Losing eight years of full-on life due to a long-ass, supernatural hibernation? Meh.
But during those eight years, I—my consciousness—became a ghost, separated from my body throughespanto, the name for the phenomenon our precolonial ancestors understood.
When someone experiences a traumatic event that makes them feel enough fear, their spirit splits and begins to wander this realm all on its own. The spirit is essentially untethered and can cause what colonizers have named symptoms of PTSD, or depression, or those of other mental health crises. Our ancestors would call upon a curandera to sing the spirit back to the wounded person. To make them whole again. But that’s only if you knowyou’ve got espanto to start with—if you know that you are actually stillalive. Which I did not.
As far as I knew, I had died when I fell. None of us were aware, not even me, that my very-much-living body was tucked into an old tree, being tended to by ancestral deities. My ghost was bound to my eldest sister Sage through her tears. When she cried, my form got stronger, and she could see me. She said it was as though I were really right in front of her, made all the more horrifying when she tried to touch me and her hand would simply slip right through my body.
When Sage didn’t cry—and believe me, that woman is really good at suppressing tears—I became fuzzy, like how the fog comes over the sea sometimes, slithering and shadowy and opaque, and nothing felt real.
It was horrible. Like living in the grayest of dreams, in which edges went in and out of focus, in which everything became as dull as the inside of my grandmother Sonya’s colorless mini-mansion. Even sound became dull echoes, as though someone were calling for me but they were too far for me to sense, over and over again.
I thought if I could get Sage to make up with Teal, who she had a falling out with over my “death,” then I could move on to some afterlife that was better than the cloudy blob I’d been experiencing. But something else happened instead.
Sage found me—my body—asleep in the woods, inside the hollow of an ancient oak tree. Light sparkled over me from between the leaves above. And below me were leaves, arranged as though someone had woven together a cottagecore bed.Step in, Nadia had told me, the ghost. And I did. I stepped in, and I returned to this world, the World of the Living, rather than the World of What Is In Between.
It was startling. Correction: Itstillstartles me, being back to this realm. Colors are so bright, I sometimes spend whole days marveling at the way the sky is a living watercolor painting, turning from indigo to gray to blue, violet and hot pink and clementine, and sometimes all these colors at once. Dotted with clouds that shapeshift like Nadia says some of our most magical ancestors used to: from a rabbit with spotted ears to running cats to two humans, kissing and kissing like they would die if they stopped. All to dissipate and become formless once more. Once as I watched the sky like this, I swear I felt an old god nearby. I might’ve even heard him say:This is just like creation.But when I turned my head, there was no one there but late-afternoon shadows spilled across Nadia’s garden.
In a way, things have been amazing ever since returning. I caneatagain. Nadia’s flan, and her enchiladas, oozing with all kinds of cheese. Big slices of pizza the size of my head from downtown pizzerias, their crusts just the slightest bit charred, dipped in garlic butter. Fresh papaya, orange as sunset, sliced up with lime squeezed all over it, eaten with my bare hands while surrounded by lavender bubbles in the bath.
But some things really suck, too. I made the mistake of telling the police, the first responders who had shown up the day I returned, that I’d simply lost my memory. That one moment I fell, and the next, I woke up still in the woods—just eight years had passed.
I felt comfortable with that version of events because…well. It’s true. One moment I fell, the next I awoke in the woods. These are all literal facts, and that doesn’t change just because I left out eight years of living as a ghost in a fathomless, foggy void.
But I guess the facts were simply not enough, because eversince, the entire town, save like two people, treat me like I’m a lying freak.
It doesn’t help that I basically live in the woods, and the only time I see people other than my family, it’s because I’ve startled them while they were hiking. Maybe or maybe not while holding several baby foxes in my arms.
One of the people who treats me like I’m human would be my neighbor, William. Whose front door I am currently standing in front of, with a heavy covered ceramic dish balanced in my hands.
I use my elbow to tap the doorbell, but there’s no answer. I then use the tip of my leather shoe to “knock.”
Finally, the door rattles, and there William is, in all his grumpy, bedhead, cardigan glory. “About time,” he grumbles, opening the door wide to let me in.
“Excuse me, but I’ve been here for five whole minutes.” I shut the door behind me with my hip, a little difficult to do in my narrow tweed pencil skirt. I have the evening shift at the library tonight, so I’m dressed for work. Black Mary Janes, small fishnet stockings, the aforementioned pencil skirt, and a cream, button-down silk top. Teal helped me with fine-tuning this style, the one she calls “sexy librarian.” I have to admit, I do feel sexy when I get dressed up for work. It’s too bad there is no one else to appreciate it besides my sisters and my boss.
Not even William gives me a second glance, instead opting to point at the dish in my hands. “Lasagna?”
“Yes, sir. Should only take a few minutes to preheat in the microwave. And you can have the leftovers if you want, as usual.”
He makes an old-man-grump sound in response, but I can tell he’s pleased. He isn’t the sort of guy who will go all out and make a homemade lasagna just for himself.
Back during my ghost days, I snooped on my neighbors alot. Ethical? Maybe not. Okay, definitely not. But I hadliterallynothing else going on. I’d spend my time frolicking from house to house, cutting through backyards filled with overgrown switchgrass and dandelions, or paved brick pathways, hopping over firepits and barking dogs (who sensed I was there but I don’t think could ever actually see me). I could slide into anyone’s home through the doors, walls, windows, and once, I walked right through an upright washer and dryer unit. Eventually, I kinda found myself zoning in on William, who we used to call Old Man Noemi back when we were little kids.
Here’s the thing I’ve learned about people from my time as a ghost. People often, if not always, say things they don’t mean. They will dance around their words till I’m damn dizzy from trying to follow conversations. They will compliment how “confident” you are, but the second you turn your head, they will give knowing smirks to their friends, implying that you should be ashamed. They will say they’re “fine” but look as upset as a baby bird who tried to fly just a touch too early and swooped to the forest floor with a plop.
You know what doesn’t lie, though? Objects. The myriad of things people surround themselves with and use and collect.
Down the street, Mr.and Mrs.Garcia seemed like the perfect couple—she would smile wide-eyed smiles as he told everyone about his promotion and new car and how they were saving up for a bigger house by the beach.
When I entered their home, though, the objects told the truth. The surplus of first-aid supplies she kept for when he lost his temper and took it out on her. The divorce attorney’s number, scrawled on a tiny piece of paper, hidden in the pages of an oldfamily Bible. Eventually, and thankfully, their lives revealed the truths inherent in these objects—Mr.Garcia lives alone in that big, dusty house, and he yells at the television each evening instead of Mrs.Garcia. And nowsherents a little bungalow near downtown, enamored with her newest companions: two fuzzy gray and white kittens named Possum and Squirrel.
With William’s house, I walked in as my ghostly form and saw that he’d been living on Hungry-Man frozen dinners, their packages piled in neat little rows in the recycling bin in the garage. There was a tiny wooden container of handwritten recipes in the kitchen, shoved behind the toaster. I knew his late wife, Emmie, must’ve written them, because there were little notes on a few of the cards—things likeWilliam’s favoriteandWilliam’s birthday dinner.
William would never tell anyone that he hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in years, but the objects in his home told the truth better than he ever could. So after I adjusted to the Land of the Living…I began bringing him food, once a week.
“I’m not a damn charity case!” he’d grumped that first time I’d shown up with a pot filled with picadillo and rice.
“Of course you’re not,” I’d responded. “But we have too much food. Are you really the kind of person to let it go to waste?”
