Here Comes Aunt Betty

”Y’all put your jars away! Here comes Aunt Betty!” Sally ran up the porch steps two at a time, skidding to a halt just shy of the screen door.

“Sally, if you bust through that door again this year, I’ll tan your hide,” JP called as he rose from the swing with his jar and crossed the porch. “I’m gonna see if Shirley and Em need any help in the kitchen.” He held out his hand to accept Jim’s jar as he stepped around Sally.

Jim unwrapped another dum-dum and popped it in his mouth, then pulled it back out and twirled the stick. The porch cleared except for Jim and Sally, who plopped down in the swing.

“You’re not runnin’ away from Aunt Betty?” Jim looked Sally in the eye from across the porch.

Sally swung her legs to give the swing some momentum. “Uh-uh! She tells good stories!”

Jim smiled so contentedly that Sally knew she was in the right place. Best way to tell good stories was to steal ‘em and make ‘em better. Sometimes Sally had to get on the other side of the screen door to hear the good stories.

Aunt Betty eased her Buick up the driveway and came to a gentle stop under a pecan tree. Sally scampered down from the swing to greet her and help her up the porch steps but not out of the car. Aunt Betty required no assistance with her automobile whatsoever. She dutifully took it to the dealership for scheduled maintenance and traded it in for a new one every December. She also visited her optician every six months. She was perfectly capable, thank you very much.

“Hey, Aunt Betty!” Sally reached up and hugged her, and Jim watched Betty’s face relax for a moment as she lay her cheek on Sally’s head.

Jim rose from the rocker as Sally ascended the porch with her hand holding Aunt Betty’s elbow.

After Jim embraced her, she said, “I don’t care what they say in town. Y’all are still raising fine young men and women out here.”

Jim cut his eyes over to the snake, and Sally hopped down and picked up the two halves of it.

Jim shook his head, but Sally grinned and ran around the side of the house with the copperhead where she nearly ran into Steve.

“Take these to Daddy’s freezer by the fish cleanin’ table and freeze ‘em in the strike position. We’ll get somebody later.” She thrust the two halves of the snake into Steve’s hands and took off for the house, banging into the kitchen through the back door.

“Where’s the fire?” Em called to Sally’s back as she raced down the hall and squatted behind the screen door, waving her hand behind her to shush Em.

Aunt Betty was telling Uncle Jim about her trip to the Piggly Wiggly earlier that week. Aunt Betty told stories better when there weren’t any kids around, and she really turned it on for Uncle Jim. Sally picked at a scab on her knee while Aunt Betty said something about a strange young man between her and Masie Adams in the checkout line.

Em and Shirley fussed around the kitchen getting dinner ready. Ginny and Sally were allowed to portion the drop biscuits after Shirley made the dough, and Em sweated over two iron skillets filled with perfectly spaced pieces of chicken frying in Crisco. Carrie sat at the table with a potato masher, butter, and a steaming bowl of boiled potatoes, smashing the potatoes without malice.

Steve came in the back door, and without looking up, Shirley told him to set the table.

“For how many? Is Aunt Betty staying? Is Uncle George coming today?”

“Lord, child, I don’t know how you expect me to predict what Betty will do, much less George. Set both tables completely. You know how your Aunt Betty is.”

The kitchen collectively gasped, and Em continued, “Good afternoon, Aunt Betty.”

“No, Emily, I don’t know how Steve’s Aunt Betty is. Please enlighten me. And did I just hear you call me by my Christian name? What would your sweet mother, God rest her soul, say if she heard you?”

“Aunt Betty,” Shirley cut in, “are you staying for dinner? I’ll put these in the fridge if you are.” She gestured toward the stack of freshly portioned meals she just finished assembling.

A fly buzzed around the stove then lit on the cabinet above it. Sally popped a piece of dough in her mouth.

“Ooh, gross!” Ginny stuck her tongue out at Sally.

“Virginia! Put your tongue back in your mouth before you catch that fly on it. And nice young ladies don’t call their cousins ‘gross.’”

“Even if they are?” Sally waggled her eyebrows and stuck out her tongue.

A smile pulled the corners of Aunt Betty’s mouth up, and a mirthful chuckle escaped. “Sally, I declare, you’re funny enough to be in pictures!”

“How come it’s funny when Sally does it but not Ginny?” Steve demanded.

“Steven Johnson, you know better than to say ‘why come.’ And it’s in the spirit of the delivery. Sally has a presence possessed by few.” Aunt Betty straightened Steve’s collar as she explained. “Shirley, I think I’ll just run those home. Iris is expecting me for dinner today, and you know how she gets if things don’t turn out the way she planned.”

Sally stood up and put a collander on her head. “I wish I could have someone go to the trouble of preparing a meal and setting a nice table for me and all I had to was sit down and enjoy, but that’s too much to ask of some people.” She walked around the room like she was balancing books on her head. “I fail to understand why people have so much trouble honoring their commitments.” Stopping in the door frame, Sally gazed out into the distance. “People just don’t care like they used to.” She even coaxed a tear to the corner of her eye.

Aunt Betty’s and Em’s grimaces suggested that a flood of laughter was about to enter the room, and Shirley opened that dam with her loud, throaty laugh, and Betty and Em nearly fell over as their own laughs escaped their bodies and filled the room.

“My goodness, I had forgotten that Sally and Caroline were there that day. If I recall, Shirley, you were supposed to join us and didn’t show.”

Shirley nodded, “Yes, that was the weekend I was in Boston and my flight got canceled because of a nor’easter. Lord, to hear Iris tell it, you’d think I conjured that storm to ruin her seating chart. Eleven people died in that storm.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time somebody accused you of conjuring,” Em said as she turned the chicken.

“No, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time Iris overestimated her own importance,” Shirley replied with a knowing look.

“Sally, why don’t you help me carry my things to the car,” Aunt Betty said.

Sally plopped the collander back on the counter and accepted the containers prepped for Aunt Betty, and carried them out to the car.

Some guy Sally had never seen was coming around from the backside of the house, and Aunt Betty did a double take when she saw him. After she deposited the containers on Aunt Betty's front seat, she came around to the other side of the car to give Aunt Betty a goodbye hug.

"That's the young man I saw in the Piggly Wiggly this week," Aunt Betty said in Sally's ear. "Something about him doesn't sit right with me. Don't leave Caroline or Virginia alone with him."