Very Superstitious

by Delany, Shannon

  The engine had died while they were making small talk. It turned over when Gwen tried to start it, but as soon as she let go of the key, it cut out.

  “It’s okay, babe. You’ll get it,” Wake said, putting an encouraging hand on her shoulder. He picked up the map that had slipped between his seat and the console. “Take a deep breath and try it a couple more times. I’ll show Lulu where we’re going.”

  Gwen nodded, clenching her jaw. It was bad enough that the radiator cap had been loose and the truck had nearly overheated in Missouri. Now she was kicking herself for not tuning it up before they left. She’d thought it would be fine because she’d only gotten it running a few months ago. But of course, every time she’d thought that during the year-long repair process, she discovered that it needed another part.

  Please don’t need a distributor cap now. Or an ignition coil. She turned the key again and it cranked. And cranked and cranked, but didn’t fire.

  “Oh, you mean Harlem and 12th Street, I know where that is,” Lulu told Wake. “My house is just a few blocks north of there. If you’ll take me, I’ll direct you.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” Gwen said. “As long as I can get this thing started.”

  Please, Daddy, she thought. The day he died she’d stopped believing in God and started praying to him instead—even though he was usually as unreliable as God. But for once, he was listening.

  “Yeah!” she cheered when the engine finally roared to life. “Now where am I headed?”

  “Just keep going down this road,” Lulu instructed. “Where are you two from anyway?”

  “New Orleans. Well, I am at least,” Gwen replied.

  Before Wake could chime in, Lulu exclaimed, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to New Orleans.”

  She pronounced the second part of the city’s name with three syllables, “OR-lee-ans,” like the old women who came into the restaurant where Gwen worked as a hostess. It was strange, but at least she hadn’t said, “Or-LEANs” like all the tourists. However, Gwen still responded the same way she did whenever they gushed about how great her hometown was. “I can see why it’s an amazing place to visit, but I guess since I grew up there, I’ve always wanted to leave.”

  “Not as bad as I wanted to leave South Carolina,” Wake objected. “Nothing’s worse than that.”

  Glancing in the rearview mirror, Gwen noticed that he’d pulled his guitar case out of the back of the truck. There was a little tan pouch inside of it. She had once threatened to throw it into a field on the side of the road in southern Illinois. She should have done it. He’d begged her to let him ease off instead of going cold turkey. But if he already needed another taste, he wasn’t easing off. And was he really going to do it now? In front of Lulu?

  “I’ve always wanted to go to the Carolinas, too,” she was saying. “I imagine they’re pretty as that song, ‘Carolina Moon.’”

  “Trust me, they ain’t. I do love that song, though.”

  To Gwen’s relief, Wake took out his guitar and set the case in the back again.

  Lulu’s brown eyes got wide. “Can you play it?”

  “Yeah, but it was one of the first songs I learned, so I might be a little rusty.”

  Wake either knew or could figure out how to play any song upon hearing it. He always warned he would be rusty, but he never was.

  Lulu rocked side to side in her seat as Wake played, joining him in singing, “Oh Carolina moon, keep on shining, shining on the one who waits for me. Carolina moon, I’m pining, pining for the place I long to be.”

  Gwen recognized the song then. Before Wake had come to New Orleans, he used to sing it to her over the phone, substituting Louisiana for Carolina.

  Lulu broke into gleeful applause when Wake finished. He met Gwen’s eyes in the rearview mirror and smiled at her as he went into another tune, one she knew from the first chord. He teased her for liking Blind Melon, a band he thought was “too sunny and hippie-ish,” but he got what “Tones of Home” meant to her. It was a song about waving goodbye to a place that doesn’t understand you and finding a real home—something they’d been talking about doing since they were paired as penpals in fourth grade.

  “Wake has a beautiful voice,” Lulu said to Gwen, interrupting her thoughts.

  “Yeah, he’s really talented,” she agreed.

  “I thought you were brother and sister.”

  Gwen felt Lulu staring at her so intently that she instinctively tugged on her hair, pulling it toward her face like a curtain, a nervous habit she’d had since childhood. “Really? I mean, I guess maybe we have the same natural hair color,” she mused, studying the dirty blonde strands that tangled between her fingertips. “But other than that …” Other than that Wake was all sharp angles and Gwen was soft curves.

  “I guess I’m just seeing your intertwined fates.”

  “What?” Gwen glanced over at her.

  Lulu, facing forward, gestured at the stoplight, which was in the process of changing from green to yellow. “I said, at this intersection, keep going straight.”

  “Wow, I really need sleep,” Gwen muttered, accelerating just enough to get them through the light. She felt the truck shudder, its engine misfiring again, but she didn’t want to risk it stalling if she stopped. The faster she got Lulu home, the faster she got to her uncle’s couch.

  “I’m really cold,” Lulu remarked.

  “Oh, sorry. I turned off the heat and the radio when the engine started acting up.”

  “May I borrow this?” Lulu picked up the jacket Wake had left in the seat. It was olive drab with a U.S. Army patch above the left pocket, and one that read Deveraux above the right. Gwen’s father had worn it in Vietnam.

  Gwen swallowed hard, not wanting to be rude, but she’d only let Wake start wearing it a couple months ago. “I guess,” she replied stiffly.

  Lulu slid it over her milky, white shoulders. “Oh, it belongs to a ghost.”

  “What?” Gwen snapped again.

  “It’s a little cold,” Lulu said, offering a friendly smile. “The fabric. But it will warm me up. Thank you.”

  Gwen nodded woodenly, returning her focus to the road, which was beginning to curve.

  “Are you staying in Chicago or just passing through?” Lulu asked.

  “It depends,” Gwen started to explain, but Wake stopped playing and spoke over her.

  “We’ll visit with her uncle a couple days, but we’re going to Seattle. I don’t mean to knock your scene or anything, but theirs is amazing right now. We could really make something happen out there.”

  “If you don’t die,” is what Gwen heard Lulu say, but before she could question her for the third time, Wake made it obvious that she had misheard.

  “Oh, believe me we’ll do more than try. You should hear Gwennie sing. Her voice is a billion times better than mine.”

  Lulu turned to her expectantly. Gwen glanced in the rearview mirror, trying to silently tell Wake that she wasn’t up to it now. She felt even less like singing when she saw him bring his pinkie nail to his nose and inhale the powder he must have scooped out of his pouch when she wasn’t looking. He sniffed and pinched his nose twice.

  “Allergies,” he mumbled to Lulu when she followed Gwen’s gaze.

  “God bless you,” she said as he started to strum his guitar again.

  He didn’t sing this time and didn’t seem to notice that Gwen wasn’t either.

  Lulu took a deep breath. They were flanked by cemeteries on both sides. Gwen wondered if she was superstitious like Mina, Gwen’s mother’s best friend, who earned—or scammed, Gwen thought—her living as a psychic advisor. Mina always held her breath when they drove past graveyards so as not to inhale any lost souls.

  But then Lulu spoke. “Almost home. Maybe if I make it you will, too.”

  “Do I smell burgers?” Wake asked. “I’m hung—hmm.” He nodded off mid-sentence.

  Gwen tried to cover for him. “More sleepy than hungry apparently.”

  “Bad medi
cine. My uncle had a problem with it when he came back from the war.”

  Gwen’s father had, too, in addition to the alcohol. It was why she’d made Wake walk away the first time someone in the Quarter was smoking heroin out of tinfoil. “Was your uncle in ’Nam?” she asked.

  “No, he was in France.”

  “Oh.” Gwen was confused, but she supposed there were soldiers stationed everywhere. Then she noticed that Lulu had doubled over, clasping her right side. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” the girl said through her teeth. “Would have given anything for my own dose of morphine that night, but—”

  “What?” Then the engine more than shuddered. It started to choke. “Shit, I’m going to have to stop here.” Gwen pulled off the road onto a small driveway—an entrance into the cemetery blocked during off-hours by a large rusty gate.

  “No,” Lulu howled. “We’re so close. Keep driving!”

  “I can’t!” Gwen slapped the steering wheel in frustration.

  The noise woke Grover, who began to bark. As Gwen turned her head toward him, she realized that Lulu had vanished—with her father’s jacket. “Dammit!” she cried, fumbling with her seatbelt and looking around frantically.

  She scanned up and down the road, but there was no sign of Lulu. Did she run into the cemetery?

  Suddenly Grover leapt over the console into the passenger’s seat and began to paw at the window, his nails clacking against the glass.

  He stepped on Wake in the process, causing him to groan, “Grover, what the hell?”

  Gwen grabbed his hand before he could pass out again and dug her nails in. “You have to stay awake and help me. That girl disappeared wearing Daddy’s jacket.”

  “Okay.” Wake forced his eyes wide open and pulled his hand away, rubbing it.

  Grover whined, still pawing at the door. Gwen slid toward him. Their house hadn’t had a fence, but Gwen would just open the back door and let him run out because he always came back to her. Gwen’s father was the only person he’d ever been more loyal to. That’s why he’d gnashed his teeth and growled at Mama when she tried to get past him into the bathroom that day. Of course, he might have been trying to protect Gwen, too.

  Gwen was still hesitant to let the dog out of the truck, though. They were on an unfamiliar road. Daybreak was approaching, but if she lost Grover and Daddy’s jacket on the same night …

  Grover whimpered again and looked at her. His big brown eyes seemed so human, like he was trying to tell her, I couldn’t protect you from what was behind that door, but I can do this for you now.

  Gwen reached around him for the handle and heaved the door open. Grover leapt over her arm and charged toward the cemetery gate. Then he veered right. There was a two-foot gap between the brick column that the gate was hinged to and the chain link fence that extended down the road to the next gate. A bush covered it slightly, but the dog plowed in, no problem. All Gwen would have to do to follow was go through sideways. Grover must have seen Lulu go the same way.

  It might have been her eyes playing tricks on her, but while trying to keep Grover in her sight, Gwen thought she glimpsed pale purple fabric and even paler legs in the distance.

  Wake had slumped over again, so she whipped a cigarette lighter at him and shouted, “Come on!” as she scrambled out of the truck.

  In the hope that Wake would follow, Gwen didn’t shut the door. She barreled ahead toward the bushes, which scraped the backs of her hands as she pushed through them.

  Grover barked and she followed the sound, her sneakers pounding against the wide and uneven asphalt road.

  Gwen wished she’d spent the past year smoking less and exercising more. The cold air stabbed at her lungs and she felt her side cramping. Like Lulu’s, she realized. How could a girl in such pain get so much farther ahead of her even if she’d had a head start?

  She squinted into the distance. There was clearly a busy road on the other side of the cemetery. Bright lights from a strip mall cut through the fog like a dozen small lighthouses, but they weren’t close enough to illuminate Grover or Lulu.

  Fortunately, the sky was more gray than black, and she eventually spotted a shadowy dog shape. Gwen zigzagged around the graves and nearly slipped in the damp grass several times before she reached him.

  Grover was sitting still as a statute, his ears perked and lip pulled up to reveal his teeth. He didn’t move when Gwen called his name. She placed her hand on top of his head, weaving her fingers through his fur. His warmth assured her that he was real. Nothing else felt like it was—maybe because of the fog, the bite in the air, and the eerie surroundings. Her adrenaline rush had subsided. She now realized how scared she was.

  “Let’s go, bo—” She stopped herself mid-whisper when she realized what Grover was staring at.

  Her father’s jacket lay in a heap the way Gwen’s mother’s clothes always did when she came home drunk. Relief flooded Gwen’s aching limbs as she hurried forward to snatch it, but she nearly dropped the jacket when she noticed what it had been covering.

  The tombstone was engraved simply—a name and two years, not even full dates. The name, however, was Lucille Frendenberg, whose life had spanned from 1912 to 1931. If Gwen hadn’t known instantly that Lucille called herself Lulu, the oval-shaped photograph affixed to the right side of the marker in what looked like an oversized locket, would have given it away. The metal piece that slid over the picture, protecting it from the elements was missing, so the full-length shot of the girl had faded considerably in sixty-two years. She wore a white dress that was barely discernable from her pale skin and the background behind her. The shadow between her side and the crook of her arm along with beading at her hips and the bottom of the dress, a few inches above her black shoes, were the only things to give her shape. Her facial features were blurry as well, but her dark, chin-length curls distinguished her.

  A low growl from Grover startled Gwen. She looked up from the picture into the actual eyes of the dark-haired girl standing in front of her.

  Lulu was a few yards away in front of a mausoleum. Like in the photograph, her limbs nearly blended in with the white-washed stone behind her, but her colorful dress stood out. “I’m sorry if I frightened you,” she said softly. “I just wanted to go home. I hoped you could get me there.”

  “Haven’t I?” Gwen gestured to the gravestone.

  “That is where my bones rest, but it is not home.”

  Gwen stepped to the left, hugging her father’s coat to her chest to counter the chill that ran through her when she realized that she was standing above Lulu’s body.

  “Home isn’t far from here,” Lulu continued. “We almost made it.” She winced and squeezed her side. “Just like that night. Almost there.”

  Gwen knew this was crazy, talking to a spirit in a cemetery. She knew she should put her daddy’s coat on, grab Grover by the collar and walk back to the truck, to Wake. She draped the army jacket over her shoulders for warmth—the sweat she’d broken into while running had completely evaporated—and instead of turning away, she asked, “What happened?”

  “I went out dancing. Mama told me not to. She said I spent too much time at the Melody Mill, but I snuck out after she went to bed. I walked to Des Plaines and hitched a ride. As soon as I got there, I started to feel sick and ignored it. There was a great band playing and all I wanted to do was dance. After the last song, the young man I was dancing with offered me a ride home. I gave him directions, but we only made it a few blocks when the pain …” Lulu stopped, doubling over and sucking in air through her teeth like she could feel it all over again.

  Gwen cringed for the girl, her fingertips flying to her mouth. “You’ve been reliving that for the past sixty years?”

  Lulu straightened. “Is it … has it really been?” She bit her lip and shook her head. “Time moves differently for me and honestly at first I didn’t care, just like my mother used to say.” She furrowed her drawn-on brows and mimicked a heavy Eastern European accent, “‘L
ulu, you not care if you live or die as long as you get to dance.’ And I didn’t,” she said sadly. “But three times now I’ve tried to go to Melody Mill and I couldn’t find it. It’s gone and if I can’t dance, I …” She swallowed hard and dabbed at a tear, which Gwen noticed did not affect her makeup. “I just want to go home, but when I try …”

  “When you try, then you relive it,” Gwen finished for her as she watched Lulu’s hand drift to her side.

  Lulu nodded. “I knew it wouldn’t work, but I just had to try.”

  “Funny, you want to get home so badly and Wake and I just want to get as far away as we can.”

  “Funny,” Lulu echoed, though the hollow look in her eyes said it was anything but.

  Gwen stuck her arms through the sleeves of her father’s jacket, growing colder by the second. “You don’t think we’ll make it. That stuff I thought I heard you say about our fates, about us dying … You really did say that, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe you thought it and that’s all that matters,” Lulu stated. The old woman she would have been shone out from her kohl-lined eyes. Though her lips had initially reminded Gwen of old Betty Boop cartoons, there was nothing playful, soft or sweet about Lulu’s face anymore. She looked like an icy phantom.

  There’s no such thing as ghosts, Gwen tried to tell herself. She’d spent all of her childhood believing—or at least from the age of eight onward—that hauntings, voodoo, hoodoo, tarot, crystal healings, psychic readings and such were bullshit. They were just part of the New Orleans tourism industry. If they didn’t keep people blind drunk and convinced that the city had magical qualities, they might see it for what it truly is—hot, dirty, and full of poor, struggling people.

  “What are you running to? What do you think you’re going to find out there?” Lulu asked. Though the happiness that permeated her voice when she talked about dancing had vanished, her tone wasn’t cold or judgmental, more measured and curious.