Pearl Mystery

After almost thirty years today I just might have worked something out.

When I was about ten my aunty F (maternal uncle's wife) gave me some knickknacks for Christmas. Aunty F is into drama and theatre. When I was growing up she would often give me her old costume jewelry, which I loved. That year she gave me a basket with a bottle of perfume and a couple of long (fake) pearl necklaces. One black, one white. Loved them. Wore them that day, thought they were boss.

The necklaces were a pair. Both same length, same plastic material, same light weight, same threaded stuff the bead things were strung on. Same pearly painted finish, only difference was the colour underneath the finish.

Wore them all the time when I would dress up like Madonna, who I worshiped. Wore them to family events, any excuse, I wore them.

Fast forward several years later I'm about sixteen or so. Haven't dressed like Madonna in a while or worn those pearls but have them on my dressing table mirror with other necklaces as cool decorations.

Aunty F is a bit of a Karen.

One day it's aunty F on the phone (mid 90's landline), she's asking for me. Random, I thought, but okay. She's asking me about the black pearls she gave me that year, do I remember them? Do I still have them? She didn't mean to give them to me, can I give them back to her? Verbal diarrhea. I told her I remember the pearls and the perfume but they're white not black. I say sure she can have them back that I don't wear them anymore. She asks me if I remember the black ones. I say she gave me white plastic pearls and some perfume. I ask her why it's important and what made her think of that Christmas? Silence for a few seconds, doesn't answer the question. Keeps insisting she gave me black pearls that year but that she just realized and it was a mistake. She didn't mean to give them to me. I asked do pearls come in black?

Here's the thing I did know what black pearls were. I learned a bit from my grandmother who had a side hustle as an antiques dealer in her florist shop. If aunty F had a good reason, and she wasn't playing me for a fool, I wouldn't have played her back. In all likelihood I would have given them back to her. But I figured she'd seen some black pearls on Antiques Roadshow and flipped out about her old plastic theatre ones being potentially real. It's just the sort of thing she'd do.

A day or so after this I took the black pearls off my mirror and put them in a jewelry box. I did this because my mirror was visible from my bedroom door and if my aunty and uncle were to visit, well yeah. When I opened my jewelry box to put the black ones in I found a pearl necklace (white pearls), real ones. I didn't own a pearl necklace, not a real one anyway. I thought it must be mum's. Because I often borrowed her jewelry. So I thought she must have put it in as a surprise. But I didn't know she had a pearl necklace. So I ask her and sure enough it wasn't her. Confirmed she'd never had a pearl necklace.

Same thing with my friends, no one had left any jewelry at my place and no one had pearls. The only person I knew with real pearls was my grandmother and I didn't borrow her jewelry. The next time I was at my grandmother's I asked her if she'd snuck a necklace into my jewelry box, said she didn't. That would be out of character for her if she did. She said something like "I think it's best not to question these things." I was on a mission to solve it for a few weeks, then I lost interest.

I've never worn the pearls because the string is too fragile. I'd be scared of breaking them. But I've always kept them. They just sit there with my other jewelry as a mystery I never solved.

Then today I had this kind of cool kind of sucky realization and now I'm in a moral dilemma. A memory of a conversation at a family gathering about twenty years ago.

I was in my early twenties, it was late, probably Christmas night. I was listening to my stepmum talk about her mother who had passed years before. My stepmum was talking to the table, so a large group. She was telling people about her sister in law, another Karen, and what this woman did after stepmum's mum passed away. She told everyone that her mum had a pearl necklace and it was the only thing she wanted after she'd passed. Everyone in her family knew and wanted my stepmum to have the pearls. But her sister in law took everything she could, including the pearls, and other things other family members were agreed to have. (There was no will.) I vaguely remember this from when I was younger. This woman took the lot, books, clothes, jewelry, plants, everything and anything. She'd go early and pile as much stuff into her car as possible. It was sick.

Stepmum tried to get her sister in law to give her the pearls but she wouldn't.

My stepmum is still cut up about the pearls today. I think she always will be. There's my dilemma and big realization. Have I had V's pearls all these years? Are these the mystery pearls that turned up in my jewelry box? The dates fit. V, stepmum's mum, passed away not long before my aunty F went on a black pearls bender. Another thing about V is she was always psychic when it came to phones, or people calling. She'd pick up and say "Hello Steve", or whoever, even if they hadn't called in ten years, it was freaky cool. I'd say V would have a way of listening into my ridiculous conversation with aunty F that day.

I recently submitted some events around V. You'd think I'd have pieced this together while typing that up, because there's some jewelry themed wtf-ness in there.

The dilemma is my stepmum: biggest non-believer of all time. If these are her pearls; how did I get them? Because 'they just turned up one day' isn't going to cut it with her. I worked all this out about six hours ago. It's now quarter to two Sunday morning. I'm usually up this late on weekends. Can't stop thinking about it.

Maybe it's best to let this one slide and do nothing. But then if V gave these to me to give to stepmum, then I'm the baddy. But V should have put them in stepmum's jewelry box. But stepmum is always leaving her jewelry in stupid places so maybe V thought stepmum wouldn't notice the pearls if they just showed up at her place. Erggh. Bloody ghosts!

This is like one of those maths problems with two many details. If Peter has six apples and Mary likes Joseph, how many drivers does a buggy have?

I need to sleep on this one. But I think I figured it out after all these years. Who else would have dropped off pearls? Stuff doesn't just happen randomly.

Thanks for reading.