Listening To Great Great Aunt Tula

I want to know everything about you, I said. She began talking, until I was green in my head. I had opened up the floodgates of a woman who’d been dead. I was the first person in fifty years who had stupidly said Let me know everything. I am glad to hear about your life. Now I understood more why she had never been a wife. Every story was horrible, terribly, the worst, oh, so bad. It was the worst conversation I had never ever had. She did not pause for breath, she ran off like a horse. She had so many ideas, she got me sometimes off course. Her car had broken down, she had lost at least sixty-three jobs. I wanted her to stop, but she kept going, and I mean in gobs. So how did you like Great Great Aunt Tula? My mother asked. I had been held hostage for days, in her full attention I had basked. She had stories galore, and told some more than one time. I heard every disgusting story; she was filled with gritty and grime. It must have been interesting, my husband said later. No it wasn’t I told him. No jeeps, elephants, circuses or alligator. No traveling stories, or things that would be any way upbeat. At least she had a great time, which I think was sweet.