Phooey Superman. I am able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Put the kibosh on Phantom. I’m quick like lightning. I got eyes and ears everywhere.
Everywhere is my dance floor. Named after Ricky, but I don’t mind. It’s my domain, no doubt about it. When I walk across the floorboards, the rhythmic click click click of my heels can be heard in the living world. Their mouths drop open like ventriloquist dummies. They press their ears to the floor for more. If they could hear my voice, I’d tell them, “You’re sitting right on top of an old boat hull, and you there, you’re on a weathered soda stand sign—magic wood, perfect wood.”
She always situates herself on the roller coaster track. Same track she nearly drowned to find for me. My sweet girl. So sweet, too sweet.
With all the wood they salvaged, I’ve got space enough to Shag Down and Big Apple Stomp and Box Step. I can dance upside-down on the funny clamshell-shaped ceiling if I want to. Twirl around the perfect wooden columns. Slide down the bannister and run back up the three wide stairs. But the greatest feature, the one thing I would have never guessed in a million years, is I can see myself. Those swell fellas with their saws and hammers. Not only did they leave the SS Canadiana wheelhouse intact, they filled the three empty windows in with mirrors and glass. Black age marks dot the reflection, yet there I am still, twenty-three plus a summer. Not a hair out of place. Bumper bangs and finger waves that I kept long to set me apart from working women with their above-the-collar bobs. Rosy rouge and cat eyeliner, unsmudged. Swing shirtwaist dress with fabric-covered buttons. I never wore plastic buttons. And I never ever wore military brown or navy, despite the trend. Black and white and red for me. Florals, if there were floral patterns to be found.
I am forever twenty-three. Same age as her. ’Cept she will turn twenty-four and five and six and maybe see thirty and forty—if she can manage not to fall off her wobbly perch. I ought to be appreciative, or angry. Can a ghost feel both? I feel more now that my dance floor is built. I am more.
Directly in front of me, the men have fixed a funhouse mirror. I remember those long mirrors—your whole body warped up one way and twisted down the other. But this mirror is no bigger than a vanity, a perfect fit for the wheelhouse window. I can’t look in this mirror for more than three seconds. I timed it—one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three. I got three seconds giggle at my ballooning forehead or banana-bent neck before I disappeared. And not just my reflection, I mean disappear, like I’m being pulled away. Like falling out of the picture. It’s like I barely know where here or there or now or yesterday are anymore.
But her voice keeps me here. She has a few dozen or so folks coming ’round now—all women. A small house, but you gotta start somewhere. She’s getting good at trembling and moaning, like a bonafide fun park fortune teller. I’d like to stretch out on any one of the built-in benches and watch the show, waiting for my cue. Bit by bit, we’re perfecting our tricks. Rapping. Flashes of light. Spitting oracles and swapping divinations. They fall for it all. She merely says the name of someone’s dead grandmother or runaway daughter and they swoon, enchanted. People just wanna see themselves. I’ve always known it. People just wanna be their own show.
But this production is missing something.
I can’t put my finger on it quite yet.
Something’s missing.