Free as a Ghost

I let Mom guide me through our dark, chilly house, moving everywhere she pushes me, passively helping her complete her chores simply by existing. It’s not the first time for this middle-of-the-night gather-and-dash routine, and we move seamlessly from room to room, despite most of the lights being dark. In my bedroom, one of her hands rests on my shoulder as we roll up pajamas, jeans, extra underwear. For some reason she pulls a winter coat from my closet, even though it’s May and New Jersey isn’t all that cold in May. We shove things into backpacks and move like quiet, unwelcome ghosts in our own home until we reach the front door and an explosion stops us.

Shattered glass somewhere behind us.

It’s a loud splintering that makes my whole body jump.

My father’s rage fills the entire, dark space of the house the way smoke once filled our kitchen when Mom burnt corn muffins to blackened mounds.

Only that had made us all laugh.

           Just as Mom pushes me the last few feet towards the door, and as she slides on her boots, I catch my reflection in the tilted mirror by the bathroom. Slack faced, emotionless. I look like a ghost. Only for a second, I wonder if the reflection is actually mine. Is that what I really look like on nights like this?

The girl in the glass seems older, somehow more aware of herself than I, like she sees me and knows something I do not. Behind her looms a dark shadow. It shifts just a bit even though I know I didn’t move. I whip around but I have no shadow. It’s too dark. When I turn back and try to straighten the mirror, I’m swept out the front door, and the stronger girl vanishes from sight.

Only the shell of me is left.

Every time this happens, it’s like I become more and more transparent. I’m invisible and Dad becomes much--sharper. It’s as though he literally can’t see me when he’s drinking, unless he needs something from me, like a bucket for his vomit. Otherwise, I cease to exist, completely gone from his view. It has to be true because what dad can see his daughter, and then proceed to smash her favorite glass dolphin figure against the wall? That’s what happened one of the last times we left in the middle of the night. This time he seems more focused on punishing the kitchen, Mom’s bowls and vases. But I know by now not to expect anything I love to be intact when I return. The only choice is to stay smart, move quick, and accept it. This is just the way things are.

It’s better to not be attached to anything. Not even myself.

           As Mom opens the car door for me, I see my tired reflection again in the dusty window, the same dark circled eyes, no shadow this time. Only frowning. Me. I guess that’s what acceptance looks like. Every time we have to leave while Dad “cools down”, which most often means breaking dishes, ripping pages out of books and smashing Mom’s houseplants, I have to accept it. I have no idea why cooling down means taking it out on every object in the house, but apparently that’s what it takes for Dad to come to his own acceptance and back to us.

Fight, smash, leave, treatment, apologize. Wash, rinse, repeat.

“Lydia, sweetheart. Get in the car and fasten your belt,” Mom breaks me out of my trance. Her voice sounds exactly the way she speaks to her students at the glass studio where she works. Calm, calculated, always even-toned and so trustworthy. She can never get Dad to calm down before he explodes, but with me, and with her students, she’s like a still pond. No ripples, no disturbance. Almost as though nothing out of the ordinary is even happening.

It’s kind of confusing, honestly.

           I climb into the backseat of the old Camry we call Georgie for some reason, throw my backpack across to the other side with a loud thunk, and put on my seat belt. Even though the drive will only take us around the corner, Mom plugs in her phone to play music. Some cheery Broadway musical, like she always listens to drown out Dad’s screaming about money or countless other things I can never even make sense of. I rather have silence, but I don’t say anything as Mom starts to back up the car.

I never say anything.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Lyds. Okay?” Mom says, staring at me through the rearview mirror like her gaze alone will convince me. I look back at her tired eyes, but I know by now how empty those words are despite how much she wants them to be true. She really, really wants them to be true, no matter how many times Dad proves her wrong. But I nod so she’d just drive already.

           Mom puts the car in gear, and I turn around in my seat to look back at our dark house. It’s a nice yellow, a little faded, but looks a bit like a farmhouse as it’s one of the older homes in town. Paint curls up in spots, but it’s not falling down or anything like most haunted-looking houses. Dad’s family owned it for decades and apparently it used to be a pretty popular historical home that people toured and everything. But in the last several years, I don’t think my parents so much as cleaned out a gutter. Yet it’s still the kind of place you might see on the cover of a home improvement magazine, with no real clue of what goes on inside. But with all those peaks and eaves and dirty, odd-shaped windows it looks a little haunted to my friends, especially at night with no lights on. The perfect trick or treat house. If only a real monster wasn’t hiding inside. I never invite people over.

I’ve lived here all my life; this is maybe the tenth time we’ve had to leave because of Dad’s drinking. I lost count. But it wasn’t always like this. I remember laughing and board game nights and Dad teaching me how to play rummy. Back then it only happened once in while, it was easier to think Mom’s favorite phrase was true, that it would all be okay. But lately, it’s every few months. It’s like the house doesn’t really belong to me and Mom at all because of this, it really is all his, he haunts it and when he wants it all to himself, he gets it. All he has to do is scream or break something or punch a hole in the wall, and out we run. It makes me more than a little bit mad. And afraid. And being afraid of someone you love is the strangest combination. It makes no sense and it’s not fair. Because I do love my dad, and he sometimes has good days.

But this isn’t one of them.

           Mom pulls out of the driveway, and makes the left turn toward my best friend Jill’s house. Jill’s mom is my mom’s best friend, so that’s usually where we go. That part is actually fun, if I’m being honest. It’s way better than Mom’s other friend outside town where we stayed once when Jill had family visiting and no room for us. That time Mom said I could have the couch, but I wanted to curl up in this beautiful, white lambswool covered chair that looked like I’d be sleeping on a cloud. I was smaller then, I’d fit. In the middle of the night, while Mom snored, I woke up in a serious fit of itching only to find fleas covering my arms and legs. I had red, itchy bites for weeks and we never stayed there again.

But at Jilly’s, we watch movies and I sleep over in her room on the little trundle bed, and Mom gets the whole apartment over their garage. It’s like a second home and sometimes I wish we all really did live together like this all the time. Jill’s house is always warm and smells of coffee and popcorn and there’s a lot of laughter. Her mom makes hot chocolate on cold afternoons and Mickey Mouse pancakes for breakfast just for the heck of it, and her dad doesn’t even exist—Jill and her sister Avery were born without a dad. I mean, a guy exists somewhere, but Mari said she never planned to get married, but she always wanted to be a mom. So she had Jilly and Avery on her own. I don’t totally know all the details, but I’m really glad Mari decided the world needed a Jilly. Because I know I certainly do.

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to not have a dad at all. Much quieter, I imagine. Not that I ever would want my dad to not exist, only not be so mad all the time. Maybe have a snowball fight with me like we did when I was little. Or teach me guitar like he’s always promised but still hasn’t even tried. It would be okay if he just made hot chocolate once in a while. But right now, all I can imagine is him inside the house, stomping like a monster from room to room looking for more things to break.

Eventually there will be nothing left.

           I glance up at my bedroom window and the attic window just above that. Right before the house is completely out of view I see a bright flicker of light. No one ever goes up in the dirty attic. It’s full of Dad’s family’s crap, as Mom says. She so badly wants to throw everything away and make the attic a library. But he’s never let anyone touch it and yet he never goes up there either. Plus it’s freezing in winter, sweltering in summer, so we just keep it closed up as though it doesn’t exist. A void in the ceiling.

The black hole above our heads.

The door to the attic steps is actually in my bedroom and I keep it blocked with my desk because the drafts in the house frequently make the door rattle in the frame in the middle of the night. But maybe Dad pushed it aside to run up there and maybe he’s trying to signal us to stop? Maybe he realized how hard he grabbed Mom this time and he wanted to say sorry for making her fall.

“Mom, stop!” I shout. She slams on the breaks and immediately pulls over out of surprise.

           “Lyd, please. My nerves can’t take anymore shouting right now.”

           I don’t apologize and only lean toward the back window to try to get a better look. “Just wait one sec,” I plead.

 Sure enough, even in the shadows it’s clear someone has their hand pressed against the glass in the little arched window, but it’s a small hand. Not my dad’s. I squint. It looks like a girl. Like a girl maybe my age wearing a blue and red striped shirt. Goosebumps pop up all over my arms and the back of my neck.

I unbuckle, jump out of the car--despite Mom’s protests--and run a little way back toward the house.

“Lydia!”

But I can’t answer her back or explain what I’m doing because I don’t even totally understand what I’m seeing. My mouth feels dry and my jaw frozen in place.

She looks a lot like me. Not just a shadow.

           “What are you doing?” Mom pulls me by the arm back to the car, breaking my gaze. “What are you even looking at?” She glances back at the house, with a confused look on her face, but it’s obvious she doesn’t see anything.

           I pull out of her grasp to look one last time and my heart sinks. This time all I see is a dark, empty window. As I crawl back into the car, I don’t tell her I’d hoped it was Dad, but instead I saw a girl—a ghost girl—in our attic.

Because ghosts don’t exist.

And there’s no hope for Dad.