Free The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter by Susan Hahn Page B

in
    from play. It’s summer again
    and someone loves her.
    c. slaughter
    Z IPPING UP THE peach chiffon dress that Deidre Fox bought for her daughter’s early July wedding, she was clear in her mind, once again. She was more interested in getting information from Celie about our family and most especially about Cecilia than in having the dress properlyfitted. It is obvious Deidre is obsessed with Cecilia and it is also obvious she thinks Celie is too blanked out to notice. But however delicate, however breakable Celie is, she is hawk-like aware of every move Deidre makes. What Deidre does not know is how protective Celie is of Cecilia, as Cecilia is of her. And, with Cecilia’s growing popularity, Celie sees some of the negative consequences of her success and this makes her all the more concerned for her.
    It is evident that Cecilia has become the sun in Deidre’s solar system and that she is desperate to know everything about her interior core—which, quite frankly, is impossible. I do, however, understand Deidre’s need to a point, for she is an unsuccessful poet and most clearly Cecilia is not. And one thing that stands out among our many flaws as humans is how badly we want to be perceived as successful. As if success were an inanimate outer, loud adornment—like a flashy broach or a medal—not an inner, silent bloom to be watered and nourished.
    Being that she is one of Celie’s best customers—comes to the shop almost three times a week, mostly looking to see if Cecilia is there—Celie tells her the most superficial things that come to mind. Facts that everyone knows. For Celie, too, in her own small way wants success—though she is satisfied with what many consider a ridiculously tiny portion of it.
    Celie goes along with the family myth and tells her that Cecil Slaughter was reportedly a brilliant Jew and she provides some family facts that have been passed down through the years. That he was an émigré from Hungary who, when asked his name upon reaching Ellis Island, thought he was being questioned as to who he
was
—meaning what he did. He paused, then made an inadvertenthissing sound through the gaps in his teeth—whistle-like, and answered in his best English,
“scholar.”
(He
did
have a position as an adjunct lecturer in philosophy at a small institute of advanced learning before he left his country.)
    The tired, impatient man behind the desk recorded
Cecil
from the whistle and from the broken-English
scholar,
he recorded “Slaughter”; rather prophetic, because the newly invented Cecil Slaughter ended up working in a kosher butcher shop, hacking meat. In the back room he did, however, teach himself to speak perfect English and to read books on literature and history in his new language. When he died of pneumonia at forty-eight his young wife, also from Hungary, went mad. Had to be institutionalized.
    Celie tells this to Deidre because, as I said, some things about us are not secrets,
are
public knowledge. She can see how big-eyed Deidre becomes when she speaks of this—as if Deidre has heard all this for the first time, which Celie believes is not true, given how unendingly inquisitive she is about our family and how she is known to make attempts to find out things about us from others.
    What Celie does not tell her is that my mother and her four brothers chose to ennoble Cecil to genius status so as to make up for the shame they felt about their mother’s madness. It was this feeling about her, coupled with the blatant, totally public poverty of their early years—their sweeping self-consciousness about all of this—that made them more determined to create a
brilliant
Cecil—he who had no equal.
    One day when Deidre spotted Cecilia at the shop buying an expensive black lamb’s wool sweater laced with seed pearls around the neck, she bought one, too. Celie doesreinforce her. While she wrapped it, she explained to