I Opened The Trunk In The Attic, The Ancient Photograph Looked Just Like Me

• Leisle Kuhle, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2019

I smile at the chubby faced toddler in my lap. His trusting arms embrace my neck as he begs me to tell him my story for perhaps the hundredth time. I am easily won over by his entreaties and so I begin…
The leather straps dangerously creaked as I eased the dusty trunk open. Holding up the bulky torch I peered into the dim interior of the well-travelled trunk. Gingerly I sifted through moth ridden garments, crumbling letters, and fading photographs from a bygone era. There was certainly a lot of stuff in here.
I shifted myself into a slightly less uncomfortable position wedged between the wall and trunk and prepared for a long afternoon.
Before long I had carefully removed the contents of the trunk, namely: a suspiciously moist perfume bottle – with no perfume, some fraying bits of lace, seventeen buttons, half a dozen garments of different colours and styles, twenty three deeply romantic letters, a hideous pair of lace-up boots, seven bulky old-fashioned rings and necklaces, a chipped but beautiful tea set, a journal with minuscule unreadable lines, and a stack of torn black and white photographs kept together with a piece of string.
The last find was what interested me the most. Here was a splendid chance to find what I so needed. The first few were of a family all dressed up in their finest gowns with grim expressions standing around an elderly matron carrying a primped-up poodle. The next was a perfectly grand mansion standing upon perfectly manicured lawns and surrounded by perfectly trimmed hedges. Yes, very nice I thought but not quite what I was looking for.
Idly thumbing through a couple more, I came to one showing a teenage girl with hair neatly coiffed and dressed like a miniature adult. Her collar was buttoned tightly up almost to her chin and her sleeves, frilly and puffy, ended at her wrist showing long elegant fingers wrapped around a lacy fan. She had had an unnaturally slim, curved waist, the trademark of a tightly laced whaleboned corset.
But what really caught my eye was her face. Her eyes; dark and smouldering beneath elegantly arched brows, had a sort of confident smug look about them. Delicate lips were held in a patronising smile and altogether she looked like someone who had every right to be where she was.
And then it clicked.
The eyes. The lips. The face. I was the girl in the photograph. Well, it wasn’t actually me, of course, but if I was dolled up like her; I very well could have been. Scarcely daring to breath, I flipped over the photograph to see in neat script the fading words, ‘Audrey Victoria Edwards, Born May 14th 1901.’ She must have been my great - grandmother.
I could have sobbed with relief. All those years I had been searching; searching for the lost family I never had. Finally, I held a piece of my family’s puzzle; small though it may be. I had never met any of my family before but when I looked into her beautiful eyes, so like mine, I felt like I had known her-really known her-all my life.
I had found my family within that dear, ancient photograph, so long tucked away in an abandoned old trunk in the attic.
I was home.