Autumn Street Read Online Free PDF

had died in the war; but Charles said no, he had just never had no father at all. Later I asked Jess if that were possible, to have no father, ever; she thought it over, and said yes.
    "Like baby Gordon," she pointed out. "He's never had a father."
    "But he
has
one," I told her. "It's just that Daddy is away at the war."
    "But if Daddy didn't come back, ever, then Gordon would never have had a father."
    "DON'T SAY THAT."
    Jessica shrugged and went back to cutting out her paper dolls. She cut very neatly, on the lines, and kept her sets of paper dolls in a cardboard accordion file, in alphabetical order, with the June Allyson set first.
    But Charles had a mother, and his mother was infinitely more interesting than my own. Tatie's only daughter was named Gwendolyn. Sometimes she appeared at Grandfather's house, in the kitchen, and smoked a cigarette, with Tatie opening the windows and fluttering her hands at the smoke so that it would not waft into the realm of Grandmother's nose.
    Gwendolyn's fingernails were as long as her Lucky Strikes. Only once had I seen fingernails that long, and it had been in the illustrations of a book of fairy tales, on the hands of a particularly evil witch. But aside from her fingernails, which both frightened and fascinated me, Gwendolyn was not at all like a witch; she had a loud and throaty laugh, long straightened hair, rhinestone jewelry that glittered at her neck and wrists, and clothes that shimmered and rustled.
    Charles said that his mother was a secretary. I couldn't imagine how. I pictured her at a typewriter, with her arms lifted high in the air, tapping at the keys with the ends of her nails, a Lucky Strike caught in the corner of her wide, lipsticked mouth.
    Grandfather's secretaries at the bank, I knew, because I had been taken there for a visit, were elderly, mirthless, and prim, their white blouses buttoned neatly at the neck and their dark skirts covering their knees.
    Gwendolyn sat in the kitchen on a sweltering June day, her legs apart, her shiny skirt pulled high, her toenails polished and exposed in strapped high-heeled sandals. She pulled her blouse loose at the waist and flapped it against her bare brown midriff.
    "Gotta ventilate myself," she explained to me, chuckling with her low voice. "Hooie, it's hot. I'm sweatin' in places you wouldn't believe, child."
    "Don't you talk to Elizabeth that way," said Tatie disapprovingly.
    "She don't mind. You don't mind, do you, child?"
    I shook my head solemnly no.
    "
I
mind," said Tatie. "What you doing here, Gwendolyn?"
    "Came to see if you could keep Charles for the weekend. I'm going to Ocean City. Going to get away from the heat."
    "Who you going to Ocean City
with?
"
    "Victor."
    "You going with Victor, then you ain't going to get away from any heat, Gwendolyn. You taking your heat with you."
    Gwendolyn laughed again, her deep back-of-the-throat laugh. "Maybe. Can Charles stay here?"
    Tatie sighed. "Charles, you take your things up to my room. You got clean underwear?"
    "Yes ma'am." Charles picked up the brown paper bag he had brought and started up the back stairs. I scampered to go with him.
    "Not you, Elizabeth. You stay right here."
    I pouted. I had never been to Tatie's room. And rooms were important to me; I wanted to know how hers smelled, how it was lighted, where her clothes hung, whether her bed was soft and enveloping, as she was. I daydreamed Tatie's room into being often: I daydreamed it dark and warm, with small lights that glowed gold in the corners. In my mind's picture her dresses hung against a wall like friendly women in a group, their sleeves flowing in slow, shadowed, beckoning gestures with the breeze that came through a small window. It would smell heavy and hot, like the chicken soup she made on Saturdays, with, somehow, the sweet tinge of peach ice cream piercing the warmth. Her bed would be large enough for me to curl beside
her, with pillows as huge and yielding as her breasts; there would be a deep