Ghosts and Memories

a short story

I’m a little bored, sitting in the kitchen, waiting for Momma to tell me it’s time to go over to Grandma Aurélie’s house next door. While she’s making some of her yummy pastries, I’m drawing a picture of Daddy with his black curly hair. It’s really good. I keep thumping the kitchen island with my foot as I sit on the stool, so Momma uses her finger signs to tell me to stop. I stop a little while and then I start doing it again, just outa habit.

Momma smiles at me. You’re bored, aren’t you? she says with her fingers. She’s so pretty right now with her long brown hair tied back in a pony, a big spot of flour on her nose. Seems happy today, not so sad.

I show her the picture I made of Daddy, and she suddenly looks a little sad, though.

“Can I just stay here today? I’m right here, really close. Right next door,” I say.

Won’t you be scared? The ravens upstairs, the creaky noises? she signs to me.

NO! I sign back to her. I’m seven now. And Tante Gabriella will be back soon, anyway. Actually, I am scared to be alone here, but I don’t wanna be scared anymore.

OK, she signs. Just come over at lunch time. She comes to me and hugs me tight, and her nose gets flour on my cheek. She laughs, with no sound, like always. She knew she had flour on her nose, I think. I giggle and wipe off my cheek, and she picks me up and holds me in her arms with my head on her shoulder for a couple minutes.

She puts me down and kisses me on the forehead. Still my beautiful little girl.

Momma gathers the pastries she made in a box and waves goodbye as she goes out the back door. The little ones are already over there playing with little Alban, and I lean outa the door to watch her walk across the yard.

I’m slowly getting used to our spooky house now, but not because it’s not really spooky. It is. I see things here that scare me. It’s just that I’ve been here half my life already, more than 3 ½ years now, and I guess I’m starting to find my way around by now. I’m kinda all on my own most times, cuz the other kids, my brothers and my cousin, are all 4 and 5 years old. Roger, Alain, and Alban. Just little kids doing little kid stuff. And I don’t have any friends.

It’s either hang out with the little ones or try to hang out with all the adults, like my Momma, and Tante Cassandra and Oncle Rolland, though usually they’re all in the house next door. They’re doing some kinda making food business outa the big kitchen over there, special French “cuisine” they call it. Then they make me help and call me “notre petit assistant,” as I fetch things outa the pantry.

Non, merci!

I decide to sit outside in the shade, in the raven playground for a little while, so I grab a fruit container from the refrigerator. It’s a place my Tante Cassandra and her sister Simone set up a long time ago to bring the ravens around. All sorts of mirrors and shiny things and perches all over the place and a big raven-sized birdbath. I bring them fruit every time I come out here, and a lot of ravens come to me. They’re a little scary cuz many of them are half as tall as me.

“Genevieve,” one says to me. Yes, they can speak some words, and sometimes I think they’re pretty smart.

“Non, Monsieur Raven, that’s my Momma. I’m Elise.”

The rest of the ravens squawk, “Elio, Elio, Elio.” I giggle because they can never seem to learn my name. I give them all the pieces of fruit and they eat hungrily while I move away to the people bench there.

I look over at Grandmama Aurélie’s house, which Momma told me is a Victorian house like ours, and not spooky at all. Most of the houses in our neighborhood are Victorians. But, maybe ours are a little more spooky than the others. I see Simone on the roof there, and my heart starts pounding. I don’t want to look but I force myself and I watch her just sitting in the warm sun like she often does even though she died a long time ago. She’s very pretty, in her little blue dress, and sometimes she smiles at me… but today she’s just dreaming, I think, sitting outside of Grandmama Aurélie’s window on the steep, steep roof.

She fell from there, I think, and that makes me sad and afraid. I don’t like that people can die.

I start wondering about my Daddy, who disappeared right after we moved here. Tante Cassandra invited us here when needed a place to live cuz Highland Park by Chicago wasn’t good for us anymore. Daddy lost his job and his family lost all their money. I miss him because he was silly with me sometimes and was really nice, reading me books in funny voices. Nobody knows where he went when we got here.

Suddenly a face appears, sideways, in front of me, and I shriek before I realize it’s just Tante Gabriella having fun with me. She laughs like Momma, making no sound, and she speaks to me with her hands. Like Momma she also walks silent, too. I never hear her coming.

Gathering wool? she asks me, smiling at me in her pretty summer dress. It’s covered with strawberries, her favorite.

I jump up and hug her, saying, “A whole lotta wool. You know me.”

Yes, I do, beautiful Elise, she answers. What mischief can I help you with today?

“I wanna look for my Daddy,” I say, and she looks shocked.

But your Daddy, left a long time ago, she signs slowly.

“I wanna look here, for all the things I can find that remind me of him.”

She sees the tears in my eyes, and she hugs me close. “OK,” she breathes in my ear like a quiet, voiceless whisper of a breeze. I think I have some things of his, she signs to me. We can start there. Yes? She looks up, at the other house. Has Simone been there all morning?

“Yes, I think so,” I giggle. “It’s dreamy Tante Simone today.”

Ahhh. I miss dreamy Simone.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..֎ . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

He gave me this book, Gabriella signed, holding it out to me. It was a book of poetry, A, by Louis Zukofsky. I know what a good reader you are for your age, so this will be a piece of cake. It isn’t difficult, the words… And I also have these things.

She stops talking with her hands long enough to hand me a beautiful pen and a bookmark that has a metallic head of a cat on the top. We sit in her room on the first floor in the back of the house, as I hold these things in my hand. I see a painting she did of the strawberry garden she and Momma had back home. In the picture is Momma, Tante Gabriella, and a guy, not Daddy.

I feel like my father is watching me now.

“Where did he go, Tante?” I ask. I struggle to hold my tears, but I’m happy at least to know something more of him. He liked poetry.

He was a troubled man, Elise, Gabriella says, looking down, sadly. Don’t be sad.

“There’s a lot of stuff in the attic, Tante. Right? Maybe some of his things are there.”

We don’t want to disturb the ravens. Just old clothes there, I think.

“But I’ve been there before. It’s a separate room.” I stand and pull her hand, her arm, to get her to stand.

OK, just this time… and real quick.

We don’t often go up the top of the house and through the upper door to the attic. This part of the house was made for the ravens to always have a home, with special window box doors to keep out the weather, and tiled floors so we can have it cleaned once in a while. We enter the attic and dozens of ravens are sitting quietly on perches or in their box nests near the roof.

“Elio, Elliiioooo, El, Elio, Elio,” the ravens say. One says “Gabriella.” They mostly just watch us, and a couple of them drop to the tile floor and walk with us as we go to the left to the storage room. One of them has bright white feathers just on his head.

“Bonjour,” says the white-headed raven.

Concealed behind stacks of boxes and old furniture, there are several boxes labeled “Edward Walker,” and I start opening them carefully, finding lots of clothes, some books, his glasses, his wallet.

His diary.

Maybe you shouldn’t …. maybe I should look at it first, signs Gabriella, moving to take the diary from me. She is upset.

With each thing I touch of my father’s I start to feel him more and more present, and I see a dark figure standing near the door. Silent, he is, head down, holding his hands out to me. It is my father, it seems. The curly black hair, the serious eyes. His lips move, but he doesn’t speak… yet I see his hands saying he is sorry.

Don’t blame your mother. She did what she had to, Daddy says, again with his hands. The sorrow on his face brings tears to my eyes.

He moves smoothly to a tiny window, the only source of light in the room, and he points down to the far back of the yard. A small clearing.

“I understand, Daddy. I think I do. But don’t go, please Daddy.” He fades away, and I start crying, but the house feels lighter to me, happier, even as I feel more sad. Tante Gabriella says Daddy was standing with Momma’s old friend Elio, but I didn’t see him. Elio’s always around you, says Tante Gabriel, but he’s not a ghost, he’s an Angel.

. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ֎ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I’m trying to make more normal friends now, at school, instead of just being friends with my little brothers and my Tantes and the ghosts all around me now. Trying to act less weird too. The good thing is I’m not afraid of anything anymore. I can see and hear ghosts all the time, except when I’m singing and dancing, so I do a lot more of that just to get some peace.

“What are you thinking, Elise?” Johnny asks me.

“I dunno. Do you believe in ghosts?” I ask.

“You crazy? There’s no such thing,” he laughs.

“Really, you think that?” I spread my arms wide. “Look where we are, at my spooky home of talking ravens, sitting next to my father’s grave. A man who died mysteriously.” I take little wildflowers from the bag I brought with me, and I spread them around the little grave-sized clearing in the back of the yard behind the trees. Then I open my poetry book and start to read.

“OK, OK,” Johnny says. “If I say I believe in ghosts, will you stop reading poetry?”

Original draft published at https://vocal.media.

Consider reading these companion pieces to Ghosts and Memories: - Sisters in Silence - Jardin Caprice - Among the Strawberries - An Unkindness of Ravens