Amber put her books aside, went to the wall, and took down a picture of Aunt Jacqueline and Nana as children, each holding a doll and smiling as they stood beside an old station wagon. Amber studied her aunt’s face, wondering how she’d gone from that happy girl to the angry creature who was hurting her mother. She took the picture over to the chair where Nana was knitting.
“Done your homework, dear?”
“Not yet,” Amber answered, not wanting to lie. “Can you tell me more about your sister?”
Nana took the picture and set her knitting aside as she smiled. “Jacqueline was my younger sister.”
“Jacqueline, like mom used to be?”
Nana frowned a little at that, but nodded. “Exactly. My sister died when we were both still young. It was such a tragedy. We went on a holiday to the beach, and we thought we were safe, playing well above the water line, climbing over rocks to see what had washed into the cracks. Jacqueline went out farther than I dared, always the brave one, but still safe enough, we thought. Then a rogue wave swept her away. I screamed for help, but it was too late. That wave pulled Jacqueline under and kept her there until her breath ran out.”
Amber thought of the ghost girl’s soaked hair, the way her dress floated, and shivered.
“She loved piano, you know that?” Nana continued, sitting up as though pulling herself out of the darker thoughts, looking over at the instrument in the corner. “She was going to be a concert pianist. Your mother was going to do that, too. At least, that was the plan, when she was younger. I don’t know what happened.” She ran her finger over the picture, a touch as soft as the confusion in her voice. “I wanted to see that so very much.”
“I don’t think mom likes piano,” Amber said, hoping that didn’t make Nana upset.
“I don’t know what happened,” Nana repeated, and Amber wondered if she would ever notice nothing had, that her mother had always hated it. “She would play every day. Her aunt loved practicing, but my Jacqueline always complained. My sister, she would sit down for an hour a day without question. I used to have to drag your mother over to it. She liked to play, just didn’t like to practice.”
“Don’t you have to do one to do the other?”
“She never saw it that way.” Nana was looking at the piano in the corner now, a frown creasing her forehead. “She liked to play, I’m sure of it.”
“What did she play the most? What song?”
“Claire de La Lune,” Nana said immediately, then shook her head. “No, that was my sister Jacqueline. My Jacqueline played, she played, what was it?”
“This is confusing.” Amber wrinkled her nose. “It’s easier if we call mom Lynn.”
“That is not her name.”
“Everyone else calls her that, even dad.”
“It is not who she is,” Nana snapped and her hands tightened around the frame of the photograph.
Amber sat back, startled by her tone, and then Nana suddenly smiled and her grip relaxed.
“Now, I almost forgot, I have something for you.”
She set the photograph on the end table and pushed herself out of her chair. It took more effort than Amber was used to seeing, and she leaned forward to help, but Nana managed on her own.
“Not to worry. I’m not so old I can’t get myself up just yet.”
Amber sank down on the footstool and waited until Nana returned. There were more pictures by Nana’s chair, but instead of Nana’s sister, they were of all Amber’s mother. Her mother had been an only child, just like Amber, and she seemed happy. At least, in the pictures when she was younger she did. As she grew older smiles gave way to frowns and instead of standing next to her parents she began to put distance between them. Amber got up and moved from one picture to another, happy little girl mom to unhappy teenage mom. Something was missing. Amber frowned and kept walking from one picture to another and back, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Here we are,” Nana said, coming back into the room with a cardboard box in her hands. “I found this when I was cleaning out the storage space. I thought you might like them.”
Amber opened the box and gasped. “Doll clothes! For Elie?”
“They’re hers, absolutely.”
All the clothes in the box were just the right size, made for her style of doll, and each was embroidered with a J, like the one on the purple dress she’d lost. Amber frowned, as she realized what was missing from the pictures. Her mother was never holding a doll, though the only pictures Amber had of herself without Elie were from school. Even Nana and Aunt Jacqueline were holding their dolls in the pictures she’d taken off the wall. “Are these from when she was mom’s doll?”
“Oh, Elie was never your mother’s.”
“But she must have been.” She held up a dress and pointed at the J.
Nana smiled, that soft sad smile. “Elie was Jacqueline’s, my sister Jacqueline’s.” Nana sorted through the box and came up with a white ribbon somewhat worn along the edges. The centre was embroidered, just like the clothes, though this time it was the full name and not just the first initial. She nodded to where the picture of the sisters was sitting on the chair. “We each had a doll, exactly the same except for their hair. Elie had brown to match Jacqueline and mine was blonde to match me. We used to squabble over their clothes, though, so our mother split them all up and put a J on Jacqueline’s and an R on mine.”
“What happened to your doll?”
“Jacqueline has it. I didn’t want her to be alone. And this way, I could stay with her, and she could stay with me.” She ran her hand over the ribbon, the embroidery that formed her sister’s name. “I even called her doll Jacqueline for a time. But, well, then I had my own Jacqueline, didn’t I?”
Amber froze. Nana had called the doll Jacqueline, too?
“You mother never seemed to like Elie when she was little, so I put her away in storage. You liked her right from the start, though. I’m glad. She’s a wonderful doll.”
“Yes, she is,” Amber answered on auto-pilot as she thought of the way the ribbon had seemed to reach out for her. Or reached out to where she had been standing, holding Elie.
“Where is she today, dear?”
“I left her with mom, to keep her safe.” Before she could stop them, tears rose in her eyes. “She’s losing her breath.”
Nana wrapped her in a hug and rubbed her back as the tears fell. She murmured assurances that Amber wasn’t really sure she believed, but appreciated hearing all the same.
“It’s okay, dear. My Jacqueline is tough.”
“Her name is Lynn,” Amber said. “She really doesn’t like being called anything else.”
“It’s who she is,” Nana repeated, clinging as tenaciously as the single thread from the torn ribbon.
“Doesn’t she get to decide that?” Amber asked. It seemed like such a silly thing. There were kids in her class that she only knew by nicknames. When substitute teachers took attendance, the names on the list would be called instead and everyone would be confused until they answered and everyone remembered this teacher didn’t know any better. Nana did know better, though.
This time Nana didn’t answer. Amber looked at the pictures again, happy girl to unhappy teenager. “Do you really want to be fighting? She’s so sick.”
“I named her for my sister,” Nana said, but she was looking at the pictures of her daughter.
“But she isn’t that Jacqueline. She’s her own Lynn.”
Nana reached out and picked up the last picture by her chair. In it, Amber’s mother was standing in front of an old car with Nana and Papa. It had been taken right before she’d gone away to college, the last time she’d lived at home. The last time she’d lived anywhere near them, until now.
There was a knock on the door and they both jumped. Nana motioned for Amber to stay seated, and then went to peer through the peephole. When she stepped back she opened the door with a smile on her face. “You’re up an
d about!” she said and gave Amber’s mother a hug as she stepped into the hall.
“I’m feeling a little better today. I thought I might come and pick Amber up early.”
“I just have to grab my books,” Amber said, putting the ribbon in the box before picking it up and setting it on top of her school things. Nana asked more questions about how her mother was feeling, and it really did sound better. Amber joined them in the hallway. “Ready!”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Amber,” Nana said. “And I hope you’ll drop by again soon. Lynn.” She said the name with determination and a little dissatisfaction, sharp and quick like a snipped thread, but it still caused Amber’s mother to pause in the doorway and turn back.
“I will, I promise. Thank you, mom.”
For a moment, Amber thought they might have another hug, but it seemed like that would have to wait until next time. For now, though, she grinned at Nana, said her goodbyes, and went back to the apartment, where the ghost would still be waiting.
Amber’s father leaned in the door to check she was asleep and then crept across the room to close the laptop she’d left on the floor beside the remains of a moving box and craft supplies. She stayed curled up on her side, her back to the door, and breathed in and out as slowly as she could manage. He would be able to tell she was faking. She was certain of it. Instead, he took the laptop out of the room, leaving the door open just enough for a sliver of light.
She wished she had Elie. More than anything she wanted to hug the doll to her chest and take strength from the familiar action, but Elie was still in the room with her mother and Amber hadn’t thought it was a good idea to take her away. Anyway, if she was right, she wouldn’t be able to cuddle the doll ever again.
Ghost could be tethered to people and things, she thought, repeating what she’d found on the website with the weird bird logo that she found when looking for ways to help her mother. When Nana was little, Aunt Jacqueline was tethered to Elie, bound by the name and Nana’s belief the doll meant her sister was still with her. When Nana transferred the name, she transferred the ghost. Amber’s mother became her new way to have her sister with her. But Amber’s mother started pulling away. She was Lynn and she was her own self, and Aunt Jacqueline was being cut loose and was hurting her mother, but she had originally been bound to Elie. Amber needed to put her back.
She pretended to sleep, just in case her dad checked back in, and those thoughts ran over and over in her head, until they almost messed everything up by lulling her to sleep for real. She snapped back awake, not certain what time it was, but hoped it was late enough. She slipped from her bed, pressed her feet to the cold floor, stepped around the cardboard box piano she’d made after finding the website, and crept across the hallway to her parent’s room.
The respirator was beeping, the forced air coming in regular breaths, but as Amber entered the room grew colder. She could see her breath, her teeth began to chatter, and the floorboards were so cold they stung her feet. There was no one hovering over the bed this time, not that she could see, but dark drops appeared on the blanket, up near her mother’s face, and the respirator began to struggle, the bad-beep coming faster.
Amber took a deep breath, letting it out in a plume that didn’t get stolen, and hoped with everything she had that her plan would work.
“Jacqueline?” Amber whispered, as quiet as she could. She didn’t think her mother would wake, having taken her medicine again tonight, not even if the ghost stole her last breath, but her father might. When he snored softly, she risked speaking again. “Jacqueline?”
She crept up to the bed, her breath still puffing out in plumes, and when she stood where she had seen the ghost the night before, it was like opening the freezer. Goosebumps broke out on her skin and she began to shiver, but spoke through her chattering teeth.
“There you are, Jacqueline. Time to leave Lynn alone.” She picked up the doll, not Elie, never again Elie. “Come on now, Jacqueline, time to go.”
The machine’s beeping stuttered, and then the pace evened out. The drops were still falling on the blankets, though, and she was so cold.
“It’s time for you to practice.” She stepped back from the bed, and water drops followed her, leaving a trail on the floor all the way back to her room. The cold settled around her shoulders as she knelt on the floor and pulled over the box of doll clothes. The white dress she’d picked out was sitting on the top, embroidered J clear even in the low light from the window.
Amber still couldn’t see her aunt, but now and again, in the corner of her eye, she thought she saw the end of the torn ribbon, the end completely cut, not even a thread left to reach back to her mother. Every time she tried to look at it directly, it was gone, so instead she focused on the doll, on her dress and the J, and watched that shifting ribbon drift closer, inch by inch.
“Let’s get you changed first,” she said. “J for Jacqueline, of course. That’s who you are.” Her shivers increased as she repeated her great-aunt’s name like an incantation and the words started to stick in her throat, but she kept going. “Lynn doesn’t like piano at all you know, but you never miss practice, Jacqueline, do you?”
The ribbon was reaching for her hands now, though it still faded away if she looked. Instead, she took out the embroidered ribbon out of the box and realized it was the same width as the one teasing her vision, that the frayed end of it might, in fact, be torn. She concentrated on the image of the girl in the pictures, on Nana’s sister, Jacqueline as she had been, and placed the embroidered ribbon at the doll’s waist, before wrapping the good end around it twice, and the frayed end once. The floating ribbon followed along, darting close and drifting away, each jerking movement bringing it closer.
“Almost ready, Jacqueline.” When she Amber tied the ends of the embroidered ribbon together, binding, the spectral ribbon pulled taunt, its torn end snapping to the frayed end of the embroidered ribbon, and a howl like an ocean wave filled the room. She almost dropped the doll, but held on and continued to concentrate. “Stop it, Jacqueline,” she said, and the roar stopped.
Her room was warm now, her breath was no longer visible, but she could still hear dripping. When she looked down, there were watermarks by her feet, dripping from the doll’s soaked hair. No matter where she looked, she couldn’t see the floating ribbon, but the frayed end of the embroidered ribbon around the doll’s waist was now intact. She was certain the other was still there, tethering the ghost girl once again to the doll who bore her name.
“Time to practice, Aunt Jacqueline,” she said again and when she set the doll in front of the piano, her hair was already dry. Amber left her there and crawled back under her covers, hoping she could get used to sleeping alone. As she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, she thought she could hear a piano playing scales.
M is for Matronymic
Lynn Hardaker
I found the house at the edge of town.
Walking up the path, I smoothed the pleats of my generic private school tartan skirt and tugged up my knee-socks. Then I checked Mother and righted the collar of her blouse. Although she said nothing, I could sense her relief at finally arriving.
After a few seconds of using the heavy brass knocker, Mrs. Pott opened the door.
“Ah, you must be the new tenants; though really, I’d rather call you the new neighbours.” She smiled over-brightly.
I introduced myself and Mother. Mother hadn’t been well lately and managed only a tepid greeting. Mrs. Pott bristled with life. If it had been dark, I think she would have given off sparks. I couldn’t help smiling.
She invited us into a cavernous entrance hall. Two young people descended the broad central staircase, stopping short of the last step. The boy must have been around 18, the girl perhaps 15. They were tall and pale and grim, wanting both sun and humour. Their hair was the brown-black of bad coal and they resembled old oil portraits more than flesh and blood people.
“My children,” Mrs.
Pott chimed, and her voice did have a bell-like quality. “Oliver and Mara, come and greet the new upstairs neighbours.”
The children seemed locked in a contest to see who would give in first. The girl lost and came toward us in a way that suggested she was used to that. The boy stayed put, a slight upturn to the corner of his mouth.
Mara’s hand was cool and limp in mine, reminding me of squids-on-ice at a fish counter. Greetings over, she was told to show us upstairs. Mrs. Pott returned to the kitchen where, she explained, she had something on the go.
I put my hand under Mother’s bent elbow to lend her support as we followed Mara up the well-worn stairs. Oliver watched. There was an unpleasant smell to him, organic and slightly fungal. He listed his shoulder toward me as I passed, forcing me either to make contact or move away. I moved away.
We passed through the first floor landing and continued up a narrower staircase to the top floor. The door to our flat had been painted aubergine. Mara took a key and unlocked it.
“Here’s your living room,” she said with little enthusiasm. She pointed to the other rooms vaguely. “Two bedrooms there, toilet and bath there. Eat-in kitchen over there.” She dropped the key onto the coffee table. The flat was furnished, though erratically; as if by an interior designer on hallucinogens and lack of sleep. The sofa and two armchairs could not have been more different in style: pale silk brocade fought with orange-and-green wool plaid. I directed Mother to the sofa, the less vocal of the options.
Mara showed her first sign of interest in us.
“Bit dark in here for sunglasses,” she nodded to Mother.
“I’m afraid she’s not well. She needs to wear the glasses even indoors.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She seemed awkward talking to strangers. “You and I must be the same age,” she tried a different topic. “Will you be starting at the school in town in September?”
“I don’t know. It all depends on Mother.”
G is for Ghosts Page 16