Standing in the deep closet of their new baby’s room, I was looking over all the new-baby dresses people gave as gifts. Wishing I could have those dresses. Through the closet wall I could hear my aunt and uncle speaking. They were telling my mother that fate cannot be contained. My mother made some polite comment. She didn’t care for the aunt. The aunt kept it up saying your daughter’s name is charted. I realized she was talking about me. I pictured my name on a big map where all the places are different colored splotches but all the oceans are the same blue. “It’s not like milk,” the aunt said.
When I was not quite in my teens the uncle took me and his son on a long ride to go ice skating at Meadowbrook Park lake. It was a freezing day. I mentioned something about the cold, when the uncle suddenly turned angry. Loudly berating my comment, calling it unnecessary. My cheeks burned. I’d turned my head to look out the side window. Icicles hung from branches all along the parkway.
The year I graduated high school, I heard my mother tell my father that the uncle was no good. He was my father’s younger brother. “Youngest of seven boys, they spoiled him,” she said. That he pretended to be a jolly sort when he was actually quite evil. Saying the uncle made a pass at her while she was carrying me in her belly. Right then I should have probed for details.
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