Summer at Mettie’s
Aunt Mettie’s only good feature was her hair, and that’s the sad truth. She was some kin of Daddy’s, “way up yonder in the family tree,” as Grandpa said.
I used to think it was funny, when Daddy would say somebody was “plain as Aunt Mettie,” but then I graduated high school and took a job in town and Aunt Mettie offered me room and board for next to nothing.
Daddy said, “How you gonna eat, Theenie, sitting across the table from a face like that?”
It seemed mean-spirited to laugh at somebody who was doing me a good turn, and I haven’t laughed about her since.
Daddy was planting, and Mamma never learned how to drive, so I toted my suitcase up to the road and caught the Greyhound into Queen City, then hoofed the five blocks to Aunt Mettie’s fancy little two-story with its scrollwork and wood trim all painted bright and pretty.
When Aunt Mettie answered the door, my goodness, she was plainer than I remembered! Her teeth were too big for her mouth and her nose was too big for her face. Her eyes were clear and brown, but they kind of bugged out. Then, making the rest of her look worse, there was that gorgeous hair: thick and glossy black, piled up on top of her head with a few curls worked loose and bobbing around her broad, flat face.
Poor thing! I thought. She can’t help looking like a frog with cheap dentures. I hugged her real good and she gave a little surprised gasp that nearly broke my heart and hugged me back.
Aunt Mettie was a way better cook than Mamma. Not any fancier, but she grew herbs and added them to things, and kind of—oh, I don’t know—treated what she was cooking with respect, not like it was something she had to wrestle onto the plate. I liked being with her while she worked, peeling potatoes for her or snapping beans. She taught me about kitchen herbs and healing herbs, and I got to be a pretty good cook under her lessons. I already had a hand for pies and baked goods, so we ate well.
Not just us, either. I wasn’t at Aunt Mettie’s long before I found out she was a mama hen with a world of chicks.
We’d sit on the front porch swing, the spring breeze catching Aunt Mettie’s stray curls and rubbing them against her rough skin with a faint hiss, and folks would come and pour out their troubles and go away soothed. Sometimes she gave advice, sometimes food, sometimes an herbal tea or tonic. Sometimes she sweet-talked a banker into making a loan or a grocer into extending credit or a landlord into holding off on eviction until a job came through…. You see what I mean.
It didn’t take me long to realize she would have let me have my room and board for free, that she only charged me what she did because she knew we didn’t hold with taking charity.
Not that she was a soft touch. She was a sharp one, Aunt Mettie. Sometimes somebody would come around hinting for help and she would close up her face so it scared even me, who had come to love her by the end of my first week. Next thing we heard, that person she had frozen off her porch would have been arrested or would have skipped out on rent or abandoned a wife with a boatload of bills. Then, if the wife came to Aunt Mettie, that hard face would soften and arrangements would be made with the creditors.
Summer came, and Aunt Mettie went foolish.
Short hair was the rage that summer. All the girls were getting their hair cut this certain way, and I wanted that cut in the worst way. Miss Maybell’s was running a two-for-one special, but I couldn’t even afford to split the cost with a friend.
So, one Saturday, Aunt Mettie said to me, “You’ll never guess what I’ve done. I’ve made me an appointment at Miss Maybell’s to get this hair of mine all cut off. I’m so sick of messing with it! She tells me I can bring a friend with me for a free cut, so do you want to come? I just purely hate to throw away the money by missing that special.”
I knew good and well Aunt Mettie was sacrificing her beautiful hair so I could have a haircut without her flat out paying for it, but I was just selfish enough to pretend I was doing her a favor.
They took us both back at the same time. My hairdresser and I chattered and giggled and I didn’t spare a thought for Aunt Mettie until I was admiring how cute I was in the hand mirror and heard the silence in the next booth.
My heart felt like a rock lying on my stomach as my girl brushed the hairs off my face and undid my plastic cape. I stepped around the partition and made myself look.
Aunt Mettie’s long, glossy hair, in the form of a thick braid tied at both ends, lay on the floor like a dead snake. What was left, coiled to the length of her ear lobes, framing her horrible face just as my gentle waves framed my pert youth.
Aunt Mettie was blinking into the mirror.
“Oh,” I said. Then I smiled and said, “It looks adorable!”
The stylist, who had been standing like a statue, backed me up. “It sure does! I wish my hair would curl like that! Say, you want to keep your braid?”
Aunt Mettie shook her head.
On impulse, I swooped down on it. “I do! Let’s wrap it up in tissue paper and save it forever.”
They had some tissue paper right there that they kept for when little girls got their first short cut. It took three lengths to wrap up Aunt Mettie’s braid, and they had to double it over, at that. They put it in a sack for me, Aunt Mettie paid and added a good tip, and we left.
“Well, what now?” she said, obviously forcing a smile. “Let’s just go home, want to?”
But, as we turned toward home, we both got bumped by a man coming the other way.
“Oh! I beg pardon, ladies,” he said, raising his cap and bowing a little. “It’s bad enough, knocking a woman to the sidewalk, let alone twins.”
Aunt Mettie laughed a little. “I don’t see where either one of us is down on the sidewalk, and we’re hardly twins.”
“You coulda fooled me. Say, what are two tender young things like you doing out without your mamma? I believe you need an escort down to the soda fountain as badly as I need friends in this new town of mine. What say we do one another a good turn?”
I was about to put him in his place, but Aunt Mettie said, “Well, all right. I am thirsty.”
Her smile wasn’t forced anymore.
~*~
His name was Perce Estridge, and he was a jack-of-all-trades, groundskeeper, and handyman. He wasn’t looking for friends; he was looking for business contacts, for people who would hire him or recommend him for hiring. When Aunt Mettie introduced herself as Mettie and he called her Miss Metis, I was certain he had gotten her name and description and general financial situation from somebody before he “happened” to bump into us.
But Aunt Mettie was dazzled by him.
By the time we’d finished our sodas, Aunt Mettie had given him the names of half a dozen people who needed work done but couldn’t afford it. She arranged for him to offer to do their jobs at cost in exchange for a letter of recommendation he could show a higher-paying prospect. Naturally, Aunt Mettie would secretly pay him his labor so he wouldn’t lose any money.
He walked us home and charmed his way to staying for supper. I was surprised she had the sense to not offer him a free room, and even more surprised he wasn’t nervy enough angle for it.
Aunt Mettie couldn’t talk about anybody but Perce Estridge. He called her to report on the jobs he was doing for “her little people,” as he called them. It was sweet, seeing how happy she was, but it made me sick to see him leading her on. And, just so you don’t think I was jealous, let me tell you I’m enough my Daddy’s girl that I don’t have much use for a man who doesn’t know a horse from a mule or a turnip from a radish, and Perce Estridge didn’t.
He knew a good thing when he saw it, though, and he played Aunt Mettie for all she was worth. He even went to church with her. He brightened up when he saw the place, and I thought maybe he’d been touched by the Lord. Then I saw he was looking at the broken shingles on the roof and the peeling paint on the rectory porch.
He brightened up even more when he met the preacher and the preacher introduced him to his daughter, Andromeda. Drommy was a little older than me, with a creamy, heart-shaped face, long blonde hair, and sky-blue eyes.
It was child’s play for Perce to whisper a word or two in Aunt Mettie’s ear during the service and get himself and the preacher and Drommy invited to Sunday dinner at our house to talk about repairs to the church and rectory.
I got so sick of hearing about Perce every minute, I nearly snapped at Aunt Mettie a time or two. Mamma had given me grandma’s locket when I moved out, so I’d have something nice to wear on Sundays; I snipped off a piece of Aunt Mettie’s braid and put it in that locket and took to wearing it every day, just so I’d remember the shrewd Aunt Mettie from before Perce Estridge came.
The last week of August, I finished my job probation and got hired for real and got a raise. I was so tickled, I bought a little cake from the bakery next to where I worked and hurried home, thinking about how I’d raise my own rent, whether Aunt Mettie wanted me to or not. The house was empty.
Then I remembered Aunt Mettie had been talking about Perce doing a final inspection of his work at the church that afternoon. She said she might meet him there and maybe take him to supper at Bigelow’s to celebrate. She’d already paid him and he’d already cashed the check, but I knew he wouldn’t say no to a free meal. If I didn’t catch them at the church, I’d catch them at the restaurant and treat Aunt Mettie, for a change.
Much as I didn’t care to watch Perce winking and buttering Aunt Mettie up, I wanted to share my good news, so I left my cake and off I went.
I could hear the preacher shouting before I opened the heavy church door. I wondered what had filled him with the Spirit on a weekday without a congregation. Then I thought maybe he was trying to bring Perce into the fold. I wished him luck with that.
But, no, he wasn’t shouting to the glory of the Lord, he was fit to be tied. And who he was shouting at was Aunt Mettie.
He shoved a finger in her face and said, “You brought that snake in here! You inserted that serpent into the bosom of my family! Everybody talks about what a wise woman you are; I trusted your judgment! How could you bring this calamity upon me? Upon the church? The house of God is defiled, and it’s on account of you! I believe you did it on purpose, out of pure jealousy and spite. I should have known. The devil marks his own, and he marked you from birth. Your soul is as foul as your face!”
I knew from Sunday and from prayers before various meals that he could go on until his voice gave out, once he got wound up, and I wasn’t having him say another word like that to my Aunt Mettie. I went up to him and put my fingertips on his chest and shoved him back a pace or two.
“Don’t you dare talk to a woman that way! Don’t you dare talk to anybody that way, especially her. You ungrateful so-and-so! After all the money and time she’s put into this place and all the food she’s let you shovel down your gullet! Aren’t you ashamed?”
“Ashamed? Ashamed? What have I to be ashamed of? You don’t know what this monster has done!”
I wanted to slap him till his teeth rattled, but I wanted to know what was going on more, so I said, “Well, what’s this sainted woman done that’s got you so hot?”
“She’s ruined my child, is what she’s done!” He took out a big white handkerchief and blotted up the tears that suddenly overflowed his eyes. He sobbed so hard, I couldn’t understand a word he said.
Aunt Mettie, still as stone, in a voice that sounded like it came out of a cave, said, “Perce and Drommy ran off together this morning. She sent Pastor a telegram saying she’s in the family way and they’re getting married. She wants Pastor to hire Perce as full-time caretaker and handyman for the church and rectory, so she can come home.”
“Well,” I said, almost speechless. “Won’t that be cozy?”
“Leave this house of worship!” the preacher choked out. “I don’t want to see either of you unnatural women again.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said. “It’ll cut down considerably on the grocery bill.”
I led Aunt Mettie home and made her some strong coffee and put a slug of whiskey that she kept for medicinal purposes into it. I told her my good news and she congratulated me like she was a Victrola record and not a person. She was acting like Mamma did, when she got the news that her brother, my Uncle Beau, was killed in an automobile accident. “Shock,” the doctor had called it.
Was she shocked because of the way the preacher talked to her, or because the preacher’s daughter fell from grace, or because she felt like Perce had let her down? Or had she let herself get carried away with his snake oil and really believed he saw her heart and not her face?
I don’t know, and I’ll never know. I only know that Perce Estridge killed her that day, just as sure as if he’d cut off her head, and he probably did it without even thinking about her.
The preacher let everybody know Perce had carried Drommy off to get married, although he left out the part about her being in a delicate condition. He made sure to lay the blame on Aunt Mettie for opening two young people to temptation by bringing them together.
When somebody asked me about it, thinking they could pump me for information, I just said, “For a man who preaches that gossiping is a sin, he sure wags his tongue a lot.”
Aunt Mettie got to where she hated to go out. We used to shop together every Saturday, but after Pastor got the rumor mill going, seemed like everybody in town cut Aunt Mettie dead—just wouldn’t look at her, or looked at her like they didn’t see her or know her or ever want to know her.
Even after Perce and Drommy came home and moved into the rectory with Pastor, things didn’t get better for Aunt Mettie. Even after Drommy popped out her good-looking baby and you’d have thought Jesus had come again, Aunt Mettie was still in the doghouse with the whole town. I believe they forgot or never knew what she was being ostracized for; everybody was doing it, so everybody did it.
She went out less and less. No matter how I tried to lure her out, she stayed in the house, mostly in her bedroom, and wouldn’t even come down to see the few folks who came around after dark to ask for her advice or help.
“You take care of it,” she said to me. “Just tell me what they want and I’ll tell you what to do about it.”
So I learned her ways and wiles and herbs and finances.
Summer ended, and it was almost like Aunt Mettie and I had swapped places. I managed the house and shopped for her and cooked the food, I sat on the porch and received her petitioners, and she kept to her room like a boarder and only came down for meals. She kept her hair short, cutting it herself until I agreed to do it for her, and I let mine grow.
The next spring, I planted a vegetable garden in the back yard and took care of that and the house and my job. I got a promotion and another raise and kept getting them.
Folks started calling me Miss Athena.
I stayed “Miss,” too. I didn’t want any town men, what with the way they did Aunt Mettie, and strangers were suspect, considering the last one that we had anything to do with.
Years went by. Aunt Mettie faded and passed away and left everything she had to me.
The first thing I did was build a new church and hire a firebrand preacher. The second thing I did was finance a revival that pulled a good portion of the congregation away from Preacher-Daddy. I didn’t go, myself.
So here I am, solitary and glad of it. Like Aunt Mettie before me, I listen to troubles and give what I can. And, from the day I first put it on to this, I wear my locket with a coil of Aunt Mettie’s hair in it. Every night, I sleep with it on my bedside table. Every day, I wear it like a shield.
If anybody laughs at me, they don’t do it to my face.
*
Marian Allen identifies with no particular genre, but writes the story however it wants to come out. She has been published in print and online, including multiple appearances in Marion Zimmer Bradley's SWORD & SORCERESS anthologies. Her cats think she's okay.