That Sunday drive with Aunt Nono

By Nellie Curtiss …

At my cousin Edna’s 80 acres, my aunt, my black cocker spaniel, and I loaded into my red 1989 Dodge Raider—a gift to myself the year I graduated with my master’s—for a Sunday ride in 2001. Just outside of Manassa, passed the waterless bridges of steel, Aunt Leona measured the hill and plateau she saw.

“I wish that God would come down, sit here beside me, and talk to me,” she said.

I asked her, “And what would you talk to Him about?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I just had it on my mind but now I just don’t know. Oh, Nellie, my mind isn’t what it used to be, you know.”

Just outside of San Acacia, passed the crumpled café and homeless bed & breakfast, Aunt Leona gasped for order.

“I just thought that I haven’t told Mama where I was going. Do you think she knows?” she asked.

I assured her, “Oh, yes, I told Edna before we left that we were going for a drive.”

Then my aunt who was at the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s offered, “Do you ever wish you were dead, Nellie? Sometimes I just wish that I could lay down and go to sleep.”

At the outskirts of San Luis, where the mountain prays in stations, Aunt Leona whispered about walks to the mailbox, and abductions.

Almost in tears, she said, “Some days I just want to cry. I go into my room by myself and just cry. I don’t want Edna to know though; I don’t want her to be hurt. What’s wrong? Do you see that car behind us?”

Glancing in the rear-view mirror, I asked her, “How do you know there’s a car; I don’t see one, Aunt Nono. Look back and describe it to me.”

She urgently claimed, “It’s back there somewhere. I can FEEL it.”

Trying to gently bring reality back to our conversation, I asked again: “What color is the car, Aunt Nono?”

“Oh, I don’t know what color it is, but it’s dark,” she said as she looked out the windshield.

“What make is it, Aunt Nono?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I’ve forgotten,” she said in a I-give-up tone.

“There’s no car behind us, Aunt Nono,” I said.

Even so, Aunt Leona swore, “Oh, there MOST CERTAINLY is. I can FEEL it.”

As we rounded away from the levee, she peered my way, out the passenger window, behind her, and in front of her.

From her mind came demented fears, “I don’t want to be abducted–I want to stay away from the men who abduct. I heard there’re some men who abduct. I just don’t want to be one of them.” By this time, tears formed in her eyes that seemed pale set juxtaposed to her pearl-like hair drawn back from her face with silver hair clips.

Rattling on, Aunt Leona pondered, “I think so much about you. I think about my mama, Daddy, my husband, and Jerry. You know, my son is an alcoholic. Things haven’t been going so well for Edna, either; she always has something to worry about. I want to see her sheep, but I don’t want her to worry. Things haven’t gone so well for Jerry. Do you have enough gas?” Rummaging through her cream patched leather handbag, she said, “I don’t have any money for gas.”

Further down the road, she recounted, “I haven’t seen my mother in so long. She was so sick.  I don’t know if she is all right or not. I don’t know if my Daddy is alive or dead. It’s been so long since I’ve seen Arnold. I wonder where he is?”Out of the blue, she asked, “How are your two boys? How is your mother, Nellie? I think about you SO much. Your people are good people.”

Just pass the Rio San Antonio bridge on our way back through Manassa, Aunt Leona squinted to see the perched bald eagle half hidden in the bare cottonwoods along the banks.

“I’ve been here before in Mercedes, Texas. I never realized how big everything was here. All the Mexicans loved my daddy because he gave them water. He made sure everyone got water whether they were rich or not.”

Between Manassa and Romeo, we pass by over-grazed pastures, calving heifers, Sunday chores, and flattened barbed-wire fences.

Aunt Leona then cautioned me, “We better turn around if we don’t have much gas.”

Reassuring her, I said, “We are. We’re on our way back to Edna’s.” Clapping her hands and giggling, she raved

“Oh, I’m so glad. Won’t she be surprised!”

Finally, we both sighed as my SUV crept over the drying but muddy entrance. Unexpectedly, a sea gull lifted past the passenger side, and snared a scavenged treasure as it swung off into the southern sky and then eastward ho even as Aunt Leona’s thoughts angled towards Dallas, Houston, Galveston and the southernmost Rio Grande Valley.

— Nelda Curtiss is a retired college educator and long-time local columnist. Reach her at columnsbynellie.com or email her at columnsbynellie@gmail.com

Cutline for picture: The illustration “That Sunday Drive with Aunt Nono” is an original colored pencil with marker drawing by Nelda Curtiss.