Nat glares at Gus. “Sometimes you can be such a jerk.”
“All I’m saying is that of course that’s the girl,” Gus snaps.
We’ve made it to Vinegar Hill. This is a long high walk that takes you up from Dumbo to the northern part of the Heights. As we walk, the joyous barks and yips from the dog run on our left pull me back to the real world. The world where ghosts don’t exist.
Nat looks at the dog run. “Too bad you don’t have a pet. In a lot of the stories I read, they can see ghosts even when we can’t.”
“Yeah, I remember that too,” I say. “But my mom’s allergic to almost all kinds of cats, hamsters, and guinea pigs, and our landlord doesn’t allow dogs.”
“Not even to visit?” Gus asks. “We could just, you know, bring one by, maybe….”
Nat is not having it. “You can’t just bring any animal in there. It has to have some connection to the place.”
“Who made you the expert?” Gus says. “I say we try it.”
I shake my head. “My parents are not going to let a dog or cat in our apartment. And definitely not in that room. It has to be perfect for our guests.”
“Whatever,” Gus grumbles. “You’re the one who has to live with the ghost.”
We’ve arrived at my place. I turn to go in. “Thanks, guys. I’ll, um, let you know if anything happens.”
Gus shoots me a look. “That is, if you make it through the night.”
I try not to show how much this freaks me out but clearly fail. Gus bursts out laughing.
“Dude! You should see the look on your face! I’m kidding!”
Nat smacks him on the arm. “That wasn’t funny at all. Danny, don’t these…things…normally happen when there are guests?”
I think for a minute. “Yeah…for the most part. Like they’re disturbing her, or something…”
“So you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Nat says.
“At least for tonight!” Gus adds helpfully.
I wave goodbye and head inside.
At dinner, I tell my parents about visiting Katia and show them a copy of the picture Katia printed out with the girl’s face.
My mom says, “Danny, I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.”
My dad wipes his mouth with one of the paper towels we use as napkins when we don’t have guests. “Film is something I know a little bit about.”
This is what he says when he’s about to give me a lecture on something he thinks he’s an expert on. Okay, he is a filmmaker, but still…
“Digital artifacts can look like anything, especially when you zoom in that close,” he begins. “I’m not saying you don’t see something, just that—”
“Are you telling me you don’t see it?”
“See what?” he asks. “You say it looks like a girl? People are very suggestible. If I told you it looked like a rabbit, you would probably see a rabbit.”
“It doesn’t look like a girl, it is a girl,” I say.
My mom pushes my hair back from my forehead. She looks concerned. “I don’t think you’re getting enough sleep. Kids your age need at least ten hours.”
“Tell that to the people coming into my room and waking me up,” I mutter.
“Your mom’s right,” Dad says. “How about an early night?”
“Fine!” I say a little too loudly, pushing my chair back. “How about I take my shower now?”
I stomp off to my room and get clean clothes. I head into the bathroom, and turn on the water. Part of me doesn’t want to take a hot shower so there won’t be any steam, but another part (okay, most parts) is not about to take a cold shower. I also have my phone with me, so if there is another message from our (not so) friendly ghost, I’ll have proof this time.
Thankfully, when I peer out of the shower, there’s nothing but steam on the mirror.
Maybe I will be left alone tonight.
I get into bed, and there’s a soft knock on the door. I stiffen, but it’s just my dad. He lowers his head to fit into my room and sits on the corner of my bed.
“I’m sorry about dinner. You feeling any better?”
I nod. “Yeah. I’m sorry too. I know ghosts aren’t real. At least, that’s what I always thought. But there have been so many—”
“Changes. I think that might have something to do with it,” my dad says. “You know you don’t do well with change.”
I want to say I would have been absolutely fine with changing my room to Jake’s the way we had originally planned, but decide now is not the time to bring it up. You know what change I’d do really well with? If my parents would stop telling me I don’t do well with change.
Dad kisses me on the forehead and looks into my eyes. “I promise, Danny, this is just temporary. I had lunch with Jack Tempkin again, and he says he’s got some people in Toronto who are looking for scripts….”
I used to get excited when Dad said things like that. Now I just pretend to be excited. “That’s great, Dad. Fingers crossed.”
“Right,” he says, looking like maybe he’s pretending a little too. “Fingers crossed.”
He leaves. I drift off to sleep.
When I wake up, I see light under my door. It feels like I’ve been asleep for ages. I hope I haven’t overslept.
I open the door and it’s all wrong. The light isn’t coming from the windows. It’s not sunlight. There’s a light glowing in the kitchen.
I try to catch my breath when I see two people sitting at our kitchen table. But it’s not our kitchen table. It looks older.
I don’t want to join them, but something is pushing me toward the kitchen. As I walk I hear whispers coming from the walls. “Yean…ki…la…” The whispers are all around me as I approach the table.
There is a candle burning in the middle of the table, and plates and glasses, like it’s set for a meal or something. One chair is empty.
I realize that the man is my father, with his head down. But he’s in clothes from another time. A collarless shirt and old baggy pants.
He gestures for me to join him at the table. As I get closer, I see in the middle of the plate in front of each seat is something small, wrinkled, and black. It looks like a dried brain.
The voices whispering from the walls have changed. Now they’re humming a song. The song! What is that song?
My mom turns and looks at me, and my dad does the same.
My mother has her hair in a braid and is wearing a lace collar.
There are dark circles under her eyes.
But she has no eyes.
Neither does my father. Sitting in the sockets are what look like almonds, and they’re staring at me.
I am shaking so violently now that my mother reaches out.
I think she is doing this to calm me.
But instead, in a girlish voice so different from her own, she screams.
“Where is my little boy?”
“I guess I fainted. I mean, I’ve never fainted, but that’s what must have happened, because the next thing I remember is my parents shaking me.”
Nat is staring at me, her big dark eyes unblinking. “Why were they shaking you?”
“They found me in the kitchen in the morning. I was sitting in a chair, slumped over.”
Gus pushes his tray away, his lunch half-eaten. This is a first. “Dude, that is freakier than any ghost story I’ve ever heard.”
Normally Nat would be at chess club during lunch on Friday, but when she got my text, she canceled so she could hear what I had to say.
“So they were eating miniature brains?” Gus asks, eyeing what’s left of his casserole with a queasy look. He pushes it away.
I look down at my own tray, which is hardly touched. I don’t have much of an appetite either. “I didn’t say there were brains. They were something small
and wrinkled. It was hard to see in the candlelight.”
“So what did your parents do when you told them?” Nat asks.
“They think I should see a therapist.”
Gus eats a forkful of noodles, chewing thoughtfully. That didn’t last long. “So they think you’re nuts?”
“They didn’t put it that way,” I say carefully. “More like they are concerned.”
“So they think you’re cracking up,” Gus says.
Nat has been folding her napkin into smaller and smaller squares. I’ve seen her do this with notebook paper when she’s trying to work out a particularly difficult math problem. It helps her concentrate.
Finally, she looks up at me. “I don’t think you’re nuts.”
“Gee, thanks,” I say.
“Too many weird things have been happening. So what we have to figure out is, if it is the girl in the window, who is she?”
Gus scratches his head with his fork. Yes, the same fork he has been eating with. Because Gus. “Is there a ghost directory?”
“Ha ha,” says Nat, meaning “not ha ha.” “She has to have some connection with the apartment, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” I answer. “But she could be anyone. I mean, just by looking at her I’d guess she was Eastern European, but I don’t know.”
“Yeah, but she could also be Italian, Greek, even Arab,” suggests Nat, ticking off the possibilities on her fingers. “But at least we can narrow down a little when she was alive.”
Gus gives her a skeptical look. “How do you figure?”
“Simple,” Nat answers. “Do you know what year the building was built?”
“I dunno,” I say. “Sometime around the turn of the century, I guess.”
“Well, that’s a start,” Nat says, gathering her books as the bell rings. “I’m working at the store on Saturday, if you want to come by.”
We agree to meet then, since it’s the last Friday of the month and Gus and Nat know I have plans.
* * *
Ever since I can remember, my family has spent at least one Friday a month celebrating Shabbos with my mom’s mother, Bubbe Ruth. And yes, when I was little I used to call her “Baby Ruth” and thought the candy bar was named after her, which is a story my mother will be telling people for as long as she lives.
“Bubbe” is Yiddish for “grandmother,” and Bubbe Ruth is about as Brooklyn Jewish as they come. I don’t mean religious, just the way she talks and acts. For example, most Jews today call the Friday Sabbath meal “Shabbat.” But old-school Jews in Brooklyn still say “Good Shabbos” and “Shabbos dinner.” When I asked why, Bubbe Ruth said, “When I was a girl, we called it Shabbos. Now everyone wants to be fancy and call it Shabbat like they’re Sephardic or something.”
Apparently Jews like us who came from Russia and Poland used to call it Shabbos, but the Jews from Spain and France and other places call it Shabbat.
I think this is one reason my dad and mom aren’t very religious.
It’s too complicated.
Don’t get me wrong, my parents are proud of being Jewish; they just don’t go to services or anything.
But Bubbe Ruth does, at least on the High Holidays. Other than that, my family goes to her place once a month and does all these things like blessing the wine and the braided loaves of challah. My aunt Tracy in Westchester comes with her family when she can, and my uncle Artie brings his family in from California for Thanksgiving.
Bubbe Ruth lives in an old high-rise apartment building farther out in Brooklyn, on Kings Highway, where my mom was brought up. It’s nice. My grandfather died a long time ago. But she’s not lonely. She has lots of friends.
Well, neighbors, anyway.
Who we hear all about.
Especially right after they leave the elevator.
“Her I can’t stand” is a typical Bubbe Ruth comment.
When we arrive at her building it’s already pretty close to sundown. According to Jewish law, we’re supposed to be inside and celebrating by now, but we’re kind of loose about that. We have to change trains to get to Bubbe Ruth’s, so it usually takes longer than if we had a car. Brooklyn is a lot bigger than you might think.
I press the button with GERSON 16E printed next to it.
There is a long pause, and then the intercom crackles. It’s hard to hear through all the static.
“Who is it?” Bubbe Ruth yells. All these years and Mom has yet to convince her that she doesn’t have to speak quite so loudly into the microphone.
“It’s us!” I yell back.
“Who?”
My mother pushes me out of the way. “Mom! Let us in!”
After a few more questions, Bubbe Ruth finally accepts that it is indeed her family and we’re buzzed in. Immediately I’m hit with the same smells as always—a combination of cabbage, chicken, and pickles. I’m guessing that’s what it is, because to be honest, it’s just “old people apartment” smells to me.
We take the elevator, which is working (not a given). As soon as the door opens we hear Bubbe Ruth’s booming voice. “Hello! Hello! What happened? The subway was broken?”
“The subway wasn’t broken,” my mom says, kissing her.
“It’s just that you’re so late,” Bubbe Ruth murmurs.
My dad hands her a bag of rugelach from Haddad’s. “We’re fifteen minutes late.”
She ignores his comment and admires the pastries. “You brought! From the Arab place, right?”
We’ve been bringing her rugelach from Haddad’s for as long as I can remember, and she still calls it “the Arab place.” Old people…they don’t always say things in the nicest way.
Bubbe Ruth looks at me, and a huge smile creases her wide face. I see a little of Mom in her when she smiles. “Danele! Such a big boy he is!”
DAN-ah-luh. That’s Bubbe’s way of saying Danny.
She then adds something that sounds like “kenna hora poo poo poo.”
I remember asking my mom why she does this, and my mom shrugged and said she always says it after saying something good. I looked it up and it’s actually spelled kein ayin hara, which is Yiddish for “May the evil eye stay away,” and the “poo poo poo” part is when you spit three times between your fingers to help ward off the evil eye. It’s kind of like knocking on wood. I guess so many bad things have happened to the Jews throughout history that when you say something nice you have to say this right after to make sure it won’t bring on some sort of misery.
Bubbe Ruth sighs. You have never heard a real sigh until you’ve heard my Bubbe sigh. It’s like her whole body is sighing. It’s like she’s sighing for all the grandmothers everywhere on the planet.
“It’s wonderful Jakele is off to his college—such a brilliant boy! But I miss having him here.”
“We all miss him,” Mom tells her.
Bubbe Ruth sighs again.
We all stand there missing Jake, and then Bubbe Ruth springs into action.
“Okay, enough about Jake. The food will overcook.”
Bubbe Ruth hustles us into her dining room, which is already set with nice china. I can smell chicken for real this time.
She and my mother light the candles and say the blessing, and my dad and I say, “Omayn,” which is the Jewish way of saying “amen.”
Bubbe Ruth heads to the kitchen, humming away. She is, as my uncle Artie likes to point out, always humming. It drives him crazy. “Stop humming, Ma!” he’ll yell.
Bubbe Ruth just waves her hand. “Who is it hurting?”
I kind of like her humming. I mean, it’s never an actual song, just some notes going up and down occasionally. But Uncle Artie can’t stand it.
“Ma, at least hum a song!” he’ll yell.
Bubbe Ruth laughs. “I am.”
“You could have fooled me,” U
ncle Artie mutters.
As I say, it’s always been just random notes.
Until tonight.
Tonight the notes sound familiar.
A chill goes through my body.
I am finding it hard to breathe normally, because this feels like the ghost has reached all the way from our house to my bubbe’s warm apartment.
I try to sound casual when I ask, “Bubbe, what’s that song you’re humming?”
She laughs like always. “Tonight he asks? It’s what I always hum. I used to sing it to your mother when she was a baby, remember, darling? And I sang it to you too. It’s a Yiddish lullaby.”
I need to know. “What’s it called?”
She thinks for a minute. Hums a few bars of the song I’ve come to know so well, and to dread.
Her face lights up. “ ‘Rozhinkes mit mandlen,’ ” she announces.
I am back in my dream, at that kitchen table. That horrible, terrible kitchen table of my worst nightmare. So I ask, “What does that mean in English?”
“ ‘Raisins and Almonds,’ of course,” Bubbe Ruth says.
I glare at Mom. “I hummed that tune to you a dozen times! You didn’t remember it?”
Mom looks annoyed. “It didn’t sound like that when you hummed it.”
Bubbe Ruth looks at my mom with amusement. “Nu, your son doesn’t seem to mind my humming.”
“It’s just that I’ve heard that same song being hummed in our apartment for the past few weeks, and I couldn’t figure out what it was,” I say.
“You know, Danny, she hummed it when you were a baby, too,” my dad grumbles, defending my mom. “Why didn’t you remember it?”
I flop down onto one of Bubbe Ruth’s chairs, which is filled with old People magazines. “When I was a baby! Who remembers things from when they were a baby?”
“Maybe you do, without realizing it,” my mom says softly.
That stops me cold. What if I’m just hearing the tune in my head? What if it’s something I happened to remember for no reason? What if there’s no ghostly singing?
The Ghost in Apartment 2R Page 13