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Aunt Alberta
- University of Illinois Press
- Chapter
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21 Aunt Alberta Amazing how Aunt Alberta was named by an act of sheer prescience after a Province of Canada. Alberta born 1903 on the island of Jamaica, one Easter morning cracked an egg and sighted a ship becalmed between yolk and albumen. Taking a hint, she boarded a steamer and sailed faraway from life in a sun-lit green Jamaican village founded by her grandfather into a city of ice storms. No lingua franca but the tongue of Quebecois, and unaccustomed hard labor in Mont Royal. She lived in service, taking orders; a saint remitting money and care-parcels for an entire village. Photographs show her dolorous in snow banks, solitary in deep sylvan glades of photo studios, till at aged fortyfour she married one Geoffrey Seal, a Barbadian, himself stone-faced in service, first and only man to uncover her loveliness. It came unexpected, Aunt Alberta’s late luck, in the form of a tender companion who wore her wool scarves like prayer shawls, holy her barely-scented handkerchiefs. He slept, telling her pearls like a rosary. ...