The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter (6 page)

Alan Gross did not help either. He was the editor of
Contemporary Philology.
At first we got along quite well, but when I started getting published in places where his work had been rejected, he became quite cruel—verbally abusive—called me awkward, ugly, fat, and stupid. One day I taped a bulky recorder to my chest and put on a loose-fitting sweater to cover it. When I saw him, I ran into the ladies' room and in a stall, I clicked it on. It was perfect. I caught all his meanness on that tape. However, when I went to Human Resources at the university, the woman there said my evidence was not good enough. I did see her eyes tear up as she listened to his words—she
did
feel how they burned, how they branded. But, she then composed herself and said, “There is nothing I can do with
this, no matter how terrible it truly is. There has to be proof of physical abuse or that he has stolen something personal from your office or your purse for you to file a complaint.” I remember her voice. The tremble of it.

I found out that day that legally you could say such things to women in the early 1980s and easily get away with them. Alan Gross's
just
verbal assaults, however, did have a terrible effect on my still living body and soul. He did, in fact, steal something from me. I cannot blame him for my illness, but I will forever believe he helped put a halt to its remission.

I remember the day he told me, “Look it, if there's to be one star in this office, it's going to be me.” He always used too many words when he spoke. Throwaway ones like
look it, you know,
and
like maybe.
He loved himself much more than any affection he had for language. However, I thought it so odd when he claimed one-star status. His perception was so off, his vision so narrowed, as if he were trying to shine a lit matchstick on himself. Philologists are never famous in the larger world of fast food, wide Technicolor movie screens, television sitcoms, easily accessible pornography, and missiles that can take out cities far away.

Everything about him I found repulsive and ridiculous, although I loved his last name because of how well it fit him. He had a bulbous nose, with at least a double layer of cartilage—far worse than mine. Sometimes when I looked at him I thought this might be why he was always so angry. I obviously had my own longstanding issues with unattractive excess, so I could almost understand his problems with
Gross
homeliness. Though he did not lack for sexual favors from women—mostly his students. In the eighties you could also easily get away with this. They bought into
his cachet because they were so young and thought that they, too, could become
famous
philologists.

In Greek
philos
means “love” and
logos
means “word.” I loved the ancient texts, the myths—the study of grammar, the classical traditions associated with a given language. For this I had a passion even larger than when Wyatt long ago had so deftly—and ferally—manipulated my breasts. Of course, looking at all the Greek god statues, especially in their nakedness, did remind me of him and the glory of his body, which always resulted in reigniting my despondency.

I would take out Frank Sinatra's “Only the Lonely” record album and play the music over and over, while staring at its cover—Sinatra with that one tear running down his cheek, looking like a sad clown—looking like Perriot.

Secret references to my obsession with Wyatt and my memories of his sculpted image can be found in the papers I wrote, and writing these did give me some amount of pleasure—as does the fact that they are still being discussed in tiny circles along with the one book I published. I do admit to still liking a small amount of polish on my own ego—something I continue to work on.

Alan Gross is never talked about except by he, himself to his most naive students, although having sex with them is far more problematic because of recent university rules and the fact that he is now old. Soon he will die and the stars will stare down on him in all his anonymity. He will never have even a moment of the twinkle and shine he still hungers after, unlike my mother, who has enjoyed a long stay in the spotlight of a small space—center stage.

I am readying myself for her arrival. She will lie between
my father and me. My father exhausted himself in life from all his bloat about himself, causing not only his ego but also his soul to fragment from the fatigue of needing to work so hard to keep itself whole, and he remains quite scattered and quiet. I, however, have spoiled well—that awful, thick makeup they smothered me with is long gone and I am left with just sleek bones and a few fibers of the white silk chemise that was slipped onto whatever the doctors did not cut from me—and I have also been quite spoiled by the richness I have found in all the worlds I can now enter and the freedom they bring to my words.

Here, no one cares to—or can—yank from me my story.

Mother twisted every action

to suit my father's mood,

which ran from sour to bittersweet.

Mother only had one motion of her own—

she picked

her scalp as if searching for the right

hair would lessen

all the tension. I'd watch

her hand curlicue into a question

mark, tear out the nervous

answer, examine what

she plucked, toss her head,

then pat it

as she would to soothe

my cousin's in the crib.

Once I brought a tweezers

to help her

grab what I thought

she wanted. She let me explore

the ruins underneath her beauty

shop creation. I touched

the sores and stubble, tried to

yank out all the trouble

until she yelled

to stop. From then I never could.

I keep looking for the spot

on my own head, ask anyone

who will to rub.

When I'm alone,

I use two mirrors, struggle

to see if I can get hold

of the anxiety. Deep within

my skull a stem is snarling

and will split the bone.

c. slaughter

I
WAS TO BE
the One,
the one great success of the Slaughter family offspring—my parents
had said it
and their word on all matters was considered biblical—so when I was dropped from their world to the one beneath, my cousins and their parents, each with his or her individual agenda embedded in the larger family one, were disoriented as to who would be the flag bearer of the family's legacy.

Years later, Celie would come to say, “Cecilia and Cecily have all the talent in the family, because they were given the
extra
syllable.” She meant they had an extra syllable in their names. She considered that maybe because my name, “Ceci,” had just two syllables it had not been powerful enough to hold me to that promise. (Celie is more prone than any of us—even Cecilia—to magical and convoluted thinking, her thoughts often arriving through a side door or the even stranger back door in her mind. But there are reasons for this.)

By then Cecilia had published five poetry books and Cecily had two plays produced in non-equity, storefront theaters where the plumbing in the bathrooms was fairly
non-existent. Cecilia told me this with some amount of humor when she visited my grave one day, adding, “Ceci, I think there were peepholes in both places with someone snapping pictures or videotaping us. I heard little clicks or a tiny buzz and I saw little ragged openings in the walls and the ceilings. Or maybe they were just made by the rodents living there.” Then she laughed, “Same thing I guess.” Some things deeply bothered Cecilia; some things she could easily joke about, when others could not—peep-holes in the bathrooms both intrigued and amused her, at least before Herr M entered her life. Then, her reaction to
any
possible intrusion ignited her to full-blown alarm.

Cecily's two plays received not-great reviews, but now she has written a third one which she believes is a huge improvement. So far, however, no theater seems that interested and she has become wise enough not to call too often for updates on it. Alone, in her large, half-furnished apartment, she thinks, “Perhaps they feel if they ignore you enough—not return your phone calls—you'll go away.” The emptiness of the place in which she lives has become a metaphor for both who she is and how she feels.

She thinks about going away a lot, but not in the way you first might think. Going away, not as in stopping calling about the play or as in going on a trip, rather she thinks about disappearing. She is tired. Tired of being Cecily Slaughter, granddaughter of the mythically brilliant Cecil Slaughter, cousin of the highly praised poet Cecilia Slaughter, daughter of the sad and broken late Abraham Slaughter, victim of the dead monster Emmanuel Slaughter, daughter of the also deceased Lillian—who, she believes, really did love her in her own weak way.

As for my other female Slaughter cousins, Celine (unlike
her baby sister, Celeste, who was gone before she could speak an understandable word) survives rather well in the world she has constructed for herself with flashy colors—most of them variations of shocking pink—her whole being a shock of pink. Celine, is known for such statements as, “Well,
I can't help it
if there's
at least
two men in love with me.” And, then there is Celie—the one most prone to dissociative thinking—shy, modest Celie, who works in a high-end suburban dress shop. Celie, who
seems
of little threat to anyone except herself. Celie, who needs love so much and receives so little, except from Cecilia.

In Cecily's third play the dying mother,
Tanya,
is all light and grace. Cecily,
of course,
is
not
the daughter in the play. She is a poet and although she has borrowed “a bit” from Cecilia's life, she justifies it in the name of art. The fact that Cecilia is disturbingly beautiful with five applauded books, makes it difficult for Cecily not to hate her, though Cecily, at least consciously, believes she does not. She feels she can fairly assess the adventures that all Cecilia's beauty and so-called talent have taken her on—borrow from them and create art.

Some people would call them less adventures than misfortunes. (And then, of course, there was one person for sure—Herr M—who believed Cecilia Slaughter deserved all the bad things that happened to her—had ever so directly caused them herself.) Cecily believes she is neutral—so she can present a somewhat disguised story of Cecilia's travails on stage with a clear, clean eye. Although she is beginning to worry that maybe the reason no one has called her back about the play is that they all think she has burgled Cecilia's life and that “isn't right or nice or whatever.” She continues to further excuse her feelings about Cecilia, thinking, “Celine
believes whatever's happened to Cecilia is no big deal. That Cecilia clearly just doesn't know how to handle men.” Then Cecily thinks about Cecilia's “not so secret habit.”

Cecilia's mother's head was a mess of tiny sores from tearing at her hair. One by one Aunt Lettie would pull each out and examine it when she thought no one was watching, but all of the cousins at one time or another saw her doing this. Sometimes, I would hide behind a chair and stare. She would sit on her worn beige couch, almost hypnotizing herself with this motion. If she did not comb her hair just right you could see those irritated moth holes all over her head.

Cecilia only has one moth hole—right at the top of her head. The crown. She calls it her Seventh Chakra. Believes the light of God is able to pour right into that spot, allowing her to be filled with all the magic that the universe has to offer. Yes, Cecilia does have a way of turning a gross neurotic habit into something poetic, odd, lovely, and disturbing all at the same time.

Most unfortunately, Cecilia showed her newly created spot to Cecily when Cecily was seven. Under the bushes next to their three-flat apartment, the one my father bought for the Slaughter brothers when they began to marry, the eight year old Cecilia spread her hair and bowed her head to Cecily and asked her if she'd like to kiss it.
“Kiss it?”
Years later, Cecily would tell anyone who would listen, “Thank goodness she has an outlet with her poetry, otherwise she'd end up quite crazy, be institutionalized like Grandmother Slaughter.”

My father would boast to his friends that the building where Uncles Emmanuel, Abraham, and Samuel lived cost him “next to nothing,” adding, “Of course, I fixed it up
better than the other properties I own.” Then he would laugh. After marrying Esther, Uncle Benjamin moved into his mother-in-law's apartment, which was a half a block away. The two buildings were almost identical—each with dark, chipped bricks, a patch of grass in front, and a dirt alley in the back that ran the length of a half mile. I would always feel guilty when I visited, given our mansion in the suburbs, situated on an acre of well cared for lawn.

Even now I can easily bring forth the smells that permeated the narrow, poorly lit hallways of those two buildings, the scents coming from those small, clean kitchens—cabbage soup, a chicken, tongue boiling in a large old pot. And, unfortunately, the sounds, most especially the shouts—Uncle Emmanuel and Aunt Sonya yelling at each other and, down the street, Great Aunt Eva screaming at her daughter Adele, or
about
her, to anyone who would listen.

Of course, each brother's goal was to move to the suburb where we lived, and each eventually did achieve this. By the time I was fourteen, Cecilia, Celine, Cecily, and Celie all lived within several miles of me. But this did not lessen my shame, for within our mansion my father would mock what he called their “matchbox houses.”

Growing up we would hear her story over and over—how Idyth Slaughter could not adjust to America and left Cecil to go back to Hungary because she missed her country too much, only to return to him because she missed him more and all of this before she turned seventeen. She finally lost him when she was twenty-nine.