the matching satin sheath dress. She violently twisted the arms and legs. “Don’t break her,” I warned. The whole time I could feel her curiosity, her wonder, her fear that the doll was dead. Yet I never questioned why we had this emotional symbiosis. I was too worried that she’d take Barbie home with her. I said, “That’s enough. Give her back.” And this little girl pretended she didn’t hear me. So I went over and yanked the doll out of her hands, then returned to my bed.
Right away I noticed the feather boa was missing. “Give it back!” I shouted. But the girl was gone, which alarmed me, because only then did my normal senses return, and I knew she was a ghost. I searched for the feather boa—under the covers, between the mattress and the wall, beneath both twin beds. I couldn’t believe that a ghost could take something real and make it disappear. I hunted all week for that feather boa, combing through every drawer, pocket, and corner. I never found it. I decided that the girl ghost really had stolen it.
Now I can think of more logical explanations. Maybe Captain took it and buried it in the backyard. Or my mom sucked it up into the vacuum cleaner. It was probably something like that. But when I was a kid, I didn’t have strong enough boundaries between imagination and reality. Kwan saw what she believed. I saw what I didn’t want to believe.
When I was a little older, Kwan’s ghosts went the way of other childish beliefs, like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny. I did not tell Kwan that. What if she went over the edge again? Privately I replaced her notions of ghosts and the World of Yin with Vatican-endorsed saints and a hereafter that ran on the merit system. I gladly subscribed to the concept of collecting goody points, like those S&H green stamps that could be pasted into booklets and redeemed for toasters and scales. Only instead of getting appliances, you received a one-way ticket to heaven, hell, or purgatory, depending on how many good and bad deeds you’d done and what other people said about you. Once you made it to heaven, though, you didn’t come back to earth as a ghost, unless you were a saint. This would probably not be the case with me.
I once asked my mom what heaven was, and she said it was a permanent vacation spot, where all humans were now equal—kings, queens, hoboes, teachers, little kids. “Movie stars?” I asked. Mom said I could meet all kinds of people, as long as they had been nice enough to get into heaven. At night, while Kwan rattled on with her Chinese ghosts, I would list on my fingers the people I wanted to meet, trying to put them in some sort of order of preference, if I was limited to meeting, say, five a week. There was God, Jesus, and Mary—I knew I was supposed to mention them first. And then I’d ask for my father and any other close family members who might have passed on—although not Daddy Bob. I’d wait a hundred years before I put him on my dance card. So that took care of the first week, sort of boring but necessary. The next week was when the good stuff would begin. I’d meet famous people, if they were already dead—the Beatles, Hayley Mills, Shirley Temple, Dwayne Hickman—and maybe Art Linkletter, the creep, who’d finally realize why he should have had me on his dumb show.
By junior high, my version of the afterlife was a bit more somber. I pictured it as a place of infinite knowledge, where all things would be revealed—sort of like our downtown library, only bigger, where pious voices enumerating what thou shall and shall not do echoed through loudspeakers. Also, if you were slightly but not hopelessly bad, you didn’t go to hell, but you had to pay a huge fine. Or maybe if you did something worse, you went to a place similar to continuation school, which was where all the bad kids ended up, the ones who smoked, ran away from home, shoplifted, or had babies out of wedlock. But if you had followed the rules, and
Right away I noticed the feather boa was missing. “Give it back!” I shouted. But the girl was gone, which alarmed me, because only then did my normal senses return, and I knew she was a ghost. I searched for the feather boa—under the covers, between the mattress and the wall, beneath both twin beds. I couldn’t believe that a ghost could take something real and make it disappear. I hunted all week for that feather boa, combing through every drawer, pocket, and corner. I never found it. I decided that the girl ghost really had stolen it.
Now I can think of more logical explanations. Maybe Captain took it and buried it in the backyard. Or my mom sucked it up into the vacuum cleaner. It was probably something like that. But when I was a kid, I didn’t have strong enough boundaries between imagination and reality. Kwan saw what she believed. I saw what I didn’t want to believe.
When I was a little older, Kwan’s ghosts went the way of other childish beliefs, like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny. I did not tell Kwan that. What if she went over the edge again? Privately I replaced her notions of ghosts and the World of Yin with Vatican-endorsed saints and a hereafter that ran on the merit system. I gladly subscribed to the concept of collecting goody points, like those S&H green stamps that could be pasted into booklets and redeemed for toasters and scales. Only instead of getting appliances, you received a one-way ticket to heaven, hell, or purgatory, depending on how many good and bad deeds you’d done and what other people said about you. Once you made it to heaven, though, you didn’t come back to earth as a ghost, unless you were a saint. This would probably not be the case with me.
I once asked my mom what heaven was, and she said it was a permanent vacation spot, where all humans were now equal—kings, queens, hoboes, teachers, little kids. “Movie stars?” I asked. Mom said I could meet all kinds of people, as long as they had been nice enough to get into heaven. At night, while Kwan rattled on with her Chinese ghosts, I would list on my fingers the people I wanted to meet, trying to put them in some sort of order of preference, if I was limited to meeting, say, five a week. There was God, Jesus, and Mary—I knew I was supposed to mention them first. And then I’d ask for my father and any other close family members who might have passed on—although not Daddy Bob. I’d wait a hundred years before I put him on my dance card. So that took care of the first week, sort of boring but necessary. The next week was when the good stuff would begin. I’d meet famous people, if they were already dead—the Beatles, Hayley Mills, Shirley Temple, Dwayne Hickman—and maybe Art Linkletter, the creep, who’d finally realize why he should have had me on his dumb show.
By junior high, my version of the afterlife was a bit more somber. I pictured it as a place of infinite knowledge, where all things would be revealed—sort of like our downtown library, only bigger, where pious voices enumerating what thou shall and shall not do echoed through loudspeakers. Also, if you were slightly but not hopelessly bad, you didn’t go to hell, but you had to pay a huge fine. Or maybe if you did something worse, you went to a place similar to continuation school, which was where all the bad kids ended up, the ones who smoked, ran away from home, shoplifted, or had babies out of wedlock. But if you had followed the rules, and
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