Free Spirits

by Julia Watts

Virgil looks around. “She was here a spell ago.” He looks at Isabella. “Why don’t you holler somethin’ in her language and see if she hears you?”

  “Okay,” Isabella says, as though conversations with ghosts are an everyday thing for her. She puts her hands on either side of her mouth and yells, “Hola! Hola!”

  Within seconds, the ghost woman, with her long, black hair, her peasant blouse, and her bell-bottomed jeans and sandals, is standing before Isabella. “Hola,” the ghost woman says.

  “Hola,” Isabella says, breaking into a grin. Then she says to us, “This is so cool.”

  Isabella and the ghost begin a conversation in Spanish. I have no idea what they’re saying, but I can tell from their tone that Isabella is asking questions and the ghost is answering them.

  When Isabella stops talking for a moment, I say, “Do you want to write some of this down so you can translate it? I’ve got a notepad in my bag.”

  Isabella shakes her head. “No. Juanita—that’s her name— Juanita says if I let her be inside me for a few minutes, she can speak through me. Her Spanish words will come out of my mouth in English.”

  “You mean, like a spirit possession?” I say.

  “Whoa,” Adam says. “Like The Exorcist? Mom says I can’t see that movie till I’m sixteen.”

  Isabella shakes her head again. “It’s not scary like that. Juanita is good. And she only wants to use my body for a few minutes. She doesn’t want to stay there. She doesn’t even want to stay here on this earth. She wants us to help set her free.”

  “Okay,” I say, “as long as you’re okay with this, Isabella.”

  “I am,” she says. She stands straight and tall, opens her arms like for a hug, and says “Juanita, ahora.”

  Juanita opens her arms and returns Isabella’s hug, but as they embrace Juanita disappears. Isabella has absorbed her. When Isabella opens her mouth, a woman’s voice comes out, heavily accented, but speaking English. “Can you understand me?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “Can you understand me?”

  There’s a little pause before she says “Yes,” maybe so my words can be translated through Isabella. “My name is Juanita Gomez,” she says.

  “Nice to meet you,” I say because you don’t want to be rude when a ghost has gone to so much trouble to be able to talk to you. “Thank you for speaking with us.”

  “I want to speak,” she says. “I want to tell my story. I’ve been on this riverbank for longer than you’ve been alive, carrying this story inside me with no way of telling it to anybody. It is a heavy burden, and I wish to lighten it.”

  “We’re listening,” I say.

  “Some might say this story is not suitable for the ears of children,” Juanita says through Isabella’s moving lips. Isabella is still standing, but her eyes are closed as if she is asleep. “But I can tell you are not ordinary children, so I will tell you.

  “I met Rick Boshears when I was not much more than a child myself. I was nineteen years old. I worked at a taqueria in Juarez, and he used to come in all the time. He was handsome, just a couple of years older than me, with ash blond hair and these eyes that were so light blue they were startling. Like a wolf’s. I was slow to figure out that he liked me. He’d had only one year of Spanish in college, so his language was limited. Maybe that made it hard for me to read his signals. But finally he managed to tell me he wasn’t coming for the tacos. He was coming to see me.” There’s a smile on Isabella’s lips, but I can tell the smile belongs to Juanita.

  “We started dating—long walks at night, that kind of thing. We didn’t have much money so there were no fancy dinners out, just long walks with me helping him with his Spanish and us getting to know each other. He told me he was in Mexico so he wouldn’t have to fight in Vietnam, and I told him it took a brave man to refuse to fight for a cause he didn’t believe in. We fell very much in love. I still lived with my parents, who didn’t like Rick because he was a gringo. But somehow their disapproval made it all the more romantic. We were like Romeo and Juliet.” The smile is on Isabella’s lips again, but there’s something else, too, a hint of sadness.

  “When Rick got the message that his grandmother had died, he asked me to go back to America with him. It felt even more like Romeo and Juliet. He was asking me to run away with him. And so I did. I went without telling anybody, and I went illegally, too. Rick hollowed out the backseat of his car so I could hide inside it like a box. The seat cover went over me, so you couldn’t tell I was there. It was hot and dark and there wasn’t much air, but I didn’t care because I was in love. Once we were across the border, we bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, and that was what we lived on as we drove all the way from California to Kentucky.

  “Rick was talking about his ideas for Strawberry Fields the whole trip. It was his dream to have a community of what he called free thinkers living and working together. And he made that dream come true, at least for a few years.”

  It’s hard for me to make this peace-and-love version of Rick Boshears match up with the man I know. “Were you happy with him, Juanita? Was he good to you?” I ask.

  “I was happy, and most of the time Rick was good to me. Sometimes, though, now that I’ve had so much time to look back, I can see signs that should have worried me. Like, I always helped Rick with Spanish, but he never wanted me to learn any English. One time, he caught Kathy, one of the women on the commune, teaching me a few words. He got furious and yelled at her, ‘What, you don’t think her own language is good enough? You have to brainwash her into talking and thinking the American way?’ But I don’t think that was really why he was mad. As long as I didn’t know English, I had to depend on him and I think that’s the way he wanted it. But things were mostly good until the bad man came.”

  “Reverend Bobby Scoggins?” Adam asks.

  Isabella nods. “Yes. He ruined everything. He took my Rick away from me.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Adam says, “is how somebody could go from being a hippie to being a hatemonger.”

  “It is strange,” Juanita says, “but Rick always believed in big things, big changes. Most of the people of Strawberry Fields thought it was a success because we were living together peacefully and self-sufficiently. But by the time Reverend Bobby showed up, Rick was disappointed in Strawberry Fields. A small group of people living peacefully wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to change the world, and he was starting to feel like he was going about it the wrong way. Reverend Bobby was more than happy to tell him ‘the right way’ to do it. The problems in America, Reverend Bobby said, were caused by the Jewish conspiracy and the mixing of the races. He pointed out passages in the Bible to back up his ideas.”

  “But there are no passages in the Bible that say that,” Abigail says.

  “And isn’t everybody in the Bible, including Jesus, Jewish?” Adam asks.

  “Yes,” Juanita answers, and Isabella shakes her head. “But Reverend Bobby had a way of twisting scripture to suit his purposes. Rick had been looking for a leader, and he found him in Bobby. Bobby called Rick his disciple, and Rick told everybody in the commune that they must become Bobby’s disciples or leave. They left.”

  “But you stayed,” I say.

  A single tear rolls down Isabella’s cheek. “Yes, I did,” Juanita’s voice is choked. “I kept hoping it was a phase—that Rick would come to his senses, that maybe if I stayed with him he’d turn back into the good man I fell in love with. But Bobby hated me. I didn’t understand a lot of what he said to me, but you don’t have to know much English to understand ‘go back to Mexico.’ I also know that he told Rick if he wanted to get right with God, he needed to find a nice white girl to marry and have babies with instead of shacking up with some Mexican…” She stops. “But that’s a word I can’t say in front of children.”

  “I’m sorry you had to put up with that kind of treatment,” I say.

  “Well, I don’t suppose I had to. I stayed out of love for Rick and out of hope tha
t he would change, which was a mistake. But sometimes, no matter how hatefully he acted toward me, I would see him looking at me, and I knew he still loved me. He didn’t think he should love me, but he did. And over time, I think he started hating himself for loving me, and Bobby added fuel to the fire, telling him I was an evil, dark-skinned temptress who was leading him astray. We would have these fights, where he’d yell at me and throw things and slap me across the face. It got so bad I wanted to leave, but where could I go? I was an illegal alien in a country where I couldn’t speak the language, and I had no money and no way of earning any. So I stayed, and I hoped that Rick would change.”

  Tears stream from Isabella’s closed eyes. I reach out and take her hand. It’s Isabella’s hand that grips mine, but Juanita says, “Thank you. You’re a sweet girl.” She takes a breath and says, “But things only got worse. The night it happened, Rick came home and I could smell the liquor on his breath. I was at the stove, cooking supper, refried beans and tortillas I was warming in a cast-iron skillet. He was red in the face, furious. He told me if I was going to live in America, the least I could do was learn to cook American food. I told him he didn’t have to eat what I cooked, or he could just think of it as the same pinto beans and cornbread everybody in Kentucky ate. This made him even madder. He seemed to think I was saying I was better than him somehow. He picked up the big cast-iron skillet off the stove and swung it like a baseball bat, hitting me across the face.”

  Abigail gasps. “The monster!”

  “He was,” Juanita says. “Or at least, he had turned into one. I guess you never know what will happen to a person who takes a hard blow on the head, but what happened to me was I died.”

  “Oh, Juanita,” I say, my voice choked by tears.

  “It was so quick. I was alive, then I was dead, just like flipping off a light switch. And from then on, it was like I was hovering between this world and the next, watching, always watching. I watched Rick as he gathered my body in his arms, crying. Then I watched him pace and panic until he wrapped my body in old quilts and tied them up with rope. It was almost funny, looking at what used to be me, wrapped up like a giant burrito. I watched as he waited and paced and drank some more whiskey. And then when it was late, I watched as he loaded my body in his truck and drove down here to the river. He had an old rowboat he kept out here for fishing. He used to take me out in it, too, out in the moonlight, and it was very romantic. Our last boat ride together wasn’t romantic, though. He weighed down my body with bricks, hoisted me up and overboard, and watched me sink to the blackness below. Over the years, as my body decomposed, the current washed my bones away. Maybe they’re in the ocean by now. But this river is where my spirit has stayed, crying for my betrayal and longing for Rick to come here so I can finally know some peace.”

  “Didn’t anybody notice you were missing?” I ask.

  “As an illegal alien in rural Kentucky? Do you think anybody really looked for me? My family had disowned me for running off with Rick, so they hadn’t been in contact with me. And to the people Rick knew who asked about me, he just said we had broken up, and I had gone back to Mexico.”

  My heart aches. Lost to her family, killed by the man she loved. No wonder she paces the riverbank crying.

  “As a spirit,” Abigail asks, “do you go back and forth between here and the spirit world?”

  Isabella shakes her head. “No. I am trapped here until I have made my peace on earth. I must see Rick. You children must bring him to me.”

  “How?” Adam says. “We’ve done a lot of snooping about this guy, but he doesn’t even know us except that he worked on Miranda’s mom’s car.”

  “Give Isabella a pen and paper,” Juanita says.

  In the dark, with her eyes closed, Isabella writes in the notebook. When she’s finished, she holds it out to me. “Take this to him,” Juanita says. “When he reads it, he will know.”

  I look down at the note. It’s in Spanish, and it’s not in Isabella’s big, loopy girly handwriting, but in the more controlled style of a woman.

  Mom honks the car horn, signaling that it’s time to go, and we all almost jump out of our skin.

  “I must leave, too,” Juanita says, and her essence flows out of Isabella’s chest until she is standing beside her.

  Isabella’s eyes snap open. “That was wild,” she says, back to her own voice.

  “Tell Juanita we’ll give Rick her message,” I say.

  Isabella does, and Juanita takes each of us in her cold arms and says “Gracias.”

  When it’s Abigail’s turn, Juanita reaches inside the mirror and touches Abigail’s cheek. “Gracias,” she whispers again.

  Once we’re back in the car, Mom turns around in the driver’s seat and says, “For the record, I know what all that was about. Once I sensed that what was going on down there didn’t have much to do with Abigail’s little boyfriend, I listened in to make sure things didn’t get out of hand.”

  Of course, Mom had been too far away to listen with her ears. She listened with her mind.

  “And it didn’t get out of hand,” I say. “Juanita is a gentle spirit.”

  “She is,” Mom says. “But Rick Boshears isn’t. And I don’t want you kids going near him. If you give him that note, mail it to him anonymously and let that be the end of it. I might send an anonymous tip to the sheriff about Juanita’s murder, but nothing will come of it. With no body, there’s no case.”

  “It’s so sad,” Isabella says quietly.

  I nod. “Isabella, while Juanita was talking, were you aware of what she was saying? One time I acted as a medium, and it was like I blacked out until the spirit left me.”

  “I heard everything she said twice,” Isabella says, “once in my head in Spanish, and then again as it came out of my mouth in English. And now it feels like I know her story better than any story I’ve ever known, like it’s written on my heart. It reminds me of La Llorona.”

  “What’s that?” Adam says.

  “La Llorona is a story my abuela used to tell me. It means the Weeping Woman. She was a ghost who haunted a river in Mexico—a poor Indian woman who fell in love with a Spanish man. He left her for a rich Spanish lady, and so La Llorona drowned herself in the river and haunted the river from then on, crying from a broken heart.”

  “Well, at least in that story the guy just dumps her instead of killing her,” Adam remarks.

  “True,” Abigail says. “But still, they’re both stories of doomed love. Isabella, what does Juanita’s letter say?”

  Isabella unfolds the note and translates,

  Rick,

  You are still my heart, even though I cannot understand how you could hurt someone who loves you so much. My spirit will never be at peace until you have made your peace with me. Come see me at the river.

  Juanita

  Isabella’s voice breaks when she gets to the end, and Adam says, “All this love stuff is too much for me. If I was a girl and some guy killed me, I’d want to kick his butt.”

  “Well, maybe she does want to, at least in a manner of speaking,” Mom says. “But maybe she doesn’t want him to think she wants revenge.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “How would you respond to a letter signed by a woman you killed that said, ‘Come down to the river so I can kick your butt’?”

  “Good point,” Adam says, grinning.

  “It seems to me that you’ve got quite a moral dilemma with that letter,” Mom says, as she pulls into the parking lot of El Mariachi. “If you mail it to him, probably the most likely outcome will be that he’ll be creeped out but assume it’s some kind of sick joke and ignore it. But what if he chooses to go to the river? Maybe Juanita wants to make peace with him. Or maybe the peace she wants will come from dragging Rick to the bottom of the river where he dragged her.”

  Mom takes a moment to look at each of us. “Kids, what I’m saying is, if you mail that letter to Rick Boshears, you’d better be prepared to accept that whatever happens to him is a consequence
of your actions.”

  Chapter 16

  I’ve kept Juanita’s letter with me since last night. Right now, as Adam and I are biking downtown, it’s in my shirt pocket over my heart. It’s probably my imagination but it feels hot, like it could burn through the fabric to my skin.

  “So Abigail thinks we should mail the letter?” Adam asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “She thinks it should happen so Juanita’s spirit can finally be at rest.”

  “And what if Juanita decides that killing Rick is the most satisfying way for her spirit to find rest?”

  “To be honest, she didn’t seem too concerned. She doesn’t seem to think Rick would be too much of a loss to the world of the living.”

  “Well, she’s probably right,” Adam says as we park our bikes under the shade tree in front of the courthouse. “But I’m not sure we’re qualified to make that call.”

  I sit down under the tree beside Adam. “I know what you mean. Maybe we should vote on whether we send him the letter or not. I know Abigail’s vote is yes. Probably Isabella’s is, too.”

  “Well, we can find out for sure,” Adam says. He takes out his cell phone and holds it out to me. “Why don’t you call her at the restaurant?”

  “Um…I’ve never used one of those things before. Can you show me how?”

  Adam rolls his eyes. “Sorry I don’t happen to have a telegraph machine on me. You’d probably be more comfortable with that,” he says. “Or if that’s too high tech, we could try smoke signals.” He punches in the number and hands me the phone.

  “Smart aleck,” I say, putting the tiny phone to my ear.

  When Isabella comes to the phone, I say, “Hey, it’s Miranda. We’re taking a vote on whether or not we should mail Rick the letter.”

  “Of course you should mail it,” Isabella says. “This isn’t just about him messing with our restaurant anymore.He’s a murderer! And we have to do what we can to help the woman he killed.”

  “And what if he has to pay with his life for what he did?”