Free Underneath by Sarah Jamila Stevenson

tries to draw Auntie Mina out of her shell, encouraging her to vent if she needs to and not hold any emotions inside where they’ll “fester.” Despite my mother’s well-meaning attempts, Auntie Mina stays quiet and listless, putting in a soft word now and then but nothing significant. Nothing that tells us how lost she must feel. Not that she needs to tell us.
    At some point, after our tea has long gotten cold and Dad and I have reduced the zucchini bread to a pile of crumbs on the plate, the conversation turns to Shiri. It happens by accident. I’m finally telling my parents about how I’ve stopped going to swim practice, how I think I want to quit the team, and it just slips out of my mouth: how Shiri would have wheedled, badgered me, whatever it took to get me back on track because it would be a major plus on my college applications.
    And after that, it’s like an invisible barrier has suddenly disappeared. Auntie Mina starts to talk. And then we’re all talking, remembering weird random things like how much Shiri hated mustard and how inordinately happy she got whenever she was able to find a cute pair of shoes in her tiny shoe size.
    Dad says, “Remember that time the newspaper wrote about the Mock Trial case against Vista Hills?” Mom nods, a sad smile on her face.
    â€œThat’s right ,” I said. “The reporter got her name wrong. He wrote ‘Sherry.’” I snort.
    â€œSherry,” Auntie Mina says with a shaky laugh. “I’d al-
most forgotten about that.” One minute she’s smiling; the next minute, tears begin to roll down her face. Abruptly, she dashes them away and apologizes, eyes downcast with—what? Embarrassment? I’m not sure. I pass the napkins. She dabs at her face with one and then crumples it into a ball. My mom fusses, putting an arm around Auntie Mina’s shoulders and pulling the cup of cold tea closer, telling her she has nothing to apologize for.
    Auntie Mina lets out a shaky sigh. “But I am sorry, because you’ve been so nice to do all this,” she says, her voice thick. “I know I should be coping better, but I just—” She breaks off, looking down at the table, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
    I exchange a look with Mom. Auntie Mina lost her only daughter, for crying out loud, and it’s like she’s afraid we’ll be angry at her. But I just feel bad. We all do.
    I open my mouth to tell her that she has no reason to be sorry, that nobody has any right to tell her otherwise, when the doorbell rings. Auntie Mina springs to her feet and says, “I should really get going.”
    â€œMina,” my dad says, reaching a hand toward her. “Stay for dinner.”
    She grabs her purse from the back of the chair. “You have company. Plus it’s roast chicken night, so we’ll have company, too, one of the other VPs in Randall’s department. I’ll just let myself out the side door. I loved the tea.” She gives Mom a kiss on the cheek and says, “I’ll call soon.” She hugs me and Dad, quickly, and hurries out the door before we can say more than goodbye. Dad scoots his chair back and rushes after her, looking as confused as I feel, and Mom is frowning, but the doorbell rings again and she hurries to answer it.
    Poor Auntie Mina. I wonder what she’s thinking, what was going through her head. Why she decided to run off. And I wonder why I didn’t underhear anything.
    I guess I didn’t try.
    For the first time, it occurs to me that I could have. Could have tried to find out what she was feeling, deliberately. What she was thinking.
    No matter what was going through her mind, I know she’s got to be hurting a million times more than I am.
    I don’t have much time to think about it, because who follows my mother into the room but Antonia in the ample flesh, wearing a yellow tracksuit nearly identical to mine, only hers is