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Diana: How to
Live Like a Ghost in your Mind
When
I woke up I was confused where I was. This
ain't my room? I think? What time is it? Where am I?
Then, I look up and see Widow Ricketts standing right there looking right
at me. At first, I was startled, and then, soothed. There's just something about her face and the
way she looks at me that tells me she ain't judging me. That she knows where I'm coming from. When she leaves to make coffee though, the
dreams come back. They come back and
wash over me. Girls who try to run away
and whose legs instead turn into trees. The
flames all around me and my wish to walk into them. Something inside me feels lost. Like a part of me was never found in them
woods when I lost Mama. It was so long
ago, I hadn’t thought about it for years, but this morning, sitting real still
in the chair, feeling the electricity in the air from an oncoming storm, I
remember the day like it was yesterday.
Momma and my brother setting the wool horse blanket down on the ground
and setting down the fried chicken and biscuits Mamma had brought from our
restaurant in town. We’d ridden about a
half hour out of town. Papa had only
been gone a few weeks, but Momma was so sad she’d stopped getting out of
bed. We’d have to wake her up and push
her out the door or she’d not forget to open the restaurant. Mama thought of the picnic as a vacation
from our lives. So as we sat around her,
my brother John and I smiled at her.
Hoping our smiles would reflect light and joy back into her like
sunlight. But, after she set down and
was still, we saw the sadness sink back into her. First, her eyes dulled, and then her
body. We ate the chicken and biscuits
and talked between ourselves. Sometimes,
Momma would flicker back and smile before she’d drift back out to wherever she
had to go in order to keep sane. I know
that place now, but when I was a child I was mad not to be able to just climb
into her lap and feel safe. Not to be
able to feel her arms melt around me as they always had. After a little while she said she was going
to take a nap. John (who is a few years
older than me) ordered me to stay put as he gathered wood. But, after he left, something grew in
me. And I got it in my mind that I
should make my Momma pay for all of the hurt she’d caused me. So, I got up and started walking into the
darkness of the woods. As soon as I walked
from the clearing, the darkness of the woods wrapped around me. I walked and
walked until I felt I’d gone far enough to make her scared and I sat down and
waited, thinking I’d be found soon. But,
hours passed and to my surprise, no one came for me. The woods got even darker and I felt the
noises around me press in. When I cried
out, Mamma, I’m sorry. Come get me.
John, I’ve over here. Come and
rescue me out of the woods. All I heard in return was the hollow sound of a
screech owl. That feeling, of the dark
world swirling in on me, and being utterly alone is what is creeping up inside
me now. Sure, I was found in those
woods. After hours of searching my big
brother had had the sense to ride the horse into town and find the
Sheriff. He’d gathered a posse and
combed those woods all night long until they found me near dawn, huddled in a
hollow tree. My Momma, she never came
back from that, from the idea of losing me.
After that, when I returned, it was as if she couldn’t stand loving me,
for fear she’d lose me again. Imagine
that, being seven years old and not having a mother to hold you? But here I am again in a dark wood with no
Momma.
Just
then Widow Ricketts walks in. She’s
laughing like her sides are gonna split.
I look at her, perhaps revealing the darkness that’s been pouring over
me, but it doesn’t make her skip a beat.
“Diana,” she says. “You’re gonna
want to put on your clothes and come see this!”
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