Whispering Minds (5 page)

“What about asking your parents?”

“Hello, have you met my parents?” A rhetorical question like a thousand others we’d exchanged, but this one felt loaded.

“Hurt my daughter, and I’ll hurt you,”
had
been the extent of my dad’s pleasantries the day Travis got his driver’s license and came to pick me up for the first time. While my dad had no problem inflicting deep emotional wounds upon me, he didn’t seem to want anyone else to hurt me. Or maybe he just wanted to do it all himself.

Pain flashed across Trav’s face, and he opened his mouth to say something. The shrill call of the phone cut through the house, freezing the words on his lips, saving me from things I might not want to hear.

The phone rang again. And again.

Travis squeezed my shoulders before letting go. “It won’t answer itself, Gemi.”

I made my way to the phone, hoping the ringing would stop before I got there. I couldn’t bear someone asking to talk to Granny. The answering machine picked up.

“Hello. You have reached Sophia Baker. You just missed me, but I will call you back as soon as I get your message.”

Her voice startled me. When the machine finished beeping and the telemarketer left his message, I replayed the recording, over and over, mesmerized by the only connection I had to my grandmother. “You just missed me.”

“I still miss you,” I whispered back. “Forever and always.”

Travis slipped his hand into mine and tugged me away from the counter. “I think it’s time for us to go, Gem. We can look through the house another day.”

We washed the dishes, and I gathered my things. Before leaving, I made one last trip to Granny’s room and picked up the picture of us on the swing this summer. We had been reading
Little Women
when Travis stopped by to pick me up on his way home from work.

He’d snapped the picture, surprising us with the flash. In it, straw sun-hats covered our heads, bent together. Granny laughed as I finished off one of the berries from her garden. Her skin glowed a healthy golden brown, and her eyes sparkled. Travis had framed it for me, but I passed the picture on to Granny.

Not knowing what would happen to the house or all of her belongings, I stacked the picture on top of my birthday books. On my way out of the kitchen, I played the answering machine one last time.

Chapter 6

The day of the funeral dawned gray and cold. The church filled with Granny’s friends, people I’d met through worship with her or at the Farmers Market. They swept in on the wind and carried empty words as an offering.

“Sophia was a special lady, so full of life.”
Not anymore.

“What a beautiful urn.”
Granny was beautiful too.

“She fought a good fight.”
Yeah, but she lost, so what’s the difference?

Gnarled hands pressed to my cheeks, followed by awkward embraces. Peppermint and Bengay filled my nostrils, hitting my gag reflex. Each new exchange unraveled my tenuous grip on sanity. Hysteria bubbled up in my throat, and I clapped my hand over my mouth before it could spill out.

I retreated to the youth room where I’d spent hours in Bible study. Even with the door shut, the hum from down the hall pounded in my ears. Rows of confirmation pictures filled the farthest wall from the door. I’d always been drawn to them, and now, the familiar faces soothed my nerves.

Granny’s picture hung in the second row, her class being one of the first confirmed at Holy Redeemer. She stood awkwardly in a pair of heels and a crisp white dress. A single red rose nestled in her curly hair. Like all the confirmands, she held a Bible in her hand. Next, I tracked down my dad’s class. He stood a head taller than everyone else, his green eyes peeking out between shaggy blond hair. He’d been a handsome kid, athletic and muscular in his pressed suit. Confident, too, like he could take on the whole world. I wondered what had changed to make him so hard in some ways and so soft in others. When had the Big Secret happened?

Never remembering my parents in church, I pulled a handful of directories off a bookshelf. No family pictures appeared in the pages after my birth. I backtracked through the directories and found my dad and Mom posing two years prior to my birth. They sat in front of the gray backdrop, my dad’s hand on Mom’s shoulder, a smile on his face. Mom held a suit-clad baby in her arms.

Their names were typed under the picture.

Mr. and Mrs. Dan Baker and Jimmy.

I blinked the words away. A typo. It had to be a typo. My stomach lurched and my temples pounded. I sunk to the floor and massaged my fingers into the pain.

“Gemini?” Pastor Olivier stood beside me. A melody in tune with my soul filled the air.

I swung my gaze to a clock above the pictures. Thirty minutes had passed since I first came in, yet I didn’t remember any of it.

“You play beautifully.”

Only then did the music falter. Sweat washed over my body and mingled with the sour stench of fear. I sat at a piano, my fingers flying over the ivory keys. I slammed my hands down to stop the music. The discord matched the pounding in my head. “I don’t play.”

“But, isn’t that Bach?” Granny’s pastor gazed at me, his question heavy in the air.

I locked my hands in my lap to steady them and continued as calmly as I could. “I was just fiddling around.”

Pastor Olivier’s brows scrunched, then straightened out. “I see.”

Yet, he clearly did not, and neither did I. While I played first chair oboe, I couldn’t play the piano. Certainly not Bach. The memory gaps and blackouts came too fast now, my odd behavior replacing normal living. First the basketball game, and now this.

And at the computer.

No. That was a nap.

“Are you sure?”

I shook my head to clear the fog from the room and the recesses of my mind. “Sure about what?”

“That you’re okay? It’s time.” Pastor Olivier’s voice came out a gentle nudge, and before I could waffle, he tucked my hand in the crook of his arm and guided me through the church to the sanctuary.

While the front pews had been reserved, only my parents sat in the cordoned-off family section. Travis sat a few rows behind them with his grandfather. Keeping them as my focal point, I walked down the aisle, carrying the urn in my hands.

Sweat rolled down my back. It caught in my bra and soaked into my knit dress. My fingers dampened, and my grip loosened. Visions flashed through my head.

The urn slipping from my fingers.

Bursting open.

Filling the air with clouds of ash. Bone dust settling around me, making its way into my nose, choking off my air.

Breathe.

Listening to the voice in my head, I sucked in a deep breath and tightened my grip on reality and the urn. By the time I reached the altar, I could barely stand under the weight of Granny’s remains. I set the urn on the pedestal and sat alone in the front pew. Behind me and through the soft strains of the organ, Mom’s whispers made their way to my ears.

“…should sit with Gemini.”

A grunt, followed by a gasp. I’d seen it enough to know. My dad’s hand clamping down on Mom’s leg. Or was it a pinch to the soft part of her arm? Mom changing her mind, appeasing my father’s anger. Fueling the cycle.
But what had started that cycle? What had turned the confident teen cold?

I stared straight ahead and concentrated on the flower arrangements. Pastor Olivier stood at the altar. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. His silent voice wrapped around me like a thick wool blanket until it covered my body, my eyes, my ears.

A hand shook my shoulder. The pastor knelt before me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. The gray-fog blanket was gone and a bouquet of daisies popped back into view too bright to look at, too perfect to ignore. With the service over, I once again found myself escorted down the aisle.

We had talked about a receiving line on the way to the church basement where traditional Midwestern funeral fare would be served. But the smell of the potato and ham bake made my stomach churn, and I barely made it to the bathroom before I vomited.

The cool tile floor offered some relief. I pressed my cheek against it and waited for the queasiness to pass. It never did. Probably never would. Shoes clacked into the bathroom, drawing nearer until I could almost feel the steps. An old lady hunched over me and let out a thin stream of air. “Just like your daddy. Can’t hold your liquor and so young too.”

Embarrassed by my dad’s reputation, I stood and brushed myself off. “You know my father?”

“Honey, there ain’t none of us that don’t know your daddy and what he done.”

Vomit rose to the back of my throat. Did this sour-faced woman know my family’s secret? All I had to do was ask. But I couldn’t. The look of disgust she shot my way was too much, and my body stiffened at her obvious disdain. “I’m nothing like my father.”

The woman let her gaze fall to the stall where the sickly scent of vomit still hung in the air. She sniffed once, continued to the next stall and jammed the bolt in place.

I slammed my own door and layered the toilet seat with paper. Stepping out of my heels, I squatted on the edge, resting my chin in the cradle of my knees. I tried to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Not even after I dialed Granny’s home phone and listened to her message.

“Hello. You have reached Sophia Baker. You just missed me, but I will call you back as soon as I get your message.”

“Hello. You have reached Sophia Baker. You just missed me….”

“Hello. You have reached Sophia Baker.”

I hummed a lullaby to drown out her voice.

The door to the bathroom whooshed open. Banged shut.

My temple pulsed, and I peered through the crack in the stall. Travis paced in front of the sink. In range, then back out. “You can’t hide in there forever, Gem.”

I shifted my weight to relieve my foot.
When had it fallen asleep?
My cell phone fell off my lap and into the toilet. I almost followed it in.

Travis stopped pacing and helped me as I stumbled from the stall. He led me to the sink, wiped my smudged eye liner from under my eyes and ran his fingers through my hair. He handed over my black messenger bag.

Like a transient, I carried everything important in it. I brushed my teeth as Trav watched me in the mirror. “Ready?”

I spit white froth into the sink and rinsed my mouth. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

He slid his arm through mine and led me to the church basement. Under the scrutiny of Granny’s old friends, I lifted my chin and made my way around the dining hall. At every stop, Granny seemed to whisper in my ear, coaching me on each face and name and what they had meant to her. I welcomed her calming presence. When it became clear I could finally handle myself, Travis left to sit with his grandfather.

And I could handle myself. As long as Granny guided me.

Past my parents.

Past the old biddy from the bathroom.

Past my pain.

Chapter 7

I picked at the hem of my dress and stared out the window of Trav’s truck. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

The bobblehead nodded from the dashboard. “What’s this about, Gem? Seeing Granny’s ghost already?”

“Not seeing. But I think she talked to me after the funeral.” I bit my lip to keep from telling Travis that Granny’s might not be the only voice I’d heard in the last few weeks. While I’d never actually talked to any of the members in my dream study group, I’d begun to think of these mental prods as belonging to the Dozen. It helped ease the loneliness at home.

“Happens to me all the time. I can’t seem to get Grandpa Clarence’s voice out of my head whether he’s with me or not.”

“So I’m not crazy?”

“Nah. I’d say you’re pretty normal. Your conscience is just borrowing the voice of someone you’ll listen to.”

I relaxed against his arm, comfortable for the first time all day. “Makes sense.”

And means you’re not crazy after all.
A foreign voice, not my own. I pegged it as belonging to Luna. I sat up. “What if it’s not someone related? Can they talk to you too?”

Travis pulled back a bit, taking his eyes off the road long enough to make me nervous.

I scrambled for an answer he would understand. “I mean like you, my best friend.”
Or my cyber friends who I’ve never met?

“James, too?” Trav’s voice had an edge to it. Jealousy, maybe? Anger? Hurt? I couldn’t tell.

I nearly laughed at the ridiculous notion of me and cynical James hooking up. “Not James. Pinky swear. But how did you hear about him?”

“You talk about him sometimes. In your sleep on the way home from games or during movies that bore you. I thought…maybe you... Who is he anyway?”

“Some guy I met online.”

Travis stiffened.