I Don't Know How the Story Ends Read Free Page B

wide porch. From its deep shade, double glass doors stared out flatly.
    â€œHere we are!” Aunt Buzzy chirped. “Our hacienda!”
    Disembarking from the auto, Mother, Sylvie, and I followed her across the porch and through a rustic entrance hall. When we stepped into the front room, our jaws dropped as one.
    Mr. Titus Bell, my new uncle whom I’d never met, was an importer of exotic goods. I didn’t know exactly what that meant until now: his house was like an Oriental/Near Eastern/Mediterranean/Polynesian/Eskimo bazaar. Taken all in a gasp, as we did, it assaulted both sense and imagination.
    The room was big enough to play red rover in. It ran the width of the house, with a high, sloped ceiling and a huge stone fireplace. Indian silks shimmered in the windows, and Persian carpets rioted on the polished floor. Bronze lanterns beaten with Fiji hammers glared fiercely from the rafters, and Chinese statuary crouched in every nook. And then there was the furniture, to which every creature on earth might have given a horn, hide, bone, or feather. At first sight, it stunned me like a whack to the head. I took a step back, only to be poked in the ribs by the tip of a large, wooden palm leaf—a mail tray, mounted on a real elephant’s leg.
    â€œI know,” Aunt Buzzy said, laughing. “It’s like a museum. Or like a museum warehouse .”
    â€œVery…impressive” was the word my mother chose.
    â€œThe trouble with Titus is he can’t say no to any little pretty that catches his eye. And I can’t either. I just adore everything he brings home. We were hoping you could help us decorate, Mattie. You’re the only one of us with any taste.” Aunt Buzzy raised her voice to call, “Solomon! Esperanza! We’re home!”
    Dropping her voice again, she added, “Now where could Ranger be? I told him to stay nearby to welcome you. Though it’s hard to keep him close these days, he’s always wandering… Esperanza! I’m afraid they step a lot more lively when Titus is the one calling. But he’s back east until the end of June. Solomon! Oh, thank you, Masaji.”
    The chauffeur had dragged in our trunk and was just now setting our two suitcases beside it. He touched his cap to Aunt Buzzy, who was darting from one doorway to the next, peering, calling, taking off her hat, and pulling off her gloves one finger at a time. The doorway on the left side of the fireplace stood open, and from it drifted a jaunty tune played on the gramophone. I wondered if there was a dance going on in the servants’ quarters.
    â€œI may have to go to the kitchen myself and… Oh, Solomon. There you are.”
    A dark-featured man with straight, black hair like an Indian’s had appeared in the open doorway, no expression on his face whatsoever. “Señora,” was all he said.
    â€œThese are our guests: my sister, Mrs. Ransom, and her daughters, Miss Isobel and Miss Sylvia. Please ask Esperanza to bring some lemonade and tea cakes and…do we have any melon?”
    Instead of answering the question, he just said “Señora” again and departed with scarcely a glance at us. My mother would have settled his hash in a hurry—and wanted to, I could tell. But Aunt Buzzy just kept flitting, unfazed by surly housemen. “Where is that boy? I told him to… There he is. RANGER!” she hollered out one of the open windows on the west side. “We’re home. Please come in and say hello!”
    Then she turned to us with a radiant smile, as though her main problem had just solved itself. “He’s a good boy. Just a little preoccupied these days. Goodness, what am I thinking? Let me take those jackets and hats, and we’ll act like you’re here to stay.”
    While shrugging off my coat, I noticed a youth framed by the doorway on the right of the gigantic fireplace. This door had to be reached by three flagstone