The burial happens in front of me, but I am not here. I’m somewhere outside the cemetery gates with Jas. We are twelve years old, counting the number of penny candies we can buy at the corner store. We are fourteen and hoping our cloaking spell works so the cashier won’t notice when we steal Starburst at 7-Eleven. We are seventeen, and we come to the cemetery to talk to the dead, but we are not the dead. I’m alive, and she’s alive. We walk, laugh, count graves, share the blunt she rolled up this morning, and read names from tombstones. And all of this happens until the burial is a blur of something that isn’t real. It’s a haze, foggy and thickened by smoke, my heart hammering the whole time because weed and me don’t mesh. And my ex-boyfriend isn’t trying to catch my eye while he rubs Darleny’s shoulder as she sobs, and Natalie isn’t whispering about how ashamed she is when people stare at her, and Inez isn’t hyperventilating when they lower the casket.
None of it is happening until I thumb the bag with Jasmine’s fingernails in my coat pocket and realize this is real. But maybe it doesn’t have to be.
When it’s over, Inez thinks I’m going with them to her house. They’ll say prayers with her mother. They’ll cry and try to eat and talk about how overwhelming it is that Jasmine isn’t here.
They look confused when I pull them in for a hug and say there’s something I have to do.
Nat clings to me as I try to leave. “What’s going on? We could come with you.”
I grit my teeth, force myself to linger for another second, wanting to tell them my plan. But not yet. “Make sure to stop at a store before going home, okay?” I say to them. “I promise I’ll call tonight.”
Auntie Lindy’s doorbell isn’t lit up. It might not work, but I ring it once and a few more times. I’m not sure she even still lives here until she parts the curtains of one of her windows and peers at me through the screen. “Miliani, is that you ringing me wild?”
“It’s me, Auntie,” I call back. “Sorry.” She disappears behind the curtains. Then I wait for a long time on her stoop in the dark. Maybe she’s deciding whether to let me up or not.
It’s been a year since Mom and I bumped into her at the Filipino market in Cranston. Mom tried for a smile, which Auntie called a good fake one, and while Mom was cashing out, Auntie slipped a piece of paper with her address on it in the palm of my hand. Shh, she said. But Mom must have had a feeling because she made sure to remind me why we were keeping our distance from her sister on the ride home. Your tita has been wrapped up with the dark stuff ever since we lost your lolo. You are not to get involved.
But the “dark stuff” Mom spoke about was partly derived from the same stuff Papa, my lolo, had taught us. He’d carried his family’s practices with him from the Philippines, where he had grown up Catholic while also believing in the spiritual realm. Most particularly, that it was all around us, existing in the soil and the trees and the rocks and the ocean. These are the most common places part of the energy from a person’s spirit will rest to watch over their loved ones on earth.
Sometimes, the spirit of a person isn’t able to move on to the afterlife. It gets stuck in the purgatory between realms. Papa called those who were stuck wandering spirits. And in rare cases, the luckiest wandering spirits will cling to a person and be free to roam. This is the unluckiest scenario for the person, Papa told me many years ago while we pruned his pear tree in our backyard. A haunting? I asked. The worst kind, he said, and didn’t want to say any more. When he died, I was young and foolish. Had no idea what it meant for a spirit that couldn’t move on. I would have welcomed a haunting if it had meant Papa would never leave me, but instead the energy of his spirit rested with the pear tree in our backyard, causing the pears to ripen quicker and taste sweeter. It’s in the soil of his garden, preparing the tomatoes for growth. It’s turning the grapes on the vines lining our fence a deeper shade of red.
Auntie isn’t the only person in our family who believes in the spiritual realm and uses what she learns as fuel for practicing magic, but for some reason, Mom shuns her because of it.
I stand here, wondering if maybe Auntie Lindy’s invitation had an expiration date, thinking it probably would’ve been smart to call from a pay phone before I took two buses to get here. But as soon as she opens the downstairs door and gives me a once-over, she folds me into her arms.
“Good to see you, kid. I knew you’d make it.”
Her apartment is brightened by floor lamps and yellow walls, which are covered in picture frames and collages and gorgeous paintings of flowers and trees. Auntie is an artist; I wonder if she painted them herself. There are plants on various stands and on windowsills, but nothing wildly exotic or outrageously long. And the books aren’t stacked on the floor; they’re neatly placed on small white bookshelves. She tells me to sit on one of her leather couches—instead of the nonexistent floor pillow I’d cooked up in my mind—and offers me soda. Everything seems normal until it happens, the thing she does that makes you feel your mind isn’t safe.
“You expected the bones and innards of my enemies to be hanging from my ceilings as decoration?” I choke on my soda, and she smiles with one side of her mouth. “Maybe you can tell your mother it’s safe to visit. If you decide to tell her you came at all.”
Anything I say might be twisted—it’s better I say nothing—but my silence seems to drain the coolness from her face.
“Ease up, and tell me why you’re here.”
“Don’t you already know?” I reach my hand in my pocket and play with the cloth bag there. “Didn’t you see it before I came?”
“That’s not how it works.” She laughs, waves her hand as if to say Silly child. “I can’t see the future.”
“But you can see my mind?”
“Not exactly.”
I mean to push, to ask how it works. Those psychic abilities Mom claims aren’t anything more than a quick mind. A trickster is what she calls Auntie when I try asking for stories of her sister. Stories I know will be buried with the rest of the ones she seems fixed on never sharing about our family. But Papa used to say his Lindy was just more in tune than most of us.
“I came from a funeral,” I say, then quickly, “but I stopped at a gas station first.”
There is a Filipino superstition that Papa told me about after my father died: if you go straight home after a funeral, you might bring a spirit home with you.
The corners of Auntie’s lips twitch like she wants to smile. “Go on,” she says.
“I need to ask for your help with something.”
“With what, Miliani? Spit it out.” She leans forward. A spark lights her eyes and lets me know she’s interested, even though she plays at impatience. “What are you hiding over there?”
I take out the bag and dump the contents onto her coffee table. She reaches out to gently touch one of the fingernails.
While her head’s low, I tell her, “I want to bring my friend back from the dead.”
Auntie sits back, sinking into the pillows, and beats a rhythm into the arm of the couch with her fingers. Then she tilts her head to the side and watches me awhile. “No wonder your mother has kept you from me.”