by Y G Maupin
Beryl sat in her car in the alleyway behind Sarah and Alice’s house. She hurt all over and hunger pangs had started since she had never gotten around to eating. There were people walking around in the alleyway and she didn’t feel safe. “Where the hell are all these people coming from?” she thought out loud.
Opening her door and making double sure she locked it, Beryl walked through the wooden gate and felt an enormous sense of relief being in that backyard. Despite the house being over one hundred and seventy years old, it was situated on almost three acres downtown. The original owners had been very wealthy. Truth be told all the owners had been wealthy, she corrected herself.
The house was large and sat further back from the front street but leaving plenty of room in the back of the house to add on. There were two massive live oaks too far from each other to string up a hammock but close enough that their top branches had formed a thick canopy of leaves keeping the backyard shaded. There was a café style table with several ornate chairs in the back where she supposed Sarah probably would drink her tea whenever she felt like it. Sarah didn’t have to work, she mused. She could go to the bookstore with Alice whenever she wanted.
There was a quick stab of envy that subsided in shame. Beryl couldn’t begrudge the older woman and her position in her life. Beryl had no idea what sadness or personal tragedies Sarah might have gone through, or really anyone of the other women in her group. She hadn’t tried too hard to get close to them, although they were very open and willing to let her into their lives. She smiled at the warmth she felt when she was surrounded by them. Birdie was the kindest of them all. Gently, truly sweet and naïve in that way that young people were.
Beryl didn’t have that leeway in her life to let go the trappings of reality. She was reminded every day of her responsibilities. Work, pay bills, make sure that things are taken care of because she had no one else to fall back on if it all came crashing down. She didn’t know, she could only suppose that if something happened to Birdie, she had family that she could rely on for help. Beryl was alone and had been that way even before her marriage had ended.
Her parents had been older when they adopted her and she never had any siblings. She had never experienced the camaraderie of a tight knit group of women. It was nice. She felt respected and that they cared for her. The outbursts the night before, she chalked up to the alcohol and strong emotions tied into the ritual. She had loved her part and felt even closer to the earth and the powers she wanted to cultivate. Walking up the steps to the wraparound porch she saw their cat dozing near the doormat. He was fluffy and very round, nothing like her Mr. Bosley. She mentally reminded herself that she would be sure to get them all cat treats before she went home. Home.
Suddenly she felt tense in her spine when she remembered the intruders that had caused her to panic and crash through her furniture. The more she thought about it, the less she thought that they were hallucinations and that maybe they had broken into her condo. Her doors had remained locked and she had checked the windows. That was the only reason she still kind of believed that she had dreamt it all. Knocking on the door, she wondered what the emergency that T mentioned had been. Hopefully no one had gotten hurt the night before. She had been one of the last ladies to leave T’s house and everyone had seemed ok to drive. She knocked again and Alice opened.
“Oh I’m so glad to see you.” The older woman reached up and hugged her around the neck tightly. “We were so worried, because we had a hard time getting a hold of you this morning. Are you ok?” She stepped aside so that Beryl could enter.
“I had horrible sleep.” She started and then was surprised to see an older African American woman standing at the far end of the kitchen wiping down a counter. That’s strange, she thought. They hadn’t mentioned hiring a housekeeper. Alice followed Beryl’s gaze over her shoulder. “Oh don’t mind Beverly,” she added ,guiding Beryl to the study. “Can we get you something to drink?”
“Yes. And if there is anything that I could snack on please, I’m so sorry to ask, but I hurried right over before having breakfast.” Alice waived her apology away and said, “I’ll bring in a plate for you. Almost everyone is inside the study. We need to get you up to speed.”
Twelve
Calvin stood outside the accountant’s house for the second time in twenty four hours. The neighborhood had been in a quiet location, but the activity nearby had picked up with the increase in spirits roaming the town. Myron wasn’t at home, but he would be soon. He never stayed out for longer than a couple of hours, unless he had driven in to Fort Worth or Dallas, which would make it a three hour drive round trip. Myron had left with only his wallet and hadn’t taken a briefcase or any boxes, so chances were that he wasn’t going on a rare trip to visit a client. Maybe he was going to the grocery store or a dental appointment. Either way, the wait was for another hour, tops. Calvin was confident that Myron was the one he could convince to do himself in and Calvin would come back. Calvin had been dreaming about what he would do if he was alive again and his desires were simple. Truthfully you wouldn’t call it dreaming. The dead don’t sleep, so it was more like planning and making himself promises that back then he was sure would never be met. But here they all were, a new dawn in the age of the afterlife. Death was no longer permanent, if there was a will ingrained in the spirit, there was a way to resurface among the living. Calvin noticed a small group of spirits walking across the street. Every once in a while, they would stop in front of Myron’s house but Calvin would shoo them away. They could see each other but they always went out of their way to ignore one another, so the spirits continued walking down the street. It was almost a given that spirits on this side were selfish and, funnily enough, mean spirited. Kindness and courtesy didn’t exist, not in the truest sense of the word. There was nothing to gain in the spirit world. There was no commodity or hierarchy that Calvin knew of. He only surmised that death evened the playing field. There were no enclaves or country clubs for the rich spirits. Everyone intermingled. Everyone went through the same thing. It was the Great Equalizer, for no one could claim to be higher, more noble or richer than another. Yet most all were miserable and bored and the longer they had been dead, the more likely they were to just drift away to the outer edges of the death scape. One could see them in the distance, similar to what a long shot in a western movie looked like, where tumbleweeds drifted across desert dunes in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains. It was a wasteland of the dead. Calvin needed to continue practicing getting in Myron’s house. His first attempt was to walk right through the garage door, but that hadn’t worked. It felt like a fuzzy force field buffered his effort. He moved to the front door, and out of habit, he reached for the door handle and found his hand went through the brass fixture. No luck. He shoved with his shoulder, like he was trying to break in, but it only served to make him more frustrated. Patience, he thought. I have all the time in the world. No one else would be coming for Myron. Alive or dead. The windows were useless to enter through, those were the most difficult to try, harder than concrete. He went around to the back where the door entered the kitchen. He pressed with all his might and he was inside. Astonished that he had success, Calvin took a moment to look at his surroundings. He hadn’t been inside any home other than his own since he died. And he didn’t have to struggle to get in, he had floated in. The kitchen was small and tidy. The kitchenette style table reminded him of the diners that went out of style in the 70’s, with plastic covered seats and metal frames. A lone dish towel hung from the handle bar of the oven. It was frayed red plaid and it looked like it would rather die too. Walking around in there was less than five seconds so he stepped into what had to have been the living room. Calvin had never been invited this far into Myron’s home. Myron had converted a part of the carport into an office and saw clients there. Calvin had entered the fortress of Myron’s solitude and had found it to be dull and colorless, very much like Myron himself. He snooped at the bookshelves. Mostly historical biographies and books
about gardening. Myron didn’t have a garden, he thought. Must have been his wife’s he decided. She dreamt of green lush grasses and flowers that trumpeted in color bordering leaves like palm fronds. And Myron dreamed of people that had already been successful and were already dead. Like he would soon be if Calvin had his way. He found that there weren’t many picture frames on the shelves, but there was a wall that was partially covered in a collage of black framed pictures. Black and white, grainy photos of people standing near tractors or holding up largemouth bass. The most recent picture had been an orange tinged grainy photo of Myron and his wife on their wedding day. They were both wearing the oversized framed glasses that were popular in the late seventies into the early 80’s. Calvin peered closer and could see that despite Myron’s wife having a large wild grin on her face, making her look absolutely crazy in love, had a tight clutch on her bouquet, like she was hanging on for dear life. Myron’s smile was wan. Like he was admitting defeat in the act of getting married, but Calvin knew that Myron had been lucky to have found someone willing to spend a good chunk of years with him, until she wasn’t and left. Calvin sighed and moved on. The rest of the photos were more of the same, black and whites, old time looking pictures with no sign of children. He heard a car pull up and all of a sudden he felt panicked. This was the real thing. He had to find a place to hide even though chances were good that Myron wouldn’t have a clue that his biggest client was waiting in his house to kill him.
T looked up when the sliding doors to the study opened with Alice and Beryl. All the women stood up and rushed to greet her and for the first time ever, Beryl felt like there were people that cared for her. Birdie and Sharon guided her to a good spot on the couch and after she had assured them she was better now that she was with them, they went back to the books they were reading and putting in piles around the floor.
“This isn’t it,” T announced, after plowing through her second book so far. This was nothing like cramming for an exam as Sharon had tried to convince her when they had started several hours ago. In all events, it was likely that Sharon was trying to convince herself.
“This sucks,” Beryl whispered, sniggering as Birdie feigned death with a large book in her arms.
“Gods, I know that this sucks. Guess what? Random murders and suicides suck too. We just have to keep plugging away,” Alice replied from her desk.
“Hold up,” Anesta said quietly. “I think I have something.” She turned the book back to look at its cover. It was a journal transcribed from Portuguese in the 1400’s by a rogue monk named Fra Jacobo. The credit was given to one of his followers from an underground cult they had developed the century before during one of the plagues that had hit the countryside in the early 1300’s. This plague had started in Genoa and made its way north, stopping in the Pyrenees but having made its way west through Spain, France and Portugal. “This book mentions that the villages had deaths happening so rapidly but while their people were decimated, areas to the far south and even farther north had increases in population, with no recordings of births to match,” Anesta said.
“Well further North ,would be the non-Catholic countries like Finland, Norway, and Sweden and the far South continent were Muslim,” Alice answered. “Maybe they didn’t record their births the way the Catholic Church did as part of their sacraments.”
“That’s a stretch,” Sarah replied. “There’s nothing saying that the spirit transfers all only occurred outside of the plague areas. There has to be more for me to say that this happened back then too.” She paused. “Why would it be that the ability to come back to the living would stop? It could become like a turnstile. You die and then turn right back around and come back,” she reasoned. It made sense to her that way.
“Because something made you stop.” T replied. “There has to be some drawback to coming across. I mean what if you come back as a slug? Or a man comes back as a woman or vice versa.”
Anesta shook her head. “Anjolie said it doesn’t work that way from what they had observed. Although they couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the new body came from or where on earth it was at, they knew that spirits were inhabiting other bodies, and not inanimate objects or animals.”
“I would like to come back as a bird,” Birdie announced. “I think I would have a good time flying around and pooping on people that had made me mad,” she laughed.
Sharon bopped her on the head with a thin volume from France. “You can’t be an animal, silly bird. That’s what she just said.”
Birdie rubbed her head and asked. “Did your sister say if there were any others that had been around way back in the days if there was a time this has happened before?”
Anesta thought for a moment. “That’s a good question. I need to ask her. Give me one second.” Looking for a pen and paper in her satchel, she opened up her notebook and said. “Let’s brainstorm some questions and see if we can get more Intel from her. Until I can convince her to join us here, which she says she doesn’t feel comfortable doing, I’ll have to be the intermediary for our intermediary.”
Within the hour Anesta had compiled a good list of questions to ask her twin. She got up to leave as the gathering was starting to break up.
“Thank you for all your help. We’re going to have to find a way to regroup to see what we’ve determined but tomorrow is the start of the work week,” Alice said, stacking piles of books away from the doors.
“We all need to be on the lookout for whatever is out of place. If any spirit does contact us, we should seek to find what they want and let them know you’re not eligible for their plans,” Sarah reminded everyone.
“If you don’t feel safe at home,” Alice added.” We have room here. Beverly seems very benign for the most part.”
“That you know of,” Added Beryl.
“Well, I think if she wanted to do one of us in, she would have already tried. It sounds like the dead are impatient,” Sarah replied.
The women said their goodbyes within the hour and went their separate ways except for Birdie, who opted to accept their offer to stay and was cozily ensconced in a smaller bedroom downstairs off from the living room. Sarah found Alice staring off into the distance with her toothbrush in one hand and the toothpaste in another in front of the bathroom mirror. Sarah walked up to the other sink in the adjoining counter and turned the faucet.
After sometime, as Sarah just thoughtfully observed her partner, Alice twitched as if waking up from a trance and startled she turned to Sarah. “I’m sorry. Did you say something?” she asked breathlessly.
Sarah chuckled. “No. Just watching you wondering where you were traveling in your mind.” Alice ran her toothbrush under the faucet and put it away, not having remembered exactly the process of brushing her teeth but knowing that it happened because of the distinct minty taste in her mouth. She cleared her throat and filled a glass with water. She was remembering all the lifetimes she had passed through going as far back as she could remember. Alice always knew that she had been on earth, but as different people and in different bodies and times. She could remember almost vividly her days that she had spent in every version of herself going far back at least a millennium. Even going back further, but those memories were becoming hazy, which to her meant that her current embodiment would be winding down. She never knew when that would be, and she was glad not to know because she was certain that her personality was the kind that would try to prolong her stay in her current self. She had loved many, both men and women and she had lived both as a man and woman in her different reincarnations. She grew and learned and became braver at every passing. She also had been rewarded with an increasing curiosity to learn, retain the knowledge gained and to live with compassion for others. She backed up and simultaneously leaned down with her hands on the edge of the sink to stretch out her back, stood up and drank the water in her glass. A great deep sigh escaped and Sarah smiled. “What’s going on, dear? Do you want to talk about it?” Alice made a face that said she was over the idea and hugged
her love. “I’m sorry honey, it’s just been a very long day. With everything that’s going on it feels like I can’t shut off my thoughts but with the continued rehashing in my mind of what is exploding in front of us, I can’t seem to get away from it all, and Sarah? I want to not think about this because it feels like that’s all I CAN do at this moment. I feel powerless, for myself and for the others. It’s just...” at this point Sarah framed her hands around Alice’s face. Staring at her, smiling and then gently she leaned down and kissed her lips. “I know. I’m there too. This hurts my head. But let’s go to bed.
Thirteen
T drove him in silence. Spirits coming back and what if? She pushed the thought from her mind. Last October, Jackson and T had gone through a bad week, not the first, of arguments and yelling matches.
“You don’t get what I’m asking,” Jackson intoned dully, after they had been going back and forth for the better part of an hour.
“Oh I understand perfectly what you want to know,” she retorted, arms crossed pacing in the doorway of the living room. “You want to know if I’m going to be the traditional stay at home mom as soon as we get married. Well, sorry, Jackson. I love being a teacher and I know plenty of parents that can successfully juggle work and kids.”
Jackson threw his hands up in the air. ”I’m not saying you can’t. Listen to me without interrupting me.” He stopped her by putting up an index finger in the air. “One second, let me finish what I’m trying to say before you run me over.” She frowned. “I’m just asking if it was possible that we try for kids right away rather than waiting until we get to our thirties, is all I’m asking.” T slapped her hands down at her side and stomped away, very much like a spoiled child.
