When the Messenger Is Hot (12 page)

So there's this ghost baby standing there looking up at me and the first thing she said was,
I'm sorry you're having a bad day, man
. Naturally I was a little nonplussed, to say the least, and thought I was surely hallucinating until she showed me some of her special powers, which include scaring the squirrels out of my flowers and giving me blond highlights that don't dry out my hair. (I would later hear, at length, about exactly what ghosts could and couldn't do; it was Christina's idea to someday write a treatise on this topic demystifying the stereotypical ghost images in popular culture, which really bugged her. Among things ghosts don't do, I would discover, are walking through walls, carrying chains, and moaning all the time [
what's the point of that nonsense?
she said,
there's no
pain
here
]; she swore to me that no one she knows would ever have cause to say “Boo.” Christina's biggest gripe, though, was the whole thing about “seeing the light” when you die, the idea that there was some big moment of spiritual enlightenment
with angels or some shit
, she said.
That's all crap.
) Also I'd like to clarify, in my limited experience with ghosts, that she isn't transparent at all, she's completely opaque, although she does have the ability to make herself invisible on an as-needed basis, which you may have already guessed tends to coincide with my attempts to introduce her to people.
I'm not really a people person
, she said.

I hear that
, I said.

The last time I went out some lady tried to drag me to her church with some loony idea that she was going to stick me in a manger for the benefit of worshippers wanting to get my blessing, like they do every time statues of Mary start crying or when the face of Jesus appears on a potato. I'm not Jesus, I told her
.

I can see that
, I said.

Christina told me the story of how she died (and in spite of what she said, I think she was glad for the conversation), from a fall off the porch about a week after she'd learned to walk. Her mother hadn't gotten into the habit of latching the screen door and out Christina went, exploring, onto the porch and tumbling down the stairs, landing in one of the neighbor's potted plants.
You know that lady
, she said,
the one who takes the pictures of the babies in clay pots, with flowers on their heads and stuff?

Sure
, I said.

Well
,
it was like that, only bad. My mom moved out right away
, she said.
She didn't know I was still here
.

Let me make one thing really clear right now. Admittedly, I spend a good deal of time examining the ways in which my emotional and intellectual disposition is unique. But I'm not crazy. This isn't something that's going on in my imagination because I want to have a baby or because someone e-mailed me one of those digital dancing babies (that bear no resemblance whatsoever to Christina, who, aside from the ghost thing, is quite lifelike). Frankly, I don't know whether or not I want to have a baby
or
get married, as I am certain that I have been culturally brainwashed into thinking that I want to get married and have a baby, and that any free thought I might have about it is colored by all that other stuff, and plus, not having gotten married at this point, when it's getting closer to the time when I will have to rely on technology (and how I feel about all that is another complication entirely) or some other means of producing a baby (theft?), and you know, sometimes these days I'm exhausted just watering the plants. Anyway, she doesn't tell me to spread the word of the Lord, or that there are governmental conspiracies against me (okay, but well, although . . never mind); Christina is a real, whole separate person who happens to be dead. The thing about her is that she has this extremely serious look on her face 90 percent of the time. She laughs and smiles like any baby,
but not unless she has a good reason
. You can easily see her looking around and observing the weirdnesses of the world that a lot of people don't seem to notice. She doesn't look miserable. She just doesn't smile all the time. People have been saying to me,
Smile, Chrissie, smile
, since forever, and it's a huge pet peeve of mine, and I say,
Just because I'm not smiling doesn't mean I'm not happy
. It means I'm not smiling. God. But you know, no one ever believes me. Anyway so what I'm saying is she has this really serious look on her face, the same way I do in countless childhood photographs (and home movies, in which any number of great things happen, like riding a tricycle for the first time, which
I
am clearly enjoying [as indicated by furious pedaling and clapping] in spite of the absence of a traditional facial expression of happiness), and I could see by looking at her that she knows like I do that some things are really wrong. (I know that she can see that some things are perfectly right as well, but I really was having a bad day.) Plus she wears this peach-colored knit dress with a matching cardigan that's cute enough but for some reason it makes her look like an old lady. (Why it is her superpowers don't include a wardrobe change, I can't say.) As it is, she doesn't have that baby waddle. She walks like an old lady, kind of pitched forward, and when she falls down, usually on her face, she doesn't cry, and if you try to help her up, she says,
I'm fine, don't worry about it
, and gets up by herself.

Do you want to tell me what's going on with you?
she asked. I told her I was having problems with my boyfriend. She nodded, the weighty nod of a blues singer. I told her that Joe and I had been having some problems for a little while.

He's a decent guy
, I told her,
but you know, he just stays up so late
. Christina nodded again.
And all we ever do is rent movies. And then he says how bad they are, and in what way, and then how bad all the art is, on and on until we've covered the mediocrity of the entire universe, and I'm completely exhausted. We could go to bed so much earlier if he'd just say, “Yes, that was a bad movie, all the people are bad, everywhere, good night,” but it's never like that
. To be fair, for the most part Joe doesn't take his dismay with the universe out on me, still, it just wears me down. Plus he says “I says” all the time. At first I thought it was kind of working-class sexy. Then no. So we'd sort of decided to take a break. It's possible that he may not have been clear on why. It's possible that
I
may not have been clear on why. It may just have been something to do. I'd been at somewhat of a general loss as to what to do about anything at that point. It may or may not be coincidental that our breakup took place on the first anniversary of my mom's death, and even though I had sort of anticipated that that might be a sadder day than every other day, I was also at the same time thinking that because of my unique emotional and intellectual disposition, I would be thus exempt from having these disproportionately large death-anniversary feelings, which it turns out I wasn't.

I
bet you miss your mom too
, she said.

You knew about that?
I asked.

I am
a ghost
, Christina reminded me.

So, what, you're omniscient?

No
, she said,
but you know, word gets around
.

Word? What are you saying?

We have some mutual acquaintances
.

Well Christ, can you take me to wherever she is?

Mmm, no. You can't go that way. Anyway, apparently she moved on a while ago
.

Moved on to where?
I pulled the curtains closed when it occurred to me the neighbors might see me talking to what appeared to them to be no one.

That part I'm a little sketchy on. There's talk, but no one really tells you until you get there. Word has it it isn't bad. Anyway, give yourself a break. It was only a year ago
, she said. My mind wrapped around the word
only
for a little while and I couldn't think of what else to say.
Let's go dance
, Christina said. I thought it seemed kind of inappropriate at that moment but she stood firm.
I want to dance
.

Even with the old-lady walk, Christina moves pretty fast, so I put on some James Brown. Her dancing is similar to her smiling. She wiggles her butt a little, and then every fourth or fifth wiggle she throws up her hands and waves them around for a second, but there isn't very much more smiling involved in the dance than there is at any other time. I followed her lead, which got a little laugh. I may not have been as good at it as she was.

She hung around for a while. I continued to go about my business but found myself making a lot of excuses (more than usual, even) to people in favor of staying home with Christina. I liked her. We rented videos and went to bed early.

Christina
, I said one night,
do you ever just feel totally different?
For a second I thought she wasn't going to say anything, because the look on her face was enough to remind me who I was talking to.

Then she said,
Are you joking?

Fair enough
, I said.

The thing is, Chris, everyone feels like that
.

Everyone might feel like that
, I said,
but I really am
.

You're not
, she said.
But your feelings are understandable
.

Is that so
.

Yes. For starters, you're an only child
.

Christina
, I said,
I've been through therapy already
.

I'm just saying you have no verification. Siblings, within the family structure, provide a sort of reference. A kind of proof
.

You're scaring me a little bit
.

I may go into the psychology field, later
.

A fine choice
, I said.

Further, having lost a parent contributes to the feelings of isolation already in place
.

I don't want to talk about that
, I said.

You're not a pioneer in this area
.

What?

People die. People get sad. You're not the inventor of that
.

I'm the only daughter of a somewhat strange and unusual person who died, and no one could possibly know what that's like
.

Um. Your dad? Anyone else who knew her?

Not the same. I'm not saying it's better
, I said.

You think no one else feels that way and it isn't true
.

Shut up
.

At that point in the increasingly Pinteresque conversation, Christina burst into tears. I kept forgetting she was a baby, and I said shut up to her and she burst into tears, wailing, actually, as babies do. I didn't know what to do really, because it seemed so uncharacteristic in spite of her being a baby, but she eventually climbed up onto my lap and got her arms around me as best she could, sobbing into my sleeve. I rubbed her head and rocked her for a while, and said I was sorry about a hundred times. She finally accepted my apology but again she said,
You're not different. You're the same
.

I don't want to be the same
.

Ah
.

At Christmas I got us a tree and dug out my collection of ornaments. Mom and Grandma had made most of them over the years, giving me a new bunch every year in my stocking. The last few years when Mom was sick she didn't have so much energy anymore and started ordering them from mail-order catalogs. I hadn't put up a tree last year because it was so soon after she died and the Christmas spirit eluded me. Naturally with Christina here this year, I couldn't not put up a tree. Anyway, though, I found this batch of ornaments my mom had ordered, little Christmas cookies; snowmen, candy canes, and such, that were coated with polyurethane so they could be kept and reused. Except when I took them out of the box (suspiciously light), they were all crumbly and full of tiny holes, eaten right through the polyurethane by some kind of mealy bugs, those bugs you never actually see but that leave these extensive little empty trails. Christina could see I was upset, and so she made up a rhyme to cheer me up. (
Mealy bugs mealy bugs, you're just a bunch of thugs, you can take away my stuff, but you're just dumb and pasty, because there are plenty of ornaments that aren't so tasty.
) She was a smart baby and her rhymes were good but she was still working on her meter, obviously, and felt better when I told her not all poems rhyme anyway.

We had lengthy discussions about the meaning of life. I had a notion to write some of her thoughts down, because they were very bestsellery. She had a knack for making up slogans — the one she said to me most often was “Let go or fall down,” which at first I didn't get, especially coming from a baby who often fell down when she wasn't holding on to something, a baby who, you know, died from falling down. I kept trying to convince her to change it to “Let go
and
fall down,” and she kept telling me I was missing the point, which kind of did take a long time to register. Other slogans included “If you don't like what you see you're probably looking in a mirror.” When I pointed out that her favorite, “Life isn't so long, you know,” sort of contradicted my favorite “What's the rush?” she said,
Think so? I
guessed she didn't, really. Anyway, it seemed to me like no more suspension of disbelief would be required to receive the wisdom of a dead talking baby than some guy who expects you to believe he sat down and chatted with god. But her ideas were sort of general — she didn't have any better of an idea about what love was than I did. The only point of reference she had was her father (who lasted for a week or two after Christina's conception) and a couple she met after she became a ghost who were killed (in a roller-blading mishap) who seemed truly in love, although she questioned their habit of dressing identically. A lot of the other dead people, she said, were all too happy to be rid of some of their former partners. I asked her if there was any dating in the afterlife and she said there was but it didn't seem to be a noticeable improvement.