Three's Company

Sybil Speaks

I know I only existed on the periphery of your girl's gaze, Andrea. Maybe not even there, but it wasn't your fault. I'm pretty sure that, even on the edge as I was, you knew my name. You thought it was an odd one, and I admit it has many meanings. No, I'm not referring to the young woman with endless personalities, which must be a scary condition, but that Sybil wasn't known to anybody back then. Only later would she have a book written about her and even a film - no, two films - made about her. She was a very tragic figure, plus that wasn't her real name. Sybil was my real name.

You probably knew me as a scrawny old woman with gray hair pulled back in a bun at the nape of my neck and bushy eyebrows that remained dark. They made for quite an odd appearance, I'll admit, but that's who I was. I was skinny because I didn't have much money for food or maybe I didn't like food very much. It's hard to remember. You probably noticed I often wore the same dress: dark blue with white polk dots. I only owned three dresses and they might have all been the same, so you wouldn't have been able to tell if I changed daily.

You may or may not have noticed when I came into the five-and-dime where your mother worked for years, although I rarely bought anything except a package of needles or a spool of ribbon, maybe a small pad of paper. I imagine you moved closer to your mother when you were in the store after getting out of elementary school. Your mother would not have called me a witch, but I heard the whispers of others from time to time. However, I cannot assume you ever saw me when I left the five-and-dime to go into Dykma's Dry Goods two doors down. It wasn't to buy fabric, because I had no use for things like that and could not afford it. At least I enjoyed looking at the new shipments and imagining what it would be like to wear something made from the bright designs. The bolts were steeped in formaldehyde, which made my eyes water. 

You probably thought the same thing about the bolts on the shelves at Dykma's and your eyes probably stung as well. Why did they put that poison on something women put on their bodies?

You may or may not have known, Andrea, that I lived on Market Street, less than half a block from those two stores and less than two blocks from your house. I doubt you knew that a few yards further down my street in the direction of the Erie Canal, there was a spot called Bloody Corners. That was because the drivers on the canal would stop at the lock and go to a local tavern where there were always brawls. Ones with lots of fights and hence lots of bruised bodies. People in town tried not to think about those days, but my street was never very pretty and had nothing of interest on it except my parents' general store. I'm pretty sure you avoided walking down it.

Unsightly as my street was, I never lived any place else, and I'd like to point out that my house had a lovely, an unusual, wrought iron balcony. It probably looked out of placed in the midst of the dullness and ugly past. The only time I left it was when I ran off to New York City to become an actress. That was my one - failed - attempt at emancipation, and my father immediately came after me. He dragged me home kicking and screaming all the way on the train. Afterward, I resigned myself to living with my parents and having no studies, no career, practically no friends, my whole life. Once in a while I did go to see the circus when it came to town, and I did go to the Strand Theatre with my father while he was alive. I imagined I was in the films, which was the next best thing to being an actress.

Andrea, you probably didn't know when you were a girl and I was an old woman nobody cared about, that people thought I was both a witch and crazy. A lot of people think that about skinny old ladies who look like me. It was easy to be a bit crazy because my father had forbidden me to see the world and my imagination was locked up inside me like I was locked up in my house while he was alive. If I had to go out to a store, which was only a block away, he would go all over town trying to locate me and leaving notes in all the places he entered, including the barber shop, the shoe store, the pharmacy. When your father stalks you, it's not good for your mental health either.

Still and all, I don't want to blame my parents if I turned out rather odd. Being an only child does place quite a burden on a child, admittedly. I got used to looking over my shoulder until both of my parents were gone, but by then it was hard to go too many steps beyond my door. Once in awhile I did get out - after I was orphaned - because I still had my imagination and was determined to attend sessions of spiritualism at Lily Dale or in Rochester. Lily Dale was southwest of Buffalo, at least a hundred miles away, but still closer than New York City. They made a documentary about it in 2010, but neither you nor I could have seen it back when you were a girl in our town and I was still alive. I also had the place I liked in Rochester, only thirty miles away. 

Still, I rarely went far because I didn't dare go alone. You probably never knew, at least when you were a little girl, that I tried to get your grandmother to go with me. She should have gone, because she was always trying to contact her daughter who had died in a freak car accident when she was twelve. She always sat or lay in bed staring at her dead daughter's hand-tinted photograph in the casket, but she never agreed to come with me. It might have eased her pain. I heard she attended her own séances, but never managed to cross that line between life and death; not while she lived, at least.

Lucille Speaks

Wait a minute, Sybil, please. You weren't the only one who was the periphery of Andrea's world. Andrea, you know I was there. Maybe you were more aware of me, but I think you didn't give me a lot of thought. Let's see:

You knew I was an only child and never married. You didn't care about that, of course. You knew my mother, whom I nursed for years, but we never talked about her ailment. When you came to my house, she was no longer able to get out of bed, and I could tell her long yellow-gray braids fascinated you, soft and silky as they were. You had long hair too. You were quiet and respectful with both of us, a nice girl, always polite. You were shy, like me.

Your mother probably told you how I went to college and tried to become an English teacher, but failed. I simply couldn't manage a classroom, so I quit and focused on my mother. Her name was Jenny. You might recall that.

Andrea, you came over to my house fairly often. Do you remember? We had several activities that you enjoyed. I taught you how to make homemade mustard by using the powdered form of the spice, vinegar, water, and a pinch of salt. It had a real bite, which you liked when I put it on a bologna sandwich for you. My house was always immaculate, which you also liked; my cleanliness never seemed to frighten you. I think I was more old-fashioned than your mother.

You tried to learn to play the piano, despite your physical limitation, and if I'm not mistaken your favorite songs were "Greensleeves" and "Good King Wenceslas." Am I right? Maybe you liked them because they were the only ones you could play, poor thing. You weren't aware yet of your limitations.

Surely you recall, Andrea, when you were six and I took you a very cold ice cream cone when you were in the hospital recovering from having your tonsils out. You were too sick to eat it. One other thing you might recall is the method I taught you for covering books with brown paper bags from the grocery store. You loved decorating them with crayon drawings. You always did love drawing and were thrilled when I let you take the covered books home.

I left you my books and my piano in my will. That probably surprised you, but I doubt you ever played it more than a few times. You couldn't, after all.

I think I passed away from the same disease as you, Sybil: leukemia. It must be a coincidence.

Andrea Speaks

Sybil, Lucille, I can't tell either of you now what space you occupied in my life then, how far on the periphery you existed to me when I was little. I can say that many years later, Sybil, I would visit your parents' general store and was amazed at how time had simply stopped in it when the decision was made to close the business. I learned that you used your meager funds to feed neighborhood cats, which wandered among the barrel still full of pickles, the cartons still full of eggs, the soap brands that are no more than history and dust now.

I have learned that it took a long time for the house to have electricity installed, that it had no running water, that you bathed - somehow - in a little tin tub, that you had an outhouse even though you lived right in town. I went all through your house, which had been turned into a museum along with the store. I especially went through the countless papers and notes that you had stashed in drawers and in folders. You apparently used to go to the library two blocks from your door to copy things out of books, especially poetry. You somehow had quite a library on Spiritualism and the Rosicrucians.

Your mind must have been abuzz with frustration and things you invented to keep going. I learned that you used a ladder to climb up in the upper floor to put your lively head in the attic space to talk to your father. You would have been fascinating to talk to, so I'm glad we're getting the chance now. You intrigued me so much that I took my mother to see your house and papers. I purloined a few, because I'm hoping to use them in the novel I'm writing. The notes your father left you all over town - "Dear Sybil, I'm in the drugstore but you're not here - Where are you? - Come home now."

I think your father was the one who was crazy.

Lucille, you were not like an aunt, but you were one of the quietest, kindest women I've ever met. I owe much of my love for reading to you and, yes, the Bobbsey Twins books I inherited are in my home today, their handmade covers still in place to protect them from dust. Every so often I think about make mustard the way you showed me, but probably it wouldn't turn out right. Many of the books I read years ago and even some I read now are set, in my mind, in your house. I can go all through the rooms and, despite their sadness, they feel comforting. The novels from the nineteenth century are especially prone to reminding me of the space you inhabited.

And I still feel guilty about not eating your wonderfully large, cold ice cream cone, which I'm sure was vanilla flavor. You must have frozen it first to ensure it reached me in a still-solid state. I haven't felt the desire to put you in a novel, but on the other hand, my imagination has placed many novels written by others in your home. Your house would have made a perfect setting for the soirées of the Bluestockings. Plus, I could look out the windows of the dining room you never used and see my mother in my house across the driveway. 

Lucille, Sybil, I wish now I'd told you both that you were not on the periphery of my world. You were very much a part of it. Maybe it has taken me a long time to bring you both into focus, but at least now you know you were not overlooked. My mother helped me see you both.

I am using every last drop of the memories. Still.