Family Skeletons

I hit the door to the guest room with my hip and shoulder, shoving it open. It was well enough, needing wood for the fireplace, kerosene for the lamp, both beds needed making up, but there was a recent, although dry, water stain on the far wall.
“Therin?” I yelled for my cousin, panicked. “Don’t turn on the water,” I added when he came up from the basement at a run.
“Well, this makes the fight for first shower pointless.” He poked at the stain a little. “Any ideas how to cover this up? How long is Nona gone?” He sounded somewhat less concerned than my absolute panic.
I thought for a moment. Nona, our grandmother, had headed out shopping with a five page list. “Not before three. I can get one of Nona’s paintings.” I was experienced at concealing damage to walls. We did not want our family to discover this issue, if Nona didn’t panic, our family would. Ten of Nona’s eleven children were due here within the forty-eight hours before Christmas, including Uncle Frank, the bible salesman, and Aunt Harriet, the taxidermist. Aunts Joan and Maria had felt compelled to have families to rival this one in size. Their children, my younger cousins, had inspired me to never want children.. Holidays were never calm with the Latimers.
“Good. We have time to fix the pipes. Damn the family’s lazy plumbing.”
We separated: Therin went for tools, and I went to get an extra framed painting. I left the painting out of the way in the guest room and hurried upstairs to join Therin in ripping up the floor of Nona’s studio.

Nona

I was helping Nona with dinner. We were making ravioli. She had coerced me into not an apron but a white smock, the ties wrapped completely around me to be tied in back. I may as well have been wearing a dress, it covered me from neck to knees. I need not have worn a shirt or pants underneath it. As it was, I had peeled off the sweater and flannel shirt I had been wearing to just wear the tank top I had pulled from the wash. I hadn’t protested overly much, she had rightly claimed my clothes were a sanitation issue. Nona usually let me dress as I wished without comment, but she never bought me clothes she didn’t like. I think the pants in objection had once belonged to Mama. The pants were some of the most comfortable clothes I owned, thick fabric broken in to be rather soft, worn into varying shades of gray, with remains of glue stuck on regardless of the number of washings.
I shook my head to work my braids back over my shoulders and resumed feeding the pasta dough into the machine. Each sheet had to be fed through at least four times, and Nona had me trying to crank the machine and feed the dough while she carefully pulled out the pale sheets.
Nona had been silent, so far, just humming almost under her breath. The radio was on in the entry, the one classical station we could get coming in from Boston. Nona tucked a wisp of hair back behind her ear with the back of her wrist before handing me another sheet. She had gathered her waist length white hair in a rather severe bun, held to the back of her head with at least thirty bobby pins. Her gray apron covered the blue jumper she had worn to work this morning at the county library, although she had removed her pumps in favor of thick socks.

Eavesdropping

I dangled my legs over the edge of Mama’s balcony and rested my head on the uprights of the metal railings. She had yet to put her plants out, so it was still possible to sit on the edge and enjoy the view of the city, picking out the spires of Old South Church and two Episcopalian churches for which I didn’t remember the names. If I looked another way I’d be able to see parts of the common and possibly the river, although unlikely. It was quiet in this part of the city, quiet in a city way, but quiet. There were few passerby on the street below for the time, and cars rarely budged on the weekend. There would be more signs of life and more noise as the day wore past noon, but now it was quiet. There was laundry flapping on clotheslines strung over the ally, I would be hanging out and tending loads from the wash soon enough, but Mama had yet to decide laundry was necessary.
This was Mama’s apartment; she and Aunt Jan had let this together for at least twenty years. I couldn’t remember exactly when Mama had moved out of Nona’s house and established her independence. This was the one place that didn’t change, I’d had my own room here, and the same room, for my entire life. It was a carefully constructed deal, but the second bedroom of the apartment had been turned into two even smaller rooms for Therin and I with some paper screens. Mama and Aunt Jan had known what they were doing when they hung the oriental screens that were securely anchored to the ceiling with rope and to the floor with pegs. Mama kept a rather large garden here, she had a few miniature trees, plenty of cactus, African violets, spider plants that threatened to consume the house, and pot upon pot of lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, herbs, spinach, eggplant, peppers, and squash. She kept even the vegetables going all year round.
I heard footsteps in the kitchen, Therin; it had to be him, since he was the only one left home. Mama and Aunt Jan both had left for work, they wouldn’t be back until past noon, and I had woke to them arguing that morning.

Reason for a Cat

It’s supposed to be a secret that I’m adopted. Mama says I’m not supposed to tell anyone, and made me triple promise, swear, and cross my heart, that I wouldn’t tell. She believes in honesty, but also says that sometimes there are things that are more important than the full truth. When they told me, she said to claim that I didn’t know, she was my mother, and that I had privacy to be respected. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant for years. I found out I was adopted when I was just starting school, and a lot of my classmates were having siblings.
I likely asked something about where babies came from, and if I would have a little sibling.