I used to have a photo of Aunt Annie when she was a very young woman. Long ago lost, I had a vague, though imperfect, memory of it and of her.. She was shown sitting with a toddler dressed in a christening outfit standing on her lap. She looked very pretty in her dress, wearing a broad brimmed hat with a wide bow ribbon under her chin. Annie looked back from the photo with a slight cock of her head and a clever little smile. I found the photo during an online google search.
A few wisps of memory blend with those of other family women forming an archetype of the woman I always thought I would become. I want to grab at the wisps, although they are ephemeral. Maybe by peering more closely at these memories I can better understand this image of what I thought I would be and better fathom why I am so often disappointed with the reality of who I am.
My great, great Aunt Annie McClintock was born in 1885, one of twelve children fathered by a strict Methodist preacher. Her life included three marriages, three children. At one time or another in her life, she had worked as a taxicab driver, carnival barker, merchant marine, farmer and desert recluse. She wasn’t well known. She didn’t leave much behind and so not many have any lasting memory of her. However, I often think about Annie, wondering about her life, imagining it from the few clues provided in snippets of memory.
I remember Aunt Annie as an old desert rat living in a shack in the dry expanse between L.A. and Las Vegas. My memories of meeting her probably reveal more about myself and provide only minor clues about Annie’s character. Since I was only about 4 or 5, it is hard to know how much of what I remember has been distorted by the passage of years or simply reflects the skewed perspective of an immature mind. I remember sitting primly on an orange crate politely proffered me when we visited her on one hot summer day in 1956. I sat with back straight and my white, gloved hands folded in my lap, just as grandma had instructed me to do in her stern lecture to me on the way to Annie’s home. I occasionally smoothed my new frilly dress and petticoats. My feet dangled off the side of the crate with the heels of my impractical shiny black patent leather shoes incessantly banging against the crate. As I dangled my feet, I glanced around at the unpainted walls with old yellowed newspaper clippings and an occasional faded photo. In one corner was a stack of old letters, arranged in bundles, held together with twine and Christmas ribbon. In the kitchen was a dripping pumpstyle faucet in a slate sink. A checkered gingham skirt dressed the front of the sink where the usual kind of kitchen cleaning tools peeked from the skirt’s hem. The spigot above dripped brownish water. Annie offered us a glass of this to wash the dust from our throats. When I demurred with a look of distaste, she gave me a bottle of Coca-Cola, the green bottle still warm from sitting in the sun, and the green light refracting through the glass onto the wall next to me.
I was under orders from grandma to sit quietly and keep comments to myself.
Annie had tried to make the place nice for our Sunday afternoon visit. She had fashioned little handmade animals using walnut shells, of particular interest to me. These animals she placed carefully atop crocheted doilies resting on orange crates that served as end tables dotted around the little room. In the center of the largest of these crates was a green bowl full of oranges. The sun pierced the walls in a couple of spots and when I looked up, I thought I could see at least one patch of blue sky. Thankfully, rain was infrequent in this area. I noted a shotgun in the corner next to the door. She caught my eye as it roved around the room and stopped at the sight of the gun. Aunt Annie explained it was kept convenient because she was having trouble with pumas, a wildcat common in the area.
It was only after several cups of soda that I learned that the “facilities” were outside. It would be my first, and I hoped the last visit to an outhouse It was the old fashioned kind, with a wood lid over a hole in the ground inside a dark, tiny closeted room located several yards from the shack. I approached the structure warily, looking about carefully for a glimpse of a “puma”. The outhouse itself was full of yellow jackets, flies and a pungent smell. I could not bring myself to venture into that little room and instead squatted behind the outhouse, pricking my bottom on stickers and getting urine on my lace topped white socks. I noticed with dismay that my pretty shoes were brown with dust and dotted with beads of splashed urine.
I breathe deeply now, remembering … there was a smell inside the shack, too. I remember it as the smell of lavender talcum, dust and oranges… a peculiar smell of an old woman’s cabin. As I close my eyes and remember, I hear her laugh. She had a hoarse, robust laugh, full and broad, with no hint of pretension.
Annie wore blue jeans and a man’s shirt. Her long gray hair was brushed back and neatly braided, with a small dusty ribbon the only concession to her gender. Her face had the dark, leathery look of one accustomed to working in the sun and squinting in bright light. In spite of a manly way of dressing and walking, she had a gentle humor about her that was definitely, though perhaps only nostalgically, feminine. Sitting in that room with Annie, I sensed that I was in the presence of a person fully capable of handling life no matter what its course.
In my Aunt Annie’s presence, grandma was a far different person than the one I knew. Grandma had had a special fondness for Annie. Around her, my grandma acted as one does with someone with shared memories of childhood. I don’t know what happened in their lives that bonded them; I never thought to ask about their relationship. When I calculate the disparity in their ages I realize they would have shared a corner of their youth. When grandma was in her early 20’s, her aunt would have been young enough to sympathize yet experienced enough to fascinate her. I imagine that Annie knew grandma when grandma was still vulnerable and had hopes for her future. Grandma once hinted how Annie had taught her a popular dance in the 1920’s, known as the black bottom. It is still hard for me to imagine a younger version of grandma dancing the black bottom.
Perhaps it would have seemed incongruous for a life like Annie’s to end in a soft easy manner. Many years after that summer’s visit, on a similar summer day in 1975, an elderly but still agile Aunt Annie, drove her old battered Chevy truck down the highway near her desert home. Somewhere along the way, she picked up two tired teen-age hitchhikers and offered them a meal. Aunt Annie never had much but what she had she offered freely, and with pride. Perhaps because of this remarkable sense of generosity, the couple could not believe she was as poor as she appeared. The teenagers were convinced that she was an eccentric with hidden money on her land. She was found strangled and her shack virtually destroyed, torn apart by the teens anxiously searching for more meaningful treasure than what they had been given so freely.
Though convicted, the young boy and his girlfriend served nine months for the crime. The conviction of the girl was overturned because she didn’t have a lawyer present during her confession.
Not long ago while out on visit in California with my husband, I insisted we try to locate Annie’s property. As we drove past what we believed to be the place along the freeway, there was no evidence of the shack or the outhouse. Only another part of the desert one travels by on the way to someplace else.
All that’s left is little bit of memory, remnants of unasked questions. And the ubiquitous dust when the SantaANa winds howl through in the late summer
I value the white space as necessary to understand the meaning of the space that is filled.
