March 2009 — Sentry

“You like grandma?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “One time she even told me I was her only friend.”

Zhou Lei nods. “Hungry ghost,” she says.

“What?” I say.

“Your grandma die,” Zhou Lei says, “but not yet find peace. Something make her want to come back and get your attention.”

“Well she’s got it,” I say. “What should I do?”

“The road you live on,” asks Zhou Lei. “Is it straight or crooked?”

“Straight.”

“Too bad,” Zhou Lei says. “Ghost have harder time finding you on crooked road.”

“I don’t think there’s much I can do about my road,” I tell her.

She thinks about it some more. “Ghosts stay away from fire,” she says. “Perhaps you should make fire.”

“In my room?” I ask.

“Good point,” Zhou Lei admits. “Only one other thing. You need to figure out what she wants.”

After dinner my mom asks me if I’d like to go over and help her clean out her mother’s apartment. It’s only fifteen minutes away, and the landlord has been down our backs to remove the cardboard boxes that have sat in the kitchen for almost a week and kept him from showing the place.

When my grandmother started having problems with her memory, when she started to get lost in her own neighborhood and call her neighbor’s dog “Paul,” (her ex-husband’s first name,) she was placed into an assisted living facility in the city. Her fear was that once she left, her son’s wife – my Aunt Lillian — would sweep in and make off with all her “valuables.” So she carefully printed labels, stuck them to the bottoms and sides of things, and confided to my mother that this was the way she wanted her wealth distributed.

Not three weeks out of her apartment, she died.

In fact, she had very little. Some Hummel figurines with my mother’s name under their bases, a couple of pieces of Lenox crystal willed to her some, a bunch of junk like fishing poles, chipped dishes, and old books distributed to her grandchildren.

We’re in a hurry to get the job done, and during the process of my picking up one of the boxes, its bottom gives out and the contents spill all over the tile kitchen floor. One of the Hummels, a girl with a billowing apron, shatters.

“Sorry,” I say to my mom.

“Forget it,” my mother says. “If you want to do me a favor, break the rest of them.”

I go for the broom and dustpan which have been crammed between the refrigerator and the pantry and yank them free. And when I do, a box – which had evidently fallen back there – is freed. It’s faded green in color, maybe a foot long and two inches wide. My name is on a sticker on the bottom.

“Find something?” my mom asks. I take off the lid and from an indented velveteen notch I remove a dark brown wooden flute with seven holes. “Her recorder,” my mom says as she moves next to me. “She used to play that thing all the time when we were kids. I haven’t seen it in years.”

I hold it up and notice its finish has been almost totally worn off from handling. I think about blowing into the mouthpiece, but I stop myself. I want to know that the last breath that passed through it was hers.

That night my grandmother visits me one last time. She is young and striking and she has her recorder. She leads me from the large room into the outdoors where we sit in a field. She plays a tune I recognize from Peter and the Wolf. When she finishes she smiles, hands me the ghost recorder, and no longer hungry, is gone.

Tai Dong Huai was born in Taizhou, China.”Hungry” is from her collection in progress, I Come From Where I’ve Never Been. Other selections have appeared, or are scheduled, in Smokelong Quarterly, elimae, Hobart, Thieves Jargon, rumble, Underground Voices, Wigleaf, Word Riot, and other terrific places.

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