by Tom Crockett
Gracie looked at her suspiciously. She rolled back up into a squatting position as if to be ready to bolt suddenly. “You know what I think?” She waited for Marina to answer.
“No, what do you think?”
“I think only ghosts come from the other side of the island.” She said this with a deep seriousness, checking Marina carefully for any suspicious moves.
“And why do you think that?”
“Cause that’s where all the ghosts are, stupid.” She realized she’d said something she shouldn’t have and apologized immediately. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that you were stupid.”
“But that’s where I came from, and you already decided that I’m not a ghost.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Gracie conceded. “But ghosts can fool you.”
Marina laughed at this and soon Gracie was laughing with her.
They talked some more about little things, what Gracie liked and didn’t like about the island. At one point Marina flinched when Gracie referred to it as Turtle Island. She somehow felt as if she had named the place herself and that others only used the name out of deference to her journey. But Gracie called it Turtle Island and referred to big turtle shells that hung on the patio of the big house.
She also realized at some point that Gracie was making her fantasy island, her dreaming place, a reality. Like a goddess or Devic spirit, Gracie’s naming of things, her confirmation, was making Marina’s dream a thing of substance.
Eventually, however, Gracie cocked her head to one side, listening to a sound Marina could not hear. “I better go now, I think they’re looking for me.”
Marina didn’t want her to go. Gracie got up and danced down the back steps, then turned back. “Hey, can I come back tomorrow?”
“That would be nice,” Marina said, and, in an instant, Gracie was gone.
I wonder what this means, Marina thought to herself later as she ate alone. Her food had arrived as usual, though whether it had come while she slept or while she talked to Gracie, she could not say. Everyone I’ve met has had some message, some lesson for me. I wonder what Gracie’s message is?
As soon as she’d thought this though, another observation came to her. I’ve assumed all along that my experiences have been arranged to meet my needs. What if I’m here for Gracie?
* * *
The next morning Gracie was back before Marina woke. She was polite and stayed outside, but Marina could hear her rearranging the shells Marina had placed on the edge of the cistern. She was glad Gracie was back. She stretched and wrapped the sheet around her.
“Good morning,” she said from what would have been a doorway, if there had been a door.
“Hi. I hope it’s okay that I came back, I mean so early.” There seemed to be something else she wanted to tell Marina, some other explanation she wanted to make, but didn’t.
“It’s fine. Have you eaten breakfast?”
“Yeah, but I’ll sit with you while you eat, if you want.”
“That would be nice.” Marina went back inside and selected a full skirt of several sheer layers of blue and green and a vest with a pattern of green leaves on it. “Would you bring the tray inside?”
“Sure.” Gracie seemed excited to be useful to someone. She was dressed in torn blue jean shorts and a little T-shirt with a big question mark printed on the front. Her toenails were painted an electric shade of blue and she wore a necklace of shells. She bounded up the steps with the tray in hand, almost tripping in her enthusiasm.
Marina took the tray and set it on one of the low tables, gesturing for Gracie to sit. When Marina uncovered the tray she discovered two sweet rolls instead of the usual one and two ceramic mugs of tea, still steaming.
“I suppose you were meant to join me after all.” Gracie nodded and picked up first one, then the other mug of tea, sniffing each and selecting one.
“This is mine,” she announced.
“How can you tell?”
“Honey. I like honey in my tea.” Marina tasted the tea Gracie had pushed to her side of the table. Sure enough, it was unsweetened.
“Did you sweeten it before?”
“No, it comes like that. My tea always comes sweet.”
“Do you know who brings this?” Marina said, gesturing at the food tray.
“The people from the big house. They bring it. You never see ’em though. But they’re not ghosts, they just move real quietly.”
“And they know about me?”
“Sure. You’re living in one of their cabins, just like my mom and dad. They have to know about you.”
This was a puzzle to Marina. This is some part of the process of return, she thought. It makes sense in a way. It’s gradual, gentle. But still she wondered how.
“Hey, wanna go exploring with me?” Gracie said after devouring her sweet roll and tea.
“Sure,” Marina answered. “Where shall we go?”
“I’ll show you.”
Gracie waited impatiently as Marina rinsed the dishes and cups with water from the cistern and placed the tray back outside. There was never food left on the tray, but Marina never felt full after eating. They, whoever they were, seemed to know just how much was enough.
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Gracie said as Marina rinsed the plates. “They don’t expect you to. My mom and dad don’t do it. It’s like room service or something.”
“Ahh,” Marina acknowledged, continuing to clean up. “Still, it feels good to do it. Do you mind?”
“No. Suit yourself.” This seemed an unlikely phrase to have sprung from Gracie. Marina imagined Gracie picking it up from her mother or father.
After splashing some water on her face and tying her hair back, Marina let Gracie lead her back up the trail that forked off the main trail. At the main trail Gracie turned right, the direction that led back up the way Marina had come. This made Marina vaguely uncomfortable. She’d vested so much energy in going forward on her journey that going backward just felt wrong. Gracie seemed to sense Marina’s unease because she stopped and took Marina’s hand in hers.
“It’s okay. You’re with me. I won’t let anything happen to you.” Marina had no idea what Gracie meant by this, but she found it oddly reassuring.
She let herself be led up the trail until they came to another fork, one that Marina did not recall passing on her way down. Gracie took this path and they climbed for a while. They crossed two small streams and one they had to wade through, but Gracie seemed to know where she was going so Marina let herself be led.
After about an hour they reached a level plateau and Gracie left the trail. Marina followed her to the edge of a clearing. Gracie put a finger up to her lips, indicating quiet and sat in the shade of a tree with low-hanging branches. Marina sat beside her.
“Just kind of squint your eyes,” Gracie whispered, “and you’ll see ’em.”
“See who?” Marina whispered back.
“Ghosts.”
Marina could see nothing, but she closed her eyes and then opened them again, squinting as Gracie had advised. Gracie looked at her to see if she was squinting properly. Marina still saw nothing. It was clear that Gracie saw something. Her head moved back and forth, eyes tracking some movement invisible to Marina. After several minutes, out of boredom more than anything else, Marina tried seeing auras. She looked with the kind of softening of vision that helped her see the shimmering energy patterns. She saw the glow around the leaves nearest to her, around the trees on the other side of the clearing, and a bright glow around Gracie.
Then she saw the others.
At first she saw only their outlines, faint auras, barely visible, more of a disturbance or fluctuation of light than real auras. Then they popped for her, the way optical illusions sometimes did—one minute she couldn’t see the pattern, the next she could.
It was an old woman and a younger woman sitting and talking in the clearing. The old woman wore a long purple robe, the young woman, a short gray tunic belted with a wide black belt. Mari
na did not recognize them, and she could not hear what they were saying, but seeing them appear so suddenly made her gasp.
Gracie squeezed her hand to comfort her. “It’s okay. They aren’t real.”
Marina wondered what she was looking at. Were these wandering spirits? Had she been a ghost like this? Mai-Ling had said that people from the lower island couldn’t really see her when they got close. Was that because on the upper plateau they’d both still been insubstantial? She remembered her own journey and wondered if she’d been observed like this. It made her feel uncomfortable, and after a few minutes she stood and walked back to the trail.
Gracie followed her and began leading the way back down the trail. “Pretty cool, huh.” It was not really a question, but something Marina was supposed to agree with.
“Yes, pretty cool,” Marina repeated, though without much enthusiasm. “Do you know what happens to them?” She wasn’t sure why she was asking this of Gracie, wasn’t sure what she thought Gracie could tell her.
“They’re ghosts. What do you think happens to them?”
“I don’t know. I mean do you ever see them again?”
“The real ghosts I don’t. Sometimes I think it’s a ghost but later I find out it was a real person . . . like you,” Gracie added.
Marina swallowed hard. “Did you see me before you saw me down at the beach?”
“I thought maybe I did,” Gracie explained. “But then I found out that you’re real, so you can’t be a ghost.”
Marina let this pass. She didn’t know why it bothered her, but it did.
The two of them shared lunch back at Marina’s cabin. Once again, food for two was waiting for them. After lunch they swam in the ocean, but then Gracie said she needed to check in with her parents and left.
Marina went shell collecting along the beach and found several more large conch shells and some big round bowl-like shells. She added these to the collection she had started around the cistern and sat looking at them for a while.
She remembered Mai-Ling’s circles and suddenly felt the urge to create her own. She had not known why she’d been collecting the shells; now it seemed obvious. She could not pretend to create anything as elaborate as Mai-Ling’s circles, but something simple would serve her needs.
She took a handful of shells, as many as she could easily carry, and began to walk in big circles around her cabin. She walked slowly, purposefully, shifting her weight deliberately, as the Turtle Woman had taught her. She paid attention to the physical sensations as she walked—sand, leaves, twigs underfoot, the light of late afternoon, the breeze off the ocean, salt smell, green tree smell. She tried to empty her mind and see as Téves had taught her. Energy patterns glistened and glowed around things as she made her slow spiral outward. Finally, she found the spot she was looking for. She felt it tingling beneath her bare feet, looked down and saw the subtle pattern of it.
She kicked away the loose debris to uncover a layer of sand. She dropped the shells in this spot and set about clearing a circle of sand about twelve feet in diameter.
Next, she carefully arranged her shells at even intervals around the circumference of the circle and raked the sand clean and even with a palm frond.
Satisfied with her work she stepped back from her circle. She had to admit that she had no idea why she had built it. It’s a calling, she heard a voice in her head say. It sounded like Mai-Ling, she thought, or maybe it’s just something Mai-Ling had told her. Was it a calling to build it? she wondered. Or was it built to call something?
* * *
Gracie was back again the next morning, once again waiting out by the cistern when Marina awoke. This time she seemed more troubled than she had the previous morning. Marina noticed that her eyes were puffy and red as if she had been crying.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Marina asked as they shared her breakfast.
“No,” she said, and sounded as if she meant it, then added, “Well, maybe.”
“Is it your parents?”
“They’re not going to stay together.” Gracie was silent after announcing this. She seemed to be gathering her strength before speaking, fighting the urge to cry again. “I mean, I didn’t really think they would. They fight all the time, but now I’m supposed to say who I want to live with.” A little gulping sob escaped from Gracie despite her best efforts to control it. “It’s like they want me to say who I love best.” And now she was crying, punching her own thigh with anger and frustration. “How can I choose? How? How?”
Marina had no answer for this. She held out her arms in invitation. Gracie resisted for a moment, then came to her, allowing herself to be cradled.
“It’s not fair. I wish I was dead, just dead, that’s all.”
Marina did not scold her for this expression, but stroked her hair and rocked her in her arms. She let Gracie tire herself with tears before speaking.
“You know that this isn’t your fault, don’t you? You know that this isn’t about you?”
“That’s what they say,” Gracie sniffled, “but it still hurts.”
“I know, but the question is, what will you do with that hurt?”
“What?” This question caught Gracie off guard. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what will you do with your hurt? How will you live with it?”
“I don’t want to live with it.”
“But it’s a guest now. It may be an unwelcome guest, but it’s still a guest. It lives with you now. How will you live with it?”
“You mean like a game?”
“A game if you like.”
“Then if this was my guest, I’d make it stay in the basement, and I wouldn’t ever let it out.”
“And would you feed it?”
“Nope.”
“Then what would happen to it?”
“It would die.”
“And what would happen to your basement?” Gracie thought about this a second, then responded.
“It would stink.”
“And everyone would say that your basement smelled bad.”
“Oooh, gross.” Gracie thought a bit more. “I’d run away.”
“Your house is in your head. How can you run away from that?
“Okay, I would feed it, but it would have to stay in the basement.”
“And then wouldn’t it get bigger?”
“I don’t like this game.” Gracie pulled away from Marina, still pouting but not crying anymore.
“I know. But think about it, okay? How could you live with something that hurts inside you?”
They were both quiet for a while. Marina couldn’t tell whether Gracie was thinking about the dilemma she had posed or not, but after a long silence Gracie asked, “How would you live with something that hurts?”
“Well, I haven’t done a very good job of it in my life, I’m afraid.” Actually, she realized that she did not know what she was going to say, but she knew that she owed Gracie some kind of answer. “I guess I would try compassion. Do you know what that means?”
“That’s when you’re supposed to be nice to somebody even if you don’t like them, right?”
“Well, not exactly, but that’s a good start. Compassion means to really love someone who is suffering.”
“Yeah, but I’m suffering. How will that help me?”
“Do you think you could love the part of you that hurts or the thing that’s causing you pain?”
“No!” Gracie was direct and emphatic.
“How about this, then. Can you imagine how you might forgive a person or thing that’s hurting you?”
Gracie was silent. Marina too was silent for a moment and a new thought occurred to her. “What does your hurt look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Imagine it. Give the thing that’s hurting you a face.”
Again Gracie was silent, then she brightened. “It’s a bear, a mean bear with big teeth and claws.”
“So what’s hurting your bear?”
Gracie looke
d confused. “My bear?”
“Yes, it’s your bear. Close your eyes.” Gracie shut her eyes obediently. “Now see the bear. Look at all of him. Do you see what it is that makes him so mean?”
After a few moments Gracie spoke without opening her eyes.
“He has a trap stuck on his leg. One of those metal traps with sharp points.”
“Can you take the trap off?”
“He might bite me.” Gracie was now fully playing this imaginary game.
“Try it anyway.”
Marina watched Gracie, eyes still closed, tentatively mime removing the trap.
“Okay, I took it off.”
“Now what does his face look like?”
“He isn’t so unhappy now.”
“Do you feel like you know him better.”
Gracie nodded.
“That’s what it’s like to forgive. It doesn’t mean you have to approve of the bear’s behavior. It doesn’t make everything better right away, but it’s a start. What do you think?”
Gracie was quiet for a while, obviously thinking about the question.
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“Well, start there. Just try to understand the bear and forgive a little bit each day. And, if you can forgive, maybe you can imagine how you might come to do the same thing if you were in a similar situation. Maybe you can get to compassion that way, maybe not. But in the end, if you can’t forgive, I think it will only hurt worse.”
“So you’re saying that I shouldn’t be mean to the bear, even if he’s being mean to me?”
“If he’s hurting you, it may be that he’s hurt. Maybe you can help him not hurt anymore.”
“I don’t know,” Gracie repeated, and Marina let the conversation trail off.
* * *
They did not speak of it again that morning or that afternoon.
They swam together and Marina helped Gracie repaint her toenails. Gracie chose a hot pink polish from the little collection of colors she’d brought. She tried to talk Marina into painting her own toenails. Maybe later, Marina had said, smiling at the thought of her own toes accented with one of Gracie’s eccentric selection of colors.
After lunch they gathered more shells, and Marina showed Gracie the circle she was making. She expected Gracie to ask her why she was making it, but Gracie didn’t seem to need an explanation and, unexpectedly, offered one of her own.