Lisa Trumble fiction story Aunts
Menno, by Kennan Hutchins, Acrylic and Ink on Paper, 19″ x 14″, 2025. (Photo by Manfred Wolf)
Aunts
by Lisa Trumble
Lucy was focused on jabbing a stick into a beige sand mound. Across the yard, Jamie sat on the top wooden step outside her front door and pulled her feet up, folding like a jackknife so she could stretch her oversized fleece top over her knees and down her legs. The cold was starting to seep up from her toes. Jamie sensed the curses of the ants coming from deep underground and took another gulp of tepid coffee. She inhaled an incantation of hope that this third brew could compensate for the lack of sleep last night.
Jamie turned her head, put her cheek on her knees, and instinctively hooked the right side of her straight, auburn hair behind her ear. At least the wind had died down. Now was the post-storm stillness—the morning specter whispering, “What in the hell was that?”
“Why are you poking at that?” Jamie called out. She was both worried and fascinated to see her niece so enamored with stabbing.
“Ants!”
“They won’t hurt you.” Please stop stabbing them.
“I know.”
Lucy thrust into the mound a few more times and then pushed a handful of the grains over the top and patted it, sealing the hill. She was the image of her dad, Jamie’s brother. Dave had the same near-white hair and blue-green eyes. She had his overbite and a thin pointed face like a snapping turtle.
It was hard to grow anything here. Plants needed additional manure to have any chance of not dying. Thriving was harder and involved luck. If you didn’t add the poo each spring, the sprig might hang on for a year or two, becoming spindlier as time went by, until it looked like a scrubby ball of weed with a couple of sticks poking up. Then you yanked it out and started over. That current pile of sand marked the death of a scraggly rose bush. Three hopeless flowers each year on stems tufted with a few stunted groups of leaves. Not enough greenery for one sachet of potpourri.
Jamie shifted again on the step, and the wood squeaked. She wiggled back and forth, generating grating croaks from the rusty nails on the dry wood. She continued for several more squeaks until Lucy looked up. Jamie smiled, seeing that the sound was scraping up the little girl’s spine.
“Do you need another sweater?” Jamie asked.
“No.”
“You sure? It’s cold.”
“Yup! I’m sure!”
Okay then. The kid had next to no meat on her bones for insulation. She had Dave’s self-assurance, though: I can do what I want, when I want, and if I want—oh, and his best one, when he was learning to drive at fifteen—I don’t have to worry. They’ve got brakes.
Although yesterday they didn’t find theirs in time, and all the swerving in the world couldn’t avoid the mangle that was going to happen. Tire tread markings intertwined like the distracted love doodles in the margins of a teen’s notebook. The kitchen phone had screamed like it used to do when their dad was on the way to the hospital, again. And then their mom. It had rung last night with its familiar jangle and her mind had salivated like a trained dog—a dog that immediately choked on its own spittle.
Kara, Dave’s wife, had passed soon after Lucy was born. All the doctors’ visits focused on the pregnancy, and they had missed divining the signs of a creeping blight. After the birth, a fatigue that didn’t diminish, then multiple lumps and an amorphous mass, excised and irradiated, and then everything doused in chemo—until Kara said stop. Please just stop. Jamie’s own cancer several years before had been simpler and less motivated. It had disappeared after surgery and radiation. She had no words of wisdom for Kara. In the long dark that had followed, Dave had held baby Lucy like a talisman as she glowed with youth from the inside and from her blond hair on the outside. He had come out of the dark to follow her light.
Dave’s friend Mitch was at the hospital now, waiting for news. Couldn’t have him watch the kid. Nice guy, but a fuck-up. Jamie hadn’t needed the couple of dates with Mitch in high school to prove that to her. Lucy would need a tetanus shot just to enter his house. Oiled machine parts everywhere, trying to be assembled into who knew what. Jamie didn’t think Mitch knew anymore what mechanical beasts had been hacked apart into the various hulks that littered his table, coffee table, porches (front and back), and his car’s trunk. Nuts, bolts, washers, and wire in the kitchen drawers. The few dishes and cooking things were up in the higher cupboards. So, no place for a kid. Lucy was throwing fistfuls of sand into the street.
Kids had never been on Jamie’s radar. Ever. And some would argue that her own place wasn’t much better than Mitch’s for a kid. She had a house and a lifestyle clearly devoid of anything that smacked of marriage or children. It had become Kara’s mission to fix her up. First, Kara’s brother, then a cousin, then this “nice guy” from work. Then this “nice gal” from work. Jamie tried using humor, followed by logic, then stomping hard on any more fiddling in her life. I’ll get married, if and when I want to—get it? I don’t want kids, so live with it, Kara. A prophetic and insensitive remark, but who knew? A week later, Kara found a lump in her armpit.
She’d have to move soon to warm herself up, but she stayed on the porch. Lucy had woken up this morning confused and scared. It had been a long time since she’d been in Jamie’s house. After those tears and sniffles (hadn’t they taught her how to blow her own nose yet?), a breakfast of cinnamon toast and hot lemon Jello—it was the only thing she could make into a drink that didn’t have caffeine or alcohol. Jamie also had toast, but with a small shot of Jameson’s in her tea. Ok, a large shot. And more than one cup of tea. Then she made a pot of coffee. It had been a long night, and it was likely to be an even longer day. Mitch had checked in very early to say Dave was still in surgery.
“Lucy, you’re being mean to the ants.”
“It’s just sand.”
“It’s sand with maybe some ants in it. Stop. C’mon.”
Jamie put her coffee mug on the porch and stepped down into the yard. She held out her hand, and Lucy ran over and immediately took hold. The road in front of the house curved to the right in front of the marina, where it changed its name from River Road to Clover Lane and then ran along the river for a mile or so until it swooped back up to higher ground. They looked both ways before crossing the street, heading left and then turning right before the marina gates. Three doors down, a small white cottage with peeling paint squatted in the cold, a For Sale sign plunged into the front yard’s tan belly of dead grass. Mrs. Kline had moved a month ago, but her house was still on the market. Given the gray day and the dark windows, some might have said the house looked brooding. Jamie knew better. This house was pissed. It was supposed to finish its life with the old lady, who’d lived, married, raised children, and then become a widow here. It was supposed to slowly decline into oblivion. It wasn’t becoming decrepit fast enough, though. True, the edge of the front porch bowed into a sardonic smile, and the wet soaked into the frames around each window. But the wood was just beginning to rot, and the beams of the porch and the foundation were still sound. Now, horror of horrors, a family might buy it. Renovate it. Noisy hammering, stomping, slamming, kids screaming, dates coming with horns honking. In the backyard was a tree swing. The old woman wouldn’t have cared, then or now, and as Jamie knew, the neighbors didn’t care. She tugged hard on the ropes, finally suspending herself off the ground and bouncing a little as she clung. The ropes seemed sound.
Jamie looked down at the tiny girl and then fished into her pocket. She took the white hairband stashed there and placed it around the girl’s head to cover her ears, already a deep pink from the cold, stretching the material as flat and wide as she could. With the white wrapped around her head, it looked like she’d been bandaged from a concussion. Jamie lifted Lucy onto the swing’s wooden seat. After a few light pushes, Jamie stopped and watched the swing’s arc die. Lucy giggled, wriggled, and begged to be pushed harder. Guess she didn’t know how to pump her legs. Jamie tried to explain it, even demonstrate it, but the girl didn’t catch on to the coordination of when to pull in and when to kick out. Jamie returned to pushing her gently in an arc as the rope and wooden seat squawked in rhythm: Hmmmm? Urrrrrr.
The girl’s cheeks grew pink in the cold. Jamie stopped the swing and told her they should go back to the house. Maybe they’d come back again. Hand offered, hand grabbed, tiny cold fingers like the emerging talons of a growing baby bird. On the way back, Jamie found a thick blunt hunk of purple chalk, no doubt kicked across the road by the house opposite. Their entire driveway was a mosaic of scribbles in blue, green, pink, and purple. She picked up the chalk and stuffed it and her hand into her coat pocket. Back at the house, she gave the chalk to Lucy and pointed to the driveway. The girl skipped over and stood for several minutes, contemplating the dark surface. Then she squatted and scratched with the chalk.
Jamie sat back down on the steps and picked up her mug. She swallowed the last mouthful of cold coffee, bitter but drinkable. Geez, the kid needs a real hat and some gloves. And, shit, had Mitch called while they were off, playing?
“Lucy, stay in the driveway, ok? Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”
Without looking up or halting her drawing, Lucy held up her left hand and opened and closed her fingers, mimicking a puppet talking. “Ok, ok.”
The front screen door squeaked as Jamie opened it, and she smiled a little as she leveled a stern kick to the brass plate at the bottom of her storm door to unstick it. Jamie picked up the receiver just as the screen door slapped shut. A steady dial tone. No message. Stupid thing to leave the house like that. She had given Mitch her cell phone number, but each time he’d dialed her kitchen phone.
Now, something warm. Lucy’s backpack had been tossed on the armchair, and half of it had been disgorged in search of a nightgown last night and today for clean underwear and an outfit. No hat, no gloves. Apparently, Mrs. Mitchell, Lucy’s usual sitter, had planned for indoor activities. Jamie had no games other than cards for solitaire. The few puzzles trotted out during the winter for something to do over the holidays had small pieces. Not for kids. Plenty of books, but none of them for kids. Movie discs, but nothing for kids. Video games, but none for kids. Jamie cooked liver, and Brussels sprouts, and grains with odd-sounding names like amaranth, teff, and farro. No cookies and no candy. No pop. No peanut butter or jelly. A bloated plastic milk jug in her fridge door with a white liquid that had started to separate.
Jamie grabbed a pair of gray socks from the child’s bag and, on her way out, stopped to scrounge in a cardboard box in her hall closet. It contained odds and ends she’d forgotten about, including a bright red knit hat that had belonged to her dad. Fire red, pilled, and splashed with white paint; it was ancient, the knitting gone sloppy. Jamie couldn’t remember him wearing any other hat in the winter to shovel the driveway. She’d tried to gift him a new one, something more subtle, or at least, without paint on it. He gave each one away, saying he liked his red one just fine. She took the hat, closed the box, and backed out of the closet. The child’s lilting voice seeped through the screen door along with the cold.
Kara had talked to Jamie about a will. Now that we have a child and, you know, for what’s coming, we need one. They never made one, though. At least, not while Kara had been alive. Jamie had no idea if Dave had made one since. Probably not. He’d always felt having a will tempted fate. It was likely an unchecked box on his lawyer’s to-do list that had become a potential blip on Jamie’s radar now – a small obligatory missile that was presently singing a song about flowers and butterflies while making chalk drawings on the driveway.
She called Lucy over to the door and took the chalk from her chubby hand. The child started to protest.
“Just a second and you can go back. Here.” Jamie put a sock on each hand, cleaving the tube to make separate pockets for the thumb and the rest of her fingers. Sock mittens would have to do. The red hat was too big for her head, but it would work. She removed the white headband and pushed the hat onto the child’s head. She tried to give the chalk back to Lucy.
“Ugly hat!”
“Too bad, it’s the only one I have.” Jamie held out the chalk and wiggled it.
“I hate it!” Lucy reached up with her sock hand and tried to get a grip on the hat. When she couldn’t, she swiped up her forehead instead, the hat dropping off to the asphalt behind her. The static caused sections of her hair to lift and undulate like Medusa’s angry serpents. A pink bottom lip pouted out in defiance, and her hands gripped into little balls inside the socks.
Jamie squatted down and picked up the hat. “Yeah, I know, kiddo,” she said quietly, trying to smooth down the silky, charged strands. She only made the static worse. “It’s cold, though, and you need to wear something on your head.”
“That’s ugly. Why can’t I wear yours?”
“Mine’s attached to my coat. I only have this other one that was your grandpa’s.” Jamie made no comment on the fact that the hat was ugly, ’cause it was.
“That’s grandpa’s hat?”
“Uh-huh. It’s very special. I’ve never let anyone else wear his hat before.”
Lucy reached for the hat and, with fumbling hands, jammed it on her head so hard it nearly swallowed her head. Her lips were barely visible, little puffs of breath wafting out. Jamie folded the bottom of the hat twice, making the hat shallow enough so the kid could see. Lucy took her chalk and went back to the driveway.
Halfway back, Lucy turned and pointed. “See what I drawed?”
Jamie walked up the driveway and looked down. Something with four legs. Maybe legs. Arms and legs? “Nice. Very nice,” she said.
“You know what it is?”
“It looks very fierce.”
“It is. It’s an ant. And these are its ant friends,” she said, pointing at a sprinkle of dots she’d made around the main figure. Jamie didn’t mention the relative size difference between the main ant and its friends. She had been guessing it was snow, but okay, ant friends.
“Very good! Keep it up.” She heard the phone ring and scooped Lucy up. The child immediately shrieked.
“I’m not done! Not done!”
“I know, I know,” Jamie said as she ran, the chalk clutched in Lucy’s sock puppet hands rubbed on the back of Jamie’s sober, dark blue coat. In the kitchen, she let Lucy slide down to stand next to her. Jamie yanked the phone off the hook.
“Yes?”
Jamie panted and listened as Lucy stomped her feet on the green tiles and continued to whine, Mitch’s deep voice growling through the receiver. Jamie turned and tried to shush her.
“Ok, Mitch. Thanks. No, have them wait until I can say goodbye. I’ll find someone to watch her and be there as soon as I can. No, I don’t know at this point. I’ll have to figure that out.” She hung up the phone with a shaking hand and then plopped down into a chair at the kitchen table.
Lucy’s stomps had become a march, to go with the song she was inventing. A song about ants and the sugar they wanted to eat. About the sugar they will eat and the happy times they will have in the sun and sand.
Jamie put her chin in her palm and watched Lucy pound around the kitchen. Lucy’s song turned dark, willing rain and sticky sugar destruction down upon the ants as she stomped and crushed the purple chalk onto the kitchen floor. Tears started and then stalled, welling in Jamie’s eyes. She blinked several times, and though her view of the room swam and slid, the tears did not fall.
Lisa Trumble currently resides in Upstate New York, although her heart belongs to the Northwoods of Wisconsin. She earns her rent money by managing technology projects but devotes much of the rest of her time to writing fiction. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Ashland University. You can find more of Lisa’s writing on Bluesky: @lctwrites.bsky.social.
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