The Bag Her Aunt Left Behind

Amy was standing in the yard with her new handbag hanging off her elbow. She had been crying, and trying to do it where nobody would see.

“I don’t want mine,” she said. “I’m going to give it back.”

“No, you’re not,” Emily said. “It’s pretty, and she picked it out for you. Keep it.”

“It’s not fair.”

“I know.” Emily hugged her with the box between them. “Keep it anyway.”

We drove home on the Doss road with the windows down. Nobody talked. The box rode in Emily’s lap.

When we turned in at our gate, Mark shut off the truck and sat there with his hands on the wheel.

“I should have put her off that porch,” he said.

“She’s your sister, Daddy.”

“That’s why I should have done it.”

“You said her name,” Emily said. “I heard you. That was enough for today.”

She got out and walked to the shop with the box under her arm. A minute later the lamp came on over the bench.

I did not sleep much that night. I lay there composing phone calls. I am not proud of how good some of them were.

But I had given my word in that kitchen, and so for three weeks I kept it.

Dana posted a picture of the three girls with their handbags, lined up on Carol’s porch, with the words “Spoiling my girls.” Emily was not in it, though if you looked at the edge of the frame you could see one yellow sleeve. Forty-some people from church had pressed the little heart on it.

Emily saw it. She showed it to me herself.

“There’s my arm,” she said. “My arm made it in.”

She went on working. She finished six bags for Mrs. Ortega. On Saturdays she set up her folding table on the square by seven, under the live oaks, and came home with cash in a coffee can and leather dye under her fingernails.

The boot box sat on the shelf over the bench. She had not thrown the bag out, and she had not put it up for sale either.

I asked her about it once. I said Mrs. Ortega would put that one on the shelf in a heartbeat.

“She already asked,” Emily said. “I told her it was for family.”

“Baby, family left it by a cooler.”

“I know where she left it, Mama.”

That was all I got.

Then, on a Wednesday night three weeks after Easter, my phone rang while I was drying dishes. It was Dana.

“Julie! Guess whose name came up.”

I knew before she told me. Mrs. Ortega calls the next names on the list the week the new bags come in.

“Ortega’s called,” she said. “I’m up. Saturday morning, ten o’clock, there’s a chestnut one with my name on it. I about fell out of my chair.”

“Is that right,” I said.

“I’m making a day of it. I’m bringing Katie and Brooke and Amy to watch, and then lunch at the biergarten, my treat. I want those girls to see what it looks like when a woman buys herself something fine.”

I said nothing. I was holding a skillet and I set it down.

“And bring Emily,” Dana said. “I mean it. I felt a little bad about Easter. She can finally see a real one. Might light a fire under her.”

I have thought many times about what I would have said next, if I had been alone in that kitchen.