He can hear me.
That’s all I can think for the next few hours. He walks around the house, bugging the maids, offering to help, and carrying bags of trash out to the curb, anything to ignore me, but I don’t care. I follow him around the house to the front door, and then I watch him through the windows until he comes back inside, and then I follow him around again. He pretends as if he can’t hear me, but I know he can.
“Don’t throw that rug away,” I tell him. “It just needs to be taken out back and beat. Get rid of all that dust.”
He doesn’t answer me, but he sighs and shakes his head. And then, because he’s a Delisle, he carries that rug out to the curb anyway.
Serves him right when one of the maids tells him he can probably sell that rug and a few other things to a local antiques dealer, and then he has to drag that rug right on back inside.
“Told you,” I gloat.
“Shut up,” he mutters under his breath.
“Excuse me?” one of the maids says.
“Not you, ma’am. I was talking…to myself,” he says.
And I laugh and laugh and follow him to the next room.
He can hear me!
He can see me, too. That moment when our eyes met, and I saw surprise in his, is still emblazoned in my memory. I felt it. And I know he did, too; that why he keeps his eyes aimed anywhere but at me. Sometimes, though, I catch him looking at me out of the corner of my eye, and it feels like a tiny little victory, which, as it happens, feels like tingling all over the nothingness of my body.
All day, I follow him around the house, pestering him, shadowing him, soaking up the fact that someone can hear and see me for the first time in… “What year is it?” I ask him when the thought occurs to me.
He flinches and almost looks my way, but he stops himself. “Twenty-twenty,” he says. “Two thousand twenty.”
I’m not slow or anything, but I have to take a while to puzzle that out, to try and make sense of all the time that’s passed while I’ve been stuck in here all by myself. And when I do, I whistle out my shock and frustration. “Everyone I know is dead and gone,” I say, and he does look at me then.
His eyes are big, brown, warm, and kind. They don’t look like the eyes of a Delisle, but I guess anything could have changed in damn near one hundred years.
“I been here alone almost a hundred years,” I say, and that snaps him out of the moment between us.
“Nope. Nope, nope, nope,” he says, grabbing a few bags of trash and rushing out to the curb again.
We go on like that all day, me following him and pestering him, him ignoring me most of the time and cursing at me every now and then when he forgets he’s supposed to be ignoring me. Him running out of the house when it gets to be too much, and me waiting for him to return. All in all, I think he’s handling this quite well.
Not me. I’m desperate to get these damn maids out of here since Delisle obviously won’t talk to me outright with them around. I’m the kind of anxious that has me fidgeting and twitching with anticipation.
You twitching like you got ants in your pants, my poppa used to say to me.
And even though time doesn’t mean much to me, the next few hours crawl on by until I’m fit to burst.
But he can hear me, and he can see me, and I just keep telling him and me that, biding my time.
“We’re done for the day,” the maid says.
Delisle looks around at the house, which ain’t nowhere near clean.
“Karen paid for six hours,” she says.
“Oh. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for coming.”
“We can come again,” she says.
“Yeah?”
The woman rolls her eyes. “Just have Karen call and set it up since she said she’s paying from your aunt’s account.”
“Is she allowed to tell you all that?” he asks.
The woman shrugs. “We’ll come back after you talk to Karen.”
“Oh. Okay. Great. Thank you again.”
“Mmmhmm,” the woman hums. She reminds me of Mrs. Green, who used to teach all the Colored children even though she hated us all, but she hated me and Esther the most. “We might be able to come back tomorrow. I’d have to check the schedule.”
“The hell you will,” I say. “Me and you got business to settle, Delisle, and I’m not about to follow you around for another day.”
He flinches but doesn’t turn around to me or respond. “Um, actually,” he says, “I need to talk to Karen about a few other things with the house, so tomorrow might not work.”
She shrugs. “Whatever you say.” Yeah, she’s definitely prickly like Mrs. Green, and I’m not sorry to see the back of her.
“Okay, great. Thank you again for all you did today.”
“They didn’t do that much,” I say, “if they gotta come back another day.” I’m just joking with him, ‘cause I can. ‘Cause he can hear me!
He doesn’t even flinch this time. He smiles and waves as the maids head toward the door. Well, two of them do.
I’ve had my eye on the third one all day, so I’m not shocked when she hangs back. She’s been watching Delisle out of the corner of her eye whenever she could, and I’ve been watching her. I’m not shocked that she’s sidling up to him right now, but I do give her the evil eye. Not that she can see it.
He can, though.
“So, you new in town?” she asks him.
“Obviously,” I mutter.
“Uh, yeah,” he says, just a little too loud as if he’s trying to talk over me, even though he’s the only one who knows I’m here.
“Where you come from?”
“Atlanta.”
“Ooh, I never been to Atlanta,” she says.
“I never been to Atlanta either,” I say. I always meant to, but I never had the time. I never got out of Louisiana, actually. Made it to New Orleans, though, but suddenly, that seems like not so much of a feat.
While I’m feeling sorry for myself, this young thing is sidling up to him as if she’s not covered in dust and grime, and I scowl at her. Back in my day, we had the tiniest bit of decorum. We at least went home to wash our asses before trying it on with a man, and I would never stoop to throwing myself at a man who’s clearly not interested in me, clean ass or not. Apparently, things have changed a bit since I been dead and gone.
Oooh, what would Pastor Delisle and the Baptist ladies think about this? I wonder, and immediately decide that I might like this girl.
“Hussy,” I whisper with a smile.
“Um, well, you should definitely go some time,” he says.
I realize they’re still talking about Atlanta. How is this conversation not over yet?
“Maybe,” she says, getting close to Delisle — real close, a little too close if you ask me, not that anyone has. I don’t think I like her so much anymore. “Maybe we can go together sometime, and you can show me ‘round.” She’s looking up at him, batting her eyelashes, which, to be fair, are thick and long. I’m not the envious type, but I do love a good set of lashes.
Delisle, however, doesn’t seem too interested in them or her, just like I thought. Each time she steps forward, he steps back until he’s standing between us, her in front, me in back. I’m not solid like her, but I know he can feel me behind him.
“She likes you,” I whisper into his ear, and he swallows loudly.
“Um, I don’t have any plans to go back, but there are lots of tourist websites and stuff.”
I can see the annoyance on her face, and I recognize it; most women probably do. That moment when you realize that a man might be beautiful, might be strong, might have money, but he’s completely oblivious to a woman throwing herself at him.
I roll my eyes, but she hides her frustration well; it only flickers across her face for a fraction of a second. And then she beams and bats those amazing eyelashes again.
“What’s the fun in that?” She steps forward again, pressing her chest against his.
He steps back and accidentally backs into me. I feel it, and I know he feels it; a cold electric current ripples through me, right where his body touches my…whatever I am.
He shivers, and I do too.
“Remember last night in the shower?”
He wheezes out a harsh breath and then slides left toward the door, shaking his head.
I can’t help but laugh.
“Um, I don’t even like Atlanta like that. I was only there for a few years. But I hope you make it there,” he says in a rush of jumbled words. “Thank you again,” he says, holding the door open and ushering her out.
If she’s offended, she hides it well and saunters out of the door, switching her skinny hips as best she can. I’m happy to see the backside of her, too, but I have to give her credit for her perseverance. I used to get into trouble for much less.
When she’s finally gone, he slams the door behind her and exhales loudly.
“Finally,” I say, sitting on the bottom stair. “I thought they’d never leave.”
He locks the door and then presses his forehead against it. I can hear him breathing heavy and muttering to himself.
“We’re alone now,” I tease in a husky voice that makes him shudder. I like that. “You can hear me. You can see me.”
He shakes his head but doesn’t turn around. “There’s nobody here but me,” he whispers against the door. Poor child.
“If there’s nobody here but you, would you need to say that?” Poppa did say that I ain’t ever met an obvious question I didn’t just have to ask.
He shakes his head a few more times before taking a deep breath and turning around. He keeps his eyes down at the floor at first, but then slowly — real slow, almost like he’s teasing me — he raises them, and we make eye contact.
That cold current shoots through my body again, and we aren’t even touching this time.
How long since someone has looked me dead in the eye and seen me? How long since my last conversation?
Too long.
“You can see me,” I whisper.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“My name’s Ruby,” I tell him in a soft voice before I remember just what is going on here. “This is my house, and you damn Delisles stole this house from my cold dead hands. Give it back, and get the hell out.”