Revived Spirits (2 page)

Tonight she comes bounding in, looking the same as I’ve always known her, the same as she’s looked for over a century. She’s pretty, with long blond ringlets tied with a blue ribbon to match her blue, drop-
waisted
dress and her blue eyes. “School starts on Monday, doesn’t it?” she says. “What would you like to do on your next-to-the-last night of freedom?”

Which could be my next-to-the-last night with Abigail.
It’s terrible. Knowing we have so little time together means I should make a real effort to enjoy what time we do have. But I can’t because I’m always thinking about losing her. “I don’t know. I guess we could watch one of the movies Adam gave us.”

A while back Adam gave me a VCR his family didn’t use anymore, along with a stack of old horror movies he’d replaced with DVDs. He said only I was so behind the times that I’d consider a VCR and some old tapes to be a great gift. But when you consider I didn’t even have a TV until last year, right now I feel like I’m on the cutting edge of technology.

Abigail is riffling through the cardboard box of movies. “I definitely don’t want to watch
Bride of Frankenstein
again. It was too sad.” She picks up a couple more tapes. To anybody’s eyes other than my own, it would look like they were just floating in the air. “Here’s
Creature from the Black Lagoon
.” She studies the back of the case. “But I bet it’s a sad one too. From the looks of him, I don’t imagine he gets the girl. Why don’t we try this one called
The House on Haunted Hill
? You know how the depictions of ghosts in movies always make me giggle.” She wiggles her fingers and makes a movie-style ghost “
whoo-ing
” sound.

“That’s fine,” I say, my voice as flat as I feel.

Abigail puts down the movie and sits beside me on the bed. “Miranda, what’s wrong? You’ve been so melancholy lately. Do you need your granny to give you a tonic?” She takes me hand in hers, which makes it feel like it’s enveloped in a cool breeze.

I grimace, thinking of all the nasty-tasting potions Granny has forced me to choke down.
“Definitely not.”

Abigail’s brow is furrowed in concern. “I thought you might be happy tonight. I wanted you to tell me about the carnival.”

I feel a pang of guilt. Of course I should’ve started my visit by talking about the carnival. Abigail had been disappointed that she couldn’t go with us.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “There was a house of glass that I’d still be trapped in if Adam hadn’t helped me. And there was a terrible haunted house with recordings of spooky sounds and a plastic skeleton. There were rides, too, but Mom didn’t want us to go on anything too high or too fast, and the other ones were too babyish.”

“Is that why you didn’t enjoy yourself?” Abigail asks.

I flop back on the bed. “No. Mom met somebody at the carnival—I guess it was a date—and I don’t know
,
it kind of made me feel weird.”

A small smile pushes up the corners of Abigail’s petal-pink mouth. “Your mother has a beau?”

I shrug. “I don’t know what he is.
Maybe just a friend, maybe a boyfriend.
He won her a stuffed dog at some carnival game.”

“Oh, but that’s so romantic,” Abigail says, her voice all swoony. “Why aren’t you happy for her? You were happy for me when Virgil became my beau.” Virgil is the ghost of a Confederate soldier boy who haunts the river outside town. Some nights Adam and I take Abigail there to see him.

“Well, I didn’t feel like you were using Virgil to replace my dad, which is how it feels with Mom and this guy. Plus, it’s just been Mom and Granny and you and me for as long as I can remember. I don’t want that to change.”

Abigail is playing with my hair, picking up a long red strand,
then
letting it drop. “Miranda, even if this gentleman is your mother’s beau, it doesn’t mean he’s replacing your father. If there’s one thing the living underestimate,
it’s
how much love they’re capable of. Your mother can love a new gentleman while still holding all the love she has for your father in her heart. The heart is a roomy vessel. It never gets too full.” She looks at me with her ice blue eyes. “And besides, your father passed to the other side almost thirteen years ago. Surely your mother deserves a little companionship. She’s still quite young.”

Tears burn my eyes. “I know. I’m being selfish, I guess.” I sniff. “I just feel like everything is changing.”

Abigail produces a lace handkerchief from her dress pocket, but when she holds it out to me, my hand passes right through it. She hands me the box of tissues from my nightstand instead. “Yes, everything is changing. Life is change. Death is the only realm in which things stay the same, and believe me, that can get really dull.” She cringes at my unladylike nose blowing. “And often change is good. Adam moving to town and becoming your friend was a good change, wasn’t it?”

I nod. “It was. Losing you when the time comes won’t be, though.”

“Oh, you’re worried about that, too?” Abigail asks. “So am I.
Though perhaps ‘worry’ isn’t the correct word.
There’s no use worrying about what you can’t change. But I am sad.”

I feel a little better knowing she shares my sadness, that she’ll miss me too. “So...when it happens, what will happen to you?”

“Well, I suppose it will be the same as when your mother was a girl. One night I’ll go to find the door I open to visit you, and it won’t be there anymore. I suppose it will stay gone until there’s another little girl in this house who’s ready to see me.”

“
Which could take a long time.
”

Abigail nods. “Or it could be never.” She sighs. “In any case, I’ll stay in my own realm then, which is a nice place, though quite uneventful. And I’ll hope that maybe
some day
, there will be another living friend. Though”—she surprises me by sniffling, silver tears leaking from her eyes which she dabs with her lace hanky— “I can never imagine loving a friend the way I love you and your mother.”

“I love you too,” I say, and we hug and cry for a few minutes. Abigail’s hugs feel like being wrapped in a cool
sheet.

“I can’t talk about this anymore right now,” Abigail says. “It makes me too sad. Tell me more about the carnival. Were there human oddities?”

“Human oddities?”
I ask.

“Well, some people call them freaks, but I always thought that sounded cruel, so I preferred ‘human oddities.’ They were always in their own special tent: usually there’s a fat man or a fat lady and an adult the size of a small child. Then there might be a bearded lady or an alligator-skinned man—”

“I don’t think they do that at carnivals anymore.” I can’t imagine what it would be like, having people stare at you all day just because you’re different. On second thought, yes, I can. I guess the difference was if you were a “human oddity” in a carnival, people would at least have to pay for the privilege. “People who look different can get regular jobs now.”

“That’s good, I suppose,” Abigail says, “though carnival life does have
a certain
glamour that regular life lacks. Once, when I was alive, I tried to run away and join the carnival.”

I’ve never heard this story before, and I can’t help smiling.
“Really?
Why?”

“I was angry at my mother for making me practice embroidery and piano all the time. The carnival was in town, so I thought I could join it and see the world and have adventures. Since I had the Sight, I wanted to apprentice myself to
Mesmero
the
Mindreader
. But when I met him and told him what he was thinking, he was terrified. It turns out he wasn’t a real mind reader. He just did some silly tricks with cards.”

“So they wouldn’t let you join the carnival?”

Abigail shakes her head. “No. I was only ten, so they couldn’t hire me without my parents’ permission. I always felt so odd compared to
others,
it would’ve been a comfort to live in the company of other oddities.”

“It is nice,” I say, letting myself relax and enjoy Abigail’s company. Maybe the human oddities in the carnival felt the same way Adam and Abigail and I feel with each other—the comfort of having friends who accept you the way you are. But soon my number of friends will be reduced by half.

The sky is just turning from black to gray, and I’m in the chicken lot, scattering cracked corn. The hens peck at it, their heads and feet moving in funny jerks. I already have on the peasant blouse and long floral-print skirt I’ll wear to school, but I’m wearing an apron to protect my school clothes and
clompy
, mud-covered boots instead of my school shoes. I have to feed the goats next, and I hope I can manage without one of them chewing on my blouse or skirt. It’s hard to feel cool in school when your clothes are soggy with goat spit.

When I’m done feeding the animals, it’s time to feed myself. When I walk through the kitchen door, Granny’s taking a pan of biscuits out of the oven. With her long gray braid (she claims never to have cut her hair) and long black dress,
it’s
obvious why people in town call her a witch. The facts that she has the Sight and often has her pet African gray parrot, Methuselah, perched on her shoulder don’t help much on that account either. But to me, she doesn’t look like a witch. She looks like my granny, and when she smiles, I smile back.

“Just in time for hot biscuits,” she says, setting the pan on the stove. “Why don’t you get the apple butter out of the
ice box?”

“Nobody says ice box anymore,” I say, opening the fridge
door.

“I say it.” Granny slides a spatula under a biscuit and flips it into the bread basket. “And I’m somebody,
ain’t
I?”

Mom joins Granny and me at the table for biscuits and scrambled eggs. Mom and Granny drink hot tea, and I drink milk, which in our house always comes from the Tennessee Fainting Goats Granny raises. Methuselah’s little
birdy
toes are wrapped around the back of Granny’s chair, and she’s feeding him bits of biscuit.

“So how are you feeling about starting school this year?” Mom asks, buttering a biscuit.

As soon as she says it, a dark cloud of gloom forms over my head. Some of the gloom is because of school, but there are other reasons, too—nervousness about Mom’s possible boyfriend, worry about what it was Adam was afraid to tell me, fear of losing Abigail. “Why do you even have to ask? Why don’t you just look inside my head and tell me how I feel?”

Mom jumps back like I slapped her, and Granny says, “Now, missy, there
ain’t
no cause for you to talk to your mama
thataway
.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I mean it so much I burst into tears, and Mom and Granny reach across the table and take my hands.

“You’re at the hardest age to be a girl with the Sight,” Granny says. “At thirteen it’s hard enough knowing what’s in your head, let alone anybody else’s.”

I nod. When I have enough control of myself to talk, I say, “You know what makes me sadder than anything?”

Mom squeezes my hand.
“Losing Abigail.
And I didn’t look into your head to know that. I remember going through it myself. Except for when your dad died, it was the hardest loss I’ve ever experienced.”

Mom’s words cause my eyes to refill with tears. “Isn’t there some way to stop it?
Some way to keep her?”

Granny shakes her head. “That
ain’t
the way it works, child.”

Methuselah, who has jumped onto Granny’s shoulder, says, “Time and tide wait for no man.”

“Nobody asked you,” I say. I figure I’m at least allowed to talk back to the parrot. “But Granny, you always say that once I’m old enough to give life, I won’t be able to see Abigail anymore. What if I choose not to give life when I grow up? Would that make a difference? I could kind of trade having a baby for keeping Abigail.”

“Miranda, you’re much too young to make that kind of decision,” Mom declares.

“And even if you wasn’t, it still wouldn’t make no difference,” Granny says. “It’s about crossing over into your womanhood. It
ain’t
about what you decide to do later.”

“But can’t I cross over and take Abigail with me?”

“Well, you can in one sense,” Mom says. “You’ll always carry Abigail in your heart.”