I don't know why I found it so hard to believe that my mother might have been telling me the truth, since everything she said made sense, since it redeemed the Staten Island relatives whom I loved, Esther and Louisa whom I adored, and my mother herself, still the center of my universe. But my father's words had cut deeply into me, and I couldn't rid myself of them so quickly. We walked the rest of the way back in silence. When we got back to Nana's, I felt a little better, and Esther had wrapped up a present for me. It was a lovely small cameo on a delicate chain with a flower carved into it that looked like icing sugar. But it was rock hard. Esther asked me to look at the box carefully because this was a cameo she'd been given as a girl. It came all the way from Italy, and the jeweler's name was right on the outside. And inside the box, which was only about one inch square, she had written a short inscription in a shaky hand. I took it and, even though I couldn't read what she wrote, I thanked her and started to sob. My mother fastened the cameo around my neck, and I began cry~ ing again, hugging her tightly, because I knew that everything she'd told me must be true. And Esther said, "Surely the poor girl must be having her hor~ mones coming in," and Louisa started on some speech about hor~ mones, but no one seemed to be listening. After I calmed down and was sitting comfortably in the living room, I wondered how the cameo would look with that jade green and ivory silk clothing and whether I should wear my hair loose or pulled back, when I noticed that Aunt Louisa and Aunt Esther weren't with liS. I rushed into their room, but they weren't there. I checked the kitchen and the bathroom, but couldn't find them. I ran outside into the backyard, around to the driveway, and then I spotted them, just inside the door of the trailer. Louisa's head was on Esther's shoulder, her arm around Esther's waist. Esther's hand was gently touching the inside of Louisa's leg, above the knee. I stopped running and stared at them. My head spun with images. Mary Magdalen. Sins ofthe flesll. Donna's hair. Anne's leg. "Get away!" Ladies of the evening. Esther saw me first. She and Louisa slowly separated, turned, and looked at me expectantly. I could hear my parents' voices as my heart pounded in my ears. "They lived together above the shop." "Devoted to each other." "They aren't technically your aunts." "They aren't technically anything." I wanted to scream out, "They are technically something. They are my aunts. They are dressmakers. They came into their woman~ SulTUTlef 2004
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