First Page Teaser–Secret Lives by Berthe Amoss
My mother is sixteen in her portrait. Only four years older than I am now. Her portrait dress is painted so carefully you can see little waves in the white silk, and threads in the scooped-out lace collar. A gold heart hangs from a chain around her neck, and her curls, almost as golden as the heart, are tied back with a velvet ribbon. Her smile makes you wonder if someone she loved was standing to the left of the painter.
In one hand, she is holding a prayer book with a mother-of-pearl cover; the other hand rests on Fifi, her little white dog. Fifi is looking straight out of the portrait, so real and cute I wouldn’t be surprised to see her tail wag. There they sit, the two of them, absolutely perfect forever, on a creamy white sofa, the very one I’m sitting on. Only now, the sofa is covered in scratchy mohair, worn and old like everything else in this house.
It just seems to me that, this being 1937, there ought to be a hint of modern times around here, but Three Twenty Audubon Street and its occupants have been lifted straight out of the Dark Ages and placed in the middle of New Orleans. Not that I’m ungrateful for all of the things Aunt Eveline and Aunt Kate do for me, especially Aunt Eveline, but if it hadn’t been for the tidal wave, I wouldn’t find myself in a practically haunted house being raised by two old ladies dressed in lavender, who think more about dying than living.
