“Look,” I said to Aunt Odie the next afternoon. I’d come to her place like she asked.
She stared in my eyeballs.
I sifted flour and baking powder together. Then salt.
“Are you thinking loving thoughts?” Aunt Odie said. Behind her the sun broke through the window and crowned my aunt with a halo.
“Not really.” I knew what was coming.
“Then you can’t work on the food.”
Aunt Odie waited until I said, “Fine.”
I clapped my hands free of ingredients. Flour poofed in the air like a cloud. “I better stop working.”
“Yes, you better had. You know what makes this product the best in the land.”
“Love,” we said at the same time.
I pulled the apron over my head and threw it on the table (with no love), then stomped around the kitchen like I might make an exit any second (also with no love). Aunt Odie took my hand. Led me into the living room. She plopped down in a rocker in a dusty puff.
“Climb on up onto my lap,” she said. She patted her knees. “You know I will hold you long as your feet don’t touch the floor.”
I gave a bit of a nod. Only a woman who dreamed recipes and was assisted in the creative cooking process by the dead would hold me, no matter that I was taller than her, no matter if her own feet had a hard time reaching the floor when she sat in the rocker.
Aunt Odie’s been saying I can sit on her lap since I can remember. Maybe even longer. I bet she said that to me first thing, right after I was born and she held me in her arms that early morning when it rained so hard and the weather was so rough three tornadoes were spawned. She probably said these words, “I’ll hold you on my lap as long as your feet don’t touch the floor,” ’cause her momma said it to her and her grandmother before that and her great-grandmother—you get the picture.
In slow motion, I walked to where Aunt Odie sat. I eased myself onto her lap. Pulled my feet up so not even my toes would touch the flowered carpet.
The rocker moved and I let out a sigh. No matter what anyone says, fifteen is not too old to have your auntie hold you and soothe away the rumples that ghosts can cause. And boys. And parents, too.
“This is the way of the Messengers,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.” I whispered my answer.
Outside, far away, I heard a siren go off and a dog howled.
“There’s a reason you are the way you are, Evie,” Aunt Odie said after a few minutes of rocking. The words came out like a new song. “A reason I am the way I am. A reason everyone is the way they are. We each got duties. Some are easier known for a few of us. Like you and me. We’re lucky. We know what we are called for here on earth. Some people go through trials doing this, that, and the other thing trying to settle on what they’re supposed to do here in life. And some don’t find out till they have gone from this life to the next. When it’s too late. And then maybe they have wasted their chance at serving others and making the world a better place.” She let out a long sigh, like air being released from a balloon. “You should be glad about that, Evie. That you know.”
I didn’t answer, but I thought.
Maybe I didn’t want to help others.
Maybe I didn’t want to leave the world a better place.
I rolled my eyes at myself. Of course I did.
Aunt Odie was right.
At least, that’s the way I felt as she rocked me till the sun slipped away and all the world was covered with an evening blanket and I needed to get home so I could hold my baby sister, tight, on my own lap.
Before I left her place, Aunt Odie patted my shoulder, handed me a casserole dish that was steaming hot, and said, “Listen, shug. I think they need to tell you what’s going on down to your place.”
I narrowed my eyes at my aunt. “What are you saying?”
Aunt Odie shifted from one foot to the other.
“It’s your momma,” she said after a long minute.