What It’s Like to be Raised by Ghosts
Inside bodies, people die all the time.
The floors in our house in Mahopac, New York, are icy cold and creak loudly when we walk across them, especially in the early mornings. I am eight or ten but my age doesn’t really matter. What matters is the distant sound of rain, the darkening skies outside, and how alone we are.
My mother has locked herself in her room again. The air in front of that room has created a kind of bubble, one my brother and I know cannot be broken. I want it to break of its own accord. I want my other mother, the one who cooks food for us, makes us toast in the morning we spread with marmalade, jam, or sometimes the Marmite she buys in specialty shops to remind us of our past, of where we come from, of the fact we carry pink cards that proclaim us “aliens” from another country.
I try to extricate the me from the alien. I do this alone, far more often now than before. Our mother’s long absences, the times she is behind that door, have grown more frequent. My brother and I eat tinned soup and nosh on saltines. We walk up the street to friend’s houses and surround ourselves with other families, houses so full of people, I wonder if that’s why they’re so much warmer than ours, or if it’s our cold wooden floors, coupled with the tall ceilings, that keeps us frigid. Sometimes I wonder if…
