Day 24

Have you ever had a secret? What if you took that secret to the death, leaving behind only a battered suitcase with two items to tell the world who you really were? What would those two items be?

            THE SUITCASE

The mail was late that day. Of course. That was the day the package was arriving. “What is the package”, Alicia wondered. The note was cryptic, simply telling her she would receive a package. It was unsigned, but the paper was fine, like that used for résumés or official documents. It looked like it might have come from a lawyer, or someone in the business world. It wasn’t the sort of paper she was used to receiving notes on; most notes she ever got were on Post-It notes and hung on the refrigerator. They were not stuck through the mail slot on fancy paper. So she waited.

The postman rang the bell; she remembered the old saying, the postman only rings once, so she raced to the door in case she had to sign for the package. She saw the back of the postman as he trotted down the steps, but no matter. The package was lying on the porch underneath the mail box. It was larger than she expected, and when she picked it up, it was heavy.

Alicia didn’t waste any time standing on ceremony. She ripped open the package, eager to solve the mystery. She stared at the battered old suitcase, the brown leather scuffed and worn, the monogram so faded it was nearly invisible. The monogram, what was still there, said A [something] D. Those were her initials! Depending on what the missing initial was, of course. She scratched at the space, wishing she could make it out. Was this hers? If so, why didn’t she remember it, and why was someone mailing it to her without explaining why?

There was no return address to help enlighten her, so she turned to the package itself and rummaged through the paper and twine. She lifted the old suitcase and found a letter underneath, a letter written on the same fancy paper as the note. She tore open the envelope and was disappointed to see that the letter was written by hand, in a fancy handwriting, and in cursive. Really? Cursive? Who could read that?

A ping from her phone alarm alerted her that she would be late for work if she didn’t leave right away. She pulled on her uniform and found the car keys, several feet from where she remembered dropping them. The dog had apparently played one of his tricks on her, moving her keys, but he hadn’t moved them so far she couldn’t find them in a glance. She gave one more look to the suitcase and left for work.

The evening shift crawled by. The customers were all cranky, or at least it seemed that way, and Geordie was on grill, which meant nothing happened on time. She helped him fish his wedding ring out of the fry vat, polite enough not to ask him how it happened to get in there, and waited for the four sandwiches to come up so she could move her customers along. Why did Vic always insist on putting Geordie on the grill? She hated that. Just because he was the only male on shift! She’d run grill so many times, and could run circles around any of the male employees, but when Vic was the manager on duty, he refused to put any “girl”, as he called all his adult female employees, on the grill.

Everyone settled into one of the booths after closing for a much needed break before they began to clean up the store. Alicia mentioned the suitcase, and the letter, to Mandy, the old lady that worked the front register. Mandy must be at least 40, and Vic still called her “girl”, too. She mentioned that the letter was in cursive, so it couldn’t be read, and Mandy offered to read it for her. Apparently they used to teach cursive in school. Go figure.

Mandy went home with Alicia, almost as curious as the younger woman to know what was in the suitcase. Alicia handed her the letter, and shifted from foot to foot while Mandy read it. Why wasn’t she just reading it out loud? Did it need that much translation? It seemed like an eternity, but her phone told her it was only two and a half minutes before Mandy finished and started reading the letter out loud.

The suitcase had belonged to her grandmother, Alicia Douglas. Alicia knew she had been named after her father’s mother, but they had never met. The old woman was in a nursing home by the time Alicia was born, with cancer eating up her liver and her pancreas. The woman had outlived all expectations, but her father never took her to visit her grandmother. He didn’t seem to like his mother very much, and Alicia assumed the woman was crazy, or something. She’d always resented being named after a crazy woman.

The older Alicia had died last week, and the employees at the home had found the suitcase, and the letter. The suitcase was the only possession her grandmother had left; the children had divided her property among themselves when they put her in the home, so she didn’t have anything to leave Alicia but this battered old suitcase. The letter was from her grandmother.

Alicia held the letter after Mandy read it to her. The old woman had expressed her delight over having a granddaughter. The six children she’d left behind had a total of twenty children between them, and Alicia was the only girl. Her grandmother expressed her sorrow at not being able to leave her more, but said that this suitcase contained the only two items her children had not wanted, and they were the two items she had wanted the most. Now they were to be handed on to the one person she had always hoped to meet, and had never gotten the opportunity. Someone had sent her a picture of Alicia, and she kept it by her bed, but the picture was taken when she was only 10 years old. She had changed a lot since then, and wished she had known. At the very least, she could have sent her a picture. She could have visited her now that she was on her own, but she never thought about it, and she assumed the old lady was crazy. The letter was too lucid, too articulate, and too sublime to have been written by someone crazy.

Alicia started to flip the locks on the suitcase, Mandy watching with interest. She hesitated before she lifted the lid. Only two items defined her grandmother, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready to know what they were. Mandy encouraged her, but she still hesitated. This was a scary moment, and she wanted to savor the feeling of thrill that ran up and down her spine.

She closed her eyes and lifted the lid. She could hear Mandy breathing behind her, and she stood between the older woman and the suitcase. She wanted to see first, before anyone else. This belonged to her, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready to have someone else in on the excitement. Still, she liked Mandy, and the woman had helped her many times, not just tonight. She had been there for Alicia when Stu broke off their engagement. She had stood up for Alicia when Vic threatened to fire her for starting her period while she was on the line. And she had read the letter to Alicia, coming home with her at midnight when she certainly wanted to be in bed. She deserved to see, too.

The suitcase contained only two items, as her grandmother had said. The first item was a framed photo of a young woman with an old fashioned haircut and a graduation gown and hat. She looked a lot like Alicia, but it couldn’t have been her, because she never graduated. She dropped out the first semester of her senior year, wanting to get away from home and make a place for herself without the constant hassle of her father and her brothers. She was worried she would end up as old and tired as her mother if she stayed.

The picture was in a frame with the name of the school. Alicia gasped. She was holding a picture of a woman who graduated from Harvard…she couldn’t believe it. No one in her family ever went to college, and all the women just got married as young as possible and had babies. What was her grandmother doing graduating from Harvard, and she never knew? The picture was dated 1964; her grandmother would have been 26. Her father was born in 1968, and was her oldest child. She’d always wondered why her grandmother waited so long to have children, when it was normal at that time to have children young. This could explain that mystery.

The other item was a letter. Alicia couldn’t read this one, either. Why did everyone old have to write in cursive? She could see that this letter was not in the same hand; it was apparently written to her grandmother, and was dated 1967. She handed it to Mandy without a word. The older woman scanned the lines on the yellowed paper, and turned away from Alicia so the younger woman would not see her cry. It didn’t work; Mandy’s shoulders were heaving, and Alicia could tell she was moved.

The letter was from her great-grandmother, ordering her daughter to quit working and get married immediately. The tone was harsh and judgmental, and running through it were some horrible refrains that Alicia could hardly stand to hear. Her grandmother was addressed as a “slut” and a “whore” and told to start acting like a woman instead of a man. The woman who wrote it clearly had different ideas that her own offspring about how a woman should live.

As the letter progressed, it became obvious that her grandmother was pregnant, and not married. This was 1967, when women still lost their jobs for being pregnant even while married, and the older Alicia was plainly scared. Her mother continued on for paragraph after paragraph instructing her on the proper way to live in the world, and demanding that she marry someone, anyone. It was clear, apparently, that the father of the child did not wish to get married, and in the end, her grandmother – or someone – had written in a shaky hand one name, the name of her grandfather, and said, “He’ll do.”

Alicia didn’t want to hear any more. She was devastated by the pain and the unhappiness of the woman who had been abandoned by her parents, and then later by her own children when they discovered her terrible secret. Her own father, the child she was carrying, had abandoned her when he found out his father was not his father. Several pages of a diary appended to the letter told the horrible story of a life lived with a man she did not love, and who did not love her, bearing him five children after the one that brought her so much shame, and cleaning, cooking, and otherwise taking care of him through the rest of his life. Her husband demanded she rid the house of any signs of her education, but she kept the one picture, hidden in the back of a closet, unable to totally forget.

The final line of the diary appeared to be fresh. It was added later, apparently not long before the woman died. She addressed her granddaughter directly, and told her to take the back off the picture. Alicia did as instructed, and inside, she found a check made out to her, a sum much larger than anything she had ever owned. The subject line said “For Alicia’s education”. That was more than she could bear. She sobbed uncontrollably, while Mandy rocked her in an attempt to comfort her and erase the guilt she felt for dropping out of school.

The next few days were a whirlwind. Alicia presented the check at the bank, and discovered that it was good. Her grandmother had indeed had a secret account that her children did not know about; the account had been established by the father of her oldest son, and designated to be used for Alicia’s education. The note she had received had apparently come from him, and he contacted her several days later, eager to know his grandchild, and wanting to share stories of her grandmother. They had ended up together in the same nursing home, and had become the closest of friends. He regretted his decision of all those years ago, realizing that his wish not to get married had condemned one of the brightest women…brightest people, he amended…to a life of drudgery and unhappiness. “If only I knew then…” he kept sighing. Alicia decided to forgive him, and accept him as her grandfather.

 Mandy was by her side three months later as she headed for the local college where she had arranged to take her GED. A crash course at the high school had prepared her for the test, and she sat down with confidence before the blank answer sheet. When they said to start, she turned over the paper and wrote her name: Alicia Jane Douglas, and added II. “This is for you, Grandma”, she whispered as she began to fill in the answers. Someday, she would use that college money, and live the dream her grandmother had been denied, a dream that her grandfather had been able to live because he was a man and the signs of illicit pregnancy had never been seen by anyone on him.