Little Ghosts
Maya’s aunt Debbie’s voice fills a room, despite being merely above a whisper. It melted into the space of Debbie’s and Maya’s mom’s childhood home, showing how she’d never really left, and made it so Maya could visit every summer when her mom got into the busy season at work. Maya loved how her aunt said her name — three times, like she couldn’t help but say it any other way, and she said the Y as the most important letter. No one else said that. There were a million other Mayas in her class, but no one said it like that, like they truly loved the sound of the word. “Maya, Maya, Maya,” she heard, through a round of late-night jitters. “It’s time to go to sleep now.”
“But you never showed me where the little ghosts live!”
Maya didn’t really care about the little ghosts, but she did care about not going to sleep.
“The little ghosts will be asleep now, too,” Debbie replies, having a response all ready to go for Maya’s inevitable and routine bedtime retort, while somehow forgetting she’d mentioned them earlier that day. Though, this time, Debbie didn’t want Maya to go to bed, either. It was their last night together before Maya had to go back home. Everything was more vivid when Maya was around. Even the cat came out from under the couch when Maya visited.
Maya and Debbie painted that evening, and Maya’s painting was an unintelligible blob that got paint all over the kitchen table and cups. Debbie figured it was on her for using the glass ones, though. Cleaning them would be something to do after Maya’s mom picked her up. It was supposed to rain the next night, so maybe they’d use the dirty glasses and paint again for their last summer night together for the year.
“But you said it’s supposed to rain tomorrow! You said my mom liked to look at them, too, I think she’d be okay with me staying up past my bedtime if you said it was for them!” Debbie couldn’t help but be charmed by her negotiation skills. Maybe one day Maya would grow up to be a lawyer like her mother. Secretly, though, Debbie wished she didn’t, especially if Maya became like her mother. Her mother probably forgot about the little ghosts. She hadn’t visited them since. She used to want to be a teacher, but their parents said at least one of them had to make some money, and with the younger going to art school, the older sucked it up and made the change. Every day, she remembers the switch, and every day, a different emotion is attached to it. Today, she remembered it with hope, for once, because of Maya. Maybe she’d get back to the little ghosts someday, if Maya can help her get there.
“Please?” Maya pleaded. “I really want to meet them.” For a child, Maya was good at reading faces. She knew adult emotions before she was even taught what they were. She also knew she could convince her aunt with just a few retorts. Any time now, they’d be seeing the little ghosts, and Maya wouldn’t be asleep.
“Alright, but you have to tell your mom you went to bed on time, ok?”
“I can’t tell her we saw them?”
“You can if you want, but you have to promise to be awake and alert for your mom when she comes back on Saturday, right? She’s excited to have you home.” It’s not that her mom wasn’t excited to have her home, but Debbie knew her sister, and work took precedence. She never understood how work could be more important than time with Maya.
“Promise! I give you my word,” she said, leaping from the covers and putting her shoes on.
“You give me your word?” Debbie said through giggles at Maya’s expression. “At least you can tell your mother you learned some new phrases.”
The creaky door that rusted from the moist air swung shut behind them as the pair wandered outside.
“I think it’s just dark enough. Now, look at that bush over there, the one that looks a little wet,” she paused, giving Maya time. The moonlight that lit up the lake bounced onto the leaves.
“I got it.”
“Great. Try your absolute best not to blink.” She waited for a few more seconds, waiting for Maya to comment. She knew she wouldn't have to ask if she was ready for the next step — Maya would tell her.
Maya gasped. As she looked out, thousands of little ghosts appeared around her, each no bigger than her small fist. Some looked happy, some a little less so, but none sad. The ones closest to her had little arms that worked like a parachute on either side, pulling them down peacefully towards the lake. They all moved downward at the same speed, like they lived in the lake. But they were starting to fade, and Maya just wouldn’t have that.
“It’s disappearing!”
“Now, turn your head and look out to the lake,” she said, adding, “don’t close your eyes,” as an afterthought. Maya didn’t.
“Why are they going away?” Maya asked sadly, as though they’d never come back.
“They’ll come back. Find the bush again.”
She did so, then looking back at the lake a few seconds later.
“What are they?” She asked, curious as any child would be.
“My mom used to say they take all your bad feelings and keep them stored away so you won’t have to worry about them anymore,” her aunt said. “They’re very helpful little creatures, aren’t they?”
Maya watched in wonder as the little orbs floated from the crystal clear sky. If they were looking at constellations, they’d be able to see every one from either horizon. When Maya gets older, she thought, Maya would love astronomy.
“Do they live in the water?”
“You know, I don’t know.”
Most children did not like the answer, “I don’t know.” They wanted something more concrete, a learned fact about the world they could add to their list. Maya however, loved nothing more. The whole night, she thought of the little ghosts, even after she said good night to her aunt. What were all their names? Did they have names? Did they have families with moms and aunts like hers? What language did they speak? Maybe they communicated without speaking. That night alone, she probably had a hundred stories for the little ghosts in her head, each one with a different family, name, language, home, or whatever she could think up until she drifted off to sleep, the thoughts combining with the gentle wave noises of the lake. She was finally asleep, the little ghosts floating through her mind as gracefully as they entered.
~
The whole car ride home, Maya thought about the little ghosts and all of the personalities she developed for them. One’s name was Julie, the first name she thought of, after her best friend. Julie had two little brothers. She wondered what it was like to have a little brother, since she was an only child and her mom only had one sister. Julie and her brothers would see who could take the most amount of bad thoughts, turning it into a little competition. On the fall down to the lake, they’d drift and bump into each other, taking the bad thoughts the others had captured. At the end, whoever won got to pick their bedtime. Maya thought that seemed a worthy enough prize.
She asked her mother about the little ghosts. If she remembered them, if they looked like her memory of them, if she thought they had names and families like hers, where they came from, and where they lived. She didn’t remember them, but she was working on a really hard case, she said, but she’d talk about the little ghosts when they had dinner that night. She thought it was something Maya made up. When they ate dinner, they watched an episode of TV and the conversation stayed mostly about other things over the summer — how was Aunt Debbie? Did you like the lake? Did you swim? S’mores by the campfire? Oh, I bet that was fun! I bet you were missing having tater tots for dinner, though, huh? Yeah, I thought so. I bet you’re excited to be back in your room tonight, huh?
Maya never understood why adults said this. She couldn’t think of another place she’d rather be than back in the guest room at her aunt’s house, but after that episode, she went to sleep, in her own room, still dreaming about the little ghosts and their lives.
~
Maya woke up to her alarm. It was a Friday — her early shift. She slept through her shift once, so she waited in anticipation for three, all with different ring tones as she slowly woke up. She liked to look at her drafts one last time before she went in, reminding herself of something she liked before getting yelled at by customers who seemed to think of it as a threat when they said they’d never be coming back to this establishment. Good, she thought. One less stressor from my day. She’d pour coffee for the regulars instead, people who remembered her name and asked her how her thesis was going. She didn’t like hating her job because there were people out there like that who made her day a little brighter. It wouldn’t have to be “made brighter” if she didn’t have to work at the restaurant, though.
Aunt Debbie always told her to go to her happy place when she starts to feel that ping in her chest. Every time the ping happens, she looks at the clock, a habit her mom told her to break, but she just couldn’t resist. This time, she felt it when she got a 50-cent tip on a $30 meal, three people who all paid separately, only one “considerate” enough to leave a tip, two quarters sitting on the table mocking her. They really shouldn’t have. As she pocketed the two pitiful coins and stacked the seven plates among her arms, the clock gave her just as much anger as the coins did. How were there still three hours left? Probably another four after that, writing, too, since she had to pick up an extra shift a few days before and now she really, really needed to hit page 65 of her thesis today, the thing she didn’t want to write. The thought of having to write one more sentence about implied copyright made her almost want to pick up another shift instead. At least she was writing about writing, though. For now, that was the closest she could get.
She thought about the little ghosts every once in a while, but tried not to anymore. With Aunt Debbie gone and her mom getting overly sentimental at every mention of her name for the lost sister-relationship-that-could-have-been, the ghosts did the opposite of what they were supposed to do and brought the bad feelings back. She couldn’t blame her mom, though, because if she had missed out on a relationship with Aunt Debbie, she’d be sad about it too. She knew there was more to it than that and there weren’t too many less compatible personalities than her by-the-book, overachieving single lawyer mom and her eccentric, crafty, free-spirited aunt, especially after she found out how their parents pitted them against each other, but she knew they liked to hold a grudge, and she knew she didn’t.
When someone else in her section waved her down, she tried to remember the last time she made progress on the memoir. Ketchup? I’ll be right back with that. Hey, where are those fries for table 10? Alex didn’t wipe down that table? I guess I’ll go do it. Again. Was it three weeks ago I made those edits that mom talked about? The fair use thing? But what did she say, again? It was about fair use. But it’s implied copyright law, the whole thing is about fair use. Fair use is implied! You know what else is implied? Cleaning the goddamn table after someone leaves! I can’t believe he gets hourly and I have a whole fifty cents in my pocket. Maybe someone else will make up for it. Usually Rob comes in on Fridays, and he usually tips pretty well. I wonder if he’ll talk about his granddaughter again. They were supposed to go to the movies this week. I hope when I have kids, I talk about them like he talks about her. I hope she doesn’t end up in law school. Shit, I was supposed to get ketchup for table three. Why don’t we have any ketchup back here? I hate grabbing stuff from tables, but I guess I will. Are they looking? Yeah, I guess I’ll grab one from Lindsey’s-
“Maya! Fries for 10!” The shout from the kitchen made her jump. The line cook said her name like a command, like it was its own verb that needed to be said quickly to get to the next part of the sentence. He had a point, maybe, since they did have a job to do. She just hated not being able to take her time with anything. Everything was so snappy. The second she started thinking about anything from her own life, being her own person, she was snapped right back in — even her thoughts had to be restaurant-related. Her name bounced through the walls in the kitchen, almost no different from the food order she was supposed to pick up.
A few hours later Maya was in her car, wondering how she was going to muster up the energy to catch up on her thesis she didn’t care about in the least. It will get me where I need to be, she told herself, racking her brain to think about anything to say about fair use she hadn’t said already. Going straight to her computer, forgetting even that she probably should make dinner, she opened another document, something that she had actual thoughts on, to get started.
She liked jogging her memory about the summers she used to spend with her aunt. The cabin on the lake seemed too distant a memory for her, and though she remembered things that happened, such as them painting or her never wanting to go to sleep, she was losing the small things, like how everything felt spending time with her aunt. What did her voice sound like again? There was something she always used to make for breakfast… that egg thing? What was it called? It wasn’t an omelette and she never technically tried it because she was in the phase of her life where dino nuggets and tater tots were the only acceptable meals. She would give a lot to try it now. What color were the curtains in the guest room? They were green, right? No, orange. They had to be because they had those stupid little butterflies on them that matched absolutely nothing else in the beach-themed house. As bad as they looked, she wouldn’t mind hanging those curtains in her own apartment. It gives character, Aunt Debbie would always say. Aunt Debbie would listen to Maya’s endless stories she’d make up, and one time, she even did a painting of a story Maya came up with that one day when it rained. What was it about, though?
Reading back her own work, she finally got in a tolerable enough state of mind to work on the thesis when she heard a ring, letting it go to voicemail.
“Hey, Maya? It’s Mom. I know you’re busy and all, but I’d really appreciate some help cleaning out some of your aunt’s stuff from that cabin. I haven’t been up there in years and -”
Before the voicemail could even end, Maya was out the door. Somehow, she remembered the drive there, not even knowing the address.
~
“What about this?” Maya held up a shirt her aunt used to wear. “You don’t think you’d like this one?” It had been a few months since Maya was there, but her mom took a two-year long hiatus after the funeral. Avoiding their childhood home that her sister obtained was a break from the constant reminders of how distant their relationship was as adults.
“Those frilly bits wouldn’t look nice.” Her mom paused for a moment, thinking of what else to say, as she could see her daughter was disappointed to get rid of it. “She wouldn’t want us looking less than our best.”
Maya put it in the get-rid-of pile, sorry, the donate pile, her mother corrected her, a sinking feeling in her stomach. She was throwing the memories away, but she couldn’t keep everything. As she reached over the pile, shirt in hand, her foot hit something. It was heavy and had a corner, but was flat. “Is there something under there?” Her mom asked as she heard something heavy creak against the old wooden floors. “I thought we got everything.”
Maya bent down, grabbing the object peeking out from under the dresser. Inside a weirdly-ornate frame for her aunt’s taste was a painting that made Maya lose her breath a little, hardly noticing that she had stopped breathing. It was these little white orbs floating around the night sky over the lake — they had faces and arms. Some were holding hands gathered in groups. Others hung alone, but not in a lonely way.
“Another painting? I really thought we got them all,” her mom repeated.
“Can I show you something?” Maya asked her mom, suddenly remembering one particular night and one particular memory.
“What is it?”
“It’s outside,” she said, grabbing her jacket and slipping her shoes on. “Follow me.”
Maya led her mother outside, just as her aunt led her. Like she didn’t want to go to sleep that night, she didn’t want to let go of another memory tonight. Thankfully, it was just dark enough to show her.
“Look at that bush over there. The one that kind of reflects the moon a little bit? And don’t blink.”
“What is this?” She trusted her, but had no idea what was about to happen. For a moment, she saw a glimpse of her sister in Maya, always looking for their own meaning in whatever they could find. A smile brushed her face, whatever they were about to see.
“Just look, ok? And keep looking…” she directed. “Okay, when I tell you, turn your head to the lake, really quickly, but don’t close your eyes.” She made sure her mom was watching, knowing that she’d probably be skeptical of something like this. “Turn!”
Her mother followed her instructions, instantly remembering, just like Maya had. Even though they said nothing, they both knew and understood each other. Everything was peaceful again. They felt like they were children again. As much as her mom saw her sister in Maya, Maya saw her aunt in her mom now, like she hadn’t before. The ghosts brought a smile to her mother’s face, highlighted by the same moonlit glow. Maya practically heard her aunt say her name in her own special way, “Maya, Maya, Maya…”. She finally remembered how she sounded. She wasn’t reaching for the past anymore – it was there with her. The little ghosts fell from the sky, and into the lake. She never did get the ketchup for that table. Her bad feelings faded away with the little ghosts over the dark horizon. Nostalgia was nice, but being here, presently in the moment for once, was pretty nice too.
