Ghosted
by Marie Perez
She stood alone in their kitchen as the rain pelted the tin roof and her mother-in-law sobbed the impossible news through the phone she held in her trembling hands. She folded to the floor, holding her head as visions spun around her — her and her Love sipping coffee in the soft morning light, the sly sips of kåddon beef shank they shared before dinner — and then she suddenly bolted from the floor to her front door.
“No!” she screamed. When she opened the door, she wished that her Love would be standing there.
He would be wearing his old dress shoes that he carefully polished once a week for Sunday mass. His slightly faded but well-kept jeans would fit him comfortably, and he would be wearing a clean, white, button-up shirt with the first few buttons loosened so that she could see the outline of his clavicle — just hinting at the strong chest that lay below. His wide brown eyes would meet hers, looking at her like he would never let her go.
The breeze would carry the faint scent of the tobacco in the base notes of his cologne that he pressed to his clean-shaven skin every morning — a scent that was overlaid with top notes of whiskey, middle notes of cinnamon and coriander. The scents would breathe and fade, one-by-one, throughout the day until he would be beside her as they napped during the siesta, and she would only smell faint tobacco on him as her fingers lightly traced the tattoos and thin scars on his arms.
Instead, the rain welcomed her with a blurry vision of their garden and with heavy, putrid scents unearthed from beneath the ground. She crumpled into herself and cried.
Three nights later, prayers and ma’åse’s were raised into the air from her living room. Surrounded by the quiet crying around the circle of folding chairs that was so unusual during family gatherings. She saw his eyes peering at her from outside the house through the opened louvre windowpanes. She sat frozen, cross-legged on the floor. Let me in, his deep brown eyes pleaded with her. Let me in!
But instead of opening the front door for him that night, she found herself continuing to stare into his wide eyes. She saw nothing more besides him staring at her from the black night. She did not cry or scream. It was not right but his eyes were there. Before she could think or say anything they were gone. She must have imagined him there. She must have.
On the sixth night she could not bear the thought of never seeing his eyes open again. She recalled a story her Nana told her long ago of a ghost girl who peered into the world of the living through the gaps between furniture. While the rest of the house slept, she spent her time looking in the gaps all around the house. Under the ice box, between the oven and the counter, under the couches, between couch cushions — Nana, can gap ghosts peer out from the shadows between clothes that hung in a closet too?
He couldn’t be just outside. He wasn’t there before — and yet why didn’t she try again just three nights ago? Were his eyes alone not enough for her? Or was it that there really was no possible way he could be there…just outside the house…waiting for her to welcome him?
The next night, she could hear the tap-tap-tapping through the walls and on the windows. Was that there before? Could it be geckos? Tree limbs blowing in the wind?
Or maybe it was him. He was sending her a message. As a child, her father taught her military alphabet and Morse code. She taught her Love these secret codes too, when they were young and the seed of their romance was planted in the afternoons spent playing hide-and-seek in the cul-de-sac their houses shared. He was playing a game with her — she liked to imagine that his soul did not lose the playfulness it had in life.
While the women around her raised their monotone voices in prayer and song, she studiously ticked the taps into her prayer book.
Charlie…Yankee…Echo…
Charlie…Yankee…Echo…
Charlie…Romeo…Charlie?
Over and over again.
CYE CYE CRC?
Was it not morse code? Was it not him tapping away?
By midnight, she searched all the gaps again and peered out of all the windows. She ventured outside at 3:00 a.m. without turning on the lights and wore only white so he could see her. She whispered the words she said to him when they embraced.
Did he lose his eyes and his way back home? Did he lose his way back to her? She picked asusenas and held them in the wind so that he might catch the scent and find his way back.
After his funeral, she could not listen or search anymore. She had seen him laid to rest. His skin, that was like burnished copper in life — radiant with his spirit and colored with the many days spent toiling and playing in the sun — was covered with powder that poorly masked the dimness of death — it was not right. She laid curled in bed clutching the prayer book and a picture of them together.
Hours later, she cried as she went over the last texts that he sent to her as he left in the relentless rain to pick up food for their date night because they both did not want to cook.
Bye Bye, BRB
He meant “Goodbye my love, I love you, I will be right back.”
Is that what he meant…cye cye crc? He always confused the Bs and the Cs…
She ran out of her bedroom to her front door — this time he would be there, he would be there, he would be there!
Her heart sang saina ma’åse’s to God and to her Nana in heaven who told her that she and her Love would be together forever.
She would have his eyes in her life again. He would be there.
She paused, turned the doorknob, and pulled open the front door.
But all she saw was the empty air.
Marie Antoinette Perez is a CHamoru-Palauan writer from Kañåda, Barrigada. Inspired by her family’s love for storytelling and fantasy movies and books, she enjoys incorporating fantasy elements into her writing to explore human relationships.
