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“Tell me more about Eliza. What was she like? Tell me about her past and where she came from.”
“Why? It’s not like you’ll believe me. Besides, it’s just voices. Isn’t that what you’re medicating me for?”
“Risperdal is for all types of psychosis.”
“Oh, like seeing ghosts?”
“All kinds.”
It’s not worth arguing with him.
“Fine. What do you want to know?”
“Anything you want to tell me about the ghost you claim raised you.”
***
Age Four
“Why are the living more thick than the dead?”
“Thick?”
I lean forward on the concrete bench, sticking my pointer finger out at my ghost mother. I poke into her, watching wispy bits of soul tangle between my fingers.
“Thick. Not like this.”
“Oh. Tangible. That’s what you mean. The living have a thing called density.”
“What’s that?”
Eliza gently pokes me back. It tickles. I laugh, lifting the bottom of the pink tank top that Prudence brought me from the dumpster by the thrift store in the center of town, and tell her to poke me again. She smiles, moving her ghostly fingers over my belly button and making me laugh so hard it hurts. We laugh and laugh and laugh until Eliza’s face becomes stern. She puts her finger over her lips.
“Hush.”
I turn, wondering what the problem is, and see him: A living. A man in his late forties stands only twenty feet away.
“Hurry. Run,” Eliza says.
I know the plan. I’ve done it before. It’s my job to run out of the cemetery and toward the line of houses at the very back edge. I’m supposed to act like I’m playing in the yard. But I have to be careful. The woman who lives there likes to garden. She’s outside a lot.
My ghost father, Eliza’s husband, came up with the plan before I could walk. So far, it’s worked. Any of the living who have caught me talking to myself or even just playing alone in the family plot have always assumed I was just the kid next door being a normal child. As long as I wasn’t hurting anything, people seemed to think that was okay. Sure, they’d often take a second look. But according to the reverend, that was the problem with the contemporary living: They just weren’t friendly. Not like in his day where neighbors helped neighbors and you weren’t afraid to talk to strangers.
I don’t look back as I run toward Mrs. McGuire’s backyard. I’m hoping yesterday’s drizzly weather has her second-guessing her garden needing water. But she’s like clockwork, and this is the time of day she will be around. I wish I could turn back and speak to the man. I wish I could ask who he is here for. Sometimes, when the ghosts who raise me aren’t looking or listening, I talk to the living.
I deliver messages from their loved ones. I like telling them they are still here and that they’ll never really leave. Love and bonds don’t have to have bodies. The living like hearing that. They never seem to mind that I’m just a kid. They want to believe me. But the ghosts don’t understand that. Instead, they are always so suspicious of the living. It’s kind of sad.
At the edge of Mrs. McGuire’s yard, I crouch down and watch the man, waiting for Eliza to catch up. For a ghost, she moves slowly. Hester says it’s not that she can’t move quickly. She says it’s that she’s afraid to. Even for me, the only kid Eliza really has, my ghost mother has her limits. For her, it’s the edges of the cemetery. Anything outside or having to do with the living is scary to her, she says.
I can’t really blame her. From the consumption to all those kids in childbirth, Eliza had a hard life. I know I will live way past age twenty-six, and I don’t even ever want to have kids. It seems like kids would be annoying. The reverend says they are. Someday, if I’m ever brave enough to enter the world of the living completely, I’ll be like the man. I’ll come back here and visit my friends.
“Good girl,” Eliza says, finally joining me at the edge. She stays on the grass part, just before the woods but close enough I can almost reach out and touch her.
“Why can’t I talk to him? He looks sad. I could go over and cheer him up.”
“No. Not a good idea,” she says.
“But the reverend says the living should be more friendly. I want to be like that. Maybe if I was friendly first.”
“No, Adaline. There is no discussion to be had. Your father is wrong. Besides, it’s not proper, young lady. A woman, especially a child, never speaks first to a man.”
“Why? Why does it matter if he’s a boy or a girl?”
“Common etiquette,” she says.
“That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Henry is a boy, and I talk to him first all the time.”
“Henry is a peer.”
“What’s that?”
“A kid your age.”
“A dead one.”
“It doesn’t matter. And watch your mouth. You are being fresh.”
“Fine,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
Slowly, and with one finger pressed over her lips, she floats closer to me again. She sticks out her other finger and pokes me in the stomach, causing me to stifle a laugh.
“Fine,” she says, smiling.
As much as I want to argue with her and convince her that her rules are dumb, Eliza really is a great mother and even a friend... Way better than Hester’s stupid half-brother Henry.
