By Callie Feyen
@calliefeyen 

Tame the ghosts in my head
That run wild and wish me dead
- Lovers’ Eyes, Mumford and Sons

 It is one of those winter days in Michigan where spring steps in like a kindergartener perfectly giving his line in the school play except at the wrong time. Nobody cares though because what he says is true. Or it is funny. Most of all, it is welcome. That’s the kind of day this is—where windows are thrust open and the smell of what’s to come seeps through our wool-socked feet and travels up our cardigan laden backs.

For Hadley and Harper, the day is a gift. They’ve pulled on shorts, revealing how much they’ve grown and also making Daisy Duke look conservative. Still in virtual school, they’ve brought their computers outside and are doing their assignments on our patio’s table. They’re texting their friends about bike riding and ice-cream eating in the afternoon.

For me, spring boldly showing up off cue is a warning. “She won’t stay,” I think as I stand at the kitchen sink with an empty coffee mug. “This won’t last.” The worst thought is this: “Brace yourself.”

It is not just the weather that brings these thoughts on. I do this with every good thing. With every friendship that grows deeper I think, “Soon they’ll learn what an awful person I am. Soon I’ll mess up. This won’t last. Brace yourself.”

I do it with work. My most frequent nightmare happens after days I’ve put in a successful or even productive day of writing. I dream I am a slacker. I wake up gasping for air, clutching Jesse’s leg with the force of an Avenger.

“What is it?” he’ll ask.

“I dreamt I was a slacker,” I’ll tell him. “And I liked it.”

I can trace this line of thinking all the way back to preschool, when I chose to eat the hot pepper flakes we were using for an art project, even though we were all told, again and again, not to eat them. I licked my finger, pressed it on the flakes, then tasted for the first time what I can only describe as fire. The burning in my mouth was so fierce I slipped into my cubby to cry and wait it out because I knew if my teacher found out she wouldn’t give me water. I believed my teacher, the kindest woman that walked the Earth, would tell me I got what I deserved.

“I am Eve,” I thought while I waited for the pain to subside. “No one can ever know,” I decided with equal parts thrill and horror.

A warm breeze glides through my kitchen window, rustling my shirt and I feel its touch, like fingers at my back and on my belly. I think of a twist cone with rainbow sprinkles, a Cubs game when I should be in school, cherry Slurpees from 7-11, an afternoon painting my nails and watching Oprah. Shopping. A glass of wine. A kiss.

The breeze ends. A squirrel darts across the yard and up a tree. It drops a nut or some sort of nourishment it’s found into a hole where the trunk of the tree splits into two branches. They are bare, no sign of the buds that will bloom. Winter is still here, and the squirrel knows this.

I look at my empty coffee mug. My writing time is over. “Do something productive. Do something worthwhile. Do something good.” The statements don’t come from the wind, or the squirrel, or the tree.

In the early evening, I check the mail, a ritual that marks the end of a day and with a strange hope makes me think for a second that now is the time to relax. It never lasts, though. I never think I’ve done enough to relax, and so instead of sitting on my front porch and sifting through the mail for a spell, I reach for the mailbox, my body only half outside, and grab what I know is only bills and junk mail.

Tonight though, a small package is shoved in our mailbox. It is to Hadley and Harper, from my mom. Inside the package are two jewelry boxes. They hold my grandparents’ wedding rings. My mom had them turned into necklaces for the girls. I take the jewelry boxes upstairs to my bedroom before the girls know a package has arrived for them. I want to hold the rings for just a minute.

Save for a Sherlock Holmes book stored in my bookshelves somewhere, I have never held anything of my grandpa’s. He died before I was born.  A drunk truck driver hit him when my grandpa was driving. He went through the windshield, and I believe he died on impact. My grandma was in the car with him. Both of them were rushed to the hospital.

The doctors had to cut my grandpa’s ring from his finger. I’ve learned this is common, as though that is supposed to make me feel better. I don’t think about what’s common, though. I think of my grandma somewhere else—away from him—on another stretcher. I think of my mom on her college campus, probably walking happily and boldly, with no knowledge of what has just happened. I think of my Aunt Lucy, the youngest of their three girls. She was twelve when this happened.

My grandma was born in Aleppo, Syria. “You know, Paul?” she would tell me, “from the Bible?” And I’d say, “Yes, Grandma, I know Paul from the Bible.” My grandpa was born in Greece. I believe they met sometime in high school. He proposed via telegram, and she replied via telegram, her best friend standing next to her in the post office. “Tell him, I say, ‘Yes,’” my grandma told the post office worker.

My mom was five years old when she got on a boat with my grandma and grandpa and fled to America. Maybe they were going for a better life, but the bigger part of it is they were leaving so they could stay alive. I have my grandma’s voice on a cassette tape telling me this story, and I know they were not supposed to be on that boat. It is because of my grandpa that they got on. It is because of my grandpa that I exist.

I was in my early 20s when I was in my grandma’s home, looking through her Bible (I was snooping, it wasn’t because I was being reverent). I found several dates written in her stiff cursive. Next to the day my grandpa died, she wrote something like, “The day my life ended.” I remember thinking, “No. A life ended, but not yours.” The thought startled me, and I took a step back, as if to step away from myself. To this day, I feel guilty for thinking this.

I am thinking of inheritance. What of my grandparents do I carry with me? Does this constant vigilance for tragedy come from them? Is my deep belief that there is something wild and uncontrollable within me—ready to pick and eat the apple—an inherited trait? What about Eve? Do I carry anything from her? Am I a terrible person if I hope that I do? How much of this have I already passed on to my girls?

I put my grandma’s ring in my palm. It lies next to my grandpa’s ring, and I close my hand over them tight so that when I release my grasp the rings’ imprint on my palm. By the time I put them back in their boxes, the mark is gone.

At dinner, I give the rings to Hadley and Harper. Harper gets my grandma’s. It is silver with a small diamond, and it’s been stretched into a sort of infinity shape. I give Hadley my grandpa’s. It is rose gold and has been put into the shape of a circle. Neither of them look like rings, and I like that. I like that something different has been made from what my grandparents once held.

Later, I pour myself a glass of wine, crack two squares of dark chocolate from a block we keep in our candy drawer, and slice an apple. My grandma used to slice the skins thick and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over them. “All the nutrients are in the skin,” she’d tell us as the cinnamon and sugar fell from her fingers.

I reach for a small container of cinnamon and sugar I keep in a cupboard and toss a bit onto the apple slices, then take the plate and the wine outside.

I sip the wine and nibble the chocolate. I bite the apple and think of Heaven. If I get there, I want to find Eve first. Surely there will be a coffee shop there. I’ll take her to it and over pour overs I’ll say, “Tell me everything.” I’ll hold her hand, the one that took the apple, and say, “Don’t leave one detail out.”

I’ll find my Grandpa, too. I imagine he’ll be playing soccer. I was told a few times he loved the game. I was told he was good.

I think about being good as I scrape the last bit of cinnamon and sugar off my plate with the last apple slice before popping it into my mouth. I think about the hot pepper flakes, and cramming myself into my cubby to wait out the pain and to muffle my cries so I wouldn’t be found out and nobody would know what I’d done.

That can’t be where the story ends, though. Someone must’ve found me. Someone must’ve given me water.

Words and photo by Callie Feyen.