We met at the graveyard among the grass and granite… where most ghosts happen to meet, shortly after midnight, when the ghosts gather. She was standing there off by herself, her jade-green eyes watching the play some of the ghosts were putting on, Romeo and Juliet, her hands clutching her stomach.
The moon was full, and Thanksgiving was just past, the living in the city of Tucson madly preparing for Christmas by shopping until they dropped and spending until they were spent. Some more Christmassy things were planned for these ghostly midnight gatherings, the Midnight Circle, but tonight it was a Shakespearean tragedy, something to cheer up the dourest of ghosts after the most family of holidays. He dies. She dies. Lessons are learned. Tragedy works great when you are dead.
There was something about her, the way she watched the other ghosts put on the play of love gone wrong, that made me think it spoke to her in a specific way, like she was seeing it for the first time or with new eyes.
She was beautiful, long black hair the color of midnight on a mountain framing her round face. She was young, maybe seventeen, a few pimples splashed on her high cheekbones and one on her slightly upturned nose. Her simple outfit, jeans and a light-green blouse, let her natural beauty shine forth.
She was a new ghost—the pimples gave it away; she hadn’t figured out how to alter her form yet. And I’d never seen her before and I would have remembered seeing her.
This rendition of the play was altered slightly. After the two young lovers died, the ghosts playing them let their forms go diffuse, looking altogether more ghostly as the living imagine us to be, and rose up into the air holding hands while they watched the shock of their death unfold upon the Capulets and the Montagues.
After the prince uttered “For never was a story of more woe. Than this of Juliet and her Romeo,” and everyone left the grassy area the players had used as stage, after the props melted into the grass, they floated down together, beatific smiles on their faces and kissed.
Turning the tragedy into a kind of happily ever afterlife story. A bit of a risk with this crowd, but it was well received since we all want to have a happy afterlife.
“Pretty sweet, right?” I said, having slowly maneuvered through the crowd of ghosts until I was next to her.
“Huh?” She seemed startled, as if I were waking her from a dream, her arms still clutching her stomach.
“Those two,” I said, nodding to the ghosts that played Romeo and Juliet, “Jesús and Lela are really in love. Met in Mexico City a while back when Jesús went back home. Nice to see people of color in the roles, don’t you think?”
She smiled, just a tiny thing, like white people often do at such comments, and nodded her head.
“My name is Trisha,” I said, extending my hand, “and I died when a semi jackknifed on I-17.”
She blinked twice, turned, and walked away from me.
The ritual is standard here among this graveyard in Tucson, Arizona. You state your name and how you died. It is a bit of a morbid ritual, but since we are all dead anyway, why not?
I didn’t chase her, not my style, but I was bummed. Not many dead teenagers hanging around the graveyard. Most that don’t move on and are actually ghosts don’t tend to do well, and end up being those lost moaning vaporous clichés you see in the movies.
This girl, if she didn’t find a friend, was going to end up that way too. And yes, I had an awful crush on her, and yes, this was not the first. Despite dying over twenty years ago and having experienced more dead than alive, much of me was still very much the teenager I was when I died.
It’s not like I expected her to swoon and fall into my arms. She looked like she identified as female, but I had no idea if she was straight, gay, or asexual, but a friend “my age” would be nice, you know.
And truth be told here, we don’t have bodies, and while there are intimacies, to be sure, there is no sex. All that messy biology may be behind us, but we still have all those messy emotions.
Her name is Tiffany. Ack! What a terrible name, it makes her sound like one of those insufferable rich girls that have privilege problems and expects the world to bow down before her because Mommy and Daddy gave her everything from the moment she was born.
But that’s my mind, my immigrant heritage, and my blue-collar upbringing, not my heart. My heart wants Tiffany. Actually, my heart wants Tiff—it can’t handle her full name even in its squishy, crushy state.
Tiff drowned. In a pool. With her high and drunk high school friends too messed up to think to dive into the pool and save her.
She died a whole week ago and I gotta tell you, I should know better than to get involved with some newbie ghost who doesn’t have a single clue. But the heart… the heart.
All of this info took me two seconds to find out. While we can watch all the TV and movies we like (except 3D, of course, with the stupid glasses), the gossiping here is about ten times worse than high school. We literally have nothing to do but to talk to each other and tell stories.
Well… we can go haunt our living relatives (did that, so dangerous) or stars, say Sarah Michelle Gellar (so boring… really, I tried it) but stories are what drive our community and keep us all sane.
Anyway, the next day I found Tiff walking the graveyard alone, her arms wrapped around her stomach, her ghostly form getting diffuse along the edges, taking her one step closer to that moaning, terrorized, clichéd ghost state.
I “ran” up to her. The quotes are around “ran” because any biological-type actions are done consciously. Earlier when I said she was walking, she wasn’t. She was hovering along, her feet nothing more than wisps of brown, another bad sign. “Hi again,” I said, a smile on my face. “I’m Trisha, sorry if that ‘how I died’ thing was too much last night.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m just… You know…”
“Freaked out? Thought you’d be in heaven or something? Never thought you’d die so young? Wish you could go back and redo just one itty bitty moment and change it all?”
“How do you know?” Her arms loosened just a touch and that was a good sign.
“‘Cause everyone here has a regret like that, at least one, if not, like, ten thousand and one.”
She pursed her full lips and nodded.
I’m writing this like it was just some “casual” encounter. I did just “run” up to her after making sure my form was good, my long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, my calf-high boots perfect, my jeans formfitting, and after having practiced a thousand ways to say hello, finding none worth a damn, and telling my stupid heart to shut the hell up.
“Do you know why everyone does that ‘I died’ crap?” She shivered even though without the biology she can’t be cold.
“No one ever told me, but I have a theory.”
She nodded, her green eyes really looking at me, and my poor “heart” getting all mushy on me.
“It’s because we’ve got to accept what has happened to us and acknowledging it every time we meet someone helps with that.”
She nodded like I was brilliant or something and I was wishing I was alive so I could attack her right this moment. But then I remembered what it had actually been like to be me and be alive and certain facts that would likely send her running, and let it go. The lack of an endocrine system helped with that letting go stuff.
I extended my hand to her. “So, my name is Trisha and I died in a traffic accident.”
She stared at my hand for a while and finally took it. I adjusted my form to meet hers where it was at, meaning I got a bit fuzzy around the edges, so I could feel the ghostly numb feeling of her hand in mine. If I hadn’t done it right, our hands would have just gone through each other.
“My name is Tiffany, and I… I drowned.”
“Good job, Tiff.” I should have asked her if she hated the nickname, but a “no” wouldn’t have worked.
“I… I’ve got a few questions. If… if you don’t mind.”
I smiled because having those gorgeous green eyes focused on me was the only thing I really wanted.
The gentle flashing of a Christmas tree illuminated Tiff’s high cheekbones and full lips as we talked like girlfriends talk. We had been talking all day and it was about 11 p.m., I could feel midnight coming and the nightly gathering of the ghosts.
The tree was tall and symmetrical, a fir or a spruce—I can never tell the difference—with tinsel and a star on top and hundreds of blue and white ornaments. It stood in the center of the graveyard where we put on our nightly plays and told stories.
The tree had that slightly translucent quality you see with an experienced ghost. Almost solid, but not quite.
“Say hi to my friend Tiff, Blinky,” I called to the tree.
The tree didn’t speak but it bowed its star and waved a few ornament-laden branches which softly tinkled as the ornaments collided.
“What!?” Tiff asked, grabbing my arm and doing it right. She didn’t hold onto it long, but I really wanted her to.
“All the set pieces for Romeo and Juliet, you noticed some of them were a bit transparent, right?”
She nodded, her smooth forehead furrowing.
“They were ghosts.”
Her mouth opened, because I had lectured her endlessly about good ghostly hygiene, which boils down to that if you look like a human you will feel more human. “Blinky and a few of his friends have mastered transforming into inanimate objects safely. All the big set pieces are them.”
She was in awe staring at Blinky and I was in awe staring at her.
“So they don’t go into the Bar… Bardie…”
“Bardo,” I offered. “That’s where those moaning, regretful, stuck in the past, wispy-ass ghosts are.”
As if on cue one floated through the graveyard and the ghosts made room for him saying kind words like “We miss you, Gene.” “Love you, man, let’s hit a movie, okay.” The bardo brains are all so far gone such a simple thing isn’t likely to work, but you never know.
“Bardo. You said it was a Buddhist thing, right?” she asked.
I nodded. “Except everyone here misuses the term. In Buddhism it’s the place you must travel through between death and rebirth when you get to face all your crap. A ghost in the bardo is not on its way to rebirth, just lost in its crap.”
She nodded, and our conversation turned to other topics and I was glad. I wasn’t quite ready to tell her of my own experience with the bardo. We talked more of what ghosts can and cannot do until her curiosity landed her where every teenager’s conversation (living or dead) ended up.
“So… no sex?” she asked, her voice low, her eyes darting around to make sure no one was close. We were “sitting” on a granite tombstone, her form much better. She was easy to coach and learning fast.
I nodded my head and bit my lip. “No. But there are… well… things.” I nodded over to a group of three ghosts. Jesús and Lela who had played Romeo and Juliet last night, and a third man named JJ. The three of them were together. A lot. It made me wonder if they were having a group thing… or getting ready to have a group thing… or thinking about a group thing.
“What kind of things?” Tiff asked.
I frowned, because while I liked playing the role of mentor, I wanted to do the things, not talk about the things. Being a bit of a romantic, I’ve come to the conclusion that just like in life, the afterlife is better with someone else.
She was staring at me and I couldn’t help but smile. I leaned a bit closer and whispered to her. “It’s kissing, but….”
“But what?” Tiff asked, a slight squeal in her voice.
“No body… No barriers. A kiss on this side is… everything.” I leaned back and watched her mind turn it over.
“Have you!?”
I shook my head. I did get close to this one girl, but… she got sucked back into her old life and ended up in the bardo and is still there. I hadn’t dared try again until I saw Tiff’s emerald eyes.
Her face darkened and she wrapped her arms around her abdomen again, her eyes going to a nearby granite headstone that had a small Christmas tree set up at its base.
“What is it?” I asked gently, putting my arm on her shoulder.
“He… I…” she muttered and walked off.
“What she needs right now is a friend,” a gentle baritone said, interrupting my in-depth self-flagellation session.
I had been gazing longingly in the direction Tiff had flown off, running the conversation back in my mind, trying to figure out what I had screwed up.
“Shit! Banquo,” I said, turning to the big-bellied, bald man, that was kind of like the father of the graveyard. He showed up like Yoda did in a Star Wars movie and dispensed cryptic advice. “You scared me half to death.”
His eyebrow raised, and his lips curled up in amusement. “You know what I mean.”
“And so do you, Trisha,” he shot back.
I nodded and looked back the way she had gone. “You know what sucks, Banquo?” I didn’t give him a chance to reply and forged on. “It sucks that I was a teenager when I died. If I had just been a little older, I think all of this would be easier. I wouldn’t be stuck in the never-ending crush cycle of doom.”
He just laughed at me, loud and booming. It turned heads and Blinky the tree leaned toward us like he wanted to hear better. “Love makes teenagers of us all,” Banquo said.
That quote sounded like Shakespeare—Banquo’s the one that knows all the plays and puts them together—but I just didn’t feel like asking him.
“And think of poor Emily,” he continued, “she died at age four and has been here longer than most anyone.”
I rolled my eyes, the only possible response that was appropriate to all of that Yoda-like, parental BS.
“A friend, huh?” I asked after I was done being a teenager.
“You know this, Trisha.”
“What I don’t know is where she went.”
Banquo closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his belly swelling up noticeably. No one had better form than he did, his slacks and his button-down shirt wrinkled perfectly and moved as he did. These things take work when you don’t have a body. He also had mad psychic skills. All us ghosts became way more intuitive the day we died, but he’s next level.
“A pool,” he finally said. “She’s by a pool.”
“Where she died,” I said, knowing it in my heart.
“Yes. She really does need you.”
Not thinking, I flew off in the direction she had gone, determined to be that friend and leave all the crushy stuff behind.
The house made me feel uncomfortable as I flew in. It wasn’t a monster house or a rich house, but it was a nice house with fresh beige paint and a big pool out back, complete with a slide for the kids and a pool house with a bathroom and a place to store all the toys.
These folks loved their pool time, and in Tucson I sure get that, but wealth to me means a “I got mine so you can go jump” kind of privilege. I wasn’t officially born in this country, but I am as American as you can be, getting here before I could crawl.
It didn’t take long to spot Tiff, she was in the water lying on the bottom of the pool, her form going diffuse as she raced toward that hellish clichéd ghost place, the bardo.
Sitting next to the pool was a middle-aged woman with raven-black hair and a few extra pounds perched on a lounge chair crying her eyes out.
Inside standing at the patio door was a boy, athletic and handsome, with blond hair staring at the crying woman.
I didn’t need to have my ghost-enhanced intuition to see what was going on. The woman was Tiff’s mother, the boy was her boyfriend, and this was his house, his parents unable to refuse Tiff’s mom access to the place her daughter died. All three of them were stuck in the tragedy that had happened here.
And that’s to be expected, the grief normal. It’s not easy losing someone you love and it’s not easy dying.
But what Tiff was doing was not good for her, not at all. Much more of this and she would be gone, lost to the bardo. She needed a friend, and how.
I went down into the water and said, “Come on, girl. You just got to see what Blinky is going to do for tonight’s Midnight Circle.”
She didn’t respond, her eyes vacant, her mind slipping into the regret of her young life and how it ended. As I leaned close, I could hear the pounding beat of trance-dance music and the rowdy laughter of drunk people, her memory so strong I could sense it.
I tried to take her hand, but it was too wisped out. I’d be unstable if I followed her there. And I knew where she was going. I’d spent ten years in the bardo myself. Ten years that felt like ten thousand.
Shit!
I shouted and pleaded and cried, but she couldn’t hear me or see me as her form got more diffuse, seeming to melt into the blue water around her.
I needed to do something shocking, something that would break through to her and I could only think of one thing.
I kissed her.
Stupid, I know. I was risking my afterlife and all my secrets, but I had to do something.
I let my form go wispy until I could hear my brother taunting me as we sped down the rain-soaked highway, dark-green pine trees flashing by in our headlights as we headed back south.
Give it back, Arnold, I shouted.
He was in the front passenger’s seat and had just taken my lipstick.
No, Trevor. You just look like a freak in this shit.
I surged up and said, My name is Trisha.
Well, you don’t look like no Trisha.
My father opened his mouth to speak, glancing over at us and lost precious seconds of reaction time and didn’t see the jackknifing semi soon enough. There was screaming and the deafening sound of crunching metal and shattering glass and…
We connected, Tiff and I, the intimacy of a flesh-and-blood kiss amplified a hundred times. I could feel her, I knew her, and she knew me. My secret. My past. My shame.
I felt my ghostly form reverting back to “Trevor,” the boy I never really felt I was. Gangly and awkward. Shy. Never comfortable in my own skin.
I got a hold of her and flew her up, straight out of the pool and into the night until the neighborhood was a speck, kissing her the whole way, letting my life pour into her as hers poured into me.
She was the youngest of four and mercilessly teased by her older brothers. She had terrible acne and thought herself ugly. She loved the boy who had been too drunk to save her and had just found out, she had just told him, that she had gotten pregnant. It hadn’t gone well, full of shouting and blaming and they’d overdone it.
She loved pancakes and Adele. She was terrible at math and thought that made her stupid. She…
Up there, high in the Tucson night sky, she pushed away from me, her form now returning back to normal.
“You’re a boy,” she gasped.
And I was, looking like Trevor not Trisha.
“I never felt like I was,” I said. It seemed lame to say it that way. I felt all the judgments of the world and all my own judgments that I wasn’t like everyone else.
I couldn’t read the look on her face. Disgust? Confusion? Fear? A mixture? None of the above?
And then she flew away, but back toward the graveyard and not toward her boyfriend’s house. Relieved, I just slumped into my shame, hearing the taunts of my brother, the screeching of metal, knowing that the three of us died that day and it was my fault.
“I got you, Trisha,” Banquo said, suddenly there, enfolding me in his arms.
There under the full moon, my death so fresh, full of shame for being seen looking like a boy, I cried and cried as he said “Trisha” over and over again until it drowned out my brother’s taunts and my female form came back.
I stayed away from Tiffany after that. And didn’t think of her as “Tiff” anymore. She is a white-bread white girl, and I am a Latina who was born a Latino. No room there, no matter what my heart said. I am Trisha and I wasn’t Trevor for anyone while I was alive and certainly not while I was dead. Saving her robbed me of my female form briefly. It wouldn’t happen again.
I felt for her, my heart now knew her, all that vague crush inspired imaginings filled in with the hard facts I had learned when we kissed. And my heart still wanted her. But my heart wanted me to be Trisha more.
So I stayed away as December crawled by, as the ghosts started rehearsing for a stage adaptation of Scrooged, written by Banquo of course.
I attended Christmas Eve Mass, hovering over my mother as she lit candles for her long-dead husband, son, and me.
I saw Tiffany, of course. Talking to other ghosts and seeming to be in good spirits, but she was always looking away when I looked at her.
Whenever the shadow of shame started creeping in, I just remembered Banquo’s voice saying “Trisha” over and over again until it passed.
I am Trisha.
In my heart I always was. Now I can look the way I feel. And if that means I’m alone, then—
“You are coming, aren’t you?”
I jumped. Banquo had a way of sneaking up on you.
I saw the compassion in his face and had to look away. He knew my secret, but that fact hadn’t spread through the graveyard like wildfire. It looked like both he and Tiffany were keeping my secret, and for that I was grateful.
“Coming?” I asked dumbly, buying time.
“Scrooged. We’re about to start. It’ll be Christmas when we end.” He nodded up toward the Midnight Circle area where most of the ghosts had already gathered. I could see Blinky and his gang swooping around as a miniature Santa with his sleigh and reindeer as a warm-up act.
I shook my head and looked down.
“Please, Trisha. It would mean a lot to me.”
He held out his hand and I took it. After what he did for me, how could I refuse him?
The Scrooged play was fantastic. Ghosts getting to play ghosts is just a hoot. Banquo played the role of the narrator, the old guy with the big book, and half the graveyard was in it at one point or another.
At the end, after the players had returned to the circle and Blinky and his crew were back to looking like people, Banquo strode out into the middle.
“We have a tradition here, that a new ghost gets the floor whenever they are ready to tell us their story,” he said, his voice deep and resonant, the kind of voice that could reach the back of a theater. “It is a rite of passage, and tonight we’ll hear from one of our newest members.”
His mischievous green eyes caught mine for a moment and then he looked away. “Tiffany, if you please.”
Everyone clapped and there were a few calls like “How’d you die?” and “Make it good!”
She walked out holding her stomach, but when she got to the center, she took a deep breath and let her hands fall to her sides.
“Hi. My name is Tiffany, but some of my friends call me Tiff.” She looked straight at me and smiled when she said “Tiff.” “I drowned in my boyfriend’s pool pregnant with our unborn child.”
She told of her life and her death, haltingly but with great courage. Things I had learned when I kissed her. The ghosts were rapt and applauded and hollered when she was done, her pale cheeks lighting up red. She had a story for sure, and a difficult passage. That’ll get you respect around here.
And then she walked straight up to me as everyone dispersed.
“I’m sorry,” she said, quietly. “I needed some time.”
I nodded, not able to speak.
“I… I’ve thought a lot about this and…”
She looked away, her arms going to her stomach, and I felt like I was going to just die. Right there. I probably would have if I hadn’t already been dead.
“You…” she began again. “I mean… I can’t believe what you…”
And then she took my face in her hands and kissed me and she didn’t need to speak anymore. That ghostly super-kiss said it all, and so much better without our regrets front and center. The kiss said that I had been there when she needed someone. That I was her friend. That me being a girl in a boy’s body who happened to like girls could take a bit to get used to. That now she didn’t care. That although there was a lot to get over and adjust to, she wanted to explore this afterlife with me. That…
Well, you get the picture.
Pretty silly that the best kiss of my life came after I was dead, but I’ll take it.
Behind us a group of ghosts started singing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs. There were some good singers there, but some just had their enthusiasm.
Our lips parted and we held each other and watched. Banquo’s baritone was front and center as he and the rest of the singers beamed at us. Our hands clasped together, we went and joined them and sang our hearts out. After all, what could be better for a transgender Catholic girl ghost past the crush stage and fully in love on an early Christmas morning.
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