Painting Their Portraits in Winter

by Myriam Gurba

  “Pollen” allows the hummingbird to be all he can be. Hummmmm…

  Petra Páramo

  for Abuelito

  In the forest lived the ghost of a girl who knew very little. She knew for sure that she was dead. She knew for sure that she was a girl since gender is something that you just know. People know what their gender is the same way that they know whether or not they are dead or alive or prefer cake to sugar cones.

  The other thing the ghost knew and was absolutely sure of is that all the best things to come out of México have come out of the state of Jalisco. Beyond those certainties, the ghost existed in the form of doubts. Everyday, her doubts sprang leaves, vines, and stubborn buds. Questions. What’s my name? What kind of music do I like to dance to when I dance alone? How many languages do I speak? How did I die? How many books have I read? Am I a virgin? Did my mother want me? Did my father love me? Did I love him? Are there other ghosts? When will I be old enough to shave?

  She wondered if she had died in the forest where she lived. She did have one memory, but she wasn’t sure what it represented. Thinking about the memory moistened her slippery brain. In it, she looked up at a circle of light filtered through grayish water. Maybe she’d struggled at the bottom of a well, a drowned girl. Maybe she’d been flushed down a toilet. Maybe she was remembering being born. The ghost thought it was most likely that she had drowned but wasn’t sure. As was said earlier, she was certain of very few things. She wasn’t even sure what certainty meant. She knew things, but didn’t know things with a capital K and that capital K was very enticing to her.

  Cotton clouds were marrying and divorcing in the sky above the redwoods. The ghost was squatting against a trunk, gazing up, playing a game she played most afternoons. Her eyes darted, seeking ghosts among the nimbuses. Her curiosity scrutinized each puff. Foggy snakes drifted.

  Are any of you ghosts? she thought, her mind telepathically signaling this question at the sky.

  Brutus! her brain dubbed a choppy cloud.

  Sylvia Plath! her brain dubbed a smoky one.

  Nobody, her brain dubbed a boring puff. Nobody is the name of most ghosts.

  She wondered about the ghosts of her mother and father. For all she knew, her mother and father might be Brutus and Sylvia Plath. However, she doubted they were. She did have a hunch that her parents were dead which meant that she was an orphan. Staring at the cloud she’d named Nobody, the ghost reasoned, All orphans are not ghosts, and all ghosts are not orphans, but everyone will be a ghost someday. This logic made her smile. She thought, Everyone will be an orphan someday, too. This means that all orphans are ghosts, but only in the most future tense sense of the word. She quit smiling. She felt sad for everybody and nobody and Nobody.

  More than anything, more than any animal, mineral or vegetable, the dead girl longed to know more than what she did. It sucked to only know a pocketful of things with a capital K, and the ghost wished to be able to fill a drugstore notebook with facts that she could prove with charts, tables, and anecdotes. She had a feeling in the pit of her deceased stomach, a feeling that sentences shouldn’t end in a preposition, and so, as she wished, Man, there’s so much I wish I could be sure of… she felt insecure about sure of… The clouds melted into a single serving of mashed potatoes.

  All I know, the ghost ruminated as she traced the hole where an umbilical cord had once tied her to someone, is that I’m dead. I’m a girl. And the best things to come out of México came out of Jalisco. Mariachi. Trumpets blared in her head. Tequila. Alcohol poured into an imaginary glass. Charrería. Cowboys lassoed black and white stallions. Pedro Páramo. Ghosts flew out of the pages of a book, their dead hands and hooves tickling and galloping along her invisible gray matter. Did I even make it to my quinceañera? she wondered. Was I a mariachi prodigy? A female rodeo star? Do I like to read? Am I even literate? Do I suffer from any food allergies?

  The ghost continued tracing the spot where her body had been tethered to her mother’s. Her gaze remained fixed on the clouds. She identified and sorted some according to flower, two resembled peonies; celebrity, one danced like Michael Jackson; and various foams: sea foam, cappuccino foam, bubble bath foam, and rabies foam.

  The ghost sort of knew that if she wanted to learn anything about her origins, how she died, or how to program a VCR, she’d have to leave the Christmas-scented place. Brooding beside ferns, she’d considered stowing away in a camper’s vehicle, crouching invisibly beside a cooler stuffed with brie, seedless grapes, granola bars, and crackers. The idea of riding in a car made her skin break out in goosebumps. It seemed too much like flying. She had no memories of having ridden in cars and enjoyed walking on loam, especially on rainy days, and gazing up at the blue and the white and the pointy treetops. The ghost decided If I’m going to leave the forest in search of knowledge, I’m doing so with my own dead feet.

  Honey sun lit the ghost’s walk out of the forest, and she stopped to admire plants, animals, and smells. Pausing at her favorite redwood, she put her face to it. Its bark clawed her cheeks. She sniffed it doggy style. She pressed her eyes so close to the wood that she could see its texture change from one red to another red to a cousin of that red, a collection of tree bloods. She licked the giant. The tree tasted of nothing. She had hoped it would taste like a holiday.

  Hugging the tree goodbye, the ghost turned and continued walking. A fallen bird’s home appeared in her path, and she got down on all fours to examine the light blue eggs cupped by nest. Her sixth sense told her, The babies in the shells have no heartbeat. She used her sixth sense to holler, “Hello!” at their ghosts, but looking up into the arms of the oak they’d plunged from, she only saw a bitch-faced mockingbird, a flesh and blood one, scowling down at her. Sometimes, animals sense ghosts. Not all of them do, but certain animals are particularly keen about it. Mockingbirds possess this talent in spades. So do salamanders and molting iguanas.

  The curious ghost lifted her hand. This walk out of the forest was meant to be a learning experience. With her fingers I-have-a-question-high, she smacked her palm down against the nest. Crunch! sounded. Shells cracked against her skin, jags digging into her useless lifeline. Splaying her fingers, the ghost stared at her destruction. “Scrambled eggs,” she mumbled. “I just scrambled eggs.”

  Yellow and pink screamed life and death, and goo coated the crunchy nest. Red bits swirled the gold. Twigs, hay, grass, a speck of light blue glass, and pink string punctuated the scramble. Baby bird eyeballs floated, caviar.

  The ghost’s stomach growled for what she’d made. She wanted to put it in her mouth and eat it, but human taste is the one sense that the dead are denied. Instead of eating the mash, the ghost did the next best thing. She shut her eyes and inhaled the scent of the would-be birds and their home. Her invisible marrow pulsed. She was savoring the smell of their destruction. She smeared her hand down her side, marking her nightgown with her accomplishment.

  She said, “Hey, baby birds, when I was alive, I might’ve been dropped from a tree, too. Maybe that’s why I’m like this. Maybe we’re related by mode of death.”

  The ghost stood up, and the sudden knowledge that she might not see any of these plants or rocks or animals again smacked her. She began bidding everything farewell out loud, “Goodbye, heart-shaped rock. Goodbye, playful fern. Goodbye, random shrub. Goodbye, berry-filled pile of dung. I wonder if those are wild raspberries…”

  Her walk slowed as she kicked through a California golden poppy colony. She wondered, Do poppies exist outside the forest? Freezing, she sank to her side, and felt flowers tickle her check. She relished using flowerbeds as beds. From her worm’s-eye view, the world was all poppy, only orange petals and doily leaves. She shut her eyes and fell into a totally unnecessary nap.

  The ghost opened her eyes to thin green stripes. Stems. She scrambled into a half-up position. Leaning on her hands, she peered around. The moonlight was glowing extra neon for her, and she stood, stomped her feet, and wiped the wrinkles from her nig
htgown. Faint purple flowers dotted it. It was the only piece of clothing she owned but she didn’t mind. It felt soft and really let her move. Let’s go, she thought.

  She continued wandering towards what she believed might be the edge of the forest. Once she got there, it was indeed the edge of the Christmas-scented place. Its trees gave way to something probably never-before-seen: farmland.

  This earthscape unfolded in gray squares. Strawberries sprouted from white plastic covered rows in some. Grapevines stretched and coiled in others. A sour grape fell silently into the dirt. The palest chunks of farmland were lying fallow.

  “Ooh,” whispered the ghost. “So unwoodsy.”

  She tiptoed onto an unsown patch. She expected the earth to fall away from under her, but it didn’t. The planet didn’t turn to ash or mush as she abandoned the only place she sort of knew. Dirt remained strong and held her. The unknown was real. It was strange that places where she had never been (or had she?) were real. She wondered, Is this what death is like for people who’ve just died? Does it feel strange? Death felt familiar. Her ignorance about most things also felt familiar to her but she was sick of this particular familiarity.

  She walked across wild grasses cows had munched to stubble. She floated through barbed wire fence and laughed. She hardly ever used her ability to pass through things because it felt like a cop out, like, oh gee, I’m dead, I don’t need to honor the organic, let me float right through that boulder, but it seemed funny to her to float through something that would’ve killed her if she was meat. It made her cackle not to get cut or tetanus. “Ha-haha!” she boomed. “Barbed wire fence, you fail!”

  The ghost crouched so that her mouth was parallel to the fence’s second wire strand. She parted her lips and her non-existent tongue snaked out. It licked metal. It tasted of absence, nothingness, but triumph beat its chest inside the ghost. She could lick fatal things and not suffer any consequence. She could pick up a poisonous frog, lick it and not die. She could eat a bag of AIDS-infected needles and not choke. All these dangers would taste the same, like the number zero, but they could never result in her demise. In death, the ghost triumphed over all earthly dangers.

  “What a trip,” she whispered and tried to imagine what the barbed wire tasted like. She figured it probably tasted like a mouthful of pennies. She seemed to recollect sucking on a mouthful of coins and felt like, yes, there was a moment in time when she had shoved coins in her mouth and sucked on their flavor. They tasted poor.

  “Nothing can keep me out,” she said. “Barbed wire. Fences. Muskets. Flame throwers. Nazis. I can go wherever I want.” This feeling of being able to go wherever she wanted gave her self-esteem balls.

  The ghost walked along dry grass and onto a two-lane road. This strip was a dark shade of dark by day. By night, it offered a screen that moonlight bounced off. The ghost figured this would be as good a road as any to follow so she continued her walk along the asphalt, which felt warmish against her feet. It must be summer, she thought.

  Oak looked like wild things against the purple horizon. Stars were pretending to be diamonds. The clouds had all gone home. An owl spoke into the night. The night returned no echo. A cricket chirped one note. Things rustled in the trees and grasses. The ghost felt around in her soul. She was looking for fear. She couldn’t find any. Nothing could kill her. Perhaps she could kill. Perhaps she had killed.

  The ghost followed the moonlit road up and down slopes and dips. She savored her solitude, introspecting, wondering, until she heard voices. She wondered, Who the heck is out here?

  The talking was coming from over the hill. The ghost scampered towards the source, and got within slapping distance of two girls walking down the middle of the road. They held hands and shared haircuts, identical bobs, except one girl’s bob was curls while the other’s was not.

  Lovers? wondered the ghost. She kept close. Her ears perked up.

  “I swear,” said the straight-haired girl, “I think that thing that bumped into my head was a bat.”

  “Bat’s have really good sonar systems,” argued curls. “I don’t think a bat wouldn’t notice that you were right there and just crash into your forehead. Your forehead’s not even that big. I think a bird hit you.”

  “No, I saw it right before it hit me in the head. It was clearly bat-shaped. I know bats. My favorite book is Interview with a Vampire. A bat crashed into my head. Did you ever hear about how if a bat flies into your head, it can cause your hair to fall out? I read that in a library book. It’s a superstition, but what if it’s true? I could wind up looking like Captain Picard. If that happens, nobody will ask me to the prom.”

  Curls sighed. The girls continued their talk about bats, high school, a recent mountain lion attack, their school’s dress code, shoes, and how awesome it would be to become vampires. The ghost caught hope shimmering in the head of the girl who believed a bat had struck her. The girl was wishing, Tonight might be my lucky night. Maybe that was a vampire, and it bit me super lightly, so lightly I couldn’t even feel it, and I’m going to turn! I won’t have to go to school on Monday.

  After tasting this thought, the ghost realized that she could taste; as a ghost, she wasn’t completely denied this sense. This sense, however, manifested in being able to taste brainwaves. She experienced flavored mental telepathy. The vampire thought left a medium rare and silly taste in her dead mouth, the way it tastes when you cut your index finger as you’re mincing celery and decide to suck it.

  The girls’ conversation stumbled to a lull, and the ghost dipped into the other girl’s head. She was thinking I hope my best friend and my sister aren’t dyking out. These thoughts tasted heavily of wishful thinking. Curls knew that her best friend, the girl that she was strolling with, was indeed fooling around with her sister. She’d never caught them making out in her sister’s Ford Ranger, but the looks they exchanged as their hands reached for the same nacho after school at Taco Bell said more than enough: Sapphists.

  The trio headed up and down slopes and dips. The night smelled the way only California can by dark. It also felt alive because of the stars, owls, and coyotes debating whether or not to pounce.

  The ghost thought, Coyotes. Roadrunners. What happens when a roadrunner runs through a ghost town? Why are ghost towns called ghost towns? Isn’t a town a town because people live there? So then shouldn’t ghost towns be called a ghost something else?

  The girls had resumed their conversation, describing how awesome it would be if they could be undead, if only they could find a vampire willing to turn them, and they rattled off places where such a creature might be found. They believed he — and he had to be French — lurked with taste and sophistication at bars, nightclubs, symphony halls, and smoking rooms. The one who’d been struck in the head said, “I’ll bet vampires can’t get AIDS.”

  The road bent. The ghost made out the shape of a white mailbox. It stood at the mouth of a dirt lane stretching to a farmhouse. The girls turned at the mailbox and muted themselves. They moved towards the house. Curls grabbed the back door’s knob, turned, and pulled. The pair tiptoed inside, and the girl who was still in fear of her hair falling out shut the door behind them.

  The ghost wasn’t interested in passing through the door to follow the girls. She found them kind of blah and felt that the information they had to offer wasn’t the kind she was looking for. She thought, I want to taste the minds of more mature people, the elderly, those with one foot in the grave. The wise. The ghost had a sense that the knowledge she lusted after might be historical, genealogical, theological, or, perhaps, even occult. The ghost looked to her left. A smaller house stood about an acre away. She thought, Why not?

  Moving her feet, she left the farmhouse behind. She traipsed through a dark acre and its fuzzy vines tried to trip her. Long curly leaves tickled her ankles. Her legs brushed swelling gourds. It was a Halloweeny minefield.

  Nearing the house, the ghost decided to do like a living person. Instead of floating through its front door, s
he prowled the periphery of the one-story home, eyeballing windows. Along the backside of the house, curtains billowed beyond a sill, their cotton fingers poking and pointing, and the ghost walked over. Her ankle grazed a garden gnome. His magic acknowledged hers, and he fell over, doing a face plant. The ghost ignored him. She wasn’t into gnomes. She pressed her palms to the glass and pushed up the pane. Curtains reached for her, masking and blindfolding her face. She blew back at them and jerked her head, freeing her eyes. Shifting her hands to the windowsill, she hoisted herself up, crouched, and dropped, landing on a carpet whose color the darkness kept from her.

  She could see the outline of a TV on a cart. Beside it, a potted plant. A glass coffee table hung out in the middle of the room, and an overstuffed couch and loveseat L-ed around it. No ottoman.

  The ghost bopped to the media center. A record player rested on its middle shelf. A record collection standing on the top shelf threatened to betray its owner’s tastes. The ghost waited till her eyes adjusted to the special darkness of a stranger’s living room at two in the morning. Then, she pulled a record off the shelf.

  “Dan Fogelberg,” she read aloud. “Never heard of him.” She replaced the LP and ran her hand along the record player lid. She lifted her finger to her eyes to see how dusty it was. It was too dark to tell. Dust shared the same hue as most other grays in the room.

  Snoring. Someone was sawing logs close by. The ghost turned and followed the ugly sound out of the living room, past the moonlit kitchen, and down a cramped hallway. She stepped through an open doorway and into a room where a queen-size bed was backed against a wall. Behind it, the room’s biggest window. Where she was standing was like putting a conch shell to her ear. Oceanic. The snoring broad was a white lady enjoying a waterbed.