Lately, Aunt Jet has to carry a black cane that has a carved raven’s head; she’s bent over with arthritis, but she never complains about the way her back feels when she unlaces her boots at the end of the day. Each morning she washes with the black soap she and Frances mix up twice a year, and her complexion is close to perfect. She works in her garden and can remember the Latin name of every plant that grows there. But not a day goes by that she doesn’t think about the boy she loved. Not a moment passes that she doesn’t wish that time were a movable entity and that she could go backward and kiss that boy again.
“We’re so glad to be here,” Jet announces.
Sally smiles a beautiful sad smile. “I should have invited you a long time ago. I didn’t think either of you would like it.”
“That just goes to show that you never can tell about a person by guessing,” Frances informs her niece. “That’s why language was invented. Otherwise, we’d all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Sally agrees.
The suitcases are lugged inside, which is no easy job. Antonia and Kylie shout, “Heave ho!” and work together, under the aunts’ watchful eyes. Waiting by the window, Gillian has considered escaping through the back door so she won’t have to face the aunts’ critique on how she’s messed up her life. But when Kylie and Antonia lead the aunts inside, Gillian is standing in the very same spot, her pale hair electrified.
Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies, for instance, and women who’ve been in love with the wrong man too often. The aunts cluck their tongues as soon as they see this grown woman who once was their little girl. They may not have had regular dinnertimes or made certain that clean clothes were folded in the bureaus, but they were there. They were the ones Gillian turned to that first year, when the other children at nursery school pulled her hair and called her the witch-girl. Gillian never told Sally how awful it was, how they persecuted her, and she was just three years old. It was embarrassing, that much she knew even then. It was something you didn’t admit to.
Every day Gillian came home and swore to Sally that she’d had a lovely afternoon, she’d played with blocks and paints, and fed the bunny that eyed the children sadly from a cage near the coat closet. But Gillian couldn’t lie to the aunts when they came to fetch her. At the end of each day her hair was in tangles and her face and legs were scratched red. The aunts advised her to ignore the other children—to read her books and play her games by herself and march over to inform the teacher if anyone was nasty or rude. Even then, Gillian believed she was worthy of the awful treatment she got, and she never did go running to the teacher and tattle. She tried her best to keep it inside.
The aunts, however, could tell what was happening from the sorry slope of Gillian’s shoulders as she pulled her sweater on and because she couldn’t sleep at night. Most of the children eventually tired of teasing Gillian, but several continued to torment her—whispering “witch” every time she was near, spilling grape juice on her new shoes, grabbing fistfuls of her hair and pulling with all their might—and they did so until the Christmas party.
All the children’s parents attended the party, bringing cookies or cakes or bowls of eggnog sprinkled with nutmeg. The aunts came late, wearing their black coats. Gillian had hoped they would remember to bring a box of chocolate chip cookies, or perhaps a Sara Lee cake, but the aunts weren’t interested in desserts. They went directly to the worst of the children, the boys who pulled hair, the girls who called names. The aunts didn’t have to use curses or herbs, or vow any sort of punishment. They merely stood beside the snack table, and every child who’d been mean to Gillian was immediately sick to his or her stomach. These children ran to their parents and begged to be taken home, then stayed in bed for days, shivering beneath wool blankets, so queasy and filled with remorse that their complexions took on a faint greenish tinge, and their skins gave off the sour scent that always accompanies a guilty conscience.
After the Christmas party, the aunts took Gillian home and sat her down on the sofa in the parlor, the velvet one with the wooden lion’s feet whose claws terrified Gillian. They told her how sticks and stones could break bones, but taunting and name-calling were only for fools. Gillian heard them, but she didn’t really listen. She put too much worth in what other people thought and not enough in her own opinion. The aunts have always known that Gillian sometimes needs extra help defending herself. As they study her, their gray eyes are bright and sharp. They see the lines on her face that someone else might not notice; they can tell what she’s been through.