Help for the Haunted(101)

“What exactly is wrong with her?” I asked my mother, since she seemed different from the only other haunted person I’d encountered in our house, that man at the kitchen table in the middle of the night years before.

I had followed her to the washroom, where she emptied the bag of Abigail’s belongings and inspected the broken zippers, torn hems, and tattered material. In a tired voice, she told me, “You don’t have to be a part of this, Sylvie. Once I get her cleaned up and fed, I’ll get her settled in the partitioned area that your father finally just about finished. In the meantime, you can go to your room and read or even go to the living room and watch TV for a change.”

She seemed so weary that I couldn’t help but want to be of some use to her. “Here, Mom. Let me get this laundry going while you help her settle in.”

My mother debated the idea, then put down Abigail’s clothes and went to a cabinet by the dryer. She pulled out a gift box with a torn scrap of Nativity wrapping paper taped to one side. Since my sister wore sweats to bed and walked around the house barefoot until the soles of her feet turned gray, I was never sure why my parents bothered getting her certain gifts. Now, my mother took out an unworn nightgown and slippers they’d given Rose the previous Christmas. She held up the gown, and it unfurled like a pale spirit before her. She carried that spirit, those slippers, from the room.

A Grand Canyon T-shirt. A Mount Rushmore T-Shirt. A Jesus Loves Me T-Shirt. From where I stood feeding all those frayed shirts into the machine, I could hear my mother and Abigail in the kitchen. My mother offered her food but got no response. My mother offered her a shower but got no response to that, either. At last, she must have managed to convince the girl to wash her hands and face, because I heard water running in the sink for some time. I poured a double dose of detergent into the machine as I heard my mother say, “There we go, Abigail. That’s better—for the time being anyway. Now, I imagine you must be tired. Am I right?” The girl must have nodded, because after a pause my mother said, “I thought so. And you know what? I’m tired too. So let’s get you settled downstairs. We can say some prayers, read a bit of scripture, then I think I’ll head to bed early myself.”

I cranked the knobs on the washer, realizing my mother and I would not be having any of the fun she promised earlier. Considering the way things had been lately, I should not have been disappointed, but I was. I didn’t have time to really get upset, though; no sooner had I lowered the lid and the machine started thrashing away than a crash came from the kitchen, followed by the sounds of a shrill yelp, furniture toppling, and dishes smashing. I hurried to the kitchen to find my mother holding open the basement door, the light we’d left on glowing below. The table had been shoved into the center of the room. The chairs where my parents normally sat had been knocked over. A fat strip of peeling blue wallpaper stripped from the wall.

“What happened?” I asked my mother.

She shut the basement door, looked down at that wallpaper book on the floor. It had fallen open to a pattern I recognized by now—The Tiniest Hearts. “I wanted to take her downstairs but she shook her head. I told her it would be fine and held out my hand. But as soon as we reached the top step, she pulled back so suddenly and with such force that our hands came apart and she fell into those chairs. She grabbed for something and caught that wallpaper, which peeled right along with her as she fell to the floor.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know.”

Once more, my mother told me I didn’t need to be a part of what was happening. But I ignored her. She picked up Rose’s nightgown and slippers, and we roamed the house. I expected to come upon Abigail tucked in the back of a closet or behind a hamper or beneath a desk, burrowed away like an animal in hiding. Instead, when my mother and I reached Rose’s doorway, we spotted her inside, slipped beneath the covers, eyes closed, as though she had been asleep for hours.

More to herself than me, my mother said, “I can’t have this.”

“What should we do?” I asked.

She did not answer right away. Instead, we lingered in the doorway, watching Abigail. I thought of the story her father had told about the Sisters, those hunched old women who took his money but did nothing to help beyond pointing him to my mother and father. After so much false promise, no wonder the girl did not trust anyone to lead her into an unfamiliar basement.

My mother must have been thinking the same thing, because as I watched, she entered the room, reached out, and made a sign of the cross on the girl’s forehead again and again. It went on long enough that I looked away, staring at my sister’s globe and giving it a spin the way she used to do, planting my finger down on random locations: Hong Kong. Ontario. Bombay. I wondered if Rose had arrived at Saint Julia’s by then. Maybe she’d even checked into her room and begun making friends with other girls there, realizing already that it was the best place for her after all.

“I don’t like the idea,” my mother said to me in a hushed voice when she was done making crosses. “But we could leave her here for just tonight. Do you feel comfortable with that, Sylvie?”

I lifted my gaze from the globe and looked at Abigail asleep in Rose’s bed. “For now, I guess it would be okay.”

“When your father gets home, he can help us make other arrangements.” She stood, leaving that white gown Rose had never bothered with at the foot of the bed, those slippers on the floor. My mother joined me in the hallway and was about to close the door when we heard something from inside the room: a voice, worn as those tattered clothes in the washer, saying, “Thank you.”