by Karen Strong
“Jasper is downstairs with the salt,” I said. “We’re going to bless it and put it around the house. Maybe those haint things will leave us alone then.”
She moaned and shifted away from me. “I don’t care about the stupid salt.”
“Janie, this is important,” I said. “We can’t let the haints get inside the house.”
My cousin didn’t budge. She moved closer to the wall. I wasn’t sure what else to say. What do you tell someone who is missing their mama? I had never been away from my own mama for more than a few days. How would I feel if I knew I wouldn’t see her smile or be able to brush her hair and give her a goddess braid? If I couldn’t share a bagel with her in the morning? I didn’t know how any of that felt, but I knew that it had to hurt. That heavy feeling at the bottom of your stomach. The sharp sting of tears that never come. I knew what it felt like to miss a best friend.
I tugged at her blanket again. “Janie, I know you feel bad. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to make you feel better. It’s not fair that you can’t go to Paris and be with your mama. You should be with her and not with us. But since you’re with us, I want you to know that I’m here for you. And we want you to help us.”
Janie peeked out from underneath the covers. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying.
“I know she promised you,” I continued. “But I’m sure she meant California and not Paris! I mean, do you even have a passport? By the time you got one, she would be done with the movie. Think of all the fancy things she’ll get you. Authentic French stuff. I’m kind of jealous.”
Janie sat up in the bed and took off her hair scarf, rubbing the satin with her fingers. “I really miss her.”
“Of course you do—I would miss my mama too,” I said. “But she left you here because she knew you were safe and with family. People who care about you. I don’t think she would be happy to know you’re sad.”
Janie fiddled with the scarf, winding it around her hands. “I’m sorry I haven’t been that nice to you.”
“That’s okay. I’m sorry for being a bossy nag.” I smiled, remembering what she had called me that day at Mrs. Greene’s house.
Janie smiled back at me. “You’re really good at that.”
“Whatever,” I said, getting up from her bed. “Get dressed and come downstairs. We have work to do!”
• • •
Jasper had fetched two ceramic angels from Mama’s garden.
“Figured we could put the angels on the front porch,” Jasper said.
I touched one of the wings. “Easy enough to put faith in angels,” I said.
Ellis had gathered up horseshoes that Granddaddy Duncan had left on his last visit. I still remember the clangs and ringing of the game they played during Mama’s birthday celebration.
“We can put these near the back door,” I said.
Janie came out into the backyard, her braids pulled up in a high ponytail. Her eyes were less red now, and she went over and took some of the horseshoes from Ellis.
After placing the angels on the front porch and the horseshoes near the back door, I worried Mama would think something was going on, but maybe she wouldn’t notice.
We gathered around the rock salt, and I opened up the bag, releasing a puff of white smoke that caused me to cough.
“So we’re gonna say a short grace over this and then sprinkle it around the house. Especially near the woods,” I said. “Ellis, are you ready?”
“I still don’t feel like we’re leaving this blessing in the best hands,” Janie said. “We need a professional. A real priest.”
“I got this,” Ellis said.
“You have to be serious,” I told him. “No fooling around.”
“Sarah, I know. I got this.” Ellis bowed his head, and the rest of us did the same.
“Dear Lord, bless this salt as we use it to protect against restless spirits. Let this salt hold the haints at bay and keep our family safe. Let this salt protect us as we sleep. Let this salt protect us against any evil that may dwell in the night. Let this salt protect us from bodily harm. In your name, we pray. Amen.”
“That was a nice prayer,” Jasper said.
Ellis smiled and gave everyone two handfuls of salt out of the bag.
I hoped it was enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Fireworks
My brother’s prayer over the salt must have been strong and true, because we endured another haint-free night.
The next day was the Fourth of July, and the fireworks were a Fairfield County tradition. Everyone came out to see them. I remember last year, lying on the grass and staring up at the sky with Jovita, waiting for dusk to turn to nightfall. Waiting to see colors explode in the sky and rain down to the earth like shooting stars. I found out later on that different elements determined the colors of fireworks. Lithium carbonate made red. Sodium nitrate made yellow. Barium chloride made green. I imagined the fireworks as nebulas forming new suns, birthplaces for planets and moons.
Daddy snaked through the traffic at Fairfield Park and backed into a tight corner of the packed parking lot. We grabbed the folding chairs, and Mama pulled out a large cooler.
Earlier that day we had had a cookout in the backyard. Daddy put hamburgers and hot dogs on his green-domed grill. Mama put ears of corn and made veggie kabobs from Mrs. Greene’s garden. Our grandma didn’t make an appearance. She insisted she had been invited to Pastor Munroe’s house, but I wondered if that just meant she was still mad at Mama for letting Janie stay with us.
Ellis had eaten too many hot dogs, so he stayed closed to Mama, resting his head in her lap. Although Janie teased him, his stomach must have ached more than his pride, because he ignored her.
I spread out a blanket on the grass. The sky was turning a deep indigo, and the fireflies were making an appearance with their iridescent green flashes.
Janie sprawled across the blanket, and I lay down next to her, our heads touching. She released a long sigh.
“Mom takes me to the Navy Pier to see the fireworks,” Janie said. “This is different.”
“Jovita hates the loud booms,” I said. “She always covers her ears.”
Saying her name out loud made my heart skip. Jovita had always come with us to Fairfield Park to watch the fireworks since her mama usually worked that day. She didn’t like them, but she came because I loved them and she was my best friend.
Now I didn’t know if she was here at Fairfield Park, lying on a blanket with the Jones Girls. I wouldn’t know if she capped her ears with the palms of her hands to push out the noise.
“Is Jovita your only friend?” Janie asked.
I paused. Jovita had been my best friend, but was she my only friend? I furrowed my brow. Amber Cassidy chatted with me in class but sometimes acted like she didn’t see me in the hallways when she was with her other friends. Carmen Simmons sat next to me in gym class, whining about push-ups, but when we left the locker room, we didn’t have too much to say to each other.
Jovita had been the only girl who talked to me outside of school, the only one who invited me to hang out with her on weekends. She listened to my obsession with astronomy even though she didn’t understand most of what I was saying.
I thought about Amber and Carmen. Amber with her pale skin and eyes the color of the ocean. Carmen with her freckles and curly hair. Neither one had ever been to my house. They never contacted me over the summer. Should I have more friends? Maybe there was something wrong with me?
“I know some other girls from school,” I said. “But they’re not really my friends.”
“Girls are the worst,” Janie said.
“What about you? Do you have any friends? You never talk about anyone else from Chicago.”
Janie sighed and moved closer to me. “Mom is my best friend.”
“That’s not the same,” I said. “Your mama is always gonna like you, until you break a rule, and then she’ll just be disappointed.”
“Girls at my school don’t
like me,” Janie replied.
“Girls at my school bully me for no good reason,” I added.
Janie turned on her side to face me. “Oh, they have a reason. You’re smart. You make them feel dumb, which they probably are anyway. They know you’re gonna be someone important one day, while they’ll just be regular people.”
“Maybe,” I said, not quite believing her.
“It’s true,” she said. “You’re the smartest girl I know.”
I grabbed her hand and squeezed it.
“People tell me that I’m a show-off. A know-it-all,” I confessed. “But I just like facts. And I like asking questions.”
“You do like asking questions!” Janie laughed.
“Why don’t the girls like you at your school?”
Janie shifted again and stared up at the dark sky. “When my dad left, I lost my friends. We had to move into a smaller apartment, and some of them said they couldn’t visit me on the bad side of town.”
“Those weren’t your real friends,” I said.
“Exactly,” Janie said. “When Mom gets movie-star famous and I become a celebrity daughter, they’ll come back running, and I’m going to ignore them. I hate fake people.”
“Me too,” I said. “I just want a real friend.”
“Yeah.” Janie squeezed my hand. “In the meantime, we’ll have each other’s backs.”
The first firework shot up like a tiny rocket going into space and burst open into a rosebud of sparkle. The boom reverberated in my heart. I lay there in the grass, watching the sky explode in color. In this moment everything felt right. I wasn’t scared, and I wasn’t sad. As I lay on the grass, watching fireworks with my family, nothing else mattered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A Past Life
Over the next week, Janie got over her sad phase. She went back to daily pedicures, and I went back to studying the Cassini spacecraft mission and Saturn’s moons while everyone slept in. It hadn’t rained yet, so our blessed salt still protected us from night visits from the haints. At least this is what I wanted to believe. To avoid questions from Mama, we kept our amulets hidden in our pockets. Mrs. Whitney said we just needed to have faith, and every morning I bolstered my belief as I kissed Daphnis on her wooden head, thankful for her extra protection.
Janie and I did more things together. Her taste for troublemaking and snooping didn’t seem to be as important anymore. I lured her away from Mrs. Taylor’s reality TV and convinced her to watch the History of the Solar System series with me. Even though I had already watched all of the episodes, I enjoyed it more the second time around and took copious notes. I couldn’t wait to go the science symposium in September.
Ellis let us alone in our girl cocoon, and I found that I no longer cared that Jovita wasn’t my best friend anymore. She hadn’t called me. She still hadn’t invited me to her birthday party, but it didn’t matter as much. The heavy gloom I felt in my chest finally went away.
• • •
On Saturday morning after breakfast, Jasper came over on his bike to meet up with Ellis so Daddy could take them to a basketball day camp. Mama decided to bury the hatchet with Mrs. Greene and drove us over to her house so we could help our grandma sort out some of Granddaddy Greene’s belongings for the church clothing drive. I guess she had taken to heart what the women had told her at the Deaconess Board meeting. It was time for her to let go of things from the past.
Mama sat on the couch in the parlor, and Mrs. Greene gave her a glass of sweet tea. Janie and I stood and waited. Since our grandma didn’t offer us anything to drink, it was a signal that they were about to discuss grown folks business without us.
Mrs. Greene gave us several large plastic bags and told us to go into the attic and find suitable things for the clothing drive.
The sun was directly over the house and warmed the attic with its oppressive heat. The lone window gave everything a dim glow as I surveyed old furniture covered with dusty white sheets, broken toys spilling from boxes, and large leather trunks with thick films of dust bunnies.
“Still junky as ever,” Janie said.
Our grandma was immaculate in all other parts of her house, but apparently the attic didn’t count; it was haphazard and full of chaos. It was a room hidden from guests and judgmental inspections. I sneezed from the stale air and dust.
“We have to be careful. In case something falls on us,” I said.
Looking through the boxes, I found several of Granddaddy’s ties, shirts, and suspenders. Granddaddy Greene had always dressed in a suit and wore a hat. The official uniform of a mortician. I remembered the smell of his hugs, a mix of tobacco and mint.
During his last days in hospice, I had gone with Daddy to sit by his bedside. I remembered Daddy reading aloud Invisible Man, which was one of Granddaddy Greene’s favorite novels.
“Do you think he can hear you?” I had asked.
“Yes, I believe he can,” Daddy had told me. “I have to believe he can hear his son.”
Wrapping a tie around my wrist, I deeply inhaled Granddaddy Greene’s familiar scent. I thought maybe this was the real reason that Mrs. Greene had sent us up here to the attic. Maybe she didn’t want to relive these memories. Maybe it was still too soon.
I had filled two bags of clothes when Janie called me over to her corner of the attic. She had opened up a big leather trunk. I noticed a lock on the floor next to her feet.
“How did you get the trunk open?” I asked.
She blinked her eyes. “It fell open.”
When I frowned at her, she sighed. “It didn’t take much for me to jiggle it open. It was an old lock, and I was curious. Take a look at all this stuff.”
“These are private things,” I protested.
Janie plunged into the contents, pulling out papers. “I’m tired of looking at old-people clothes. This is way more interesting.”
Despite my reluctance, I peered inside. The worn leather had deep scrapes. This was the kind of trunk that had traveled many long journeys across lands and oceans. A treasure chest of many lifetimes.
Janie scavenged through and uncovered jewelry tinged with opal and nickel. None of it was real, but it still seemed priceless. Janie tried on several bracelets and rings. There was a folded dress of white cotton and crocheted lace. Pictures of women in high-neck dresses and feather-plume hats. Faded baby pictures with moth-eaten edges. We found several Bibles, birth certificates, and school diplomas. There were also many leather-bound books. I picked up one and opened it. The first page was filled with small, frilly cursive.
November 12, 1947
Miss Hamilton gave me this diary as a gift for my birthday because I have done well with my lessons. She said that I could use it to write down my thoughts. I have so many thoughts. So many that I think they may burst from my head and float into the sky for all the world to see.
I wept when I heard the news. Our beloved church burned to the ground. We cannot even have a safe sanctuary. They took our place of worship. We praise the same God, yet we are not seen as human. This is the lie they tell themselves, but we know the truth. We are flesh and bone. We hurt and we bleed. This is one thing they will acknowledge. Our blood. They know our blood well. They ache to see it spill and seep into the ground. But even our blood is worthless to them. No justice for the terror they inflict on us. Miss Hamilton says God is on our side, and He will help us rebuild the church. I want to believe, but I’m losing my faith.
I studied the handwriting. Blots of smeared dried ink and mildew filled in the crevice of the yellowed pages. The pit of my stomach fluttered with curiosity.
“Look at this, Janie.” I offered the book to her. “This could be a girl’s diary by the handwriting.”
My cousin took it and read quickly. “You think this belonged to Mrs. Greene?”
“No, it was written in 1947,” I said. “I don’t think Mrs. Greene was even alive then.”
Janie flipped through the rest of the pages, but they were blank. “The girl
only wrote on the first page.”
“Maybe she was afraid someone would read her private thoughts,” I replied.
Janie handed me back the diary and continued to dig through the trunk. I read the entry again and flipped through the empty pages. That’s when I noticed some of the pages were missing. Torn out. Did the girl tear out the pages, or did someone else?
“Janie, some of the pages from the diary are missing,” I said.
My cousin ignored me. She was staring down at a picture, her face filled with a kind of fear I had never seen before.
I took the picture from her hands and realized what had frightened her. The girl in the photograph wore a faded plaid dress with dusty boots. Next to her was a younger boy in a tucked-in shirt, pants that were too short, and a big smile.
The same boy who had appeared on the church steps at Creek Church.
The same boy who had smiled at us and disappeared into the woods.
The same boy who had thrown rocks at my window after midnight and whose eyes glowed silver.
Janie and I huddled together in the humid room. A sharp prick of cool air wedged between my shoulders. Turning the picture around, I saw the same frilly handwriting as in the diary.
“Sophie and Abner Hopkins,” I whispered.
“Mrs. Whitney must know who these people are,” Janie said.
We both jumped as we heard footsteps on the attic stairs, but it was too late for us to move or cover up our meddling.
Mama appeared. “Are you girls almost finished?”
Janie sprang up. “Yes, Aunt Delilah. We just need to put some stuff back, and then we’ll be down.”
I pointed to the two bags full of Granddaddy Greene’s clothes. “I found some nice suits and ties for the clothing drive.”
Mama didn’t seem to notice our guilty faces. “Great. When you’re done, come on down. We’ll be leaving soon.”
Janie and I hurriedly put everything back in the trunk, and Janie placed the lock back together with a tiny click. I lugged my bags full of Granddaddy Greene’s clothes.
Why did Mrs. Greene have a picture of the ghost boy in a locked trunk? And who was the girl who wrote in the diary? Even if Mrs. Greene knew who they were, I was pretty sure she was keeping those items locked up in the attic on purpose.