Swamplandia! by Karen Russell Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Karen Russell
alphabet, summoning “boyfriends.” It made her too sad, she explained, to get “a dial tone” when we tried to ring Mom; now we were going to practice conversing with other ghosts, the ones whom she could make contact with. At first I refused to play; I felt as though we were giving up on our mother. Getting Mom on the board was the whole point of the game, as I’d understood it. But pretty soon I started to sort of enjoy reading my sister’s conversations with these ghosts—it was a very special kind of eavesdropping. Your eyes had to dart around the board and add up the words as fast as her pointer flew. We sat on the bedroom planks and spelled things to ourselves like I LOVE YOU, GORJUS . Wally Pipp was my sister’s first “date.” Wally looked like a living dimple, just this chubby footnote to sports history that she’d found in a book called
Baseball: An American Passion
. It was not for me to criticize my sister’s tastes, but why not try for Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth? I asked her. Or even Lefty Gomez? Why not Lefty?
“Too famous,” Ossie told me, concentrating. “We’ve got to be realistic here, Ava.”
Then the rules changed again, and Ossie told me that I was not allowed to play anymore. I was “too young to understand” her Spiritistcommunications. Ouija was no longer “our toy”; it was now a private rotary. She’d sit with her delicate hands vaulted over the pointer for an hour, like a concert pianist waiting for her score to appear.
Now that I couldn’t play the game with her anymore, I was happy to ally myself with my brother. We’d tag-team tease her:
“Hey, Ossie, what do baby ghosts eat for breakfast?
Dreaded wheat!
”
“What do you call a ghost’s mother?
Trans-parent!
”
In addition to his many academic aptitudes, Kiwi had a genius for embarrassing our sister—he could make her plump, serene face crumple into tears of rage in under a minute, and I encouraged him. If she got angry, then I knew she was listening to us. Frequently now she was within earshot of us but zonked, out of it. When she was doing a séance her pupils blew wide and her violet eyes became as hard and shiny as bottle caps. You could yell her name at her and she wouldn’t look up. During the day it was easy to roll your eyes at Ossie’s love spells. At night everything changed. Then something shifted in our house’s atmosphere, and I felt outnumbered. Ghosts silked into our bedroom like cold water. Ossie sucked in her breath and twisted in the yellow sheets, just like my fantasy picture of a hurricane being born. Sometimes she called out strange names. Then a ghost would enter her. I knew it, because I could see my sister disappearing, could feel the body next to me emptying of my Ossie and leaving me alone in the room. The ghost went moving through her, rolling into her hips, making Ossie do a jerky puppet dance under her blankets.
Get out of here, ghost
, I’d think very loudly across the chasm between our two beds.
Get back in your grave! You leave my sister alone!
Ossie told me that when she left our room at night she was going on “dates” to meet these ghosts in the woods. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell the Chief. “You have to cover for me, Ava, okay?” I nodded queasily, hoping that Kiwi was right, that the séances were just silly pageantry, an excuse Osceola made up to wear her homemade purple turban with the gold felt star. By noon her terrifying “possessions” became as unrecollectable to me as a dream and the whole problem seemed goofy. So what if she went on these “dates”? Probably it was just a new permutation of the game, and at least this way I got to play it with her again, albeit in the sidekick position of secret-keeper.
One Friday I found
The Spiritist’s Telegraph
open on my bed. It wasn’tanything I could read: the letters were printed in a runic alphabet that looked to me like flattened bugs. I’d had enough of this spooky crap, feeling scared in my own
Baseball: An American Passion
. It was not for me to criticize my sister’s tastes, but why not try for Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth? I asked her. Or even Lefty Gomez? Why not Lefty?
“Too famous,” Ossie told me, concentrating. “We’ve got to be realistic here, Ava.”
Then the rules changed again, and Ossie told me that I was not allowed to play anymore. I was “too young to understand” her Spiritistcommunications. Ouija was no longer “our toy”; it was now a private rotary. She’d sit with her delicate hands vaulted over the pointer for an hour, like a concert pianist waiting for her score to appear.
Now that I couldn’t play the game with her anymore, I was happy to ally myself with my brother. We’d tag-team tease her:
“Hey, Ossie, what do baby ghosts eat for breakfast?
Dreaded wheat!
”
“What do you call a ghost’s mother?
Trans-parent!
”
In addition to his many academic aptitudes, Kiwi had a genius for embarrassing our sister—he could make her plump, serene face crumple into tears of rage in under a minute, and I encouraged him. If she got angry, then I knew she was listening to us. Frequently now she was within earshot of us but zonked, out of it. When she was doing a séance her pupils blew wide and her violet eyes became as hard and shiny as bottle caps. You could yell her name at her and she wouldn’t look up. During the day it was easy to roll your eyes at Ossie’s love spells. At night everything changed. Then something shifted in our house’s atmosphere, and I felt outnumbered. Ghosts silked into our bedroom like cold water. Ossie sucked in her breath and twisted in the yellow sheets, just like my fantasy picture of a hurricane being born. Sometimes she called out strange names. Then a ghost would enter her. I knew it, because I could see my sister disappearing, could feel the body next to me emptying of my Ossie and leaving me alone in the room. The ghost went moving through her, rolling into her hips, making Ossie do a jerky puppet dance under her blankets.
Get out of here, ghost
, I’d think very loudly across the chasm between our two beds.
Get back in your grave! You leave my sister alone!
Ossie told me that when she left our room at night she was going on “dates” to meet these ghosts in the woods. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell the Chief. “You have to cover for me, Ava, okay?” I nodded queasily, hoping that Kiwi was right, that the séances were just silly pageantry, an excuse Osceola made up to wear her homemade purple turban with the gold felt star. By noon her terrifying “possessions” became as unrecollectable to me as a dream and the whole problem seemed goofy. So what if she went on these “dates”? Probably it was just a new permutation of the game, and at least this way I got to play it with her again, albeit in the sidekick position of secret-keeper.
One Friday I found
The Spiritist’s Telegraph
open on my bed. It wasn’tanything I could read: the letters were printed in a runic alphabet that looked to me like flattened bugs. I’d had enough of this spooky crap, feeling scared in my own