By Liz Zuercher
Next door to my childhood home was a big Victorian house
painted bright purple with white trim and a red door. People on the street said it was an eyesore, but I loved it,
especially when the jacaranda trees bloomed, enveloping the purple house in
clouds of lavender. But the reason
I loved that house so much had more to do with the people inside, the Gillum
sisters, Miss Emmeline and Miss Dot.
I remember them as being ancient, but I’d guess when I was
growing up they were probably only in their sixties or seventies, which is
looking pretty young to me now. I
suppose the sisters seemed older to me because they were so thin and wore
old-fashioned housedresses and oxford shoes.
They both had gray hair, but they had different hairstyles
that matched their personalities.
Miss Emmeline’s hair was pulled tight away from her face and gathered in
a bun at the top of her head. Miss
Dot wore hers long and flowing from a center part down past her waist, as if
she had never cut it. Maybe Miss Emmeline’s
was that long, too, but I never saw it freed from the bun.
Both women wore glasses with skinny wire rims. Miss Emmeline had hers on all the time,
and they often slid down her slim nose to perch at the end. She looked out over them at me when she
talked to me, which was seldom.
Miss Dot’s glasses dangled from ribbons tied to each side of the glasses
with a tiny bow. She changed the
ribbons to match her outfit. I
never saw Miss Dot put her glasses on to read anything. They were more like jewelry. Maybe she needed them to read, but
didn’t want to admit it. Maybe she
didn’t need to read, because all the stories were in her head.
People thought the Gillum sisters were twins, but Miss
Emmeline was really two years older than Miss Dot. Yes, they looked a lot alike, but to me they were very
different. Miss Emmeline was quite
stern and most of the time she had a frown on her face – a scowl really – that
made me nervous when I had to talk to her. I’d try to time my visits for when I saw Miss Dot outside
gardening, because Miss Dot always wore a smile on her face, and her voice
sounded like a song when she said, “Hello there little Miss Emma. What can I do for you today?”
My mother used to send me next door to the purple house when
she was out of sugar or if she had some cookies to share or if we’d gotten some
of the sisters’ mail. At first I
was afraid of the purple house and the Gillum sisters, but once I set foot
inside I was enchanted.
Inside everything was neatly in its place, which I imagined
was Miss Emmeline’s doing. But all
of it was whimsical, which I took to be Miss Dot’s doing. From the fanciful floral print
slipcover on the sitting room loveseat to the shelved wall full of painted
porcelain ballerinas in various poses, it was a feast to my eyes. Even better were the stories that went
along with each item. I could sit
for hours and listen to Miss Dot talk about her trips and how she’d come to
have the Russian nesting dolls or the Indian hookah or the family of glass
penguins from Argentina.
When Miss Dot began to tell her stories, Miss Emmeline
brought tea and tiny butter cookies.
Then she disappeared down the hall and soon I’d hear the purposeful
clack of a typewriter. Sometimes
my mother had to come get me, because I’d been gone on my errand so long she
thought the purple house had eaten me up.
Maybe in a way it had. In
the purple house I entered a strange alternate world where time stood still, a
wonderful place where all the amazing things inside consumed me. When I headed back home, I always
dreamed of going to the places in Miss Dot’s stories.
I started going over to the purple house on my own, without
an errand from my mother, just to hear Miss Dot’s stories and feel the warmth
of her smile. But in the end it
was Miss Emmeline who had the bigger impact on me.
Miss Dot got sick and had to go into the hospital, leaving
Miss Emmeline alone in the house.
My mother sent me over with some soup for her, and when I knocked on the
door it opened up all by itself with the force of my knock. I tiptoed in, careful not to drop the
soup. What I noticed first was
that the place was a mess. I’d always
thought Miss Emmeline was the neat sister, but apparently it was Miss Dot who
kept things clean and tidy. What I
noticed next was that the house seemed empty, lifeless.
I called out for Miss Emmeline, but all I heard back was the
clack of that typewriter. I
followed the sound down the hall to a room at the back of the house. It was the size of a closet and had no
windows to allow the daylight in.
There was Miss Emmeline, her back to the door, sitting in a
ladder-backed chair at an old oak table, typing away. Stacks of paper were all over the floor of the little room
like skyscrapers in a paper city.
A narrow path between the stacks left just enough room for Miss Emmeline
to walk to and from her typewriter.
There was nothing else in the room – no porcelain dolls, no tea sets
from China, no Persian rugs, not even an American ginger jar lamp with a
crenellated shade. A single bare
light bulb hung from the ceiling bathing Miss Emmeline, the table, chair,
typewriter and stacks of paper in a harsh light. A cigarette burned down to ash in a plain glass ashtray next
to the typewriter.
“Miss Emmeline,” I said. “I brought you some soup.”
She kept on typing.
“Miss Emmeline?”
She continued typing.
I cleared my throat really loudly, hoping to get her
attention. I had just decided it
would be best to leave the soup in the kitchen when Miss Emmeline spoke.
“What do you want?
Dot’s not here. Can’t you
see I’m busy?” All the while she kept on typing. She hadn’t even turned around to look at me.
“I brought some soup,” I said again. When she said nothing, I said, “I’ll
put it in the refrigerator for you.”
She grunted and typed faster.
“The story’s not finished,” she said, more to herself than
to me. “She can’t leave now. I don’t know the ending.”
That’s when she turned around and I saw her panic. Wisps of white hair hung loose, but her
glasses were straight on her face, magnifying the desperation in her eyes.
“Do you know the ending?” she said. “Do you?”
“No,” I whispered.
Miss Emmeline searched my face then covered her face with
her hands and broke into sobs.
“How could she leave before she told me the end of the
story?” she said. “I can’t finish
it by myself.”
I was only ten years old, and I had never seen anyone so
completely undone. I didn’t know
what to do. What could a
ten-year-old girl do? I walked
over to Miss Emmeline, put the container of soup down on the oak table next to
the typewriter, wrapped my arms around Miss Emmeline and held her close.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“I’ll help you.”
She looked up at me and smiled the first smile I’d ever seen
from her. Then she turned around
and started typing again, while I went home to get my mother.
After that we kept a closer eye on Miss Emmeline. I went over every day after school and
worked with her. She left the
front door unlocked for me and I went right back to the typing room. Usually, I brought some food with me,
because my mother was afraid Miss Emmeline wouldn’t eat otherwise. We didn’t speak much, but she seemed to
like having me there. I took a
notebook with me and while Miss Emmeline typed, I wrote down all the Miss Dot
stories I could think of in case Miss Emmeline needed to fill in a blank. Maybe just knowing someone else knew
the stories, kept her going. I sat
with Miss Emmeline like that for an hour or two each afternoon, both of us hard
at work.
Somewhere along the line I started making up bits and pieces
of Miss Dot’s stories, embellishing a little here and there where the details
were sparse. I guess that’s when
they became my stories, too, and I kept on writing after I left the purple
house. I worked on the stories
when I was alone in my room after dinner.
I worked on them on the weekends when my friends were playing
outside. In two months I had a box of notebooks, filled with stories of places I’d never been, like an imaginary
travelogue.
Then one day Miss Emmeline was very excited when I walked
into the typing room.
“Dot’s coming home tomorrow,” she said with the biggest
smile I’d ever seen from her. “We
have to have everything ready for her.”
Instead of writing and typing, she and I bustled around the
house straightening up, dusting and vacuuming. Outside, I swept the porch and picked some flowers to put in
a vase for Miss Dot. She loved
flowers. When I left that day,
Miss Emmeline stood in front of the red door and waved goodbye. That was the first time she had ever
seen me to the door, whether to let me in or send me home. I’d never seen her so happy.
The next day after school I ran over to the purple house to
see Miss Dot. I had my box of
notebooks to show her. The red door was locked and when I knocked no one
answered. I peeked in the window,
but saw no one. Finally, I gave up
and went home. My mother was on
the phone when I walked into the kitchen, and she looked away from me, concentrating
on what the person on the other end was saying. I took my notebooks up to my room and put them on my
bed. Sitting on the window seat, I
looked out at the purple house and waited for the Gillum sisters to come home.
I remember so clearly the way my mother looked standing in
the doorway of my room. Her thin
blond hair hung limp around her face and she clasped her hands together in
front of the green and white checked apron she always wore when she was
cooking. Her face told the story
before her words did.
“Emma, Miss Dot passed away this morning,” she said. She sat on the window seat with me and
held me tight as we both looked over at the purple house. It didn’t look happy anymore to me.
“What about Miss Emmeline?” I said. “What will happen to her without Miss
Dot?”
“I don’t know,” my mother said.
* * * * *
Miss Emmeline’s relatives from back east came to stay for a while, and I didn’t see her. My mother said two cousins from Philadelphia had gotten rid of all the knick-knacks they didn’t want. That’s what they called Miss Dot’s treasures – knick-knacks. After they picked out what they did want, they went back to Philadelphia and left Miss Emmeline alone in the house.
I tried to see Miss Emmeline and work on the stories with
her, but the door was always locked and she didn’t answer when I knocked. I could hear the typewriter, though, so
I knew she was there. After a few
weeks, I put my notebooks in the back of my closet and went back to playing
with my friends after school.
* * * * *
My worst childhood memory is the night the purple house
burned to the ground. I still
remember the orange glow outside my bedroom window that woke me up that
night. Maybe it was that glow, a
light that shouldn’t have been there, but maybe it was the crackling sound of
the fire or the smell of smoke slipping through the thin slot of my barely
opened window. Whatever it was
that woke me, it was all those things that grabbed me from my bed and took me
to the window.
What I saw was horrifying – flames shooting out of the
windows, gold and orange against the purple walls, turning them black. I screamed and ran into my parents’
room.
“Fire!” I screamed.
“The purple house!”
My dad bolted out of bed and ran to my bedroom to see for
himself.
“Call the Fire Department,” he yelled at my mother, as he
put his shoes on and ran outside to see if he could help.
“Get everyone out of bed and dressed,” my mother said, and I
rounded up all the kids while she called for the fire truck. She was afraid our house would catch
fire, too, so she made us all go outside, across the street on the opposite
corner. Just to be safe, she said.
We huddled together on that corner with our neighbors and
watched as the fire trucks rolled in and got their hoses trained on the purple
house. Daddy came to join us,
covered in ash and smelling like our campfires when we had just doused them.
“Is she in there?” my mother whispered to him.
He nodded his head.
“I think so,” he said in a sad voice. “I couldn’t get past the foyer. The flames were too intense.”
It’s funny what you remember about bad times. I remember the flames, the smoke and
the flow of the water from the fire hoses. I remember the neighbors gathered together hoping that by
some miracle Miss Emmeline had made it out of the house. But what I remember most about the fire
was that one of the neighbors gave us all cookies and lemonade while we watched
the purple house burn and the firefighters work to put it out. It was like a block party with a huge
bonfire and refreshments, which seemed very wrong to me.
I took a bite of my cookie. It tasted just like the little butter cookies Miss Emmeline
always gave me when I came to see Miss Dot and listen to her stories. I started to cry right there on the
street corner, eating my cookie and watching the purple house of treasures burn
to the ground.
After we all went back to our homes, I sat on the window
seat and looked out at the blackness that used to be the purple house. I was feeling so sad and helpless until
I thought of all my notebooks and the stories I’d recorded in them. I dug the box out of the back of the
closet and sat there all night reading, reliving those adventures I’d never had
myself. I made a silent promise to
the Gillum sisters to always keep the stories alive.
