by Sara Veglahn
“Of course we know her. We always have, just as we’ve always known you. Don’t you remember? Try to remember now.”
It is early. It is late. I have to find my way home.
They are dragging the river again. Everyone stands on the banks, watching and waiting. It is excruciating—waiting for the lost to be found. Secretly, everyone hopes that the lost stay lost. They do not want to see the face bloated, the skin green and gray, they do not want to see what the river has taken and left. It is horrifying, the transformation. The implements used to retrieve the drowned. The noise, the spectacle. There is a marked contrast between the noise created to find someone who has drowned and the relative quiet that occurs when drowning.
I sifted sand through my fingers and sat silent. Like anyone, I stared at the water before me. I was every person there that day. It was overcast and the clouds were heavy. I was drawn to the water but couldn’t muster enough energy to wade near shore. I never learned to swim and so I was rarely alone near rivers, oceans, ponds, or seas. I kept safe, kept watch over myself.
I wasn’t alone. My ladies wandered in the near distance. I saw them gathering shells into buckets, lifting their skirts to avoid dampening them. Earlier they had somehow managed to make a floating table in the river. They stood playing cards with water up to their waists. The cards were much larger than normal cards. I could see each hand clearly from shore.
I sat staring. A gun shooting blanks. I became this blankness. I felt nothing.
She kept herself dry, her feet moving swiftly around her rooms in which she stayed, counting out crackers onto a plate, counting eggs. When the power went out there was a hum. For a whole day, the low sound inside her head. And all the waters gleamed, the trees waving like seaweed, her hair waving like seaweed. Beneath lakes and rivers the waters intermingled, ethereal, an account of floating past, hands brushing the banks, a return to the world, seized.
In this photograph, a woman sits in a pale dress on a dark sofa. Her hands are gloved and her hair short and wavy. She does not look directly into the camera and her expression is distracted, as if she wasn’t ready for the picture to be taken. On the left side of the photo, there are three white streaks that some say are ghosts. They say they can see faint faces. They say this even when they’ve been told that it is probably a mistake, that the photographer most likely jarred the camera at the same time he released the shutter. But he did not discard the negative as an error. He may have thought that the streaks were ghosts, too.
“Don’t you remember? Try to remember now.”
She felt her face turn pale, her body heavy. She nearly fainted. It was hard to remember. It was another kind of thinking.
Her ladies led her inside and sat her down upon the sofa. They held her hands and stroked her forehead.
“Do you remember?”
“No, I don’t. Nothing.”
She sat surrounded and attempted to let her mind go blank. She suddenly had a realization.
“Why weren’t you there? At the séance?”
“We didn’t realize you had gone out. We were napping upstairs and thought you were downstairs reading. We didn’t know until we awoke what you were doing.”
“You can read my mind?”
“No, we can see where you are.”
She has a dream where she has to fill Mason jars full of river water and empty them into a large porcelain tub. The tub is far away from shore and she only has two jars. She understands she must empty the entire river into the tub. There will no longer be a river. She is exhausted by the immensity of her task.
It is early and the sun is barely above the horizon. The bare trees are hard webs against the sky and the buildings along the avenues are illuminated strangely. It is early and everything is silent and still. It is like a photograph. Nothing moves.
I walk towards the riverfront. I walk several blocks to get there, my shoes sharp clacking through the streets. I am the only person in this city. No one else exists.
It is necessary to move towards the finish.
In order to scream, you need to be able to breathe. Submersion, turbulent water, undertows. A silent accident silently immersed. In order to scream you need to be able to scream. Someone is drowned by mysterious circumstances. Someone is drowning right now. If she floats she is a witch and dies. If she does not float, she is not a witch and dies. Rip currents, waves, and eddies. Someone is pulled away from shore.
A ghost in a ghost costume climbs out the window. The ghost is going to a party to be among the living. The ghost can only do this in disguise. The ghost can only be in disguise at a costume party.
The ghost leaves the loop of its existence and a great wind howls around her. I wish it were quieter. She adjusts the white sheet with which she is covered. She thinks about what she knew of ghosts before she was one. She thinks of illustrations in children’s books where figures covered in white sheets grace the sky like long white birds. I wonder if I can fly, and jumps up to see if the wind will carry her. It does not.
She walks down the street. Fallen leaves are rotting and hollow pumpkins with faces carved into the sides are rotting. The pumpkins have candles inside them and throw face shapes on the ground. She remembers these things but only remotely. For years she has lived with the same repeated thought. Over and over. She has relived it for years.
She arrives at the party. There are lots of people dancing to loud music. Everyone is there—Marie Antoinette, Henry VIII, Richard Nixon, Mama Cass. There are many witches and vampires and angels and devils but she is the only ghost.
She stands by the punch bowl watching. They are different than she remembers. Their expressions are a mixture of violence and joy. It is remarkable and frightening. She is frightened. Her ears ring with the music and the laughter. She pours a glass of punch and holds it. She stares into the dark red liquid and feels remote. She should not have come.
“Nice costume,” says a man dressed in a gorilla suit. “Nice and cool. I’m burning up in this thing. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He takes off the gorilla head and sets it next to the punch bowl. She realizes she has forgotten how to respond to a question. She racks her brain. She tries to remember. She says thanks.
They stand in silence for several minutes. The man dressed in the gorilla suit shifts his weight from foot to foot, fans himself with a paper napkin. “Do you want to dance or something?”
She isn’t sure what to do. She hesitates.
“Oh, come on!” he says.
“Umm… I don’t know.”
He grabs the fabric of her sheet and pulls her to the middle of the room. She isn’t sure how to dance to this music. After a moment she realizes if she sways a bit, her sheet shifts enough to make it look like she’s really moving.
She does not know whether she should go out or stay in. The entire day has revolved around this decision and now the day has gone. Geese flew overhead. The sky stayed bright blue. It was the changing of seasons and it was unsettling.
Yesterday she went walking in an early rain. It was as if she were in a different city. All of the colors were saturated and deep. She got lost in the neighborhood where she lived because everything looked so different. She felt completely displaced, removed from both her body and her surroundings. It was as if she no longer existed. Today, she worries it will happen again.
A few weeks ago, feeling adrift, she began to leave odds and ends at various places. At the bus stop, a stack of pennies, which were immediately strewn to the ground and picked up by a small boy. At the newsstand, a picture postcard depicting an unidentified two-story pale brick house in the middle of a large green lawn at sunrise. She left a small bottle of oil that smelled like ripe figs at the tea room. The corner of her street received a bundle of daisies. She left a small plastic lizard among the lettuce at the grocery store, and a tiny ballerina figurine at the post office counter. Her offerings were off-hand, absent. She was aware of reaching into her pocket or bag, but did not choose the item consciously. No one
seemed to see her place these objects at counters or corners or atop a pyramid of apples.
The day has gone. A purple dusk has fallen across the floor beneath the window where she stands transfixed in a long dress. She sways slightly. Her long red hair hangs straight down her back. She has beautiful eyes.
“But I can’t remember.”
She sat stupidly in a low mustard-colored chair near the window. Her ladies had gone outside for some air. It was a muggy night and the heat of the day was stuck in the walls of the house. She grabbed an ice cube from a glass of water next to her and ran it across her forehead. Why can’t I remember? Are they telling me the truth? Are they lying?
She suddenly became aware that these ladies, her ladies, could be a figment of her imagination. A hallucination. Made up. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. She was so often alone. Always alone. But as soon as she thought this, she knew it wasn’t true.
The sky came off and she saw swallows. They shone. The place of things. Everything had a now and she walked through it. There were doors. A good omen had been torn through. She was walking. Everything was new; no one thought her out of place. Who would have gathered the neighborhood? Finding everything has come inside. A joke. She saw things, but where? How they were. She went back and walked out. There were things to be.
The motion stopped suddenly and I gasped for air. It was sweeter than expected. Mother was silent and still. She rested only a moment and then walked into the looming white building without assistance.
I was cleaned and wrapped and handed back. We were told to go home.
She placed me in a soft place and sat on the other side of the room. I could see her from where I was. I watched her stretch light between her hands, her thumb and forefinger holding the ends. Her dark dress was illuminated and her face looked strange.
I am tired of this silence. Couldn’t we at least talk about the weather? The ocean? That it’s too cold today to sit on the beach? I only hear my own voice and it sounds ridiculous. I am sick of the sound of it. Lately, I don’t know whether or not I am actually speaking or if I am just thinking. We should go back to the mainland. But I can’t stop talking and I hate it. I hate how all of these words sound in the air. And you sit there, staring. I know you can speak, but you won’t and I am tired of it. I am so tired I could scream.
Her ladies guided her towards the dark red sofa and pushed her down into it and then went into the kitchen to prepare tea.
They brought out a tray and set it in front of her. They poured a cup of tea and placed it into her hands. She sat and stared. She had no words. She could not swallow or speak. She was glad she was sitting down.
They pulled up three straight-backed wooden chairs and sat in a semi-circle around her. They wore identical pale green housedresses and drew their knees to their chests and rested their chins there. They looked like fauns or nymphs. They seemed altered.
After a few moments, she noticed they were dripping wet. The floor was covered in water below the chairs on which they sat. Had it been raining? Had they come in from the rain?
Outside the sun shone relentlessly. It was almost too bright to bear. She got up from the sofa and pulled the shade.
“Come back and finish your tea. It’s getting cold.”
But she did not want to sit or drink tea. She stood behind them and crossed her arms.
“I don’t understand. Why are you soaked to the skin?”
“We’ve just come from the river, of course,” they said in unison.
The mainland is so busy, full of people and cars and noise. Everyone walks in the same direction, stares her down, expects a response.
She walks and soon finds herself lost. A narrow street near the river she does not remember leads her to a long line of old brown warehouses. One of the warehouses has been torn in half. The front of the building still stands, but the back of it shows severe white scraping where the walls were pulled down and there are piles of bricks and cracked lumber piled up. The river is separated from the street and buildings only by a narrow strip of grass. A line of smoke rises weakly from one of the warehouse chimneys. She walks right down to the water, which is dark and faintly rippled from a passing barge.
It was after midnight when she crawled behind the heavy willow tree. Its trunk was large enough to hide her entire body. She sat there and watched the lagoon slosh over smooth black rocks. She sat in the mud. The tree was completely covered in insects. They hung on the branches like strange breathing leaves.
She soon fell asleep. The water continued its motion, the insects increased their shrill drone. When light shone purple on the horizon, she began to wake. She did not understand where she was or how she got there. She was covered in mud and her hands looked unfamiliar. She could not open her mouth.
From beneath water I see light.
It is morning, there is a chill in the air. They looked all night but gave up after several hours. Soon, another search party will get into their flat-bottomed boat and four men and one woman will glide slowly through the backwaters and lagoon. The woman—young, with long red hair and a white dress—will have a rooster on her lap. They will row and wait for the rooster’s crow that tells everyone that they have found me.
But the rooster will not crow today. They are rowing down the wrong river.
I am applying myself to the mornings. At sunrise I wake and run onto the front lawn. The purple light is alarming. It makes the house look so old. Through the dark windows I see them walking in their heavy skirts and somber suits. I hear the low hum of their voices caught in the old brick. Every morning I wait. I apply myself to the morning. I sit patiently. It will happen. One day they will emerge from their history and speak.
“Try to remember…”
She sat on the sofa. Her eyes became heavy. She stared at the portrait of a serious young girl with big eyes in a dark dress and white collar. Something in the girl’s lap glowed. The light nearly obscured the girl’s face.
Each night she follows the black rocks as if nothing happened. She is both herself and a photograph. She remains these past days in several bodies. Her hands are windows. She studies the picture where someone is walking. Another soft sun. She verges on a blur. No or yes. One woman but many costumes. It is incomplete. Someone asks when she will leave. She will leave each night. They will follow.
Are you here? If you could send me a sign or give notice that you still remain. Something small. Something I can see in the atmosphere.
I am leaving this place. Everything is packed and ready to go. I have managed to trim my belongings down to one large suitcase. I feel light, as if recovered. As if I had been trampled by a herd of horses and the sharpness of the hundreds of hooves on my body has finally faded.
My ladies linger. They aren’t ready. I told them over and over that today is the day. They are a swirl of chiffon and sparkles. They haven’t spoken to me all week. I am standing at the threshold of their room and I am invisible to them. They are otherwise occupied with their movie star magazines, sharing secret cigarettes, removing curlers from their hair. They laugh and screech at each other.
The window darkens. The window makes me a shadow.
She was so tired. Lately, it was difficult for her to stay awake through a meal or conversation. She found she could sleep through anything and worried about perishing in a house fire, tornado, flood. Some days were entirely lost to her. It was difficult.
Her ladies tried to help through various methods of waking. They flicked cold water onto her face, they shook her shoulders, coughed loudly, yelled “Hey!” inches away from her face, slammed doors and windows. Once they waked her, they tried to keep her occupied with their dance routines and costumes, their singing and reciting, their games of cards and memory.
“Just let me rest, I need to rest,” she said. Everything ached. She felt jostled. When she looked in the mirror she couldn’t recognize her face. Her features seemed altered.
Her dreams were faint and dark. Everything seemed to t
ake place at night and through a thick fog. She felt as though she were walking through mud.
If you have the sense of someone sitting beside you, or the feeling of someone else nearby as you gaze out the window, if there is comfort in solitude, and if the solitude seems full, if there is the sensation of a cool hand upon your brow while sleeping, if your dreams seem like forgotten events from your life long ago, if there is the question of whether that shadow was something alive, if there is someone walking past who looks familiar, if this person looks into your eyes with knowing but keeps walking, and if a moment passes before your vague recognition of this person, and you suddenly stop in the middle of the sidewalk to contemplate and turn around and look for that familiar face, and if you turn around and the person you think you know has vanished, and if you continue to search for her and actually succeed, then:
A crash of cymbals, a soaring phrase of violins, a low rumble of drums. I made my way quickly down the hallway. I did not glance back once. I was looking for something strong and reliable and found nothing but the edge of winter and concrete, a path that lead down to the water.
