I was fairly certain I did not want to meet my dad's older sister. Judging from my parents' enthusiasm at her pending arrival, it was clear I was going to be forced to share their attention with this stranger. I lay in bed that night hoping she would change her mind, hoping my grandfather's old truck would break down in Columbia or thereabouts. I wasn't particular where it happened just so long as it happened. What, I wondered, could an old woman offer to enhance my world? I had everything I needed, and what I didn't need was anyone else in my home diverting my parents from me.
By the next morning I had forgotten all about Aunt Myrna and the truck, and I wasn't even bothered about the possibility that a potential squatter might be looming in the dark shades of the woods waiting to take possession of my cherished hollow log. Life was waiting for me at the foot of the back deck steps, and I lunged at it with full, unbridled, and, to my mother's dismay, unkempt force.
For a long time, from the time I could leave the house and return without my mother's piercing hawk eyes that shadowed my every move, I thought my name was either "Mess" or "Something Else." "You're a Mess!" she'd scold me while gently removing my grass stained clothes. Or, "My goodness, you are "Something Else," she'd say, laughing in exasperation while she bathed me for perhaps the third or forth time of the day.
"What is this, sap?"
"Bubble gum. Timmy?"
"Never mind," she sighed.
Mama finally wearied of her crusade to keep me tidy, sterile, and "ladylike." As long as I was reasonably clean at bedtime and for Sunday Mass, she was content. Or at least quiet.
"It's hopeless, Walter!" I overheard her despair late on night after I had been put to bed. "She gets into everything!"
My dad chuckled softly. "Yeah, you're right, Laura. That little girl is just a Mess!"
"Yes," Mama giggled, "She's Something Else alright!"
"The little Imp," my dad said, and I went to sleep wondering if an imp was a good thing or a bad thing.
And so, having dismissed her from my mind for a week, it was quite a surprise to me on a Tuesday morning, around eleven or so, when Aunt Myrna pulled into our driveway.
Danny and Timmy and I were playing in the creek bed. Mrs Watson had procured three bags of plastic toys for us early that morning, an assortment of multicolored cowboys and Indians who came apart at the waist and rode black, brown, white, and gray ponies. My favorite was the gray ponies, and Timmy accused me of hogging them until, under Danny's instruction, I acquiesced and traded him for one of his black ones.
It didn't take me long to match cowboy tops with Indian bottoms, and vice verse. Timmy scoffed at me, saying it wasn't natural, and Danny scolded him and said I could be interracial if I liked. Timmy started to argue and Danny hushed him.
Timmy and I built a little Indian camp among the larger rocks in the creek bed, and Danny secured enough twigs from the giant oak tree that was the bed's lush canopy to build a fairly respectable fort for his cowboys five feet from our camp.
"But what about this guy?" Timmy complained, pointing at a little Indian wearing a cowboy hat and holding up a pistol. "He don't belong here!"
"Doesn't," Danny corrected. "Just pretend, will you?"
"Yeah," Timmy said with a sharp edge. "I'll pretend you're not my brother."
"Fine with me."
Their squabble did not concern me, so long as I was able to keep my little man the way I designed him. Life was about getting my way, I had my way, so where was the problem? Besides, what was all the fuss about a guy having both Indian and cowboy features? Timmy, I said to myself, was just being narrow minded.
One of Timmy's Indians had just engaged in friendly fire and killed my cowboy Indian, and I had grabbed his shirt, cocked back my fist, and was just about to throw him a punch when we heard it.
"What the hell is that!" Danny never cussed unless he was very excited. Cussing is very unmanly, his father had counseled him, the mark of someone too ignorant to find appropriate words. Danny revered his father, and took most of what he said to heart. Except when he got really excited.
"Sounds like a damned tornado!" Timmy blurted out, and Danny shushed him.
"Quit talking dirty!"
"You started it!"
"And I'm finishing it!"
"Yeah," I interrupted, "but what the hell is that damned noise anyhow?"
Whatever it was, the roar grew louder. We all jumped up at the same time when a small explosion erupted from the tail pipe.
"Backfire," Danny assured us with authority. "Probably a hole in the muffler, by the sounds of it.
Must be going fifty miles an hour, I'm guessing."
We were all standing up now, straining to see what horrific monster could make such a racket. We didn't have to wait long.
The truck came into view as it careened passed the corner of the Watson's house, and we heard the shrill of brakes having their hearts stomped on. The truck disappeared in front of our house, and finally skidded to a stop. We heard a crunching sound as gears shifted, and then, the monster tamed, the truck slowly pulled into our driveway and came to a docile stop.
"Lands sakes!" Danny said. "Who is that?"
My mother's head popped out the back door and she yelled, "Katie Arlene Morganstern! Come on in now!" She was wiping her hands with a dish cloth and when she saw she had my attention, she added, "Go in through the basement and wash up, and put on those clean clothes I laid out for you there." She added, "Good morning, boys!"
"'morning, Mrs Morganstern!"
Mama waved and closed the back door hurriedly.
I left my camp and my dead man and my gray ponies to Danny and Timmy's keeping and moped round shouldered to the basement door. At no time in my childhood can I ever recall my mother's use of my full name being associated with a happy event.
I was sure that meeting Aunt Myrna would not be a happy event.
"And don't forget to brush the tangles out of your hair!" my mother yelled from the top of the basement steps. I heard her quick footsteps waltz across the hardwood floors into the dining room and living room, and she went out the front door.
I scrubbed my face until the white was flaking off. Well, not that hard, perhaps, but pretty hard nonetheless. I changed my clothes reluctantly, replacing my comfortable jeans that, in my mother's words, could stand by themselves, and with great trepidation and aggravation, put on the pink Swiss polka dotted dress with the lace collar and the itchy full slip underneath. I replaced my Keds with a pair of white patent Mary Janes. All I needed was my chapel veil and I was all set for Mass, I scowled to myself.
I climbed up on the footstool in front of the sink and looked in the mirror. My hair didn't look that bad. I combed my fingers through each side of my head twice.
Normally I would not have remembered to deposit my dirty clothes by the washing machine. But this morning I was looking for opportunities to delay the inevitable meeting with an old, unwelcome woman.
I carried the clothes through the black tiled room and pushed back the green plastic curtains where the Maytag washer and dryer sat. I folded my jeans as neatly as I knew how, which in retrospect wasn't really very neatly. I fumbled a little with the red tee shirt, then gave up and tossed it on top of the jeans. I wasn't sure what to do with my socks, roll them in a ball or just place them on top of the shirt. I had little experience being neat.
I heard the front screen door slam and two sets of feet entering the house. The sound of women laughing and chattering filtered down through the beams, and I realized I could no longer postpone my fate. I threw the socks on the wadded up tee shirt and didn't bother to pick up the one that slipped to the concrete floor. I climbed with heavy feet up the stairs, walked through the kitchen, and peeked hesitantly around the corner of the dining room.
They were sitting on the sofa. Two large pieces of luggage and a small overnight bag sat idly on the floor just inside the door.
"Oh, Myrna," my mother clapped her hands. It looked very awkward to me; my mother was not typically big on clapping h
er hands. "This is our little Katie Arlene! Come here, Sweetie," and she reached toward me.
I obeyed my mother's open arms, but without much enthusiasm or speed. When finally I arrived by her side, she brushed my hair with her fingers and muttered under her voice, "I thought I told you to?."
"I did!" I swatted her hands away, not so much with disrespect as to make a statement of sorts.
Mama kissed my cheek and swung me around to face the woman sitting next to her. "This is your Aunt Myrna, Katie!" She got one last sweep of her hand to the back of my head.
Aunt Myrna looked as unenthusiastic about meeting me as I was her. Not actually unhappy, I guess, more like uncomfortable, the way people are who must get through uncertain moments. She said nothing, and I said nothing, and so my mother kept talking. I have no idea what she was saying, and I think Aunt Myrna wasn't paying much attention, either. We were sizing each other up.
She wasn't really a fat woman, just very bulky. Her clothes were drab, shades and layers of browns and tans and off whites. I wondered why she was wearing so many clothes in July. They were cotton, light weight, but there just seemed to be so many of them. Every part of her from her thick neck down, except for her hands, was covered with clothing. She was wearing pants, baggy and wrinkled. What they lacked in fashion they seemed to make up for in comfort and wearability.
I did not often see women wearing pants, and I admired her immediately, though I was still resolved to not like her. I reasoned that I could respect her wardrobe without actually liking her. The problem with being ladylike, I had realized several years earlier, was that one was always preoccupied with shielding one's underpants from public view. I had too many important things on my mind to be bothered with whether or not anyone else could see "my business." Pants, in my view, were practical.
So I could see, whatever character flaws this large person sitting on my couch possessed, Aunt Myrna must be a practical woman. I could match my dad's fantasies dream for dream, but I could be as practical as my mother as well.
Still, it would take much more than her ability to shield the eyes of the world from her undergarments to impress me.
There were two questions that every child in the 1960's dreaded when they met a new adult. The first was, "How old are you, Dear?" The second was, "And what do you want to be when you grow up?"
Even with a good imagination, I could not, without drawing the stern ire of my parents, come up with a snappy response to the first question. There are only so many ways to say, "I'm six years old" without sounding like the ever smirking Eddie Haskell. My parents gave me a wide berth in many areas, but they did not tolerate blatant disrespect.
However, the second question gave me no end of entertaining responses that kept my parents baffled and myself amused until I was nine years old when the world seemed to lose interest in my potential occupations. I want to be a diplomat to the United Nations. I want to be a Safari guide in Kenya. I want to be a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force. I want to be a biostatistician. I want to be a Zen monk in the Himalayans, or Los Angeles. I want to be an astronaut. (I only used this once; I discovered nearly every child in the early sixties at one time or another wanted to escape to the moon. I did not want to be ordinary.)
Whatever occupation I thought might sound the most outrageous, that's what I answered that I wanted to be.
To her credit, or perhaps she just didn't think about it, Aunt Myrna never asked me either question. Perhaps she forgot to ask. Perhaps she just didn't care about my age and ambitions. Anyhow, she never asked, but I answered both questions in due time.
The answer to her first unasked question came only half an hour after we met.
"Katie, Honey, why don't we show your Aunt Myrna to her room?" Mama stood up, and Aunt Myrna stood up.
My God, she was HUGE! Her thick frame towered over my mother; she was nearly as tall as my dad. She could squash me with one slip and there'd be nothing left of me but a stain on the floor.
"You'll catch flies, you leave your mouth open like that," Aunt Myrna said with no emotion, merely a statement of fact, and I snapped my mouth shut.
"Here," Mama said as she lifted one of the large brown Samsonite cases off the floor. The weight nearly jerked her to her knees.
"Good Lord, Myrna, did you bring bricks with you?"
"Oh," Aunt Myrna apologized, "Here, I'll get that one." And without so much as an oomph, she was holding the bag effortlessly and looking around for direction. "Where to?"
Mama took the other bag with a little less struggle, but not much, and headed toward the hallway. She turned right at the first bedroom, and Aunt Myrna followed her.
I stood alone in the living room weighing whether or not I wanted to be proactive and appear welcoming or if I would prefer to be passive aggressive. The latter was more appealing to me, at least on the surface, but instead, I picked up the overnight case and followed my mother and aunt into the guest room.
"Well," my mother was saying as she deposited the suitcase on the floor by the bed. "We'll let you freshen up a bit." And without waiting for a response, she went into the kitchen, and I could hear the jingling of her fine bone China cups and saucers and spoons, and the sound of the teapot being placed on the stove.
I put the tiny case on the floor next to the one my mother had left behind and took one step back, then stared at the big woman. She ignored me at first, then picked up one of the suitcases, shook it a little, set it back down, and picked up the heavier one and set it on the bed. She glanced back at me. She wasn't smiling, but she wasn't frowning. I didn't feel I was in any imminent danger, so I held my position and watched suspiciously.
Aunt Myrna opened her suitcase gently, carefully, as if there were a great treasure trove within. All I saw were books. She sat down on the bed; the springs moaned in anguish but she seemed to not notice. Picking up one of the books she opened it, put her nose right next to the seam, and sniffed a long, drawn out sniff. Her eyes closed as if she were intoxicated.
"Now that's a classic!" she said, and for the first time I saw the twinkle in her eyes. "Care for a whiff?" She offered a sample of her elixir to me but I shook my head no.
"As you say," she grinned, set the book on the bed, and reached for a second book, and did the same thing. After she had inhaled the rich perfume of the old pages, she offered the book to me, and I reclined a second time. She smiled, closed the book, and placed it carefully on the bed next to the first one. She picked up a third book.
"Ah," she smiled coyly. "Now this one you will not be able to refuse." She opened the covers of the book as if caressing a lover, smelled its pages, and looked at me, but did not offer the book.
Perhaps I was tiring of her game. Perhaps I wanted to see what all the fuss was in smelling old books. Perhaps I just wanted to do something that I was not invited to do.
I walked quickly to her and stuck my nose into the book so quickly I almost lost my balance. She laughed, but it was not a condescending laughter.
"Yes," she said, "some books really can sweep you smack off your feet."
I had just enough time to take a quick smell of the musty book before I steadied myself. It was faint, but it was aromatic. I had never smelled anything so beauitful, a darkness mingled with light, a freshness transposed on oldness. It was delicious.
Aunt Myrna closed the book gently and handed it to me. "Lost Horizon by James Hilton. Always remember the authors of the books you read. Here," she handed me the book. "Read this, and we can talk about it sometime."
"Read it!" I countered with indignation. "I'm six years old! The biggest word I can read is 'something!'"
"Yes, yes," Aunt Myrna waved her hand, swatting away my objection. "And now you can read something else! Trust me on this. You will love it!"
My eyes narrowed and my voice lowered. I wanted to make sure my mother couldn't hear me, and I wanted my aunt to know that I was a contender to be taken seriously.
"I do not like being told what to do," I growled.
> I expected a retaliation as soon as the words left my lips. Instead she frowned, but her frown was at herself, not me.
"Yes, yes," my aunt said. "Yes, and rightly so. I was insensitive."
My glare softened; I was caught off guard by her verbal Aikido.
"Well," I stammered. "I don't want to be rude," and she smiled a wide grin exposing perfect top teeth that could only have been created in a dental lab. I reached for the book with both hands. "If it'll make you happy," and I took Hilton's book from her.
"Oh, it would tickle me to no end," she said, and her voice, while lacking wild intonation, seemed to be sincere.
I looked down at the book in my hands, and opened its pages again. I was getting ready to read fonts smaller than 14 point. I must be growing up.
"Is it mine to keep?" I asked.
"To keep?" a faint question mark etched across my aunt's face.
"You know," I clarified. "To keep. Are you giving it to me to keep?"
"Oh, Katie," she said. She spoke as a poet reads a sonnet. "One never gives or keeps a book. Books have their own lives, they are not be slaves to be owned. No. You take the book, and it's yours to care for as long as you want it, and someday maybe you'll return it to me, or maybe you'll pass it on to someone else, or maybe it'll just live on your book shelf all its life. But, Katie, you never own a book. You are entrusted with its care, and in turn, it shares its treasures and secrets?"
"?and smells?" I interjected.
"?and smells." She chuckled and paused, then added, "You have a dictionary?"
"Webster's Student."
"Well, that ought to work out okay. But if not, let me know. You'll want an Oxford before long."
I thought Oxfords were saddle shoes, and I had two pairs, one white and brown pair and another white and black pair. But there were many things I thought I knew that were soon to be challenged.
The challenging became my life.
CHAPTER 3