Free Autobiography of My Mother by Meg Stewart Page A

trifle for dessert, commotion came from the kitchen. Someone, Annie said, had eaten the jelly off the top of the trifle. I can’t remember if Pauline confessed voluntarily or if Annie forced it out of her, but a lengthy scene with copious tears followed in the kitchen after dinner.
    Grandma worked in the store every day except Sunday. She loved holding court there, sitting up in the dress materials department with her crocheting. Grandma’s crocheting was never out of her hands.
    Linda did tatting, making little lace edgings to go around handkerchiefs and collars. Lizzie didn’t sew. She preferred tending her chrysanthemums.
    Lizzie liked arranging flowers. Everywhere in the house, particularly on the sideboard dressers, Lizzie filled vases with little mixed bunches of flowers. I would have liked to help her, but she insisted on arranging the flowers herself, taking half the day to do it. That was Lizzie’s contribution to the housework.

    I feel I ought to pay special tribute to Annie. She worked very hard for very little money, loved my grandmother and the family and thought The House was her home.
    Annie’s mother died when she was little. Her father kept the two boys but put Annie and her two sisters in an orphanage run by nuns. Although he married again, he left his daughters there. Grandma, who always knew all the nuns, got Annie from this convent.
    Annie and I were fast friends before I came to live at Grandma’s. When I broke my wrist, she came to see me with a threepenny bag of halfpenny lollies. It contained a jelly mousedipped in chocolate and covered in hundreds and thousands, a crocodile made of tough pale lemon marshmallow, and a liquorice stick. Annie loved sweets as much as I did. It was the beginning of a great bond between us. Together we sneaked lumps of sugar, almonds and fancy biscuits. Annie would save me the cake dish after she made the cake for afternoon tea. When I came to live at The House I adopted Annie, in a way. I had no idea I was going to live with my grandmother for so long. I never stopped missing my mother and loved getting her letters, but Annie became my new, everlasting friend.
    I particularly missed my mother at night in my small, den-like room. As soon as I was in bed and Annie took the candle away, the nightmares began. Strange faces appeared and wouldn’t stay still; the eyes grew bigger and rolled in their sockets, lips swelled back from the teeth, enveloping the whole face and noses grew longer and longer. I would scream out and Annie would come and comfort me.
    I spent a great deal of time with Annie in the kitchen. She sang as she did the dishes and I used to dry up for her. Annie had a large repertoire of sad songs.
    Put your head on my shoulder, Daddy, and turn my face to the west,
    It’s just the hour the sun goes down, the hour that mother loved best.
    I wept through this song about the widowed father and his child; I relished the pathos of every line.
    â€˜Just for the sake of society, baby was left all alone,’ another of Annie’s songs began. Baby played with matches while the careless parents danced the night away at a ball and house and baby were burnt to a cinder.
    Annie had jet-black, woolly hair of which she was very proud. The mass of tight curls was her crowning glory; if you pulled one out it snapped back into place.
    Annie’s real name was Hannah Harriet Allmon, which everyone pronounced ‘Allman’. We used to tease her by calling her ’Annah ’Arriet Hallman, at which she laughed as much as we did. A favourite joke was to ask Annie what her name was. ‘Allmon,’ she would say. ‘All man and no woman,’ and would go into peals of laughter.
    Annie cared for anyone who was sick in The House. When I had whooping cough and I coughed all night, I was banished from the rest of the house to sleep by Annie’s side. She stayed up looking after me and giving me medicine.
    Annie was seventeen