Free Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns Page A

heard about it, it was too late to argue. And anyhow, who could argue with Aunt Carrie?
    She wasn't really kin to us. She had latched on to Granny's mother long time ago. Granny inherited her, and now she was ours—for Christmas and Thanksgiving and all the Sundays between. She used to be rich, but wasn't anymore, having lost everything during the War, including her husband. But she still acted rich and, like Grandpa, had the manner of one who expects to be obeyed. She lived in an old three-story, rundown plantation house with morning rooms and sun rooms, and porches wrapped around every floor. Aunt Carrie looked rundown herself, in her frayed sweaters and canvas and rubber Keds shoes. She wore her thin hair in a knot, and except in winter always had a flower stuck behind each ear.
    One summer she held weekly "cultural gatherings" for children. You had to recite a poem to get in. She gave us lectures on women's suffrage, Shakespeare, Beethoven, English history, and horticulture, and always had two freezers of homemade ice cream, which was why we all went. Her last lecture was on what she called "human excrement." Taking a rose out of her hair, she said it wouldn't be nearly so lovely if it weren't for human excrement, and told us children to go home and get our folks to empty our slop jars into our manure piles. Nobody let their children go to Aunt Carrie's gatherings after that, but she kept letting everybody know what happened to the excrement at her house. Aunt Carrie was stubborn.

    Which is why nobody thought to argue with her when she decided to dye Mary Toy's hair black for Granny's funeral.
    Halfway through the service Mary Toy got to sweating. Trickles of black liquid started running down her face. Seeing it, the preacher could hardly keep his mind on how good Granny had been or how it was God's will and all. Mama kept glancing at Mary Toy and finally dabbed at her face with a lace handkerchief.
    About then, Mary Toy noticed the black that was smearing off her hair onto her sweaty arms. Thinking it was black blood, she went to wailing. People in the pew behind the family said later they thought she was just missing her granny, pore child.
    Soon as we got to Grandpa's from the cemetery, Mama took Mary Toy's taffeta dress off and stuck her head in the wash basin on the back porch. The black leached right out, just like Aunt Carrie said it would. Only thing, her hair wasn't red anymore. It was purple. Soon as she looked in the mirror, Mary Toy went into mourning for her hair. She cried for hours and then days. It was a relief to everybody when, after our Glorious Fourth celebration, Cudn Temp said to her, "Sugarfoot, come on home with me and stay till the color grows out." Cudn Temp lived out on a farm in Banks County.
    Like Mary Toy, my mother was partly in mourning for herself. Because of Granny's dying, she couldn't go to New York City with Papa on the buying trip they'd been planning ever since February, when a wholesale house in New York offered the store two free tickets on the boat from Savannah and Grandpa said for
Mama to go. The morning after the funeral, she insisted she wouldn't even want to go now. But tears were brimming in her eyes and all of a sudden she left the room and ran upstairs, I guess to cry. I felt sorry for her, and I knew she couldn't help feeling sorry for herself. Mama had never been anywhere much except to Atlanta, once to Raleigh, and once to Social Circle, Georgia, for a two-week visit the summer before she married.

    At first I didn't mind being in mourning. I didn't want to do anything anyhow but think about Granny. It was like I was trying to memorize her.
    One thing I already missed was pork. Granny had been providing me with ham and sausage ever since Papa decided if the Lord thought hog meat was bad for the Jews, then we weren't going to eat it, either. "Southern Presbyterians are as much God's Chosen People as Jews are," he said.
    Grandpa had laughed about that. Said he heard