My Aunt Minnie was a tyrant. Nothing gave her more pleasure than to rear back on the hocks of her legs, arms akimbo, and Bellow at people in such a belligerent voice they were reduced to a state of nothingness. Cunning, greed and deceit were parts of her outward character discernible at all times, but her strong filial tendencies were known only to those in close contact with her. Aunt Minnie was a tall woman, close to five feet ten inches in height, weighing somewhere in the two hundreds. A wide face, small eyes spaced close together, gave her the look of a pouncing hawk. Needless to say, we stood in communal awe of her. We, being my nine brothers and sisters, entrusted into her care by my well-meaning, misguided father, whose only fault laid in his pride as sole provider of a family the size of ours. Father looked on the acceptance of charily in any form as a cardinal sin. Therefore; when times became hard, we were packed up and shipped off to a small rural parish in North Carolina, under the auspices of Minnie Although we were forced to submit to her absolute rule, there were times, to give the Devil his due, when she was most kind to us. As time passed, we learned to mistrust these moments of kindness. They seemed to precede Aunt Minnie at her worst. Now that I am grown and know something of Aunt Minnie's history, I am more given to understand her whole character. She was, according to my grandmother, never satisfied with her status in their small family which consisted of herself, my grandmother, and their mother. Born some months after the death of my great-grandfather, she was never sure she could rightfully claim the legitimacy that fell naturally to my grandmother, who enjoyed the safety of being born during the lifetime of their father. Consequently, she was a difficult child who grew to womanhood with a warped sense of love-hate toward her mother, sister and the whole world. This too would explain her late marriage. Having developed a tongue and temp