Tiffany
All through dinner dad kept asking what Justin and I did at the park, and Mom kept planning our wedding.
I wanted to put myself up for adoption.
I got in my pajamas and crawled into bed with the Hello Kitty flashlight my mom had bought me for sixth grade camp. I had never noticed how creepy the mouth-less cat looked. I put it face down under my pillow so I couldn’t see it.
I couldn’t sleep so I tried singing.
I belted the entire soundtrack to Annie. Unabashedly. My parents had heard me singing in my room plenty of times. Somewhere in the middle of Anything But You, I thought I saw something move by my door.
What if the kids weren’t the only ghosts in my house?
Oh my gosh! Why hadn’t I thought about that before?
What if it’s the White Witch or that dude from the baseball field?
I pulled the covers over my head and started chanting A Man of Words. I was surprised I still knew it.
A man of words and not of deeds
Is like a garden full of weeds . . .
When I finished I started again. Slower this time and dotted with yawns.
I didn’t even realize I had drifted before my sleep was interrupted by screaming.
Icky-creepy wailing.
I opened my eyes to the grey gummy mouth of the baby. The girl held her out, right in front of my face, like she wanted me to take the baby from her.
No way. I don’t touch dead things. That’s how people get diseases.
Recoiling back I switched on the flashlight. Shining it at them was useless though. The rays just shot right through their bodies and reflected on the wall behind them.
The girl with the dark curls opened her mouth and joined the screaming. She looked like she was just trying to talk but the chaos of sounds was deafening. It had been awful with only one ghost screaming. Two at the same time was a sound I would never be able to adequately describe. Something like a squeaky garbage truck and microphone feedback multiplied by 673 . . . million. I sat up. Covering my ears didn’t do jack. The girl was getting insistent. Pushing the baby forward and shaking the baby trying to get me to take it.
I considered calling out for my parents, but when they came what was I going to say? Hey guys, I see ghosts. Can I sleep in your bed? And if I did tell my mom then she’d tell the ladies at church and the girls at the gym and word would get back to school faster than ice melts in the summer. Then I’d have to eat all of the rest of my lunches with Justin . . . at the crazy table.
I shuddered at the thought, and ready to accept my fate as the host body to a demonic ghost infant, I took the baby.
Like in my hands.
I actually touched the squirmy, dead baby with my own clean, living hands.
But what followed justified my decision.
Silence. I could hear a cricket outside chirping the last chirps of warm weather.
The baby had a body. I could feel the flabby rolls under the full long-sleeved nightgown it was wearing. I always imagined ghosts more like a fog, visible but untouchable. I squished it a little and it felt plump and soft. But there were two things that were yucky. First, it wasn’t warm like I was expecting. Or even cold. I wouldn’t say it had any temperature at all. Second, it was a ghost. A colorless, slightly transparent, jittering ghost. I held her (I think it was a her—it was wearing a dress after all) with my arms fully extended. I’m not sure what I thought it was going to do if I brought it any closer—suck out my soul through my nose? (I saw that on a movie trailer one time.) Bite my face? (It wasn’t a zombie . . . I didn’t think.)
The girl just stood there and looked at me while my arms shook under the weight of the chunky baby. How could ghosts weigh that much?
The baby was falling asleep, and though I still didn’t want to pull it in close to me, I decided I could probably lay it down on my bed and sneak out to sleep in my mom’s scrapbooking room.
Its eyes closed and I laid her down gently. She wiggled a little but it looked like my plan was going to work. Carefully I slipped my hands off of her so I could leave. Her eyes flew open and she immediately began screaming. I placed a hand atop her small body, and like an on/off switch, she stopped, her eyes fluttering shut. I sat with one hand on the baby, having a staring contest with the girl. The boy crawled onto the foot of my bed, pulled his socks up as high as he could, then curled up where my feet normally go. I wanted to complain but he wasn’t touching me and wasn’t jumping off of or onto anything. He was kind of peaceful looking all snuggled up, and I wasn’t going to sleep in my bed anyways.
I felt myself drifting, so with painstaking slowness I eased my hand off of the baby. She awoke instantly.
The screaming woke me up real good and I placed my hand back. I was too tired to keep my eyes open anymore so I rested them and my head, just until I could get the baby asleep. Then I’d go sleep somewhere else.
It was like I was a baby-sitter for ghosts. But I was pretty sure no one was going to pay me.
At least these ghost kids hadn’t done me any harm.
Yet.
***
“Why are you sleeping like that T-cup?”
I awoke facing the warm sunlight coming in through my window—and with a child across the top of my pillow. My head was awkwardly kinked. There was a baby under my arm, pinning that arm behind me, and the boy was still at my feet forcing me to sleep at an odd angle.
I had slept through the night with ghosts in my room. No, in my bed. In my teeny-tiny twin bed.
Dead people.
And I lived to tell about it.
I shuddered and jumped out of bed, waking the baby. Its screams were shrill and I plugged my ears. Catching a glimpse of my mother’s worried face I unplugged my ears and tried to act cool.
The girl was beside me in mere moments holding the baby out for me to take. Why did that thing suddenly become my responsibility?
My mom’s mouth was moving. I’m sure she was saying something, but I didn’t hear a word. I tried to read her lips but all I got was “spam for the janitors,” and that didn’t make any sense to me. I nodded, hoping that was the right answer.
The girl pushed the baby against me so I would take it and I teetered, almost losing my balance, but I was smart enough to maintain eye contact with my mother and not acknowledge the girl at all. Still reading lips I caught, “Hello Kitty,” a bunch of “you’s,” and “beaver,” then she put her hand to my forehead. Pulling her hand away she looked at me like I was supposed to answer a question. I tried really hard to remember the shapes her mouth made and create a sentence out of the strange words I had heard but nothing came to me.
She shouted behind her and my dad came out of their room, adjusting his tie. She was telling him something.
This could get bad. My dad was always the first to over-react to situations. Like the Justin-in-my-room incident.
She turned back to me and her lips moved something like “pool today,” when I heard a scream come from right behind me. I didn’t have time to brace myself before the boy jumped on my back, making me lose my balance and have to brace myself on the wall. It must have been fun because he didn’t continue screaming but pulled on my shoulders for some sort of piggy-back ride or something.
My parent’s eyes got huge.
Oh thank heavens. It’s not just me.
I pried him off my back and held him by the shoulders between us. “Can you see him?” He kept flickering in my grasp until I couldn’t feel him at all and he jittered away.
My mom brought her face really close to mine. Almost nose to nose. “Her eyes aren’t dilated. I think they might be able to see her today. T-cup, can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I can hear you,” I said quietly since she was so close.
She smiled a huge smile and went back to talking with my dad.
Like a foghorn in the ear, both the girl and the baby appeared beside me in full wail. If I ignored them, they would eventually go away. Right?
My nerves danced on the brink of collapsing. The boy jumped on my back again. This time I tripped and fell forward onto my hands and knees. I shook him off and covered my hands to my ears. The boy didn’t like being tossed to the ground and bellowed on the other side of me. The baby’s wailing, the girl’s frustrated cries, and the pained howls of the boy sounded exactly the same, and as they all let that awful sound out of their gaping mouths, I felt my sanity evaporate.
I screamed.
It was my turn to scream.
I felt a tug at my elbows. Two totally disturbed parents pulled me to my feet.
They were talking but I still couldn’t understand it all. My mom said, “until nine-thirty,” and my dad said, “if Mike takes my spot.”
I shook them off my arms and reached out and took the baby in my hands.
Baby quiet. Girl quiet. The boy held on to my leg then shut his mouth.
The only noise I heard was my mom. “Why are you doing that?” She pointed to my arms out to my side.
“This arm fell asleep and feels really funny.” I used my free arm to hit the arm that held the baby. “It just needs to wake up.” I let my head nod with confidence as if this was all part of a perfectly normal morning.
My dad looked skeptical and said to my mom, “You call as soon as the offices open and we’ll just keep her home today.”
“What?” I panicked. “I can’t stay home today. It’s the Friday before elections. If I stay home today, Kevin will win because there’s still the leather kickers, and the goth kids, and the band nerds who haven’t seemed to choose between us. And I have a math test.” With my free hand I pulled at my dad’s shirt and pleaded. “A really important math test. Please, please, please don’t make me stay home.”
My dad looked firm but my mom looked pliable. I hugged her arm.
“Mommy, please let me go to school. I couldn’t hear because there was ringing in my ears. It happens sometimes in the morning. It happens to lots of people. Like Justin . . .” I had mentioned Justin because I knew my mother loved him, but unfortunately my dad perked up at his name. “. . . And Mrs. Fenden, my history teacher . . .” I was running out of lies. “I just can’t miss today. It’s critical.”
Mom turned to Dad, tilting her head and dropping her brows. “She is working really hard on this campaign.”
He shrugged. “I think we should take her in.”