Remembering Mrs Sully

Remembering Mrs. Sully always makes my face break out into smiling mode. Her face was as craggy as a grave, there was an aluminum tooth on the left. When she smiled, it gleamed with pure happiness, making her stories even better. When I first met her, her ferocious stories kept my gentle side terrified, for hours. I thought she was the Hansel and Gretel witch, because she looked like my vision of her. There was a unique smell around Mrs. Sully, an earthy, vegetable-type smell. She was always in her garden, killing snakes, big black ones, with large mouths. She relished showing us how she whacked them with her hoe, hacking them to pieces. Although short, stooped over and old, she was a force no snake wanted to encounter. Her stories were full of spit and vim, anger, and devilishly mean murders and such. If you decided to share a story, she did not hear it, she did not pause if you wanted to talk. You had to walk along beside her, acting like wearing two or three house dresses over each other under a pair of overalls was normal, seeing the bibs and lace stick out like crazy. Her expertise was incessant talking, not waiting for social cues or societal nonsense like that. She knew about all the hangings that had ever happened in the county, and relished telling About them in full-force detail, hoping to keep us on our toes, ripe with worry. All you have to do is mention the words Mrs. Sully, and the old-timers smile, remembering Those awful hangings, and what happened after the rope was yanked, because we all knew. Sometimes I swear I see her in her old black hat, pulled down nearly to her eyes, Stooped carriage, pushing a rusty brown wheelbarrow full of produce, from one farm to another. We were lucky, our house was smack in the middle, so we would run out and hear the tale of the day. She owned two properties, a block and a half from each other, one of them had goats. If we were really lucky, she would have one of her mean goats on a little leash and we could walk our block with it, as it butted us with its angry head. Rumors said the goats slept in the house with her. It did not matter to me, she was a character I will never forget her, sometimes picturing that amazing aluminum tooth, which told excellent Stories. Stories I do not dare tell my own sweet grandchildren, as they stay up too late already.