Linny was Lana and Jolie’s cousin. Sometimes she and her brother stayed at Billie’s house. Her brother was tiny and wore a metal brace on his thin right leg. Both children had soft brown skin, short bowl cuts, and Asiatic eyes. They were delicate flowers, and quietly preferred by the adults.
One night, Linny dreamt of a gagohsa, and soon after there was a healing ceremony. Gagohsa was Seneca for ghost—a spirit who visited people in their dreams, and was chased away with smoke and rattles and chants. But best of all, his exit was celebrated with bread. Indeed, the only bread around for miles was reserved for ghosts.
From the moment Linny made her gagohsa announcement, I began to eye her. I wanted to know what she knew. As her healing began, I pressed my ear to the door and listened from the bedroom. I heard the shake of mud-turtle rattles, smelled the fire, watched as smoke swirled in from cracks in the door. Chants and ashes were blown over the girl, who emerged from her healing more serious than ever, a rough strap of leather tied to her wrist.
After Linny’s healing, the women baked ghostbread.
It was fried into golden wheels in deep cast-iron skillets, or sizzled into hand-sized splatters of dough, or formed into puffy bricks and baked in the oven, only to be slathered with butter and sprinkled with sugar when it was taken out. Light on the tongue and heavy in the stomach, Ghostbread drove the taste of soup away, and was far better than any religion for convincing me of heaven.
As I threw myself into the bread’s soft interior, I considered Linny and her gagohsa. I was intrigued by everything about the ceremony and considered staging a ghost-sighting myself, but decided against it, thinking that gagohsas probably paid no mind to palefaces anyway.