Based on true events, as much as ghosts can be true. Scabby ankles and a thick and loud August. Fifteen years old in \u201984. Headlights gobbled up the night space. The Volkswagen Rabbit slowed down. Debra and I lowered our thumbs, wiped grime on our whitewashed, high-waisted jeans and climbed in. Boy 1 was Thomas, a mustached smoker. Boy 2 was Greg, sharp-faced, earing in just one lobe, real John Waite-ish. We split a dime bag.<\/p>\n
\u201cQue passsssaaahhh,\u201d said Thomas, like he was Cheech or Chong. Out the window, hot stalks of corn danced under the light of a sturgeon moon.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnybody wanna shotgun kiss?\u201d said Debra. She stuck her head up in the middle of the boys\u2019 seats, but instead of locking lips and exhaling, she noogied Thomas, the driver.<\/p>\n
Car swerved. I loved silly Debra. Wish we\u2019d stayed in touch after all these years. Greg opened the glove box but retrieved nothing. Then he shut it and reclined his seat against my knee. I was busy rubbing my right big toe into my left ankle nonstop.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Two days ago, my kids came home from college to visit their long-lost mother. We played barefoot cornhole in my backyard next to the neon creek. Bugs feasted on my ankles. The next day I woke and itched and itched until they bled, and today, I have embarked on this camping trip with no hydrocortisone. You think Professor Garrett would have included hydrocortisone in the wilderness survival syllabus, but no, Professor Garrett did not.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve enrolled in a wilderness survival course to fulfill an elective credit. Beats a public speaking class. I\u2019m an empty nester and a divorcee, too young for birding and golf, and I have no one to bird and golf with, so, what the hell?<\/p>\n
The muddy trail cuts through brush so green and thick there can\u2019t even be space for each single strand. Heavy rocks are secretly wobbly in the river we\u2019re about to cross. I have an extra pair of socks in my backpack, but still, I\u2019d prefer to stay dry, to not slip.<\/p>\n
Professor Garrett leads with ease, waiting on the opposite bank, ready to help each of his students up and on their way. First, my younger peer, camo-clad Steve trainwrecks across the river. By some miracle he makes it, refusing help from Professor Garrett. Back on solid ground, he shrugs off embarrassment, pulls out a Slim Jim, and watches his two other classmates. Like a ninja I step, ready for the stone\u2019s tremble, the rapid\u2019s wet slap. My arms are the wings of a helicopter.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, girl!\u201d shouts my encouraging female classmate from behind. \u201cYou got this, lady!\u201d<\/p>\n
I have that unsteady feeling, and I\u2019d love to itch my Achilles tendon right about now. But I\u2019m almost there. I\u2019m tripping my way to the opposite bank, I\u2019m a car with three wheels and a burning engine, I\u2019m no better than Slim Jim Steve, I\u2019ll bowl Professor Garrett over but I\u2019m surprised to find that my teacher\u2019s wiry frame is sturdy and strong. Professor Garrett\u2019s got me, he\u2019s pulling me by my elbow up onto the path, no more spitting water, no more tottering ground, but a hand lingers on my butt for one Mississippi, two Mississippi. Nobody sees because Steve\u2019s captivated by his Slim Jim and my Yeah Girl! classmate\u2019s crossing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Thomas, Greg, Debra, and I decided it\u2019d be fun to cruise the lonely roads of Irving Mental Asylum. No gates around the 400-acre grounds. Trust me, I\u2019d know, because I was a fifteen-year-old girl whose mom sporadically frequented the place. Dad would call the police and Mom would fight the uniformed men tooth and nail, which is to say, arm and leg. They\u2019d drag her out by the extremities like a piece of screaming furniture. They wouldn\u2019t listen to her, only to Dad. \u201cWhat about my babies?!\u201d she\u2019d shriek. Slam. I\u2019d race back into my bedroom, to the window, and watch the neighborhood spectacle. I was one of her eight babies never allowed inside Irving. Dad gave Mom my wildflowers that I picked.<\/p>\n
Dear Diarrhea \u201983
\nMom went in again. Debra and I snuck into a James Taylor concert and he signed my jean jacket. I absolutely positively one- hundred-and-twenty-one-percent HATE school.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nFour pot-smoking hooligans, we were, driving around the place like it was Dracula\u2019s castle. All was spooky and fun. I certainly had my reservations, but I wasn\u2019t going to be a buzzkill. Then, lights and sirens materialized from behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ganja!\u201d Greg said, but Thomas was already slowing down for the cruiser.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Yeah Girl! struggles to keep up. Her soaked shoes squawk on the path (because she fell in the creek), and she\u2019s huffing like an elderly smoker trying to play pickup basketball.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should stop,\u201d I say to the four of us. We unzip our waters from our backpacks and lean on the trunks of trees. Slim Jim Steve flicks a cicada shell off a big tall oak.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you think?\u201d Professor Garrett asks Yeah Girl!<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean how\u2019s it going?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot good,\u201d says Yeah Girl!<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s do a pulse check,\u201d says Professor Garrett.<\/p>\n
Specks of sun fairy their way down from the canopy. I look at Slim Jim Steve, but he doesn\u2019t seem up to small talk. The poison in the bumps on my ankle tries to seduce me into sneaking my fingers underneath my sock. I sit and listen to the forest\u2019s rustle. I can hear Yeah Girl!\u2019s thumping heart.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to your health and safety,\u201d says Professor Garrett, \u201cYou can\u2019t be too cautious.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many more miles we got left?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so for the first time, the prospect of Yeah Girl! leaving our posse, i.e., and then there were three, bares its fangs. Me, Slim Jim Steve, and Professor Garrett, who may or may not like to touch butts.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Memory softens and crackles like a graphic on a cheap tee. That night at Irving Asylum: how\u2019d the four of us\u2014Thomas, Greg, Debra, and I\u2014how\u2019d we dodge arrest? How\u2019d we go from \u201clicense and registration\u201d to the boys and the cop engaged in hold-my- crotch-so-I-don\u2019t-pee laughter? Debra and I sat on the curb, high as kites, looking at unmarked, shadowy graves that swooped down into forest while Thomas and Greg smoothed it over with this officer who they just had to have known from somewhere. Friend of an older brother?<\/p>\n
Drags were taken. Ankles (my ankles) were scratched. The sturgeon moon peeked out from treadmill clouds but then fell back behind the blanket. Lo and behold, the officer was driving away, leaving us to our own silly devices.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I could\u2019ve sworn the weather looked promising this weekend. Clear skies, nighttime lows in the upper sixties. So why all this wind? Why that guttural thunder boom? Why has the pink canvas of setting sun clouded over? Damn you, meteorologist Dick Goddard, damn you!
\nTo make matters worse, we\u2019re running late, thanks to Yeah Girl!, who\u2019s bowed out, probably home by now watching The Office on her couch with a DiGiorno Pizza on her lap.<\/p>\n\u201cY\u2019all bring rain gear?\u201d Asks Professor Garrett.<\/p>\n
\u201cWasn\u2019t supposed to rain,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh boy,\u201d says Slim Jim Steve with a chuckle.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot to worry, Cheryl,\u201d says Professor Garrett. \u201cYou\u2019ll just really have to earn that A, is all.\u201d<\/p>\n
My teacher looks back and smirks at me. Smiles on the faces of men are not the same as smiles on the faces of women. At some point even my own son probably grinned and behind his stretched face festered intentions impure and devilish. I mean come on. Let\u2019s be real.<\/p>\n
My mother told me once that she saw devils when she gave birth to me. What a girl\u2019s supposed to do with this news beats the hell out of me. Pray, I suppose. Say the rosary, maybe. Pick flowers for her mentally incarcerated mother.<\/p>\n
Dear Diarrhea \u201985
\nMom says we can\u2019t eat meat anymore. Also, she\u2019s pried the buttons off the TV.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
The wooden structure sagged in the middle, shingles having flown off to head south with birds. Maybe they performed lobotomies here, I thought. A raindrop landed on my nose. Storm was picking up.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know,\u201d said Thomas enticingly, \u201cIf we get closer, the trees will grant us cover.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so fifteen-year-old Debra and I followed the older boys. It strikes me now how willy-nilly and without fear we were. We trudged through slick tall grass and pricker bushes. Branches looked like veins in the arm of a giant monster and yet they swayed so willingly, left and right and all around, making wet crackling noises on top of the cricket\u2019s chirp. The sky was purple and light-polluted.<\/p>\n
\u201cCool!\u201d Thomas shouted from inside. \u201cCome see this!\u201d<\/p>\n
Greg followed his buddy through the dark rectangle.<\/p>\n
Debra was third in line. The abyss swallowed her next. I lingered and peered to my left. There was an odd-looking article of clothing in the weeds and I wanted to see what it was. I scouted my way over to it, and as I did so, it took shape: an old, heavy-duty straitjacket. A straitjacket was a plausible item to be littered around these parts, but that thought didn\u2019t stop my heart from revving in park. Cue the twinkle of an out-of-tune piano.<\/p>\n
When she walked into my field of vision, she looked so normal, wearing a sleeveless, white blouse. She could have been out for a stroll. To be perfectly frank, I still don\u2019t exactly know whether this was real-life Mom or a premature ghost I was making up in my head. I suspect the latter, but I mean, really, who knows? Mom was in close proximity that night, lying in a bed in one of the main buildings that was still up and running, i.e., hanging by a thread. Dad refused to send her to the nice facility down in Athens because it cost too much money.<\/p>\n
Her face bore no acknowledgement of my words. She spoke of her own agenda. \u201cSomething dark about you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d was all I could stammer back.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou weren\u2019t supposed to be born on Halloween.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow could I help it?\u201d I asked, angry. \u201cWhat could I have done?\u201d<\/p>\n
We were getting somewhere. I rarely ever showed her my anger. In life I was always just so happy to see her that there was no time to be angry. But goddammit\u2014Debra. She was screaming now from inside the dilapidated structure and I had to come to the aid of my friend. I left Mom out in the rainy woods and dashed over, waking a cranky, creaking step, passing into complete darkness.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s going on in here?\u201d I said to the stale murk.<\/p>\n
Shoes on bare floor, a swishing sound. Heavy breathing. Greg lit a match. That sliver of vision was scarier than no vision at all. I could see red veins in the white of his eyes. A rusty bed frame with no mattress. There was nonsense writing on the walls, symbols, equations, poems, crude diagrams of human anatomy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a gentleman,\u201d Thomas was saying.<\/p>\n
\u201cBullshit you\u2019re a gentleman,\u201d said Debra.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019d they do?\u201d I asked, thinking about a weapon.<\/p>\n
\u201cTried to make something happen is what they did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNuh-uh,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cWe\u2019re both gentlemen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cListen,\u201d said Greg. \u201cIt\u2019s all good, okay? We get it. Let\u2019s just go home. We\u2019ll drop you ladies off.\u201d<\/p>\n
The match went out.<\/p>\n
And we did go home. We didn\u2019t have to fight off or give into Thomas and Greg. This didn\u2019t turn out to be Twin Peaks. Maybe the strength of Debra\u2019s screams shocked them into realizing what was happening. Maybe it scared the lust out of them.<\/p>\n
When we exited the crumbling shack, there was no sign of Mom. She\u2019d wandered off to some other hollow.<\/p>\n
So why, then? Why the remembrance of the dime bag and the mental hospital? If I\u2019m alone on this wilderness survival trip with two men\u2014Slim Jim Steve and Professor Garrett\u2014why not just think about my old boss at the telemarketing firm, the time it really happened in the break room when the other ladies beat me out the door that day? Does this right here, now moment have something to do with Mom? Is Mom in these very woods? Could she have wandered over here from Irving Mental Asylum and lingered all these years? Not really all that far\u2014miles or time\u2014when you think about it.<\/p>\n
Dear Diarrhea \u201986
\nThey said Mom died of a heart attack because she had a bad heart. I said I wanted to see her files. Like how many shock treatments??? How about meds?? It was like Dad didn\u2019t care. Like he was in on it. Dear Diarrhea, can you feel my tear splotches? There\u2019s one and there\u2019s one there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
Rain\u2019s been on and off. A leaf or two smacked me square in the face as we closed in on camp. But that was all a pregame show. There\u2019s a real storm coming. You can feel it. No sign of the Sturgeon Moon behind all these black puffers.<\/p>\n
Slim Jim Steve declines Professor Garrett\u2019s offer to warm up his Spaghetti-Os with Franks. No fire tonight, but my teacher has a propane stove, living the good life, browning up two chicken thighs and humming John Denver. He\u2019s graciously offered me his other burner, and there, bubbling hot, is a bowl of vegetarian chili. I haven\u2019t taken a bite of meat since my divorce.<\/p>\n
Boom. Whish. A rumble in the bogs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019d like to know,\u201d he says, getting powder from a premade seasoning packet all over the place, \u201cIs what\u2019s your secret.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t like the connotation of his word secret. It\u2019s a cousin in the family of how\u2019d you get to be so pretty? And how can you not have a boyfriend? But I humor him, mainly because it\u2019s my chili he\u2019s got on his burner. \u201cWhat secret we talking about here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSecret of finding the fountain of youth. You were killing it out on the trail. You looked great.\u201d<\/p>\n
I resist the urge to stick my finger down my throat. \u201cSounds to me,\u201d I say, \u201cLike a backhanded compliment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow so?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re implying that I\u2019m old. That I\u2019ve done a good job with health and fitness and all that, but I\u2019m still old.\u201d<\/p>\n
Professor Garrett holds up his plastic tongs and clamps them together at me. What do I have on him, five years? Maybe eight? \u201cTouch\u00e9,\u201d he says to me, \u201cTouch\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n
A bolt of lightning arteries down from the sky, headfirst into the treetops. Can\u2019t get a single one Mississippi in before God rolls a strike in heaven. It\u2019s dark now and the crickets have begun to chatter about something.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell my friends,\u201d says Professor Garrett. \u201cI\u2019m inviting you to eat your dinners and maybe play a card game or two in my tent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slim Jim Steve looks at his steel can, empty now of Spaghetti-Os with Franks. \u201cGonna turn in,\u201d he says. The great Slim Jim Steve, a man of few, monosyllabic words. A stuttering simpleton could play his part in a theater production of this camping trip. I do feel bad poking fun, though, as the guy strikes me as a war veteran, and I don\u2019t have a clue what his road\u2019s been like.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat leaves you and me, Cheryl,\u201d says Professor Garrett.<\/p>\n
I never liked the smell of citronella, even if it does ward off mosquitos. Three flames in the big circular bucket of wax and two of the three die out in a strong gust of wind. Professor Garrett\u2019s lantern falls over, casting strange shadows on the greenery that\u2019s turned black.<\/p>\n
Wowwwwwwshhhhh says the coming storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cGonna turn in too,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh come on now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTired,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, suit yourself,\u201d he says, and tears a strip of chicken off with his teeth. \u201cI play a mean game of beat the devil.\u201d<\/p>\n
I ask my professor to say that again.<\/p>\n
He chews and swallows. \u201cBeat the devil\u2014you know, solitaire?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRight,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
Dear Diarrhea \u201980
\nI will call you that because I think it sounds funny and it\u2019s a homophone so sue me! I woke up today and Mom was back. She let me stay home from school, just me, nobody else. We played rummy, go fish, solitaire aka beat the devil. We cut out coupons from the newspaper and added them to her collection which she never uses even when it\u2019s the perfect time. While we cut, she whispered to me that I was her favorite.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nIn my tent an hour later, I scratch my ankles and hear everything there is to hear. Bigger booms. Louder booms. A train\u2019s whistle. Raindrops splattering on tarp. The wavy dance of trees, carefree even in the face of so much power. I try to read with my pillow folded behind my neck and my headlamp strapped across my forehead, but it\u2019s no use. This sleeping pad might as well be a slab of wood.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo lock on a tent door,\u201d I say. \u201cIt\u2019s open.\u201d<\/p>\n
But she never comes. She never ever comes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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