Mourning

Throughout “Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry” one of the most telling clues of Aunt Helen Beck’s elusive personality remains hidden: readers are not made aware of the depth of her true relationship with Georgie Beck until the story’s end. When she first explains him to Ford and Chris, Aunt Helen Beck says that he was her younger brother, a child preacher who toured the South proselytizing. Before his untimely death, she says, he made the change purse for her as a gift, and she has carried it with her for most of her life. After she is exposed as not a real member of Ford’s family, she admits that she was not really related to Georgie either. As a sixteen-year-old with nowhere to live, she was attracted to him because she once saw him preach...