“I didn’t know,” she told me that first day. “Trust me, child, I didn’t know or I would’ve taken you years ago.”
I didn’t cry. Saw no purpose for the tears and didn’t know if I believed her anyway. If I was supposed to live with this woman, then I’d live with this woman. Not like I had anyplace else to go.
Aunt Nancy ran a B&B in a quaint resort town in the Mount Washington Valley, where rich Bostonians and privileged New Yorkers came to ski during the winter, hike in the summer, and “leaf-peep” in the fall. She had one part-time helper, but mostly my aunt relied on herself to greet guests, clean rooms, set up tea, cook breakfast, provide directions, and all the other million little odd jobs that go into the hospitality trade. When I came along, I took over dusting and vacuuming. I could spend hours cleaning. I loved the scent of Pine-Sol. I loved the feel of freshly polished wood. I loved the way I scrubbed the floor again and again, and each time, it looked pretty and fresh and new.
Cleaning meant controlling. Cleaning kept the shadows at bay.
First day of school, Aunt Nancy personally walked me down the street. I wore stiff new clothes, including black patent Mary Janes I polished obsessively for the next six months. I felt conspicuous. Too new. Too fresh out of the box.
I still wasn’t used to all the noise and clamor that came with “village” life. Neighbors, everywhere I looked. People who made eye contact and smiled.
“Your tea set is tarnished,” I informed my aunt, one block from my first ever school. “I’ll go home and polish it for you.”
“You’re a funny child, Charlene.”
I stopped walking, my hand rubbing my side and the scar that still itched sometimes. I had more scars, spiderweb fine, on the back of my left hand, let alone the ugly surgical mark on my right elbow, burn marks on my right thigh. I was pretty sure other kids didn’t have such blemishes on their bodies. I was pretty sure other children’s mothers didn’t “love” them as much as mine had sworn she loved me. “I don’t want to go.”
My aunt stopped walking. “Charlie, it is time to go to school. Now, I want you to march through those front doors. I want you to hold your head high. And I want you to know, you are the bravest, toughest little girl I know, and none of those kids have anything on you. Do you hear me? None of those kids have anything on you.”
So I did what my aunt said. I walked through those doors. I kept my head high. I slid into a desk at the back of a room. Where the little girl on my left turned and said. “Hi, I’m Jackie.” And the little girl on my right turned and said, “I’m Randi.”
And just like that, we were friends.
*
BUT I NEVER TOLD THEM EVERYTHING.
You know what I mean, don’t you?
How sometimes, even with best friends, even with the sisters of your heart who laugh with you and cry with you and know every single minuscule detail of your first crush and final heartbreak, you still can’t tell them everything.
Even best friends have secrets.
Take it from me, the last one standing, who’s spent the past two years learning most of our secrets the hard way.