ghosts

by Jennifer Harris

I don’t know what woke me up. A bad dream, maybe. I used to be haunted by bad dreams, especially in Maine. I used to sleep on a rollaway bed in my grandparents’ bedroom. They had a small two-bedroom cottage off Fletcher Street, off Wood Pond Lane. Way back by the woods. By Wiggins Pond. The rollaway was placed against the north wall (which points toward the pond). The air conditioning unit was in the window, just above the bed. It was always too cold. Too loud.

I woke up terrified. The sort of terrified where you are frozen in place. I could not move. I could not turn my head. I was eight and in full panic mode. I tried to breathe. I tried to inhale just a little longer. Bit by bit I unfroze. But something was wrong. When I could move, I looked over to my grandparents’ bed. They were there, asleep. Everything was normal. I looked toward the bathroom, which was straight across the room. Normal. Nothing. I looked to the side and down. I froze again.

There was a diver in an all-white old-fashioned diving suit. A weird metal helmet over his head. Copper. He was almost the length of my small rollaway bed. He was just lying there. Not moving. Not doing anything.

I turned my head back. I stared at the ceiling. I wanted to get up so bad and run to my parents, but my body wouldn’t listen. Besides moving my head, I was locked. I couldn’t lift my arms. My legs. Nothing. But I was awake. The air conditioning was chugging. My grandfather was snoring.

And the diver didn’t move. I stared at my grandmother’s feet, peeking out of the covers at the end of their bed. Her toenails were painted red. I only knew this because at Mother’s Beach, about a mile away, I always marveled at her painted nails. She would sit and watch the waves. I would play bocce ball with my parents when the tide was low. My grandfather would prowl. Walk up and down the beach. Sometimes play. He had a violent streak.

One winter, the only family Christmas we had together, my uncle and I were playing backgammon. I kept winning. He said, “You’re cheating!” I was ten. I’d been playing for years. I looked at him like he was an idiot. He threw the game. Knocked it over and stormed off. At dinner that night he told my mom I was a cheater. My grandfather blew up. My mother and her mother shrank into the background. I ran away. I can’t remember. I remember the feeling of it. What violence under the surface feels like. There’s a lot I don’t remember about my grandfather.

But the diver didn’t move, and I was frozen in place. I spent hours like that. Looking at that thing not moving. Not moving at all. It wasn’t breathing. It was just there. On the floor like a pair of shoes.

At some point, after a lot of self-willing, I stood up on the rollaway bed. I was preparing to jump over it so I could go to my parents’ room. It wasn’t safe in that room. Maybe it was the diver. Maybe not. I was afraid the diver would reach up when I jumped. Try to pull me down. But I knew I had to do it. That thing wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t take it. I remember thinking escape was my only option.

There’s a sculpture of a woman in arabesque on top of the old Montgomery Building in Chicago called The Spirit of Progress. It looked like she would jump into the clouds. I moved there years later, and when I saw it, I remembered that night. The diver. Screwing up the courage to jump. The feeling of wanting to disappear into the clouds. Disappear entirely. It was too heavy for eight. There was so much I didn’t understand.

I leapt. I ran. I kept talking about ghosts. No one believed me. The ghost wasn’t the diver. It was the house. It was the echo.

Photo of Jennifer Harris

BIO: Jen Harris is the publisher and founder of JackLeg Press. She is also the author of the novel Pink (Harrington Park Press, 2007; Bold Stroke Books, 2008). Her recently published creative essays include “Why I Am Not a Buddhist Monk” in Gargoyle Magazine and “One Hundred and Forty-One Miles” in MER. www.jenrharris.com