she wasn’t interested. In truth, she wasn’t particularly interested in Aunt Libby’s death and funeral, but she didn’t want Aunt Maureen to stop talking to her.
‘I stood up here on this very hill and I watched Libby’s funeral come towards me—’ Cecelia looked where she was pointing, at the winding dirt road below them and beyond. There, in fact, she caught sight of an oncoming funeral procession, a boxy black hearse, one other dark car nearly as tall at the hump as it was long, and - oddly, she thought, though she couldn’t quite have said why it was odd - several pedestrians.
The road was apparently much further below them than she’d realized, for the figures stayed tiny, movements blurred by distance and perspective. She blinked, glanced at her aunt beside her, looked back. The sad little parade of miniatures was no closer, although it was still in forward motion.
* * * *
Uncle Clyde’s flesh was mostly pale pink, darker pink in some places Libby could not think about, and smooth, hairless. If he’d been hirsute, darker-skinned, or covered with warts, she’d have found his body no more nor less revolting.
When she was little and Uncle Clyde would come to get her, she’d sometimes open his shirt and feel around for his nipples, like little stones in the ocean of his soft smooth flesh. Then he’d whisper to her, or say out loud if he was sure they were alone, ‘You like this, too, don’t you, sweetie? You like your Uncle Clyde.’
Libby did like how his nipples felt under her fingertips. They gave her something to fasten her thoughts on to. Sometimes, too, she’d imagine that she could slit him open by tracing a line from one of those hard pinkish-brown dots to the other and his pink heart would tumble out into her hand. That never happened.
All the women in the family knew about Uncle Clyde. As girls grew up, they learned what to say about him. ‘Oh, that’s just Clyde,’ Grandma said nervously the single time Libby - thirteen years old, scrubbing clothes on the washboard in the big black tub - told her about the kisses he stole from her in the pantry, which was not the worst she had to tell. Her little sister Helen was peeling potatoes on the back porch, out of sight but not out of earshot, and Maureen, crawling, was under everybody’s feet, with Mama eight months dead.
‘Clyde is a good man,’ she was instructed sternly. ‘Clyde is a man of God,’ and Libby, observing, could see that this was true. Uncle Clyde performed many acts of charity. He was a good husband, a good father, a good neighbour. Everybody loved Uncle Clyde. For a little while, she tried it on, like somebody else’s frock, feeling chosen.
‘He does it to me, too,’ Helen informed her from the other edge of the billowing sheet as they changed his bed the next Monday morning. ‘Maureen’s next, you know,’ and that was when, for the first time in her life but by no means the last, Libby was aware of making up her mind to do something hard, something she was afraid to do. She would tell her father, Helen’s father, too, and Maureen’s, a man newly bereft of his wife and Uncle Clyde’s brother. She would tell. Frightened as she was, full of dread as she was, her resolution buoyed her, made her feel grown-up and strong, gave her something better to fasten her thoughts on to.
Walking home from school the next day, worrying about telling, worrying about the English exam on Friday and about the ink stain on her skirt, she smelled something funny. Ever since she was little she didn’t like going past that big old tree in front of the grocery store, because it had a knob on it that looked for all the world like somebody hiding, waiting to jump out and grab her. This time when she hurried past it, there was an odour, vaguely bitter, wrongly sweet, and then a man was walking beside her.
Libby did her best to edge away. The man said in a pleasant voice, ‘I won’t hurt
‘I stood up here on this very hill and I watched Libby’s funeral come towards me—’ Cecelia looked where she was pointing, at the winding dirt road below them and beyond. There, in fact, she caught sight of an oncoming funeral procession, a boxy black hearse, one other dark car nearly as tall at the hump as it was long, and - oddly, she thought, though she couldn’t quite have said why it was odd - several pedestrians.
The road was apparently much further below them than she’d realized, for the figures stayed tiny, movements blurred by distance and perspective. She blinked, glanced at her aunt beside her, looked back. The sad little parade of miniatures was no closer, although it was still in forward motion.
* * * *
Uncle Clyde’s flesh was mostly pale pink, darker pink in some places Libby could not think about, and smooth, hairless. If he’d been hirsute, darker-skinned, or covered with warts, she’d have found his body no more nor less revolting.
When she was little and Uncle Clyde would come to get her, she’d sometimes open his shirt and feel around for his nipples, like little stones in the ocean of his soft smooth flesh. Then he’d whisper to her, or say out loud if he was sure they were alone, ‘You like this, too, don’t you, sweetie? You like your Uncle Clyde.’
Libby did like how his nipples felt under her fingertips. They gave her something to fasten her thoughts on to. Sometimes, too, she’d imagine that she could slit him open by tracing a line from one of those hard pinkish-brown dots to the other and his pink heart would tumble out into her hand. That never happened.
All the women in the family knew about Uncle Clyde. As girls grew up, they learned what to say about him. ‘Oh, that’s just Clyde,’ Grandma said nervously the single time Libby - thirteen years old, scrubbing clothes on the washboard in the big black tub - told her about the kisses he stole from her in the pantry, which was not the worst she had to tell. Her little sister Helen was peeling potatoes on the back porch, out of sight but not out of earshot, and Maureen, crawling, was under everybody’s feet, with Mama eight months dead.
‘Clyde is a good man,’ she was instructed sternly. ‘Clyde is a man of God,’ and Libby, observing, could see that this was true. Uncle Clyde performed many acts of charity. He was a good husband, a good father, a good neighbour. Everybody loved Uncle Clyde. For a little while, she tried it on, like somebody else’s frock, feeling chosen.
‘He does it to me, too,’ Helen informed her from the other edge of the billowing sheet as they changed his bed the next Monday morning. ‘Maureen’s next, you know,’ and that was when, for the first time in her life but by no means the last, Libby was aware of making up her mind to do something hard, something she was afraid to do. She would tell her father, Helen’s father, too, and Maureen’s, a man newly bereft of his wife and Uncle Clyde’s brother. She would tell. Frightened as she was, full of dread as she was, her resolution buoyed her, made her feel grown-up and strong, gave her something better to fasten her thoughts on to.
Walking home from school the next day, worrying about telling, worrying about the English exam on Friday and about the ink stain on her skirt, she smelled something funny. Ever since she was little she didn’t like going past that big old tree in front of the grocery store, because it had a knob on it that looked for all the world like somebody hiding, waiting to jump out and grab her. This time when she hurried past it, there was an odour, vaguely bitter, wrongly sweet, and then a man was walking beside her.
Libby did her best to edge away. The man said in a pleasant voice, ‘I won’t hurt
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