PERPETUAL CARE

by Addison Herron-Wheeler

Long ago, she was abandoned in the South, where she came with her father. Her little body died, withered away in a Savannah hotel, little Gracie, to be forgotten. Forgotten by all but her father, who built a shrine for her, a monument of perpetual care. He walled it up inside a gated fence to keep people out. He had the finest sculpture, whose work he admired, carve her out of the best marble in perfect likeness. But Gracie could not be contained. At night, she slips out of the gate and floats, oh-sosoftly, down toward the river, where she lets out a horrible moan. A loud, piercing, wailing sort of moan that echoes off of the moss-covered trees, off the barges, onto the riverbanks, out into the ocean. A wail for her Black brothers and sisters, in bondage, in suffering, suffering still. A scream for her mother, who died in childbirth, forced by the doctors to give birth at risk her to failing body. A bloodcurdling, bone-chilling moan that wakes the hounds both ghostly and Earth-bound for miles to come.

She floats down the aisles of gravestones, touching the moss that grows on their faces, and sheds tears nightly for those without grave faces, the indigenous, the Black, the poor, the female, the forgotten, the cast-off. She stops by the graves of those who died too young, who never got to live a good life, and she says a little ghostly prayer, whispers a melody, lets her tears fall on the stone. Her cries are loud and wailing, carrying above the mossy trees, but are still stifled by the great, silent, humid sky pressing down on her, heavy clouds blocking out the stars. Sometimes she wants to rip through that curtain of humidity, to not feel it anymore, but it always presses in around her like a wet, warm blanket. She roams the woods with ghostly dogs, plays with stray cats. She snacks on berries and nuts, she even laughs sometimes, giggles, lets out a ghostly chortle. But mostly, she screams and cries.

Some say they can hear her crying on a still, hot, too-hot-breathe night if they listen close enough. Others say she ventures downtown, into the hotels, the haunted businesses, unlocks the doors where they used to keep the slaves, runs down by the river skipping stones, screams into the faces of tourists, and then disappears into the night. And still others say she’s not a ghost at all, just a memory. And barely that, for even her father, heartbroken as he was, had to move on and leave her grave. But every night, after the screams, the cries, the haunting, she returns back to her grave, her little courtyard, guarded by perpetual care, to sleep the day away and then embrace the night, the darkness, once more.

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