Short Story: My Father Tells a Story (Aunt Blanche)

by Claire Matturro

My Father Tells a Story

Four generations of us had crowded my brother’s farmhouse in the rural black belt of Alabama and the living room still smelled of roasted turkey and pumpkin pie. We were sitting about in various chairs and couches with the kids sprawled on the floor and the baby sleeping in his mother’s arms. Outside, a cold wind threatened frost before morning. But we were warm, cozy in each other’s company, and well fed.

My father and Uncle Bill had been trading memories and tales for days in the way of old brothers who do not see each other nearly as often as they’d like. Dad sat up straight in his chair, and said he had one more story to share.

Normally, my father spoke in soft tones, with the cadence of a storyteller, the long, soft syllables of an Alabama accent, and the vocabulary of a man with a good education. That night, when he began to speak, his voice dropped a couple of octaves, and the change signaled that this was an important story. I leaned in closer to hear every syllable.

When he was a child, my father began, his Aunt Blanche had taken ill one summer. She’d fixed butterbeans the night before and had eaten a generous fill. When her stomach pains began, she just thought she’d eaten too many. By the time she realized something more dreadful was afoot and got to a hospital, it was too late. This was the 1930s, in backwoods North Alabama, and her appendix had burst. Peritonitis set in. The family was called to gather and wait for the inevitable.

Kith and kin spilled out of every room of Aunt Blanche’s house. Another aunt made pallets on the floor of the unscreened wrap-around porch for my dad and Uncle Bill. It was going to be a long, hot night. Dad tossed and turned. Between the heat, the bugs, and his worry—he loved his Aunt Blanche and they were close—he didn’t really even try to sleep.

Somewhere in the wee hours of the night, he looked up and Aunt Blanche was standing at the foot of his pallet. He hadn’t seen her come onto the porch. She reached down and touched his bare toes and smiled. He remembered her hand was warm and soft on his foot, something in her touch tender. He smiled back and began to relax. They’d been wrong, he thought. She was fine and she was already home from the hospital. Reassured, he drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, he woke to the sounds of women crying. He staggered up from the pallet and off the porch and went into the living room, with his brother Bill beside him. His mother was weeping and holding her other sister. Their father came over to Dad and Uncle Bill and told them: Aunt Blanche had died in the wee hours of the night.

My father never told any of them he had seen her that night. Theirs was a strict, fundamentalist family who did not hold with drinking, playing cards, or dancing. Or visitations from dead people. His father was a preacher, and the only ghost the family believed in was the Holy Ghost.

As my father told this story that night in my brother’s house, my uncle closed his eyes as he listened.

“I never even told my brother,” Dad said.

Uncle Bill rose from his chair and advanced upon my father. Uncle Bill was a genius, a true one, well versed in science and math who had built a career at the Red Stone Arsenal Space Center, a man who landed at D-Day and lived to never speak about it. He was, in short, no fool, not given to vapors or dreams or delusions. He was also never one to leave the faith of his childhood behind. As he stood beside my father, he reached out and rested his big hand on Dad’s shoulder.

“I never told either,” he said. “But she touched me too—and smiled.”