We Shall, Yes Claudia Burbank
You hate the fried egg in front of you, but you eat a teensy bit and try not to gag. A teensy bit no bigger than a dime, which is the weekly allowance you don’t get when you’re up here in the north for the summer. It’s that drippy, gluey yolk that always does it. Your crazy aunt is at the stove and there’s no telling what she might do. So you poke it, slide it around the plate, and when she turns around to look, you move your mouth as if you’re chewing. She turns back and takes a swig from a tumbler. You’re old enough to know that the amber liquid is booze. You’ve never seen your crazy aunt, or anyone else for that matter, drink at breakfast. You’ve never seen anyone drink except at dinner. And when your Pop slipped on black ice and broke both knees and spent five days reclined in the recliner with his eyes closed, moaning and then blasting Wagner on the hi-fi because there was no way at first of getting to a doctor in the snow, and then as the days passed, it was too far and too late and what good was a doctor anyhow? No, this is different, even for your crazy aunt. She’s barefoot and wearing a peach linen mini dress as short as anything Twiggy slouches around in. From the front you’d think everything’s okay. But when she turns around to the stove you see that it’s unzipped all the way, all the way being down over her rear, and that there’s nothing underneath. No Cross-Your-Heart Bra, no 18-Hour Girdle, not even white cotton panties. You watch her breasts move, her bottom move, beneath the still peach fabric. Your older brother Phil watches, too, but your cousin Woody looks down, cheek propped on one hand. When his mom drinks she tends to only half-dress as if she’s doing you a big favor to cover herself at all. If your Mom were here, she’d yell at her because Yvonne is younger than she is. “Oh, for God’s sake, Yvonne, put some clothes on.” Then Yvonne would argue that she had a dress on, that she wasn’t completely naked, and that everyone’s seen her before anyhow, which is true. Just not in the kitchen. Or anywhere downstairs where no one, but no one, is ever allowed in a robe or pajamas or what your Mom making a face, calls déshabillé. Yvonne would argue in a go-ahead-I-dare-you tone, batting the crumpled false eyelashes she forgot to take off the night before. Then they’d fight in French because they’re French Canadian, and they do their best fighting in French. You wouldn’t get the words, but you’d get the cursing, the verbal slaps, the tit-for-tat venom being spit across the room. Your Mom would switch back to make sure you got her parting shot, even if you had to look it up because you didn’t trust your brother to know what it meant. She’d throw out “slattern” or “slovenly” like a stinky fart that hangs in the air and glance at you. It’s her way of building your vocabulary. But your Mom is home in New Jersey with your Pop. They dropped
you and Phil off here in the northern tip of New Hampshire for the annual stay with the grandparents. There’s your father’s parents and your mother’s mother, great aunts and uncles, regular aunts and uncles, cousins of all kinds. You and Phil switch off every week between the two sides to keep everyone happy. This week is your mother’s side, the crazy French Canadians. Phil smirks because he knows you hate eggs, knows you’ll be the one to get in trouble. He spears a whole slimy fried egg and stuffs it in his mouth, then opens wide and waggles his tongue so you can see the disgusting mess inside. He snorts. That makes Woody, one year older than you, and one younger than Phil, laugh. For some reason no one ever forces Woody to eat breakfast the way they do you and Phil. You’re pretty sure your crazy aunt Yvonne cooks you breakfast only because your Mom would find out if she didn’t and World War III would start. “What are they feeding you for breakfast?” your Mom asks in her letters. “Are you getting enough?” This from a mother who never makes you breakfast. This from a mother who taught you how to open those little single boxes of cereal and pour the milk right in before you even turned three. Suddenly you feel sorry for your crazy aunt in her open dress knocking back a glass of something. We’re all done, Woody announces, glancing up at his mother. All right then, she says, not even looking up. But Woody and Phil have already scraped their chairs back and are out the screen door and thumping down the porch steps before the door whacks shut. You’ll be home for lunch, she says as if they’re still sitting there, and shoves something around a pan with a spatula. You switch your plate with the egg for Phil’s clean one. The kitchen is large and old and painted the same mint green as all the old kitchens in this city, at least all the ones you’ve ever seen, both French and English. It might be the only thing these two families have in common. Phil calls it puke green with a touch of snot. He only says that because you once said it looked like melted mint parfait, which is your favorite dessert. The wooden cabinets, the bead board, the wooden kitchen table and chairs where you’re sitting. Puke green with a touch of snot. Or melted mint parfait. It depends on your perspective, Pop would say. Whatever you want to call it, it’s not improving the color of your crazy aunt’s skin. Now she turns around and sags against the stove. Her hair is blonde and blowsy like Marilyn Monroe’s, only she hasn’t combed it yet, so it’s sticking out on one side and matted on the other. It’s not real, your Mom told you once when she caught you staring. Her real hair’s just as dark as yours. That stunned you. Not so much that your crazy aunt was really brunette, but that you, too, could change yourself into a blonde. You could be blonde and people wouldn’t know unless they knew you
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