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In my family, the word "aunt" did not rhyme with either "ant" or "font." Instead it was pronounced ain't, and while strictly speaking, ain't was just a pronunciational variant, it had become a word in its own right. And that is the way I still hear Aunt Aubria's name in my head-Ain't Aubria.
Every Christmas, it was Ain't Aubria who threw the party in Houston, and Grandmother Gertrude who supplied the wet blanket. Christmas morning would begin in Port City with Grandmother Gertrude's querulous plaint at the breakfast table. Didn't my father realize that she had been up all night wrapping presents? Couldn't he see that she still hadn't finished? And until all her presents were wrapped, we couldn't possibly leave for Houston.
Her son considered these objections unworthy of refutation, so every time she raised them, he just pounded his gavel and upheld his previous ruling. "We have to leave here by eight," he would tell her, "because Ain't Aubria expects us at nine." This kowtowing to Ain't Aubria always cut Grandmother Gertrude to the quick. Insensitive to personal insults, she was mortified by social slights. After all, my father was her son, not Ain't Aubria's. Her sense of grievance made her all the more determined to drag her feet and if necessary dig in her heels. By the time my father had finally herded her out of the house, he would be worn out from flogging her like Balaam's ass. And always, always we would already be at least a half hour late.
Grandmother Gertrude would hobble along, refusing to be hurried, and although she had the doctors' diagnoses to prove that her arthritis and tenomtis and bursitis and osteoporosis and diverticulitis were real physical maladies, it was hard to believe that the seventy of her suffering was not subject to a psychological rheostat. On Christmas morning, when the dial was always spun all the way over to maximum, she could barely maneuver her body onto the front seat, let alone the back. (That was why she always rode in the passenger's seat next to my father, while my mother, who usually sat there, was displaced to the backseat where she straddled the hump, separating my brother and me.) My father would open...