Two things catch my attention when I get home from Jasmine’s house. The first is that there isn’t a home-cooked meal on the stove; there’s a box of pizza. The second is how dark the house is. I flip on light switches as I pass them. The bathroom door is shut but not locked. When I open it, I see Mom standing by the sink, staring into the mirror, with thick brown paste coating her bare arms. She doesn’t notice me, or hear me when I apologize for intruding.
Her lips move like she’s speaking, but no sound is coming out. My breathing quickens.
“Mom,” I call again, and use my free hand to knock on the open door.
She flinches and curses in Tagalog before running the sink water. “You’re supposed to knock before you come in. Not after.” She washes the paste off in a hurry. “Hand me a towel.”
“What is that stuff, Mom? It smells awful.”
She catches my eyes in the mirror, then looks away. “It’s an old remedy,” she tells me. “One of your grandfather’s.”
Hearing Mom speak of Papa and remedies makes me feel warm. Hearing her tell me anything at all surprises me. “What’s it for?”
She uses the towel to wipe the sink, then throws it in the hamper. “Dry skin…,” she says. “I’m going up to my room.”
When she’s through the door, but not far, I ask, “Do you miss him?”
Mom turns quick. The look in her eyes unsettles me. Especially when her gaze lands beside me on the bathtub. She opens her mouth, closes it. Gnaws her lip. “Who?”
“Papa?”
“Oh.” She wraps her arms around herself. “I do.”
“Who did you think I was talking about?”
“I don’t know, Miliani,” she says. “That’s why I asked you.”
When she turns and leaves, I open the shower curtain to be sure nothing’s there.
Upstairs, I lock my bedroom door and sit on the floor. Papa used to joke that old wooden floors are a good place to talk to the dead. I place the strands of Darleny’s hair in a glass bottle and start working through Jasmine’s brush to do the same. I stuff them in a separate bottle and label it with her initials. These are supposed to be for the anchoring spell, but I light candles and drop a single strand of Jasmine’s hair into a glass of water in front of me.
Auntie said Jasmine’s spirit might be lost, but these hair strands might say something different after what happened in Darleny’s room.
I need them to say something different.
“Jasmine, if you’re here, show me.” I try to concentrate on remembering her face, her touch, her voice. I call to her a few times, but my call goes unanswered. It had to be her laughing, the way she used to do when we’d almost get caught sneaking around. It had to be. I know how her energy feels. I remember.
“Jas, I’m going to fix this,” I say. “I promise.”
One of the candles pools on the holder quicker than it should have and goes out. My senses pick up when the rest sway. I carefully unfold the cloth on the mirror Auntie gave me.
“Jas. Is that you?” I’m on my feet, tilting the light of my lamp toward the wall and lifting the shard of mirror to my face.
Someone whispers my name and sends a shiver up my spine. I tilt the mirror around. Nothing.
“Hello?” I try again. “Jasmine?”
A shadow materializes behind me. My hand is shaky as the shape becomes more defined. I inhale. Tell myself I’m just excited when goosebumps rise on my flesh, but my body wants me to move and my mind tells me to run. This isn’t the way I felt in Darleny’s room.
A knock comes on my door, and the mirror slips from my grasp and hits the floor. The shadow disappears. I pick up the mirror, scared it’s shattered, but it’s not.
“No burning candles up here,” Mom calls. “Miliani, do you hear me?”
“Yes,” I call back before tucking the mirror away and blowing the candles out.
My breathing is rapid when I open the door, but she’s already down the hall, shutting hers behind her. Sometimes, I wish she’d ask what I’m doing instead of just telling me to stop. She wasn’t this way when I was a girl. She’d tell me about the time she traveled to the Philippines with Papa. “I’ll bring you some day,” she’d say. We’d sit in the yard with a telescope, counting constellations and talking horoscopes. But it changed when she got sick with blackouts and body shakes. No one explained what caused her illness, but we moved in with Papa because of it. He took care of her and gave me the attention she couldn’t. We never left when she got better, and she never gave me that kind of attention again.
I pick up the mirror and try and try, but the spirit doesn’t want to be seen anymore.