Aunt News

Yes, I got the message that Aunt Anita was slamming me all over the place, saying that I had not paid her the proper respect due to an aunt, that because she is the daughter of Esther only she deserves to occupy the pedestal of motherhood, that even though I was six months older than my cousin Laurie, and thus the oldest granddaughter of Esther, Laurie is the daughter of Anita and thus will be crowned princess, being much more tiny and dainty than pudgy, more coarse and ugly, big-footed me, always impertinently trying to push Laurie off her high horse. I should not have ventured to set foot in Long Beach which is obviously the territory of Anita, although I did not realize that it mattered that much as they never tell me anything. I never know where those Butterfield people are coming from. They never spend more than a few months in any given church because they are always moving around so we don't know where they are. I got the message that Anita had spoken to Mr. Enemy of my Mother's family and said all kinds of nasty things slamming my mother and my mother's family, as if Anita ever knew anything about us, having maybe once had tea and cookies with my grandparents over at Julia's house or something like that. We often heard via grandmother something vague about Aunt Anita's babblings but I had previously thought it was mostly relatively innocent trivialities, mainly talking about angels and other Christian fad topics of the moment. But after hearing via putrid Stacy that my aunts, mainly Anita and Linda, are agitating in expectation of something from me and at the same time making it impossible for me to deliver, I see no reason why I would want to do them any favors anyway. If they are going to go around slamming me as if I were some sort of enemy unrelated to them, then there is no reason for me to pay them back. I do not owe them anything. There is nothing for me to add to that. They do a pretty good job of digging their own graves without any help from me.