I didn’t think anyone would notice. To be honest, if I’m really, really honest…I didn’t think anyone would care. The obituaries of my death had crumpled and smudged, rotting in landfills or serving as wrapping paper for glass vases, or maybe some of them were in a second grade art classes’ paper mache scraps. No one had visited me since it happened. No one had come to visit and give me flowers or leave me little offerings. Not to say there were that many people to begin with. Apparently when you try your hardest to keep people at an arm’s distance, they tend to stay that far away. And now that there was six feet between me and the rest of the world there was no other way for it to be.

I grabbed another book from my cart and put it back on the shelf. I thumbed through my stack and placed the next one in that particular series next to it. How many James Patterson books could there possibly be? And why were they all in the Underworld? This in and of itself made me wonder if maybe I was in Hell after all. Maybe someone had forgotten to tell me. Like when your professor emails you the day of that you’ve switched rooms, but you haven’t seen the email; so you walk into a lecture and five minutes in you realize that this isn’t Masterpieces of British Literature. Why is there a diagram of a penis on the board? But now it’s too awkward and you’ve stared at the diagram a little too long to just get up and leave. Mistakes happen. People are human. You learn how a prostate functions.

And it wouldn’t be the first time something like this had happened to me. Like when I was eight years old, my family had all piled into our little wheezing Pontiac to go to Red Lobster for my birthday. My Abuela Flora, the absolute wild card, had saved up all of the poker money she had won from the old biddies in the Lakeside Retirement community to take us out to celebrate. And celebrate we did. 

After dinner I stood outside the sputtering car and waited for my abuela to get situated. Ivan, my brother, insisted on having the window seat despite it being my birthday. Boys in my family (but mostly Ivan) always got what they wanted. Abuela Flora unfurled her question mark shaped body into the car, lifting one leg at a time and slowly creeping into the middle seat so that I, too, could have a window view for the drive home. She was always thoughtful to me like that.

My mom, high on cheddar bay biscuits and a severe lack of sleep, saw that Abuela Flora was situated in the rickety rearview mirror and hit the gas; she pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street. I watched the dented rear bumper pull away. The brake light that only worked when it felt like it flickered, as though it were waving goodbye. I didn’t move a muscle. I didn’t make a sound. I think I was caught somewhere between disbelief and the aghast realization that I didn’t actually know where I lived. Would they notice that they had left me? Would I have to live with the raccoons now?

A block away I could hear Abuela Flora screeching all sorts of colorful words first in broken English, then in Spanish—words that I was absolutely not allowed to say in either language because God, and more importantly Santa Clause, were always watching. My mom slammed on the brakes a few blocks away. I had to run as fast as my little legs could take me to catch up, or “this time she’d leave me for real”.

 If this was Hell, and I had been assured multiple times by multiple sources that it was not (or is that just what They wanted me to think?), I must’ve done something right when I was living to get such a sweet gig. There were people out there who were probably picking hairs out of Gabriel’s butt crack; I was in the Underworld library reshelving books, and reminding Mr Thomas that the communal computers were not, in fact, for pornography; they were for research. Compared to my life on the surface, this was easy. Honestly I did, in fact, Rest In Peace. I laughed at my own stupid joke. My cart squealed as I turned the corner into the romantic fiction aisles and lazily scanned for the right assortment of letters.

Not to be cocky, but I was good at many things in life. I was a jack of all trades, and I used to pride myself on that. I taught myself to fix a car and build a bedframe and write a killer resume. But I was never great at any of them. Romance had been one of these things. I was terrible at romance. In my own Once Upon a Time I had been a young 20 something head over heels with someone. While other couples thrived by building each other up, we stayed just to make each other absolutely miserable. In the span of five years we had become each others’ greatest damnation and greatest salvation. We loved hating each other, and it got to the point that I don’t think that either of us recognized the people staring at us in the mirror anymore. We’d look at pictures of ourselves and say, “Who is this stranger? What’s that upward thing that their mouths are doing?”.

After I had broken that engagement off, I found another person. A lovely person who just wanted to love the broken parts of me. At night my heart would shatter open, and they would kiss each wounded piece and put it back in its place. I couldn’t take it. This feeling was such a shock to my system that it disgusted me. They talked about moving in together. I talked about changing my name and moving to a different country. The first time they said they loved me, I almost threw up. I was too broken. Too unlovable. I was just getting used to recognizing my own face again. I was afraid that if I commit in any small capacity that I would become this Godzilla-esque monstrosity and eviscerate every building, every monument that we had built together. So I ran. Again. For someone who didn’t do a lot of cardio, I was really good at running away.

I tucked the Diane Macomber book next to the rest of its kind.

“Diana.”

I nearly jumped out of my shoes, right hand going to the imaginary pearls on my chest.

“Jesus Christ, Jerry. I need to put a bell on you or something.”

Jerry stared at me with his piercing yellow eyes completely unamused. There are three things to note about Jerry.

1. Jerry is a cat.
2. Yes, Jerry realizes that the cat’s name in the cartoon is actually Tom and not Jerry. No you would not be the first person to point it out. And third, “quite frankly he likes his name and he serves no master, so he will not be changing it any time soon”.
3. Jerry is, somehow, my boss and also closest confidant. 

“They need you upstairs; before you ask I don’t have any more information. Finish reshelving your cart and then head up, okay? I’m gonna go take a nap. Enjoy your trip.”

Trip? What did he mean by “trip”? I looked at my smartwatch, which still held the time of the world above. One of the things that surprised me was that we still kept similar timekeeping down here. I guess I’d never really thought about how time works for people who are already dead. We kept time on the surface because we had places to be, and time actually meant something. But down here there were no repercussions. There was no life to waste when your life was, as far as everyone knew, infinite. The brochures claimed that it made things less confusing for the newly departed. It was less of a shock to the system if we kept up with some kind of routine while we worked through what was keeping us from moving into the next stage of the Karmic cycle. The face of my watch glowed.

11:54PM EST

October 31st, 2022

Happy Halloween.

But why would I be called to take a trip? Like I knew why one might be called to take a trip, but I didn’t understand why it was me. Some people, people who left kids behind or people who looked up to them, would sometimes take trips to go and make sure their people were okay. Maybe offer them a bit of luck in some way. Some people went on trips because they were hired as Guardian Angels. Some people snuck onto the elevators to raise hell. But I hadn’t interviewed to be an angel. I wasn’t in a place to put in for a petition to go and see my family either. And quite frankly raising hell  sounded exhausting. So there was really only one reason that I was taking a trip. Someone had put my picture on the ofrenda.

I had kind of waited for this day these past eight months. Not in an excited kind of way, but in an antsy kind of way. In a hurtful kind of way. I wanted it and I didn’t want it. Most of all I didn’t want to be disappointed. I didn’t want to hope because…what if I was wrong? What if I was so excited and packed my bags and got my hopes up…and then nothing happened. No picture. So I sat in this cocktail of two parts anxious and one part dread with a little pearl onion of hope for a garnish. But someone had remembered me. Someone had picked me. I know it’s silly, but I was kind of curious who it was, and what picture they’d picked.

“Elijah Gregory Thomas, those computers are for research. They are not for pornography!” Jerry yowled from his nest of books.

Jerry’s yowling and Mr Thomas’s false promise to not do it again shook me from my stupor. If I still had a heart, it would be pumping erratically. I had to reshelve these books quickly. I only had a few left. I could finish these in the blink of an eye. And the elevator was only a few blocks down, so realistically I could make it to the surface by 12:15 when the real party would begin.

I could smell the pan dulce. It would be freshly baked, of course, because Abuela Yesenia couldn’t cook to save her life, but she could bake like a god. She would be dancing to Ricky Martin, and the house would smell like good cigars and scotch with a hint of Abuela Flora’s signature perfume that she’d been wearing since Castro came to power. Ivan would be on the patio, smooth talking some woman that he swore was the one just like the other countless lovestruck women before her. And Mom would be yelling at Abuela Flora for smoking cigars at her age, and in the house! This wasn’t the 70’s. But she’d bring her an ashtray and another ice cube for her scotch anyway. 

But I died this year. Maybe it would be more of a somber affair. There would still be cigars and scotch and pan dulce of course. We were still just as Cuban as we were Mexican as we were American. But everyone would be dressed in all black. There would be no foolish woman. Ricky Martin would not be joining us. But there would be my picture on the ofrenda, and there would be crying. They’d be remembering all the good things about me. How proud they were that I was the first one to go to, and drop out of, college. How I always made dumb jokes to lighten the mood. How I always worked two to three jobs to be able to have my own apartment and also set a little aside when family called and they were short on rent. How I always complimented old women because they reminded me of my own abuelas, and how all they wanted was for someone to remember that they were still beautiful.

My skin turned to ice as Dread crept his way into my lungs. This was his home away from home. He hung a new picture on one of my bronchioles and lit a cheap clove cigarette as he settled into a hand me down beanbag chair. What if my mom had put up my picture? Was I ready to face her? Our last conversation was Christmas before I died. It wasn’t a bad conversation but…it wasn’t a good one. It was mostly about her and how she was getting promoted again at work. How she wasn’t friends with Linda anymore because being Linda’s boss made it hard. How she was still looking for a man, for someone, to love her. And how she was doing “Not bad for a girl with a GED”.

I had wanted to shake her, as many times before, and remind her that at 52 she was not a girl anymore. She was a woman. And she didn’t need to be the best or the brightest or the most ambitious. She didn’t need to find a man that found her suitably fuckable to be loved. That honestly, Linda was a bitch and I had never liked her, and that, my mom–she had a tendency to keep people around because she was lonely and needed validation. That these ideas were toxic and fostered an inhospitable environment for children who, even in their 20’s and had spent most of their lives together, didn’t know the first thing about how to be a family; that one of them didn’t know that the word “sorry” started with an ‘s’ and ended with a ‘y’.

I wanted to tell her that I was sorry that Abuela Yesenia had put so much pressure on her to succeed, because she had decided on a broken marriage and two kids that she didn’t really want as opposed to taking a chance on that full ride academic scholarship and getting to see the stars like she had always dreamed about. I was sorry that abuelo dipped out and left a broken little boy and a confused little girl one night and didn’t come back until Parkinson’s had wracked his body. I was sorry for all of it. But the only words carried by clove cigarette smoke were, “Yeah. No, I could totally see that. That sounds exhausting. You go girl!”

I’d told her that I’d visit for her birthday in May. But I didn’t make it that far. Instead I died on Valentine’s day, drunk as a skunk and stark naked due to a freak brain aneurysm. I wondered who found my body. I wondered who had taken in my cat. Had Regina eaten my toes before they found me? I’d have to go to the surface to find out.

I didn’t have to go. I could stay down here. Clock out early. Maybe go volunteer on the Rainbow Bridge and play with all of the animals that were over there. Get some sweet, sweet serotonin. I had a choice in the matter. Would whoever put my picture on the ofrenda be offended? Did it matter? It was an age-old tradition, something that my Abuela Flora had insisted the family start before we were born to honor my Bisabuelo, her husband. By now it was a superstition. No one really believed that their ancestors would visit today…did they? I know I was dead, and I know that my actions probably didn’t matter in the long run, but the idea of disappointing my family felt like a set of pewter boots weighing down my every step. 

I was on the last book on my cart. I didn’t know what had happened to the others. Hopefully I’d put them in the right place. I guess it didn’t really matter if I had. I parked my cart by the checkout counter and walked over to children’s fiction to shelve The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. I laughed out loud. I don’t know if this was God or Gabriel or maybe even Jerry trying to say something. Maybe it was sheer coincidence.

This book about a daring mouse with big ears and a love for reading was my favorite as a kid. It was the first chapter book I ever read. I loved it in the way that only a child can love something–that is to say with my entire being. In my old apartment somewhere was my original copy, dog eared, torn and pages carefully taped in place. No matter how many moves I made or how much downsizing I did, I could never bring myself to get rid of it. I could never buy a new one, either. Whatever the case, intentionally placed in my hand or not, I couldn’t help but think that this book was a sign. And a sign is a sign; I had always been a superstitious person. I had to go on this trip.

I lovingly eased the book in with the others on the shelf, taking time to drag my dusty fingers down the worn spine. I wiped my hands on my pants and took a deep breath. I was doing this thing. I swung by the desk up front. Jerry, always true to his word, was asleep on a farmer’s almanac from thirty years ago.

“Thank you,” I whispered to him as I scratched his head. “I’ll be back soon.”

He stretched, and his little toe beans became a web of claws and fur. He turned his head to me, and his orange eyes looked into my brown ones. “Should you see her, tell her it’s time to come home.” He whispered. He patted my hand with his paw twice and then curled back into a ball. His tail covered his nose and eyes and sighed heavily as he drifted back into his dreams.

I exited the library and took a left towards the elevator. Dread took another puff of his clove cigarette. But Jerry’s eyes had given me something. His gentle hand pats had imparted a gift. It was love. It was jealousy. It was Hope. I could feel an entire play unfurl within me. Hope came barreling into Dread’s space and began batting him around like a toy mouse. She stamped on Dread’s cigarette and threw him into the wall, rendering flesh from bone with her razor claws. I entered the line and grabbed my ID card from my wallet. I could feel Hope finally swallow Dread. He  screeched and cussed the whole time. Jesus would blush at some of the things he said as he slid down her throat. She purred in delight as she washed her paws clean. Dread was a concept and not a person. He would be back, but Hope would be waiting.

It was my turn for the elevator. Hope’s purrs felt so much like anxiety that I thought I was having a panic attack. My entire body thrummed with energy. I could still turn back. I could run right now, and no one would know. But I would. I would still be the coward that I was in life, running when things got too difficult. I’d be the woman who could never settle, because if I let people love me then they could leave me. But I was going to do this, and it was my decision. With shaking hands I handed the Doorman my ID card. He smiled softly at me as he scanned it and handed it back to me.

“Going up?”

“I am.”

He handed me two more cards that looked very similar to golden credit cards.
“You’ll be wanting these then,” he said, “We’ll see you soon.”

Spice and musk. Cinnamon and scotch. Cigars and pan dulce.

I was home.

I phased out of the refrigerator and into the kitchen. Weird place for an elevator to let me off, but I failed my physics class and wasn’t exactly an undead architect. The kitchen looked the same since I saw it last. It was still cramped. The pine cupboards filled to the brim with coffee cups and old Cafe Bustelo containers. (Because you never knew when you’d need a strong container.) Flamenco played in the background. The patio door was open just a crack, allowing chilly night air to dance to the guitar. I stepped into the dining room and stopped.

She was here.

A halo of snow white hair peeked over the head cushion of Her chair. A nip of scotch in a rocks glass sat on the end table weeping at the base. Her scarlet sunrise lipstick painted the rim. The smoke of her cigar offered the night air its hand, and the two twirled as practiced partners do. If I took one more step, the floor would creak. If I took one more step, I’d be able to smell her signature perfume that she’d worn since Castro came to power. If I took one more step–

but she wouldn’t be able to hear my steps.

Or at least I don’t think she’d be able to. Would she? I was a ghost. I didn’t have any weight. And I wasn’t one of those poltergeists that would go bumping and knocking into walls and knocking things off tables. I came in peace.

Regina the cat popped her head up from Her chair. She looked right at me and blinked slowly with her one eye. I could hear her locomotive purrs from where I stood. Emotion gripped my sternum and held on tightly. My sweet girl. She looked so much older than I remembered. She was 16 this year. A fighting stray that lost an eye in her kittenhood to another feral cat (but you should see the other guy). Her black mask and white chin looked so raggedy. She was so much thinner than she was before. But she still had that, “Fuck around and find out” air about her, and she knew that her mama was home.

“Mija. Is that you?”

My voice caught in my throat. The jig was up. The floor did not creak when I stepped on it.

I stepped in front of her and took her in. I was suddenly hyper aware of my all black attire. Between the knee length cardigan, the v-neck, the skinny jeans and my combat boots I probably looked like the hipster of death. 

I didn’t say anything. I let her take in what her muddied, cataract ridden eyes could. Could she see my messy hair? Could she see my lopsided smile? Could she see the fear and happiness equally pushing tears out of my eyes and onto my cheeks? I kneeled and put my arm on hers. She gripped it with one hand and put her other skeletal hand to my face. I’m not sure if I could feel it or if I imagined it, but it felt warm. She wiped my tears.

“Somehow I knew it would be you.” she croaked in Spanish, “Your grandfather was always late.”

Regina placed a paw on my arm and dug her claws in. I pet her with my open hand.

“I missed you.”

The floodgates opened and I openly bawled. I know we didn’t do that in my family, but I couldn’t help it. I’d kept myself so busy becoming accustomed to being dead that I had been avoiding putting too much thought into those that were alive.

“I missed you too.”

We sat there for a few minutes, basking in each others’ presence. She took me in, and I took her in. 

She was still a lion of a woman at almost 98. Her spine was bent, and her body was frail, but her presence was strong. Her mind was still active. Senility had robbed her of her short term memory, but it could not take her pride. She was the queen of this castle–and queens would wear slippers and capris if they wanted to. 

Regina took a spot in her lap and began purring softer now.

“You should see your mother’s hair now.” She stated, breaking the tension.
It felt good to laugh.
“Grief does weird things to people.”
Her scarlet sunrise mouth flattened into a thin line.
“She should sue.”

“So how…how is she?”

Abuela Flora shrugged. “She’s doing her best. Losing a child is like losing your shadow. Everything seems fine, but something is never quite right. And it’s always on the sunny days that you notice it the most.”

I nodded. It was like thinking someone is behind you, so you go to say something but…you’re completely alone. She was experiencing that moment, that drop. All of the time. I wanted to soothe my mother now. Make sure she was okay. Our last conversation be damned I–but she wasn’t here.

“Where is she?”

Abuela sighed heavily. “Off finding herself again. You know how she is. This was always your holiday.”

It has always been my holiday. From the time I could tottle I had always loved the slight chill in the air. I loved the costumes, the face paint, and the dancing. I loved the way that people started to doze a bit in the fall before the stress and festivities of December came knocking. I loved that everyone finally remembered to put spice into their food.

“And the others?”

“Yesenia is volunteering down at the church. Ivan stopped by. For a minute. He misses you too.”

I scoffed at the idea, and Abuela Flora swatted my hand.

“Stop that.”

My anger flared. I was dead. I was allowed to be as petty as I saw fit.

“No.”

She raised a painted on eyebrow at me. Her spine straightened a little bit. No one said no to the queen.
“Diana Floricinda Calderon.” She growled.

“No.” I cut her off. I had never done that before. I pulled my hand back and stood up. “No I get to be angry. He hasn’t visited my grave since the funeral. None of you have. The only time I felt wanted was when someone needed something. I was only important when I was useful. And now that I can’t do anything for you, you just…what? Stop visiting? I stop mattering?”

Anger rolled off of her in waves. Regina woke up and left her lap, sensing the danger of proximity. Abuela Flora said nothing.
“I was never anything to you all.” I continued. “I was always second best. But I was always the reliable one. I was the one who helped Mom in the divorce. I was the one by Abuela Yesenia’s bedside when she got cancer. I was the one who kept the lights on. But none of you seemed to remember that. I mattered too, Abuela. I needed you. I NEEDED someone to see me and to take care of me and to REMEMBER ME.”

I was huffing. I was crying. I wanted to rip apart her precious keepsakes and smash her rocks glass. I wanted to watch the lipstick smear on the matte white walls and the scotch drip down from it as though the wall itself were bleeding. I think I finally understood poltergeists.

“My cigar box is on the ofrenda.” She said simply. Quietly. “Bring it to me.”

Still an eight year old child trapped in an adult body, I listened.

The ofrenda was on her bookshelf. It had an ornate cover on it, and on top was a candle and some marigolds. One pan dulce on a plate sat next to an opened bottle of Coors Light. Tucked in the corner, next to the cigar box, was a picture. It was of my abuelos smiling. She was in her 70’s when he passed. Her white hair was steel wool at this point, and much longer. Her husband, Reynaldo, wore a linen suit with a bowtie. His smile was soft, but his eyes twinkled with the pranks he had yet to pull. The mischief he had yet to get into. I took a deep breath and touched the box. I could feel the grains of lacquered wood beneath the pads of my fingers. That was a fun discovery to unpack later. I grabbed the cigar box and handed the box to her. I kept the beer for myself. She gestured with her eyes to take the other armchair near hers. It was my bisabuelo’s, and no one was allowed to sit there. But even after thirty years, she couldn’t part with it. 

She opened the box and pulled out a cigar. It was her second to last one. She pulled out an ashtray older than I was, and a box of matches. She cut the cigar and lit it. She slowly puffed to bring the smoke and heat through it. Her face became obscured by the smoke. Abuela Flora put the ashtray on the little table between the two chairs and handed me the cigar. Then she went about lighting the last one for herself.

“I don’t know if these will be any good.” She said, “These were the last ones I ever made.”

I pulled on it and let the smoke fill my mouth without fully inhaling. It tasted like ass. But I had never been a cigar aficionado like she was.

We sat in silence, pulling on our cigars and sipping our drinks. I was feeling ashamed of my outburst. I was afraid of the repercussions of my actions. I only had so much time with her, and I had spent most of it, so far, screaming at her. I had been so angry that I wanted to destroy her things. I had scared Regina. The Catholic guilt was all consuming.

“When I came to this country, your grandfather and I had nothing. I was a dancer. He was in business.” She began, “But we got by. There were nights that I went to bed without eating, because I wanted to make sure that he had food for lunch the next day. I told him it was because I was trying to keep slim for him.” She smirked at her own actions. Her own sacrificing prank that she had pulled on her husband. She rolled the ash off her cigar and crossed her legs.

“And then your grandfather made money. They needed people who could speak English and Spanish. Someone who looked like them, but could communicate with other Cubans. Your grandfather started telling people that he was Spanish, not Cuban. He moved to Tampa because he loved the weather, not because that’s where they ushered all of the people fleeing Castro like us. And the money followed. I was able to dance again. I hosted parties. I had dresses. I had everything that I always wanted. And then, in the peak of my life, I had Yesenia.” Another cigar roll.
“I wasn’t a good mother. She was sensitive, like you. She was book smart. And I wanted her to be like me. I wanted her to be a good wife and host parties. I wanted her to have a million babies. I didn’t understand that she wasn’t like me. But she tried to be. Oh, she tried to make me happy. When she got that scholarship to go to school…I talked her out of it. I told her that she wouldn’t be able to find a husband at that school. That no husband wanted a wife that was smarter than him. That women weren’t supposed to want a career. That she was broken, somehow, for wanting that.”

She stopped talking. She was dancing with her memories now. The cigar slipped from her hand and rolled onto the table. I grabbed it and put it into the ashtray, afraid she was going to set the house on fire. She was crying now. Quietly. Silent sobs wracked her chest.

“I’m so sorry.”

She grabbed my hand and held it.

Tears began to fall from my own eyes. This wasn’t a Hallmark movie. We didn’t collapse into sobs and cling to each other as though we were each other’s life raft. There were no more soliloquies or words of grandeur–though flamenco guitar was playing, still, in the background. We stared at the wall in our own tear soaked reveries. There were only two little words said, so softly that they might’ve been carried away by the cigar smoke.

“Thank you.”

I think that’s all I needed to hear. All this time. The words stitched together some of the broken parts of me. Thank you for always taking care of the family. Thank you for trying to be better. Thank you for always stepping up, even when it wasn’t your job. Thank you for still loving, even when you were not loved. All of it was wrapped up into those two little words, and I understood. She had been stuck in survival mode for so long that she had passed that on to her daughter, who passed it on to her daughter, who then passed it to me. Generational trauma makes the worst of family heirlooms, but it was all she had to offer.

“What picture did you use, anyway?” I asked her in a rusty voice.

She smiled and opened the cigar box. Tucked next to her pendant of St. Michael that she had worn since the dawn of time was an old polaroid. She handed it to me. 

I remembered this.

I was eight. Abuela Flora and I were tucked under a table that I had turned into my own personal reading fort. She was looking at me with unadulterated love in her eyes as I explained to her what was happening in the book, because this one was in English. She never learned how to read in English. But I remember explaining it in great detail, how a little mouse named Despereaux lived in a kingdom that didn’t allow soup. And how he had the biggest ears. How he was a bad mouse because he enjoyed reading books instead of eating them. And that maybe being a knight didn’t mean that you had to hurt people, but that maybe being a knight was about helping people instead. 

And she had listened to me. She wasn’t one to say “I love you”, but this was her quiet declaration. She had laid down with me with her creaking bones and her ironed dress and she had listened to me as I told her this story. She had listened to this little girl talk about mice and knights and soup. And then, after I was done, she sat me at the table and we ate ropa vieja–which is kind of like a soup. 

One of the golden cards that the doormen gave to me fell out of my pocket and skittered onto the floor. Regina was on it immediately. She grabbed the card and ran for the kitchen. I didn’t know what the card was for, but if the doorman handed it to me it was obviously important. I took off after her. My beer wibble wobbled on the table, and I heard the bottle smack against the wood. Maybe I was a poltergeist after all. She ran to the kitchen with it in her mouth. She stared at me with her orange eyes, so similar to Jerry’s. I think that’s why I took to him as quickly as I did. They were both tuxedo cats with bright orange eyes. 

 She looked at me. She looked at the refrigerator. She locked eyes with me again, and then she walked right through the refrigerator. I stared at the door. I was a ghost. A cat disappearing into a refrigerator should be normal. Nevertheless I opened the fridge. I closed it again. And opened it again. Still no cat. Regina must be on the elevator. I checked my wristwatch.

12:53AM

11/01/2022

So it looked like the cap was for an hour, and a good portion of it I had spent deciding whether I wanted to go or not. And now that I was here…I didn’t want to go back. Or more so, I did, but I didn’t. I wanted to go back to my job in the library and to yelling occasionally at Mr. Thomas. I wanted to debate books with Jerry and to occasionally scare him with cucumbers and spray bottles. I wanted my quiet little apartment near the city center. I didn’t want to leave Abuela Flora behind. But I couldn’t just stay here. The brochures didn’t paint a cute picture of those that chose to stay behind.

I probably stood next to the refrigerator for several minutes before making my decision. I had to go, but I could come back next year. As long as she kept putting up my picture I could keep coming back to visit. We could have more time. I would go home and put in an application to go and see my family. Maybe this was how I moved on. I turned the corner to share my thoughts with Abuela Flora.

It was a confusing moment, really. There were two Abuela Floras. One sat in her chair, head slumped to the side. The other stood in front of me. The standing Abuela Flora stared at the sitting Abuela Flora. There was no horror on her face. No concern or worry. Just…curiosity. Like she had never seen herself in full before, but she knew that it was her.

“That’s my body.”

So Abuela Flora was dead. Okay. That’s fine. I mean she was 98, an avid smoker and a more than social drinker. To be completely honest, it was a modern day miracle that she made it this far. I stuck my hand in my pockets and sighed. My palm brushed against the gold card, and I realized what I needed to do. Why I’d been sent up here. I didn’t know the specifics, but I understood my purpose at this moment.

“Abuela, I think you need to follow me.”

“I bent over to grab your beer. It fell on the floor. That’s my body.”

I grabbed her by the hand. It felt cold, but it was just as soft as I remembered. We walked slowly to the kitchen. It was a twenty second walk, but it felt like an eternity. I could feel Abuela Flora pulling back a bit in my hand. She was afraid. She didn’t want to go. We paused in the kitchen. I grabbed the gold card in my pocket and I handed it to her. I smiled at her softly. No one had been there for me when I died. But I was here, and I wouldn’t let her walk alone.

“Are you ready?”

“Where are we going?”

“Well based on this gold card,” I assured her, “I think we’re going up.”