Straight No Chaser

Howlers

one of my aunties at home has a brain tumor. a small one. but, nonetheless.

maybe this is really narcissistic, but i thought something was wrong when she didn't make a bigger deal over marcus, when he was at home with me over spring break. she begged me to bring him upstairs so she could meet him, and then she met him, and then, afterward, instead of "he's cute, shanny, tell me more about him, when is the wedding, [standard adult remarks that get old coming from people who aren't her]," she smiled politely at us both and sat back down.

but that's just my self-absorption. she was tired then because it was after three in the morning, and unimpressed because he was in sweats and being obnoxious, talking only about the campaign and stuff. i'd have smiled politely and sat back down too.

her kids, ages fourteen and seventeen, are going to completely flounder around the time of her operation. they already don't have a drop of motivation between them; my mom might be dying seems like as good an excuse as any to let the other shoe drop. the younger one i used to babysit every summer and we had a great time--it was (still is) the most adult i've ever felt; she was so attentive, so inquisitive, and she yielded so much authority because she was tiny, a really skinny little thing with a cupcake voice and snap-length hair that stayed twisted over the summers. we wrote stories together. she wanted to be a writer, then, before she stumbled into precocious puberty and started hating herself. now she's into cosmetology and modeling and she won't speak to anybody except under extreme duress.

her brother hasn't done a lick of schoolwork since approximately the third grade. he claims he's going someplace for college next year, can't remember the name of it just now, but chad says he's actually just going to continue doing what he's been doing, which is nothing, which sucks.

it sucks. it's a crumble. blue cheese crumbles over a waldorf salad of injustice.

my mom never tells me things like this because she thinks i am emotionally fragile. apparently she bases this on the fact that when i was seven, and she announced that my grandfather had passed from emphysema, i ran and jumped in the bathtub and wouldn't stop crying till i ran out of breath and tears. i was seven, though, and we haven't had much death since then, but she still hides things from me--when she choked on her dinner at some camping trip and had to be rushed to the emergency room, she told one of my aunties (the one in question, actually) to say she'd gone out "to get some air freshener." a very strange, ill-formed lie, because she was disoriented from all the choking, and i saw through it immediately, and was furious, afterward, when they told me she'd spent the whole night having her throat palpated by specialists.

so, this, she didn't mention, not once, while i was home for spring break. my dad, who is here this weekend with my brother, brought it up at dinner last night, because i'm his confidant and he can't keep my mom's secrets worth a damn. his immediate next words, which i've heard maybe six hundred times throughout my life, were "don't tell your mom i told you."

i won't, but i'm just wondering, what would they tell me if the howlers got her before they ever came clean?