June heard the drip--drip--drip of the kitchen faucet. She couldn’t stop gluing to end the irritating noise. Five cards down. She wiped her forehead with her wrist, the hands being covered in paste. And now she held the red paper heart unsteadily with the very tips of her gluey fingers over dear Aunt Hazel’s card. Funny how fast a year goes by. One day it is August and the next thing you know there it is, Valentine’s Day again. Dear Aunt Hazel. Such a little squirrel of an aunt. She hoarded holidays as if they were acorns in a tree trunk.

"Oh, don’t bother! Don’t be silly. You don’t have to do a thing, " she would sigh wistfully on the other end of the line, a thousand miles away.

June knew that she had better not forget the card. Dear Aunt Hazel was not much different than a big child. Always had been, and she and June had shared many guilty little sundaes, dinners out, and other small extravagances when June was growing up. How many times Aunt Hazel had come over to watch June when her mother had to work late? Seemed it was almost every other night when she was a real little kid. So--Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot? Time to get that heart nailed onto the paper.

June liked making the cards. Each one had a bit of the personality of the recipient snuggled into its cover. Funny hearts for the fun loving. Serious and flowery hearts for the deep thinkers. June wondered how well she really knew any of her family anymore, since they only whizzed by in flashes. Doesn’t it take continuous exposure over time to really know someone? June often doubted that any one person could ever really know any other person. All that she knew was that there were these little filaments, these ties, and things that bound the fragments of a great old family like the Hamptons into a unit.

June reached for the glue with a sticky hand and the bottle choked and gasped as it formed one last, microdot of glue on the paper’s surface.

"Damn!" June startled herself with a shout. Think fast. Where to get glue at 11:30 PM on Sunday. Only Walgreen’s might be open, but June didn’t like going out at this hour, getting in and out of the house and store could be tricky late at night with muggers and all, and June’s husband, John, was out of town until Tuesday. "Damn." June said again.

Then it came to her about the paste. You could make glue or paste out of flour and water in a pinch, couldn’t you? She remembered . . . Now where had she heard of it? June pulled out the flour and mixed up a soupy cup of cloudy water. No, too loose, she thought. She turned the flour canister over and a big lump of flour fell into the cup, sending up a great white puff of flour dust. The fork could barely stir the mess in the cup now. June began to add water in small droplets until the paste seemed to reach a gooey consistency. Something stirred at the back of June’s mind from when she was -- what? four or five? -- as she mushed the paste around the cup.
 
 

Junie Ann stood outside the Shimansky’s door in the corridor of the apartment building, switching from one leg to the other. She could see through the living room into their kitchen through the open apartment door where the three Shimansky girls, curly-blondes, all under six years old, were laughing and whooping. Mary, Helen, and little Rosie the baby, were banging pudgy little fists on the table and had started in begging Grandma Shimansky to mix some paste, so they could go back to gluing horseys, camels, and other zoo animals on a big hunk of brown butcher paper. The Shimanskys had yards of butcher paper from Mrs. Shimansky’s brother, who worked at Olsen’s meat market. Junie Ann noticed water dripping off the corner of the oilcloth onto the floury kitchen floor. The Shimanskys had an oilcloth table cloth on their table with big yellow roses and--now--lots of flour and puddles of water. Junie Ann was older than Rosie and Helen, just about the age of Mary. She knew she should go back into the apartment. Aunt Hazel was watching her and she was making a special dinner for the two
f them to eat before mama and daddy got home. She should go back home . . . The old woman turned around and wiped her floury hands on her apron, looked down and into Junie Ann’s big hazel eyes.

"Come . . . come," she motioned for Junie Ann to come in. Junie noticed the big woman had flour on her arms all the way to her elbows and even streaks of flour on her forehead near her salt and peppery hair that was pulled up about her head in a braid. "Come . . . You come play?" She nodded and smiled down at Junie.

Junie Ann looked a little off to her right down the corridor. No sign of Aunt Hazel. She went in and sat on a flour-spattered chair.

"Gimme that orange one!" crowed Mary, the eldest. She scarcely seemed to notice that a new face had been added. Junie handed the orange crayon over to Mary. Grandma Shimansky put a small bowl of flour paste on the table.

"Blue birdsie!" Rosy yelled and held a dripping blue bird in front of June’s face.

"Splat!" Rosie pasted the blue birdsie onto the long scroll of butcher paper.

Junie Ann took a black crayon and drew a big ‘U’ for the horns and a kind of four-stick squiggle under it for the rest of the cow. Grandma Shimansky came over and held the little kindergarten scissors in Junie’s hand to help her cut out the cow. Junie took the popsicle stick and spread the flour paste over the back of her cow and she found a place that nobody had claimed and glued the cow on the paper. She made a duck like the one that Mary had just drawn, sticking her tongue out the corner of her mouth in her intense effort to get the feet to connect with the bottom of the duck’s belly. This time she knew how to hold the scissors and grip the big butcher paper to cut out her duck all by herself. She cut off one of the duck’s toes, but nobody seemed to notice.

As Junie Ann was gluing her forth duck onto the brown butcher paper, she heard a long, drawn out, "Junnnn-ie Ann!" She knew Aunt Hazel’s voice and hopped off the seat, almost upsetting the bowl of flour paste. She remembered what she had been on her way to do when she was called into the Shimanskys now. Having to go potty while running made Junie hop and slouch on her way to the apartment. She darted past Aunt Hazel and into the bathroom.

"Goodness! I’ve told you to take time out, Junie Ann, for going to the potty!" Aunt Hazel clucked her tongue.

As she sat down to the special cube steak dinner that Aunt Hazel had made for them, Junie Ann could hardly wait to tell about her new friends and the wonderful times they always seemed to be having, and that now she might have, too. With a mouthful of potatoes, Junie began explaining about the big ‘buchur’ paper and Rosie’s blue birdsies.

"Wipe your chin," said Aunt Hazel.

When Junie Ann inhaled a bit of mashed potato and choked, Aunt Hazel said, "See, all that talking with your mouth full will do that. Arms Up!"

Junie raised both arms and her aunt smiled as she thumped Junie a couple times on her back. Junie wanted so much for Aunt Hazel to feel what it had been like to play and laugh so much. She wrinkled her forehead and tried to think of how to show Aunt Hazel how they made fun on the big flowered table in the Shimansky kitchen.

"You . . .know . . ." Junie Ann gulped down any small piece of food so nothing should stop her from telling her aunt. "You. know. . . Youcanmake . . ." she began running her words together.

"What? What are you saying? Slow down," Aunt Hazel mumbled, perplexed as she cut her steak into small squares.

So Junie tried to talk slowly. "You can make paste, Aunt Hazel, out of flour and water! At Mary and Helen Shimansky’s we made paste!"

Junie Ann’s aunt wiped at the corners of her mouth with a napkin, flapped the napkin and put it back on her lap. "Hm. Paste with the Shimanskys." A frown crossed dear Aunt Hazel’s face. "Oh, anyway, what’s the big deal? It was only flour and water."

June got up and wiped her gluey fingers on a kitchen towel. She looked in the oven to see that her casserole was almost done. Then she turned off the annoying dripping faucet. Still not happy with the placement of the red paper Valentine, June held it up one more time over the paper. Aunt Hazel. Dear Aunt Hazel. She always waited for these holidays. As she punched the Valentine heart onto the paper, June felt the urge to tell somebody that you can make paste with flour and water, but she didn’t know who.