Family Secrets by Rona Jaffe Read Free Book Online Page A

respect. The old woman knew this, and she knew that the only person who was in the natural order to receive less respect than she did was this argumentative child.
    Although her life was ruled by superstitions she was clever. She knew that the matter of the orphan was between herself and the child and Lucy and Adam would not tolerate it, and so she kept it their secret, hissing “Orphan!” at this fierce little girl, pulling her braids, smirking when the child went running to her Papa to tell.
    “Grandma pulled my hair again.”
    “And what did you do to deserve it?”
    “She was rude to me,” the old woman would say.
    Adam would cuff Lavinia then, always taking the side of the older one, who was due more respect. “Don’t back talk your Grandma!”
    “I didn’t!”
    “She did, she did,” the old woman would crow. Why wouldn’t the child cry? She could see tears in the blazing little eyes, but the jaws would clench and the child would stand there rigid, glaring at her, wishing for her death, longing for the day she could pretend to cry at the old woman’s funeral.
    Such hate! But it was better than being ignored, and at the end of a long life when one was lonely and ignored, it was interesting. If one could be hated then one was still worth reckoning with.
    When Mama had a second boy, Lavinia began naming the children when they were born, without waiting for them to reach school age. She named this one Basil. She wanted the whole family to be American now, to fit in. Basil was a distinguished name, graceful. Basil Saffron … he could become a famous businessman. It was an English name, and it was also the name of an herb. Lavinia had found books about flowers in the school library.
    When Mama had a little girl, Lavinia named her Rosemary.
    “That’s a Catholic name,” Melissa said. “There’s a Catholic girl in my class and her name is Rosemary Feeney, and her family comes from Ireland.”
    “Don’t be silly,” Lavinia said. “If she was Catholic she would be in a school with the nuns.”
    Melissa chewed her lip. “I guess you’re right.”
    “Rosemary happens to be the name of a beautiful-smelling herb,” Lavinia said. “It was a name celebrated in poetry and beautiful stories.”
    “It’s pretty, anyhow,” Melissa said.
    The photographer came to take a picture of all of them for their Papa’s thirty-sixth birthday. There was Papa, stern and distinguished, and next to him Mama, always frail, but having one of her better days. Beside them was Lavinia, then Melissa, with a great bow in her hair, and in front the smaller ones: Hazel, sturdy Andrew, Basil holding a ball, and little Rosemary, sitting on a chair holding her pet kitten. It was the gray and white kitten Basil had tried to cook by putting it into the oven in a pot, and it was only by luck that the servant girl had discovered it and saved its life. Now Rosemary wouldn’t let it out of her sight.
    “Smile,” the photographer said. “Hold still. Look at the birdie.”
    He would crouch under a black cloth and set off a flash of light and a puff of smoke, but there was no birdie. Lavinia didn’t like him because he was ugly. His skin was pockmarked and his teeth were broken and brown. Her Papa didn’t like ugly people, and neither did she. She wanted to be exactly like her Papa when she grew up.
    Papa was very pleased with his birthday photograph, and had a large one made and framed to sit on top of his bureau. They were going to move to a private house in the spring, where there would be enough room for all of them including Grandma and Aunt Becky, and any greenhorns who came to stay for a while, and there would be a whole top floor just for the two Irish girls who worked for them now, cleaning the house and doing the laundry. In the new house they would have a grand piano in the living room, and on top of the piano there would be a fashionable fringed Oriental shawl, and on top of the shawl would be the framed photograph. None of