grabs my arm. She’s holding
out the box.
Want to play Monopoly?
she says, her eyes
almost clear again.
I nod, and we spread the board
across the table and play
until it’s so late our eyes
start sliding closed,
hours and hours of
pretending we didn’t
need Mama for this fun,
pretending we don’t care
that she chose her room
over us, pretending we’re not
thinking about how
we’ll miss her in a way
she won’t miss us.
HOME
Aunt Bee comes for us early.
Mama is already gone.
All ready to go? Aunt Bee says,
eyeing the suitcases
piled in the living room.
She only lives across town,
but me and Charlie packed
about everything we owned,
except for our winter clothes.
We still don’t know
what we’ll be doing
at Aunt Bee’s house
or how long we’ll stay.
Aunt Bee picks up two bags,
and me and Charlie carry the rest.
Don’t worry about art supplies, Paulie.
The bags smack her legs.
I have plenty.
I grab my pencil
and sketchbook anyhow,
but I leave all the rest.
Milo jumps in the back seat.
Even though she doesn’t like dogs,
Aunt Bee is letting Milo come with us.
I hugged her neck
when she told me.
I love Milo.
I didn’t know if I could
leave him behind, and I
guess Aunt Bee knew that.
He’ll have to wear a collar
and a leash at Aunt Bee’s house,
but I don’t think he’ll mind,
seeing as it’s the only way
we could be together.
Milo understands
things like that.
Let’s go home, Aunt Bee says,
like her home has always
been our home, waiting for us.
PORCH
It doesn’t take us long
to get there. It’s about
the nicest house I’ve ever seen,
a neat garden out front,
no paint chipping on the sides,
a door you don’t have to pry open.
Aunt Bee takes us right through
the inside and out to the back.
I look around her porch.
There’s a back door painted red,
like the favorite shirt
my daddy always wore,
like Aunt Bee’s face
those days he made her laugh,
like the stop sign his car
broke from the ground.
A green hose wrapped
around a hook beside the door,
like the one my daddy used
to water our garden,
like the grass in the woods
where he used to live,
like the old tractor he drove
for Granddad when Granddad’s
arthritis kept him in bed.
A mop against a rail,
like the one my daddy used
to clean up the milk
I’d spill sometimes,
the one he’d hold
while he danced around
the living room just to be silly,
the one Charlie used
at Halloween one year
when we couldn’t find
the broom and my daddy said
she could fly a mop instead.
Everything on Aunt Bee’s
back porch reminds me
of him.
GLAD
Let him go, Paulie,
Aunt Bee says, and
at first I think she’s
talking about my daddy.
But then I notice Milo
trying to jump right
out of my arms.
I set him down.
We watch him sniff the plant
growing up the side of Aunt Bee’s
house. He lifts his leg.
I wonder if Aunt Bee
will stop him, but she doesn’t.
When he’s finished,
he runs into the grass
and collapses, rolling
all over it, looking like my
daddy’s car must have looked,
feet, back, feet, back, feet, back.
Except he rolls one more time
so he can stand and then races
to my side so he can
lick my hand.
Milo runs back and forth,
back and forth, and I hear
myself laugh at the crazy of it.
That makes Aunt Bee laugh,
and Charlie, too.
The way Aunt Bee’s
eyes shine and twirl
from me to Charlie
and back again
makes me think
she’s saying something
I haven’t heard in too, too long.
I’m so glad you’re here.
NAME
There’s a picture
hanging in the room
where I sleep at
Aunt Bee’s house.
At first I thought it
was a real picture,
being as it’s perfect,
with palm trees standing tall
against a blue-and-yellow sky.
But then I looked closer,
and I noticed it’s a painting
that looks just like a picture.
I know because I found
a BA in the corner,
hidden in some twisted
tree branches so you
wouldn’t see it unless
you were looking
really, really close.
I think it might
stand for Aunt Bee,
since her name is
Beatrice Adams.
I’ve found BA
painted into the corners
of other pictures
in her house, too.
But she’s never said
anything about painting before.
I think she’s trying to hide it.
I don’t know why.
So today, when she leaves
to check the mail and pick up
our supper, like she does
every Wednesday, I plan to sneak
into her room.
LETTERS
Aunt Bee doesn’t let
anyone go in her room,
not even Charlie, even though
Charlie is supposed to be
helping clean her house.
Aunt Bee says she cleans it herself,
but I can tell as soon as I walk in
that she doesn’t,
being as the tables beside
her bed and the dresser
along the side wall hold dust
as thick as my fingertip,
like our tables at home
always did.
Lotion and makeup and perfume
are stacked all over her bathroom counter,
on top of some spilled powder
she must have never wiped up,
since it looks old and permanent.
Her bedsheets are tangled,
and a blanket is almost falling off
onto the floor.
The purple slippers beside her bed
are the only neat thing in the room,
looking like she just
stepped right out of them
and now they’re waiting
for her to come back.
A curtain closes off
a corner of Aunt Bee’s
bedroom, where the light
from two windows is
glowing through the fabric.
Something is there.
I pull the curtain back.
Out of the corner of my eye,
I see a chair and a table
spread with paint
and a stack of paintings
leaning against the wall
under the windows.
But I don’t look at any of them,
just the one resting on the easel.
Sunbeams point to it, even though
the shades are drawn.
My daddy’s eyes
stare back at me.
BA is easier to find
on this one, right across
the bottom in loopy letters.
CURTAIN
What are you doing in here, Paulie?
Charlie says, and then she stops,
her mouth open wide.
Neither of us says a word.
We just stare at our daddy,
looking real on canvas.
After a while, Charlie says,
We should get out of
this room. Aunt Bee will be
back any minute, and she
pulls the curtain back in its place,
hiding this corner
of Aunt Bee’s room again.
SECRETS
Me and Charlie sit on the couch,
waiting for Aunt Bee
to get back home,
and I only think
of three things.
1. Aunt Bee is
an artist, a real one.
2. She didn’t tell me.
3. What other secrets
does Aunt Bee have?
QUESTION
When Aunt Bee gets back home,
she calls us to the supper table.
Her house is fancier than ours
but not as clean. Papers are
stacked in every corner
of the room, and Aunt Bee
puts more on the pile
closest to her before
sitting down with some
fried chicken.
Mama would hate
this room.
It doesn’t seem to bother
Aunt Bee, though, being as
we still eat every meal here.
I look around the room
while we eat, and I don’t
know why I’ve never noticed
it before, but there’s another
painting that looks like a picture
on the wall beside me.
It has the same palm trees
in the background,
and lights glow in the street
and on a diner
and on the hoods
of old cars.
I point to the picture.
Did you paint that? I say.
Charlie kicks me under the table,
but I hardly feel it,
since my whole body
is already burning.
Aunt Bee looks at me
with wide eyes, like she’s
surprised. She stares at her plate,
but not before her eyes move
to the picture so fast I almost
miss it.
She doesn’t say anything,
so I say, I found a BA
on the picture in my room.
I thought BA might be you.
I watch her face. She takes
a long breath, and then she
lets it out real slow, like she’s
trying to think hard about
what she’s going to say next.
That’s what my daddy
used to do when Mama
asked him where he’d been
the nights he came home late.
Gran’s coming tomorrow, she says,
and I know she’s trying to
avoid answering my question.
She looks at Charlie.
She’ll give you a lesson
while she’s here.
Charlie takes violin lessons
from Gran. She’s not very good yet.
She doesn’t have her own violin,
and Gran keeps hers at her house.
I bite my lip, staring at the
empty mashed-potato carton.
My stomach turns over and over.
I reckon there are too many secrets here,
just like at home.
SURPRISE
I picked some things up
at the store for you both,
Aunt Bee says,
turning to me.
I don’t care.
I don’t care a bit.
But when I look at her face,
she’s smiling so big you’d think
she just said my daddy was
coming back home. I feel my
mouth smile, too, even though
I don’t want it to. It’s just that
when Aunt Bee smiles, it’s real hard
not to smile right back.
If you’re finished,
I’ll show you, she says.
I don’t feel hungry anymore,
so I push my supper away.
We leave the food on the table
and follow Aunt Bee
into her living room,
where bags wait on her couch.
Aunt Bee digs inside
one of the bags and pulls out
a black case, which she opens.
She pulls out a shiny brown violin
and turns to Charlie.
It’s yours, if you want it.
Charlie smiles so wide
the secrets don’t mean
so much to me anymore.
Aunt Bee shakes out another bag
in my direction. It’s filled with
canvases and sketchbooks
and more pencils than I’ll ever use
in a lifetime. So you can practice
your art, she says.
My chest burns.
Me and Charlie lunge at Aunt Bee,
She laughs long and loud,
and I hear love all through the laugh
that shakes itself out into silence,
like it used to
when my daddy acted the fool.
Love lives here,
even in the secrets.
GARDEN
Every other week,
after Charlie’s violin lessons,
Gran helps me weed
Aunt Bee’s flower beds.
Gran says Aunt Bee was never
a garden kind of person, but her
husband was, and that’s why
these beds are full of
so many dead plants.
I reckon Aunt Bee let them die
when her husband left.
I reckon I would have, too.
Gran says the plants aren’t
really dead, they just need loving care.
She must have a gift
for dying things,
since some green is coming back.
LOVE
Usually, when me and Gran weed,
we talk about safe things,
like the weather and
what me and Charlie are doing
to keep ourselves busy this summer
and what Aunt Bee is feeding us
in place of Gran’s Thursday night meat loaf
and Sunday afternoon pot roast.
But today she’s brought up
Aunt Bee’s husband who left,
and since I’ve never met him,
I say, What was he like?
Gran looks at me, her face
turning from bright red to a
pale gray, a shadow I can’t read.
Then she looks down at the gloves
that carry dirt so her hands
don’t have to. Bee should never
have married him, she says.
Why
? I say. I just
can’t help myself.
Gran pulls weeds out by their roots,
one after another.
It doesn’t work that way for me,
on account of stems breaking
before the roots come loose.
Gran says it’s important to get them out
her way, or else they’ll come right back,
but it’s not as easy
as she makes it look.
She keeps pulling, and I keep waiting,
thinking maybe she didn’t hear me.
Then she wipes her hands on
the apron she tied around her dress
and says, The only thing he was good for
was growing flower gardens,
painting pretty pictures,
and breaking hearts.
He was a painter? I say.
A good one, Gran says.
Problem was, painting was
more important than his family.
You mean Aunt Bee, I say.
Gran looks at me for a minute
but doesn’t say anything else.
So I say, But they loved
each other, right? since
that’s why people get married.
Gran laughs, but it’s heavy.
Love had nothing to do with
that wedding. Gran says it in a whisper,
and she looks real quick at Granddad,
sitting on Aunt Bee’s porch,
rocking in a white chair.
So if people don’t get married
on account of love,
then why do they get married?
Gran pats my knee with her
dirty glove and says, Love is
a strange thing, Paulie.
It’s a lot like a flower.
She touches a plant that
looks greener than it did
the last time we weeded.
Sometimes it shows up, like a bloom,
after a person gets married.
Sometimes it’s there at the beginning
and then it leaves for good.
She stares at Aunt Bee’s house,
like she can see inside.
Sometimes it never shows up at all.
I don’t ask her which one it was
for Mama and my daddy.
FLOWER
I move on, weeding
all the way around the front.
Gran works close beside me.
When we get to the
side of the house, Gran says,
Well, look at that. She’s pointing
at a tiny white flower,
yellow tips sticking out
from its center.
Our first flower.
A beeblossom.
I don’t think. I break off
the bloom and race inside
and push it in Aunt Bee’s face
so she can see that her garden
is blooming again and it has
nothing to do with the man