JOHNNIE MAE KING Flash Fiction Contest Winner

Errands by Jacquie Shaw

We first stopped at a small house at the end of a sunny drive. A slender woman with white hair and skin nearly shedding from pale limbs brought out a cup of coffee for Aunt Johnnie and hot chocolate for me. I tried to catch marshmallows in the pool of my rolled tongue. They talked for a bit, Aunt Johnnie gave her a hug, and we left.

“Who was that?”

“Desire,” she replied. “I saved her husband once. I was stowing away on a freighter bound for Morocco and saw him floating on a raft no bigger than a cushion. I had to turn myself in to the captain but at least we saved him.”

“Where's Morocco?” I asked.

Our next stop was the grocery store where Aunt Johnnie picked up breakfast fixings. She let me pick my own cereal, even one with sugar. I picked up an orange box with a muscular model on the front, my mother's favorite.

“I was on this cereal box once,” Aunt Johnnie said.

“Really?”

“Yes, I was the best pole vaulter in the state of Georgia. Once I was going to pole vault over a big ship. A ship like from revolutionary times with a white mast and everything.”

“What's a mast?” I asked.

Our next stop was a nice house, rosebushes bloomed under windowsills, large willows towered in a sprawling backyard.

“Stay here,” she said as she pulled on a pale blue wig from her bag. She was inside only 10 minutes before she returned with a book.

“What is that?” I asked, when she handed it to me. I had to sound out the letters of the large word on the cover. “Phi-sycs?”

She nodded. I opened the cover and saw most of the pages had been glued together and a crude hole was cut into the stack of paper. In the hole was a golden flower inlaid with tiny black stones.

“Don't lose that,” she warned, pulling the wig off.

She turned on the radio as we drove further still from home, her hand resting carelessly out the window, catching wind between her fingers. A Diana Ross song started playing and Auntie laughed. “I was going to be the next Diana Ross once. I had a big tour all planned out, could've gone to Australia. I always wanted to hug a koala.”

“Why didn't you go?”

“I didn't want to tease my hair.” she laughed again and gently tousled her straight shoulder length brown hair, shaking it into the wind of the open window. I reached up to my own head and felt the crude frizzy braids.

The chorus started and Aunt Johnnie turned the radio up to sing along. I'd never heard her sing before but her voice was soft and clear. Watching her, one hand on the steering wheel, singing, her chin tilted up to heaven, I wished I could wear her joy like a mask.

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"I like that the narrator is observing Aunt Johnnie and serving as a surrogate for the reader. We learn as she learns, and we get to experience the power of Aunt Johnnie by observing her from the outside." -Ran Walker