by Gina Linko
The next card was a chalice, a fancy golden cup covered in jewels. I looked at Mrs. Rawlings, her broad face turned down to the cards, her eyes studying. It was quiet for a moment, and I heard a fly buzzing in the kitchen, the hum of the dishwasher.
Mrs. Rawlings looked up apologetically. She said, “Cups mean water.”
“Water?” I said. I could stomach love and death. But love, death, and water? Was this my freaking résumé? I got up quickly from the stool and turned toward the door, watching the edges of my vision get all inky and swimmy. Sparks of liquid orange flickered at the dark edges of my sight. I reached a hand out, tried to find something on which to steady myself. My hand itself felt far away, detached from the rest of me. I heard Mia-Joy as if from a distance: “Corrine, it’s good—”
I passed out flat on the white-and-black tiled floor of the Crawdaddy Shack, the fly buzzing at my ear as I lost consciousness.
I shoved the outdated tape into the ancient black cassette recorder. It was a crazy old machine, on its last legs and totally about to crap out on me. I had begged Mom to invest in some newer equipment. But she had insisted that she knew how to use this tape recorder, and if she was the one who had to use it, then she would choose to stick with it. I pushed the PLAY button, and Mr. Lazette’s voice picked up right where he had left off—the story of the Madame Bridgit ghost on the hotel terrace on Dauphine Street.
I picked up my sketchpad, my favorite pencil, and my little pocketknife from Granddad. I sat cross-legged on my bed, scraping at my pencil, getting just the right point on it, listening to Mr. Lazette.
“I was only a chile, ya see. I recall I seen it twice the summer of the fire on Basin Street. Didn’t know it was a ghost then. Saw her wandering on the roof of the Dauphine Hotel. Made me nervous to see—”
Mom knocked on the frame of my open door, and I stopped the tape. “Come in.”
“You sure you’re feeling okay, honey?” She carried in a tray and set it on my overcrowded nightstand. I looked it over: a tuna fish sandwich, carrots, a glass of sweet tea.
“I’m fine.”
“Sarah said you let her do the cards.”
I nodded.
“Was it fun?” Mom’s smile stretched tight across her face, wary. My mom, my middle C, my four-four time. My anchor.
“You’re worried. I’m fine.”
“It’s just that when I hounded you to hang out more, to overstep your boundaries, I didn’t mean you had to delve into voodoo.” Mom said this last part with that jingle-bell laugh of hers, but I knew there was some worry there.
“It was stupid,” I said. Now that I wasn’t sitting there with all eyes on me, those hokey cards staring up at me, I knew it was dumb. “I just got overwhelmed, I think.”
Mom sat down carefully on the edge of the bed. Her legs did not touch mine, didn’t even graze my knee. I took a bite of the tuna fish sandwich, and we sat in silence.
I ate a few more bites and took a couple sips of the iced tea. It was cold going down my throat.
“I’m glad you’re feeling okay.” She looked like she wanted to do something—touch me, hug me, tuck my hair behind my ear. I wanted to let her, but I couldn’t. I didn’t dare touch her. I realized in that moment that I could feel something, a tiny something in my chest, churning, blossoming.
I swallowed hard, inched myself farther away from my mother. I was too tired of asking how, why, what. The only thing I knew was that it was there. And I had to respect it.
“He looks a lot like that,” Mom said, pointing to my sketch of Mr. Lazette. “Again.” She shook her head and gave me a smile. Her eyes, the same blue eyes as mine, looked amazed and entertained, but hidden underneath sat some fear.
I felt it too. “His story is creepy. Good, though.”
“I know. It’s a regular ghost story,” she said, rubbing the backs of her knuckles across her bottom lip like she did when she was thinking.
She first started interviewing the senior citizens up at Chartrain Hills because of a New Orleans history project I had to do at school. I couldn’t do it. It was early in the semester, when we had just moved here. I hadn’t said more than five words to anyone. She did the interviews for me, taped them.
Mrs. Janell Jackson. Her great-grandmother had traveled on the Underground Railroad, had been a contemporary of Harriet Tubman, and Mrs. Jackson could really tell a story. The truth was, Mom saw me enjoying something a little bit, putting that project together for history class, so she urged me to interview some of the old folks myself.
I couldn’t. But she kept bringing me tapes. It just kind of happened. She said the old folks liked talking even more than I probably liked to listen.
“What should I do with these stories?” I had asked Mom after three or four of them.
“You’ll think of something,” she said.
And that’s when I started sketching the tale-tellers. I had always loved to draw: pen and ink, charcoal, pastels. But after Sophie, after the move, it became the only thing I remembered how to enjoy, even just a little bit.
“When will Dad be back?” I asked, finishing off the iced tea. I had seen his handwritten note to Mom in the kitchen, on our chalkboard next to the phone.
“Next Thursday,” Mom said, taking a carrot off my plate and getting up. Dad spent about half of his time back in Chicago, with Harlowe Construction booming at both ends of the Mississippi River.
I nodded, reached over to press PLAY on the tape recorder.
“Have you thought about letting me show these sketches to anyone?” Mom asked, leaning on the door frame.
“No,” I answered simply. Mom nodded. She didn’t push.
I didn’t want anyone to see my drawings. It was only a hobby. I wasn’t that good at it, not like the violin. But even more important, sharing my art would be a much too personal interaction now. These sketches of my tale-tellers. And I could never answer the questions that these sketches would bring. Especially the one.
The question that even made Mom nervous. Fearful.
How could I listen to the tapes of these people, listen to their tales—with Mom giving them the prompt “What’s your story?”—and then sit down and sketch them, without ever having seen them in my life?
How could I do that? And how could I be uncannily correct each time? Right down to the placement of a mole, a chicken pox scar, or a set of wrinkles on the forehead?
I couldn’t answer those questions.
But I could draw them, and I loved their faces, their histories, their connections.
I didn’t let myself think about it too much. In Chicago, I would’ve laughed at the idea of drawing people from only their voices. I would’ve called it crazy. But so much had changed for me, in me, since Chicago. And plus, this place. New Orleans. It made certain things seem so much more possible than the Chicago suburbs ever did. When New Orleans was just our vacation spot, our summer house, that made sense. New Orleans was a getaway. But now it was supposed to be home, and so many things seemed cockeyed because of it.
Before, I had been a logical girl. A swimmer, a music lover. A math geek. I loved the way that math and music fit together, the numbers, the patterns. Things made sense with numbers and notes, with scales and time signatures, with equations and proofs. A equaled B. Logic ruled for me back in Chicago. Some things were possible, and some things were not. In Chicago, streets were parallel and perpendicular, named in order of the presidents of the United States. You could easily figure things out there. In Chicago, the seasons followed the rules. It didn’t rain when the sun was out. People followed the rules in Chicago too. You buried people under the ground, in graves. You didn’t have famous cities of the dead, with fancy aboveground mausoleums and crypts. You didn’t have reputable people talking about seeing ghosts at every other hotel in the French Quarter. You didn’t have labyrinthine mazes of back streets and alleyways. New Orleans was unpredictable, messy, and exciting.
Was it because New Orleans had so many mysteries? Ties to American vo
odoo? A link to the macabre?
Well, New Orleans felt different than Chicago. It felt more. Real. Not real. Crazy. Not crazy. Such a thin, thin line.
Sometimes when I would lie awake at night, watching the pear tree branch sway in the wind from my bedroom window, feeling the Gulf breeze on my skin, I felt so close, so very close to something. I felt open. That was the only way I could put it. Open.
I had never felt that way in Chicago. Well, maybe when I had played a certain piece of music and interpreted it in just the right way, I felt it. But it was rare. Here, though, I often felt open. Like I was very close to something. Had it right on the tip of my tongue. But what was it?
The telephone woke me late that night, but I didn’t answer it. Instead I tiptoed to my doorway and listened to my mother’s end of the conversation. The concern in her voice freaked me a little, but I reminded myself that she was a minister. She often got phone calls in the middle of the night. I stood in the doorway, watching the concern in the knit of my mother’s brow.
“Oh, honey,” Mom said to the person on the other end of the phone. Something in her voice struck me as more personal this time.
I waited until she hung up, then walked across the hall to her room. “Who is it?” I asked.
“Mia-Joy’s grandmother.”
“Granny Lucy?” I whispered.
She nodded, and my stomach dropped. I reminded myself that Granny Lucy was ninety years old. She was actually Mia-Joy’s great-grandmother. She’d had a stroke last fall, and she had not been in the best health for months now. But Granny Lucy had just been in the kitchen with me today. With Mia-Joy and her mom. Today. You’re scratching your palm, chérie.
Mom sat on her bed, already pulling on a pair of jeans. Her paperback was open on the quilt, a box of Triscuits and spray cheese on her nightstand, her bedroom TV muted on the home and garden channel. Mom always was a night owl, like me. Sophie had been too.
Mom sighed. “Sarah doesn’t know where Mia-Joy is. And they really think this might be it for Granny Lucy.” She shook her head.
I averted my eyes. It was Saturday night. I knew Mia-Joy was at the cemetary.
“You’re going to Sarah’s?” I asked.
Mom sat for a moment like she was in a trance, thinking. “I am,” she said. She got up, quickly changed into a clean shirt. “You don’t mind, do you, honey?”
I shook my head, watching her find her purse, locate one shoe under her bed, all the while trying to decide. Should I tell her where Mia-Joy is?
Mia-Joy will get in trouble. But she’ll be so sad if she doesn’t get to say goodbye. But she’s prepared for this. She’s known goodbye was coming. But I could give her this last chance.
I followed Mom downstairs and latched the dead bolt behind her, then sat down at the kitchen table, still waffling.
I got up and took my phone off the counter. I thought briefly of my other teenage life in Chicago, before everything, when I had carried my cell everywhere, texted constantly, a state of never-ending interaction.
I called Mia-Joy. This in itself was something I rarely did, but it seemed safer than going to get her myself.
“This is Mia-Joy. Leave me a message.”
“Call me if you get this,” I said, my voice shaking. I hung up, put the phone back on the counter. I stared at it, willing her to call me right back. I waited, listening to my own shallow breaths. It didn’t buzz.
If I went for Mia-Joy, would it somehow circle back and harm her? Or someone else, because I got too involved?
Then something hit me. Granny Lucy had been there today in the Rawlingses’ kitchen. Had she touched me when I passed out?
I ran my hands through my hair, feeling my breath catch in my throat. “Oh Jesus,” I said under my breath. Had I done this? Had I caused this to happen to Granny Lucy? I tried to remember back to before I passed out, back to the tarot cards. Had I noticed it in my chest? Had it been there at that moment? Alive? Swirling?
I swallowed hard. I listened for the phone to buzz, for Mia-Joy to call me right back. But she didn’t. I concentrated on the sound of my breathing in the still kitchen for what seemed like a long time, thinking of Granny Lucy, of Mia-Joy, their quick retorts to one another, their easy relationship. I thought of the finality of death. How it snuck up on us, like we somehow believed that death and loss were things that other people had to deal with.
I thought of Sophie, of my guilt. I pictured Granny Lucy’s hand on my shoulder or touching my cheek when I was passed out. Could she have possibly touched my hand? Held mine in hers, palm to palm?
Oh God. No, that couldn’t be. No. But maybe. Just like Sophie.
Love. Death. Water.
I thought about Sophie, that gap between her teeth. She had begged me to take her to see that air show. I remembered exactly how the air smelled that morning on the shore of Lake Michigan, crisp and earthy. I didn’t want to remember.
I pushed against it. I didn’t want to go there. But the proverbial door had been opened, really, ever since Mrs. Rawlings had done my cards. I sank into my kitchen chair, my head in my hands.
Every moment, I spent so much energy pushing away the memory of that day.
But it was always there. Hovering. Owning me. Defining my every action and inaction.
Part of me felt like I was falling, plunging back into that memory.
It had been windy.
Sophie loved airplanes, and I smiled when I thought about her goggles. She had bought this old green-tinged pair of lab goggles at a garage sale. They were way too big for her, fastened onto her head with an old shoelace. She was trying to look like a pilot, I guessed. I pictured us that day, that final day, and I could see myself making peanut butter sandwiches at the counter to take with us for a picnic afterward, and she was bouncing around the kitchen wearing those goggles. They pushed her nose up in a funny way, made it look kind of piggish.
I laughed out loud, put my head in my hands, and then the first tears came. I rubbed them with the back of my hand, and I shook my head against them. I had to remember.
Sissy, she called me. “Sissy.” I said it out loud, and my voice broke, and I sobbed. “Sissy,” I said again, and it was like we were there, on the beach after the air show.
The wind blows through my hair, wraps it around my face, some goes in my mouth. She laughs that silly belly chuckle that she has when something is really tickling her funny bone. She crouches down, her feet in a tidal pool. She pokes at something with a stick, a reed she has found on our walk.
“This mudpuppy just cannot get up the side of this hole, no matter how many times it tries.” She laughs some more and I watch her. I am not always the patient, indulgent big sister that can appreciate Sophie like this, but I can today. I do now.
Her goggles slip farther down her nose, but she doesn’t notice. I see now that she has the salamander dangling from the stick. The sky darkens over and the wind picks up.
A storm is coming.
“Let’s go see ’em, Corrine.”
I lead the way to the rocky north shore, to the place I heard has all the good rocks, the Petoskey stones, fossilized coral that Sophie is dying to see. When we get there, I realize that the terrain of this beach will be hard for Sophie; it is tough even for me. The sky has blown into a pewter-gray cloud, and I consider telling Sophie we need to turn around.
I don’t.
We hold hands for a while. I help her with her footing. The beach is at a steep angle, covered in sharp, jutting rocks. Large rocks. Each step is treacherous, a possible twisted ankle, skinned knee, but after ten minutes or so Sophie is confident. She lets go of my hand and begins to crouch down between rocks, moving on all fours.
We get near the shore, and the rocks are smaller here, more varied. Even I can see the riches in the surfaces that gleam up at us. “Agate!” she squeals, picking up a particularly sparkly one. She is amazed, mouth agape. She reaches out, touches another one, and I giggle. She is so happy. And I think, I love this kid. We are no
t perfect siblings. We are not always tethered so closely. I often complain about toting her to and from Girl Scouts, or babysitting on a Saturday night, or having to hear her and Mitchy Rogers make fart noises at the dinner table. But I think it right then: I love this kid.
The rain begins. Just a smattering of raindrops, but big fat ones. I don’t think about how these raindrops will make the walk back to the sand beach more dangerous. It doesn’t even occur to me. Oh, how I have second-guessed so many of these details.
Sophie spends a lot of time pocketing small stones near the shore. “I think this is a Petoskey!” she says, showing me a tiny stone with peach-colored spiraled ridges. I nod enthusiastically, but I can’t tell what it is. The wind is pushing the waves higher onto the beach, so we have to leave via the large rocks just as we came, and when we start back, she leads. She stands erect, no crouching over. She knows the weather is turning, I’m sure, so she hurries.
I watch her slip like it is in slow motion. She’s way ahead of me.
Mom’s gonna kill me, I think, picturing Sophie bloodying her knees. Maybe even stitches. But before that thought is even fully formed, I see that it is worse than this. She’s going so fast across the rocks, and she hops—two-footed. She lands, slipping. She hops again, and one foot slips. She yelps. Her feet slip out from under her and her head falls backward. It is an awkward, painful-looking fall, with too much momentum, too much force slamming the back of her head onto the rocks.
After the six or eight steps it takes me to get beside her, I see she is unconscious, and her body seizes, trembles, and jerks, the whites of her eyes showing, her limbs working so unnaturally.
The sight of Sophie, the blood on the rock under her head, the ugly movements of this seizure, it wrecks me. I panic.
“Oh God, oh God,” I say, scanning my brain, trying to think but coming up with nothing. Something about her tongue. Where’s my cell phone?
The wind blows hard then off the lake, and the air changes, a change in pressure, a change that registers on my skin. The hairs on my arms stand up and then …
