Marsha Hunt - Like Venus Fading

Lilian thought it was from Daddy, but Mother said, ‘That’s ain’t Mr Matthews’ writing. That’s from Hortense, and I can’t understand why she didn’t write nothing about when she’s coming for her furniture.’ I smiled for two whole days.

Mother rarely smiled after the new decade got under way and any small sound in the room seemed to annoy her. It never crossed my mind until now that she was not only worried and bored but irritable from a lack of food.

The mere sight of Lil and me must have reminded Mother that we needed food when she could no longer rely on credit at Mack’s for a pound of sugar or a can of sardines.

She stayed out, walking around Camden to seek comfort from the faces of other jobless people whose miseries mirrored hers. After dark, she’d slip home and hardly look at us before unlacing her shoes and saying, ‘Why ain’t you two in bed!’

This was less punishing because we were using Hortense’s things, Lilian and I curling up under that pink satin comforter like kittens, and if we were allowed to whisper, Lil would teach me a difficult prayer or relate details from her first Holy Communion ceremony. She had worn a short veil along with a hand-me-down dress, socks, and shoes that had once been part of Mabel Herzfeld’s summer wardrobe.

From the moment that I had seen Lilian when she was seven in a veil, I couldn’t wait for my turn.

‘Patience, Irene,’ Mother had chided. ‘Your communion’s in 1930, and you’ll look as pretty in that dress as Lilian. It’ll only need starch and an iron.’ But seeing me eye that white ensemble too often, Mother put it away in a cardboard box, after returning the veil, on loan from St Anthony’s. I knew better than to mention the words Holy Communion again but I continued to dream about mine, sitting in that short section of our L-shaped room where Mother undid crocheted doilies so that she had some thread to crochet again.

Without the Herzfelds, Mother was lost. She’d dust Miss Hortense’s dresser till it shone like glass and wash our few clothes so often that the bathroom looked like a washhouse.

Being winter, Lilian and I retreated to church and school, where the nuns’ stern white faces and monotonous, subdued voices kept control. Sweeping through school in their black habits, they monitored our every move.

Lilian and I were Catholics because Daddy had been, and while Mother was Methodist, non-practising in those days, she kept us at St Anthony’s in case he ever came back.

Some church life in Camden during those harsh times would have done her some good. She faked an interest in getting herself baptised whenever she bumped into Father Connolly, but Mother refused to study the catechism and saw no point in a Pope. However, she was proud that we were Catholics for some reason.

Lilian got her best grades in religion and loved going to confession. She even set up an altar in our room using an orange crate that Mack had given her which she draped with a yard of blue velvet donated by Miss Hortense and a replica of the Virgin Mary won in the third-grade spelling bee. Lil’s altar even had a red novena candle on it got from goodness knows where. It sat on a doily that Mother had crocheted, but since Mother was afraid of fires, the candle was never lit. Wanting to contribute something, I gave Lilian a tiny white feather I’d found in church. It had probably fallen off some lady’s hat. It lay upon the little white Spanish missal which Hortense had left behind.

Lilian’s eyes, as dark and round as mother’s, would study that altar until she looked mesmerized. Mother should have noticed that Lilian was going overboard. But maybe she couldn’t think beyond our next bowl of grits.

I used to blush when people back then confused my sister and me, because Lilian’s hair was longer and her skin was shades paler than mine so I considered her pretty.

We both got Daddy’s nose and Mother’s lips, but any fool would have envied my sister her hair, which reached below her shoulders. It irritated Lilian when I reached her size because people mistook us for twins, although looking alike was a bonus when we started singing together.

She’d say, ‘Irene, how come you’re as tall as me?’

But the truth is that I was never tall, Lilian was just short.

It was during our last six months in Camden that I seemed to shoot up. My skin itched like I was growing out of it and Mother would get vexed with me scratching and say, ‘Irene, can’t you set still? I don’t for the life of me know how you got like your Daddy.’ So I’d creep out to play, but downstairs, all I wanted to do was sit in the doorway of Mack’s store and watch the people passing. They rarely smiled back in ’30, because there was nothing to smile about.

The Depression was a snowfall in summer. It fell upon the rich and poor, and froze stout hearts overnight.

Mother said we were lucky to get hominy grits for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and she couldn’t afford an omnibus across town. We saw whole families out begging on Wells Avenue and I always went to bed thinking, ‘Will we be next?’

Lilian used to kneel before her altar and say the rosary with such intensity, believing that could save the world, and one night she told Mother that she wanted to become a Sister of Mercy so that she could help all the beggars. Mother laughed like Lil had told a joke. ‘Things gonna work out. You watch … one of these mornings you, me and Reenie gonna take off for Sippy. I’m thinking about heading for Mamie’s, if she’ll still have me.’

I was working in my copybook and was alarmed by my sister’s violent response. She yelled, ‘I’ll never go back to Sippy!’

Sippy was Mississippi and Lil had always avoided talking about it, but I gathered that something bad had happened there when Mother had taken us to visit her friend Mamie and Mamie’s brother Buster when I was two and a half and my sister was five.

Lil was normally a quiet child so it unnerved me to hear her scream, ‘You promised we’d never go back to Buster’s.’

Mother’s nostrils flared and I knew she was losing her patience. ‘It ain’t Buster’s no more. It’s Mamie’s, and you’ll go where I tell you to!’

That was the early spring of 1930 and I might have jumped to my sister’s defence had I known that this so called ‘aunt’ would try to build her nest in our lives.

While Lil and I were at school on the last day of April, Mother sold Miss Hortense’s things without warning us. To return home to find the sun lighting bare floorboards was shocking.

The place where we normally sat to do our homework, warmed by the afternoon light, was empty, and our voices echoing disturbed me more than my sister’s tears. Lilian drew the school books she was carrying to her chest as if to shield her heart from the bleakness. The room was empty apart from a trunk we’d never seen before and Lilian’s altar upon which Mother had lit the novena candle.

Despite the heavy rings under her eyes Mother looked self-satisfied, producing some dollars from her pocketbook, saying, ‘Good thing I kept Hortense’s dresser polished … It fetched way more than the bed, so I got enough for tickets and then some.’

‘Stealing,’ I said under my breath, staring in horror at the spot where Hortense’s bed had been.

‘We’re moving, huh?’ Lil asked, probably hoping that Mother had landed a job with Mrs Herzfeld’s cousin in Philadelphia.

‘Sippy,’ said Mother.

That nasal Jersey twang of Lilian’s bounced from wall to wall. ‘What about catechism? What about school!’