Gingersnap (3 page)

Who was it?

The hat teetered on the edge of the little waterfall, dragging the blue ribbons behind it, and disappeared over the edge.

“Too late anyway,” the voice said. “Just let it go, Jayna.”

I stood on tiptoe to see who was up there, but even the feet were gone now.

I had to be dreaming. There’d been too much to worry about.

“Yes,” the voice said. “Too much all at once, I know. Even for me.”

Who was reading my mind?

The voice went on. “You can’t imagine what’s in store for you, but at least I’ll be there, helping you find what you need.”

I took a quick breath. Then I ran. Around the pond. Through the yard. And into the house.

I locked the kitchen door behind me, circled Rob’s duffel bag in the hall, and went up to my room.

“Too much,” I whispered. I could hear Rob in the bathroom, fixing a leak, whistling. What was that song?

“We’ll Meet Again.”

Should I tell him about that voice?

One Sunday, when I was five, he’d come for his usual visit. “Get me out of here,” I’d said. “There’s a lizard living under my bed. A blue one.”

He’d nodded seriously, as if he believed every word.

He’d nod seriously this time, too.

But how could he believe in a ghost?

Was it a ghost?

Someone with a high voice? Someone who wore my socks and ruined my hat?

How could he possibly believe that? I could hardly believe it myself.

I wasn’t going to think about it one more minute. I marched into the kitchen and pulled out the old pot. I’d make soup instead.

T
he days passed so slowly they might have been glued together. I scuffed through the dry fall leaves and wrote to Rob on Thanksgiving:
Taught Celine how to make stuffing for the turkey. She made the mashed potatoes. I dropped a precious egg on the floor. Eek! Thank goodness it wasn’t her almost-genuine Ming vase … but she acted as if it were just as bad. Fingers crossed. When the war is over, we’ll have dozens of eggs
.

Christmas came, with knitted socks to Celine from me and a book on manners to me from her.

Four letters arrived from Rob in one swoop. One told of seasickness, one of frying Spam and doctoring
up cans of sodden vegetables, another about seeing phosphorous in the rolling water, glints of green that were magical to watch.

Lincoln’s birthday came next. I walked along the street with my head back, staring up at the trees, searching for signs of spring. Nothing yet, but I did get a lump on my forehead from careening into an oak tree.

Sometimes I wondered about the voice. I hadn’t heard it since Rob had left, months ago.

The day he left: duffel bag over his shoulder, the two of us waiting for his train. It came in with a whoosh of air, and I was determined not to cry.

Once inside, he’d pulled up the window. “I’ll be back!” he yelled.

“Anchors aweigh!” I yelled after him, waving until the tracks turned at the end of town and the train was gone.

Celine bought me a hat for Easter Sunday. Imagine, my first veil. It had little blue dots, and I kept blowing at it all through church to get it out of my eyes. I loved it!

Sometimes Celine surprised me.

We listened to the radio when we ate lunch. The
announcer called the first day of Operation Iceberg “Love Day.” “Iwo Jima has fallen, with a terrible loss of lives on both sides,” he said in that deep radio voice. “Twelve thousand ships and a half million men are steaming toward Okinawa, an island seventy miles long, ten miles wide.…”

He kept talking, but all I heard was
twelve thousand ships
. Where was the
Muldoon
in this? Where was Rob?

Later that afternoon, I walked over to our house with the blue roof. I checked the pond. Yes, Theresa had climbed out of the muddy winter bottom; she was sunning herself on the other side of the pond.

I went up to the back door, leaning forward to pull out the key that was looped around my neck, and stepped into the kitchen.

A calendar hung on the wall so I could mark off the days. It was the first of April.

What made me go upstairs? I hadn’t been in my bedroom since the day I’d moved into Celine’s. But I walked through the living room, running my fingers over the dusty end tables, and went up the stairs.

My room was a mess, the closet door and dresser drawers open, a pile of socks on the floor.

Had I left it that way?

“Sorry,” the voice said. “I was trying on a few things. Your jacket with the silver buttons just fit.”

My heart thumped, its beat somewhere in my throat.
I couldn’t run. I could see her feet, on tiptoes in the hall. I’d have to pass her to get to the stairs.

“I’m back,” she said.

“I see that.” I could hear the tremor in my voice, but I tried to sound calm; I tried to sound as if I saw ten polished toes every day, with only a hint of the rest of her. “You’re wearing my nail polish.”

“Yes, Pink Strawberry, very nice.” Her hand rested on the edge of the door. Her fingernails were polished, too, but they were bitten way down. Mine were growing at last. Celine was after me every time she saw my hand go to my mouth.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m trying to figure that out, but don’t worry, I’m harmless.”

I took a step back. I could always jump out the window onto the porch over the kitchen.

“I wouldn’t do that,” the voice said. “I tried it before. It’s a nasty fall if you miss.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I muttered.

“I don’t, either. But that’s what I am.… At least, I think so.”

“But who were you?”

She sighed. “I don’t remember. How about that queen?” She snapped her bitten fingers. “Mary, the Scottish one?”

I shivered. “Her head was chopped off.”

“No,” she said. “Definitely not.”

I was talking to ten fingers, ten toes. How could that be?

“There was Marie Antoinette,” she went on. “But she had a problem with her head, too.”

Ridiculous.

“Do you like the name Cleo?” she asked.

I shook my head. “It sounds like a fish.”

“No, I’m not a fish, either.” She sounded annoyed. “But heads rolling and fish swimming are not what I’m about right this minute. You can call me Ghost, or Voice.” She waved her hand. “Whatever you like. We’re going to spend a lot of time together.” I saw a strand of reddish hair looped over a collar. “Remember that when Stuart comes. It will help.”

What was she talking about? Did I even know a Stuart?

I brushed past her and went down the stairs. It wasn’t enough that I was living with Celine, waiting for mail from Rob that rarely came. Now I had to deal with a ghost who was wearing my nail polish.

I heard the clock chime as I passed the living room. Four-thirty. Celine, back in her kitchen working on a leathery ham, would have an absolute fit, wondering what I was up to.

“Wait,” the voice said behind me. “You have to listen. Stuart will be coming.”

I didn’t turn toward her. It was much easier to look out the window, to pretend she wasn’t there. I paused, then went out the door and walked up the street. I had to pass the Western Union office, closed and dark on Easter Sunday.

I stopped short. Stuart. The old man who sat behind the desk, the one who rode his bicycle when he delivered telegrams that told of men missing or killed in action.

E
very day there was news about the war in the Pacific. A week after Easter, a huge battleship, the
Yamoto
, had been hit and sunk. I kept thinking about what the radio announcer had said: “The Japanese sailors had just enough fuel to take them from their mainland to Okinawa, and it had been for nothing.”

Displaced
.

All that month we heard about kamikaze planes diving into destroyers and battleships.

Please not Rob’s ship, not the
Muldoon.

Mrs. Murtha drew arrows on the blackboard, showing those planes diving and looping, exploding into our ships. One morning, with tears in her eyes, she
told us that our president had died, and there would be a new president, a man named Harry Truman.

True man. The sound of it was hopeful. I made myself think about that.

May began; the sun grew warmer every day. “Wednesday afternoon,” Celine told me after school one day. “So much to do. Groceries from Milton’s, meat from John’s.”

“I’ll go …,” I said

“You’ll get it all wrong,” she said. “I’ll go. You might wash the breakfast dishes instead, and dust the living room.”

I nodded. From her kitchen window I could see all the way down the hill, almost to the telegraph office. The sidewalks were dotted with sycamore trees, their leaves beginning to unfurl, and three or four kids were playing Giant Steps in the street.

“Are you listening to me, Jayna?” Celine asked, her hairpiece sliding over one eye.

“Sorry.” I had to stop thinking about what the ghost had said about Stuart. Was the ghost real or only something I’d made up?

“When you dust, be careful of the almost-genuine Ming vase in the hall,” Celine said. “I’ve had it for years.” She pushed the hairpiece up on her freckled forehead.

I’d heard about that vase at least a dozen times.

Celine went down the street, her shopping bag on
her arm, her snood covering her hair, as I stacked the dishes in the sink and blasted the water over them.

More kids were outside now. They darted back and forth in the street, one taking banana steps, another taking baby steps. “May I?” one of them yelled as another sneaked forward. I watched them while I dried the dishes and dusted the tables, making a wide circle around that vase.

I sat down to write to Rob. “If you don’t write, you’re wrong,” Kate Smith said on the radio every day. I tried, but there was so little to say.

I glanced out the window again. Celine was coming back, laboring up the hill, carrying a knobby bag.

Stuart was behind her, his skinny legs pumping the bicycle wheels. His hand went to the bell on the front, a telegram in his fist. Celine turned. The two of them leaned toward each other, Stuart doing the talking.

Celine’s hand went to her mouth, and they both looked up the hill toward me.

That was all I saw.

That was all I needed to see.

I ran through the hall toward the stairs, knocking over the almost-genuine Ming vase, hearing it shatter into a hundred pieces. I stopped to lock the front door so Stuart couldn’t give me that telegram.