The Bag Her Aunt Left Behind

Dana started to cry.

It was not pretty crying. Her mascara went, and she put the back of her hand against her mouth, and she bent at the waist a little like somebody had pushed her.

“I said that to you,” she said. “On Easter. In front of everybody. I said that to a child.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I thought I was helping. No.” She shook her head hard. “No, I didn’t. I don’t know what I thought. My mother used to say that kind of thing to me, every time I reached for a roll, and I swore I’d never, and then I stood on her porch and did it to you.” She looked around at all those strangers and did not seem to care that they were there. “I’m so sorry. I’m so ashamed of myself I can’t see straight.”

Emily waited until she was finished.

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”

Then my quiet girl, who does not ask for much, asked for one thing.

“I’d like you to not talk about my body anymore. Not nice things or mean things or helpful things. Just not at all. Mine or the other girls’. Can you do that?”

“Yes.” Dana nodded, crying. “Yes. I can do that. I will.”

“Then here.”

And Emily put the bag in her hands.

Dana held it against her chest like something she had dropped in a river and gotten back. After a moment she turned the brass clasp and opened the flap, which she had not done on the porch, and she saw the little wren stamped inside. Under it, in small pressed letters, Emily had added a line she does not put in the others.

For Aunt Dana. Stitched to fit.

Dana read it and made a small sound. I thought about what she had said, about her own mother and the rolls, and for a minute I could see the girl she had been at that same table. I had not expected to feel sorry for her. I did, a little. It did not undo anything.

Mrs. Ortega cleared her throat.

“And the chestnut, Mrs. Fischer?”

Dana wiped her face with her wrist. She looked at the bag on the shelf, the one she had waited six months for and bragged about to every soul she knew. Then she looked at the ledger.

“Who’s number thirty-two?”

Mrs. Ortega ran her finger down the page. “A Brenda Kuhlmann. She’s a nurse out at the hospital. She’s been on since Thanksgiving.”

“That’s me,” said a voice. It was the woman in the straw hat. She had her hand half raised, like a girl in school. “I just came in to look at it. I didn’t think I’d get called till summer.”

“Give her mine,” Dana said. “I’ve got one. I’ve got the only one cut to fit.” She tried to laugh and it broke in the middle. “I don’t deserve it, but I’ve got it.”

So Brenda the nurse bought the chestnut bag for six hundred and forty dollars, and cried a little herself, and asked Emily to sign the card. Emily did not know how to sign a card. She wrote her name and drew the wren under it.

It took us twenty minutes to get out of that store. Women kept stopping her. The lady from the turquoise table held Emily’s hands and said, “Baby, don’t you let anybody tell you one thing about yourself,” and Emily said, “Yes, ma’am, I’m working on it.”

Mrs. Ortega caught my arm at the door.