"A Letter From Auntie Mip"

Melvina Tompkins was checking herself out in the mirror.  She was wearing a navy blue shirt-ways dress with a tie belt, and caramel colored shoes with a T-strap and chunky heels.  Her soft, short natural was round like a halo.  Puckering and dabbing her lips with a frosted pink lipstick, she decided that she looked good.  Melvina peeked at her watch and hoped that Leo would be arriving soon with the girls and Juanita.  She went to front door to unlock it while glancing up and down the street.  It was rare for her to be ready to leave on time and so she gave herself a little go’n Girl! finger snap before electing to tidy-up a few things.
In the kitchen her eye fell on the partially-open junk drawer where, earlier, she had stuffed a stack of mail, which had included a letter with their street address, yet addressed to Melvina Smalls---which was her maiden name, after all.  It had been with a sense of query and amusement that Melvina had opened and begun reading the letter, which she quickly realized was not meant for her eyes, but for those of her sister-in-law, Edna.  Wincing mentally and physically, and listening for the sound of a car pulling up, Melvina unfolded the letter and read it over again.

                                                                                                                                     October 21, 1968
Hello, My Dear One,


I hope that you have time to read a letter from your husband's mother’s cousin Myrtle.  Bernard knows me as Auntie Mip.  It has been just over one year that my mother---God Rest Her Soul---left this world and, I have not been doing so good since. 


The whitepeople here in Alabama are this way, some have turned out to be God’s good people even while so many are still just as mean as the devil.  We are learning who is who because of all the marching and the sitting in and the preaching.  You see peoples true self, now.  Our feelings are right up front now.  Before, we all kept hid by keeping each race to their self, but now some of us colored people have a hard time to call ourself Black because that was not never beautiful, before.  Some of us do not know how to be brave but some just couldn’t wait! And, that makes me feel good and afraid, also.


I want to visit your mother-in-law who is my cousin and lives in California she said to come on out, but, I have never made a long trip across the country like that before.  She told me that Bernard has left his little family (you all) to be a big Freedom Man.  This is not something that I can understand.  She said that maybe I should visit you all as I am lonesome since Mother died and I would like to visit you all and my other relations in Detroit.  I heard about what happened to you all up there last year.  It seems that the whole world is just going to the dogs.  I will be visiting you all soon.  Because a family I know by the name of Evans will be driving there and I have been invited along if I may.  Do you know any people by the name of Evans up there from Selma? 


May the Good Lord Bless You Dearly,
I am going to see you soon,
Auntie Mip (Myrtle) Harrison

Melvina remembered Auntie Mip from her childhood.  Of their mother’s closest sister-women-friends, Melvina and her brother, Bernard, had liked Auntie Mip the least, and suspected that she wasn’t truly a blood relative.  Her marital status had always seemed vague and she didn’t have any children of her own; yet, she was always around.  Auntie Mip had been one of those adults who seemed to be unmoved by children, no matter how sweet, cute, or smart they were.  She was always on the look-out for children to be up to something.
Biting down on her well-coated bottom lip, Melvina could have kicked herself for opening that mail.  She considered re-sealing it with a bit of Elmer’s glue, and pressing it between two heavy books until she and Leo returned from the Parents Meeting at Leslie's school.