She didn't remember the day Little Bit died.  She remembered the telephone ringing and she remembered answering and hearing her mama say, "Rhianne...?" while holding her breath as though she expected a baby to cry or a pot to boil over.

Death sends always a harbinger.  In every phone call, every telegram, every timid knock on the door by a man in uniform wearing heavy gold bars.  The harbinger arrives delivering the chill, the numbness.  The necessary cushion for its master, death.

Rhianne cradled the receiver and turned in her red swivel chair, unconsciously fingering the coolness of its soft, fine leather.  Staring at the pasty brown corkboard hanging from the wall near her desk, she breathed slowly.  In and out.  Deeply.  In and out.  Ink-lined squares and rectangles of smooth white paper merged in her vision.  Pinpoints of light pip-popped in front of her eyes.   Pip-pop.   Pip-pop.   Breathe.

Methodically, she shuffled various papers together, put her desk things neatly away and quietly advised the necessary people she was leaving.  Her legs, like the wooden limbs of marrionettes, responded mechanically.  Traffic was light.  The route was familiar.  She suspected her mother was awaiting the arrival of the family before she broke down.  Shattered into after-the-death of a loved one pieces.

Little Bit was her mother's sister.   They had been each other's eyes and ears and heart whenever necessary and, sometimes, when it was not.  One had taught the other to smoke roll-your-own-tobacco and they had each an eye for the prettiest dress and the highest heel.  Together, they left Arkansas on a freight train bound for New York.   Together, they fought off boxcar cold and buttache hunger and lice-carrying railyard tramps.  Together, they won the Big Apple Lindy Hop in Old Chicago, teasing their partners into greatness so they could share the gold cup which passed between their fireplace mantles each year at Easter.  Together, they tasted the dry, dusty plains of Texas and stuck their big toes in the salted ocean of California.  When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they served their country with cold, frothy beers and warm, lipstick red smiles as pin-up girls for the colored army base in Indiana.

Her family, the Lehmans, Walters, MacIntyres and Baileys, and all the names she could never remember, reunited from around the country to pay their respects.  The church was full to the street with relatives and far beyond with her aunt's many friends.  The funeral procession stopped traffic for more than an hour on Beecher Street and Woodlawn Blvd.  , a main thruway in the small town of Ottawilde.  Vapor clouded the windows of Cadillacs and Ramblers alike as the steam of salty tears from within the automobiles met the crisp chill of Michigan's oncoming winter air.

Little Bit had come to Ottawilde for Rhianne's birth.  Had, in fact, helped to deliver Rhianne during the worst blizzard the good state of Michigan had ever witnessed.  Most of the lower peninsula had been immobilized and the upper peninsula was in a state of emergency.  It was God's plan, according to Little Bit, that she ride into town just before the storm.  It was God's plan that no vehicles could move through the heavy snow and that Rhianne's mother was forced to deliver at home.  It was God's plan that Rhianne was born godchild and niece to the only midwife available, her Aunt Wilmena, known affectionately to all as Little Bit.

Little Bit called Rhianne her skirt tail baby for wherever was Little Bit's skirt, Rhianne was sure to be holding the end of it.  It was only natural that Little Bit make plain for Rhianne the how-tos and why nots and the understanding of common things.  How to hot comb her hair until it was oily smooth and straightened soft without burning her fingers raw and why not to shampoo her hair on her period.  How to whip egg whites into stiff, crystalline peaks of foam that cooked up golden brown proud and just enough sugar sweet and why not to put the meringue on until the pie cooled.   How to double stitch a fine back seam and hook stitch a loose hem and why not to double knot when a single knot would do.   When Rhianne's limbs seemed otherwise to outgrow her and trip her at every turn, Little Bit taught her to tame her muscles with dance.  Dance like there was fire in her feet as she tapped her heels and turned her toes to brassy, sassy Satchmo blues.  But, never on Sunday.

Sunday belonged wholly to God though Tuesday was certainly made for God's charity business and some piece of Wednesday was designated for the rehearsal of God's choir and a prayer meeting on Thursday was for the good grace of God and it was well known that God expected good old time revivals on Saturdays.  It was only natural that in the course of one of these revivals for Little Bit to dutifully introduce Rhianne to God on the mourner's bench and, while Rhianne was never certain of having made God's acquaintance, she was assured she was Saved because Little Bit said it was so.

Rhianne loved the piano playing, foot patting and the jangle of tamborines late into the revival night.  But, she especially loved the husky contralto of Little Bit's solos that washed over her in rippling, thunderous tones like the foamy waves of Lake Michigan.

Little Bit pshawed any praise of her talent avowing her voice and her songs a praise for God and simply a Christian thing to do.  Like tacking loose buttons on torn suitcoats for Deacon Paul and sewing prom dresses for young girls in the neighborhood or baking sourdough biscuits and burning white sugar syrup for old people in shut-away homes or feeding stray dogs and alley cats out of the same white china bowl with the tiny blue cornflowers and always keeping a spare room for that Mr. or Miss who had no pillow and nobody because that was the Christian thing to do.  But Little Bit's Christian sensibilities did not abide the deathly ill.

"I saw a young white boy die once," she told Rhianne, "Saw his blood run out of him like water from a leaking pot.   Heard him scream long after he was dead."  Little Bit paused; her eyes clouded over with yesterday.

"When your mama and me was coming up, I could mend fences and wagon wheels.   I could grow corn taller than I was in soil that would yield for no man.  I helped to birth cows and goats and pigs and sweet smelling babies from here to California and, small as I am, even talked a man from cutting up his wife once."  "But," she sighed heavily, "I couldn't do nothin' for that white boy but watch him die.  So, Missy... I'd soon as not watch anybody else in the dying business, thank you, ma'am."

She winked conspiratorially at Rhianne, "Just 'tween me and you."

When Rhianne turned 17, she hit, according to Little Bit, a temporary wild streak.  Nothing that God wouldn't, in His infinite wisdom and own time, put right but before God could honor His standing commitment, Little Bit had a dream.  Rhianne was naked in the forest, dancing with bluejays and redbirds when a great black hawk swooped from the sky.  Plucked her from the forest like fruit from a vine then soared into the clouds coming to rest on the top of a mountain where it settled Rhianne into its nest.  Confronted with the dream and its meaning, Rhianne crumbled to her knees, sobbing her shame and fear into her aunt's lap.  Little Bit patted and smoothed the back of her head and reassured Rhianne as she had countless times that all would be right.

But, all was not right with Rhianne.  The child she carried was conceived without love and, Rhianne, young and desperate, tried to self-abort.  Little Bit found her balled into a knot in the upstairs bedroom, her belly bloated, her face contorted in agony.  She put her arms around her and gathered Rhianne to her breast, rocking her gently back and forth.  Then Little Bit set about healing her with hot soups and cleansing herbs until the storm quieted in her belly, all the while fasting for three days and three nights, steeling herself to part from the woman what the child could not bear and, when it was over they buried the tiny mass of flesh born too soon in the northeast corner of Little Bit's garden.

Rhianne must have held her breath that day when she walked down the corridors of Ottawilde County Hospital and held it again when she entered Little Bit's private room though surely there was no odor except for the smell of medicines and hospital antiseptics.  It must have been cold earlier for she seemed to remember her hands perspiring in the pockets of an unbuttoned coat and pulling the scratchy, woolen material close to herself.

Greenish, plastic tubes with tiny protruding needles were stuck to the backs of Little Bit's hands.  Thin, white, plastic tubes ran from each nostril to some kind of air sac hung from the metal poles over her head.  More tubes ran from her buttocks underneath the covers.  Her once lovely, knowing, laughing, loving eyes were moist, black slits in a corrugated face.  No teeth.  Thin patches of wispy, gray hair.  Her whole body, insignificant small bulges under the hospital white covers out of which a plastic, lifekeeping, spider-like thing grew and thrived.

Shrunken and crumpled among the sterile folds of the hospital linen, the right and Christian thing to do a concept for those who looked upon her, surely not something tangible shining from within those glazed over eyes.  Ageless eyes that used to look into Rhianne's backbone and snap her to attention.  Eyes that said, "Stand up, girl.  You got no reason to slouch."

A nurse entered the room and smiled politely at Rhianne.

"Now, Miss Willie," she chided, her voice stern but kind, "It's not time yet for more medicine.  You must stop pressing your little buzzer because I have other patients to attend."

The white clad nurse fluffed the pillows under the shrunken frame of the tiny woman that was Rhianne's Little Bit and left the room.  Rhianne sat down on the narrow hospital bed.  She leaned over and smoothed the thin, gray hairs that framed Little Bit's face and stared into the glassed-over eyes of a frail old woman eaten up with cancer, pressing a little button under the bedcovers to summon the nurse for more morphine to stop the pain.

Pressing her face to the powder-soft cheeks of the old woman, Rhianne whispered, "Little Bit? It's me.  Rhianne, your skirt tail baby."

Slipping her arm under the bony frame, Rhianne cradled her aunt to her chest.  Little Bit lay limp and still, her glassy eyes staring into nothing.  Rhianne cupped Little Bit's face tenderly, as she would a lover's.  She kissed Little Bit, faintly brushing the old woman's lips with her own and, began to rock gently while holding the frail, cool body close to her own warm chest.  Rhianne shut her eyes and pictured her girl-self with Little Bit on Miss Clara's motorboat as they all three caught blue gills by the bucket.  There was Little Bit swinging her pole so high and laughing so hard, the boat lurched and heaved and nearly tossed them all into the water.  And, there was Little Bit in the choir stand, clapping and swaying, her head held high, her strong, brown hands wringing delicious sweat behind her sturdy back as she opened her throat and let soar her voice to heaven.  She was there in the garden, pruning rose bushes and pulling weeds from around the yellow marigolds and purple hyacinths, shielded from a too bright sun in the floppy hat sent to her by Uncle Pete from Mexico City.  And there, in the northeast corner where flowers did not grow but a sapling dared to bud, the two them they knelt together with each year that passed, facing the sun and offering a silent prayer.

Caressing the sunken cheeks, Rhianne opened her eyes and whispered, "Little Bit.  When you get to heaven, I want you to sing a solo.  Just for me, okay? You know I'll hear you singing because you know I'll be listening."

Then, one by one, Rhianne plucked the green tubes and the white tubes gently from the loose, sagging skin, parting from her Little Bit the life that neither could longer bear, as huge, salty tears rolled slowly and silently down her cheeks, wetting the still face and glassy eyes of her Aunt Wilmena Little Bit.

By the time Rhianne pulled out of the hospital parking lot, Little Bit's empty glass eyes had closed, a gentle sigh escaping the disease gnarled mouth.  By the time Rhianne reached her desk, the phone was ringing and, by the time she sat in her red swivel chair, the disguise was gone.  By the time she answered the telephone and heard her mother say cautiously, "Rhianne...," Rhianne's Aunt Little Bit was gone.  And, with her, one last secret.