He heard the woman yelling his sister’s name. The yelling was shrill. The next thing he knew, his mother was rushing him out into the fenced backyard.

“Go and play on the swing set,” she told him.

Tim Osborne did as his mother said. He sat on the swing: it was crooked, the chain being set on a different hook on the one side than the other. The swing, a white plastic board with holes in it, was too low to swing high without Tim scraping his heels on the worn spot underneath. It still smelled like plastic.

It was a great day to be outside. The air was cool, with the sky blue; deep, deep, deep blue, and as Tim looked up at the sky, his aunt’s voice was closer. It was in the house. She was in the front hall.

“Jannnet! Janet Osborne!,” the woman yelled, mocking the name. “Jannnet!”

Then she was quiet and he heard his mother talking to the woman quietly but in the same voice she had used to tell Tim to go outside.

Tim knew his aunt was crazy. Everyone knew. Now the whole block, at least, knew. His father had told him about her, how she had some kind of bad balance in her brain and it made her yell and say things she didn’t mean from time to time.

Tim held onto a supporting leg of the swing set. It was a light blue metal pipe. The grass underneath had been cut and was a funny green. He noticed his horse, a plastic mare with a rope attached up above, had broken a plastic leg.

He heard the screen door slam finally and then his aunt’s voice out front now, chanting his sister’s name. His mother came out with the tunafish sandwich she had begun to make and, giving it to Tim, turned to go back into the house. Tim touched his mother’s arm as she turned.

“Mom,” the little boy said, “was she going to hurt you? I wondered at first. I think I would have killed her if she tried to hurt you. There’s all those knives in the kitchen, and if she tried to hurt you I’d have grabbed one.”

“No, Timmy,” his mother said, looking young as she did in those days.

“What did she want?”

“To be your sister.”

“Why? Is she mad at her? Did Janet do something wrong?”

“She was just jealous, I guess. Look, Timmy, your aunt left the hospital. She wasn’t supposed to. She wouldn’t hurt us but she might hurt herself. I’m calling the hospital and they’ll help her. You just eat your sandwich.”

Tim woke sweating in his bed that night. He turned on his light and looked in the mirror. He had remembered suddenly that his aunt had a pimple or wart on one eyelid. He checked in the mirror. He did not have it. That made him feel better. But that night, Tim Osborne went to bed wondering if he ever would have that thing on his eyelid, and hoping not.

Writer, father, husband, journalist. Spent many of my formative years in India, the child of anthropologist parents. www.terinmiller.com