When We Were Ghouls

by Amy E. Wallen

“We’ll get you better earrings than last year’s gold loops. You can borrow some of my faux pearl baubles.”

  “I don’t want to be Mrs. Astor,” I said, whoever this lady was. Why couldn’t we just go to the grocery store and buy a store-bought costume like in the States?

  Outside on the windowsill, an orange-and-purple agama lizard did push-ups, staking claim for his territory.

  “I’d love to be Mrs. Astor,” my mom said. “She was the richest woman in the United States. She could even turn the Vanderbilts away at a party. She had clout, did what she wanted, and no one disagreed with her.” Mom seemed so tired, but worse than that, angry. Right then, she must have felt she could trade herself in to be anybody else. I agonized over how I could be a blessing more than a bother.

  “You want to be Mrs. Astor?” I asked. If Mom wanted to be Mrs. Astor, whoever she was, then I wanted to be her too. “Okay,” I said, still hoping for a better, more recognizable costume. A witch with a pointy hat and a broom would have been nice. But if it pleased Mom, then The Mrs. Astor I would be.

  Later, I would learn this was the same Mrs. Astor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Mrs. Astor who threw elitist parties and considered the Vanderbilts beneath her. Mrs. Astor who the press dubbed The Mrs. Astor when the family fought over rightful titles. The same Mrs. Astor whose daughter built her a forty-foot cenotaph at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway in New York. Cenotaph. What could be a more appropriate tomb for a narcissist than an empty one?

  For Halloween the next day I dressed in the long, gypsy-turned-formal skirt, earrings, and a red T-shirt. I couldn’t find anything else that matched the orange, and Mom couldn’t get out of bed that morning to help me be The Mrs. Astor.

  Sitting in the VW school bus crammed with goblins and princesses and devils, I endured my earlobes swelling and itching from the clip-on bauble earrings.

  “Who are you supposed to be?” Sandra Dodson, my new friend a year older than me, asked. I envied the Raggedy Ann costume complete with red mop hair she wore.

  “I’m Mrs. Astor,” I said for the first time that day, then I corrected myself. “The Mrs. Astor.”

  “Who?” Sandra showed no recognition.

  “A rich lady,” I shrugged, wishing for that pointy witch’s hat. “High society,” I added, although I had no idea what that meant. I figured it had something to do with wearing long dresses and fancy jewelry. “She’s famous,” I added.

  “Really?!” Sandra replied. I wondered whether maybe I did look the part as I scratched at my earlobe.

  Our attention switched as we crossed the bridge onto Victoria Island. We drove past the man lying against the green-and-white concrete barrier. He’d been lying there on his side every day that week and hadn’t changed positions, so by Wednesday we’d figured him for dead and had started calculating.

  “He’s even bigger today,” Sandra said.

  “I bet it’s tomorrow,” I said, putting my long, straight hair behind my ears.

  The dead man had started to bloat. My costume forgotten for the moment, I changed the subject to how many days until the dead man popped.

  At school Mrs. Lavigne, the homeroom teacher, asked who I was, and I told her the name of the famous real estate heir’s wife. She raised her eyebrows, and asked, “Do you even know who she is?”

  I started to explain, but I somehow knew Mrs. Lavigne already knew and only wanted to know whether I knew who she was. I did not. So I tried the best way out. “Me?!” I replied. She shook her head and let it go. Mine was an odd duck among the other costumes, but being Mrs. Astor pleased my mom. I would try harder.

  When Mrs. Nwoko arrived for Nigerian culture class, she had us make groundnut cookies. I assumed they would be peanut butter cookies as I had made with Suzanne, where we smashed the fork tines crisscross on spoonfuls of dough. When Mrs. Nwoko started to dump chopped onions in the batter to make a special Nigerian cookie, I remembered that Mom had said Mrs. Astor had clout, so I told Mrs. Nwoko The Mrs. Astor didn’t eat onions. She dumped them in anyway.

  Sandra had invited me over to her house after school. I was conflicted over betraying my mom, leaving her alone or playing with the Dodson’s American toys. Mrs. Dodson, a small German mother, fixed us an after-school snack of oxtail soup. I soon forgot my mother was home sleeping.

  “Is it really made from oxtails?” I asked.

  “No,” Mrs. Dodson said in her thick German accent. Her deep voice didn’t match her tiny stature, which made me want to watch her as she spoke, as though someone else hid inside her petite body. “It’s made from powder.” She pulled from the trash the yellow packet that read Knorr in red on the corner. I was pretty sure she was lying as my mom did to get me to eat cream of mushroom soup. Only Mrs. Dodson didn’t have to lie, because I liked the blackish-red soup.

  Being at Sandra’s was almost better than Christmas because she had American toys. At my house, I played Barbies by myself, and mancala, the Nigerian bead game, with Alice. But at Sandra’s house, still in our Halloween costumes, we sat cross-legged on the floor of her parents’ den and played Monkeys in a Barrel for a while, then pick-up sticks. I had never played these games before, and Sandra patiently showed me how each one worked.

  After working our way through Milton Bradley, we ended up outside, me trying to twirl my hips to keep Sandra’s hula hoop up. The fun was endless, and I already hoped to get invited back.

  Then Sandra took me to the front of the house where a cage took up one whole corner of the porch, from top to bottom and side to side. A monkey, I thought, like the Andersons’ in the compound next to ours. But instead, Sandra pointed out a scaly monster the size of Mrs. Dodson’s forearm. To me, he looked like a giant version of the Texas horny toads that were supposed to spit blood, although disappointingly, I never did witness the blood spitting.

  “A chameleon,” Sandra told me. She removed her red mop wig, and now her tangled blonde hair fell to her shoulders.

  I rubbed Mrs. Astor’s pinching earrings.

  “He changes colors.” Sandra opened the cage door, and we crawled in. The chameleon’s eyes rolled around, keeping tabs on us. His rigid but jerky posture made him appear as if we’d scared him to death.

  “What color does he change to?” A big gray-brown sawed-off branch wired to the cage’s bars served as the lizard’s perch.

  “Whatever color he’s lying on,” Sandra said.

  I must not have seemed impressed enough. “Stay here,” she said, and she left me with the lizard. After she darted off, I stared at him. He wasn’t as fascinating as the blue-and-orange agama lizards in our garden. The chameleon just lay there on the branch. The agama lizards did fast push-ups on the bamboo fence and had fierce hissing fights defending their territory. I rubbed my finger along the chameleon’s back. His eyes rolled around toward my finger. I liked the flecked feeling of his skin, how a lizard looks like stone but once touched is soft and squishy like a water balloon. People, dead or alive, could be like that I had discovered.

  My touching must have scared him, because his tail curled tight into a coil. When I stepped back, my maxiskirt snagged on a lower limb, tearing my gypsy-turned-socialite skirt across the back of my legs. Mrs. Astor must have rolled over in her grave. I’d have to be the tattered Little Match Girl next year.

  Sandra climbed back into the cage, holding a piece of red construction paper.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Flipper.”

  I hummed the TV theme song about the rescued dolphin . . . faster than lightning . . .

  “Watch,” she said, and she scooted the red paper under the chameleon. We waited. He turned a darker shade of gray, then kind of brown.

  “See,” she said. I wasn’t sure whether what I saw was a trick of the light or a real change. We waited some more. The chameleon reached this bruised purple stage then shifted to a dull red. Just like the construction paper.

  I grabbed a handful of skirt to make sure I didn’t trip
, and I leaned closer. “How do you get him to do that?” I asked Sandra. This was ten times better than hula hoops.

  “I think he just concentrates real hard,” she said. “Like when we try to figure out our times tables, and they slowly appear in our brain.” I hadn’t gotten to times tables yet, so I was still perplexed.

  That afternoon, I decided I wanted to live at Sandra’s house instead of my own, at least until Sandra’s dad came home and yelled at Mrs. Dodson for no good reason, as my mom would say. His outburst scared me. My dad never yelled like that, his arms crazy, his chest puffed up.

  “Time to go,” Mrs. Dodson said. I could tell the fun was over. She drove me back to Omo Osagie Street.

  Back at my house, I didn’t go straight to Mom’s room as usual. Instead, I lay on my bed, still in my Mrs. Astor costume, my earlobes red and pulsing from the clip-on earrings. But I ignored the hurt as I thought about the chameleon. I stayed very still and imagined I was turning into Mrs. Astor. If I thought hard enough it could happen. Maybe, like the chameleon, I could change. In my costume, laid out, concentrating. If I could be Mrs. Astor, then I could be who Mom wanted to be. Who Mom wanted me to be. I wanted it so much, that with my eyes closed I could feel Mrs. Astor from my throbbing earlobes to my flip-flops. I pictured myself turning Friday and Justus away. I pointed my toes like wearing high heels, bending the rubber soles of my flip-flops into C’s. I thought hard, harder than I did for spelling. Wanting it enough, willing it—I could make it happen. My fingers fidgeted with the cotton nap of the chenille tendrils, and the air conditioner fluttered the fine hairs on my legs as I thought of nothing else but Mrs. Astor.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw it hadn’t worked. I was still me. I decided to start smaller. Like the chameleon I’d start by changing color. So I closed my eyes and concentrated on the yellow bedspread. With my eyes clenched, sensed a small presence in the doorway. My mom, silent and wilted.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Turning yellow,” I said. “Have I turned yet?”

  “You’re close,” she said, “but not quite. Why do you want to be yellow?”

  I explained about Sandra’s chameleon. I didn’t explain about how I wanted to be what she wanted to be. I was afraid she’d pooh-pooh my idea. Instead I just told her how the lizard seemed to concentrate, then became red. I pictured my costume, sensed my swollen earlobes, and became dizzy with hope.

  She said, “When you’re finally yellow, come eat, because Philip said supper is ready.”

  “How about now?” I asked again, craving her approval.

  “Yep, you’re practically a lemon.” I could sense she cracked a smile. I felt her silhouette turn, and I heard her house slippers shuffle and leave.

  I threw open my eyes. My bones ached with disappointment. Looking down at my body, I had already turned back to Amy, the little white girl in a torn dress.

  What a stupid idea. I yanked off the bauble earrings, tossed them on my bed and ran downstairs on the heels of my mother.

  I could not be her, nor could I ever be what she wanted to be. I would have to settle for being with her as often and as much as I could. For being what she wanted me to be. My mother was frail. She was all I had. I had to keep her, carefully guard her, ruffle no feathers, or her brittle bones could break. If I caused any trouble, if she deemed me unsuitable as a daughter, she could disappear, she could leave me. And, if something happened to her, well, I didn’t want to think of the consequences. I must keep her from leaving me again, I must do what I must to keep her nearby. That was my hope. My delusion.

  I tell my parents that I’m writing it all down. That I’m telling our stories. “I’m telling about all the dead bodies,” I say. My dad laughs. “Did you tell the one about the man in the road that exploded? You and Sandra watched for him every day.”

  My mother, on her end of the line, makes a sound of disgust, disapproval at our morbid banter. Mrs. Astor, I figure, would not have stood for such activities with her daughter. I am glad I’m not an Astor. Or even a lowly Vanderbilt.

  “I did,” I say. I am laughing too. My dad remembers how I came home and reported on the man’s bloat.

  My mother told me once as an adult, “You’re just like your father.” I don’t remember the context, but her comment was meant to be derogatory. I remember feeling shame and pride pommeling each other inside me. I am and I am not like him, just as I am and am not like her.

  But which parts of me belong to whom? And which belong to me?

  Bees and Bad Men

  The belief in witchcraft and the power to change shapes is common in Nigeria.

  —BBC News 23 January 2009

  My dad was home from the bush, and that meant I had someone sitting with me at the breakfast table. He read the Daily Sun and didn’t say much, but I liked having him home. Outside the dining room I could hear the bumblebees buzzing over the begonias and elephant ear bushes that grew beneath the window. The bees made me nervous. As big as my thumb, covered in black velvet fur, they flew all over our garden among the hibiscus, begonias, and banana trees. The dining room sat just under my second-story bedroom, and each morning I could hear the bees’ hum get louder as the sun rose.

  “Daddy,” I said, when a bee hit the windowpane, tapping persistently to come in.

  He looked up, rustled the paper as though shaking off the words from the page.

  “Can bees get inside like the geckos?” The bees hummed outside the glass, strategizing, planning their invasion, whispering their intentions to the elephant ears.

  “They’re just bees,” my dad said. “They won’t hurt you.”

  “They sting,” I reminded him. “Bees sting.”

  He looked out the window, watching for a moment as the black fur balls bounced, bumbling in the air. “Not these bees,” he said.

  I watched their clumsy flight, wondering what he meant. “Not these?” I asked.

  “These bees don’t sting. Not this kind.” He returned his gaze to the newspaper, rustling the pages again.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “They just aren’t the kind that sting. That’s the other kind.”

  I listened to their buzz wondering, Could I ignore them? Could I walk through the garden without having to watch my back? That corner, where the bushes grew lower, I liked to shimmy up the bamboo fence and jump down to the neighbor’s garden on the other side. I would try after breakfast, but for now I didn’t want Dad to return to his newspaper.

  I reminded him we needed to take our malaria pills every day.

  “That’s right,” he said. “You don’t want to be sick, like your mom.”

  “Did Mom not take her pills?” I asked.

  “Eat your kippers,” he said. My dad liked kippers for breakfast too, and this pleased me to no end. “Stinky, smelly fish,” my mother called them. But my dad and I liked the smoky, salty flavor. The stranger the food, the more we liked it.

  “Master,” Philip came through the kitchen door. “I see you are reading the Daily Sun.”

  “Yes, Philip, what is it?” My father looked up from his paper.

  “Then you read about the bad man on the loose. Small Sister should not go out of compound.” Philip stood straight as a soldier in his angel-white Nehru jacket and creased pants, his dark, pink-edged bare feet sticking out from underneath. “Too dangerous, Master.”

  “Philip, all kinds of crooks are out there all the time,” my father replied, a little grin on his face.

  “Yes, Master, but today the police are chasing a man who attacked a little girl.”

  “Amy’s going to a birthday party today, Philip, so she’ll have someone watching her. Thank you for looking out for her.”

  “Yes, Master.” Philip bowed and backed up into the kitchen. He’d said all he could say, but his face drew in with puzzlement. I wish I could have told Philip that I preferred to be confined to the compound with him than go to the birthday party.

  “Birthday parties,” my mother said,
“are fun,” as though there were no other possibility. The cake, the games, the prizes, the free-wheeling, rambunctious screamfest of it all. As a seven-year-old, other than the momentary stress of wondering whether anyone saw me cheating at pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, I usually liked going to birthday parties. But not this one. This party was the Italian girl’s birthday party. All the sons and daughters of my dad’s bosses would be there. And me. Apparently we were the only American family that worked for Agip Oil in Nigeria.

  My mom lay in her bed with a saggy-faced look. Dr. Hassan had just visited and said she needed to get out of bed more often, to try to encourage more energy. He said not to overdo it, but she needed some sunshine. Otherwise she was just lying in her grave waiting. I was trying my darnedest to behave, because Mom was angry about Dr. Hassan’s diagnosis.

  In her suitcase Mom had brought back from the States a collection of birthday gifts. The selection in Nigerian markets for little kids’ birthday parties consisted of thorn carvings, elephant hair bracelets. and ivory tusks. Not exactly expat children’s first choices.

  I watched Mom get out of bed, make her way down the hall, me following, then stop at the closet near my bathroom. When she reached up to the shelf we deemed the Birthday Gift Shelf, a shelf too high for me to reach or see what sat on it, and took down the Miss Polly doll, my awe couldn’t contain itself. The Miss Polly doll had golden hair and a tiny comb to keep it tangle free. The Miss Polly doll wore the cutest little green dress with embroidered trim. The Miss Polly doll I coveted for myself.

  “Can I have that doll?” I said to my mother. “I think I love her.”

  In her weakened malarial state, she handed me the doll, mumbled, “It’s a birthday gift, Amy. It’s selfish to want the gift for your own.” Then she headed back to her bed.

  “But,” I tried to explain. “Couldn’t we give another gift?” Even I saw the selfishness in that statement—the gift Mom had picked was too good to give away. But I’d really, truly fallen in love.

  My bare feet slapped the cool marble floor behind my mother as her house shoes shuffled back down the hall toward her room. I knew I had only about ten feet to convince her before she’d be back in bed, eyes closed and all communication turned off. “Please!” I whined.