Silent as the Grave

by Zoe Aarsen

  “How are things with your stepmother?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I replied. I’d made the mistake during my first social work session at school of describing Rhonda as very young and pretty, and had mistakenly given Ms. Hernández the notion that all of my erratic behavior since the fall could be explained by some kind of issue I had with her.

  “Has she laid off on the prom pressure?”

  “Yes,” I said. “For now.” Rhonda had read in an e-mail sent out to parents by the principal’s office that junior prom would be held in mid-May, and she’d immediately suggested that we go shopping for a dress. It broke my heart a little to tell her that I had no interest in going to a dance in Hyde Park with a bunch of people I barely knew. Even though she wasn’t old enough to be my mom, she was really trying hard to fill the role, or at least qualify as world’s coolest stepmom.

  “What about the boyfriend? How’s he doing?” Ms. Hernández asked. She never failed to ask me about Trey during every single one of our sessions, even though I’d never mentioned him.

  “As well as can be expected,” I replied. The bitter reality was that I didn’t know how Trey really was. The one phone call per week I was allowed to have with him was monitored by the administration at his military-style school. Weekly, he told me in a cool, emotionless voice not to worry about him, because everything there was great. This made me suspect that things were far from “great,” but there was nothing either of us could do about that until he turned eighteen and was free to leave.

  Investing as little energy as possible, I moved through the rest of my classes that day. A surge of joy rose within my chest when the final bell rang. As I stuffed my bag at my locker, I tried to ignore people around me talking about either band practice or a concert that night at the Amalie Arena. Back at the start of the school year in Willow, I’d had a packed calendar too. But there was no point in lamenting the time when I’d been involved in student government and been excited about things like yearbook committee and live music. Those days were over.

  Oscawana Pavilion Assisted Living Facility was only about sixteen blocks away from my high school, but it was hot enough when school let out that I’d show up drenched in perspiration if I didn’t just wait for the bus. So I popped my earbuds in my ears and tried to remain patient. I was starting to feel anxious and felt the urge to walk to the next stop, assuming I could beat the bus, but I knew I’d never make it in time.

  By the time the bus arrived, my scalp had broken out into a rush of tingles. I knew that this was Jennie’s way of wanting to initiate contact with me, and since I’d been home in Willow over Christmas break, the tingles had become an increasingly frequent sensation. As always, the physical sensation of being lightly jabbed by needles was accompanied by a potent mixture of emotions that never failed to nauseate me a little. The thrill of being contacted by my twin sister swirled around with panic that I was either going insane—or veering off into a strange lifestyle of having paranormal powers that was going to result in my being considered a total freak by other people.

  Even though I’d been finding all sorts of new ways to receive her messages (with varying degrees of effectiveness), Jennie had a way of reaching out to me at moments when it was extremely inconvenient for me to try to respond. Like when I was hanging on for dear life to a pole on a crowded bus. I’d run out of patience for the pendulum; asking Jennie yes-and-no questions could be extremely time-consuming, and I couldn’t exactly whip it out in public places.

  I did my best to try to ignore the tingles. Whatever it was that Jennie was trying to communicate didn’t matter; I had to be at work in fifteen minutes to clock in.

  The moment I stepped into the assisted living facility, I was grateful for its excessive air-conditioning. I passed through the lobby, where an elderly man was playing the grand piano for the amusement of several women, some of whom were playing mah-jongg. The lobby had several enormous fish tanks, which were among my favorite things about working there. I tended to take my fifteen-minute break in the lobby just to stare at the fish.

  On my way to the bathroom to change into my scrubs, I was greeted by Luis, my manager. “Slight change to your rounds today, honey,” he said. I might have taken offense to my boss calling me “honey” except that Luis referred to everyone as “honey.” He was an overweight gay man in his forties who seemed to have gotten to know every single resident in the home personally, which endeared him to me. “We’ve got a new resident in the Daytona wing. Her name is Mrs. Robinson. If she hasn’t already placed a dinner order with the kitchen by the time you check in on her, could you walk her through the process?”

  The assisted living facility had three floors, and there were four corridors on each of them. My rounds included the east corridor on each floor, each of which had six resident rooms along it. It might not seem like checking in on eighteen senior citizens would take me four whole hours, but every day, it did. I was almost at the end of my shift—the sun had already started setting—by the time I had my first encounter with Mrs. Cherie Robinson, Oscawana’s newest resident.

  When I knocked on the door to her room, I heard a raspy voice call out, “Come in!”

  A thin, frail Black woman sat in the upholstered chair in the corner of the room. Her walker was set beside the chair, and as I entered the room she didn’t turn away from her television set, which was tuned in to the local news. “Hi, Mrs. Robinson. I’m McKenna, your evening aide.”

  “I know,” she told me without looking at me. “The nurse told me somebody would come by to help me order dinner. They left a menu around here, but I can’t read a damn thing on it.”

  “I can help you with that,” I said cheerfully. Many of the residents had difficulty with farsightedness, but within a few days at Oscawana they usually realized that the cafeteria options didn’t change much from day to day, so being able to read the menu wasn’t that important. My eyes scanned the room for where the nurse might have left the menu.

  As I walked over to the kitchenette counter to retrieve it, Mrs. Robinson asked me, “Aren’t you going to introduce your friend?”

  Startled, because I hadn’t notice anyone enter the room behind me, I looked over my shoulder and didn’t see anyone. “I’m sorry. There’s no one else here with me,” I told her.

  “Sure there is. She’s right next to you,” Mrs. Robinson insisted.

  My scalp broke out into a raging storm of pins and needles. It was then, as I stood at the table and took a closer look at the elderly woman where she sat in front of her television, that I noticed the milky white cataracts covering her eyes. Mrs. Robinson was completely blind.

  CHAPTER 2

  YOU SEE SOMEONE NEXT TO me?” I asked softly as I took a step closer to Mrs. Robinson.

  She scowled at me playfully. Her white hair had been cut very short, and she wore heavy turquoise earrings that pulled her earlobes downward. “I can’t see much of anything. Can barely see you. But I can tell she’s here. Shame on you if you’re ignoring her, because she seems to be quite attached to you.”

  My scalp was tingling again, and it felt as if my heart was beating loudly enough for Mrs. Robinson to hear it. I sank down into one of the chairs at the table, fully aware that I was cutting it close to the end of my shift and I might be in trouble if I clocked out a few minutes after seven. Naturally, I assumed that this woman was somehow able to sense Jennie’s presence even though I couldn’t, which thoroughly freaked me out.

  “I had a twin sister,” I said, but my voice emerged from my throat as more of a hoarse whisper than I intended. “But she died almost eight years ago.”

  Mrs. Robinson made a grumpy noise, kind of an umph, and I couldn’t tell if it was an acknowledgment or dismissal of what I’d just told her. After a long pause, she said, “Where I come from, we’d call her an invisible. They’re all around us, but you’re lucky. You have one all to yourself.”

  She had pronounced “invisible” with such a strong French accent that at first I hadn’
t understood the word she’d said. I didn’t know how to reply. At Dad’s, we didn’t talk about the fire, or about Jennie. Not ever. I was sure Rhonda knew what had happened, but it was like an unspoken rule that it was a forbidden topic of conversation in Florida. I was completely baffled by how this woman I’d never met before seemed to have known the most important thing about my childhood before I’d even entered her suite.

  I asked, “Where do you come from?”

  “Born and raised in Louisiana. My daughter brought me here to Florida five years ago, after I had a stroke. She said she couldn’t trust me to live alone anymore.”

  “Your daughter lives in Tampa?” I asked, not wanting to press too hard with my questions in case Mrs. Robinson was upset about having been “dumped” in the assisted living facility, as several of our residents were.

  “Oh, yes. She’s a big star over here. She does the weather report on Channel Eight,” Mrs. Robinson informed me with pride. “I was staying with her and her husband for a while, but I just can’t take the stairs in their house. I’ve got bad knees and bad hips. Arthritis. And the humidity doesn’t help.”

  “Well, we’re glad to have you here,” I assured her. “We should put in your dinner order. It’s almost seven.”

  Ignoring me, or perhaps just eager to get back onto the topic of invisibles now that she’d found someone she assumed qualified as an appropriate audience, Mrs. Robinson told me, “My daughter doesn’t like when I talk about voodoo. Especially around here. She says people who aren’t from the bayou don’t want to hear about loa and mystères. She thinks that kind of talk scares you city folk. But then you show up in my suite with an angry invisible following you!” She chuckled. It hadn’t escaped my attention that she’d referred to Jennie as “angry.” “Just goes to show, voodoo’s everywhere. It’s the way the universe works, ma chèrie.”

  Before moving to Florida, I’d never been farther south than Chicago, so I knew very little about bayous or the practice of voodoo. When Kirsten had told me over the winter that I had paranormal abilities, I’d been more alarmed than delighted, and it had taken a while for me to adjust to the idea that my abilities might give me leverage in combating the evil spirits that were issuing orders to Violet. But Mrs. Robinson’s awareness of Jennie’s presence piqued my interest, even though I wasn’t convinced that I wanted to formally develop my connection to the “other side.” As much as I longed for my life to be restored to normalcy, Jennie was still reaching out with regularity, and the spell I had to cast every morning to safeguard the Portnoys was a source of stress. Perhaps this Oscawana Pavilion resident could teach me how to communicate with Jennie and find out what she so urgently wanted, as well as aid me in finding a way to break the curse on Mischa without jeopardizing anyone else’s safety.

  “Okay,” I sighed, hoping Luis would be able to correct my time card when I made my way down to the first floor. I didn’t want to get in trouble my second week on the job for incurring overtime without getting approval first. And after so many months of chasing Violet in maddening circles, I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high that this woman would be able to provide me with actionable answers. “I surrender. Tell me more about this invisible and why she’s angry at me.”

  Mrs. Robinson leaned back in her chair, smiling, and pressed her hands together. “She’s not angry at you. She’s trying to talk to you, and you won’t listen!”

  “I am listening,” I insisted. “I don’t know how to hear her. Sometimes I ask her questions with a pendulum, but she doesn’t always answer. Do you know what she’s trying to tell me?”

  Mrs. Robinson grew serious and hesitated long enough to make me uncomfortable before speaking again. “You’re in a whole lot of trouble. I probably shouldn’t even have the likes of you around here, but this life for me is almost over, anyway. Your invisible—your sister, you say? She’s stuck underwater in the dark place because she’s worried about you.”

  My blood was running cold. I had no idea what she meant by the dark place, but I didn’t like the sound of it, or of Jennie being there.

  “Now, I can’t understand what she’s trying to communicate because that message is for you and not me. But you’ve got loa all around you, and she’s protecting you from them. You did something to upset them, and whatever it was…” She trailed off and closed her eyes, shaking her head as if whatever I’d done was too terrible to put into words.

  Afraid, I asked, “What are loa?”

  “They’re the spirits, ma chèrie. They bring us messages from the Bondye, but they need to be fed in order to stay strong enough to manage their business,” she explained.

  I didn’t want to ask what the loa liked to be fed, or what kind of business they managed. I had a bad hunch where this conversation was headed. “What do they eat?”

  Mrs. Robinson pressed her lips together as if trying to decide whether or not to answer me honestly. “They feed on life.”

  Life. Of course. This conversation was getting to be too much for me. I couldn’t go down this road again. I had found a decent balance, with the protection spell, and I couldn’t risk that.

  “Mrs. Robinson? My shift ended ten minutes ago, and I’m going to get in trouble with my boss,” I interrupted her as she went on about loa. The sun had completely set during the few minutes that had passed since I’d entered her suite, and I rose from my seat to turn on the overhead lights in the room. “We need to get your dinner order in, or you might have to actually go down to the cafeteria if you want to eat.”

  She was adamant that she didn’t want to socialize that night, so I called down to the cafeteria and placed her order for a bowl of chicken soup and a side of mashed potatoes. I felt my phone buzz in the breast pocket of my shirt and didn’t have to check it to know that it was Rhonda, texting me to see if I was ready for her to pick me up. But despite everything, I couldn’t make myself step out of the room.

  I knew—after everything I had already done and all of the warnings I’d been given by Judge Roberts—that the smart thing to do would have been to bid Mrs. Robinson a good night and leave—go back to Dad and Rhonda’s without giving Mrs. Robinson’s observations another thought.

  But my scalp was still tingling as if I’d rubbed peppermint oil on it. Jennie wanted to communicate.

  “Can you teach me how to talk to her? My sister?” I asked. I may have been doomed to light candles for the Portnoys for the rest of my life, and I wasn’t interested in receiving messages from dead people like a reality TV ghost whisperer. But I couldn’t resist the possibility of strengthening my connection to Jennie. Finding a way to communicate effectively with her would have been for me like anyone else having the ability to hop into a time machine and revisit the happiest day of their life. “You’re right. I am in trouble. I mean, I thought I was out of it, but I might not be.”

  Mrs. Robinson told me, “I can try. But first, is there any salt around here?”

  Each of the suites had a tiny kitchenette: two cabinets, a sink, and a small fridge, and I was pleased to find brand-new, sealed salt and pepper shakers in the cabinet over the sink.

  “Good girl,” Mrs. Robinson said when I told her she was in luck. “Shake salt along the perimeter of this room. Right where the wall meets the floor. And do a little extra around the doorway.”

  As I did what she asked, I felt like a total weirdo. I went somewhat easy on the amount of salt I shook because I didn’t want to attract bugs, even though housekeeping would probably vacuum up all of it within the next two days. Despite salt being mostly harmless, I knew I would probably be fired in a heartbeat if Luis were to find out. I wondered why Mrs. Robinson’s daughter hadn’t sprinkled the salt for her when they’d moved her in earlier that day if it was a priority. Probably because dumping an entire shaker of salt into carpeting was ridiculous.

  “The salt keeps the evil out,” Mrs. Robinson called to me as I emptied out the rest of the shaker near the door.

  “Okay,” I announced. “You’re all salt
ed up.”

  “Good. Good,” Mrs. Robinson told me, and “Now. When you come back, bring me some filtered water and essential oils—orange, lavender, and clove. And fennel! Don’t forget the fennel. And red brick dust.”

  “Um, I don’t know where to get that,” I admitted, reluctant to disappoint her but knowing better than to commit myself to something insane, like smashing bricks into dust on my night off. She clearly wasn’t going to teach me what I wanted to learn until I fetched the items on her wish list, which was frustrating. But I couldn’t blame Mrs. Robinson for taking advantage of the situation. In the eight long years since Jennie had died, I’d only been able to communicate clearly with her once beyond simple yes-and-no answers to questions, and that had been at Christmastime, when she’d appeared in the form of a ghost that was rumored to roam along a highway during snowstorms. Having to wait another two days shouldn’t have felt like as much of a punishment as it did.

  “Then eggshells. You can peel them off boiled eggs if you have to. Just bring me eggshells, as many as you can,” she said. “And sprinkle some salt and pepper in your shoes before you go to the store. Don’t want you handling my business with evil following you around.”

  I have to admit, I began to wonder about the validity of her advice when she issued the order about the salt and pepper in the shoes, and I vowed to Google the authenticity of that as an actual voodoo practice later on. “I don’t work on Tuesdays. But I’ll bring it all on Wednesday.”

  I didn’t know what Mrs. Robinson had in store for me, but I was lost in thought on the ride home with Rhonda. It was troubling to think that the loa, or Violet’s evil spirits, were mad at me, specifically, and surrounding me. Nothing ghostly had ever happened in my bedroom in Florida, and I’d never sensed any strange presences around me either. My heart was fluttering at the prospect of learning a better way to exchange information with Jennie. But icy terror was tickling at the tips of my fingers and toes at the possibility that Mrs. Robinson’s guidance might broaden my knowledge about the curse that was now on Mischa. As much as I was hopeful about finding a better way to protect Mischa, I genuinely dreaded the prospect of getting pulled back into the death trap that Violet had sprung on me and my friends back in September.