Member-only story
The Attic
A small room at the top of the house where she lived
Her name was Anne, and she was my aunt. She was tall and dark like my mother in the pictures that I showed of her. Aunt Anne was athletic in her youth, graceful, and had men gape at her beauty, I was told. Three times, she was anointed the Queen of the country fair, but that was not the aunt I knew; to me, she was always sick and feeble, living in my grandmother’s attic and never leaving the hard bed she lay on.
She would occasionally cough up flem and blood, and sometimes she choked, and I got scared. Her night dress had a bitter smell, like rotting fruit. At eighty-two, she was blind and unable to walk, her legs limp as worms under the yellow sheets.
Aunt Anne had two children, my cousins Maria and Mary. Her husband left her when she became ill, I was told by my grandmother years after her death.
It was dark and musty in the attic. There were no windows, so no light or fresh air ever came in. The room was hot as a brick oven in the summer and cold as an ice block in the winter. The walls were wood that had lost its glow, and nails came through them like spears through impaled bodies. Once, when I was little, I climbed up to the attic and saw the nails coming through the walls; it gave me nightmares for months.
