12: The Stage
1999 –2001
A measure of talent that not even the stages of Broadway have ever seen belonged to an entity I’ll refer to as The Imitator. The Imitator could change from the role of a male to a female and from an adult to a child seemingly without effort. As many performers have the reputation of being temperamental, I guess she was too, in her own way. Her unpredictable behavior manifested itself by her strong desire to cause chaos within the family, and believe me she did it quite well. I must admit, even though I often bore the brunt of her sense of humor, I can’t help but smile just thinking of how much fun she must’ve had at our expense.
One evening I was cooking dinner when Troy came into the kitchen and asked me what I needed. When I told him I hadn’t called for him, he gave me a disbelieving look, because we’d had this conversation many times over the past several days. For reasons I hadn’t yet understood, everyone in the house seemed to think I had called for them when I hadn’t. With a shake of his head, Troy went back to his room only to return about ten minutes later, asking again what I wanted. When I told him for a second time that I hadn’t called for him, he folded his arms across his chest and told me to “stop it.” He said he was trying to play a video game and if I didn’t need anything, I should quit calling for him.
I think it’s safe to say that at one time or another, most people have mistakenly thought someone called for them when in fact no one did. But when the majority of conversations in the household start with, “What did you need?” or “Did you call for me?” one can’t help but wonder …
It was getting frustrating for all of us, but it hadn’t been a major issue until one day when Keshia and I were in my bedroom talking and we heard Wes run through the house screaming out my name. Keshia and I both jumped at the panic we heard in his voice. Just as I was on my way to the door, Wes threw it open, almost hitting me in the process. His eyes were wild with fear as he asked me what was wrong.
I managed to stammer out that nothing was wrong. With my heart racing, I asked him why he thought there was.
His eyes darted from me to Keshia and, seeing that we were okay, he asked why I had called for him in that “terrified” voice.
When Keshia and I both told him that I hadn’t called for him, his panic turned to anger. Holding the towel around his waist with one hand, he jabbed at the air with his other as he said he knew what he had heard. He told us he’d just gotten out of the shower when he heard me scream out his name as though something was terribly wrong. He proceeded to tell us how he could have broken his neck running through the house with wet feet as he tried to find me.
I knew he must have heard someone scream for him, but Keshia and I both knew it wasn’t me. As these incidents piled up, Keshia and I came to the conclusion that we had a ghost that could imitate my voice to perfection. Wes and Troy concluded I was just “messing” with them.
Having an entity that could imitate me was a little unnerving, but it didn’t stop there. Apparently, she was able to look like me, too—and that was a little bizarre even for our house.
This isn’t something I ever dreamed was possible, so when I started hearing comments such as, “How did you get in here so fast? I just saw you in the kitchen,” I didn’t think anything about it. But when Troy complained about me coming into his room during the night to check on him, I knew something wasn’t right. By this time, Troy was twelve or thirteen years old and I hadn’t been in his room to “check on him” in years, but according to him, I did it all the time. He said I’d come in his room and cover him up, and when he asked me what I was doing I would tell him I was just checking and for him to go back to sleep.
I was blown away by this. I knew I hadn’t been in Troy’s room, but apparently, someone who looked and sounded like me had. Between this and everyone always thinking I was calling for them, I was starting to feel a little picked on by this entity. But everyone else was soon to get their turn.
Like any other performer, the longer The Imitator practiced her craft, the better she became. It wasn’t long before she was imitating each of our voices. As far as I know, she never physically appeared as anyone other than me, but she could sure sound like them. At times, it seemed as though we’d all lost our minds as we ran around the house saying, “What?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’?”
“Did you call me?”
“I didn’t call you, I thought you were calling me.”
After experiencing this for about three years, we became accustomed to this game. When we heard someone call for us, we’d just yell back “Are you calling for me?” If we didn’t get a reply, Keshia and I knew The Imitator was at it again. Since I had given up trying to figure out Wes and Troy’s logic on these matters, I wasn’t sure how this made any type of sense in their minds, but somehow it did. Their usual response was “I must be hearing things.”
When I heard the ghost imitate one of us, I was usually more fascinated than anything, but when she used the voice of someone who wasn’t home, that proved to be a little more eerie.
The most common theory about ghosts is, of course, that they are simply the spirits of dead people. Whether this is true or not, that thought was often in my mind and hearing the voice of Wes or one of the children when I knew they weren’t home would sometimes cause me to wonder if something had happened to them.
I can remember one time in particular that this thought bothered me all day. Troy had gotten into the habit of making a loud popping sound with his mouth. He knew this irritated me beyond reason, so naturally he did it all the time. One of his favorite things to do was to sneak up behind me and loudly pop into my ear.
After getting the kids off to school, I was standing at the sink washing dishes when I heard the familiar popping sound in my ear. Out of habit, I yelled out Troy’s name and told him to quit. When my outburst didn’t receive a response, it occurred to me that he was at school. As the silence hung in the air, I had a terrible feeling something might have happened to him. I knew if it were truly possible for the dead to come back, this would be how he would choose to do it.
I continued to hear the popping sound throughout the day. With each pop, my unease grew. Every time the phone rang, I was afraid someone was calling to tell me something had happened to Troy. By the time the school day ended, I was a nervous wreck. When he walked in the door, I was so relieved to see him that when he did his signature pop, he didn’t even get into trouble.
Keshia and I admired the abilities The Imitator possessed, no matter how irritating it was at times. But we never had a full understanding of the depth of her talent until she chose to reveal it one day to Keshia while the rest of us had gone to town. Keshia was in her room studying when she heard her dad call out for her. Thinking we had gotten home, she walked into the living room to see what he wanted. Not seeing anyone in the house, she looked out the window and saw our car wasn’t home.
She returned to her room. Getting back to her homework, she heard me call for her. Knowing it was probably The Imitator, but not wanting to get into trouble, she again left her room to see if we were home. We weren’t. Stomping back to her room, she heard Troy call her from the other end of the house. Frustrated with this game, Keshia called out to The Imitator to quit messing with her. She said she had work to do and she wasn’t falling for it anymore.
After working on her homework for about thirty minutes, she heard Wes, Troy, and me in the living room talking. She said she couldn’t make out what we were saying, but could distinctly hear each of our voices with the rise and fall of our tones as if we were having a normal, every-day conversation. When she walked into the living room to see how our trip to town had gone, she was greeted with an empty house.
This incredible incident was to be The Imitator’s final performance for us. I guess our home proved not to be a big enough stage to fulfill her mischievous desires. The Imitator left us after about three years. Maybe the bright lights of Broadway were calling to her, but wherever she is, I’m certain she’s having loads of fun and leaving a lot of confusion in her wake.