The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter (7 page)

Cecily tells her therapists that Cecil, being much older, must have been both a
great lover
and a father figure to her. “Can you imagine the to-do they make when I say such a
thing?” she says to Celine, who takes such delight in this as she does all things sexual.

Through the years her therapists have appeared, sequentially, in their dull, cramped, stuffy offices, scribbling with their pencils—not that they have helped her. However, Cecily's internist insists that she talk with someone because when he asks her “How are you?” she always says the truth, “terrible,” and it is not about the physical. Cecily, like each of us, has many issues. It was unavoidable given the atmosphere created by the too many adults that hung over us—their thick breath as heavy as the smoke that covered us from their cigarettes—their weighted, buckled histories and agendas continuously smothering us.

Listening to how handsome Cecil was, of his great charisma and, of course, his brilliance—how there was no one like him, and that is why Idyth got sick after she lost him—we all agreed, was tiresome. Anyway, it has almost become a silent story. Cecil and Idyth now lie side by side at Waldheim Jewish Cemetery. Quietly, or at least that is what those above the ground would like to believe. They do not yet know of the turmoil we bring with us wherever we go.

Last night Cecily could hear a banging in her head like cymbals crashing together. The sound was spaced at about fifteen-second intervals. She was dreaming. Dreaming that she
was
dead. And death was impossibly loud and nerve-racking. When she awoke she wondered, “Is that where the playwrights go—to some designated circle I don't know of—especially the ones who borrow on the lives of their poet relatives? Dante did find a not-too-terrible place for the poets in Limbo.” And yes, she can see Cecilia there someday, wandering with her long, silky hair spread wide
exposing the moth hole, asking the other desperate souls there to
Please, just kiss it.

In Cecily's play,
Lissa,
the poet, is always tearing at her hair—just one spot that she shows to the audience three times. Sometimes, she has her suck on the follicle bulb tip. In its own way it is quite sexual. Quite intimate. Cecily does know not to overuse the moment. The lights are directed to shine right into that slick, wet baldness. And then to pause on it. She wants the audience to care about
Lissa.
Cecily feels she really cares about her, too. Certainly more than she actually does about Cecilia. She
knows
it is hard not to be at least a little jealous of her cousin—among other things, for her pale perfect skin. In adolescence Cecily spent a lot of time at the dermatologist. From the back, she is sometimes mistaken for Cecilia. People run after her, calling “Cecilia, Cecilia.” Then, when they get close enough, they pause, disappointed, and say “Sorry, Cecily, I thought you were …”

However, Cecily does believe her play portrays the poet in a most fair way. And although it focuses on how crazy she is—she does kill herself in the end—the audience, she is sure, will be moved to tears. “That is, if there ever
is
an audience,” she obsesses.

Celie has asked her if she worries about Cecilia finding out about the play. That perhaps this will hurt or embarrass Cecilia in a very serious way. And she does not even know the many details of it. Cecily thinks, “Celie's so sweet. A little simple, but sweet. Maybe it's her simpleness that makes her this way.” Celine, however, has said that Celie is far more complicated than she imagines. Cecily knows Celie
was
hospitalized for what was labeled “exhaustion,” but to Cecily that seemed something of an indulgence. When Celine talks about Celie this way—as if she knows
a secret—Cecily believes, “That's just Celine again, trying to stand out, trying to make herself feel special.”

In the dress shop where Celie works all her customers love her. Many of them are educated, rich, bored, frustrated, freaky-thin women—who are dismayed that they have wound up being such clichés. The dressing rooms, however elaborate, have cardboard walls. And even I can listen, though I try not to, for I have learned there are far, far better places to spend eternity's time.

They talk about their latest diets and their psychiatrists, who are probably equally dismayed that they went to medical school and beyond only to end up listening hour after hour to their patients' self-indulgent complaints. Although I imagine these paid listeners have large paneled offices with many exotic artifacts from their travels, which they carefully display.

Celie makes her customers feel hopeful—that the
next
item she brings them to try on will, most certainly, reinvent them. That suddenly they will see themselves in the mirror as they want to be seen—both by others and by themselves. Some tell her she is better than any therapist. “Better, but not cheaper.” Celie just smiles.

Celine is always at the shop, buying up all the pinks, while Cecily and Cecilia occasionally come by for the blacks. Once Cecilia said to her, “Cecily, did you know that just because you wear all black, doesn't mean you exactly match? There are so many shades of black. And of course, there is also the issue of the fabric and how the black is absorbed in it.” Even though it was all too much irrelevant concern for Cecily, she had to admit that after she concentrated on it, Cecilia was right. Since, like Cecilia, she wears mostly black, after Cecilia said this, she noticed, especially in the sunlight, that sometimes she did not match. In Cecily's play,
Lissa,
of course, always dresses in black. She now believes she will have to keep her eye on the costume designer to make sure he or she knows to keep them matched.

If, however, you are thinking Cecily is some poor man's Cecilia, do not even give a hint of this to her, for she will attack you with unforgettable rage, screaming, “There's no bald spot atop my head—
and even if there were, I certainly wouldn't tell anyone
—and no man—artist or otherwise—has actually raped me or even attempted. It's true, Cecilia brings out the fire in men, which—trust me—
isn't
always a good thing. So, big deal.” What Cecily does not yet know is that this
will
become a big deal—not just for Cecilia, but for her, and the others, too.

Then only to herself Cecily says, “In
the play Lissa brings out that fire, too.
And yes, there is a rape. But it's quite inventive—more like a dance. It shows the complexities, the contradictions.
Exactly who is provoking whom?
Not that I'm saying in real life Cecilia was or wasn't raped. I don't know. But, what if the critic asked…. Yes, at the dinner in his apartment, where she went alone though she barely knew him.
(Here, the stage is so stark, the audience as tense in the moment as the characters. I can just see it!)
What if he asked? Asked about the spot, asked if it truly did exist, asked to see it. It
is
all over her poetry. And she showed it to him—allowed it. I imagine how she unclipped the golden barrettes she wore that night and let her hair run wild over her deep V-necked, soft, black sweater, over her thin black tank top—her shoulders, her breasts—as she parted the shimmering strands
(highlighted in the candlelight)
with her delicate fingertips
(like Lissa does in the play),
bowed her head to him and said that the most sacred thing one can do is to kiss it. And he did …”

How quiet the stretched skin over

the singular body—its coo and hum

and minute beat on the planet

crust. The mattress

is so bumpy and sunk,

squeaking on—sad song

sing-along to a distant memory

of a ram's horn trumpet inside

the temple's walls.
Sing to me

asked the woman of the man

and just a hollow column of air appeared,

begged the man to his god

and just one plucked string was heard,

cried the child in her crib.
So I did

something spontaneous, I then forgot.

Afterward, we slept all

coo and hum, only the child

firm on the words she dreamed on.

c. slaughter

C
ELINE SHOPS A LOT.
She likes pretty things. Pretty things on herself. They make her feel prettier, as in
prettier than
my mother, which we were all taught to believe was the most difficult “pretty” to conquer—that, quite frankly, unreachable goal, especially in my father's and my four uncles' eyes.

Celine's father, Uncle Emmanuel, would say to her, and often, “Celine, you
are
the prettiest of your first cousins.” He would hug her tightly and call her the sweetest, the prettiest of all the little raisins.
Raisins?
It would make her feel so small, so shrunken, although I am sure he meant it as a compliment in his own distorted way. However, he also believed my mother—all sunflower, all golden, in full bloom—glowed above Celine, no matter what the season of Celine's life, and she felt it.

When Celine wears the best and brightest clothes she can find, she feels she, too, glows. It is a warmth that starts outside her body when she touches the silk, the velvet, the cashmere. Then it travels deep within her, the luxurious threads weaving her insides—holding her together—making her feel rich and valuable and worthy. She thinks, “Clothes have a permanence. That is, if you take good care of them. They can last forever. People, no matter how much care you give them—take care with them,
care
for them, love them—can disappear from you, sometimes slowly, sometimes in an instant.”

Her father, although he did seem to care some for Aunt Sonya, had many women. They, too, were never enough for him. In her adolescence it became quite clear to Celine that he was always searching for someone, someone like his sister—as were all the Slaughter brothers. He never found her. Aunt Sonya knew. Everyone did. Except Celeste. She would have, if she had grown old enough.

After her second child was born, Aunt Sonya could not stand the coercion from the family to name
yet
another child after Cecil Slaughter, but Manny put so much pressure on her to do so that she felt she had no choice. However, when alone with her baby “Celeste,” Sonya would call her “Sonyi,” thereby naming her precious new daughter after herself. She loved being alone with her baby and calling her this. She loved the secret power it gave her. Celine and Uncle Emmanuel never knew of this and, for the few short months she was a Slaughter, to them she was always Celeste.

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.