FICTION

My Queer Aunt Zeinab Always Knew How to Laugh About Death

She promised to haunt me through coffee cake crumbs

“When I’m dead, if you really want to know I’m haunting you, just make a coffee cake. You’ll know I’m still here because I’ll dump those crumbs on your lap when you least expect it.”

Mom’s lips would always purse at her nonsense. Was it because Aunt Zeinab was being morbid again or because she hated sugary messes? Or was it something else hidden in the pregnant pauses between excuses?

Aunt Zeinab would always joke about terrible things. As I pushed her cinnamon-coated crumbs around my plate, trying to collect one last spoonful of flavor before going home, I found it comforting to know her spirit would haunt me someday.

She probably isn’t dead, but her absence haunts me now. By the time I was 10, she was gone forever. My Aunt Zeinab had become a collection of scandalous stories, each one worse than the last.

She was a thief, a pervert, a whore, and had probably joined some kind of filthy cult, or so the stories always went. All of the adults in the room agreed that she was no good. I quickly learned that it was best not to mention her.

At 17, I took the subway to the forwarding address on the most recent gift Mom had trashed because the delivery had been too quiet to be refused. I needed to tell someone who understood. I needed to tell someone about losing Eva again. A stranger answered the door.

I didn’t need gifts. I needed homemade coffee cake crumbs. Food, especially desserts, tell us we’re loved. They tell us we’re not alone. I felt like I’d failed her because I couldn’t remember how to make the cake needed to find out if she was still watching. I tried over and over. No coffee cake I made tasted quite like hers. The New York Times couldn’t offer the haunted coffee cake recipe I needed.

Mom always said Aunt Zeinab abandoned us because she was selfish. I knew that wasn’t true. I’ve seen the way people look at our kind in the halls or on those streets that I’m not old enough to walk on, as late as I do. They always just know somehow, no matter how meticulously I hide it.

The meaning of “old enough” keeps changing each year. I think “old enough” really is about the company you keep. Company I know I’ll never have. Company I keep promising Mom I’ll find one of these days, once I’ve taken care of those studies I’ll never finish.

But Aunt Zeinab knew all about that, didn’t she? Mom knows it, too. That’s why she trashed her sweet gifts each year, cursing the ants the boxes sometimes attracted.

I don’t need coffee cake crumbs to know she’s haunting me. I don’t need my friend Kim’s Ouija Board to feel her words caked to my skin like sugar. Mom would say Aunt Zeinab was just like sugar. She was fun every now and then, but was never good for me. She was a bad influence, a gateway to sin.

I needed her rituals. Five little cups of warm tea with dissolving biscuits for dipping before I could leave. Mom was always angry when I’d get home from her apartment three floors down. We both knew it wasn’t really because the streetlights were already shining through the dusk.

That’s why I couldn’t tell Mom about losing Eva. That’s why I’m always crying for no reason. That’s why I trade out one set of pills for another set of pills every six months, as the doctor guesses wrong again and again.

Mom tells me I don’t really need those pills, but she doesn’t have a solution to the tears that won’t stop. She can’t explain why I can’t get out of bed some days or why I’d failed a biology class I’d studied for around the clock. She says I’m just broken, lazy, or not strong. She says pills can’t fix these things; only hard work can put me back together. Aunt Zeinab would know better.

I lost a decade to the fog of withdrawal. Another tenth of my life was lost to a metal taste or a migraine that was only reported by a negligible percentage of patients.

Adverse events. That’s what happens when you ask doctors for a solution to the endless soul-crushing pain that comes from pretending not to be gay under my remaining family’s watchful eyes.

Just another adverse event. Somewhere in the haze that was my twenties, if it wasn’t just a dream, I’m pretty sure I walked Eva down the aisle. She was drunk as a skunk. I can still smell the Jack Daniels on her breath in my memory. Her palm pressed warm against my chest, as she begged me not to tell.

Such a thing would have made the marriage illegal where we lived at the time. I’m sure she told me that. The memory rings true. Maybe she needed to hold on to that technicality to make it through each photographed minute.

Our marriage would have been illegal, too, back then, so I was just the maid of honor. Ohh, but that cake at the reception was perfect! That is one memory that I can taste through the metallic flavor of another failed antidepressant. I knew my Aunt Zeinab was there because the cake crumbs fell right into my lap as my shaky hands tried to put the spoon down.

I cried for no reason all the way home that night, but the tears froze to cheeks still caked with sugar. It was too cold to snow. I was still too young to walk by myself at night, but my queer Aunt Zeinab was with me, so I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew I was safe. She was hidden in the cake crumbs stuck to my skin like little goodbye kisses on each cheek.

I cried like a child and imagined her ghost holding me close, promising me it would get better. Aunt Zeinab was promising me that there was never anything wrong with me. She was promising me that I was perfect exactly the way I was born.

I tried to sneak into a church for a little warmth, searching for relief from the little icicles running down my skin, washing away her sugar with salt. The doors were locked, like always. When I got to my apartment, I made 5 cups of tea and laughed through the tears, grateful that my queer Aunt Zeinab had haunted me, just like she promised.

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