COUSIN MARVELLA

 

A Letter to Marthy Tidwell:

                                                                        Aug. 13

Dear Aunt Marthy,

 

You won’t believe Cousin Maryella was wearing lipstick last time I was home.  She was different all over, somehow, with a shine to her in the morning like no girl I’d ever seen.  She’s always been a shy one, a down-looker and a hair-nibbler, y’know, and gettin’ on her Mama’s Last Nerve just pulling that strand across her face and the ends always wet.  Aint Bird called her Old Cowtail and told her how nasty it looked.

 

And she sure thought she’d outgrow that, like biting your nails, but as Maryella graduated and reached nineteen this Spring, nothing happened until she got The Letter From State.

 

You know she’s always been real smart and all, and always got really good grades, and she got in, but the Letter itself is what turned the tide.  When I went over there from Mama’s house last weekend I didn’t know hardly who I was lookin’ at.   She had on a blouse with a flower on it, and those jiggly earbobs, and was laughin’ fit to bust, and I had to look twice at those big blue eyes to know her.

 

She smiled BIG when she told us to call her “Marvella”---she had a whole new name, and we were to call her it.   She said she was looking at The State Letter the next day after it came, and the sun come through just right onto the envelope where a biscuit-crumb had fallen slap-dab on bottom of the Y, to make it a whole different name, and she was now Marvella for good and all. 

 

It just sounded better than Mary-yella, and sounded like somebody in an Iron Man show or something.  She said she woke up feeling stronger and lighter, too, and was gonna see about getting’ it changed on her driver’s license and all.   She’d already written to State on her acceptance, and told them.  

 

She knocked off the little doohickey from the bottom of the Y to make her name fancier, just by Pure-D accident, and the whole world changed.

 

I’m still just marvelin’ at it myself, and thought I’d get y’all word if you hadn’t heard about it. You won’t BELIEVE it when you see her.

 

Gotta run to the Walmart for some more of those broke sacks of Miracle-Gro stuff for the new raised garden---Guy saves me the ones that come in torn.   You won’t believe the tomaters this year, either! Haha

 

Your loving niece,

Amanda