...In which our heroine shares.

A certain pseudo Greek warrior I know has asked for the posting of certain pieces of my creative writing. Here's the first thing I'm proud of that's not in the drafting stages. The prompt was to write about someone not in our family that we've known for our entire lives. Enjoy or ignore kids.

She still spells my name “Katy.” Even when people called me Katie, they certainly never spelled it like that. I wish they would have, it’s more unique. Maybe Ava recognized my uniqueness and I just never caught on, at least until now.
Ava lives across the street from the house which was once home to my father, grandmother, aunt, and great-grandmother. Now it is only home to my aunt and grandmother. Ava has been alone a long time, outlasting her husband by at least twenty years. So it made sense that she was always a presence in my life, seeing as I did a lot of my growing up in that tiny, hot house on Wicklow Street.
I don’t know exactly how old Ava is. She is into the latter half of being an octogenarian but still drags her trash to the street every Sunday, and until a few years ago, mowed her own lawn. She is tiny, shorter than even me, and wears her pants all the way above her stomach, right beneath her breasts, always with a belt. Angels, crosses, and other religious relics always dot her collar—pins and necklaces mostly, the kinds you order out of catalogues or are sent to you for donating to various missions.
I wish I could tell you how she smells, but I’ve never encountered anything or anyone that smells like her. A mix of mothballs and Old Spice, only with a sharper undertone, it hits you when she clutches you tightly for a hug, squeezing your ribs to the point of discomfort.
Ava likes to talk. A lot. She speaks in a high, shaky Kentucky drawl. Her stories begin with some horrific tale of one of her brother or sister’s children. Or grandchildren. Or niece. Or hairdresser’s second cousin. The story will begin coherently enough, but soon, she begins to throw out so many names, go on so many asides, that within a few minutes I don’t know what she’s talking about anymore. No one understands her stories, which she tells at great length, especially at the holidays, which she spends with us because her family only takes her out when they want her to pay for all of their meals.

But we all listen. We might go get a drink and come back and she’ll still be talking, scarcely noticing the interruption, but we keep listening. We listen because she is family to us. Not of blood, but certainly of bond.
For every holiday, I and my three cousins get an envelope from Ava. A dollar at Halloween, five for our birthdays, ten at Christmas, all from her husband’s pension and social security. The little she has, she gives it away to us, who aren’t really children anymore, but she still puts stickers on the envelopes. Ava never had children so we acted as surrogates.
Every envelope is the same: “To my friend Katy. Happy Easter. God Bless. Love, your friend Ava.” The writing has started to get a little shaky, sometimes illegible. Most of the time, I don’t open them right away. Of course it’s partly because I know already what’s inside. But the past few years, it’s because I wonder how many more envelopes I’ll get from Ava. She’s old, no contention about it, and I’ve grown up from Katy to Kate.
But I don’t look forward to the first holiday when I won’t get the small stationery envelope with wobbly black handwriting and religious stickers.
When Ava passes, my childhood will truly, permanently be over. No one will ever call me Katy again, just Kate or Katherine. Those names aren’t very unique, and they certainly don’t come with a crisp dollar bill.