Missing Miss Mavis

Life without her would never be the same She was the loudest, proudest most endearingly brash sugar-sweet and pickle-sour five-foot-two, force to be reckoned with that anyone in Yell county had ever met I confess I was somewhat obsessed with Miss Mavis' hair as a child perhaps it was the fact that she was the only white woman I'd ever seen sporting an honest-to-Oh-My-Goodness Afro And her hair hadn't always looked like that I'd seen photographic proof pictures from the 60's that showed her having a mile-high beehive lacquered with layers of AquaNet utterly unmovable much like Miss Mavis herself Never married, Miss Mavis' house was unapologetically pink in varying shades Pink carpet, wall-to-wall pink wallpaper, curtains, bedspread even the ceiling above your head pink on the tiles of the bath pink toilet?! pink sink pink details down to the homemade tissue-box cozies Looking for all the world like the inside of an old lady 'collector's edition' Barbie house, with rainbow-colored clashes of crocheted kitsch thrown about everywhere piles of clothes draped over chairs comfy but cluttered, it had a crazy air of outrageous audaciousness She was more comfortable being herself than anyone I'd ever known so natural as if to say who else would I be? It never occurred to her to even try to become someone else's ideal She was that real