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“I like my hairstyle,” said my aunt primly, watching my mother roll in the tea wagon loaded down with all the goodies Momma’d prepared earlier. “At least I don’t try to look like a pampered mistress who spends all her time trying to please an egotistical sex maniac. Of course, I realize that’s the only kind of man there is. That is exactly why I chose to stay single.”
“I’m sure that’s the only reason,” said my mother in her own voice. Then she spoke for the photograph on the piano. “But Ellie, I remember a time when you were madly in love with an egotistical maniac. In love enough to go to bed with him and have his child. Too bad he only used you to satisfy his lust; too bad he never fell in love with you.”
“Oh, him,” said my aunt, snorting her disgust. “He was just a passing fancy. His animal magnetism drew me to him momentarily, but I had sense enough to forget him and move on to better things. I know he found another immediately. All men are alike—selfish, cruel, demanding. I know now he would have made the worst possible husband.”
“Too bad you couldn’t have found a wonderful man like Lucky’s handsome Damian,” said that sweet voice from the piano, as my mother sat down to nibble on a dainty sandwich.
I stared at the picture of a woman I didn’t remember ever meeting, though Momma said I had known her when I was four. She appeared to be very wealthy. Diamonds hung from her ears, neck, studded her fingers. The fur trimming on her suit collar made her face seem to sit on her shoulders. Often I imagined that if she rose, she’d have fur about long, full sleeves and rimming the edge of her skirt, like a medieval queen.
Mercy Marie had traveled all the way to Africa in hopes of salvaging a few heathen souls and converting them to Christianity. Now she was part of the heathens, eaten, hopefully, after she was killed and cooked.
According to everything I’d learned from attending these teatimes, Aunt Mercy Marie once had a ridiculous fondness for cucumber and lettuce sandwiches made with the thinnest possible cheese bread. In order to do this, my mother had to bake the bread, trim off the crust and flatten the bread with her rolling pin. The bread was then cut with cookie cutters into fancy shapes.
“Really, Mercy Marie,” said my aunt in her harsh way, “ham, cheese, chicken or tuna is not as tacky as you think. We eat food like that all the time … don’t we, Lucietta?”
Momma scowled. I hated to hear what she’d say next, something cruel and biting. “If Mercy Marie adores dainty cucumber and lettuce sandwiches, Ellie, why don’t you let her eat a few, instead of hogging them all for yourself? Don’t be such a pig. Learn to share.”
“Lucietta, darling,” spoke up the shrill voice from the piano, this time donated by my aunt, “please show your older sister the respect due her. You give her such tiny portions at mealtimes, she has to make up for your stinginess by eating the sandwiches I adore.”
“Oh, Mercy, you are such a dear, so gracious. Of course I should know my sister’s appetite can never be satisfied. A bottomless pit could hold no more than Ellie’s stomach. Perhaps she tries to fill the great emptiness of her life with food. Perhaps for her it replaces love.”
On and on went the memorial teatime, while the perfumed candles burned and the fire spat red sparks, and Aunt Ellie consumed all the sandwiches, even those with chicken liver pâté, which I liked very much—and so did Vera. I nibbled on a sandwich I hated. This kind always tasted like Aunt Mercy Marie might have: damp, grassy and soggy.
“Really, Lucietta,” said Aunt Ellsbeth, using the voice of the dear departed, casting me a grievous look for so obviously disliking what Mercy Marie must have loved most. “You should do something about that child’s appetite. She’s nothing but skin and bones and huge haunted eyes. And that ridiculous mop of hair. Why does she look so spooked? From the looks of her some dry wind could blow her away—if she doesn’t lose her mind first. Lucietta, what are you doing to that child?”
About this time I heard the squeak of the side door opening, and in a few seconds Vera crawled into the room. She hid herself behind a potted fern so our mothers wouldn’t see her and put her finger to her lips when I looked her way. She had with her a huge medical encyclopedia that had cardboard front pieces made of both the female and male body—without clothes on.
I cringed. Behind me Vera giggled. I shrank into that small hiding place in my brain where I could feel safe and unafraid, but that place felt like a cage. I always felt caged when Aunt Mercy Marie’s spiteful ghost came to our front salon. She was dead and unreal, but somehow or other she still made me feel like a shadow without substance. Not real in the same way other girls were real. My hand fluttered nervously to feel my “haunted” eyes, to touch my “gaunt” cheeks, for sooner or later she’d get around to mentioning those things, too.
“Mercy,” spoke my mother chastisingly, “how can you be so insensitive in front of my daughter?” She stood, looking tall and willowy in her soft, flowing dress.
I stared at that dress, confused. Surely she’d walked into this room in something coral colored. How had it changed colors? Was it the light from the windows making it seem violet, green and blue? My head began to ache. Was it summer, spring, winter or fall? I wanted to run to the windows and check the trees, only they didn’t lie.
Other things were said that I tried not to hear, and then Momma strode over to the piano and sat down to play all the hymns that Aunt Mercy Marie liked to sing. The minute my mother
sat on her piano bench, something miraculous happened: she assumed a stage presence as if an audience of thousands would soon be applauding. Her long elegant fingers hovered over the keys dramatically, then down they came, banging out a commanding chord to demand your attention. “Rock of Ages” she played, and then she was singing so beautifully and sadly I wanted to cry. My aunt began to sing, too, but I couldn’t join in. Something inside me was screaming, screaming. All this was false. God wasn’t up there. He didn’t come when you needed him … he never had and he never would.
Mamma saw my tears and abruptly changed pace. This time her hymn was played in a rock style that bounced through the room. “Won’t you come to the church in the wildwood, won’t you come to the church in the vale,” she sang, rocking from side to side, making her breasts jiggle.
My aunt began to eat cake again. Discouraged, my mother left the piano and sat on the sofa.
“Momma,” I asked in a small voice, “what’s a vale?”
“Lucietta, why don’t you teach your child something of value?” asked that merciless voice on the piano. When my head whipped around, trying to catch Aunt Ellsbeth talking, she was sipping hot tea, which I knew was heavily laced with bourbon, just as Momma’s tea was. Maybe it was the liquor that made them so cruel. I didn’t know if they had liked Aunt Mercy Marie when she was alive, or if they had despised her. I knew they liked to mock the way they thought she’d been killed, as if they couldn’t quite believe Papa, who had explained to me more than once that Aunt Mercy Marie might very well be alive and the wife of some African chieftain.
“Fat women are prized in many primitive societies,” he told me. “She just disappeared two weeks after she arrived there to do her missionary work. Don’t believe everything you hear, Audrina.”
That was my worst problem—what to believe, and what not to believe.
Giggling, Momma poured a bit more tea into my aunt’s cup and some into her own, and then she picked up a crystal bottle labeled “Bourbon” and filled the two cups. Then Momma spotted Vera. “Vera,” she said, “would you like a cup of hot tea?”
Of course Vera did, but she scowled when no bourbon was added.
“What are you doing home from school so early?” shot out my aunt.
“The teachers had a meeting and let all the students off earlier than usual,” said Vera quickly.
“Vera, be truthful in the presence of the living dead,” giggled my mother, almost drunk by this time. Vera and I exchanged glances. This was one of the only times we could really communicate, when we both felt strange and baffled.
