Dear Aunt Myrna

by Kit Duncan

We had finished breakfast half an hour earlier. Sunday was the only morning Mama let the dishes soak. She had carefully scrutinized me after I dressed and checked to make sure I didn't have any eggs between my teeth after I brushed them. Satisfied, she brushed my tight little ringlets into a circular cushion that bounced half way around the back of my neck. I fidgeted, frowned, and scratched my head, and Mama scolded me to hold still.

  "Laura, does this tie go?" Papa called from across the hall.

  "There!" she patted me on my shoulder as she stood up. "I think you're all set. Go sit in the living room until we're ready. Don't forget your chapel veil."

  "Which one?" I asked.

  "The white one." She turned around and told Papa, "No. I think the paisley will be better," and the two of them walked together down the hall toward their room.

  I opened the second drawer of the dresser and retrieved the little round veil folded neatly in a clear plastic case. I put it on, then took it off and clutched it in my white gloved hand. Why do people wear gloves in the summertime, I wondered. But I wasn't very interested in the answer, and I walked down the hall.

  Aunt Myrna was sitting in the white Morris chair reading the Sunday paper. She was wearing thin spectacles, reading glasses, Mama had called them.

  "You're not ready," I said flatly. "You can't go to Mass wearing pants."

  Aunt Myrna glanced at me casually as she turned the page. "I'm not going."

  "Not going?" I was incredulous.

  "Not going," she repeated.

  "How can you not go?"

  "Easy," she answered, and she did not even glance at me this time. "I just sit here on my big, fat butt."

  "Don't you believe in God and the Holy Virgin Mother?" I shrieked. For a split of a second I envisioned my aunt's large body roasting like a spit-roast pig in an eternal furnace as the devil, smiling hideously, slowly turned the rotisserie. Aunt Myrna lowered the paper and cocked her head a little at an angle, peering at me over the top edges of her glasses. She let the paper slide into her lap and took off the glasses. I could tell she didn't know what to say.

  "Come on, Walter, we'll be late if we don't get a move on!" Mama was rustling up the hall, and Papa was soon in step behind her. Mama grabbed my white gloved hand, invited Aunt Myrna to help herself to anything she wanted, and Papa shut the door behind us.

  St Leonard's School was attached to St Leonard's Church. It was only half a mile from our house. I walked it nearly every day of the school year. If there was nothing interesting happening along the way, which was seldom the case, I could be from my front door to my classroom in twenty minutes. I never understood why it was, then, that on Sundays we always drove one of our cars to Mass.

  Vatican II was just around the corner. While I loved the ritual of high Mass, with the nuns in the balcony chanting back and forth with Father Emerson, and the great pipe organ playing through Communion, I generally preferred the brevity of low Mass. Quick, to the point, and back home, lickity split.

  Noon Mass was always high. "Why can't we go at 8:00 or 10:30? I had once asked Mama. Because, she had answered, they're low. So? So, she had explained, high Mass is more spiritually refreshing.

  Papa had leaned down when she left the room and whispered in my ear, "Plus, you get to sleep in longer."

  I worried about Aunt Myrna's eternal damnation all through Mass and was relieved, when we returned home, to find that God had not struck her dead. She was just finishing the paper.

  "Have a nice time?" she asked as we came through the front door.

  "You don't have a nice time at Mass!" I retorted.

  "I see," she nodded her head. Her lack of religious insight baffled me, and I shook my head sadly as I walked down the hall to my room.

  Moments later, Aunt Myrna's spiritual welfare firmly shoved from my mind, I ran back up the hallway in my jeans and tee shirt and Keds, and out the front door. I came back inside five minutes later and found Mama and Papa looking through the newspaper on the couch. Aunt Myrna had disappeared.

  "What's wrong, Sweetie," Mama asked.

  "Watsons aren't home," I complained. "Their car's gone and no one answered the door."

  "Oh, that's right," Mama said. "They're having, what do they call it, Walter?"

  "Fellowship." He was reading the sports page and did not look up.

  "Fellowship," Mama repeated. "And then they're going to Emily's parents until evening services.

  They'll be gone all day, Honey. I'm sorry, I thought I told you."

  "You didn't," I said with a pout.

  "I'm sorry, Sweetie," Mama said. But I still hadn't completely forgiven her for the pin curls, and I expected to hold a grudge against her at least until supper.

  "Besides," Mama added as she turned a page. "It's clouding up. I think it's probably going to rain anyway. You think so, Dear?"

  Papa grunted in agreement. "See?" Mama said to me. "It's going to rain. I'm afraid you may have to stay inside today."

  It was turning into a miserable day all right. My scalp was still itching, Danny and Timmy were gone, and now I was going to be cooped up inside all afternoon. I didn't think life could get any worse.

  Since the day was already shot, I didn't figure there was much I could do to make it any worse. I went to my bedroom and sat heavily on my bed and looked around.

  My bedroom was not a playroom. That's what the Black Room was for, Mama had mandated. The bedroom's function was to sleep and change clothes, and not much more than that. So, except for a few minor stuffed toys, there wasn't much in that room to hold my attention. And the stuffed toys were more for show, I think. Pillows, really. My room was beautiful. But it wasn't much fun. I sighed a deep, pathetic sigh, but no one could hear me.

  Lost Horizon sat on the dresser. What the heck, I thought. The day's shot anyhow. Reading couldn't ruin a day if the day was already ruined. I grabbed the book and opened to the second paragraph. The first sentence was short, succinct, and clear. The second sentence had four words I did not know. I had frowned many times today, and I frowned again. Dangling the book with one hand I walked up the hallway to the living room. My parents were still reading the paper.

  "Where's my Webster?" I asked Mama.

  "I put it on the bookshelf in the White Room, right next to the encyclopedias," Mama looked up at me and smiled. She wanted forgiveness but she didn't beg for it. Besides, she knew that time would heal both my tender scalp as well as my aggravated heart.

  "Thank you," I said politely. There's nothing so annoying to folks who adore you as being polite to them. Politeness sharpens the edge on the softness that is intimacy.

  "You're welcome, Honey," she said, and she returned to her paper.

  I went to the basement, found the Webster's, and, both books in hand, climbed up on the couch. I tossed the dictionary on the couch next to me and picked up Hilton. I figured since the dictionary was handy I may as well look up the words I didn't know from the first paragraph before starting the second.

  Some of the words just didn't sound interesting enough for me to learn their meaning. And "Tempelhof," like the ever mysterious "M.V.O.," has never generated enough enthusiasm for me to research. They lie dormant in my mind, and I am satisfied in my not knowing.

  Other words, though, captivated me by their very sounds. They were strong, promising words. "Disillusionment," "equanimity," "diminished," "patronized," and of course, "priggish" - now these were enticing, exciting words that merited my study. I forgot "celibacy."

  I became quite engrossed in my intellectual development, rotating between the two books, and suddenly feeling Very Smart. I heard a commode flush in the distance, but I had been brought up hearing the flushing of toilets, so I didn't pay much attention.

  Seconds later I bolted straight up when I heard Aunt Myrna say hello to me.

  "Oh, I'm sorry, Kate," she said, but she didn't sound as sorry as she did amused. "I didn't startle you, did I?" She came around the couch and was facing me. She held a book in one hand. Her reading
glasses dangled from her other hand.

  "Actually," I said with a good deal of indignation in my voice, "You did!"

  "Oh," and the air shifted out of her sails. She sat heavily into the plaid chair. "Sorry," she muttered.

  "That's okay," I growled.

  Aunt Myrna put on her glasses and opened her book. I returned to my dictionary. I didn't want to sit with her, but I didn't want to retreat, either. I was hoping that my presence was annoying her, but if it was she gave no indication. Trapped in my obstinance, I continued reading and looking up words.

  I finished looking up the words in the first paragraph and then re-read the whole paragraph. Satisfied, I began the second paragraph. I surmised, judging from Hilton's frequent use of capital letters, that many of the words I did not recognize in his second paragraph were the names of people or places. I didn't bother looking them up. I was sure they weren't that important anyway. With them safely accounted for, I only had to look up four or five words.

  Sister Mary Frances had been right. If I sounded the words out I really could figure out how to say most of them. Unfortunately, I had not yet mastered the great skill of sounding out words quietly. I had to say them out loud, and if I had to say them out loud, Aunt Myrna, by virtue of her close proximity, had to hear them out loud. She fidgeted in her chair a few times, and she turned the pages with more strength than it takes to turn a page. She sighed deeply, but kept reading.

  At least an hour passed in this fashion, both of us too stubborn to relinquish our positions, and both of us absorbed in the worlds of our books. It was toward the middle of the third paragraph that I finally got stumped on a word. I couldn't figure out how to pronounce it. Nothing sounded right, and the more I repeated it, the more frustrated I got. The more frustrated I became the louder I spoke the syllables.

  "Hi Ate Us. Hi Hate Us. I Hate Us!"

  "Everything all right down there?" Papa called from upstairs.

  Aunt Myrna yelled up, "We're fine! Just reading!"

  The refrigerator door slammed shut and I heard Papa's footsteps above us walk through the dining room and back into the living room.

  I looked over at my aunt, and she was smiling at me.

  "Let's take a look, shall we?" Aunt Myrna moved next to me on the couch and arched her neck over the book. "Where is the little varmint?"

  I sheepishly pointed at the venomous word on the page. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be angry or grateful at her intrusion. But the afternoon was wearing on, and I was getting tired of being in a bad mood. Even my aggravation at Mama was starting to dissipate.

  "Ah, yes," Aunt Myrna adjusted her glasses and leaned away from me a little. "That IS a nasty little teaser, isn't it?" I nodded but said nothing.

  "Well, first let's spell it out. H-I-A-T-U-S. Hi-a-tus. You had it right the first time, Kate. That's exactly how it's pronounced. Hiatus."

  "Hi Ate Us?" I repeated. "That doesn't make any sense at all."

  "Well, let's look it up and see."

  I flipped the pages of the dictionary to the H's and ran my finger down the columns of words until I found the demon. My finger quit moving and I studied the entry.

  "What's it say?" Aunt Myrna asked.

  I read the definition out loud slowly, then looked up at her.

  "Well, what's it mean?" she asked.

  I started to read the definition again. She's old, I thought, maybe she didn't hear me the first time.

  "No, Kate," Aunt Myrna interrupted me. "I know what it says. You already read it. What I want to know now is what you think it means."

  I looked puzzled. She smiled at me, her eyes twinkling. "Do you know what it means to paraphrase?" she asked.

  "Paraphrase?" I repeated. "I guess it's a pair of phrases."

  She chuckled, but I knew she wasn't laughing at me. Then she stopped, cocked her head a little, and said, "Well, actually, you're right, in a way. A paraphrase is when you take an idea and reword it, sort of make it your own."

  "So you wind up with a pair of phrases."

  "Yes," she said, still smiling. "You do. You wind up with a pair of phrases. So," her eyes pointed to the dictionary in my lap. "Can you give me a paraphrase of the meaning of 'hiatus?'"

  I read the definition again, then cleared my throat as if I were preparing to deliver the most important speech in the world. "A hiatus is a pause in time, or maybe space, or maybe both. A hiatus is a gap between one point and another. It's kind of like when something takes a vacation." I stopped suddenly and looked up at her. "You're on a hiatus right now!" I exclaimed.

  Aunt Myrna tossed her head back and laughed, "Yes, I suppose I am, Kate!" she agreed.

  My father's voice was at the top of the stairs again. "Are you two sure you're okay?"

  "We're fine!" Aunt Myrna and I yelled in a chorus. And then we laughed together for the first of what would become many times.

  CHAPTER 6