Aunt Rose’s Livelihood

Aunt Rose was only a few years older than her youngest sister Etl, who had turned gray very early on, before she was thirty. But Aunt Rose didn’t have a single little gray hair in her head even at sixty. Her pitch-black hair had a bluish glow. She combed it straight, with a part down the middle. And her expressive face was still attractive in old age. But the little wrinkles around her lips spread more and more.

Aunt Rose lived on Skaplerna Street, far from the center of town, behind the train tracks that snaked their way across a high bridge. The trains would rush past with a great rumble and roar. From down below you could see the little windows of the train cars, their panes shimmering in the sunshine.

There, on Skaplerna Street, was where Aunt Rose lived amidst a crush of shoddy little shanties, in a small wooden house where she rented rooms. You had to climb up a wooden staircase that creaked and groaned loudly from old age. She had two tiny rooms. She had partitioned off a small corner with a little faded calico curtain, where a kerosene stove sat on a little oven, which was where she prepared her meager food.

There was a chicken coop behind the little oven, where a living creature was always hopping around: a hen that clucked and laid eggs. Aunt Rose pampered her like a house pet and would talk things over with her during the...