WHILE SHE SLEPT, Joanne could still hear Auntie Anna's spirit creep down the hallway during the night to use the bathroom. It had been in Anna's routine to arise each evening from her bed and use the toilet, though often not flushing it afterward for fear of disturbing her daughter's slumber. Now Joanne slept alone, deprived and depressed; the only noise that she ever heard in her apartment now were the croaky murmurs coming from in between the wooden baseboards in the hallway next to her bedroom. She could hear their whispers drift underneath the short opening at the base of her bedroom door, and settle like dust on her pillow, near her ear. Sometimes she speaks to me, sometimes she tells me to do things- this is what Joanne told me. 

Joanne would cry, as she now found Sundays dismal; four years later at Church Father Thomas and the other regulars inquired on her whereabouts, and I demurely told them that she was still shocked; still in a state of isolated, recoiled grieving. They had been going to the same Church for the past fifteen years, when Uncle Joe was still alive and when Charlie, who Joanne went with at the time, was still in the picture. God, she said, I still smell her lasagna baking in the kitchen.

They had gone to church, religiously, for those fifteen years- they had never missed a Sunday and they were always the most pious and amicable guests in the Good Lord’s Home- praying as they sat and kissing each new stranger that sat next to them each week. Auntie Anna was fifteen years retired; they paid rent and ate using Joanne’s meager salary and Anna’s skimpy Social Security. I am so lucky, Joanne would say at Thanksgiving while saying grace, to have been blessed with the accompaniment of my mother for my entire life; my heart, and my love, and my benefactor. Ever since Daddy died, we have been on our own, and have been each other’s shoulders to cry on. I don't know what I would be without you. I thank all of you; I thank all of you for this day and this meal. Mother, and she looked up to Heaven to talk to Joe, and Daddy, thank you for the pride and morals you have instilled in me. Amen.

I remember asking my father why Aunt Joanne had never married while in the car one day, and he, meticulous yet witty in his answer, responded: Joanne was never dealt a pretty hand to play with; and if anyone else were given what she had, they wouldn’t play it either. I did not understand much by this, as I was still young and jovial and family matters did not matter much to me, as many of my family members were still alive and breathing.

My father was right about Joanne not being pretty. She was a small, frail woman with bony shoulders and her skin color reminded me of skim light coffee. Her hair was so white and ashy that it had been like eaten up by an incinerator, and spit out upon her bald, orbicular head to let rot, or worse, be blown away by the wind (as we all had known she wore a wig). Her teeth were brown and decaying.

We invited her to my graduation party, which was three weeks after Auntie Anna died. My mother told her that it was important that she be around family, and that if she ever needed anything, naturally, that she call us and let us know, but she never came. Charlie, at her mother's funeral, said that she would be fine and that he lived right down the street from her, next to the Ingersol Mall. I remember Charlie calling us one day in the late autumn, when there was snow already biting the ground and the tulips were still alive,and he told us that he had not heard from Joanne in two weeks after he told us that she was gracious for his kind invitation to stay in his home, but she politely refused it, saying that she needed to fall accustomed to living on her own and doing things on her own. We said that we would knock on her door, and assured him that she was alright, and that she was probably still in a period of self pardoning for having never gotten married, something that her mother was always hopeful for before she died.

It was in the evening of that same day my mother got a call from a strange women. I remember my mother noting how rude she was, as she never stated her name over the telephone, but told her that she worked in the same bank that Joanne worked and that the other tellers missed her counting money out so quickly and that she had not been to work for well over two weeks. My mother kept telling me how much this woman emphasized the way in which Joanne's hands used to breeze right through the thick stacks of presidents and inventors, and how she evoked pleasurable stares and many "Ahh's" from the customers on the other side ofthe glass; she said she had never seen someone count money as quick as she let it go, and that if she really wanted to, she could become a professional card dealer, with the way her hands moved.

The morning after, My mother said that she would call Joanne before intruding in her apartment, uninvited; after all, the visit would be abrupt and unexpected and Joanne may not fully appreciate an unexpected visit from family in such a time of mourning. Joanne did not answer her phone. Well, I suppose we ought to go check on the old coot, said my mother, make sure she’s still with us.

My mother found visits to Auntie Anna’s impatient and disturbing. The ride there was often enervating enough, as it would take the latter half of two hours to get to the town that their apartment building was in, and when we did arrive at the town, it took yet another half of an hour to find it, as it was hidden in the nave of the city, the city being Churchill. The city and its town people were disturbingly pious, framed pictures of Jesus and All His Holy Disciples hung from many walls of Auntie Anna’s friends and neighbors that my mother had met, and Anna’s own respective apartment was enshrined with crosses and certain Da Vinci portraits. My mother, having deserted the Catholic Church many years ago said that it gave her the freaks.

We arrived at Anna’s apartment and knocked on the door. Joanne unhinged the lock and spoke through the thin crack:
‘Yes?’

‘Joanne it is Marilyn and Peter; we are checking to see that you’re all right. A co-worker of yours that you work with called and said you have not been to work for three weeks. Are you all right?’

‘Yes, yes- please come in.’

Her kitchen table was draped with a table cloth whose texture felt like that of a papyrus scroll. The black squiggles drawn on it were nearly inscrutable, though they resembled some type of cryptic, or archaic, language. My mother and I sat down.

‘Coffee? Would you like coffee, Marilyn?’ Joanne offered us some coffee.

‘No. Charlie said that you haven’t called him. We have been worried about you Joanne, how have you been off?’

‘Not good. Not good. I miss her terribly. It is when I visit her every day at her grave- the roses don’t seem so red anymore’

‘Yes, yes- as we all do. Joanne why don’t you come live with us for a while- you will be with family’

‘Oh I could not impose’

‘No, no- I insist- please’

Joanne’s eyes seemed to be drowning in the coffee that was in her mug, as she gleamed at the cup heavily.

‘I will think about it’ she said ‘but I will need some time to myself before.’

‘That is fine’ said my mother ‘ but you must call Charlie right after I leave and tell him you are all right. You must not separate yourself from your friends, Joanne.’

‘Yes, yes. I will, Marilyn.’

My mother gathered her purse up from her lap and rose, as did I, and we both kissed her goodbye and made pace towards the door. Opening it, Joanne followed us and said:

‘Marilyn, there is one more thing’

My mother, turning around as she was just buttoning up her heavy coat, said:

‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Since Anna has died, there has been no way for me to pay the rent. There is hardly money to buy food, since we always would order out. I don’t know how I will be able to afford to live, even with the money I make each week- it is not enough’

‘Anna, it is why we are offering you to stay with us. Please consider.’

And my mother kissed her on her cheek, which was heavily pampered with make-up, and then we left. We could not leave soon enough, for my mother had been heavily disturbed by the presence of the hanging savior on the crucifix above Joanne’s oven.

It had been another two weeks since we heard from Joanne and my mother started to worry again. I am worried, she said, about Joanne. She had told my father how she promised she would call Charlie after she left that day two weeks ago, and seeing as Charlie had not called us, we assumed she did so. But, my mother said, she still has not called with her answer. I would like her to come live with us, my mother said.

So there was a big fight about this with my father and my mother. My father saying that it shouldn’t be our responsibility to house and feed a sixty year old woman, who isn’t even immediate family; my mother saying that it was her aunt and that she needed to be with family if she wasn’t allowing Charlie’s companionship, or company, rather. So, my mother being my mother and my father being the man whose neck she twisted, he let in. It would be my father and my job to go to Joanne’s yet again to bring her home.

Walking up the  corroded wooden steps to Joanne’s floor, I could hear my father utter and groan curses and other unmentionable profane things under his breath that I am not willed to say here. When we got to her apartment door, both our noses twitched- for we both had smelled the faint, yet distinct smell of burning paper. We knocked on Joanne’s door and there was no answer. We knocked again and again and Joanne still did not answer the door so my father let out a tired sigh and punched the door hard, and I just stood watching all this unfold.

‘Damn door. Damn woman’s car’s here- she didn’t go anywhere- why ain’t she answering?’

So my father took out a thick metal wire from his pocket and stuck it in the keyhole, pricking and playing with the lock on the inside until he finally heard a click and the door unlocked. He put the wire back in his pocket, softly pushed the door open, which made a creek, and we entered Auntie Anna’s apartment. 

Joanne was dead on the kitchen floor. The papyrus scroll that once dressed the kitchen table was hugging the wall around the corner of the kitchen next to the oven and was tightly coiled around her neck. We saw that the oven door was wide open, and was emitting tremendous heat.  After seeing, not only her grisly purple face and swollen neck, but the bubbly, raw, and scorched skin of her hands that clenched that tightly wounded knot of papyrus cloth, as if to propose to the founders of her body that such a menace broke into her abode, and there was struggle while he tied her up in her own table cloth and burned her halfway to hell. Later my family would learn from the coroner that Joanne died from bronchial asphyxiation from the noxious oven gasses, and from the severity of burns on her face and hands. A week later my mother told my brother and I that we needed to go to her home and clean out her closet and collect her belongings and heirlooms, so that they need not be destroyed or incinerated. My brother, upon scrummaging through her closet for any lingering dollars or coins that she may have had there, came across a box of letters and receipts. Many letters were outdated and were addressed to Charlie, but many of the receipts, or what we thought were receipts, were in actuality tax return forms that had not been yet cleared. We dug deeper through this hole, or box, and we found more letters addressed to Joanne though from names of people my mother has never known or been introduced to, one letter read:

To Joanne:

Joanne, I am in Aruba right now, and like the setting sun, my patience has set and retired on you as well. You have lied to my family and I! You have bid me broke! You are a liar and your “promises” are not worth a mere dime of what I have given to you! You said that you needed money for dental reparation and loans for gambling losses, nearly three thousand dollars, and that you would pay me back within three months of me giving it to you! It has been nearly a year and I still have not heard back from you, as this is my seventh letter sent to you! The bank, once I come back home, will know about this and you will lose your job, I am sure of it, I am sure of it! Oh you must see this sun Joanne, it is beautiful, precious, beautiful. Though, unlike the liar and deceiver that you are, I bid you luck and good fortune in the years to come if I do not hear from you, as I do not expect to. I am sure that Mr Cheevers will cry and be so sorrowful once he loses those hands of yours!
The Best of Luck, Stephen R Rickers.

My mother, who was standing behind me as she read this, looked up and blinked repeatedly. I could deem that her soul burned with anger and avengement.

Copyright 2007 Charles Andres Alberto
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