The Visitation

THE VISITATION by Ramona Chown "Honey, let me get you a good cold glass of buttermilk to drink while we cool off on the front porch." Beaming, Aunt Ada had headed for the springhouse even before we could sit down. Quickly, I stopped her with, "Oh, no, Aunt Ada, I couldn't." Then groping for an excuse, "I can't stay long so let's just sit and visit." A bit puzzled, she turned and looked at me as I rushed on, "Here, I brought you a box of candy." As Aunt Ada slowly walked back to the porch, her raw-boned frame slumped slightly in the faded print dress she wore, topped, as usual, with a snow-white starched apron. Only an inch or two of cotton stockings showed above her heavy work shoes. She took the candy with a quiet "Thank ye" and put it down on the porch. I began asking about the family as she settled into the ragged hickorybottomed chair next to me. Seeing I was interested, her face brightened again and she launched into the latest news. We talked for a while, then, suddenly, in mid-sentence, Aunt Ada said, "You wanta see my quilts?" I said, "Oh, do you have some new quilts?" She said, "Law yes, honey, I got a trunk full." She got up quickly and looked back at me to follow. As we went into the house I had the feeling I always got at Aunt Ada's. The place depressed me. The walls were papered with newspaper. 57 Old family portraits hung around the room. Stern-looking men and women with what looked like gaunt determination in their eyes stared through flyspecked glass out from yellowed photographs . They were not hung artistically or in clusters, as was currently fashionable , but just wherever a nail happened to be left from some former use. Before we could get to the little back room where Aunt Ada stored her quilts she began identifying some of the faces in the photographs, "Now that's Mama's mama—your great grandma, over there. She was a real pretty woman. Everybody always said your mother, sister Sally, looked just like her. And that one there next to her is Uncle Dan. He's the one that left Mama the farm where we'se all born and raised." She continued pointing to picture after picture, explaining the relationship, even getting into some of her in-laws that I didn't know. I stood there pretending to listen, but was really concentrating on the furnishings in the room. There were two double beds, one wooden with a high headboard, and one with a painted iron frame. Both beds were covered with faded chenille spreads, neatly stretched over sagging mattresses. A white chamber pot sat under the edge of the wooden bed. The floor was bare, worn rough and uneven, with ready splinters . A treadle sewing machine stood between the beds under the only window in the room. A scarf made of a flour sack with hand-crocheted trim on the ends was spread over the machine. Some artificial flowers, faded and dusty, stood in a cracked vase in the middle of the scarf. Along one wall was a fireplace filled with dead ashes and a few scraps of fabric , topped by a crowded mantel. That always seemed to be the same in this type of house—a mantel lined with all sorts of little bottles and boxes on each side of an old clock, usually not working . Aunt Ada said, "That's Grandma's remedy." I was startled out of my reverie, embarrassed that Aunt Ada had caught me looking at the mantel instead of the photographs. She repeated, pointing to a Mason jar filled with red liquid, "That's Grandma's remedy. I make that. Best cough medicine they is." "How do you make it?" I asked, relieved that Aunt Ada was not offended by my inattention. She began, "You get rat's vein, wild cherry bark, pine needles, and. . ." She stood there thinking, repeating softly to herself, "Rat's vein, wild cherry bark, pine needles, and. . ." Suddenly she thought of it, "and mullein." "Mullein?" I...