1964

1964

Cecilia couldn’t sleep without her doll, Beth-Anne, even at the ageof seven. She loved the doll more than anything—the smell, the feeling of the silk hair between her fingers as she fell asleep. She searched for it frantically one night, trying to remember where she’d seen it. Etta shouted angrily from the bottom of the basement stairs and Cecilia knew she was irritated by her stomping all over the house when she should have been in bed.

“She’s down here, Cecilia!”

There was a small pickle cellar in the basement, about the size of a dog kennel. Etta had stopped canning pickles years before, and they’d almost eaten what was left. She crouched at the cellar door, her bum sticking out toward her daughter.

“Way at the back. You must have put it in there.”

“I did not! I hate that cellar!”

“Well, I can’t fit in. Go in and get her.”

Cecilia whined that her nightshirt would get dirty. That she didn’t like it in there. But she could see Beth-Anne lying in the corner.

“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat, Cecilia. If you want her, go get her.”

Cecilia got down on all fours and Etta pushed her forward. She fell onto her forearms and started to whimper, but she wanted Beth-Anne badly, so she slowly inched toward the back of the small, dark cave. The pickle jars that lined the walls looked like swamp water and she started having trouble breathing.

Something creaked behind her, but the walls of the cellar were too narrow for her to turn around. She realized then that the last sliver of light she’d seen on the glass jars around her was gone. She couldn’t get enough air and called louder for Etta. The rubble under her knees dug into her skin every time she twitched. She inched back and tried kicking open the door with her heel, but it was jammed.

She heard the phone ring from the living room. Etta’s heavy footsteps pounded the stairs. “Hello?” she heard her say, and then it was quiet for a moment, until the television set came on, and then the familiar voice of the evening news. Cecilia heard Etta’s muffled voice again speaking into the phone. It was September 1964 and the findings of the Warren Commission were being released. Etta, like everyone else, was obsessed with JFK’s assassination.

Etta never came back. Henry levered the door open when he got home from his night shift. He hauled Cecilia out by the ankles. Her fists were scraped. There was an argument about taking her to the hospital to be checked out. He thought her breathing was shallow and her eyes didn’t look right. But Etta won; they stayed home.

Henry sat near Cecilia’s bed while she slept. He put cold cloths on her head and didn’t go to work in the morning. None of them spoke to one another for days. Henry took the door off the cellar and moved the few remaining pickle jars to the pantry in the kitchen.

“That door never worked properly,” he said and shook his head.

A week later Etta whispered something to Cecilia when she cleared her dinner plate. Henry was at work. They were listening to the news on the kitchen radio. Cecilia couldn’t quite hear her, but what she thought Etta said was, “I meant to go back for you, Cecilia.” She put her lips on Cecilia’s cheek and lingered there for a moment. Cecilia didn’t ask Etta to repeat herself.