REVENANT

I followed Emma wherever she went when I was a little girl.  A ragtag redhead with button eyes and a chubby, cotton tummy strung together with blue thread and a mouth that tilted to one side if you looked at her straight on.  

Having an imaginary friend, you see, made my life extraordinary.  When you’re five years old, your options are limited.  But Emma’s passport was illuminated by official stamps from every place on earth.  And she took me with her.  She found me everywhere. No matter which street I’m walking down.  Like right now. Times Square, Lex and Third. Even when I’m back at the hotel room in Paris where the jazz saxophonist was playing Miles Davis. 

She’s been gone a long time.  Was she always there – and I just could never find her? Does she exist anymore?   I can feel a feather touch my forehead and watch a whisp of hair fall to the ground.  Then a pinch in my side.  A rolled parchment.  My name scrawled across the top.  Traces of her existential self?  Or mine. Is this the time in my life when I’m doomed to retrace my steps instead of moving forward?

How does it happen that you’re in the supermarket and there’s someone in front of you at the checkout – someone you know, or at least have seen before.  Some kind of phantom whose job is to haunt you. Then she pulls away and is gone. Surely these are not chance encounters. 

Is it a coincidence that I find her in the secret attic passageway – did she know that was where I was going?  I pulled back the curtain to expose the hidden bookcase that runs the entire length of one wall. She brushes past me. 

WHO ARE YOU?  I want my voice to shriek so loudly that the paper peels off the wall, and slides to the floor.

Someone is gently nudging my arm.  My eyes begin to open.  

 Kelly, the blonde oncology nurse, the one who always brings me ginger ale, is speaking softly.  

“Are you okay?  You were screaming.”  

“I’m so sorry.  But there was someone…someone there.”  I point to the blank wall in front of me.

Now I’m fully awake, slightly shaken from the meds that have been spilling wantonly into the hole in my chest. 

“You were just having a bad dream,” she whispered. You never have to apologize.  It’s perfectly normal.” 

Hold onto your eyebrows, love.  It was the cancer all along.

Barbara Shields