Don’t Let Your Mother Answer for You

There were eleven of them.

And on Christmas Day, at four in the afternoon, I drove to Bellamy Street and knocked on the door of the house I grew up in and asked them.

Part Eleven: Christmas Day, Bellamy Street

She opened the door in an apron and shrieked.

Actual delight.

That is the thing I was not ready for.

My mother had not seen me in nine months and she had no idea I was in the state, and she put both hands on my face and said, “You animal, you didn’t say a word,” and pulled me into a house that smelled of a ham and had eleven people in it.

My aunt.