sidewalk, and dropped smack-dab on her wanton husband’s skull. Killing him. And she survived. I heard all about it during this TV show. Stranger Than Fiction, Amazing Stories of Life and Death. But my mother thought I was lying.
'A man tumbled into a coleslaw blender and got mixed to death.'
'No he didn’t.”
'And another man tumbled into melted chocolate and died, and it happened to another man but it was gravy instead of chocolate. They died in vats.'
'Jeliza-Rose, your stories aren’t interesting.”
'Do you know what this woman in New Zealand was stabbed to death with?”
'I don’t care. That’s enough.”
'A frozen sausage. Can you believe it? And this man was in a coffin--”
'Enough. Seal it!'
But my father believed me. And when I explained about the workmen in Houston who tried freeing a squirrel from an irrigation pipe, he listened carefully.
'They lifted the pipe and it bumped a power wire, and they got zapped dead. But the squirrel was okay.'
'Horrible,' he said. 'That’s really awful.'
And that second day at What Rocks, I spied a ghost lady near the railroad tracks, and wondered if she’d died horribly - if something like a frozen yogurt machine had electrocuted her, or a vat of molten lipstick was accidentally spilled on her. Or maybe she was lured to a wedding and murdered.
I wouldn’t have seen the ghost if Classique hadn’t asked to visit the bus. We’d been among the weeds, creeping around the farmhouse yard in hopes of spotting another squirrel, when she said, 'Jeliza-Rose, show me that upside-down place.'
'Okay,” I told her, 'but only you and me can go, and you can’t tell anyone else because it’s secret.”
Then we snuck away toward the Johnsongrass, careful not to arouse Magic Curl and Fashion Jeans; their hollow necks stuck over nail butts on the front porch, hostages once more.
Stepping along the cattle trail, Classique and I quietly sang, 'I’m a little tea pot, short and stout-' And as we reached the grazing pasture, I mentioned how the fireflies had materialized from nowhere.
'So now we can’t sing or talk now,” I said, dropping my voice, 'or we’ll spook the lightning bugs and they won’t come tonight.”
And when she said, 'We must see the light bugs tonight,” I put her against my lips and shushed her.
'You’ll scare them,' I said. 'They probably won’t be out tonight anyway.”
I didn’t want her returning with me that evening. The fireflies were my extra secret friends. Classique wouldn’t understand their blinks.
Minding the bluebonnets that lurked in the high foxtails, we walked the length of the wreck. Then I bowed at a busted window, where the foxtail spikes tickled my chin. In midday, the upturned bus was smaller, less ominous than I remembered. And gazing straight through the gloomy interior, I caught sight of the Johnsongrass parting in the adjacent field -- the ghost moving out into pasture, partially obscured by the rise of railroad tracks.
'It’s a lady,” I said, noting her black dress.
Her head was covered by a mesh hood, the kind beekeepers use for protection; she stooped-she didn’t notice us. And the idea of running never crossed my mind. My heart didn’t beat any faster, my hands didn’t shake.
For a better view, Classique and I crept to the rear of the bus, my steps swooshing in the foxtails. And peeping around the side, we saw the ghost grabbing nettles, effortlessly, like pulling one Kleenex and then another from the box.
Ghost, I thought. Big fat ghost.
With the hood on, her housedress bunching as she crouched, the ghost appeared larger than any woman I’d ever encountered, including my mother. And while observing her at work, Classique and I were all whispers.
'She comes from a cave somewhere in that field,” I said.
'Because she was killed in this very bus,” said Classique, 'all burned bad and that’s why her face is covered.”
'She boils what she pulls in a pot and makes weed soup. That’s what she does.”
'That’s how ghosts get fat. There’s so many weeds it’d be easy to get fat that way.”
No other explanation presented itself.
On Halloween, I asked my father if ghosts haunted L.A., and he said just a few, mostly dead movie stars, like Marilyn Monroe and Fatty Arbuckle.
'But in Texas,” he explained, 'there’s a ton. Bluesmen like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Leadbelly wander Dallas streets at night. Woody Guthrie too. Then there’s the Alamo -- that joint is rich with spooks. And where Mother lived, way out in nowhere, she’d spot ghosts coming and going right outside her windows, right in the middle of the day.”
'Bullshit,' my mother said. 'Noah, you’ll be up with her tonight when she’s scared to sleep.'
'No I won’t,' my father told her, '‘cause I’m saying now that most spooks are harmless. They just want to be seen but don’t want to be bothered.” Then he gave me one of his winks, saying, 'As long as Mother was alive, them ghosts didn’t bug her. In fact, she enjoyed knowing they was there. They kept an eye on her place, made her feel all safe.'
And I was going to tell Classique what my father had said, but then my ankles were itching again, and my legs felt like needles were pricking at the skin but not quite sinking in.
'She got killed in the fire,' whispered Classique.
Wrenching nettles from the ground and throwing them aside, the ghost paused to wipe dirt on her white apron. And even though it was warm outside, she wore gray mittens.
'No, she didn’t get burned in the bus,” I said. 'She got strangled.”
'And drowned.'
'She’s Queen Gunhild and she didn’t want to stay in the bog so she decided not to be dead anymore.'
Bog men rose from their peat graves, so did Gunhild. After all, she was a bog woman. And perhaps my father had become a ghost. He could be in the kitchen eating crackers, or upstairs searching for that squirrel. He might be on the porch, waiting.
'We have to go.'
'Right now.'
'We have to hurry.”
But I couldn’t run because my shins were sore. So we took our time.
The ghost was busy with her mittens, whistling a pretty song. The railroad tracks and the foxtails made it impossible to see what exactly her mittens were doing.
'He won’t be on the porch,” Classique said. 'He won’t be upstairs. He’s not a ghost yet.”
'But he will be.'
'I know,' she said. 'I know everything?
I looked at her face, her long eyelashes. I wondered who removed her head. I wondered who did that kind of thing to dolls.
8
Classique said, 'Quit scratching and it’ll stop itching.'
That’s what my mother would tell me when I pinched at a scab or rubbed a bug bite.
'Just let it be and it’ll heal quicker. You’re making it worse.”
So upstairs in the bathroom, I resisted the urge to rake my shins with my fingernails. Instead, I donned one of Grandmother’s blond wigs. And standing at the mirror, I put on lipstick, trying my best to apply it evenly. If the lipstick ended up crooked or smeared, then it became poisonous. My tongue would swell, and I’d choke.
Grandmother’s cosmetic bag had six different lipsticks, various shades of red, the scarlet being my favorite because it reminded me of apples. It also reminded me of blood. And it felt waxy like an apple peel but didn’t dry
