How I Became The Ghost of 7A
Human emotion can have the psychic viscosity of motor oil.
That’s why I am stuck in this apartment for all eternity, or until I enter my next incarnation, if that’s even a possibility.
Unfortunately, there’s no one here to ask.
I didn’t think of that.
The new tenants, the ones who moved in after my “unfortunate demise”, clearly cannot be consulted upon matters spiritual. He’s a computer geek and she’s a sleep-deprived (or as I used to like to say “sleep-depraved”) new mother.
I know the baby knows I’m here.
Now I know why I was the way I was.
My mother used to talk quite often about how, up until I was about two or two-and-a-half years’ old, I wouldn’t let anyone but her and my sister near me.
If/when anyone else ever tried to approach me, I would scream and cry, and then when I learned how to walk, I added running to the hysterical mix.
Now I know it was because the ghost at 123 W. Clarkson used to visit me in my crib at night. He thought I was asleep, and most of the time I was, but I do remember clearly feeling his touch on at least two occasions and laying there, frozen with an infant’s inarticulate, as-yet-“unsocialized”, “unculturized”, fear.
He was completely harmless, just an ordinary ghost. Not a suicide. Liked kids. Not a pervert or anything.
One time, my mom came to pick me up out of my crib one hot Philadelphia afternoon, I was about seven months’ old. I screamed and cried and wouldn’t let her touch me. She drew back in alarm and confusion and then finally remembered: she had tied back her blonde, chin-length 50’s Mom-bob with a hair ribbon. Ribbon gone: crazy kid happy again.
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