Melissa

I never forgot.  These events retreated down the hallways of memory--echoing there but growing fainter and easier to overlook.  Until this morning, when she leaned over my bed again, her hand smoothing my gray hair and whispered, "Tabitha, soon it's your time." Her breath was both sweet and horrifying for being the same as in life.
         No one admits to seeing her those days, but I did. Perhaps we all did.  I saw her, a ghost walking down those dim halls, and cringed, huddled towards the wall to watch her sweep past.  As a child, I never understood that she was a ghost, only there was something wrong about the way you could see the wall through her body, through her dress and how her footsteps never echoed down the hallways the way my own did.  Afraid that when I started walking again because I knew that my steps made noise, afraid that I'd catch her attention and she would turn to face me.  I was afraid of the things I may see when looking into the space where her eyes should be. I pray now that I was not the only one to see her. 
         Father was the only one who never seemed to stiffen or fall silent when she was in the room.  Perhaps he was better at pretending then us.  He would never, never admit to seeing her.  You and I would never know that she visited him sometimes in his room, that sometimes the room she was leaving was his.  Drunk once as an old man, he told me.  You said you didn't believe me.  That you didn't remember her. 
         That I could make such passionate statements about anything, as you Theresa, telling me that you don't remember anything about a ghost in our childhood home.  I cannot lie or forget as well as you can.  I was forever changed by her presence. 
         What would Mother think?  What would Mother think if she knew her husband was spending torrid nights with the ghost of her sister, the girl that he loved more and loved first?  That her ugly marriage to the man was only for the benefit of his heart, seeing in her the soft features and the finely shaped eyes as her sister.  He came to know another reason.  Even in death, she was Mother's guardian bound by her promise to her father on his deathbed that Melissa would never leave Mother alone.   
         The four children--me, you, Sammy and Ethan--we never spoke of these things to anyone though we only knew imperfect truths.  It's hard to say now how it all began.  But I believe it started years before in the spring.  At least that much I know for sure.  The rest, I grow more and more uncertain of.  The fog of time is descending on me, and all my fellow witnesses are dead, or say they don't remember.  At least, I beg you, to listen to me and stop protesting.  I shall not live to see another dawn, and at least one person must know what torments me. 
         When I came to puberty, Melissa began to notice me, make visits to my room.  When my eyes were closed in sleep or in pretend, Melissa would lean over my bed, stroking my hair with her unsubstantial hand, whispering to me.  The story, I know it by heart.  How she loved him first, he was promised to her first.  But fate intervened with Melissa's tragic death and there was nothing to do. 
         Her words carried the soft sweet exhale like a baby, like suckled milk and honey.  She came more and more often towards the end, more animated and less wispy.  She was growing angry.  By then I was an angst-ridden 17 year-old girl with no time for the meddling of some ghost aunt who choose to frequent my room whispering secrets.  But I didn't have the time to find out what she wanted.  I wasn't listening.
         She was trying to save us, you and me and the boys that night. If only I had listened to her voice that night, the whispers of fire and death I would have been able to help them.  Help us.  But I was wild-minded and constrained in that straight jacketed life, that old house, that mother, that father, that family all stifling, holding me in, reigning me back.  There are no excuses for my actions and my inactions
         I ran free in my imagination, dancing torrid dances with secret loves, parading out a small set of rebellions.  Seventeen and my hair was long and straight  and hung down my back and fell across my face as I walked or prayed and I noticed that the eyes of the men where on me as I walked down the streets, most out of the corners but the ones that made me blush with being noticed where the ones that meet my eye but never smiled.  These I felt a pull towards those ones I didn't understand, a longing that made my breathing shallow and my pace to quicken but my thoughts to dwell there in that moment of eye contact. 
         You were thinner and fairer and with a more womanly shape though you were younger than I, and the locket around your neck was from the boy who loved you and would eventually marry you away and out of our crazy circus of family life.  Your hair was wavy and golden as a lion's main, and the sun left freckles on your cheeks and the tip of your nose.  I envied you all the things you did better, more naturally than I and the way you talked freely with anyone, whereas I stuttered and stammered and hesitated through even the most perfunctory of greetings.  We were much like the generation before us, I looked like our mother, you looked like our aunt despite the switch in birth order.
         Mother was less real to me that her unreal sister, a shell of a woman distorted with hate for the family that held her back and the husband who made promises to love her and care for her, but became inert and unmoving.  She was convinced that he was having an affair and would break into a manic frenzy, destroying the things in our house, the pretty heirloom crystal, mirrors.  He would sit there, sipping his whiskey neat then staring into the amber depths as a fortune teller would a crystal ball.  The more he ignored her, the more frenzied she became, the more often I saw the ghost walking down the hallway.
         Then a lull fell over the house.  Mother was quiet, remaining in her room, taking the suppers I prepared there, but the episodes of manic violence had disappeared.  Father stayed in his room as well sleeping on the tiny bed against the far wall.  You watched Ethan and Sammy.  I was taken with a man with coal colored eyes who told me he was going to take me anywhere and would spend as much time with him out by the damn in his finned and chromed car, dreaming of destinations as he made love to my body.
         I was in limbo between awareness and dreams.  Melissa was standing over my bed, smoothing my long hair, then she leaned down and began whispering into my ear that I must wake up, something terrible was happening and I must stop it.  Only I felt my lovers hands, heard his voice, and dreamt of London and of Rome and of Paris. 
         Startled, I awoke later, with the campfire smell of burning wood and the hazy fog of smoke clouding the lines of my room.  I jumped out of bed on to the hardwood floor that burned my bare feet.  I ran to wake you, but there was no escape.  We were trapped by the fire devouring the stairs.  I pulled you back into your room to the window and we climbed down the shade tree on the south side of the house.  There I saw fire engulfed the whole bottom floor, moved behind the glass like a room full of demons as the curtains burned away.  You screamed for help, but in the middle of nowhere in the North Dakota night, there was no one to hear it. 
         Father came stumbling out of the house, tears on his face clutching the Mother's limp body.  I remember that the most, how he cried then, pathetic and sorry like a child who lost his blanket.  She was blackened with soot and ash, a rag doll in his arms. 
         These events retreated down the hallways of my memory--echoing there but growing fainter and easier to overlook.  Spring always brought flowers and winter always brought blizzards from the North.  You and I did our best trying to care for father, but we had our families too.  He was not interested in seeing our children or their wives and husbands and their children.  It was a blessing when he passed.  I seldom let myself think of the ghost until she came to speak to me once more.
         "Tabitha. Tabitha, come with me."