At dusk...

At dusk, she would come out of her tiny cottage and walk slowly up and down the sidewalk on our side of the street, sometimes going right past our house. Taking her daily constitutional, I guess. Walking sort of tilted with her head cocked to the right. Our neighborhood’s version of Boo Radley. We kids were all scared of her, but Daddy said she was harmless. She was Frank Parks’Aunt Mary. Frank Parks who lived in the house on the corner and who had delivered ice with Daddy when they were both young men. Frank still worked at the ice plant and he had built a tiny house behind his own house for his Aunt Mary to live in.
I know very little else about Aunt Mary. She was a common presence in our neighborhood, but only at dusk, for the ten years I spent in that neighborhood before going off to college. After that I never saw her again and pretty much forgot about her. I never thought to ask my folks what became of her.
I don’t remember Aunt Mary ever saying a word, but maybe that’s because we kids kept a sizable distance away from her at all times. I wonder if she realized how we avoided her. She’d stand by the large fireplug at the corner, her hands on her hips, her head in that permanently cocked position, and stare at us. At least we thought she was staring at us. Maybe she was looking at the visions in her head. Whatever, it spooked us.
Only now, looking back, do I feel guilty about the way we children treated her—running from her, calling her Crazy Mary, avoiding her at all costs. Who knows what a closer contact with Crazy Aunt Mary might have taught us—about compassion, tolerance, empathy. We all had to learn those lessons somewhere else. Crazy Aunt Mary was just too scary.