Aunt Ginny

I’d follow her here and there. 

If we needed to go somewhere by automobile or city bus, my mother tagged along. 

One summer in the late fifties she surprised us, 

taking the muggy, grueling train trip from her home in Kansas City to southern California. 

I shivered with excitement the night she arrived—

my father clutching her tattered brown suitcase, 

standing by her tall, lanky side. 

I stayed up late to greet her.

To show her the tiny meowing kitten I harbored in my lap. 

Just as vividly, I recall her confused stare and hard, curious expression weeks later 

as I cried and cried learning Trudy—

Aunt Ginny’s and my frisky, playful companion,

had succumb to distemper. 

Color-splotched, tumbling Trudy was dead. 

Yet Aunt Ginny acted as though she didn’t, couldn’t, comprehend my pain.

In her late teens she walked into upscale department stores, placed items on lay-a-way, 

only to forget what she’d done. 

In her early twenties, she was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic.

Aunt Ginny was a chain smoker.

She carried on lively, often-hostile, conversations with herself 

and would sneak off on walks when no one was watching. 

It wasn’t unusual for her to light a cigarette, 

inhale and drop it to the sidewalk, 

laughing as she twisted its remains with her round-toed flat shoe. 

A stranger telephoned telling my mother he’d found her wandering in his neighborhood. 

She’d walked eleven blocks before tiring. 

When approached, rummaging through her pocketbook, 

she produced a crumpled scrap of paper:

her brother’s telephone number.

My most affecting memory of Aunt Ginny’s visit is walking into our living room     

finding my parents sitting together on the couch, 

my dad crying, wiping away tears with a hand towel. 

He’d asked Aunt Ginny about leaving, 

as she’d been with us well over a month. 

“I’ll be leaving soon,” she’d said. 

“As soon as I’ve been here two weeks.”

*

Virginia Ann Brewer died in a mental institution late summer of 1979. 

I shudder to imagine, to think, what life in such a place must have involved.  

I was pregnant with my son at the time. 

Hoping for a boy, I’d chosen the name Charles Skye, 

intent on calling him by his middle name—

indicative of my desire for a sensitive soul, a free spirit. 

Aware of my baby’s flutters and movements, 

preparing for a new chapter in life, 

I rarely held thoughts of Aunt Ginny—

with her cartons of cigarettes, sunken cheeks, dark wispy hair, and tall too-thin figure.

 * 

Today my hunch, my spiritual affinities, 

lead me to believe Aunt Ginny is nearby. 

Smoking. Watching. Smiling. 

Delighted with her new family: 

her great-nephew, Skye.

Great-great niece and great-great nephew— 

Skye’s young, active and talented children.

Free from confusion and pain, she watches in peace.