The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter by Susan Hahn Page B

Waldheim Jewish Cemetery. Quietly, or at least that is what those above the ground would like to believe. They do not yet know of the turmoil we bring with us wherever we go.
    Last night Cecily could hear a banging in her head like cymbals crashing together. The sound was spaced at about fifteen-second intervals. She was dreaming. Dreaming that she
was
dead. And death was impossibly loud and nerve-racking. When she awoke she wondered, “Is that where the playwrights go—to some designated circle I don’t know of—especially the ones who borrow on the lives of their poet relatives? Dante did find a not-too-terrible place for the poets in Limbo.” And yes, she can see Cecilia there someday, wandering with her long, silky hair spread wideexposing the moth hole, asking the other desperate souls there to
Please, just kiss it.
    In Cecily’s play,
Lissa,
the poet, is always tearing at her hair—just one spot that she shows to the audience three times. Sometimes, she has her suck on the follicle bulb tip. In its own way it is quite sexual. Quite intimate. Cecily does know not to overuse the moment. The lights are directed to shine right into that slick, wet baldness. And then to pause on it. She wants the audience to care about
Lissa.
Cecily feels she really cares about her, too. Certainly more than she actually does about Cecilia. She
knows
it is hard not to be at least a little jealous of her cousin—among other things, for her pale perfect skin. In adolescence Cecily spent a lot of time at the dermatologist. From the back, she is sometimes mistaken for Cecilia. People run after her, calling “Cecilia, Cecilia.” Then, when they get close enough, they pause, disappointed, and say “Sorry, Cecily, I thought you were …”
    However, Cecily does believe her play portrays the poet in a most fair way. And although it focuses on how crazy she is—she does kill herself in the end—the audience, she is sure, will be moved to tears. “That is, if there ever
is
an audience,” she obsesses.
    Celie has asked her if she worries about Cecilia finding out about the play. That perhaps this will hurt or embarrass Cecilia in a very serious way. And she does not even know the many details of it. Cecily thinks, “Celie’s so sweet. A little simple, but sweet. Maybe it’s her simpleness that makes her this way.” Celine, however, has said that Celie is far more complicated than she imagines. Cecily knows Celie
was
hospitalized for what was labeled “exhaustion,” but to Cecily that seemed something of an indulgence. When Celine talks about Celie this way—as if she knowsa secret—Cecily believes, “That’s just Celine again, trying to stand out, trying to make herself feel special.”
    In the dress shop where Celie works all her customers love her. Many of them are educated, rich, bored, frustrated, freaky-thin women—who are dismayed that they have wound up being such clichés. The dressing rooms, however elaborate, have cardboard walls. And even I can listen, though I try not to, for I have learned there are far, far better places to spend eternity’s time.
    They talk about their latest diets and their psychiatrists, who are probably equally dismayed that they went to medical school and beyond only to end up listening hour after hour to their patients’ self-indulgent complaints. Although I imagine these paid listeners have large paneled offices with many exotic artifacts from their travels, which they carefully display.
    Celie makes her customers feel hopeful—that the
next
item she brings them to try on will, most certainly, reinvent them. That suddenly they will see themselves in the mirror as they want to be seen—both by others and by themselves. Some tell her she is better than any therapist. “Better, but not cheaper.” Celie just smiles.
    Celine is always at the shop, buying up all the pinks, while Cecily