The Ghost Whisperer

Anya looked confused at her old hands, desolated about the strings attached to them. She felt like one of those wood puppets that starred in old puppet shows she liked so much as a child.

Remembering those times, she lightened up with a childish smile. Anya felt like being nine again, holding her father’s hand when visiting the annual village fair.

It was 1935 when she lost her mother due to a long and devastating illness, and her father didn’t remarry yet. The war wasn’t near, and a sweet quiet surrounded them. That day she didn’t have to take care of her little brothers. She was at the fair, eating a glazed apple and having her old man only to herself.

This didn’t happen very often. They lived in a small village and had a farm to care for. She was the eldest of twelve children, all left without the mother, so she had to act like a parent, still being a tiny child, and expected to manage everything like an adult.

She went to school and learned to read, and write, but she didn’t have time to do any homework. She didn’t even regret it since all the children in the village were so involved with working in the household that there wasn’t any discrepancy between them. She read the Bible every evening at the candlelight, said a prayer with her father, and went to sleep, making room for another busy day to come.

Anya kept this evening habit for years, even when getting older and taking care of her numerous grandchildren. She made dinner for the whole family, and after everybody prepared for sleep, she would sit there quietly and read some lines from the Bible.

Ah, the Bible, she remembered, but she couldn’t move her arms, as she had those strings attached. “I need my Bible,” she tried to speak, but the words didn’t come out loud from her mouth. She then realized that she couldn’t talk because she had her face covered with a mask she never saw before. “Maybe this is a dream, and I am dreaming of being a puppet from Pinocchio,” she said to herself, not realizing what character she might have been.

She thought that if she struggled a little, she would wake up and be able to speak. She pulled her arms with strength, and some red paint made them look unreal. That red paint might have been the cause for the alarms that suddenly started and for the people in white or green that rushed near her bed. She tried to tell them that she had finished her nap and she would like to go home now to her daughter and to feed her animals. Still, nobody listened to her. They were all acting like she was invisible.

The more she moved, the more aggressive they seemed to be. They put some more strings around her arms, and she was now tied to her bed. She didn’t understand what was happening and why she was treated that way. After all, she only needed to go home. Her daughter needed help; she had her household to look after. And she needed to go to the cemetery to tell her deceased child that everything was fine, and they would be together soon after ninety years of separation. These people that treated her like a wooden puppet didn’t understand that she had things to do. Why do they keep her here?

The green woman that gave her that red pill whispered to the white man: “She can’t breathe properly. We need to keep her under observation. Did you talk to her son? No, no, her daughter died of cancer two months ago, but the poor soul doesn’t even know….”

The ninety-four-woman lying in bed suddenly felt her life pour out of her body. And then she saw them all, floating above the green and white people: her mother holding her eldest daughter’s hand, her father giving her a glazed apple, her husband young and handsome, her four-year-old son that left too soon, brothers, sisters, friends, a family that loved her so much… she saw her grandson crying after he took her to an elderly home, she saw her grand-grandson with black eyes like his mother. She used to say: “In this family, we all have blue eyes, but here you are, my little ones, that darken our family tree in the best way possible” …

Anya needed to say “goodbye” or “hello” again to them all.

And then she got up and left, remembering that white shadow that guided her through the great war and lighted her path until this new beginning.