I loved my Aunt Julia with the same white-hot intensity I felt for Donny Osmond. I was her biggest fan. And, unlike Donny — who was only visible in the black and white glossy photos pinned over my headboard and occasionally on TV — I could see Aunt Julia perform in person pretty much whenever I wanted.
Only she wasn’t a singer. She was a storyteller.
The baby of my father’s family, she was the last of the twelve children still living at home with my grandparents. I think I must have been her favorite niece because I was the only one she — soon to be a high school senior — ever invited to sleep over. After the last day of awkward, boring third grade, I gulped down my supper, threw my pajamas and Barbies in a pillowcase and begged Daddy to take me to see Aunt Julia.
My excitement was spoiled by the sight of a big Winnebago with a Tennessee license plate in my grandparents’ driveway, which meant I would have to share my Aunt Julia time with Rhonda, my least favorite cousin. But to my relief, when it was time for bed, Rhonda proudly announced that she was too old for sleepovers with babies who played with dolls and would be spending the night in the RV, reading the latest issue of Seventeen.
I would have Aunt Julia to myself after all. I snuggled under the paisley swirls of her bedspread, admiring the way she had decorated her room. It was the way I wanted my room at home to look, instead of the way it did, with its matching white furniture and baby pink canopy and ruffly bedspread. Aunt Julia had psychedelic posters of long-haired hippy bands and a glossy photo of Karen Carpenter looking fierce as she played the drums. Big colored beads hung in the doorway to her closet.
There was also a poster from “Love Story,” a movie I had begged my parents to see when it came to the only theater downtown at Christmastime. It was “too grownup” for me, said Mama, who only took me to see cartoons or Disney movies. But Aunt Julia had seen it with her boyfriend, Jackie. Jackie was the son of the preacher at Cherry Grove Methodist but cuter and funnier than the typical PK. He had curly brown hair, a devilish grin and a Comets football letterman’s jacket. They had been going together for a whole year now and were bound to get married after they graduated. Aunt Julia wore his high school class ring, filled with wax to keep it from slipping off, and they went to the movies every Saturday night, either at the theater or the drive-in on the edge of town. Of course, they had seen “Love Story,” and Aunt Julia told me the whole movie later, playing Jenny and Oliver, tears rolling down her cheeks at the end when Jenny dies. That was probably better than the movie anyway.
The way she told stories was the real reason Julia was my favorite aunt. There were funny ones about how she cut those stuck-up city girls in high school down to size when they made fun of her and country friends. There were sad ones about car wrecks and reckless romances.
But my favorites were about the secret adventures she went on with Jackie, usually involving ghosts, crooks, or treasure hunts or sometimes all three, that she would tell in a voice all whispery and trembling. Even though they sounded like a “Scooby-Doo” cartoon — with its meddling teenagers and creepy old dudes — she always swore that her adventures were absolutely true. I believed her, partly because she told them so reluctantly, only after I begged and pleaded. I hoped she would have a story like that tonight.
Instead of sharing an adventure, though, she asked me what plans I had for the summer, which was really boring stuff like working at my neighbor’s tobacco farm and going to the American Legion swimming pool. She was still dressed in her halter top and miniskirt and a pair of white go-go boots that I coveted and, as I talked, she picked up the clothes I’d left scattered on the floor, folded them, and put them on a chair. Even doing chores, she looked glamorous, a lot like that glossy of Karen Carpenter, especially with her white headband pushing down her brown bangs and her big dark eyes framed by carefully applied feathery false eyelashes.
After turning off the overhead light, Aunt Julia sat on the bed and reached over to the nightstand to switch on the lava lamp. She smoothed the covers over me with her small, nail-bitten hands then leaned in so close her forehead almost touched mine. Her dark eyes shone, reflecting the lamp’s mysterious orange glow.
“Mary Sue,” she whispered, “did I tell you Jackie’s going to have to get a new football jacket?”
My whole body tensed at the clue she had dropped. My mouth went dry, and I had to swallow before I could whisper back, “No, you didn’t. What happened to the old one?”
Aunt Julia grinned in that way she did so her buck teeth didn’t show. She patted one of my hands in a reassuring way. “Now you just calm down, Mary Sue. It’s not like anybody died or got arrested.” She paused and puckered her lips in thought. “At least not yet. Not that I know of.”
“But what happened?” I begged.
She seemed not to hear me. “I’m kind of surprised it hasn’t been in the newspaper. But then again, the sheriff did tell us to keep things hush-hush for now. I probably shouldn’t say anything else.”
“Please? You know I won’t tell anybody.”
“Oh, honey, I know I can trust you.” She smoothed a piece of hair off my forehead. “But it’s scary and liable to keep you up at night.”
But that was the best kind of bedtime story! And I had a great comeback. “It might,” I acknowledged. “But what if it does? There’s no school tomorrow.”
She chuckled at that. “You got me there.” Then she got serious again. “But you can’t ever tell anybody else, cross your heart.”
This was the promise I always had to make when one of Aunt Julia’s stories was absolutely true, so I made the X on my chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said.
“Good girl,” she said, pulling the covers back over me and tucking me in before she began to tell me about the night back in April when she and Jackie went ghost-hunting at the Foster shack on Grassy Creek. I knew exactly the place she meant, a sagging shack with peeling tarpaper siding colored like bricks and half the windowpanes gone. The ghost of Old Man Foster supposedly still guarded the stash of silver and gold coins that he had kept hidden there in life. But Jackie didn’t believe in ghosts.
“The front door is just barely hanging by its hinges, so we have no trouble getting in,” Aunt Julia said. “We don’t have a flashlight, but the moon is shining in so bright through the windows, we can see everything downstairs. Not that there is much to see — a few broken-down chairs, lots of dust and cobwebs. And then a little old field mouse comes skittering across the floor and over the top of my foot, and I almost jump out of my skin.”
I almost did, too, because Aunt Julia had run her fingertips lightly across my arm when she was talking about how the mouse was skittering.
“But before I could say anything about the mouse, Jackie holds up his hand and points straight up. Then I hear it, too, kind of a clicking sound. So we start up the stairs.”
I pictured myself on the stairs behind them, closing my eyes tight. It was pitch black, so I had to feel my way, one hand skimming the rough stairwell wall, the other clutching the rabbit foot keychain Daddy had made for me for luck.
“When we get to the top, we can see just a little sliver of light from the crack under the door,” Aunt Julia whispered, “and we can hear something on the other side, going click, click, click.
“‘That must be Old Man Foster counting his coins,’ I say to Jackie real low. But it must not be low enough because all of a sudden the door flies open, and there is a man standing there. A real flesh and blood man, not a ghost. He is big and burly and has matted-up hair and a bushy beard. And a gun. A big old pistol. And he has it pointed right at Jackie.”
I surely would have run away by now. I was not as brave as Aunt Julia and Jackie.
“‘I ain’t afraid of you,’ says Jackie. He’s going to be a preacher like his daddy, and his faith is strong. I’m holding his hand real tight, and it feels cold as a river stone.
“‘Then maybe I won’t shoot you,’ the robber says. ‘Maybe I’ll shoot your girl.’”
I opened my eyes wide, scared to death at what was going to happen, even though Aunt Julia was sitting there right in front of me, safe as could be.
She wasn’t even looking my way, caught up in the story herself. “When he turns the gun on me, Jackie steps between us. Then the robber squeezes the trigger. And I feel the bullet slam into us both, like getting hit by a Mack truck. I throw my arms around Jackie. I’m bracing myself for him to fall down, but he never does. He’s still standing.
“Then he yells at the robber in a loud voice just like his daddy’s, ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord!’ And that robber didn’t know what to do.
“‘Who are you? What are you?’ He’s shouting at Jackie, looking all wild-eyed because he can see the bullet hole in Jackie’s football jacket and that Jackie’s still standing.
“Well, that robber turns tail and scrambles back into that attic room so fast he almost knocks down his kerosene lantern and the gold and silver coins piled up high on the table. He throws down his pistol and climbs out one of the busted dormer windows as fast as he can go.
“And after he’s gone, Jackie opens up his jacket and shows me the Bible he keeps in the pocket over his heart.” She paused dramatically, hand on her chest. “And it’s got a bullet that went clean through it, right to Revelations.”
But while I was still sucking in air at this miracle, the spell was broken by a loud grunt from my cousin Rhonda, who must have snuck back into the house during the story. I guess she changed her mind about not hanging out with babies because there she was, a chubby girl poured into a tank top and hot pants, standing in the doorway, shaking her head at Aunt Julia’s tale about the robber.
“Then show us the Bible,” Rhonda said in her new Tennessee twang. All last year, when her dad was managing a factory in South Carolina, she had drawled so slow you could hardly understand a word. Now that he had been transferred to Tennessee, she sounded like she was holding her nose when she talked. Wherever they were living, though, she was sure to let us know it was way better than back here in Southside Virginia.
Unfazed by Rhonda’s challenge, Aunt Julia bent forward to unzip her boots and take them off. “I don’t have it.” She put her boots in the closet, making its wooden beads swish and click, then ducked into the bathroom.
Rhonda threw herself on the foot of the bed. “So where is it?” She raised her voice so it could be heard over the sloshing sounds of Aunt Julia washing her face and brushing her teeth.
“It’s Jackie’s Bible. He keeps it in his nightstand next to his bed,” Aunt Julia said from the bathroom.
“And how do you know that?” Rhonda snickered, loud enough for me, but not Aunt Julia, to hear.
“What?” Aunt Julia opened the door, now dressed in her pink baby doll pajamas. She smelled fresh and clean, like mint and something vaguely medicinal, but nicer.
“I said, so how do we know it’s true?”
I stared at Rhonda. “That’s not what you said. You said…” But she pinched my leg through the covers to shut me up.
Aunt Julia didn’t seem to notice the ruckus. “Well, I’m sure Jackie would show it to you. But they left this morning on a summer mission trip to the Philippines. He’s going to be a preacher, just like his daddy.”
“Mm hmm,” Rhonda said, making her ugly smart aleck face at me.
“There is this,” Aunt Julia said, reaching deep into the back of the bottom drawer of her jewelry box. She held out a twenty-dollar gold coin to me, but Rhonda snatched it from my outstretched palm.
“We turned the money the robber left behind over to the sheriff, of course,” Aunt Julia said. “But he let us keep one of the coins as our reward.”
“See?” I said to Rhonda, snatching the coin back.
“That don’t prove nothing,” she said. “Daddy has one just like that. He showed it to me once. He said great-granddaddy gave one to each of his grandchildren when they were born.”
“She knows everything, don’t she?” Aunt Julia said to me, putting the coin back in its hiding place. Then she turned to her bookcase and slid books back until she retrieved a flat black box. “Like this one?” she asked, taking out the coin inside and handing it to Rhonda.
Rhonda grabbed it from her and held it close in front of her thick cat-eye glasses. “But it’s the same one,” Rhonda said. “The same year and everything.”
Aunt Julia grinned at me. “I guess they only made that one twenty-dollar gold piece that whole year.”
I laughed out loud.
Rhonda’s face turned red, and she threw the coin back at Aunt Julia. Then she turned on me. “You’re such a baby,” she said. “You believe anything she tells you.” And she stomped out of the room and back to the RV.
“Doubting Thomas,” Aunt Julia said as we looked through the bedroom window, watching Rhonda kick up gravel on her short, angry walk down the driveway. Aunt Julia slid the box behind the books again and rearranged them on the shelf. She slipped into bed beside me. “Not like my Mary Sue,” she said, patting my hair gently then rolling on her side to sleep.
That summer flew by. I didn’t like getting up before sunrise to work in tobacco, but I did like earning my very own money. I worked at the barn, not in the field, and we always finished by midday. In the afternoons, I had to go to my babysitter’s house because both my parents had jobs in town. Sometimes she’d let her teenage daughter drive us to the swimming pool in town and to the library to get new books. On the weekends, I went with my parents to the lake, and in July, we took a weeklong vacation to Kentucky. We went to Churchill Downs, where they have the Kentucky Derby, and saw an outdoor musical called “My Old Kentucky Home.” We also visited Heaven Hill, a stinky place where they made a drink called bourbon that I couldn’t taste but didn’t want to anyway based on the terrible sour smell that soaked into my clothes and hair during the tour. Daddy liked it, though.
September got here all too soon. Summer was over, and I had barely spent any time with Aunt Julia. But I just had to see her before school started the next week. I desperately wanted to show her the outfit I had picked out for the first day of fourth grade and to hear if she’d had any new adventures.
But when I told Mama about wanting to visit Aunt Julia, she got this funny look on her face and said it might not be such a good idea. Had I checked with Aunt Julia? Grandma had said she hadn’t been feeling well.
“What’s wrong with Aunt Julia?” That funny look of Mama’s got me worried and thinking about Jenny in “Love Story” and how Aunt Julia had said Jenny had looked all young and healthy one day and before long she was crying on the porch and telling Oscar, “Love is never having to say you’re sorry” and then she was dead. “She ain’t bad sick, is she?” My voice cracked because I had gotten so choked up.
“Oh, honey, no, it’s nothing serious, I’m sure,” Mama told me. “Come to think of it, she’d probably be glad to see her favorite niece. I’ll just call over there to make sure it’s alright.”
When I got to Grandma’s house that Saturday, I ran straight to Aunt Julia’s room, barely saying hello to my grandparents. The way Mama had been talking I expected to find Aunt Julia in bed resting. But she didn’t look sick at all, just not her usual glamorous self. She looked more like a hippy, wearing a loose smock top and a peasant skirt that came almost down to the floor and an old red bandana tied around her hair.
She was busy, too, packing her clothes and books and lots of other stuff into an old Army footlocker.
I didn’t understand. “Are you going on a trip?” I asked, although it didn’t seem likely since school was starting next week.
“I guess it’s a trip,” she said. “I’m going to stay with Aunt Geraldine up in Richmond for a while.”
“Until school starts?”
“Well, no. I won’t be going to school this fall, not till after Christmas, probably.”
This was serious. “Is it because you’re very sick? Mama said you weren’t feeling well,” I said, getting that catch in my voice again.
Aunt Julia stopped her packing for a minute and sat down on her bed, looking at me with squinty eyes. “Did she say anything else?” she asked.
I shook my head no.
She chewed on her bottom lip then patted a spot beside her and waited for me to sit down. Then she gave a heavy sigh. “Honey, I don’t want to worry you none,” she said finally, “but I’ve got a kidney stone. Maybe more than one.”
“Like Uncle Bobby?” I remembered the grownups talking about how much pain my uncle had been in last year until he had been able to “pass the stone,” whatever that meant.
“Yes, except the doctors think mine might be too big to pass on its own. They want me to be close to the big hospital in Richmond, in case they have to operate.”
“But why do you have to be gone so long? Why don’t they just operate now?”
“Well, it’s not an easy operation, so they’re going to try some other things first to see if they can make it pass on its own. Change what I eat, give me some different medicines.”
“Does it hurt?” I had only been to the hospital once, in the first grade, to have my tonsils removed. Everybody told me I’d be able to eat all the ice cream I wanted after the operation, but my throat was so sore, I didn’t want any.
“Not so much now, although it has been making me nauseous. And I’m all swollen.” She held out her hands, fingers spread. “I can’t wear any of my rings, except Jackie’s class ring. And I had to take the wax out of that. Now it fits me better than it fit him.” She held out her hand so we could both admire the sparkling blue stone in the silver ring engraved with “Halifax County High School, Class of 1971.”
“But you’ll miss all the football games and the homecoming dance.”
“I don’t know. I’m kind of glad I won’t be here.” She went over to the table where her portable record player sat and began to pick through the 45s stacked there. “School won’t be much fun for me anyway with Jackie gone.”
“What? Jackie’s gone? Where? Why?”
She found the record she wanted and put it on the turntable. “Cross your heart and hope to die?” she asked me.
I crossed. I hoped.
“He volunteered to be a Green Beret in the Army.” She dropped the needle, and we both listened to the slow, sad drums playing and Sgt. Barry Sadler singing about how the Green Beret wanted them to put silver wings on his son’s chest. When the song was done, Aunt Julia went on with her story. “Jackie just turned eighteen, and he didn’t want get drafted and wind up being an Army cook or a clerk or something like that. You know how much he likes adventure.”
That was true. I remembered the story about the robber and how brave Jackie had been and the bullet that had pierced his Bible but not his heart. “But I thought he wanted to be a preacher, like his daddy.”
Aunt Julia was putting on a brave face, but I could see a teardrop on her cheek. “Not much adventure in that, is there? Not usually.” She used the bandana to rub away the tear. “But that’s enough about me and Jackie. What about you?”
So, to cheer her up, I told Aunt Julia all about what I’d picked out to wear on the first day of school. I dug into my bookbag and held up my elephant leg pants and matching top with the big white collar and white sandals.
“I can’t tell anything like that. Try it on.” She made me turn around. Then she went over to her jewelry box and held out some beaded chokers and necklaces for me to try. She also had some dangly silver earrings. “Too bad your ears aren’t pierced.”
“Mama said I can do it after my next birthday.”
“I’ll save them for you then,” Aunt Julia said. “Oh, and I almost forgot. They wouldn’t be right for this outfit, but I want you to try these on.” From her closet, she pulled out the white go-go boots. “I can’t wear these anymore. Can’t get the zipper past my ankle. Do you want to give them a try? We can put some tissues in the toes if they’re too big.” I spent the time until my parents were ready to go home fixing up the boots so I could wear them and trying on dresses Aunt Julia said that she had outgrown.
Before I left, Aunt Julia gave me a big hug and promised me she would write from Richmond. But she never did. My parents said they hadn’t heard anything from Aunt Julia or Aunt Geraldine, so they assumed all was well. We weren’t a family to waste money on long distance phone calls with good news. Only bad news had to be shared that quickly.
Finally, word arrived in a Christmas card from Aunt Geraldine that Aunt Julia would be coming home for the holidays. She didn’t say a word about what happened with the kidney stone, which I thought was odd since older people always seemed obsessed with sickness and death, but I was too happy to care. I had so much to tell Aunt Julia about fourth grade — like our class field trip to Appomattox — and I couldn’t wait to hear about her time in the big city.
I was also eager to show her what I had gotten for Christmas. We always opened Santa presents first thing in the morning, and Mama let me take one to Grandma’s when we went there for Christmas dinner. Aunt Julia had always been so stylish that I knew she would really appreciate my favorite present, a rock tumbler jewelry maker, complete with a bag of semi-precious stones and jewelry settings. I would show her how to put the stones and the “abrasive grits” into the barrel and turn on the electricity to polish them to look like jewels. I had been doing nothing else all morning.
But when I got to Grandma’s, I barely recognized Aunt Julia. She looked even frumpier than before in a loose housedress and an old green sweater. Her hair was limp and loose, and she wore no makeup. She sat in the corner farthest from the front door, away from the bustle of aunts, uncles and cousins coming in from the cold, loaded down with presents and casserole dishes. When one of the youngest cousins went running up to Aunt Julia to show off her new Betsy Wetsy doll, I thought I saw her quickly wipe a tear from her eye.
From behind me I heard the nasal twang of my least favorite cousin. “Guess you heard about Aunt Julia.” Rhonda grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the small bedroom being used to hold everybody’s coats. She shut the door and locked it.
I flopped on the bed, still holding onto my jewelry-making kit. Rhonda was so bossy, and she always made it sound like she was in on all the grownups’ secrets. But I knew about Aunt Julia. She had told me herself. “Yes,” I told Rhonda. “She had to go to Richmond until she passed her kidney stone.”
Rhonda laughed her ugly little laugh. “She passed something alright, but it sure won’t no kidney stone.”
I looked at her like the crazy person she was. “What are you talking about?”
“She had a baby,” she hissed, punching out the last word like a hit to my gut. “That preacher’s kid knocked her up, and she had to give it up for adoption. That’s why she was in Richmond and not in school. And that preacher’s kid left her high and dry.”
I couldn’t take in what she was saying. Half the words didn’t even make sense. “Knocked her up”? Jackie would never hit Aunt Julia. He was her boyfriend. He loved her. And what did “knocking up” have to do with having a baby? Everybody knew only married couples had babies, and Aunt Julia and Jackie hadn’t even been married.
Rhonda laughed again at my open-mouthed stare.
“She had kidney stones,” I insisted stubbornly. “She told me so herself.” I decided that Aunt Julia wouldn’t mind if I broke my word if it was to defend Jackie from Rhonda’s slander. “And Jackie didn’t leave her. He joined the Green Berets. That’s why he’s not around.”
Rhonda hooted at this. “The Green Berets! Oh, that’s rich. He might wind up in Vietnam someday, but for right now he’s just in the next county over, where his parents sent him to military school. All guys there so he can’t get any other girls in trouble.”
I shook my head in disbelief, but she wouldn’t stop talking.
“You’re such a baby. You’d believe anything Julia told you. She just made up those stories about her adventures with Jackie to cover up what they were really up to on those Saturday nights. But I’m telling you the truth.” Then Rhonda did the unforgiveable thing. She put her hand to her chest and made an X. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said in that sing-song way that I knew she was using to make fun of me.
That made the hot tears spill on my cheeks. “You’re a liar!” I shouted at her. I clutched my jewelry kit to me and jerked open the bedroom door. Whatever Rhonda was trying to tell me about my favorite aunt was hateful and mean. Whatever it was, I wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t let anyone else believe it either.
I ran over to Aunt Julia and gave her a big hug before flopping on the floor at her feet. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Aunt Julia,” I said in a voice loud enough to be heard over all the noise. I was talking to my aunt but staring at cousin Rhonda, who was still standing in the bedroom doorway. “I was just telling Rhonda how hard it must have been for you to pass those kidney stones.”
Stones. That was it. I smiled in triumph at Rhonda as I dug into my jewelry kit bag and felt among its bumpy contents. There was something in there that I had planned to show Aunt Julia privately, a little secret between the two of us. But now it was important that everyone see, that everyone know, especially Rhonda.
My fingers finally touched the polished surface of two small greenish blue agates (that’s how they had been labeled in the kit) that I had tumbled until they shone and then glued onto the clip earring mounts. I held them out for Aunt Julia’s inspection.
“Aunt Julia,” I went on, even more loudly, “I wanted to thank you for letting me turn your kidney stones into jewelry. I think a pair of earrings will make a nice souvenir, don’t you?”
“Earrings? Out of my kidney stones?” Aunt Julia’s voice was whispery and trembly but not in her storytelling way. She gave me a puzzled look then followed my gaze across the room. Rhonda stared back defiantly.
Then a flash of the old Aunt Julia, the one from the beginning of summer, came back. She sat up a little straighter in her chair and grinned that grin that hid her buck teeth. She took the earrings from me and held them up high for everyone to see. “You shined them up so pretty, Mary Sue.” She hugged me to her and whispered into my hair, “They will make a real nice souvenir. Real nice.”