quickly answered, “For protection. I live alone.” She had practiced
these words in front of her medicine cabinet mirror for days. But still, when she had to say them for real, her voice cracked, which embarrassed her, and she blushed. The effect this had on the man and the young woman was to focus even more on helping her. They would remember her seriousness, her politeness, her vulnerability.

Celie, however, did not notice this, so intense she had become on learning more and more about guns, for with this knowledge came the growing, exciting reality that the plan to kill Herr M was truly in motion. She could
do
this. She had thought of sending letters to the university about him, telling the administration about the terrible things he had done, and one to his live-in girlfriend, a woman who had escaped from Castro's Cuba as a small child and was now teaching at the university. She had more degrees than any three people and kept winning awards with large sums of money attached for her writings on nonviolence—an irony not lost on Celie. But in the end the letter idea did not seem powerful enough. It did not settle her, could not clip off even a corner of her upset.

Now that she had figured out what she really needed to do, she felt she was on a religious mission—her own crusade—her Christian purpose, as she began to call it to herself, although she still considered herself a Jew. Through the years religion had become a mixed-up thing to her, like so many of her thoughts, just a jumble of ideas.