Calling Mom

The craziest thing about having an experimental spiritual scientist as a roommate isn’t the weird theories on ghosts and zombies. It isn’t the constant smell of new concoctions to summon the dead always wafting into the living room when you are trying to study. It’s not even the experiments I’m asked to participate in, like using my own body as a vessel for some spirit she’s found.

No- it’s the appalling lateness.

I’m sitting in the downstairs café of our block, where I have been for the past one-hundred and twenty-three minutes, tapping my feet against the chair legs, crossing and uncrossing and then re-crossing my own. It grew dark outside an age ago, and the kitchen hands that are cleaning up are shooting me dirty looks. I motion to them that I’m waiting for someone, but I doubt they believe me anymore.

I’ve been sitting alone for two hours now. I’ve already refused coffee three times from the waitress, keen to keep a clear, un-caffeinated head. I can see her coming back for a fourth time. 

Oh, great. I begin to move, uncrossing my legs again and slowly rising. But before I can, a hand slams down on the table.

“Hey! Hope I didn’t keep ya’ waiting!”

The hand is covered in grime and dirt, stained a suspicious green colour. It bears three rings, with symbols that have been explained to me countless times but I just keep seeming to forget. Its owner is staring down at me, a wide grin under thick rimmed glasses. 

Sorry, ‘testing goggles’. Em doesn’t wear glasses. Strictly ‘goggles’.

Em, my dearest, most beloved roommate, harassed me relentlessly for three days before this, insisting she had an experiment I needed to help with. She told me ‘it would be awkward for her to do it’, and nothing else. But after flicking through her records and upcoming exams, I’m guessing I’m going to be scared out of my mind for whatever supernatural chaos is about to ensue.

She lets out a small laugh, and I see her sharply and un-subtly wave away the approaching waitress. The waitress opens her mouth to speak, then sighs, and turns around, trudging back to the kitchen.

Em hauls her large bag onto the table top, doubles over with a relieved sigh, and slides across into the booth opposite me. It took a year of training to get her to sit across from me instead of directly next to me, but it sure has paid off. She takes off her comically large ‘goggles’, folding them and placing them neatly beside her.

“Uh, we agreed five?”

“It is five.” She looks at me blankly. My watch, flashing 7:03, also stares at me. I wave it off, turning back and smiling politely at Em.

“Yes. You’re right. It is five.”

She leans back with a satisfied smile, only to spring back forward with a surprised ‘Oh!’ and start violently ruffling through her enormous bag. It has the university logo on the side, but I’m certain that whatever she is currently carrying inside would be strictly prohibited on any kind of education grounds. Just last week, Em called in a warning on herself after realising explosives weren’t allowed on campus. While not a typical ‘bomb threat’, she still has to undergo a lengthy court process, especially since it blew up inside the empty hall she locked it in, causing moderate property damage.

I brace myself against the table. I don’t think this café can withstand a bomb. Especially once Em declared last week’s ‘not strong enough’.

She’s excitedly muttering to herself when she pulls out a cardboard box, labelled ‘DO NOT TOUCH’. I instinctively pull back as she reaches inside, slowly revealing what looks like your typical nineties cell phone. She holds it up, screaming silently, shaking in anticipation. I shake in fear.

“Do you get it now?”

“No?”

She rolls her eyes and her head slams to the table with a loud thump. I push her bag over with a grunt and frantically tap on the table as she starts banging her head down and down and down. The kitchen staff stop their conversation and stare. I smile politely again. Em groans loudly.

She raises her head back up. A napkin is stuck in between her eyebrows. I lean forward and grab it off, coughing awkwardly and scrunching it up on the table again. She slumps over.

“Okay. Fine. Good! That’s good! Good, good.”

She quiets.

“You forget quite easily. I can fix that, y’know.”

“No thanks. What am I doing?”

“Oh!”

She rummages around in her bag for a long few seconds, revealing a folded up piece of paper. She stares at me when I don’t speak.

“Your mission map?”

“Sorry. Obviously.”

I take the piece of paper and unfold it. It’s a print of Google Maps, quite literally a screenshot- I can see my text notification from hours earlier at the top. But what’s more worrying is the location that is entered in. The graveyard that’s an hour drive from here. Em is starting to pack her bag up.

“Hold on, what am I doing at the cemetery? Surely I’m not going now?”

“Why not?” Em asks bluntly.

Truth be told, I haven’t been to that cemetery in months, even though I probably should have gone at least a few times by now. I can’t even walk down the street it’s on without a little ball of guilt bouncing around in my stomach, yelling at me to at least go tell her how my midterms went. I hand the map back to Em.

“I can’t go there, sorry.”

“But I thought that’s where your mom was buried?”

My stomach flips so much I’m convinced her ghost is in there playing basketball. But Em doesn’t even look up, hauling her bag onto her shoulder and turning around.

“Okay! You should be able to get in contact with your mom through this. Call this number, have a chat. and tell me all about it! And if it doesn't work, just lie to me or something!”

“Talk to- I’m sorry? Em, but I can’t-”

A note is slapped onto the table and Em is off, her bag banging into the waitress who is making her way over to tell me to leave. I wave her off, standing up.

A cell phone that can contact the dead isn't so far fetched when it comes to Em, but I'm more peeved at the fact that she exploited my horrendous relationship with my mom for the sake of her upcoming supernatural fan club. I don't know what is more interesting- the fact that I might be able to talk to her again, or the fact that I would ever willingly choose to.

Now, it’s eleven at night and I'm on my way to see my mom for the first time in eight months, parking a street away so I can dawdle through the dark and dread this meeting. I tell myself they bolt coffins shut tight enough that she shouldn’t be able to crawl out and strangle me when I arrive. It doesn’t make me feel better.

The cemetery is just as unwelcoming at night as it is during the day. I walk through the gate and pretend I don’t see the closing hours finished while I was still in the café. I have my phone, as a flashlight, and the cell that Em gave me.

I tell myself it’s not going to work. Em is crazy. Em’s experiments don’t work most of the time. 

Like darkness shining in the light, I can spot my mom’s place from rows away, spilling it’s depressing, ‘are you really going to wear that?’ aura all over the place. 

She’s gonna be sooo pissed at me if this works, especially once she sees my baggy jeans and ‘skater shoes’.

I trudge over, placing the printed map on the floor and sitting on it so I don’t get dirt and death on my jeans. I’m positioned slightly back from it, only just able to make out the words ‘loving mother’. ‘Wife’ had been scratched out after the headstone place printed it wrong. 

It really does feel like she’s still here sometimes, telling me to eat less junk and ‘start wearing some makeup for that pretty face.’ I awkwardly shuffle forward. It’s like her very presence is suffocating. I can basically see her scowling and shaking her head.

“So. Hi, Mom.”

Silence. To be honest, her responses didn’t really change after she died. I waited, but the silence soon broke me.

“Okay, whatever! I’m sorry I didn’t come to visit. I really am. But I had… exams. And stuff.”

A cricket starts humming.

“So yeah.”

I didn't see my mom before she passed. All I know is one day she was sick and the next she was gone. There was nobody with her to contact me about it either; I found out from my cousin two days before the funeral. I think about it often- I wonder if she was alone.

Man, this is painful. I should be sleeping right now. I decide I might as well just hurry up and do Em’s part so I can escape this agonising situation I’m stuck in.

The cell is hard to type on, but I eventually punch in the random number Em left and dial it. I hold it up to my ear, and make an uncomfortably forced smile to the headstone, squeezing my shoulders up and trying to seem excited. I can tell she huffs. I drop my face and grimace at her.

“Be quiet. This is for you.”

The line rings three times, then clicks to silence. I wait patiently for someone to speak, but no one does.

“Uh, hello?”

There’s an exasperated sigh on the line.

“About time. God, grief changed you. You look awful.”

No freaking way. 

“Mom!”

Even after I ironed my shirt?

“Are you kidding me, Mom? I can’t- y’know, I didn’t even want to do this. I don’t know why I bother with you anymore-”

“No, no, no, you disturbed me, you don’t get to be angry. And after all this time-”

“Mom! Please!”

I stop talking, and I can hear my mom sighing on the other end. In my anger at her distaste for my appearance, I’m forgetting that these are the first words I’ve spoken to her since I left home around a year ago. And despite everything, I have to admit, I missed her a bit.

“I missed you too.”

“I didn’t say anything?”

“I know you didn’t,” she retorts. “But I know you.”

The line is quiet again. I fidget, holding the cell with a firm hand to my ear. I relax my fingers, and try to ease into the conversation.

“Mom, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never came to talk to you.”

I wait for her backlash, but it doesn’t come.

“It’s fine. I was lonely, but it’s completely fine.”

I blow a long breath out and smack my lips together like she always used to tell me not to, but this time she doesn’t say anything. The graveyard is not as cold as I originally thought, and the breeze is actually quite charming. Under the moonlight, talking to my mom- this isn’t the worst experiment Em has ever made me do.

I tell Mom about my midterms. She laughs at my jokes about my professors. I ask her about being dead. She doesn’t say much. She says it’s annoying. I don’t laugh. 

I did miss Mom. I missed her a lot. 

I lay on the grave, talking into the cell and gossiping like a little girl again, and Mom listens the whole time, not once cutting me off like she used to. And when she talks, she talks like she’s still here, about my friends and my life and what was happening back home after I left. I learned that she stalked me on the college Facebook page every day. I learned that she wasn’t ever mad at me for not coming. I learned that maybe my Mom wasn’t a bad person after all. I forget that it was her first time being alive as well.

And when I fall asleep on the grass as the sun rises, my head close to Mom’s headstone, the line doesn’t cut off. Mom keeps talking to me. And I learn that she missed me too. She whispers she will come and find me soon.

It’s daylight when I wake back up. A girl around my age is standing over me, her arm shaking mine.

“Um, excuse me.”

“Oh, sorry.”

I stand up, brushing myself off, sliding my phone into my pocket. The girl looks at me in a confused disgust, glancing around like there was a film camera to capture her reaction. I watch her, furrowing my eyebrows like Mom would. The girl scoffs.

“Uh, why are you at my mom’s grave?”

“Excuse me?”

I squint at her, then turn to the headstone. In barely legible letters, it is certainly not my mom’s name.

The girl waits for me to straighten back up, and shakes her head. “Weirdo. And she only just got buried. Please don’t come back.”

I nod and quickly apologise, but I’m too confused and dazed to feel embarrassment burning my cheeks. I meander through the yard back to the entrance, thoughts racing through my brain faster than I can comprehend them.

That was definitely my mom’s grave, I know it was. The same daisies that were there at the funeral were still there. And that was definitely my mom on the phone.

I open the cell phone that I had still been clutching and quickly redial the number.

“Hello?”

“Hi! Mom, is that you?”

The voice coughs a few times. “Ah, no, sorry. You’ve dialled a public phone?”

A public phone?

“Where?”

“Sorry?”

“Where is the phone? What city?”

“Ah. London?”

Why would my dead mom answer from a public phone in London? 

“Ma’am, if it’s any help, there was a lady standing here all night last night. I live just across the road, so I saw. Were you trying to reach her?’

I hang up the cell phone, and pull my mobile from my pocket. I punch in a website address and wait for it to load. I can see the girl from earlier still watching me.

The site finally appears, and I toggle the menu down until I see ‘one way’. I keep scrolling and find it.

10 a.m. flight - London, United Kingdom.

Perfect. I’ll be there by dinner.