Free Spirits

by Julia Watts

  “Scooby Doo,” Isabella says and smiles a little. “When I first came to this country, I watched cartoons to help me learn English. Scooby Doo was my favorite. It made me talk a weird kind of English, though. It took me a while to figure out that other kids didn’t go around saying ‘jinkies.’”

  We laugh for a minute, then Isabella turns to me and says, “But I especially wanted to tell you about what happened. I know that sometimes you…know things.”

  “Sometimes,” I say.“But my kind of knowing doesn’t convince anybody if there’s not any evidence to back it up.”

  Isabella looks so disappointed that I suggest, “Maybe if I look at the writing on the building I can see something about the person who did it.”

  “I was on my way to the restaurant,” Isabella says. “Why don’t you guys come with me?”

  When Adam and I see what’s happened to El Mariachi, we both suck in our breath. It’s worse than I imagined. Every window of the building has been spray painted with a giant yellow “X.” Underneath the windows, over the building’s new red and green paint are giant yellow spray-painted letters reading “Spics Go Home.”

  “That’s the same thing it said on the menu board at school,” Adam says. “Do you think maybe the same person wrote it?”

  “It’s possible,” I say. “But I don’t know if it’s likely. I mean, it’s not like the wording there is highly original.”

  “True,” Adam says.

  “Checking out the damage?” a slightly accented man’s voice says. Mr. Ramirez, Isabella’s dad, is perfectly groomed as always. His hair is combed just so, and his mustache is trimmed neatly. The only sign that anything’s bothering him are the dark circles under his eyes.

  “Yes, sir,” I say. “I’m sorry this happened.”

  “And I’m sorry it’s costing so much to fix,” Mr. Ramirez says. “It’s costing time, too. The window guys can’t come until day after tomorrow, and Javier had to drive all the way to Lexington to get the right colors of paint to cover up the words.”

  “Papi,” Isabella says, “I thought maybe if I brought Miranda here, she could see something about who wrote those words.”

  “You’re a smart girl,” Mr. Ramirez says. For whatever reason, Isabella and her family don’t fear or question the Sight. They admire it.

  I get down on my knees in front of the spray-painted letters. I reach out and trace the shape of the S with my fingers. My eyes snap shut, and a surge of rage burns through me, white-hot. Rage that I’m not getting what I deserve, that I’m going to lose my job, my food, my country, myself, and it’s all their fault. They’re taking my country away from me. Images flash through my head: a Bible held up in an old man’s knotty hand; an American flag; the smiling face of a beautiful, dark-haired woman; but then the thought,No,not her! And then a whole volcano of rage is erupting until I open my eyes and find that I’m lying on the sidewalk and Adam, Isabella and Mr. Ramirez are leaning over me.

  “Let’s get you inside,” Mr. Ramirez says, reaching out to help me up.

  “It wasn’t kids who did that,” I say. “It was a man. I felt his anger, and it was man-sized anger. More than my body can handle.”

  Once we’re inside, we sit in a red vinyl booth, and Mr. Ramirez brings us bottles of Jarrito’s orange soda. After all that burning and bitter rage, it feels good to taste something cold and sweet.

  “The policeman I talked to today said he thought it was probably just kids,” Mr. Ramirez says. “But I don’t think it was. I can see kids maybe covering our yard with toilet paper, but seriously vandalizing a business? That’s a serious crime. I told the policeman what I thought, and he said, ‘Well, there are lots of folks who are pretty upset about you people coming here and taking our jobs.’” Mr. Ramirez shakes his head. “I thought, whose job am I taking away? Is there somebody from this town who wanted to open a Mexican restaurant?”

  “It’s always a bad sign when somebody calls you ‘you people,’” Adam says.

  “Yes,” Mr. Ramirez says. “I really don’t think the police here are going to spend much time trying to figure out who did this. And I guess that’s okay as long as it doesn’t happen again. But I can’t afford to keep buying paint and new windows. What really worries me is, what if this guy gets by with doing this and so decides he can get by with doing something worse?”

  For a second, I feel Mr. Ramirez’s fear, and it is just as strong as the vandal’s rage.

  Chapter 5

  Most Friday nights Adam comes over for supper, then stays until midnight when his dad’s shift is over at the hospital. We hang out in my room with Abigail, and sometimes we watch movies on Adam’s laptop.

  Tonight the three of us are piled up on the big cushions on the floor sharing a bowl of popcorn. Well, Adam and I are sharing the popcorn. Abigail can’t eat it or anything else, but she says she likes to watch us eat and remember what it felt like. We’re watching this old movie where a family moves into this suburban McMansion-type house that turns out to be haunted, and somehow their little girl gets sucked into the TV by ghosts.

  Abigail can’t stop laughing.

  “Abigail, this is a horror movie, not a comedy,” Adam says, but he sounds like he’s about to start laughing, too.

  “I’m sorry,” Abigail says, still giggling. “I can’t help it. It’s just all so silly—ghosts kidnapping a little girl through a TV set!” She doubles over in laughter again.

  “I guess what’s horror for the living can be comedy for the dead,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Adam says. “Comedy is in the eye of the beholder.”

  After the movie is over, Abigail stands up and wanders over to my dresser. She picks up a spray bottle of lavender perfume. “This reminds me,” she says, “have you been able to find out who might have painted those ugly words at that restaurant?”

  “Nope,” I say. “All I could get from touching the words was that the vandal was a man, and that’s not exactly enough information to be helpful.”

  “No, that doesn’t really narrow it down, does it?” Abigail says, studying herself in the mirror. “You would expect it to be a man, wouldn’t you? Women can be cruel, but they’re not cruel in a way that makes a mess.”

  Sometimes I think Abigail’s Victorian notions about how boys and girls are different are so outdated they’re funny. But in this case, she’s right. “You’ve got a point there,” I say.

  “I know,”she says,still looking at her reflection.“Women don’t like to disrupt appearances. I’d love to disrupt my appearance, though. The same dress and the same curls for over a century. Sometimes I get so tired of looking at myself, I want to slap the mirror!” She reaches out to give the mirror a girly little swat, then says, “Miranda, look at this.”

  I get up to look. Abigail’s hand is inside the mirror, just like she’s dipping her hand into a pool of water. She takes her hand out, then sticks it in again, this time almost up to her elbow.

  “What’s happening?” Adam says. Sometimes I forget he can’t see Abigail.

  “When she touched the mirror, her hand went inside it,” I say.

  “Whoa.” Adam shakes his head.

  “I wonder what would happen if I went all the way in,” Abigail says, making ripples in the surface of the mirror with her fingers.

  “What if you couldn’t get back out?” Adam says.

  “I had no trouble taking my hand out, did I?” Abigail dips her hand back in.

  “But it could be dangerous. We don’t know what’s in there,” I say.

  “When you’ve been dead as long as I have, it’s a little late to start worrying about safety.” Abigail climbs on top of my dresser and lunges forward into the mirror. Just like somebody diving into a pool, her head disappears first, then her torso, and finally her legs and feet. I run to the dresser and stare into the mirror. Inside it, Abigail stands up and waves at me.

  “Is she in there?” Adam says, looking over my shoulder.

  I nod. I reach out to touch the mirro
r. It’s solid glass.

  “What’s it like in there, Abigail?” Adam says.

  Abigail looks around. “It’s Miranda’s room but backward. Actually, it’s just the part of Miranda’s room that the mirror reflects, so the space is rather small.” She smiles. “It’s still quite exciting, though. Very Lewis Carroll.”

  “Maybe you should come out,”I say,with a knot of nervousness in my stomach, “just to make sure you can.”

  “You’re no fun at all, are you?” Abigail bends forward and leans out of the mirror, then lifts one leg at a time until she’s in a sort of crouch on top of the dresser. She hops down, smooths her dress, and says, “Well, that was rather indelicate, wasn’t it? But I don’t suppose it matters since Adam can’t see me.”

  A sudden inspiration strikes me. I run out of my room to Mom’s room where I grab the antique silver hand mirror off her dresser. When I come back, I say to Abigail, I wonder if you could get into a mirror this size? Because if you can, I have an idea.”

  “I don’t know. It is rather small. But then again, it’s not like I’m made of solid material.”

  I hold up the mirror, and Abigail experimentally touches the glass. Her finger dips under the surface. “I’m not sure how to put my whole self in.”

  “Well, you do the hokey pokey,” Adam says.

  Abigail knits her brow. “I beg your pardon?” she says.

  “Never mind,” I say. “Here, let’s try it this way.” I set the mirror on the floor. “Maybe you could kind of step into it.”

  Abigail’s feet are so tiny and delicate that she can fit both of them on the surface of the mirror. There’s no time to stand, though, because as soon as both of her high-buttoned shoes hit the glass, she’s falling. As she goes down, her body narrows so she can fit through the mirror. For a moment, she’s funnel-shaped, like a tornado. The experience must feel as startling as it looks because she cries out, “Oh!”

  With a trembling hand, I pick up the mirror. When I look into it, I see Abigail’s face.

  “Is she in there now?” Adam asks.

  “Yep.”

  He takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes. “Never a dull moment around this place, is there?”

  “Nope,” I say, then I turn to the mirror. “How is it in there, Abigail?”

  “It’s fine,” she says, looking around. “Smaller than in the other one, so a bit more cramped.”

  A wave of nervousness comes over me. “You can get out of this one, too, right?”

  “I think so.” Abigail reaches through the surface of the mirror and pinches my nose, leaving it cold. She giggles.

  “I want to try something.” With my free hand, I motion for Adam to follow me. Holding the mirror, I walk out of the room and into the hallway. “Abigail, are you still with us?” I look into the mirror, and there she is.

  “Yes.”

  “Look around. You’re not in my room anymore.”

  She gasps and covers her mouth with her hands. “This…this is the hallway, isn’t it?” She says “hallway” with the excitement of someone seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time.

  Abigail has total freedom of movement in the dimension she shares with the souls of the dead, but in her visits to the world of the living she has never been able to get past the door of my room. When she’s tried, it’s been like an invisible force field has blocked her.

  I set the mirror down on the floor. “Can you get out?” I say.

  Nothing happens.

  After a few minutes, Abigail says, “It’s solid glass again. I can’t move past it.”

  I look at Adam. At that second I’m in his thoughts, which are the same as mine: What if Abigail is trapped in the mirror forever?

  I take a deep breath, pick up the mirror, cross the threshold back into my room, then set the mirror on the floor again. “Okay, now see if you can get out.”

  Right away Abigail’s hands and arms emerge, followed by her head and shoulders which widen to their normal size as she pulls herself out the mirror, grunting with the effort. “Getting in is much easier than getting out,” she says.

  I’m flooded with relief. “Okay,” I say, “I guess you can leave the room when you’re inside the mirror, but you have to stay inside it until you get back to my room.”

  “That’s too bad,” Adam says. “It would’ve been cool if you could’ve gotten out of the mirror and walked around places.”

  “But just getting to leave the room inside the mirror is so much more than I ever allowed myself to hope for,” Abigail says. “If I go in again, will you carry me around some more?”

  “Sure,” I say. And just like that, Abigail turns into Tornado Girl and funnels her way into the mirror. I pick it up, and Adam follows me into the hallway.

  “Will you take me downstairs?” Abigail’s voice sounds more distant coming from inside the mirror, as if she’s calling out from the bottom of a well. “But let’s use the front stairs, shall we? I always thought the back stairs were dark and spooky.”

  “You thought they were spooky?” Adam says.

  I carry Abigail down the front stairs and into the living room where Mom is stretched out on the couch reading a book and Granny is sitting at her old-fashioned sewing machine, the kind that’s powered by a foot pedal instead of electricity.

  “What are you’uns up to?” Granny says, looking up from her sewing. “You’re grinning like you’re up to something.”

  “Abigail’s inside this mirror,” I say. “We’ve discovered she can leave my room that way.”

  “Really?” Mom says. “How about that?”

  “Is that your mother?” Abigail says. “I’d like to see her.”

  I hand Mom the mirror. “Abigail wants to see you.”

  “Oh,” Mom says with a break in her voice. “I wish I could see her, too.” She holds the mirror up to her face, but I know she’s seeing only her own reflection. “Hello, Abigail,” Mom whispers into the mirror. “I miss you.”

  She hands the mirror back to me, and when I look at Abigail inside it, her eyes are shining with ghostly, gleaming tears. “Tell your mother she grew up to be a beautiful lady,” she says. “Tell her I miss her, too.”

  When I give Mom the message, her eyes shine with tears, too.

  “You reckon you could take Abigail outside?” Granny says. “Seems like some fresh air would do her good after all these years.”

  “We could try it.”

  Adam and I walk out onto the front porch. “You still with us?” I say to the mirror.

  “Yes,” Abigail says. “Hold me up so I can see the sky.”

  Adam and I sit on the porch swing.

  “Oh, look at the stars!”Abigail says.“And I remember that oak tree, but it’s so much bigger now. I had forgotten how beautiful everything is.”

  Mom comes out on the porch, her keys in her hand. “I was wondering,” she says, “if Abigail might like to go for a ride in the car.”

  Abigail gasps. “Could I?”

  “I think she’d like that very much,” I say.

  Adam and I get in the backseat of Mom’s dumpy old Toyota, the mirror in my hand.

  The car coughs and spits and rattles when Mom turns the key, and Abigail says, “This is so exciting!”

  “Sometime we should give Abigail a ride in my dad’s Lexus,” Adam says, as the car’s engine wheezes to life.

  “Well, it’s probably best that she start out small,” Mom says, laughing.

  I hold the mirror up to the window so Abigail can look out. As the car putters along, she laughs and shouts, “Whee!”

  “We’re barely going the speed limit, and she’s acting like it’s a roller coaster,” Adam says.

  “Is there anyplace Abigail would like to go?” Mom asks.

  “Just going is excitement enough,” Abigail says. “Though I might like going to the riverbank where my parents used to take me for picnics.”

  Mom says, “The river it is.”

  Once we get out of the car, I hold the
mirror facing outward so Abigail can see the water shine in the moonlight. “Oh,” she says, “it’s just as I remember it. Hello.” She says hello two more times.

  “Who are you talking to?” I ask.

  “Other spirits. Can you see them? Bodies of water are always very haunted places.”

  I focus my eyes in the darkness and see vague outlines of three figures. When I shine my flashlight in their direction, they disappear.

  “Do you think they’re the spirits of drowned people?” Adam asks.

  “Most of them, probably,” Mom says. “I can’t see them, but I can feel a presence.”

  “They’re hiding now, but I can still feel them,” I say. Something about the river makes me feel unwelcome, like I’m crashing a party where I’m not wanted.

  “We should go now,” Abigail says. Her voice sounds strange.

  Once we’re in the car, I ask if she’s okay.

  “Yes, it was just a little overwhelming is all. Did you get a look at them, Miranda?”

  “They just looked like shadows. It was too dark, but then I think I scared them with the flashlight.”

  “There was a boy not much older than Adam in a Confederate soldier’s uniform,” Abigail says. “He was so thin and frail looking. There was a little Indian boy.”

  I think about how Granny learned about herbs and healing from the ghost of an Indian brave and wonder if this was the same one.

  “And then there was a beautiful woman with long black hair,” Abigail says. “She looked like she could’ve been from your time, and she was crying as if her heart would break. I wish I could have done something to help her.”

  “I’m sorry going to the river made you sad,” I say.

  “Oh, I’m not sad,” Abigail says. “This is the most wonderful night of my death. It was just that being at the riverbank made me realize how little I saw when I was alive. How the living walk alongside the dead without even knowing they’re close enough to touch.”

  Chapter 6

  It’s Cinco de Mayo. El Mariachi is packed, mostly with Mexicans, but I’m happy to see a few Wilder families helping fill the place up. A real mariachi band has come down from Lexington, and their bold,brassy sounds fill up the tiny restaurant. Dr. and Mrs. So and Adam have joined Mom and Granny and me for dinner, but it’s hard to make conversation over the loud music. Every time one of us says something, everybody else yells “What?” until it gets to be a joke and we’re all laughing.