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because he liked to scare me and tease me when he caught me alone.
    Aunt Verdella was watching across the field where Uncle Rudy was working, while we walked across Grandma Mae’s yard. She had a little smile on her face, like she always did when she looked at him.
    When we got on the porch, Aunt Verdella took the key from her pocket and unlocked the door. She shoved the door open and it scraped across the wood floor. “Oh dear, I’ll have to tell Reece to rehang this door. The house must be shifting.”
    Grandma Mae’s house smelled like old dust, and it was quiet. Real quiet.
    â€œCome on in, Button,” Aunt Verdella said. “We’ll start right here in the front room.”
    I didn’t remember Grandma Mae real well. Only that she was skinny and stiff like a broom handle, and that she didn’t smile or talk to me. She gave me a brush and comb set one Christmas, but Ma said it was too nice to use, so she made me put it on my vanity and leave it be. I didn’t mind not using it though. Why would I need a brush as big as a bear’s paw to brush a couple of little knots, anyway? Ma said it would be nice to have something to remember my grandma by once she was gone, but every time I looked at that comb and brush set sitting there on my vanity, all I remembered was that I had nubby knots for hair.
    It took a bit to get myself to move from the doorway. I felt like I should take off my shoes and walk like a whisper, though I wasn’t sure why. Aunt Verdella didn’t feel that way though. She had on her old canvas shoes with garden and barn crud scuffed halfway up the sides, and as she thumped hard across the floor, tiny clumps of it sprinkled over the oval rag rug sitting in the middle of the living-room floor.
    Aunt Verdella got a stack of yellowed newspapers from a basket sitting next to an old chair, and she dropped them down by the coffee table, next to the boxes. “We’ll wrap up the knickknacks and pictures first and bring them up to the attic,” she said. “I’d like to leave a little something out, you know, make it more homey for the girls, but I don’t suppose your ma would like seeing any of Mae’s things left out for strangers.”
    She showed me how to wrap the glass things by rolling them in a few sheets of newspaper, then she showed me how to tuck them in a cardboard box so we could fit lots in. I wrapped up a green candy dish, then a couple little ladies that Aunt Verdella said were from Germany, just like Grandma. I laid the wrapped ladies inside the candy dish carefully, while Aunt Verdella watched me. “You’re doing a fine job there, Button,” she said. I smiled, because I liked the way Aunt Verdella always told me that, even when I wasn’t doing a fine job.
    Aunt Verdella took the pictures off the mantel. She held up one of my ma and daddy. Ma was wearing a wedding dress and her lips were pulled shut in a smile. She looked shy, but happy. Her shoulders were dipped forward, like they were lots of times. My daddy looked real handsome, his dark hair combed neat off of his forehead. “Your ma sewed her own dress. She got a pattern, then altered it to just how she wanted it. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I nodded.
    Then Aunt Verdella took down a picture of Uncle Rudy and that first lady that was his wife. She was wearing one of those wedding dresses too and a long veil that wrapped around her body, making her look all cloudy, like she was already a ghost, even though she wasn’t then. Aunt Verdella talked a bit about Ma and Aunt Betty’s wedding dresses, and what she liked on each one, then she told me that when I grew up and got ready to marry, Ma would make me the prettiest gown anyone ever saw. Prettier than a princess’s gown, she said.
    â€œIs there a picture of you in your wedding dress too, Aunt Verdella?”
    She shook her head, and there was only a hint of a smile on her face.