It rasps out. So you call again, this time after clearing your throat. “Who is it?”
“Hello, Ms. Walker? I, I am August Ma—”
You crack open the door and look through it with your one non-bruised eye. “I know who you are.” It sounds like an accusation when you say it, but I don’t know why.
“I … I … just heard…” He trails off. I stare at him. He looks so much younger than what I remember. Did he just want to see if this was a prank? Real? What was he expecting? I try to remember the last time he was on our porch and can’t. I try to remember the last time we spoke, but where there should be memories to turn to, there is only fog. Something’s there, itching at my mind, but nothing reaches out to illuminate me.
He waits for you to speak. I can see it on his face. But you don’t say a word.
He finally says it. “Is … is it true? About Ellie?”
You stare at him dazed, as if you are confused. As if you can’t quite piece together the English language anymore. With the subtlest of motions, you nod and close the door, locking the boy and his realness out, and keeping us tucked in here where it looks like you’re trying to pretend that I am just somewhere in the house and you are somewhere else, and it is all right, yet we both know …
It isn’t.
You slide down the wooden door as August knocks again,
and again,
and again,
but he doesn’t pound as loudly as my heart.
Funny, how hearts beat, wild and frantic, even in a ghost like me.
6
Momma,
I stare at you.
You are wearing your work uniform, but your shift should have started hours ago. You have never missed a day of work since you were hired at the grocery store as a cashier a few years back. But you are slumped against the door, hands clenched at your temples. You don’t have makeup on either.
You always brush on your mask so the black and blue is buried under piles of CoverGirl twenty-four-hour foundation. You paint on eye shadow and blush, and your face always looks like a Crayola box. Fake.
I used to be embarrassed that you were my momma. Embarrassed by how you smiled so much, lied so much with foundation and liner crinkling and smudging by your eyes. Yet, even in my embarrassment, I felt ashamed because I knew the pain hiding behind that mask.
Now here you are, face clean of makeup, eyes nearly swollen shut, the skin black and blue, not the powder. I walk closer to you and kneel down. I don’t know if I imagine the cold floor or actually feel it.
I am not sure why I am taken aback, but I am. Without the makeup, without the lies, you look just like me.
Pale skin. Freckles. Chocolate eyes.
And like a quivering breath, a whisper of a vision at first, a memory shudders into place.
* * *
We have chocolate eyes.
It had been so long ago, but now I remember.
I was four, wasn’t I?
I remember looking into the rearview mirror and seeing your eyes and saying, “Mommy, Mommy! We have the same color eyes!”
You beamed back at me. “Yes, we do, love. Chocolate! We have yummy chocolate eyes!” I liked that. Chocolate eyes. You had a long drawl to your voice. There was no twang to it, just a richness that made me think of sweet tea on summer days. I was still smiling when we pulled up to our house and saw an old ’79 Cadillac in our driveway.
Your smile fell and you drove by our house.
“Mommy! You missed our house, silly!” I was giggling. I saw how you tensed up, the way you kept looking into the mirror, the way you drove to all the wrong places. We parked in parking lots and drove around neighborhood streets. You even stopped in front of a police station. I could hear your breathing. It was shaky. I asked you why we couldn’t go home.
You didn’t say anything at first. You just sat there staring out the window, looking like the only thing on your mind was escape. Then, the world came back into focus and you said, “Mommy’s just thinking, sweetheart.”
We sat in front of the police station a long time. You never got out of the car, and as the sun started to set, you pulled out of the parking spot and kept driving.
I didn’t mind. I liked our