Under the Light

Chapter 15





Helen


JENNY SMILED TO HERSELF, glanced around again, searching for me, I was sure. You would think I would be the one to explain how this language worked, but it was a mystery. Whether my desire to speak with her had bent the binding of the book and forced a certain page to fall open and then guided her hand to find words that made sense to her or whether we were only imagining it, I had no idea. This had not been in my plan—I’d never done such a thing with any of my other hosts. But Jenny dropped the Bible on the floor again, intentionally this time. The thud reverberated through the sanctuary. The woman across the aisle who had been watching made an audible gasp. She was one of the ladies from Cathy’s women’s group. She stared at Jenny as if the girl had shouted out a blasphemy. Cathy swooped down and snatched the Bible away, stuffed it under her purse where Jenny could not reach it.

Did she think she could keep me from talking to my girl that easily? I tapped the bulletin lying on the pew. It didn’t move, but Jenny picked it up and opened it all the same. I pointed to one word after another, jumping around from this line to that. Jenny ran her finger along the print, through prayers and Scripture quotes and hymn titles, following my lead, and we shared (I hoped) a poem of my constructing: I – will – protect – thee – let – not – your – heart – be – sorrow.

When I couldn’t find the phrases I needed, I placed my finger on the white space in the middle fold of the bulletin. Jenny’s finger glided into the blank place between my finger and a staple and stopped. She stared at the page, her breaths coming in shallow puffs.

Leaning toward her ear, I whispered, “Please forgive me for leaving you alone in such a dark place. I’m here now, and I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Her whisper was so soft, Cathy couldn’t have heard her unless she’d pressed her ear to the girl’s lips. “Is it you?” Jenny asked.

“Yes,” I whispered. I couldn’t find the word in the bulletin. I wrote the letters gently on her arm. Yes.

Jenny nodded ever so slightly.

“Ghost,” she whispered.

Again I wrote with my finger on the back of her hand a Y for Yes.

She shuddered, I thought, with equal parts fear and joy. My spirit answered in kind, flickering with nervous excitement.

I thought I felt someone watching me, which is an uncommon sensation for a spirit, but when I turned I saw that the woman across the aisle was studying Jenny. Her gaze went right through me. Behind this woman’s eyes I saw an unsettling mix of concern and pleasure. And under her eyes, a shadow.

At the end of the service Cathy took Jenny’s hand and tried to hurry out the back way before anyone spoke to them. A plump woman with a Noah’s ark sweater blocked the side door and began smothering Cathy with sympathy. I paced around them, impatient to be alone with Jenny. The woman asked Jenny to volunteer in the babies’ room so she could take Cathy to the ladies’ lounge for a talk.

“Oh, here’s Brad,” said the woman. “Honey, why don’t you walk Jennifer to the nursery?”

I stayed between this boy and Jenny, though he seemed perfectly harmless. He was thin and dressed as neat as a missionary. He chatted, oblivious that Jenny was not listening.

“If you ever need anyone to talk to,” he said. “Or pray with.” Jenny didn’t seem to have heard him. “Do you think you’ll want to go to the Harvest Dance?” he asked.

“What?” She didn’t appear to comprehend.

“I should ask your father if I can invite you.” Brad realized his faux pas. “I mean your mother, I guess. I think my mom already talked to her.”

How I wanted to swat him away as I would a horsefly. Jenny swung open the half door under the sign CHERUBS’ NEST and slammed it shut without inviting him in.

“I could come by your house,” he told her, leaning on the door shelf, but Jenny only smiled at him weakly and turned away. “I’ll just call.”

The nursery was full and loud. A dozen babies under the age of two sat, crawled, rolled, and toddled around the rainbow carpet. Half were laughing, half were fussing. No one napping. My heart clutched at the sight—every round face reminded me of my own child.

A tiny woman with thick spectacles was taping a torn page in a picture book. “Are you helping with second service?” she asked Jenny. “You’re a lifesaver.” She came over and put an arm around Jenny’s waist, gave her a squeeze, and whispered, “I’m so sorry about your father.”

News travels swiftly among the church ladies—some things never change.

The woman adjusted her glasses. “The usual sunbeams are here. Russell’s got a runny nose, but everyone else is full of spunk. Darryl Ann needs changing. Would you be a dear?”

A dimpled one-year-old waddled over to us, glanced at me without interest, and wrapped her arms around Jenny’s legs, grinning with four tiny teeth.

Jenny sighed. “Come on, you.” She swung the baby onto her hip and headed to the next door in the hallway. A utility closet had been remade into a diapering station with paper diapers in three sizes, boxes of wipes, powders, lotions, and a large lidded trash can.

It might have been the way the child held the back of Jenny’s dress in her fist, or the way her leg swung as it dangled, or the size of the closet, but I imagined I could smell the baby’s sweaty hair and milk-sweet breath. I felt the weight of her, the warmth of her on my side, though she was not in my own arms. Impossible.

Jenny diapered the child as I watched, teasing her to laughter by tickling her in the ribs, and I was struck by how I imagined I could taste the salt as Jenny pretended to bite one chubby hand.

Maybe it was because I had been inside Jenny, tasted an apple with her tongue, kissed James with her lips, breathed through her, and smelled the sweet foresty pine of James’s hair. I had controlled Jenny’s every joint and muscle, looked through the lens of a camera using her eyes. I recalled it so crisply, as if it were still true. Even now I thought I felt the shape and vibration of wearing her flesh.

If I knew what it was like to be under her skin, I thought, couldn’t I induce her to feel what it was like to be me?

It wasn’t as if I told her how I died, but the flood came all the same. That it appeared to us both should have come as a surprise to me, but it felt perfectly natural.

The little room shook as if a cannon had fired into the wall. Jenny snatched up the baby and held her against her chest. The familiar howl of the storm swelled from every direction. I felt somehow vindicated when Jenny seemed to hear it too. She turned around in a circle, confused.

And then the lights went out.

“No way!” Jenny’s voice went fierce to cover the shock. She held the whimpering baby close to her heart, just as I had.

Jenny felt her way to the door and tried to push it open, but something was blocking it. I knew what it was, of course, but I could sense Jenny’s thoughts—a bookcase or some other heavy piece of furniture? She threw her shoulder against the door, but it didn’t budge. No, not a bookcase. There was a fallen tree against the cellar door. My cellar, my tree.

“Hello?” Jenny called. “Can I get a hand here?”

It’s all right, I told her. Don’t be scared.

And then the water came. Rushing under the door, a roaring river of it. Jenny shrieked. The baby let loose, crying in earnest. But this little girl couldn’t hear the storm or see the flood, could she? I supposed it was Jenny’s fear that was upsetting her.

Jenny held the little girl on one hip, away from the door, then banged with her fist. “Hey! A pipe broke or something!”

I knew the water could not drown her—I wasn’t afraid. I was thrilled. She was attuned to me, powerfully. My spirit swelled with joy.

Jenny shrieked as a branch broke through the door with splinters flying. Water shot in at her face. “Somebody help!” Jenny kicked the door. “We’re trapped in here!”

Icy water swirled around our ankles. Do you understand what’s happening? I asked her. I’m telling you my story.

“Help!” Jenny yelled, guarding the baby from the phantom spray of water.

When the door swung in at us, the light from the hall blinded me for a moment. I turned to Jenny. She swallowed back a scream and blinked.

“What in the world is going on in here?” the short woman asked.

The moment had passed. The water was gone. No tree limb stuck through the door.

“I pushed and pushed but the door wouldn’t open,” said Jenny.

“It opens inward, honey.” The woman studied her.

“And the lights went out,” said Jenny.

The woman reached over and flipped the light switch on. The room was perfectly bright. “Seems fine now.”

The woman adjusted her glasses then held out her arms to the weeping baby. “Did Jenny scare you? You’re all right, doodle bug.” The child flung herself at the woman and Jenny was left alone with me in the changing room, breathing hard.

I moved close to her shoulder to calm her. We were one now. We could feel each other’s pain and fear. She had let me in.

I will never quit you, not by the threat of hell or the promise of heaven, I told her. I am yours to command.