Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

misfortune and too sure of my own rights—I fastened together the waistband of my pants. Then my mother walked ahead of me up the toilet path and around the side of the church. We were late, everybody had gone in. We had to wait while the choir, with the minister trailing, got themselves up the aisle at their religious pace.
All things bright and beautiful ,
All creatures great and small ,
All things wise and wonderful ,
The Lord God made them all .
    When the choir was in place and the minister had turned to face the congregation, my mother set out boldly to join Aunt Dodie and my sister in a pew near the front. I could see that the grey slip had slid down half an inch and was showing in a slovenly way at one side.
    After the service my mother turned in the pew and spoke to people. People wanted to know my name and my sister’s name and then they said, “She does look like you.” “No, maybe this one looks more like you”; or, “I see your own mother in this one.” They asked how old we were and what grade I was in at school and whether my sister was going to school. They asked her when she was going to start and she said, “I’m not,” which was laughed at and repeated. (My sister often made people laugh without meaning to; she had such a firm way of publicizing her misunderstandings. In this case it turned out that she really did think she was not going to school because the primary school near where we lived was being torn down, and nobody had told her she would go on a bus.)
    Two or three people said to me, “Guess who taught me when I went to school? Your Momma!”
    “She never learned me much,” said a sweaty man, whose hand I could tell she did not want to shake, “but she was the best-lookin’ one I ever had!”

    “Did my slip show?”
    “How could it? You were standing in the pew.”
    “When I was walking down the aisle, I wonder?”
    “Nobody could see. They were all still standing for the hymn.”
    “They could have seen, though.”
    “Only one thing surprises me. Why didn’t Allen Durrand come over and say hello?”
    “Was he there?”
    “Didn’t you see him? Over in the Wests’ pew, under the window they put in for the father and mother.”
    “I didn’t see him. Was his wife?”
    “Ah, you must have seen her ! All in blue with a hat like a buggy wheel. She’s very dressy. But not to be compared to you, today.”
    Aunt Dodie herself was wearing a navy blue straw hat with some droopy cloth flowers, and a button-down-the-front slub rayon dress.
    “Maybe he didn’t know me. Or didn’t see me.”
    “He couldn’t very well not have seen you.”
    “Well.”
    “And he’s turned out such a good-looking man. That counts if you go into politics. And the height. You very seldom see a short man get elected.”
    “What about Mackenzie King?”
    “I meant around here. We wouldn’t’ve elected him , from around here.”

    “Your mother’s had a little stroke. She says not, but I’ve seen too many like her.
    “She’s had a little one, and she might have another little one, and another, and another. Then some day she might have the big one. You’ll have to learn to be the mother, then.
    “Like me. My mother took sick when I was only ten. She died when I was fifteen. In between, what a time I had with her! She was all swollen up; what she had was dropsy. They came one time and took it out of her by the pailful.”
    “Took what out?”
    “ Fluid .
    “She sat up in her chair till she couldn’t any more, she had to go to bed. She had to lie on her right side all the time to keep the fluid pressure off her heart. What a life. She developed bedsores, she was in misery. So one day she said to me, Dodie, please, just turn me on to my other side for just a little while, just for the relief. She begged me. I got hold of her and turned her—she was a weight! I turned her on her heart side, and the minute I did, she died.
    “What are you crying about? I never meant to make you cry! Well you are a big baby, if you can’t stand to hear about Life.”
    Aunt Dodie laughed at me, to cheer me up. In her thin brown face her eyes were large and hot. She had a scarf around her head that day and looked like a gypsy woman, flashing malice and kindness at me, threatening to let out more secrets than I could stand.
    “Did you have a stroke?” I said sullenly.
    “What?”
    “Aunt Dodie said you had a stroke.”
    “Well, I didn’t. I told her I didn’t. The doctor says I didn’t. She