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The Silver Suitcase

By Terrie Todd

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Seventeen-year-old Cornelia Simpson lifted a mirror off the attic wall and brushed away chips of paint that stuck to her fingers from the wooden frame. Concealed behind the mirror hung a pocket-sized picture of Jesus—a prize she’d won for perfect Sunday school attendance years before. Cornelia scrutinized it. With her tongue poking out between her lips, she pushed a thumbtack straight into Jesus’ left eye.
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she whispered. “One day, I’ll tell the world the truth about you.”
Cornelia replaced the mirror with care, making sure it hid the picture. At her feet lay an untidy bundle of papers tied together with string. She penned Diary, 1938 on the top sheet and waited for the ink to dry. Then she carried it to the far corner of the attic and placed the treasure into the bottom of an old silver suitcase, deep under a quilt, where prying eyes would not discover the darkest secrets she’d recorded. As she began to close the lid, she suddenly reconsidered.
Carefully lifting out the colorful quilt and spreading it on the attic floor, Cornelia looked from piece to piece. The squares represented an array of color, each one holding a memory of her mother. She recognized bits of the flannel nightgown she’d worn as a preschooler, the dress she’d worn her first day of school, her mother’s favorite apron, her brother’s shirt. Or was it Daddy’s?
This pink square, she knew, came from a dress she’d worn the summer she turned twelve, the summer her mother passed away. The dress had been a favorite of Cornelia’s, though her mother had fashioned it from one of her own.
In one corner, there survived a patch from a little gray coat her parents had presented to her the Christmas she was ten: yet another item of clothing that had been lovingly made by her mother. Although Cornelia had hated the color, she’d never let on to her parents that she longed for a red coat like her friend Agnes’s.
Cornelia ran her hand over the quilt’s softness and closed her eyes, as though touching it might bring her mother closer. Five years. Cornelia had lived a lifetime since her mother’s death—growing from girlhood to womanhood.
The thud of a door slamming below shook Cornelia. “Corrie?” her father called from downstairs.
Her father was in from doing chores and ready for a hot lunch. With her little brother back in school after the Christmas break, barn chores now took Daddy longer. So far, he had not recruited her to take Jim’s place and she wasn’t about to volunteer. She stuffed the quilt back into the suitcase, closed the lid, and hurried back toward the ladder. A quick glance in the mirror as she passed told her she’d tangled with more than one cobweb. She paused long enough to brush a hand over her light brown hair. Others often commented on her resemblance to her father’s side of the family, but she saw her mother’s gray-blue eyes looking back at her.
“Coming, Daddy.” Cornelia scrambled down the ladder to the second floor where the family’s bedrooms were located. Then she hurried down the stairs to the first floor. In one smooth motion, she grabbed an apron from behind the kitchen door at the bottom of the stairs and began stoking the fire in the old cook stove.
“Soup’s hot. Bread’s cool enough to eat,” she called over her shoulder.
“Good girl.” Her father scrubbed his hands at the tin basin by the back door, hung the towel neatly back into place, and took his place across from Cornelia at their kitchen table. Charles Simpson’s receding hairline, graying temples, and weathered skin made him appear older than his forty-two years.
“Well now. Why don’t you say grace for us today?” He smiled at his daughter.
Cornelia had this down to a routine. Crossing the fingers of both hands under the table, she bowed her head. “Come Lord Jesus, be our guest; let this food to us be blessed. By his hand we all are fed; thank you, God, for daily bread. Please watch over Jimmy at school and thank you for the shelter for us and for our animals in this winter weather. Amen.”
With her father’s heartfelt “Amen!” they began slurping the simple soup and devouring the homemade bread.
“Won’t be long ‘til we have butter and cheese to go with this,” Charles said.
Cornelia looked up from her soup. She’d gladly forgo butter and cheese if it meant prolonging the reprieve from milking, separating, churning, and cheese making. But she kept her opinion to herself.
“Why? Is Hazel having her calf?”
“Any time now. And she always provides more than enough milk.” Charles’s chest grew noticeably broader at this declaration.
Cornelia hoped the calf would wait for a break in the weather, both for its sake and for hers. She dipped hot water from the reservoir on the side of the stove into a basin and began washing both the breakfast and lunch dishes while deep in thought. Is this to be my life, then? She sighed. The days running into each other, each one repeating the same cycle, like the hands of the clock on the mantel? The activities never changing except perhaps as dictated by the seasons? Different chores, slight variations in diet, but otherwise the same endless cycle?
As she dried a chipped plate, she wandered over to the window and breathed on the glass to clear a peephole through the frost. The blinding sunlight reflecting off the snow made it hard for Cornelia’s eyes to adjust. She was thankful to be safe and warm inside. Still, something restless stirred inside her and she envied her little brother’s opportunity to continue his education and see his friends each day. They’d argued about it last night as Jimmy anticipated returning to school.
“You’re lucky, Corny. You get to stay home.”
“Stop calling me Corny. And you’re the one who’s lucky.”
“No I’m not. Stick me on the tractor any day of the week. You can even stick me on a milking stool. It’s still better than those teeny little desks at school. And you get to sit here inside and stay nice and warm, Corny.”
“I said stop calling me Corny!”
“Corny, Corny, Corny.”
It escalated into a tea-towel snapping chase around the kitchen during which Cornelia realized her baby brother was quickly gaining on her in both strength and stamina. Maybe she shouldn’t let Jimmy’s teasing get under her skin, but where was the fun in disappointing him by not reacting?
Now, from the living room, the radio crackled with a weather report, bringing Cornelia back to the moment. She knew her father would soon doze off in his favorite chair as he did every afternoon in the winter months. She dried the last dish and bundled herself into warm boots, coat, and hat. Outside, a clothesline full of frozen long johns and towels waited to be relieved of its icy burden and Cornelia needed some fresh air. She stepped out into the brightness and stood still long enough to blink and suck in her breath before hustling over to the clothesline. Even old Shep, their Border Collie, hid in some straw under the back steps instead of tripping her up today.
Fumbling with her mittened hands, Cornelia freed the clothing from the grip of the pins and laid each piece in a pile on the snow. They looked like a stack of mummies. By the time she added the last piece, her freezing fingers could barely manage the clothespins. In her rush to thaw her fingers, she abandoned the bucket of pins, picked up the clothes, and panted back to the house. This was ridiculous. It had not been nearly this cold when she’d hung the clothes out the day before. At least the bright sunlight had whitened them, as she’d hoped.
“Are you proud of me, Ma?” Cornelia whispered.
Back inside, she dumped her load unceremoniously on the kitchen table to thaw and removed her winter wear. She threw more wood into the kitchen stove and filled the teakettle, rubbing her hands together over the stove while she waited for the water to heat up.
Once the tea was ready, Cornelia filled one of her mother’s pink china cups and carried it upstairs to her bedroom. Humming “Side by Side” to no one in particular, she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and then sat at a small desk by the window. She reached into a drawer and pulled out the brand new diary she had unwrapped on Christmas morning. Like every Christmas morning, the simple school notebook held a thousand possibilities. Like her previous diaries, this one would no doubt fall apart and need string to hold it together before the year ended. But for now, it represented a world of pristine potential. Surely, somehow, this year my story will finally begin, she thought.
While her tea cooled to a drinkable temperature, Cornelia dipped her pen in its inkwell, opened the diary to its first page, and wrote “January 5, 1939.”

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