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Ghost Stories This morning I decided to become a lesbian. The other thing that might interest you is my friends. The thing with them is that they are all crazy, and it’s not like they can help it, they just are. But what’s more is that they are crazy people who enjoy their craziness; they think it makes them unique, and their entire lives are as sweet and airy as a mouth full of pink cotton candy melting against your tongue. Craziness is my friend Truth, an ugly man with a blonde Afro who tells the most beautiful lies. It’s my girl Tapeika who barks at people and shakes her topless breasts at the sky when it’s raining and smiles and says there’s no greater freedom when I ask her why. It’s also me, my unnatural obsession with this man who flat out refuses to talk to me no matter how many times I pray/cry/beg, and the way my thoughts and desires are tangled into his soft deeply dreaded hair. (And craziness could also quite possibly be my friend Lincoln—we call him that because he looks like a black Abraham Lincoln and nobody remembers his real name anymore. Lincoln is a man who thinks he is responsible for the pain of everyone and his is a sad craziness because he doesn’t know he is.) In the coffee shop, Truth is sitting on Tapeika’s lap blowing cancer all over the place. Tapeika is barking at him; Lincoln is reading a book he doesn’t even look up from when I come in and kiss him and the others on the cheek. Lincoln is angry but not surprised that I am late, I always am. I myself know I am late and don’t give a damn; once I got here, I stood in the doorway for three full minutes enjoying the smell of cigarettes, coffee, and dry, dying flowers because Al, the owner, is trying unsuccessfully to grow a garden out back. It’s an ugly garden, patchy and uneven because of Al’s lack of a green thumb, but we love it. I think sometimes we love everything about Al’s. The scratches on the floor. The chairs, large and old and falling apart, velvety and ripped out and dirty in some places. It’s a quiet place, cramped; the coffee and pastries are only so-so. But we take what we can get. We can’t afford Starbucks. Al, sitting behind the counter reading the paper, knows how I like my coffee; Al knows how I like everything. Last year, Al started having poetry slams every other Saturday to generate customers and one time he read a poem that was so good it made my stomach hurt, my head light, and I felt the way I do when I fall in love, when I first stopped smoking, and I told him so and he took that to mean he could try and feel on my booty and then I bit him on the cheek, and now there’s an understanding between us. Al hands me a mug and the comics section, and within seconds I’m sipping on coffee creamy, hot, sugar-sweet, even though I actually don’t even like coffee (hence, the sugar) but I drink it now to be sophisticated. When I sit down and tell my friends about the thing that’s happened, there’s a woman with long red hair who is pretending not to listen to our conversation. She’s nodding her head up and down like she understands and she looks sad and eager whenever she takes peeks at us from behind the pages of the magazine she’s not reading. I don’t care anymore, and I would invite her to join us, but is it my fault that she’s tacky enough to listen but not bold enough to interrupt? But if people stare at us hard then look away it is because they should, because we look strange, not that we can help it, we just do. There are few people of color in this town, those who are here look like updated episodes of the Cosby show or the iced up rappers in the MTV and BET videos. There are none who look like us, not like Tapeika with her long, purple braids, Truth with his thorny gold ’fro, definitely not Lincoln and his long, sad face. “You didn’t even steal the good CDs?” Lincoln asks me after I explain it all. His long flat hands pat me on the back; he makes me spill coffee all over the place, and I would be mad but I know he can’t help it and was only trying to be comforting. “He didn’t have any,” I use napkins and the Mary Worth section of the comics to stop the flow, that’s quickly going everywhere. “No CDs at all?” “Jazz shit…But still, mostly records.” “You’ll get over it.” “Wouldn’t have worked anyway, he’s a Virgo.” The woman who has been pretending not to listen squeezes my shoulder as she walks out the door. And I nod because it’s true—Libras should never date Virgos, no matter how firm the butt or brilliant the mind. It’s a mistake. “We’re going to a Séance tonight,” Truth tells me as he jumps off Tapeika’s lap, and I can’t tell whether he’s lying or not. Because of his lies, women are always in love with Truth, even though he’s ugly, even though he’s got a round pumpkin head and slightly crooked teeth…His lies are little miracles. He’ll tell you you can fly, and you’ll touch your back and feel for wings. “If you like women now, why aren’t you attracted to me? I’m cute.” Tapeika frowns and taps her mouth with a braid. “Beautiful…But unfortunately not my type.” “Te gustas?” “Haitian Virgos with locks.” Lincoln answers for me. “So whatsup? You headed to the Séance or not?” Truth stabs his cigarette out on Al’s table, and I stare at him longingly, the thing I miss most about smoking is being able to make such definitive gestures. “I’m tired and I’m staying home. I don’t feel like going anywhere.” “You need to go. Maybe you’ll meet someone there.” “From the other side?” “Does it matter? You were going to the other side anyway,” says Truth. “Of course, it is possible to fall in love with a ghost. Happened to an aunt of mine once. She was going to church every day, praying that she’d meet someone when one day she was like ah, fuck it, and went to a Séance and met this dead guy who turned her out! Forget the holy ghost, she needed one who was a bit more secular…Now they have sex four or five times a night and everybody thinks the house is haunted, but it’s not. It’s just the sweaty sounds of their own passion.” I nod, sip my coffee, and believe him. Because he really does tell the most beautiful lies. For the most part, I like my life. Why not? On sunny days, we can sit outside and laugh at the people walking by and drink coffee so hot, it’s black sunshine. We can split croissants dipped in butter, and break them apart with our fingers and talk about politics and music and what was on tv last night and all the silly things that don’t matter. You can tease me about pouring cups of sugar in my coffee and still not drinking it, wasting it. Then we can complain that we don’t have money. Then we can complain that we don’t have jobs. And then we can complain that we don’t have the money to get jobs to get money. And then maybe, depending on how our week’s gone, we can either laugh some more or argue. But then there was this one time. The sky was this deep blue-green, and there were clouds shaped like fish, and the air was so cool you could float in it. We were walking through the park, breathless from climbing up and down rocks, the messy wooded trails, enjoying a day so beautiful it made us both dizzy. We finally stopped at place that was shady and hidden, more than a little muddy from where it had rained the day before. I stood with my back against a tree and thought about kissing you, and just as I was leaning in to brush your lips I saw, out the corner of my eye, this brother wearing nothing but boxing shorts and a long red coat that made me think of Superman’s cape. “Got yourself a fine one, there,” he said and nodded at me as he flew past, holding the edges of his coat in his hands. “She’s beautiful, right?” I think you might have said and laughed, and so did I even though I couldn’t tell exactly why we were so happy only I knew that we were. Still, I don’t think the why mattered. Because seconds later, there they were…Crisp dollar bills, bright green, sparkling against the deep blue of the sky. And they were like feathers, the way they drifted from the sky. Then again, maybe they came from him, the man with the red coat, which makes about as much sense. But we grabbed fistfuls. I even opened my bag. You kissed me. We started laughing all over again. It was…Thirty seconds of magic. Then it was gone. Right now it’s warm and gray and probably will storm, not at all like that cool, beautiful day in the park. I’m searching my bag for an umbrella but does it really matter if I find one or not, the air is already steaming my face. I find an umbrella just in time, before it comes pouring, crashing down. I’m being careful, avoiding the newly formed puddles when I slip and run smack into the store window of Lulu’s, this tacky lingerie boutique. It’s the thing now, to make store mannequins as erotic as possible, and the ones in Lulu’s have belly buttons and actual nipples and look realer than real women. They wear lingerie in ridiculous shades of lime green, electric blue, and the material’s so thin you see the flesh-painted skin underneath. You look at them and are ashamed, and even though they have no heads or faces you feel as though they are blushing. Maybe then, in that sense, they are nothing like real women. Sylvia, the realest woman I know, she never blushes. She says she has forgotten how. Sylvia is a belly-dancer; she’s the woman I decided this morning to fall in love with. Sylvia is sixty-ish with wavy brown skin that kind of ripples into itself. She dances in this café that I go to when I want decent pastries and decide it’s time to cheat on Al. She was in the middle of her routine when I walked in last night. Her eyes were closed but she tossed me a pink flower anyway, and it was a carnation, and it landed right in my lap. I stayed until everybody had left because I wanted to know what it was about her. When she finished her dancing and was sitting with her eyes closed and butt in one chair and feet in another, I kind of understood. Her body looked knowledgeable, wise. Like it knew all kinds of yummy secrets. “You must have the best job in the world,” I told her. “It’s so hard to work at night.” She opened her eyes—but only a little—and smiled. “Actually, I love dawn, it’s my favorite time of day.” “It’s special because?” “Things reinvent themselves.” She closed her eyes again and asked me to light her a cigarette. Then she congratulated me about finally quitting smoking and then she asked me about you. I didn’t know what to tell her. She asked me if you were my first love; I told her yes; she shrugged and said I’d get over it soon. “Remember, you’re a good person,” she said as she removed the cigarette from her mouth and kissed me. “You’re a good person—don’t ever forget that,” she whispered, and her breath smelled of carnations. This morning, getting out of bed, the first thing I see is that carnation taped to my mirror. I think that symbolizes something but maybe it doesn’t. My apartment’s this studio that’s smaller than small; I see everything it, and I can’t walk around it without tripping over books, papers, yellowing plants that desperately need water and don’t look much better than Al’s. Today it takes me forty-five minutes to make it to one end of the studio to the other because I keep finding books I either want to or need to read. When I finally make it to my closet it takes me another hour to try and pick out some Séance appropriate clothing. I have no idea what to wear. I want to be comfortable and maybe wear jeans, but I figure that’s too informal and disrespectful to the dead. The navy skirt and shirt I pick out, I think they’re okay, but who knows if the outfit really is appropriate or not? But it doesn’t matter; I’m always inappropriate, and I’ve done more than a few wrong things in my time. I made dinner for this Muslim guy I was dating and accidentally fed him pork. I cancelled a date with a man I’d been seeing for almost a year on Valentine’s Day because I wanted to stay home and write. I set one guy’s apartment on fire when I was lighting candles to try this new thing that I read about in Cosmopolitan. Still it could be that the thing with you was the worst. I’d like to think we’re going to get back together, but it’s not going to happen. Every time I think we might, I remember what happened four or five months ago, when I was sleeping and Lincoln came over and scared the shit out of me. It was after midnight but not quite morning, possibly 3 a.m., a time when I’d forgotten I’d given all my friends keys. He didn’t say anything to wake me up, he just stood over my futon watching me sleep, until I yawned and looked up and saw him standing there. It was the coldest winter in years, and he was wearing a loose fitting Hanes undershirt and faded jeans. Snowflakes that hadn’t melted clung to him—his black skin, hollow face, skinny, uncovered arms and neck. He looked like the Ghost of Christmas past. I started screaming. I didn’t know how long he had been standing there waiting for me to feel his presence, understand his sadness. He listened to me scream until I finally got over it and drowsily made him some tea. “It’s not your fault,” I said after I’d given him a robe and handed him a mug. “You didn’t kill her.” Lincoln didn’t say anything but he shook his head like he didn’t believe me. “I wasn’t there for her, which is the same thing...She deserved to have somebody there for her, nobody should have to work that hard in life. She was a cook, picked cotton, a maid. You know she could pick a pan right up from the oven—no potholder, towel, nothing—and not get burned? One time one of the kids slammed her hand in a car door and she didn’t even wince.” He looked down at the mug in his lap, then he reached for the honey and lemon and began stirring vigorously. “I should have done more for her.” “You were only seventeen.” “She was sick.” “You took care of her, much as you could. It wasn’t your fault.” “I want my mother back.” He put the mug back on the table, untouched. “Ever since she passed, I feel like I’m sleeping and will never wake up. Like I’ve been dreaming for hours and hours and don’t even know it.” Truth, Tapeika, one day they might grow up, grow out of their craziness. But Lincoln and I, we’ll always be crazy; we can’t help it… Anything truly damaged stays that way.
The place where they are giving the Séance is a disappointment. The outside is slightly supernaturally looking with chalkboard signs saying $5 Palm Readings and a mysterious black curtained window, but the inside is just some woman’s living room. Truth is already there and so is Tapeika with Leah, her girlfriend. Lincoln, the one the Séance is for, hasn’t shown up yet, which surprises me because I’m late, and he never is. Truth, Tapeika, and Leah are eating. Tapeika made dinner—chicken and rice—and it smells wonderful and there are candles all over the place and the whole thing looks like an informal dinner party. There is a naked little girl—the psychic’s daughter I guess—who’s running around. Tapeika is barking at her, which makes the little girl laugh. I watch them for a while then fix a plate for myself and sit down. Truth cleans his and asks for some of what’s left on mine. The little girl comes and sits on Tapeika’s lap; Leah begins instructing the psychic, a chunky lady with silver hair, in how to pronounce her name. “No, not like Lee. There’s an ah at the end.” We wait a few more minutes making small talk, until everybody knows everything about each other. “Where is that motherfucker?” Truth asks the psychic’s grandfather clock as he lights a cigarette. Nobody says anything; we all stare at the clock. Finally, Lincoln comes in, wearing a rumpled dress shirt and jeans, and he doesn’t look like himself. He looks young and scared and not at all like Abraham Lincoln. “We can begin,” the psychic says and flings her hair dramatically over her shoulder. It must be a cue; the little girl leaves the room, and everybody seats or reseats themselves at the table. “Close your eyes.” We do that, and we all bow our heads like we’re in church. I get curious and sneak a peek around the table to see if anyone else is actually doing this mock-prayer thing and apparently they are because the only person who catches my eye is the psychic and she gives me the dirtiest look ever. “To find the spiritual side, we must have everyone’sconcentration,” she says, and I hate the witch. But I close my eyes again, even though I think it’s unfair that she’s the only person allowed to know what’s going on. The psychic begins chanting words that make sense to no one and she goes on like this for more than twenty minutes and I begin to wonder if I have enough underwear to make it through the week? I have five pairs of panties but not a clean pair of socks to my name. I am calculating how much change I will need to do at least three loads when I feel a rush of coldness. I begin shivering but the coldness only gets colder and suddenly I’m numb. There’s a pressure inside my head that’s like your hair when it’s wet and heavy and pressed against my face. There’s a silence inside me, and it’s like the time that you told me how much you missed Haiti and how all the people in your family had died except for your brother and how you wanted me to say something and I didn’t. I still don’t know why I didn’t because I wanted to, I wanted to say something to make you feel loved. But maybe everything is more like the time I kissed your brother and if you had asked me why I couldn’t have told you. The whole thing had no reason. It was like money falling from the sky. Or store mannequins who look realer than real women but who have no soul. I’m crying now. Up until now, I was never sorry for what I did. I was sorry for the consequences; I was sorry that you hated me; I was sorry that we weren’t together, but I was never sorry for what I did because I didn’t understood why I did it. When I open my eyes again I am lying on the psychic’s couch and everyone around me is screaming. Most of the candles are out now, and the room is quite dark, and I wonder if the candles had less to do with atmosphere than an unpaid electric bill. My head hurts and everyone is shadowy, including the little girl who keeps trying to get me to swallow from a glass of Kool-Aid. “Oh my god! Marissa, are you okay?” “You passed out.” “You were speaking in tongues.” “You were channeling another person’s energies!” The only person who doesn’t say anything—at least to me—is Lincoln. “My mother. I heard her voice, and she forgives me” he says this over and over again in wonder, and I think he’s part of my dream. He’s the only person I make out clearly in the darkness. He’s tall and rigid and still doesn’t look like himself. He looks beautiful—and peaceful.
I could have had Lincoln or Tapeika take me home, but I tell them both no. Truth even offers me a ride on his precious motorcycle, but I turn him down too. I want to walk alone. The sky and the streets are gray and cloudy and melt into each other as I walk out the house. I go past Al’s coffee shop, my favorite bookstore, all those places that mattered so much to me. I even end up walking past Lulu’s and her little shop of dead half-women. When I get there, I look up at the store window and see the naked bodies of the mannequins. I smile at them, their shiny pinkish beige flesh, and they no longer make me feel ashamed. Still, maybe you don’t understand my reaction—you always were a night person. But I’m smiling because by now it’s dawn. And I love this time of day.
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