Spiritus, a Paranormal Romance (Spiritus Series, Book #1)

by Dana Michelle Burnett

  “And waste all of this food?” Aunt Autumn chimed in while pouring the soup into a pan. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  If there was any one principle that all of us inherited from our ancestors, it was the idea of never taking more of anything that we could use, waste was the unforgivable sin. Long conversations would take place regarding what to do with a scrap of fabric or the remnant of carpet left over when Aunt Autumn had her bedroom carpet replaced. I still remember the guilty pleasure I experienced the first night in my own apartment when I threw an empty jar of mayonnaise away. The family motto, if there was one, had to be “Waste not, want not”. My mother even adhered to this strange idea, although she did warp it from time to time to suit her mood.

  Because of this ideal, our feast that day was a potluck of items from the cabinets that would soon go stale and products from the refrigerator that were nearing the expiration date. Eating in our family was not a formal affair, or even a gracious one. By the meal’s end, Aunt Ama was eating chocolate chip ice cream straight from the carton with one of my grandmother’s serving spoons.

  “Rose, make us all some coffee.” She ordered with a wave of her spoon, “We will have some while we work.”

  I did as I was told. Even though I was there in my mother’s place and she was the middle child, I was still the youngest in the kitchen that day and I was brought up to serve my elders. I took the mugs from the cabinet, avoiding the chipped white cup in the corner. No one had to remind me which one was my grandmother’s cup; I looked at that mug and knew that it only belonged in her crooked fingers.

  “Cream and sugar?” I asked the aunts, blinking back the tears. It never crossed my mind before then that I would never see my grandmother’s leathered hands again holding that cup. How long before I even forgot what they looked like?

  I poured the coffee as the aunts washed the dishes in the sink. After drying the dishes, they divided and then packed them away in three boxes bearing each of their names. They stuffed the garbage from our feast into a trash bag and set it by the door. They walked then back into the living room with me following behind, struggling with the three mugs. They ignored the sofa and instead sat cross-legged on the worn carpet.

  Aunt Ama took one of the cups from me, “We might as well get started. Go and fetch Momma’s trunk from her room.”

  It was as if she asked me to go right into my grandmother’s tomb. That is the only way that I could describe the way that I felt. After all, she died in that very room. “Oh, I don’t think I should. I mean it’s not my place.”

  “Of course it’s your place,” Aunt Autumn whispered and patted my hand. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “I just wouldn’t feel right going through her things.” I explained, hoping that Autumn would rescue me.

  “Nonsense, would you rather a stranger do it?” Aunt Ama asked. “Some person that Momma never met pawing through her things like some dime store sale?”

  How could I argue with such reasoning? I couldn’t, so again I did as I was told. I wished then that my mother wasn’t so crazy when it came to these things. Even though all of this was giving me the creeps too and I was wishing I had some artsy friends to disappear with.

  The halls of my grandmother’s house are very narrow and dark, cooler than the rest of the house. My cousin Joe and I used to sit at the end of the hall during the summer and talk of boys, school, and the insanity of our mothers. That seemed a thousand years ago as I turned and walked into the bedroom. My grandmother’s chest sat at the foot of her bed. The mattress had been stripped, but her slippers were still beside the bed. It was odd to see those empty house shoes there, waiting for feet that would never come.

  I took the chest, which was less heavy than I expected, back out to the living room and sat it down on the floor between my aunts. They both just looked at the wooden box, each solemn and quiet

  “Are you two okay with this?” I asked. “We don’t have to do this today.”

  “Sit.” Aunt Ama ordered without looking up.

  I took my place beside them, expecting that one or the other of them would open the chest right away, but they did not. Both of them sat there, the chest before them, drinking their coffee. I was confused, sitting there listening to the two of them sipping and slurping their coffee. “Is this some sort of ceremony?”

  “No.” Aunt Ama replied, not taking her eyes from the box. “I just want to drink my coffee before it gets cold.”

  Taking sips of my own coffee, I wait, glancing at each of them from time to time. Aunt Autumn met my eyes and smiled in her own tragic way, “It is good to see you again Rose. It seems that I never get to see any of our girls anymore.”

  That was how they had always referred to my cousins and me, as if we belonged to each and every one of them. I also suspected that this was her way of asking about her own daughter, Joe, I couldn’t remember if they were bickering or not. It happened so often, I never could keep up. I knew Autumn saw Ana a couple times a week so she wouldn’t be referring to her, which only left me and Joe.

  “We are all very busy.” I answered diplomatically. “We all wish that we could find the time to see each of you more often.”

  Aunt Ama snorted and I lowered my eyes. I was in dangerous territory. I spoke to each of their daughters on the telephone a couple of times a day. At that moment, I probably knew more about their daughters than they did and I did not want to give away any secrets. It is a treacherous place to be, between a mother and a daughter.

  Perhaps sensing that I was not going to say anything else, Aunt Ama sighed and motioned toward the trunk. “Well, let’s get this over with.”

  She opened the chest, throwing back the lid to reveal the woody scented leftovers of a life. There were photographs of people I had never met, bundles of letters with the ink so faded that I could barely make out any of the words, a few bottle caps, and other such meaningless antiquities. This was the true Tsusgina’i, I thought, a lifetime of memories contained in mundane objects and no one there to explain the meaning.

  I could not imagine touching these items. No matter how trivial they appeared to me, those things were the very essence of who my grandmother had been. These were all of the secrets she never told. I kept my hands folded in my lap, but I wondered the history of each item. Whom were the letters from? Why save bottle caps?

  Aunt Ama reached in and took a faded photograph from the top of the pile. She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head as she strained to see the picture. “Grandmother and Grandfather maybe?”

  She passed the photograph to me, but I had no way of confirming her assumption for I never knew my great-grandparents. I looked down at the photograph, printed on thick paper that was starting to curl at the edges, to see a young unsmiling couple standing side by side. It was no different from other pictures I had seen of other people during the depression era except that both the man and the woman had long black hair down to their shoulders.

  Aunt Autumn took the photograph from me. She gave it a brief glance and shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t remember what Grandmother looked like.”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself.” Ama scolded with an arrogant toss of her head.

  “I don’t see why,” Aunt Autumn said in her own defense. “You don’t know who is in the picture either. After all, I only saw Grandmother once and I was too little to remember it.”

  “You should have more respect for your ancestors.”

  To end their bickering, I forgot my reservations, reached into the chest, and gathered up the bottle caps. “What were these for?”

  “For bottles of course.” Aunt Ama snapped, dismissing them with only a glance.

  “They are much more than that.” Aunt Autumn explained, taking the bent pieces of metal from me. “These are from the bottles of the first soda pops that your grandmother ever drank. She thought that they were so delicious, that she drank six of them one right after the other and got a horrible stomachache. She kept the bottle caps to remind her never to b
e so greedy again.”

  “Who in the world told you such a stupid story?” Aunt Ama asked as she thumbed through another stack of photographs.

  Aunt Autumn smiled, not tragically this time, but with an expression that can only be described as gloating. “Momma told me.”

  “I never heard of such a thing.”

  “Then you must not have been listening close enough.”

  Again, I tried to find a way to end their quarrel, even though I hated to do it since it was one of those rare moments when Aunt Autumn had the upper hand. “Does anyone need any more coffee?”

  Neither answered, they sat there glaring at each other. Fuming over age-old grudges that began when they were only children until Ama shrugged. “It doesn’t matter any way.”

  She went back to sorting through the items in the chest, handing some to Autumn, and a scarce few to me. I looked down at the tarnished silver and turquoise jewelry she handed to me, some were intricately carved and others looking as raw as the earth itself. What was the story of these pieces? Why did she choose each one and why were they hidden away?

  Ama handed me a sharp black and white photograph. My grandmother’s young face smiled back at me, paler than natural, but still beautiful. I studied the photo for a moment, “Why is she so pale looking?”

  “This must have been taken just after her and Daddy got married.” Aunt Autumn said as she leaned over to look at the picture, “She wanted to look whiter. She didn’t think his mother would approve of her if she knew that she was Cherokee, so she powered her face.”

  “What did she use?” I asked. “Chalk?”

  “Rice powder.” Ama stated and took the picture away from me. “She learned soon after that there is no point in trying to hide who you are. It always catches up to you.”

  Aunt Autumn sighed and rolled her eyes, “Does everything have to be a moral lesson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that is the way that life is.” Ama said and then took a bundle of letters from the trunk. She turned to me and smiled. “Now here is something that should interest you.”

  I took the packet from her, studying the smudged postmarks and the thin pale script. There must have been more than a dozen of them, all yellow and crumbling, held together by a tattered white ribbon with a dried and withered spray of white flowers. The smell of moldy decay clung to them. I could feel the aunt’s eyes upon me and I felt that I should say something, but what?

  “Thank you.” I whispered, looking down at the letters again, straining to read the addresses from all over the world.

  The aunts were staring at me; I could feel their eyes bearing down. I felt that I should say something more, but what? I met Ama’s eyes again, seeing the shock and disappointment filled me with guilt even though I had done nothing wrong.

  “You have no idea what I am giving you, do you?” Aunt Ama asked and then shook her head. I could see the disappointment in her face.

  I stole a glance at Aunt Autumn and saw much of the same expression. What had I done wrong? Was it my fault that I did not know the importance of a stack of old letters? I had a ticket stub from when I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was ten. When I die, would my aunts cast such disapproving eyes on my granddaughter if she did not jump for joy over a faded ticket stub?

  I wondered then if their anger was not just for me, but for their own daughters as well. There was an entire history that we knew nothing about, things we had never asked. To be honest, a history we cared nothing about.

  “You know nothing about who you are or from where you came.” Aunt Ama sighed. “These are the letters that your mother wrote to Momma after she left home and went traipsing around the globe. You should have asked her about them a long time ago.”

  I wondered then if my cousins and I were not the true ghost country, souls lost to them and our ancestors. Were we dwelling in a void where the past not only did not matter, it simply just didn’t exist? Were we doomed to be lost forever? Did the souls of Tsusgina’i even know that they were condemned?