Ghosts--Andrea

The day my mom announced she was pregnant again, we became ghosts.

            Three times over the years mom made the same announcement. The fourth time, I barely mustered the strength to tug my lips into a smile.

The dictionary defines a ghost as more than one thing:

1.     The disembodied spirit of a dead person, supposed to haunt the living

“I’m pregnant.”

Those words summoned our ghosts again. They resided in the back of our minds, meant to be dead. Buried and forgotten. Her words dug up their graves so they could haunt us, the real people just trying to live day to day and forget the countless unused toys, unread storybooks, and unfolded baby clothes behind closed doors. Our ghosts took the form of the people we were, the ones who chattered happily about nurseries and diapers. Those people that sat around the dinner table eyeing my mom’s stomach with excited smiles were merely the shells of people who died when my mom lost the first baby. They were the ghosts who came back just to keep the pain fresh each time.

2. A haunting memory

I remember how excited I felt with the thought of becoming a big sister. I remember the little blanket I bought with tiny buttery yellow giraffes. I remember tripping over a book of baby names left on the living room floor. I remember how my mom glowed each time a random shopper at the supermarket would ask when she was due. I remember my older brother turning red when I caught him reading a children’s book in a monster voice. I remember staring at our family portrait, imagining how we’d look with the new baby right in the middle.

I remember the night she lost the first one. I remember my mom’s screams when she saw the blood. I remember how my aunt dissolved in tears when they called her begging her to come as quickly as possible while they rushed to the hospital. I remember my eyes being nearly swollen shut from all the tears. I remember how weeks passed without my mother so much as opening the door. I remember finding a teddy bear stuffed in my brother’s trashcan, a gift he never gave to the baby. I remember feeling like the entire world had turned against one innocent baby who never got to see it.

I remember the second and third time it happened, too.

3. A faint trace or possibility of something; a glimmer

At first, her words made my heart drop from memory of being beaten down again and again. Then something changed. That tiny seed of hope began to grow again. It was the smallest possibility of completing our family, the tiniest glimmer of buttery yellow glowing against the darkness. It was a glimpse of a future filled with lullabies, tiny clothes, diapers, tantrums, mindless cartoons, and so, so much more.

With that announcement came just a trace, a ghost of hope we held in our hearts for so long, now a little battered down thing as fragile and precious as the baby she carried.