17. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type S72, Cruel aunt.
18. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type S12.2.2, Mother throws children into fire.
You have a redheaded aunt, your mother’s closest sister. As a child you not so secretly referred to her as your “scary aunt” because she was known to fly into unpredictable rages; rages that, more often than not, centered on you.17 You dreaded the annual trips to Wisconsin because you knew it meant close proximity to a woman who clearly really hated you and did comically little to hide it. It was a power struggle, which was weird because you had no power at all. You cannot remember a conversation with her in which you weren’t tense, tiptoeing around unseen land mines.
Things that you remember sparked her anger: the time you made popcorn with your cousin and sprinkled parmesan cheese on it; the time you and your cousin tried to make watercolors out of flower petals at your grandmother’s house; the time you started to describe the movie Return to Oz to your cousin. (It was too scary, apparently, even though the same cousin had read, and described to you in great, horrifying detail, the entire plot of Needful Things the night before as you clutched your stuffed dog and stared at her in the darkness.) In middle school, when you were always fighting with your mother, your aunt told you over AOL instant messenger that if your parents got divorced it’d be your fault, and she threatened to cut your father’s balls off. (Years later, after your parents’ toxic, miserable marriage came to an end, you traced back to that moment as the first time you felt the tiniest twinge of sympathy for your aunt, who had gone through a divorce of her own and never remarried.)
Your mother explained away her behavior with any number of facts. Your aunt was a single mom, she said, a nurse who worked very hard to support her kids. She had a disease called endometriosis and was often in pain. (Years later, when the condition bloomed in your own body, you observed that you managed to get through the worst of it without screaming at small children, or anyone for that matter.)
Your aunt met the woman from the Dream House, once. Your cousin, her daughter, was graduating from college in a nearby midwestern town, and the two of you attended a party thrown in her honor. Your aunt was stiff and polite, your cousin utterly delighted. Later, you felt ugly with regret: Why was the only girlfriend you took to Wisconsin the one who’d reinforce all of your conservative Catholic relatives’ perceptions of queer women?
After that, when your grandmother passed away, you went for a drive with your scary aunt and your mother. Your scary aunt said, apropos of nothing, “I don’t believe in gay people,” and from the back seat—empowered by adulthood—you said, “Well, we believe in you.” Your mother said nothing at all.18