Auntie H.

by ThomasIota
(in response to a writing challenge by TheCreepingMan)

Aunt Hephzibah isn't really my aunt. That's just what all the kids in the neighborhood call her. Well, all the kids and all their parents too. She's been living alone in her big, brick house on the corner for as long as anyone can remember.

My dad used to always say she must be a century old, but the last time he said it he was overheard at a garden party. Then Ms. Kyrah, our neighbor from across the street, told Dad to "Cut out all that jibber-jabber and stop being such a nudnik!" She declared Aunt Hephz couldn't be more than half that old. She said all this teasingly, but Dad never spoke about Aunt Hephzibah again. Still, every time the old lady would come up in conversation, Dad would clam up for a few seconds. I knew, behind his eyes, he was repeating it silently to himself.

There are a lot of kids in this neighborhood, but during workdays we're all at school, or maybe remote learning. Normally you'd never see the bunch of us running up and down the street on a Wednesday morning. But today we got seven inches of snow. The weather lady said it hadn't snowed this much in our state for more than a hundred years. So the schools canceled classes for the day, even remote classes, and all we kids were chuffed to have the day off. I hadn't finished my homework, because my stomach had been hurting all the previous day and night. Although it felt even worse when I woke that morning, I somehow forgot all about it when I realized we'd been granted a day of reprieve.

The adults, including my dad, were mostly expected to work from home, squinting into little screens and cameras. I think they are only allowed to stay at a job if they show every day that it makes them miserable.

So it was just a matter of minutes before we were all out on the street, unsupervised, and throwing snowballs at each other! Ryan made a sled out of a scrap of rope and an old box from his basement, and we all took turns riding up and down the road – half of us pulling, half of us holding on and screaming, even though the street was too flat and the snow too thick to build up any real speed.

There was really only one "hill" (not much more than a gentle slope) anywhere in the neighborhood, and Aunt Hephzibah's house was near the bottom of it. So, just before lunchtime, most of us were gathered in front of it. The tall, dark cedars that leaned too close to her low, broad veranda usually hinted at doom but, now frosted, looked instead like magical pagodas. Her yellow porch light spilling out into the still-falling flakes seemed extremely inviting. When she opened her door, stood before a table piled high with steaming cocoa and fresh jelly rolls, and waved us in, almost all of us responded immediately, rushing to fill up her entrance hall.

Aunt Hephz laughed lightheartedly and, in a mock-scolding tone, told us to toss our boots and "snowy things" out onto the porch, then "close the door before the fire freezes!" We did those things while drinking cocoa and warming up. To the left was a study in which a fire was indeed roaring. Most of us carried our treats in there and sat down to warm our toes on the hearth. To the right, down a short hall, was what must have been her kitchen. Ryan and I, and maybe one or two of the others, went that way.

We found her in there, chuckling bemusedly over what I think was a wood-fired cook-stove. She had pots boiling on the range, and kept peeking into the oven door at what I thought must be more jelly-rolls. She just gave us a slight wink or nod each and let us snoop around. "Nope! Not until they are cooked!" she said, smilingly swatting Ryan's hand away from a pan of ginger snaps.

Except for the fire, the kitchen was very dark, although it smelled so inviting we couldn't leave it unexplored. On a small butcher's block sat a little TV, its five inches of black-and-white glow seeming paler even than the snow, the fire reflecting of the thin, stainless cylinder of its extended antenna.