Chapter Thirteen
Dani
MY STOMACH IS IN MY ASS WHEN ELLA PICKS US UP from the hotel the next morning to take us to see “Auntie Joyce,” who didn’t sound happy when Ella called last night.
Ella pulls up to a quaint ranch-style home with a white vinyl exterior and a dark green roof.
I wonder how much time Tanya spent at this house.
There isn’t a single detail, at least on the outside, that looks like she had a hand in it.
She gave Victor a glass-covered rose just to give his office a fraction of light; her touch is nowhere to be found on this house.
Is that because of her or because of the family member living here?
Ella shuts her engine off and looks to me in the passenger seat and Micah in the back seat as if she’s sending us to our deaths.
“We’re here. Everything’s gonna be fine, just … don’t look her in the eye when you meet her, okay? She doesn’t like that.”
“What?!” I shiver.
She holds her stomach as a loud laugh bursts from her mouth. “I’m just playin’. You just seemed so nervous, I had to. Come on.”
Damnit, Ella.
She doesn’t knock before walking into the house. She leads us past the living room, which is filled with furniture that seems like it’s been well-loved for generations, and into the brightly lit kitchen, where the scent of maple syrup permeates the air. Still no sign of Tanya’s presence anywhere.
Who I assume to be Auntie Joyce sits in a chair next to the kitchen window, staring out with a lit cigarette hanging from her fingertips.
“Hey, Auntie, here they are, as requested.”
She doesn’t turn to look at us, but the sound of children’s laughter streams through the window, drawing Ella’s attention. “I’ll go check on them.” As she slowly backs out of the kitchen, she mouths the words “Don’t look her in the eye” to me, prompting me to flash her my middle finger.
“Come sit,” Auntie Joyce’s voice booms throughout the kitchen.
There’s one chair opposite her at the kitchen window and more at the table right behind her. I silently plead with Micah, so he takes the chair opposite her, but of course the moment I sit down, her head shoots in my direction.
Auntie Joyce has a short black fro with streaks of silver throughout. Her cheeks are soft where her eyes are hard. One of her eyes has more wrinkles beneath it than the other, which somehow makes her look more endearing than intimidating.
She holds her hand out to touch my face, but only briefly, before doing the same to Micah. “So, you’re Tanya’s kids,” she says, matter-of-factly.
My chin wobbles as Micah holds his head up high. “Yes,” we say in unison.
She takes a puff from her cigarette, blowing the smoke out the window, then she puts it out in the ashtray sitting on the windowsill. “I wasn’t sure when you’d make it here. You were the other shoe I was waiting to drop.”
She tells us that Tanya revealed her diagnosis and said we’d be visiting sometime after she passed.
Joyce is a great-aunt to some and a cousin to others, but everyone in the family just calls her Auntie, though being one of the sisters to Tanya’s father makes her Tanya’s actual aunt.
To have lost your brother so long ago is already a monumental pain.
But to then have to secretly carry around the knowledge that you were also going to outlive the only living legacy of that brother is a burden I never wish to know.
No wonder she sounded so upset on the phone. She’s been waiting for us much longer than we knew.
“Come on, let’s take a walk.” She turns to yell out the window. “Ella, I’ll be back. Don’t be letting them run in and out the house.”
We faintly hear Ella’s response as Auntie Joyce shuts the window and rises from her seat.
She’s much shorter than I expected, no more than five foot four. Her housecoat almost touches the floor. She shakes it off her shoulders, leaving her in a lightweight sweater and linen pants.
Micah offers the crook of his elbow to her and she takes it, using him as support at the front door when she slips on her comfortable shoes.
We walk through the neighborhood, Auntie Joyce regaling us with stories about the generations of Gatens that have come up in this town. She points out the houses of several of her relatives along her street. I wonder how Tanya felt about having most of her family within walking distance growing up.
She stops outside of another ranch-style home, this one made of brown brick with a table and two chairs on the porch.
“I know this place,” I say, more to myself than Micah or Auntie Joyce. “Micah, can I see the postcard?”
He pulls out his wallet and hands me the card, which he had folded to fit.
There it is. The exterior is a bit weathered now compared to the photo, but there’s no mistaking that this is the same house from the postcard.
Auntie Joyce leaves Micah’s side to join me. A smile creeps onto her lips. “This place has had two new roofs since this photo was taken.” She walks up the steps and throws the door open without announcing her presence.
I can’t imagine, in this day and age, feeling safe enough to leave your doors unlocked. But I suppose those are the perks of having more Gatens in this town than anyone else.
“John! Dee!” she yells into the ether.
A screaming toddler runs toward us, a clean diaper mushed between her fingers. A man with reddish-brown skin, no shirt, and black shorts runs out after her.
“Come here, you stinker!”
The little girl laughs harder as she pushes her little legs as fast as they can go. He catches her before she makes it to wherever she decided the goalpost was.
“Gotcha!” He blows a raspberry into her belly, her giggles echoing throughout the house. “Hey, Auntie. What’s up?”
“She stage a prison break again?” Auntie Joyce says, tickling the toddler’s foot.
“I think I’m gonna have to start handcuffing her to the changing table.” He looks behind Auntie Joyce with a raised eyebrow at Micah and me. “Everything good?”
Auntie Joyce introduces us to John Gaten, one of her great-nephews. This is the house Tanya grew up in, but now John lives here with his wife, Dee, and their three kids. Apparently, this is the Gaten way. Homes don’t go up for sale, they simply pass around ownership through the generations.
“I never thought I’d meet anybody from Tanya’s other life,” he says in awe.
Tanya’s worlds are colliding, and though she kept us apart in life, I think she’d be happy to see us finally coming together.
“Dee’s at work and the other kids are at daycare, but you’ll meet them later, I hope.”
He takes us on a tour of the house, and my imagination runs wild thinking of how the house looked when Tanya lived here.
John opens the door to one of the bedrooms where toys cover every inch of the floor and even the two beds on both sides of the room.
“Was this Tanya’s room?” I ask.
“I don’t really remember. I think it was Andrew’s room, though,” John responds.
“Who’s Andrew?” Micah asks, stealing the words out of my mouth.
Auntie Joyce and John look between each other. Auntie Joyce is the one to rip off the Band-Aid. “He was Tanya’s twin brother.”
My heart sinks.
Twin brother.
Since when did Tanya have a twin brother?
Stupid question, because the answer is since birth, but it’s unfathomable.
I assumed she had at least one sibling. She always said kids, plural, when she talked about her mom.
But because she never said anything else about them, I always assumed they were estranged.
I didn’t realize she shared a womb with said sibling and that he died.
I understand Tanya not telling us about everyone in her family. There’s so many to mention and she hadn’t been home in quite some time, but a twin brother? Seems worth mentioning.
“She—she had a twin brother.” My voice is shaky, unrecognizable to my own ears. Why was Tanya tested time and time again?
Auntie Joyce lets out a deep exhale. “She did. He died when they were twenty-three. Fishing accident. I lost them both then.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, hanging on to her every word by a thread.
“After Andrew died, Tanya couldn’t bear to be here anymore. Too much loss. She and George packed up and moved to Richmond, to his hometown, and from then on her visits were few and far between. Then they stopped completely.”
“She always called, though,” John interjects. “She called after each one of the kids was born. Sent gifts for holidays and birthdays.”
“Not the same as holding her, though.” Auntie Joyce’s words are laced with so much hurt. The pain of missing out on so much of Tanya’s life must have created a void in her soul not easily healed by phone calls and gifts.
John releases a somber laugh. “When she came to visit all those months ago, the town damn near threw a parade for her. I thought maybe she was gonna start coming around again, but then we heard she was gone.”
Tanya must have known that visit would be her last. She wanted to see the family she left behind one more time before she shared her fate with Auntie Joyce.
I still can’t believe we didn’t know she had a twin brother. So much loss. The death of any sibling would be like losing a limb, but losing a twin has to be like walking around with a heart that doesn’t fully beat.
I know it hurt Auntie Joyce and the rest of the family, but I can’t blame Tanya for putting this place in her rearview. Everyone who lived in this house with her growing up was gone. Every memory tainted by the stench of death.
I probably would’ve done the same. Maybe that’s why Tanya is making us do this. She doesn’t want us to make the same decisions she did.
With three kids, all the bedrooms in John’s home are occupied, but he kept all the things Tanya left at the house in a shed out back, so he takes us there to look through them with toddler Ava on his hip.