Jayne Bowers

Issue 16

Flash Nonfiction

Late afternoon on Christmas Eve, and I still hadn’t braved the annual holiday visit to my aunt. With duty and dread duking it out, I put the gift bags in the backseat and slowly drove the five miles to deliver tidings of great joy and some bedroom shoes, a new robe, and some cash to Mama’s younger sister. At one time, Lottie had been fun and feisty—now she was consumed with bitterness and regret.

Arriving at the chain link fence and metal gate, I sat for a few moments surveying the sad state of the yard and trailer. Just inside of the enclosure was a small storage building where Lottie’s older son, Lewis, had spent much of the last year of his life smoking Lucky Strikes. While living, he kept the small patch of land in front of the shed neat. No weeds. No debris. Today it was a chaotic jumble of clutter and rubble, filled with his younger brother’s collection of discarded “treasures” he’d found by the wayside and tossed in the bed of his black Toyota Tundra.

With a glance at the gray wintry sky, I forced myself to get out of the car and trudged toward the fifty-year-old mobile home. The rest of the yard was junky, too, strewn with discarded scrap metal, children’s bikes, old tires, a rusty lawn mower, and other items salvaged by my cousin Jim. Aunt Lottie complained that the yard looked like Fred Sanford’s place, but her grumbling yielded nothing but grunts of irritation from her only living son. If he’d told her once, he’d told her a thousand times that he had plans for the items.

I walked up the three steps to the front door of the trailer. It was time to put ill will and resentment toward Lottie to the side. Yes, she’d taken advantage of my mother, her older sis, draining her pocketbook and peace. Reasoning that the only way to stop Lottie’s constant demands on her time and resources was to die, my siblings and I held her responsible for our mother’s early demise.

From inside, Lottie shouted, “It’s unlocked. Come on in.”  

I pushed the door open, and there she sat, ensconced in her beige recliner wearing what appeared to be a deep green sweatshirt, likely decorated with Santa and his reindeer flying through the sky. She’d always gussied up for major holidays, including Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving. From across the room, I recognized the small Christmas tree decorated with blue and white lights as one Lewis had chosen the year before he was killed in a head-on collision. 

As I leaned in for a light hug, I recognized her Christmas attire was actually a deep green velour robe that had belonged to my mother. I immediately conjured up visions of Mama flitting around the kitchen wearing this robe that zipped up the front, embellished with thin red piping at the neck. 

Grinning, Lottie asked whether I recognized the green robe. 

“Yes, it was Mama’s,” I whispered.

As she continued to smile, the memory of a day when I’d received a phone call from a friend about three women loading some of my mother’s belongings into the back of a small beige SUV came to mind. Shaking with anger and resentment, I’d jog-walked the short distance between my house and Mama’s, and as I got to the backyard, there they were, my aunts coming down the back steps with arms laden with blouses, shorts, dresses, and even shoes that had belonged to my mother. 

The funeral had only been eight days earlier. Hadn’t they taken advantage of my mother while she was alive? And just what were they going to do with shoes two sizes smaller than their feet? 

“What are y’all doing with Mama’s things? And how did you get in?” I’d said.

On Christmas Eve twenty years later, I pulled away from Lottie. We stared at one another, me with irritation and her with bewilderment. I caressed the soft velour of the robe and began to feel calm.

Lottie had loved my mother, too.