A Head Full of Ghosts Read online

  What I remember is us eating dinner at the kitchen table, sitting at our four points on the compass. We were contemplative and quiet; unsure of what was happening, unsure of what to do, even after it ended.

  I’ll always remember the four of us sitting around the kitchen table, placed like dolls at an imaginary tea party.

  THE BARRETT WOMEN WORDLESSLY AGREED that we weren’t waiting for Dad and started eating our pasta. Yes, pasta again, for the third night in a row. I’d complained when I’d found Mom boiling water in the big pea-green pot. She’d told me that we could no longer afford to be picky at dinner. I’d walked out of the kitchen, slumped and groaning about how I’d turn into Spaghetti Girl if I ate any more of it. I’d wiggled my arms around bonelessly as a brief demonstration of the not-so-awesome powers of Spaghetti Girl.

  Our small kitchen table didn’t seem as small because our table setting was so depressingly Spartan. No colander in the middle overflowing with tentacles of extra spaghetti. No glass bowl of red sauce. No cutting board with sliced chunks of garlic bread. No side bowls with sparkling green and red salads. Not that I would’ve eaten a full salad. My little wooden bowl would’ve held only little wheels of carefully peeled cucumbers and maybe a few baby carrots.

  What was on the table: four plates of spaghetti, serving sizes modest, and four glasses of water. I’d asked for milk, but Mom had said, simply, “Drink water, and quit bellyaching.”

  Dad sat at the table with his head bowed, eyes closed, and with his hands folded, those thick fingers wound tightly in between each other so that it looked like there were more fingers than there should’ve been. I counted the knuckles on each of his hands twice to make sure that there weren’t extras.

  Dad prayed over his food for an uncomfortably long time. He was so focused and earnest that I felt pressured into joining him, even as I worried that I didn’t know how to pray or to whom to pray. The other morning, while driving me to school, he’d described praying as a conversation in your head with God. Happy that he was even talking to me as he’d been borderline unresponsive since the night in Marjorie’s room, I’d asked who God really was besides some big, bearded old guy up in the clouds. Dad had started by saying God was love, which had sounded nice, but then he’d fumbled around a convoluted explanation involving Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I’d made a joke about my head getting too crowded with all those people to talk to instead of telling him that I didn’t want to hear any more about it. Dad had made me feel terribly anxious in a way that I couldn’t describe right then, partially because I couldn’t be trusted to not tell Mom about his preaching and proselytizing without her permission. Just like I had told on Marjorie. I’d become so very tired of other people’s secrets and stories. Dad had laughed at my too-crowded joke, and he’d said to just give it a try sometime, that it’d make me feel better.

  I gently placed my fork down and folded my hands like Dad. Before I could say anything to the people in my head, I caught Marjorie watching me from the inside of her hooded sweatshirt. She smirked and shook her head no. I quickly picked my fork back up and imagined Bigfoot crashing through the woods behind our house and into the kitchen, destroying everything.

  Mom refused to look at Dad while he prayed. She held one hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes as though there were a glare.

  Eventually, he picked up his head and crossed himself; touching his forehead, chest, then each shoulder. He did it so fast, like he’d been practicing all his life. Dad smiled and looked at each of us. He gave me an extra wink. I wasn’t good at winking so I blew him a kiss in return.

  Marjorie made a retching sound. No one asked if she was okay, which meant something. Then she said, “Sorry. Wrong pipe.”

  “Please take your hood off at the dinner table.”

  Marjorie complied. The removal of her hood was a shocking revelation. Her skin was gray, the color of the mushrooms that grew around the snaking tangle of tree roots out back. The circles under her eyes were dark and deep. Her black hair was a dead octopus leaking and sliding off her scalp. Whiteheads dotted her chin and the sides of her nose.

  Dad said, “So how was school today?”

  “Oh you know, Dad. The usual. I was voted class president, captain of the soccer team, most hottest chick ever—”

  Mom cut in with, “Marjorie isn’t feeling well. They sent her home because she got sick in the cafeteria.”

  “What, again? Poor kid. Do you feel good enough to eat? Why are you eating this stuff now? Sarah, don’t force her to eat if she’s having stomach problems.” Dad’s hands were folded again, this time in front of his plate.

  “I’m not forcing her, John. She said she felt better. Right?”

  “Hunky and dory.”

  “You don’t look good.”

  “Thanks, Dad. I feel so pretty.”

  “You know what I mean. You know you’re my beautiful girl.” He’d said it like the small print of a warranty or an indemnification clause.

  I said, “Hey!”

  “You’re my beautiful girl too, Merry.”

  Marjorie groaned. She wrapped a strand of spaghetti around her finger and said, “You’re going to make me puke again.” Under her nails were black with dirt. Had she been digging in the yard? I imagined her out back, planting growing things.

  Dad said, “You look pale. Maybe we should let you sleep in tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be fine. I don’t want to miss any more schoolwork. They’re threatening to send me to summer school already.” Marjorie rested the back of her hand on her forehead. She was in actress mode. I could tell. A hint of a British accent had slipped into her speech.

  I practiced eating my pasta while trying not to use my tongue. I was a planner, a considerer of every contingency.

  “Don’t worry about that. We’ll do what we have to do.” As if on cue, we all looked down at our feeble plates, our dinner metaphor for doing what we had to do.

  Dad then turned to me and said, “Merry! Tell us how your day was. I’d like to hear about one good thing that happened and one thing that made you laugh.”

  Always pleased to have the family spotlight thrust upon me, I said, “Well,” elongating the word by vibrating the tip of my tongue against the back of my front teeth. “We started reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in class. Ronnie made me laugh when he pretended to be Augustus Gloop drinking from the chocolate river. He got down on his hands and knees and acted like he was licking the rug. He shouted, ‘Chocolate, that’s good!’” I demonstrated with my impersonation of Ronnie’s funny German accent. “Mrs. Hulbig didn’t think he was funny, though.”

  Mom said, “Hmm, interesting. He’s probably seen that horrible Johnny Depp version of the movie. That you kids like it and not the original Gene Wilder version is sacrilege.”

  “Mom, what’s your problem?” I said, talking and acting like Depp’s version of Wonka: vacant smile, creepy voice full of air and lisp and nothing else.

  Dad said, “That’s pretty good. I have to admit, you’re good at doing voices, Merry.”

  “I am?”

  Both Mom and Marjorie groaned.

  “Yes, you’ve always been great at doing impressions and funny little voices.”

  I changed my pitch and tone with each word. “I can do voices.”

  “Just great. She’ll be doing voices all night now,” Marjorie said.

  “I can do voices!”

  Mom said, “You have no idea what you started, do you?”

  I cackled in two or three different styles, then stopped abruptly. “Oh, Mom! I almost forgot. Tomorrow is hat day in school. I need to find a hat! What hat should I wear?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll look for a hat after dinner.”

  Dad said, “Hey, you can wear my Red Sox hat.”

  “Gross, no way!” I instinctively covered my head with my hands. Legend foretold of a hat that was older than Marjorie and had never been washed. The once-white sweatband ringing the inside of his hat was black. The red B was al
l grimy-looking and the bill was sweat-stained and misshapen. Dad used to chase us around with the hat, trying to put it on our heads. We’d run away laughing and screaming. The game had usually ended when I’d whine and complain that he was chasing Marjorie more than he was chasing me. It was true, but to be fair, Marjorie was more fun to chase because she was harder to catch. Even though I was fast, I’d give up and stop running, drop to the ground, and roll into a ball. Dad would quickly put the hat on my head, but in two seconds he’d be off again, playfully shouting and chasing after Marjorie. Her taunts were always so clever, and if he caught her, she’d get it worse; he’d rub the hat all over her head and face until her repeated Dad stop it sounded angry. Sitting at the kitchen table that night, those hat chases seemed like they’d happened eons ago although the last time we’d done it was only a few months prior at a Labor Day barbecue. During that chase Dad had knocked over a small folding table, spilling paper plates and plastic utensils.

  Mom said, “We don’t want the school to send her home for lice, John.” It was supposed to be a joke but it had an edge to it.

  I said, “I want to wear something funny and cool. Marjorie, could I wear your sparkly baseball hat?”

  The three of us looked at Marjorie.

  Now I remember thinking that her answer could change everything back to the way it was; Dad could find a job and stop praying all the time and Mom could be happy and call Marjorie shellfish again and show us funny videos she found on YouTube, and we all could eat more than just spaghetti at dinner and, most important, Marjorie could be normal again. Everything would be okay if Marjorie would only say yes to me wearing the sparkly sequined baseball hat, the one she’d made in art class a few years ago.

  The longer we watched Marjorie and waited for a response, the more the temperature in the room dropped and I knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

  She stopped twisting her spaghetti around her fingers. She opened her mouth, and vomit slowly oozed out onto her spaghetti plate.

  Dad: “Jesus!”

  Mom: “Honey, are you okay?” She jumped out of her seat and went over to Marjorie, stood behind her, and held her hair up.

  Marjorie didn’t react to either parent, and she didn’t make any sounds. She wasn’t retching or convulsing involuntarily like one normally does when throwing up. It just poured out of her as though her mouth was an opened faucet. The vomit was as green as spring grass, and the masticated pasta looked weirdly dry, with a consistency of mashed-up dog food.

  She watched Dad the whole time as the vomit filled her plate, some of it slopping over the edges and onto the table. When she finished she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “No, Merry. You can’t wear my hat.” She didn’t sound like herself. Her voice was lower, adult, and growly. “You might get something on it. I don’t want you to mess it up.” She laughed.

  Dad: “Marjorie . . .”

  Marjorie coughed and vomited more onto her too-full plate. “You can’t wear the hat because you’re going to die someday.” She found a new voice, this one a treacly baby-talk. “I don’t want dead things wearing my very special hat.”

  Mom backed away from Marjorie and bumped into my chair. I reached out and clung to her hip with my right arm and covered my mouth with my left.

  A third new voice; genderless and nasally. “No one here can wear it because you’re all going to die.”

  “Marjorie?” Dad stayed in his seat and held out a hand to her. “Marjorie? Look at me. Hold my hand and pray with me. Please. Just try it.”

  Mom was crying and shaking her head.

  Convinced that he was only going to make it all worse, I squeaked out, “Leave her alone,” then covered my mouth back up quickly because it wasn’t safe to talk.

  He said in his most patient voice, which seemed to be not his voice at all, as alien as the voices coming from my sister: “Marjorie is never alone. He is always with her. Let us pray to Him.” And I started crying too because I was afraid and confused. I thought that Dad was saying there was someone inside Marjorie and that he wanted to pray to him. Dad pushed back his chair and knelt on the floor.

  “Okay, Dad.” Marjorie slid out of her chair, leaking down toward the floor, and disappeared under the table.

  Mom left me and bent down, next to Marjorie’s chair. “Sweetie, come out from under there. I’ll run you a nice warm bath upstairs, okay? Let’s go to bed early. You’ll feel better. . . .” She kept cooing promises of hope and healing.

  Now I was alone, with my hand still over my mouth. Marjorie slunk and slid on the hardwood somewhere in the depths beneath the table. I could not see her and pulled my dangling feet up onto the chair. My toes curled inside the sneakers.

  We waited and watched. Dad suddenly jolted as if given an electric shock and knocked into the table, shaking our plates and forks, and spilling more vomit off of Marjorie’s plate, which smelled of acid and dirt.

  Marjorie’s hand reached up. Her skin was ash gray and her dirty fingernails were as black as fish eyes. Then her muddy voice echoed up from the bottom of a well. “Go ahead, Dad. Take my hand.”

  He slowly reached out and did as she asked. She pulled his hand beneath the table, to where we couldn’t see. Dad was a statue bust, as cold and white as marble. He started a prayer. “In the name of Your son, Jesus Christ, please, Lord, give Marjorie strength. . . .” He paused and seemed unsure of what exactly to say, as though he knew he was an amateur, a poseur. A fraud. “. . . to help her deal with—with the affliction she’s struggling with. Cleanse her spirit. Show her the—” Then he screamed in pain.

  The table rattled again as he pulled his arm out from under the table. The back of his hand was bleeding, had been slashed open. There were two deep red lines dowsing a path toward his wrist. He clutched the hand to his chest instinctively, then held it out toward Mom, in an expression of childlike fear and incredulity at the unfairness of it all.

  Mom: “Did she scratch you? Bite you?”

  “Maybe. I—I don’t know.”

  I scooted back in my chair, convinced that Marjorie would come for me next and drag me down beneath the surface and into the shadows, pry my mouth open for its pink wriggling worm.

  Marjorie hummed her terrible song and crawled away from the table. Her hood was covering her hair. She stopped humming and spouted gibberish that I tried to spell inside my head, but it was made out of nothing but angry consonants.

  My parents both said her name, saying it like her name was a question, and a call, and a plea.

  Marjorie slowly crawled away from the light of the kitchen and into the dark of the dining room. “I don’t bite or scratch,” she said in another voice, a new one, one that didn’t sound like anyone who had ever spoken before in the human history of speech. “He scraped the back of his hand on the rusty metal and bolts under the old table.” She slipped into more of the consonant-speak, and then added, “We always hurt ourselves, don’t we? I’m going to my room. No visitors, please.”

  Marjorie hummed the song again, changing pitch and timbre so quickly and abruptly it was disorienting and it felt like my ears were popping. She crawled through the dining room, moving like a monitor lizard or something as equally ancient, and into the front foyer and to the stairs.

  She said from far away, “I can do voices too, Merry.”

  CHAPTER 13

  ANOTHER SATURDAY MORNING. Everything in the house felt dead, even though I had no idea, at that time, what death felt like.

  Mom had gone back to bed after making me a bowl of cereal for breakfast. Rice Krispies. She hadn’t put in the usual two spoonfuls of sugar and there wasn’t enough milk left to sufficiently soak the mouthy, complaining Krispies. I hadn’t dared complain though. Mom had had the look.

  I ate until there was only a semi-mushy paste of cereal spackled to the bottom of the plastic bowl. We didn’t have any orange juice either so I drank water. I had the TV to myself and watched all the Finding Bigfoots I’d saved to the DVR. Earlier that week my parents h
ad said something about watching everything on the DVR before it had to be disconnected, so I was proud to accomplish that at least.

  Around episode four, with the crew of Squatchers somewhere in the woods of Vermont, Dad shuffled down the stairs and into the kitchen. He sighed at the empty milk carton on the table, muttered swears that weren’t quite under his breath, and slammed around the kitchen looking for breakfast. He settled on defrosting an English muffin.

  When he came into the living room with his peanut butter–slathered muffin, he wordlessly took the remote control from me and flipped over to one of our many sports channels. I hated watching sports, and suggested compromise viewing, a show called River Monsters, which featured a charismatic British angler with terrible teeth, who traveled to exotic lakes and rivers to catch giant catfish and these living torpedoes called arapaimas. Dad refused to compromise.

  I patiently waited until he was done with his breakfast and then I jumped into his lap, saying, “Dad, play with me. Catch me! You can’t catch me!” I bent down and pulled his folded legs out straight and away from the couch. “C’mon! The alligator game.” The alligator game: His legs were the jaws of the alligator, and I’d dance in, around, and between them, teasing the gator into snapping its jaws shut on me.

  Dad did as he was asked, but it was obvious his heart wasn’t in it, that he was still preoccupied. I was manic in my attempt to have fun. If I danced fast enough, if I laughed heartily enough, if I shrieked loud enough when caught, maybe he’d forget about Marjorie for a moment.

  His alligator mouth was too sluggish. He missed repeatedly. I pleaded with him to try harder. Then he blamed me for his own lack of motivation and purpose. He said, “Well, you stop being a chicken. You can’t dance in and out from out there. You’re too far away. You have to come closer to me, stand there longer.” When he still couldn’t catch me he criticized how I was jumping in his coach voice. He said that I was too flat-footed, too heavy on my feet, that I had to be on the tips of my toes, that I should walk light enough that he couldn’t hear my feet on the floor.