I am Not the Only Ghost Here Marah Hoffman
My most imprinted memories, selfishly, involve gift-giving. It is as if my hippocampus is only concerned with a positive self-image. I remember all the candles I gave my Grammy: a crumbly blueberry-pie-shaped candle, a vanilla cupcake-shaped candle, a shiny red apple-shaped candle, a Yankee candle promising the smell of the sea. Every time I saw a candle, especially one shaped like food, I would think of her and beg my parents for the seven or eight dollars necessary, already imagining her wrinkled hand searching through the white tissue paper, the patient smile of her thin lips. Her house smelled like candles. All of them at once or one standout scent, depending on the day. Spices if I had to choose, like a coffee shop on September first. Her taste in decor was ornate, natural. My oldest cousin, Shan, painted all the tiles above her gas stove—my favorite a smiling sun amid a freckled indigo background. There was wicker everywhere. My mother now complains about this wicker-fixation; our dim garage is full of her treasures, oceans of slick tan waves. Through the portal of my memory, I walk into her guest bathroom where the woven basket of toys must still be. I spent what seemed hours playing as I pruned. Perhaps if you shook Baby Alive, water would still trickle from the holes in her perfect feet. There are ribbons in the top right drawer: silk, opaque, polka dot, stripe. Grammy ties them in my pigtails while I sit on a wicker stool, the enormous cream towel puddling around my tiny frame, and she tells me again how she was first chair violin in St. Matt’s Orchestra. Her Daddy told her she couldn’t make it, but she did. Still keeping up with that flute? she asks. Yep! I am not the only ghost here. My Aunt Amy is eternally sixteen racing into the basement to tell her siblings the van is packed until her head collides with the upper beam on repeat. The beam is solid oak. I have seen pictures of the bruising. Her otherwise smooth forehead reminded me of old fruit—rotten yellow, electric blue. Sometimes I imagine she got downstairs. And found my daddy on the carpet with his other brother and sister making a Lincoln log tower like I used to, on the same
4
