(Image: Blue House with Flowers- Carmen Iglesias)

A Local Ghost

Lucy never comes outside. Not to school, not to the mall, not to play jump rope or hopscotch with us. She stays inside. She is a bit older than the rest of the kids but that isn’t why she doesn’t play. No one knows the real reason.  Some of the neighbors gossip whispering that she might be dead, her corpse rotting somewhere behind that blue wooden door, or that her mom is sick in the head and doesn’t let her leave. But it’s not true. We know it isn’t because every so often we hear Lucy crying. She screams too. She screams a lot- mostly at her mom. We hear Lucy’s mom, Carol, begging her to go outside because she “can’t stand to see her daughter do this to herself.” Lucy doesn’t care. She screams back. 

 She threatens to do bad things to herself when someone tries to make her leave. 

Carol won’t talk about Lucy- even when her eyes are red and swollen from crying, and when her voice is hoarse from screaming at her daughter all through the night. I think she is ashamed; ashamed that her daughter has hidden herself away from the world. I think Carol wishes that we would all forget about Lucy- like she never existed. Maybe Lucy wishes that too.

The neighborhood rarely speaks of them, but sometimes I catch murmurs and whispers- pitying glances exchanged behind Carol’s back. Everyone feels sorry for Carol. Nobody says it, but they do. You can tell by the way they look at her, the way they talk to her- they treat her differently. Like, everyone gets quiet when she shows up- because just her presence needs a moment of silence. She’s always exhausted and has bags under her eyes- eyes that look like they cry so often that there are hardly any tears left. It’s because of Lucy. We all know it. 

Carol works late hours, spending every penny trying to make her daughter happy. She buys Lucy’s favorite foods even though she knows it won’t get eaten. It only rots, untouched, inside the darkened house. Carol never has time to clean. The curtains are usually closed because Carol is embarrassed by the state of her home. But sometimes, we catch a glimpse through a fluttering curtain. A narrow gap reveals towers of boxes and clutter, piled against the windows and walls, as if they are blocking out the world.

 Most of the kids gave up on trying to see Lucy. But I did see her, just once. And I was the only one. 

I was on my front lawn, sitting with my dog, waiting for a package. I heard footsteps coming from the blue house across the road. When I looked, I saw an unfamiliar face that could only be Lucy’s. She was pale with sunken cheeks and puffy eyes as if the sun was a stranger to her. Her body was thin and frail, drowning in a white T-shirt, about 3 sizes too big. I think she was wearing it to try and hide her arms. They were covered with scars and all kinds of marks- striped, like a zebra.

 She didn’t see me. She stood barefoot in the grass, her neck tilted back, gazing upward into the sky as if she was searching for something within it. She looked entranced, lost in the sun’s blinding light. I wanted to say something to her, but I paused, hesitant to disturb her moment of strange stillness. 

When I finally opened my mouth to ask if she was alright, she glanced at me, startled, and then ran back into the blue house without a word. I think that was because Lucy didn’t like being seen, so I didn’t tell the others that I saw her. I kept it a secret. 

After that day, I never saw her again. I continued to hear those muffled screams every night- those screams filled with a torment I never understood. When my family moved, I wondered what became of her, and of Carol. I feel sorry for Carol, who wore her sorrow so heavily it was hard to ignore, who devoted her life to her sick sick daughter. But I feel even more sorry for Lucy. I think it would have been difficult to live how she did- hidden and hollow, as if she were a ghost to the world around her- a ghost in even her own home.

(Image: Brain Portrait- Wabyanko)

OCD- “Right.”

Off and on. 

Again. 

Off and on. I flick the switch- off and on. It doesn’t feel quite right. Off and on. I can’t leave until it feels “right.” 

This many hugs, and this many kisses, before mom and dad can go. They have to sing the song exactly right, or else I won’t go to sleep. They have to stand in the right place, say the right words, do it exactly the right way, or the crying will never stop. Brush my hair this many times (It’s bad if I forget my brush). Tap the bedroom door 4 times on my way in. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. 

No, that didn’t feel right.

Again. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Okay, now I can rest.

It hurts when I can’t get it right.

Some sounds hurt me too, like they’re tearing me apart. It feels like if I hear it even one more time, I’ll explode. Some things, when they touch me, hurt just as bad- even something as small as a single grain of rice. I wash it off, but the feeling burrows beneath the layers of my skin. I scrub and scrub until my skin is red and raw but I can still feel it. I can’t stop thinking about it. Sometimes, I have to use my nails to dig it out. 

People get angry at me because I cry and yell over things that they don’t understand, things that I don’t know how to explain myself. 

“You’re making a big deal over nothing,” they say. But to me, that nothing is everything. 

“What do you mean you don’t feel right? What does that even mean?” they demand, and I’m not able to give them an answer. I only know it feels wrong, like I’m burning from the inside out. My head is packed tight, about to erupt, and my insides twist and ache as I feel something build within me.

I’ve been like this ever since I was young. I would cry and cry every night because my brain kept showing me things I didn’t want to see, saying things that I didn’t want to hear. I used to wish I could be someone else- someone whose mind agreed with them. I would wonder what’s wrong with me.

I think as I get older, it gets easier to manage. I don’t often wish to be someone else anymore. Still, I hope someday that things will finally feel “right.”