How Aunt Maud Took to Being a Woman

A long hill sloped down to Aunt Maud’s brick house. You could climb an open stairway up the back to a plank landing where she kept her crocks of wine. I got sick on stolen angel food cake and green wine and slept in her feather bed for a week. Nobody said a word. Aunt Maud just shifted the bottles. Aunt’s closets were all cedar lined. She used the same pattern for her house dresses-- thirty years. Plain ugly, closets full of them, you could generally find a new one cut and laid out on her sewing machine. She preserved, she canned. Her jars climbed the basement walls. She was a vengeful housekeeper. She kept the blinds pulled down in the parlor. Nobody really walked on her hardwood floors. You lived in the kitchen. Uncle Cal spent a lot of time on the back porch waiting to be let in. From “Second-Hand Coats” (David R. Godine: $10.95; 128 pp.).