The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter by Susan Hahn Page B

the habit of pulling at her hair from the top of her head became wilder.
    On the last day of her mother’s life, Cecilia found her mother tearing out the many petals on a small flower from an arrangement her father had brought her. With each pluck she repeated the words, “The man who loves me hates me.” Cecilia truly did not know if her mother meant her father or Karl.
    She did this until the flower was completely bald. As Cecilia watched from the doorway—a witness to the flower losing its beauty—her eyes filled with tears so much so that it became impossible for them not to flood her face.
    When Lettie saw her standing there, she wanted so much to hold her. Hold on to her daughter forever. Cecilia’s breathing seemed so heavy these past few weeks and Lettie worried what had happened with this man she called Herr M had
also made her daughter physically sick. It was then she tried to talk to her about him. She asked her to tell her. Tell her everything. Tell her exactly what he had done to her—her rage against this man who had hurt her daughter in some awful way expanding in her brain, in her heart, pushing at her waning body. But when Cecilia embraced her—held her close—Lettie knew Cecilia could feel how fragile she had become—her bird bones—how she truly was about to break, and she could sense Cecilia’s decision that the time for telling had passed as she released her. So they sat there together, wiping each other’s faces with soft tissue, taking pleasure in doing this and quietly laughing like small girls—the stripped stem of the flower between them. At that moment Lettie could only hope that someday Herr M would get his retribution from someone—someone would hurt him in the large way he had hurt her daughter.
    On that last night, as Cecilia was leaving her mother’s room, she carefully wrapped the naked flower in one of the tissues they had used to wipe each other’s tears and placed it in the pocket of her coat. On the long ride home she kept touching it in its moist blanket. She could not stop. At home the first thing she did was to take what was left of it and press it between two pages of her mother’s broken book. Then, she took the book and buried it deep in a drawer—next to her own most painful, secret thing—never to look at it again.
    Aunt Lettie died twice in her life; both times it was February 1.

YOM KIP PUR NIGHT DANCE
    At the end of each prayer, she’d add her own—
    to find someone to marry.
    In shul, where the men and women were separated
    by an aisle, she’d lament and vow
    to change the ways she wasn’t good, then
    break the fast with family and rush
    to dress for the Yom Kippur Night Dance.
    There, she’d wait with the girls in taffeta and years
    later with the women in rayon knit.
    Often she took a man
    for the night, let him slide into her
    because she felt she could hold him
    there, pretend her life was like some
    romantic song. Beyond the long somber chants,
    the half wails of the chorus,
    in the dark she’d start to sing
    at the high pitch of happiness,
    her appetite as huge as Eve’s
    before she knew she’d have to leave
    the bliss, bow her head
    and ask again for forgiveness.
    c. slaughter
    W EEKS AFTER AUNT LETTIE’S DEATH, Celie began to experience an acute anxiety that her mother’s sister, Adele, had just died—more and more she was fearing this. If Adele were alive, Celie definitely felt Adele would have told anyone who would listen, “Celie is helping to kill me.” And the fact that I knew that Adele was not yet buried here—was still alive at the time of Celie’s heightened worry about Adele’s existence—is immaterial. (Adele arrived way over a year later—just a few weeks before the conclusion of the Herr M horror.) It is only what Celie chooses to find out or not find out which is important. Some stories we would rather