Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood Read Online Free PDF Page B

hugged it. She wasn’t sure exactly why, but it occurred to her that what she wanted to do, what she needed to do, was light a candle.
    Bringing the sanctuary candles to the table, she lit them and set them on either side of the scrapbook. She stared at the tiny flames for a moment, then she opened the album. On the first page of brownish tan construction paper, written large in a youthful hand, was the title: “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.”
    Sidda smiled at the grandness of the scrapbook’s title. How Ya-Ya. Running her hands across the cracking leather, she vaguely remembered seeing the album as a girl, but being forbidden to touch it. Yes, she recalled, Mama kept itstored on the top shelf of one of her closets, next to her winter hats.
    Gently, not wanting to tear the old paper, she opened to a page at random. The first thing she saw was a photo of her mother with the Ya-Yas and two teenage boys on a beach. Her mother sat on the shoulders of a dark-haired boy, whose face was radiant with laughter. The smile on her mother’s face was one of sheer delight.
    She looked at her mother’s face. How old was she in the photo? Fifteen? Sixteen? The cheekbones were higher than Sidda recalled them, the skin unwrinkled, the blonde hair curly, the eyes unmistakable with their sassy glint. She found herself smiling automatically at the sight of her mother’s smile.
    She wanted to devour the album, to crawl into it like a hungry child and take everything she needed. This raw desire made her feel dizzy. It mixed with the excitement of the voyeur and the curiosity of a dramatist. Her hands all but shook at the sight of the cornucopia that lay before her: clues to her mother’s life, evidence of her mother’s life before children.
    This is ridiculous, Sidda thought. Calm down. Act like an archaeologist sifting for clues among the artifacts. And remember to breathe.
    She carried the album to a large overstuffed chintz-covered reading chair, the kind with arms wide enough so she could sit with her legs slung over the side.
    She sat down, and Hueylene came to lie at her feet, sighing with the delicious effort of her dogly job. Sidda pulled an afghan over her legs, and began in earnest to look at the album. She allowed herself to simply turn pages for a while. No order, no plan—something that did not come naturally to her.
    While Vivi had started the book chronologically, she had apparently begun to stick things in at random whenshe ran out of room. So there was a photograph of Vivi and the Ya-Yas, out-to- here pregnant, striking cheesecake poses on the creekbank, next to a newspaper clipping that read, “Miss Vivi Abbott, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Taylor C. Abbott, of Thornton, is at home for a visit from Ole Miss. Miss Abbott was recently elected most popular girl on campus. She will be home for a week before returning to Oxford, Mississippi.”
    Sidda took a moment to contemplate Vivi, Caro, Teensy, and Necie as they stood in their swimsuits with their swollen bellies.
    These were the faces Sidda scanned for clues to the world from the moment she could see. She learned what clothes, movies, hairstyles, restaurants, and people were “Ya-Ya” (read: charming ) and which were “Ya-Ya-No” (read: pathetic ). She had heard this so many times that she actually began to assess things to see whether they were “Ya-Ya” or “Ya-Ya-No.”
    In fact, there were times when these words just flew out of Sidda’s mouth. She recalled a night when she and Connor were at a painfully self-conscious evening of performance art, during which thev were forced to watch twenty-seven televisions at once and endure sugar cubes being set on fire and thrown on piles of Barbie dolls. Without thinking, Sidda had whispered to Connor, “ Très Ya-Ya-No!” It was as though the Ya-Yas occasionally channeled themselves through her in spite of all the barriers she’d tried to place between their coven and herself.
    She held the scrapbook in her