I remember my Aunt Mary Fortune for two reasons,
she always brought me a gift when she came to town and she wore a stole that
had real fox heads and tails on it.
I am sitting here trying to picture her face and I can not do it. But I can summon
up her presence and feeling.
She was short, or as I used to call it as a child, low to the ground. I think she
might have been wide. She had a round face that always was spread rounder with a smile.
I know she always came to visit my grandmother in Bristol with bags in her hands, a
couple of those brown paper bags with handles on them.
And there were treasures to be found when she opened them.
Aunt Mary Fortune usually came to spend a week or two with Grandmother at any give time.
I am not even sure how she became my Aunt Mary. Truth be told, there may not have
been any common blood flowing between us, but that is how you were raised back then, you
had a whole bunch of Aunts and Uncles. Relationships made the name, not the
name relationships.
As best as I can recall, Aunt Mary Fortune worked in service. She kept house, cooked
and cleaned for a well-to-do Philadelphia family. She had her own room there and
lived there also. She had no other housing, and few relatives, so when
she took time off from her work, she normally boarded the train to Bristol and we got to
see Aunt Mary Fortune.
I used to like to play with her stole. There were either three or four fox
heads on one side and an equal number of tails on the other. I can't remember
if feet or any other appendages were on this stole. But the heads were perfect right
down to their little ears and shiny glass eyes that seemed to look right back at you with
a glint.
Aunt Mary Fortune realized my fascination with that stole. She would bring it with
her even in the hottest of weather. I used to think it was for my entertainment but
now that I look back on it, she probably had most of her valuables with her in those bags
when she visited. She traveled her worldly goods with her.
My grandmother in Bristol had what I thought was a magnificent glassed in front
porch. I used to love to go out and sit on the lumpy faded couch that was out
there, curl up in a sun beam and read when I was little. Aunt Mary would sit in the
cushioned wicker chair nearby and watch me at my endeavor. "Read to me
Johnny," she used to occasionally request. She would not say a lot, perhaps help me
with a word I did not understand, but just watch me with a smile of pride as I attacked
the book.
It usually had come from within her bag. She knew about my love of reading.
The world knew, and knows, about my love of reading. I have traveled
around the world through literature. As much as I love writing, I love reading even
more.
To this day, one of my treasures is an old, early edition of Mark Twain's
"Huckleberry Finn.," It was my first real adult read and it came to
me during one of Aunt Mary Fortune's visits.
I was sick when she arrived at my Grandmothers in Bristol. And by now, Mom and Dad
had bought their own new home. I was curled up in my little bedroom battling what I
think they used to call the croup or however you would spell it.
The vaporizer was spitting out steam, sitting on the night stand next to my bed.
Also nearby was a card board sheet, bent in a V. That was my tent that I
would be told to periodically place over the steam port of the vaporizer to more directly
inhale its medicine containing steam. They used to put some concoction in that
steam cup that would flavor the steam you inhaled. On mild congestion, it was just
a big glob of Vicks Vapor Rub.
An old wooden brown radio, that normally held court in the kitchen, also was in the room.
That was one of the best parts of getting sick, you got to get the radio and
spend the day, after Arthur Godfrey went off and Art Linkletter called it a day, listening
to the wonderful soap operas and serials that filled the afternoon.
If I was not feeling so sick, I would have been in heaven. A little wooden handle
bell was laying at my side. If I needed anything, I was supposed to ring the bell.
Being sick was an art form back then!
Here I was feeling all pitiful for myself. Steam going up my nose "Young Doctor
Malone," going in my ears from the radio and I felt the need for company. No
new aches and pains, but probably boredom caused me to pick up the bell and give it a good
shake.
I heard footsteps coming up the steps but they sounded a little different. Not my
mother's pace. My father was off at work. And as I looked at the figure in the
doorway, it was Aunt Mary Fortune. She had walked down to our new house from my
grandmother's house to see how "how her Johnny" was doing.
Needless to say, I felt at least 50 per cent better just seeing her. And add
at least another 15 per cent when I saw the glint from the glass eyes of the foxes
hanging around her neck. How can you feel too bad when you have a fox head to
explore and pet. She only had single brown bag with her for this arrival. And when
she reached down into it, she withdrew my copy of "Huckleberry Finn," it
was inscribed with a loving scroll, May you never lose your love of reading, Aunt Mary
Fortune."
That book now is dog-eared from my many passes through it. Even as an adult, I have
picked it back up and retreated to my childhood adventures within its pages..
As I grew older, Aunt Mary Fortune's visits decreased. I was not aware of age too much
when I was little but Aunt Mary Fortune was old. Eventually the family where
she worked decided she no longer was young enough to do their bidding. They
essentially put her out so she went to reside at a nursing home.
She came to visit once or twice from the nursing home, but her spirit was not the same.
She had lost that sense of independence she used to carry with her. The fire
had gone out of her. She looked old, even to me, who really did not recognize age.
And her stole, she said it had disappeared in the nursing home.
Whether Aunt Mary lost it or someone else "borrowed" it I will never
know, but after that day in my sick room I never saw the fox stole again.
One day, not too long after her last visit, we received a phone call. Aunt Mary
Fortune had passed away. It was hard to believe because I based her whole life on
the periods of time she spent with us. I did not see the hard times she went through
between visits, perhaps that was why she was so alive, so ready to do things when she came
to my Grandmother's house. It was her safe haven, her oasis of peace and
comfort in an otherwise troubled existence.
Since I did not see her at the end, it was hard to believe that Aunt Mary Fortune was
gone. It took me a long time to realize that I would not see this short loving
woman, walking towards the house with her handled, brown paper bags in tow.
Never again see her sitting across from me intently watching me read, occasionally
asking me to read a passage aloud for her.
And that I never again would see that fox head stole of hers, wrapped so lovingly
around her neck, with the glass eyes that glinted when the sun would hit them just the
right way.
Aunt Mary Fortune was gone but her legacy lives on within me. Whenever I pick up a book, .
I keep waiting to see the glint of light from the glass eyes of a fox head.
