A page of her

I must have seemed hysterical to these men, a teen-aged pregnant girl, sobbing and screaming and tearing things from their hands as they moved like rats through our small home. Boxes of things spilled all over the rooms, my eyes swollen and dark as if I’d been whacked, and although I knew what was going on, I wondered, how did this happen? There wasn’t much I could do to help the situation besides collect scattered beads that moments ago formed a lovely scene of sky and sun. I imagined the many hours it took her to string the beads into a belt and I felt sad..mad too and useless to do anything more but to make two piles, one yellow, one blue.

Weeks ago they tried to send me away from here to the place girls like me go to have the thing done. I don’t know what the thing is but I never got it and now I’m having a baby. I’d been hiding here for months, in her closet in the smallest room of the house where it seemed auntie Lil had been my whole life. I don’t recall ever seeing her come out of the room; alive or dead. I was so young when she disappeared. Nothing was ever explained to me, nobody ever talked about her. Until last week I knew nothing about my auntie except she smelled like smokey wood, hated a man called Willy, had a lot of clothes and was really pretty. But her secrets saved my life.

She left a whole world of colour behind. Fancy dresses, shoes, swimming costumes, shiny under clothes, long coats, small bags, lipsticks, beaded things, cases, stockings and so many things I guess she didn’t need wherever she went. I imagined her on her adventures in far away places with her long black hair, big boobs and eyes like a panther.

By the time I was 12 I was stuffing my bra, wearing dark eye make up and pretending I was just like her so she would be my friend when she returned. Just a few years later here I am, almost a grown woman, finally aware auntie never went anywhere I dreamed of.

Auntie Lil made entries everyday, sometimes two or three times. She must have been sad and sick living in this room but my goodness she had a wild existence. Boring life of mine I guess because all I did for months was obsess over auntie’s notebooks. Once I realized what was happening I would read everything she wrote in her books, shocked by her nerve as she was a thief! A con artist! A criminal! There was far more to her ledgers and prose; it took me a few weeks to make sense of things but I came to understand that everything she wrote was in code and nothing was real reality for aunt Lil. Not her image, not her hair, not the fancy clothes or the far away castle town with the cheesy food she once told me about.

She would keep notes of all the stolen items in the form of poems. She was tricky with her words but not great at describing colours, patterns and textures but I figured it all out. One poem led to a specific garment and hidden bit of cash. Another poem, another garment and again a stash of cash. She documented years of stealing, genius, victims and sadness and it all became a map. Slowly I uncovered thousands of dollars; cash sewn into hems, collars, hidden under leather insoles of unworn shoes and between heavy layers of silk and tulle. It took me four years worth of her notebooks and 2 months of uninterrupted interpretive work to discover over 20 000 in cash. For over 10 years I had been snooping through her things, which my mom would never have packed up or gave away if she was alive. It took me some time to realize Lil’s code, as I call it now. She had a code for everything.

She journaled personal things in her little black books sometimes so I learned that Willy was actually Bill, her husband, and he was never her true love. He was chauvinist and he expected her to dress fancy at home like his mother did, and Lil was to do the same, just to please him. He never took her out, they absolutely never entertained, he kept her like a show pet seated uncomfortably on a busted couch wearing stockings and high heels. She hated Bill. So Lil stole. She worked as a cleaner and collected fancy clothes from the homes she worked in. She saved the money she was paid and saved the primping allowance from Bill so eventually she had a full closet and a full purse. She was going to leave him soon, and leave us too.

If it weren't for my youth I would never have hidden in shame and buried myself in a closet full of stories. My life had less meaning and just months ago the child in my belly had no meaning to me at all. My mom passed away and soon I would have nowhere to go. Over the past months people came and went through the house to fix things, take things, talk about fixing and changing things. I knew I would be discovered, I just could not have imagined when it happened I would be rich. When they asked me my name I told them my name is Lil. As of today I would be the Lil she wanted to be.

I could never return to the life she was meant to live, but I would travel to Switzerland to meet my fortune, which was left to aunt Lil in a long-ago sent letter. The cash I now had was saved for the travel. The war was long over. My baby would be born, and Lil's costumes would be worn where they belong, in a fairytale beyond. the end