“I only want you, dear.”
“You don’t want anything else? I thought you wanted my mother to be buried in Saint Louis #2.”
“I must be content with things as they are, dear.”
“Then, you’d choose me and the other thing you didn’t want besides?”
“I’d choose you above all else, dear, although I still nourish the hope that you will someday decide on a length for your bangs. Now, what I want you to do, Addie, is—”
“My bangs are almost grown out, Aunt Eveline, and I’m glad you want me above all things, because I do need this other thing to be happy and I’m pleased you’ve chosen it.”
“I was not aware of choosing this other thing. What is it?”
“I can have it, can’t I?”
“I’m sure you can, but perhaps you may not. What is it?”
“Oh, Aunt Eveline! It’s a matter of life or death! Can I—may I have a dog? A very small one. She’s smart and I promise I’ll take care of her.”
“A dog! Of course not! Absolutely not! Aunt Kate would—”
“I won’t let Pumpkin bother Aunt Kate. I promise!”
“Oh, Addie! How could you do that?”
“I’ll keep her in my room.”
“Inside?”
“I’ll keep her outside. In the shed! Oh, please, Aunt Eveline!”
“Oh, Addie!”
“My mother had a dog.”
“Fifi was sweet and very clean.”
“Pumpkin is sweet, too, Aunt Eveline.”
“Where is this dog?”
“I’ll get it! Oh, you’ll see! You’ll love Pumpkin! Tom! Hey, Tom! Wait! You don’t have to go to North Carolina! Taw-m!”
“Please, Adelaide! Don’t howl like a banshee!”
Pumpkin wasn’t exactly Fifi the Second, but maybe if I bathed her and fattened her up and Tom taught her a few tricks . . .
“Hey, Tom!” I ran down the street after Tom.
YOU CAN find your way around Three Twenty Audubon Street with your nose. Downstairs is cabbage, except for the mohair sofa, which is mothball, and the kitchen, which besides cabbage is Nini’s roux, the burnt flour and fat smell that begins her creole cooking. Upstairs is pure cloves.
When I woke up the next morning, I fanned my room to make it clove-free. Aunt Kate’s room is next to mine and she has an ancient potpourri, a jar of faded rose leaves and spices, all completely drowned out by the cloves. The cloves smell was seeping under the door into my room. I could tell Pumpkin was allergic to cloves by the way she was running around sniffing for fresh air. I stuffed the crack with newspaper, but after breakfast, when Aunt Eveline inspected my room to see if I’d made my bed, she pulled the newspaper out with a long lecture on promises made and not kept.
“The dog must remain outside, Adelaide. It smells very doggy in this room.”
“You smell cloves, not Pumpkin. The cloves stink.”
“Addie, do not use that word!”
“But I can’t even smell my Fatal Moment,” I said, unstopping my perfume and dabbing little drops of it behind my ears, at my elbows, and on my wrists. “It’s all covered over by cloves, and Pumpkin almost suffocated last night!”
“Adelaide, I smell no cloves whatsoever, and I am quite aware of your perfume when you douse yourself in that liberal fashion, totally unsuitable for a school day. Kindly put that dog in the shed. I will look in on her while you’re at school,” she added in a kinder tone.
I brought Pumpkin to the shed, curled her up on my pillow, and closed the gate Tom had made from an old crate. On my way back upstairs I saw Aunt Eveline in the kitchen, putting scraps in a bowl for Pumpkin.
Aunt Eveline is not so bad when she tries. Aunt Kate, on the other hand, is just too old to change. She is a whole generation older than my mother and Sandra Lee’s. Part of Aunt Kate seems already to have gone on to her reward, as Aunt Eveline puts it, and the other part is preparing. Never mind, Aunt Eveline says, she is laying up her treasure in Heaven, where her place is being made ready by those who have gone on before. There’s a lot of activity up there, I thought, stepping into my school dress and looking at the photograph of my grandmother, lost among children of all sizes, her own and older ones belonging to my grandfather’s first wife. One of the older girls in the picture is holding the baby of the family. The older girl is Aunt Eveline.
“Addie, you’ll be late for school!” Aunt Eveline called up the steps. “Finish dressing and don’t dawdle!”
The baby in the picture is my mother. I tied my shoes and wondered why I’ve never learned to say “was” instead of “is” for my mother. It has been such a long time since my mother, father, and I lived in Honduras. My father was manager of a banana plantation there and my mother painted landscapes, until one day, a hurricane came along, and a tidal wave swept most of Belize and our house into the Gulf. My father saved me, but, in Aunt Eveline’s version of what happened, my mother was torn from his arms and hurled into the arms of the angels. I can’t remember any of it—a strange, funny thing when I stop to think how dramatic it must have been.
“Ad-die! I see Sandra Lee on the steps already! What are you doing up there?”
“I’m dressing, Aunt Eveline!”
Aunt Eveline says my father died soon after of a broken heart, but the Honduran medical report called it malaria. I try to remember the bearded man whose picture sits on my dresser, but he is a stranger. He looks much older than my mother; I think he was closer to Aunt Eveline’s age. None of it makes any difference, because I lost both of my parents and came to live here at Three Twenty instead of in a normal house with a mother and father.
“Ah-de-la-eed! Are you ready?”
“I’m coming, Aunt Eveline!”
Having Sandra Lee complete with parents and a normal house right next door makes it all ten times worse. Aunt Toosie and Uncle Henry’s cozy cottage is full of chintz, organdy, and fake Early American furniture. They never listen to opera on the radio. They play dance music on the phonograph, and once I even saw them roll back the rug and dance cheek to cheek.
“At last!” Aunt Eveline said at the foot of the steps. “I sincerely hope you don’t make Sandra Lee, who was ready on time, miss the bell. Your hair! But never mind, I see her waiting very patiently in front of her house.”
I don’t like to criticize Aunt Eveline or Aunt Kate, but they could take a lesson from Aunt Toosie and her cute cottage. Three Twenty, although free of cobwebs, is definitely spooky, with carved wood curling around everything you sit on and heavy brocade draperies choking the light out of the windows.
“Now, Addie, be sure and buy milk for lunch. No Coke.”
“Don’t forget to feed Pumpkin, Aunt Eveline.”
I stopped suddenly on my way out the door. A plan had just occurred to me. “Aunt Eveline, we need a giant yard sale. I would start in the attic, if I were you, and work to the ground, and when we have everything out on the lawn, I’ll holler, ‘Come and get it! Then we’ll seal off the attic permanently, fumigate the rest of the house, and then, well, to tell you the truth, the easiest thing will be to sell Three Twenty and move miles away from Sandra Lee.”