Read Online In the Slammer With Carol Smith by Hortense Calisher - Free Book Online Page B

certificate on my own, it was revealed that an ‘infant’ had been born in a small town just inside the U.S. at the Canadian border, delivered by midwife to one Carol Smith, American, not otherwise described, the infant being christened the same. ‘Father not identified.’ Signed illegibly, in the midwife’s hand.
    Color was not discussed in my aunts’ house, but mine was taken for granted by those who saw me there: a member of the town’s servant clan. When Noblesse oblige was murmured in my presence by a chance guest from one of the other turreted houses, and I asked later what that meant, Rosanna, the day aunt, rallied with, ‘To keep one’s obligations is noble,’ while Adelaide, who taught music to her evening classes, drummed on the table to the tune of La Roi d’Yvetot. As for me, no sooner did I show signs of knowing my lowly position in that household, than an extra blast of their love would knock me off my perch. I felt like the only surviving fish in the grand bowl in the sitting-room, swimming hither-thither to keep its place.
    By my eighteenth birthday the house plainly needed young shoulders: roof-tiles whirling away in a nor’easter, foundation sagging in the warm. Neither aunt was now well; one might not last my college years, although this I was not told. Once graduated though, if I could teach? ‘Any subject of your choice,’ Adelaide said—‘Though I would not suggest music,’ Rosanna said. ‘And I would suggest—by day.’
    The voices blend forever, over the tea napkins and special cakes—pink-icing’d squares I didn’t know were petits fours— that had meant decision-making ever since I could recall. ‘And if you could aim to teach in a college, for which we are told you have the capacity—what a tribute to your ancestors that would be.’
    To Titus, and the sad, lavender-cheeked librarian? And my dim handsome father, not pictured anywhere in the house except in drawings I had done and kept hidden, or in pre-dream I narrated to myself?
    The aunts knew my every expression, from the games always laid out for us in the bay. I have since been told, and I believe it, that this gaming was their own childlike expression of love.
    ‘Oh—the Oldfields?’ one said, the other adding ‘Of course. But not only them.’
    Then who? What game is this?
    The tea steams from the pot; we owned a Salton hot-tray given one year to steady savers at the bank.
    ‘My dearest.’
    ‘Dearest dear.’
    I no longer try to piece out which of the aunts said which.
    ‘To those ancestors—’ both say, pointing, napkins in hand. Their faces flush, like when either of them wins at chinese checkers maybe, or even dominoes—but how can two win a game at the same time? ‘To those, dear, up there, on the wall.’
    Their tribe crowds the sitting-room’s floss-flecked paper; I know every face, bearded or lace-capped, painted by an artist or photographed, and their legends as well. I know what a busk is and a peruke, and who brought home the ivories, all but two long since sold. The abolitionist minister, circled by four dead wives? The baggy Congressman who had deserted William Jennings Bryant and the free coinage of silver, just in time?—I know them all, the heritage of this house. Only, now they come down from the wall to me, gold frames, speckled ones, mourning banded ones, and the two silhouettes I cherish because no one knows who they are. One by one they are brought down and put in my hands, these ancestors. They are also mine.
    ‘Daisy—you still asleep?’
    No, she is awake. ‘The rain.’ Pit-a-pat, autumn coming. Top of the fridge, the radio-clock glows. It’s any time, past time, I don’t want to know the time; tomorrow I’ll be gone.
    ‘I’ll tell you who my mother was,’ I say. ‘One of the aunts. But they would never say which one.’
    The Shelter-Pak—its official name—is in the hall outside my half-open door. When you live with a backpack you are always looking for a clean place