The Finer Points of Hospitality

This story is by Joanna Dunn Samson and was part of our 2025 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

“Hospitality is the hallmark of Southern womanhood, but it need not extend to Fuller Brush salesmen, crows, or kin of dubious character.”

— Miss Birdie Mae Chastain, A Primer on Manners and Virtue (1952)

“What on earth . . . ?!”

Eunice Foley stood in the middle of the kitchen, hands on hips, and scowled at the ceiling. From baby Margaret’s normally quiet nursery came a cacophony of thumps, whistles, giggles, and squeals. Perplexed, Eunice turned to her oldest daughter, Emma, who was curled-up in the worn upholstered chair by the window, reading.

She looked up. “Baby M has a new friend,” she said and turned back to her book.

Eunice peeled off her garden apron, tossed it on the counter, and took the back stairs two at a time. She pushed open the door to the nursery and stopped, stunned, hand on her heart.

Margaret was standing in her crib with a rattle, bouncing up and down, shaking the railing, and laughing. An enormous crow perched on the sill of the open window, whistling and moving from side to side in sync with her every move. On the floor, Moses, their old hound and loyal protector of Margaret, lay between the crib and the window, watching the action and thumping his tail.

Upon her entrance, all eyes turned to Eunice. Margaret gave a happy shriek. “Look, Mama! We’re yancing!”

Eunice backed out slowly and closed the door. The giggles, shrieks, whistling, and thumping resumed, as unfazed by her exit as they had been about her entrance.

Her husband Mac was incredulous. “You left the room?!”

She dismissed his accusation with a wave. “Only for a minute. Just long enough to gather my wits, then I went back and shooed the bird away. But listen to this. Before I left the room the first time, Margaret shook her rattle at me and said, clear as day, ‘Look, Mama! We’re yancing!’”

“She said?”

“A sentence, Mac. Her first full sentence.”

It took a moment for Eunice’s words to sink in before he broke into a broad smile and fist-pumped the air. “Yeesss! Our baby spoke her first full sentence!”

Although two-and-a-half, Margaret had never spoken more than a few isolated words. The pediatrician assured them the incidence of late talking was common for a second child with a talkative older sister like Emma, who did all the talking for them both.

“When she does talk,” he said, “it’ll be in full sentences.”

And so it was.

Turns out, separating Margaret and the crow was no easy task. The crow was persistent and clever. He tripped the mousetraps, pried off the screen, and dropped the shiny scare objects hung at the window into Margaret’s crib.

“Well, duh,” Emma said, who had done her research. “Crows love shiny objects. He gave them to her as presents!”

They tried closing the window, pulling the shade, and closing the curtains, hoping the bird would give up and go away. But each time, Margaret shrieked like her little heart had been ripped in two.

“Ko! Ko!” she wailed, inconsolable, until the window was open again.

No matter what they did, the crow refused to leave. Mac proposed they call in a wildlife expert, which Eunice kiboshed. God forbid it would get around the small town of Wallace, Georgia that a crow had taken up residence in the Foley home. Tongues would wag. Her cheeks flushed at the thought.

It was Mac and Emma who finally cried uncle—Mac because he was desperate to restore peace and quiet in the house, and then Emma because she thought it was cool. Eunice was not convinced. Aside from the fear of avian diseases and public ridicule, the presence of Margaret’s guardian crow added to her growing concerns about her baby’s behavior.

Recently, the happy-go-lucky Margaret had become sullen and watchful around strangers. She’d study the faces of the folks in the grocery store like she was looking for something. Sometimes she’d giggle with glee, but more often her expression went dark and she’d howl with fear. Like she’d discovered something about the essential nature of the people she studied, and it wasn’t good. It was unnerving, and when it happened, a name from the past popped into Eunice’s head. Celeste?

Celeste.

Upon hearing the story at dinner one Sunday night, Mac’s older sister, June, asked Eunice, “Didn’t you have a great aunt with a crow?”

“Absolutely not,” Eunice said, shaking her head.

 “I’m certain it was your family,” June insisted. She paused, pursed her lips. “Maybe not a crow, but an owl?”

“No!”  Eunice snapped. “You’re thinking of someone else.” She stood and picked up the pitcher on the table. “Water anyone?”

Mac and June exchanged a glance. They changed the subject to college football.

Eunice worried the napkin in her lap, lost in thought. Celeste. Her great aunt. So long ago. How could she have forgotten? Celeste, who taught her about birds and flowers. Animals followed her everywhere she went. People said she was crazy, but Eunice loved her. Then she was gone. No one ever uttered her name again. Like she never existed.

Eunice watched Margaret playing happily with Emma on the floor—Moses behind her, the crow on watch in the tree out back. Her breath caught in her throat. Concern shadowed her face.

Sunday afternoon, Eunice was weeding her roses when Emma burst out the back door and screamed, “Mama! Margaret climbed out of her crib. She’s gone!”

Eunice didn’t panic at first—Emma was prone to the dramatic—but a quick search of Margaret’s favorite hiding spots in the house and the barn came up empty. Moses was missing, too. Standing in the yard with Mac and Emma, they scanned the fields and the tree line. The faint sound of a passing car could be heard in a distance. Eunice couldn’t breathe; her heart raced. There were so many possibilities for harm to a toddler: the road, an evil stranger, wildlife, the forest itself.

Mac wrapped an arm over her shoulders. “We’ll find her,” he whispered. “She can’t be far.”

Gone. Gone. Gone. The word repeated in her head. How could her baby be there one moment—safe, laughing, present—and then gone in an instant? The absence pounded in her head—a big fat tear in her tidy, secure life.

Like Celeste. Gone. She recalled what a cousin told her in hushed tones so long ago. Celeste had been committed to the mental institution in Milledgeville for the crime of being a woman, unmarried by choice, different, and a lover of animals. Eunice dropped to her knees and wailed, “Maaarrrgggarrettt!”

Within the hour friends and neighbors descended on the house and split up into search parties. Eunice clutched a shaken Emma and sobbed under the watchful eye of June. Mac left them with a walkie-talkie before he left to join the search.

Eunice paced the floors from window to window, wringing her hands, staring at the silent walkie-talkie, re-checking all Margaret’s hiding places, standing on the porch, calling her name. The silence in the house was deafening. Time stopped.

The walkie-talkie hissed in her hand. Mac’s voice was ragged. “Got her. South field, wild azalea stand.” She heard him say, “Wanna talk to mama, baby?”

Margaret squealed and giggled, “We go camping, Mama!”

The connection disconnected with a pop. Eunice dropped the walkie-talkie and burst into tears.

According to Mac, as the search team entered the forest across the back pasture, the insistent, raucous cries of a lone crow rang through the pines. They followed the sound to a stand of wild azaleas clustered around a massive oak.

Mac shook his head. “I heard her in the stand, talking a blue streak—about what, I couldn’t tell. I crawled into the center of the stand, and there she was, making a pile of pine needles while Moses watched and the crow tossed pinecones in her direction. At the base of the tree, we found,” his voice cracked, “a sizeable dead rattlesnake. Looked like it had been pecked to death by, well . . .” he cleared his throat, searched the sky for Ko, “you know who.”

The rescuers gathered in their backyard were giddy with relief. Aside from a tick and a few scratches, Margaret was unscathed and undaunted. Wild with laughter, she chased Emma through the crowd, Moses and two barn cats close behind.

As Eunice watched her daughter and her entourage, again Celeste came to mind. It was said that her crow stood vigil outside the mental hospital until the day she died.

Eunice searched for Ko and found him perched in the tree outside Margaret’s room. He watched her approach and acknowledged her with a flare of his wings and a dip of his head. She blew him a kiss in response.

Yes, much like Celeste, Margaret was different, but unlike Celeste, she would always be cherished at home.

And so would her crow.