Southern Lady Code: Essays(14)

Megan said, “So, if you saw a ghost in this apartment, you’d ignore it?”

I stared over Megan’s shoulder and whispered, “I’m ignoring one right now.”

Dani looked up.

“Just kidding!” I said. “But seriously, there are a lot of ghosts in the building. It’s a hundred years old. People die. There’ve been four suicides I know about: gunshot, bathtub, and two jumped out the windows. All the doormen have seen ghosts. And there’s a haunted baby carriage in the basement.”

“Of course there is,” said Dani.

I said, “It’s straight out of Rosemary’s Baby. It moves between storage bins when nobody’s watching. One day it’s by the laundry machines, the next day it’s by the boiler. The super doesn’t know who it belongs to, but refuses to throw it out. My husband says there was a ghost right here where we puzzle.”

“What do you mean right here where we puzzle?” asked Dani.

“I mean, like, right here. There’s always been a dining table in this spot, and before my husband was born, his brother Kip saw a woman in a ball gown standing next to it. She was blond and wore her hair up. She wore jewelry and opera gloves. Kip called her the Moon Lady.”

“Did your husband ever see her?” asked Megan.

“No.”

“But he believes she was here?”

“Of course he does,” said Dani.

I hated to admit it: “No, he doesn’t.”



* * *



    ————

My sister went so far as to make her California husband swear to believe in ghosts in their wedding vows: Stefan, do you promise to love Elizabeth for who she is now and who she will become, to encourage her Southernness and to hold her hand, especially when things are scary? Do you promise to live in a big old house with cats and dogs and kids and secret passageways and to have a wraparound porch where you can sit and watch the thunderstorms? Do you promise to say “okay” and move out without question if she tells you the house is haunted?

He did.

When their daughter, Katy Belle (who was named after Great-aunt Belle), spoke to the People in the Fireplace at four years old, and then at six woke to see a man drink a grape soda in her bedroom, and then at seven asked my sister if ghosts are real and Elizabeth said, “Oh, yes, we are a family that likes ghosts!” Stefan didn’t contradict her. He is helping to raise a funny intelligent feminist glamazon.

What I didn’t tell Megan and Dani is: I have seen a ghost in our apartment.

The last ghost I saw was my husband’s brother, Kip.

Kip died of a brain aneurism at twenty-nine. More than twenty years ago, I woke to find him sitting between us in bed. Kip was in Converse sneakers, 501 jeans, and a T-shirt. He was just sitting there. Looking straight ahead, with a hand on my husband and me.

When I eventually told my husband that I had seen his brother, he didn’t ask questions. We haven’t moved. And he’s never asked if I’ve seen Kip again. He accepts my story. I think he likes that I believe. Like he likes that I do puzzles. While my husband doesn’t want to do either—see ghosts or work a jigsaw—he appreciates that I include him in both odd parts of my life.

But for now, my ghosts are gone.

And my one rule of puzzle night is: after my friends and I put together five hundred to one thousand parts of a picture, my husband gets to put in the last piece. My friends don’t object. Puzzling women are generous. We want everyone to share in our experiences.





PARTY FOUL





In 1983, my parents threw a Halloween birthday party for me and thirty other eighth graders in a one-room round house in the middle of a park. The house was one story, one room, walled off, with no windows. It had a glass-door entrance and—as well as I or anyone else can remember—no back exit. Was it a safety hazard? Well, of course it was, but that was part of the fun. If a candle fell off my cake, we would go up like a trash can fire. It was dark outside, everyone’s parents had dropped them off, and the nearest civilization was a Taco Casa drive-thru miles and miles away.

For costumes my friend Vicki and I dressed up as punk rockers, which to us meant side ponies and T-shirts with safety pins in the necks. My friend Liz came as the Grim Reaper in a black hooded robe with a four-foot-long sickle she’d crafted from Reynolds Wrap. My friend Ellen greased her short black hair and came as Ralph “Let’s do it for Johnny!” Macchio from The Outsiders. My friend Laura came as Trixie, a “lady of the night,” which meant she wore a feather boa. But none of the boys paid us any attention because of what the one early-developed girl wore.

“Early-developed” is Southern Lady Code for brace face and B cups. This girl wore a flesh-colored leotard and wrapped a nine-foot-long stuffed carnival snake around her body like a roller-coaster tattoo.

“Her mother escorted her in, carrying the tail,” Mama remembers. “And what could we say? We were in the Bible Belt after all, why wouldn’t she come as Eve?”

My parents had threatened to dress up as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, topped off with propeller beanies. They’d thought this would be hilarious. I’d thought it would be mortifying. So they wore jeans, as did a twenty-three-year-old female classmate of Mama’s. Mama was in her forties but had just entered law school. Nothing embarrassed her.