mellie

Mellie used to say don’t put all your eggs in baskets,
which made no sense ‘cause her baskets were always
full of needles and yarn and blackberries, that one time
out on the Cape. Mellie didn’t have a mother, just a
daughter in Boise and a sister in Indiana who I spoke to
on the phone once, her tinny voice whirring through the
wires like something distant, imaginary. She might as
well have been living on a cloud, maybe under the sea,
even, for all we saw of her. Mellie didn’t like men or tight
spaces, cliffside roadstops or fences or blood. She hid in
the kitchen the one time my father picked me up – I could
see her through the window, her face shaded, turned down.
She always let me lick the spoon. Mellie slept on the porch
one winter. She said it was because she needed the air.