In school, Walter asked me:
“What will you do if your mother turns into a ghost?”
A ghost?
Walter rose from his chair and began to act like a ghost throughout the classroom.
“My mother, a ghost?” I questioned. “She hasn’t died yet.”
“But… She will die,” Walter replied.
“She’s an adult woman; it’s likely she’ll die before you.”
“What will I do?” I asked him.
Walter didn’t answer.
I don’t know what I’ll do.
A wandering spirit that has left the body and roams the Earth. A spirit cannot ascend to heaven. It may or may not have a body. It will be a specter, an ectoplasm, a shadowy figure. There are many ways to become a ghost. That’s what Walter taught me, and I believe him. He says his grandfather is a ghost but won’t tell me in what form.
“It will scare you to know,” he said.
But my mother? My mother is alive.
“You will answer the question tomorrow,” Walter told me before the end of class.
“My mother is alive,” I said.
What is a ghost?
I’ve searched Google for the meaning of ghost:
Ghost derives from the word Gast, signifying breath, a good or evil spirit, demon…
My Mother and Her Forms:
My mother has been losing weight in recent months.
Her waitress uniform hangs loose on her. Her boss told her she’s no longer “sexy” and that if she doesn’t gain weight by summer, she’ll be fired.
Sometimes she paints her lips, spritzes on perfume, and goes out with friends to parties for adults.
I like it when she dresses in shirts and jeans.
Two days ago, I went to visit her in her room.
“Mother…” I said… and I saw her.
My mother was walking on the walls, on all fours, emitting a terrible snarl.
I woke up sweating in my bed.
Was it a nightmare?
Imperceptible Movements
My mother glides through the house as if on air.
Her steps are short because her feet are small.
She doesn’t talk much. She works all day; we see each other at night.
The television is my best friend, but I can’t ask it what I’ll do if my mother becomes a ghost.
She looks at me while preparing dinner. Her brown eyes pierce my heart. I blink, and what I see makes me scream.
I’ve seen her face distort. Her smile…
“What’s wrong, son?” she asks, walking slowly towards me.
I can smell her perfume of lemon and cinnamon. Will she have the same scent when she becomes a ghost? Will I recognize her by her perfume?
“Max, Max, Maximiliano!” she calls out, and her voice echoes hollowly.
I can’t stop looking at her, finding in her features little pieces of death, pieces of the ghost she will become when she dies.
“I’m fine,” I respond.
What’s wrong, my love?” she asks with sadness in her voice.
“Do you love me?” I inquire.
My mother embraces me.
Her body is warm, almost cold. It’s December, and outside, it’s really hot.
Is Santa Claus also a ghost?
My mother returns to the kitchen.
All the Time in the World.
If she becomes a ghost, she will live forever.
Will she live forever?
I will have her by my side at all times.
She will be bound to the earth, to the house, to me.
Will her appearances be only at night, or will she visit me during the day?
Will her body be the same?
Will she have a body?
What form will she choose?
Will my mother recognize me?
Will I be her son, or just a living human?
Will her visits be pleasant, or will I have to fear her presence?
My mother laughs watching a talk show.
It’s no longer light and clear. It has cracks.
Is it death beginning to show signs in my mother?
“Max, come here,” she yells from the living room.
I leave my room and walk towards her.
The host asks his special guest if she’s afraid of ghosts.
The guest says yes.
The host looks at the camera and then at me.
“And you, Max… are you afraid of ghosts?”
My mother on the couch turns her head one hundred eighty degrees in an impossible twist.
I run back to my room, covering myself with the sheets over my head, frightened.
“Nicholas!” she shouts, and my heart beats loudly.
I pray. I pray. Do ghosts fear God?
Forgive Her Debts.
Ghosts remain on Earth to settle their debts unless forgiven by God.
My mother owes several friends for checks they lent her to buy the stove and fridge that broke down two months ago. She bought the stove and fridge, but I don’t recall my mother returning the checks.
Sometimes my mother doesn’t pay for electricity or water. Her job as a waitress at a local coffee shop doesn’t provide us with a comfortable living.
Our neighbor Graciela Martínez brings food for my mother on Saturdays.
“It’s for the boy,” she says.
“I can’t pay for it…” my mother always responds.
“You’ll pay me back when you have the money, neighbor.”
What if she dies and can’t pay for the food?
My mother has many debts!
I start crying in my room.
Happiness is a ghost.
Ghosts are wandering souls seeking the forgiveness that has been denied to them from beyond. They are souls doomed to repeat the trauma they carried throughout their corporeal life. They can no longer repent for their mistakes.
The ghosts repeat their pain.
They carry their pain on their backs, and their fate is no longer uncertain.
“Are you happy?” I asked my mother during dinner.
She looked at me, surprised. Her eyes pierced into mine. A tear fell from her right cheek.
“Why do you ask, Max?”
“Are you happy?” I repeat the question.
She falls silent and takes a sip of water.
“I already know,” I tell her, and my heart shatters.
And I see again the cracks in her face, her imminent transformation.
“What do you already know, my love?” she asks, her face deforming with the tears she holds back.
Will that face be her ghostly visage?
Will the ghost of my mother bear the face of her unhappiness?
“I’m not hungry,” I say.
“You haven’t eaten anything,” she responds. “I am happy by your side,” she answers.
“I don’t believe you,” I reply quickly.
“I am happy by your side, son…” she repeats, and her tears well up, moistening her eyes and cheeks.
“Ever since dad left, you haven’t been happy,” I respond.
Her deformed face turns monstrous, and opening her mouth wide, she screams.
Her scream comes from beyond.
It is her pain that attracts death.
I scream with her.
But my scream is of horror.
Ghosts and Oblivion.
My father left home when I was five years old.
I never saw him again. Neither did my mother. My mother told me that my father was beautiful.
“Beautiful is not the same as good,” I said.
“He was beautiful and he loved us,” she would say.
“If he loved us, why did he leave?”
And that’s my mother slapping me.
Today I decided to search for the photos of my father that she keeps in her drawers and destroy them. His memory torments her. To her, my father is an annoying and selfish ghost. But for my mother, my father didn’t die; he simply chose another family. A new family where neither she nor I exist.
Will my mother be a ghost to my father?
Or will my mother be a forgotten ghost who wanders, waiting for someone other than me to recognize her love?
The Garden of Broken Promises.
A ghost does not pay its debts nor keep its promises. These two traits are essential to understand the pain, regret, and sadness of a wandering soul that has failed to change its fate. Death was swifter. My mother promised we would move to Buenos Aires.
I hate school, I hate my classmates, I hate the teachers, and I’m bored being alone in the afternoons at home. She promised we would have a new life. She told me she met a truck driver. The man in the truck told her he loves her, that he would take her with him wherever he went. But the truck driver has left, never to return. My mother tries to find him at the truck stops, asks her friends at work.
“Have you seen Pablo?”
My mother has broken her promise.
Pablo has broken his promise to my mother.
My mother cries on the living room couch.
The host is no longer funny to her.
“Aren’t we going to Buenos Aires?” I ask.
My mother’s face changes its expression. Her brown eyes have turned as black as night. I can see the darkness in her gaze, the lament of her soul.
Nighttime Visit
At 3 a.m., the sound of plates and glasses crashing against the wall woke me up.
I got out of bed and went to the kitchen.
My mother, in her underwear, was bleeding.
Her hands, her legs, her neck.
“Your father came,” she said.
“You’re injured,” I replied.
“Your father came…” she repeated. “Go back to bed.”
She spoke alone in the kitchen.
Who harmed her?
How did she sustain those wounds?
Did she hurt herself?
Was it my father?
My mother had said my father would never return.
I’m afraid to go back to the kitchen.
Father, are you there?
The lights in the house flicker.
A lamp in the living room explodes.
In the kitchen, my mother’s voice grows louder and louder.
I hide under the bed.
“I don’t want you to see him,” my mother shouts at… my father?
And a shadow stands at my door.
The Dawn of a Ghost
My mother bled out during the night while I slept. When I woke up for breakfast, my mother was still in the kitchen.
I slipped on her blood.
The plate of bread and butter was set on the table.
My lunchbox and school supplies were in their place.
She greeted me: “Good morning.”
Her lips were blue. Her body pale. Her face resembled a cement statue.
“We’ll have milanesas for dinner,” she said.
Her dark, deep gaze, her low voice, and her light footsteps signaled the beginning of her transformation.
“Don’t be late for school,” she said, bidding me farewell with a kiss in the air.
Mother: A Ghost in the Future.
Upon returning from school, the neighbor intercepted me at the door. “Do not enter,” she said.
“I’m going to enter, it’s my house.”
“The police and doctors will come soon,” she said.
I struggled to move her aside and took a step toward the door.
As I opened the door, the neighbor screamed: “¡Maximiliano, no!”
My mother is dead.
My mother is dead!
-- Maximiliano Guzmán (b. 1991, Recreo, Catamarca, Argentina) is the author of the novella Hamacas (Zona Borde Editorial) He serves as an editor for the digital magazine La Tuerca Andante (Argentina). Recently published in Expat Press, HAD, Bruiser, Bull, Midcult , Hobart, Serious, Don’t submit, Burial Magazine and more!
