Aunt Carrie was in the kitchen where I’d hoped to find her. Standing at the counter, she rolled out dough for a crust. She didn’t mind me standing close at her elbow to see the way she wrapped it up on the rolling pin and put it real gentle-like into the tin.
“It took me years to learn how to do that,” she told me. “My poor mother would get so frustrated with me. I tore so many crusts.”
She smiled at the memory.
“Good thing mother was long-suffering and crusts can be fixed easily,” she said. “Hand me that jar if you would, please.”
I did, the apple slices in cinnamon syrup looking so good they about made my mouth water.
“This will be for tomorrow,” Aunt Carrie said. “Do you think your mama will come for dinner after church?”
“She might.” I watched her pour the fruit into the crust and breathed in the sweet and spicy smell of them. “We went to the store yesterday.”
“Did you?” she asked, using a spoon to push the apples around so they’d be evenly spread in the pie.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I told her about all the folks looking at us and what Mr. Wheeler had said about Abe Campbell. About how Mama had acted like nothing’d happened at all.
“She didn’t even tell Daddy,” I said.
“She must have been mortified,” Aunt Carrie said.
“She had on her coat the whole time,” I told her. “So nobody’d see.”
I touched my own stomach, not knowing the right way of saying the state Mama found herself in.
Aunt Carrie nodded. “I think I understand.”
She was quiet as she put the top crust on. She pinched all along the edge so it looked like one long, round wave. Then she took a sharp knife and cut slits in the middle of it before putting it into the oven to bake.
“I think your mama is very brave,” Aunt Carrie said, collecting the crust scraps from the counter and rolling them into a ball. “And I think Mr. Wheeler behaved like a churl. He had no right to say such a thing to her. Especially not in front of you.”
“What’s a churl?” I asked.
“A poorly mannered person in possession of a mean spirit,” she answered. “In short, a bully.”
I thought of Hazel and wondered if she’d gotten her mean spirit from him. It would not have surprised me in the least.
“Why’re they all so mean?” I asked.
“Who’s that?” Aunt Carrie asked, turning toward me.
“The Wheelers.”
“Well,” she started. “I don’t know that they’re exactly mean, dear. They do mean things, yes. They behave badly, indeed. But there’s always a reason for people to do the things they do.”
“They don’t have to be mean,” I said.
“You’re right. How we choose to treat people says much about us, don’t you think?” Aunt Carrie asked, patting a fine dusting of flour onto the small lump of leftover dough. “Especially when it comes to people who have hurt us.”
“Like Mama?” The words were out of my mouth before I could catch them. I hoped so hard that Aunt Carrie wouldn’t think me a dishonoring daughter for saying a thing like that.
But she didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, she used her apron to wipe the loose flour from her hands. Then she put them on my cheeks, her palms warm and smelling of dough.
“My Pearl,” she said.
I was surprised by the way her eyes got watery and her voice trembled ever so slightly.
“Forgiveness is the hardest gift to give,” she said, reaching up to push away a tear from her own cheek with her knuckle. “It can cost us so much. But I’ve always believed that it’s worth the struggle.”
“Why are you crying?” I asked.
“Because it’s difficult to see you hurting.” She gave me half a smile. “But it will get better, dear. I believe this family will make it. I have faith that your heart will heal.”
I nodded, knowing that God’d heard Aunt Carrie’s words. Not from far away somewhere in the sky. But that He’d been a witness to Aunt Carrie’s gentle hands and soft words. I did believe if I could’ve seen God just then I’d have watched Him nodding His head at what she’d told me.
“Now, how about I teach you how to make cinnamon snails?”
I told her I’d like that.
She let me roll out the leftover dough and sprinkle cinnamon and a little sugar all over it. Then we folded it into a log, cut off inches of it, and put them on a cookie sheet to bake.
They sat in the oven along with the pie, the whole house filling with the smells of butter and cinnamon and the sweetness of apple. When they came out, that scrap dough looked like perfectly coiled snails, a shade of golden Aunt Carrie declared to be just right. I hoped she might let me taste one of them. Maybe two even.
She did. And with a big glass of milk.
Aunt Carrie wasn’t one to let somebody down.