María Rosa Menocal was a beloved professor, author, scholar, mother, and wife, as well as my step-mother. The fourth anniversary of her death was Saturday, October 15th. In honor of her memory, this week, instead of posting a new article, I’m sharing an unedited short story I wrote the first time I came home after her death.

***

This is not home. Feet land on the same steep, weathered wooden steps. Peeling blue paint, thin banisters, tarnished brass doorknob, and you enter the same old apartment you left not so many months ago. It looks no different than it did then. Fraying oriental rugs, crisp white paint, books on shelves and tables and floors and her desk. Notes on the refrigerator, filled mason jars, paint and paintbrushes on the table, her coat on the hook, alcohol on the shelves. It is empty here.

Her coat on the hook. Her paint. Her notes on the refrigerator. All of it where you left it, where she left it. It’s been months. Hamsas glitter everywhere, intricate and basic, bejeweled and plain, large and small. Her little charms. You grab one that is unadorned tin with simple designs and slip it into your pocket. You aren’t sure what they’ll do with everything when they get around to sorting this place, but you need this little bit. It’s small, no one will miss it. It can be enough. You wonder if the rest of her things will be gone by the time you return again. She is already gone.

You ghost to the small door on the side, to a small room with a small bed with a big, old hand-sewn quilt. Finally, somewhere that hasn’t changed. You sit on your bed, stare at your suitcase, stare at nothing. It almost feels the same. You can almost hear the floorboards creaking under her feet.

So you play a game. She is at the market. She will be home soon, with the ingredients for dinner. You have to unpack everything and make your room nice before she gets back. She was always such a neatfreak. Was, was, was. Hateful word. When she gets back, she will smile if she finds you sitting on your nicely made bed, reading. You will go and cook together, the kitchen bright and warm against the winter night. So you set to work. You put away all of your clothes, straighten the bookcase, straighten the bed. You hum to yourself, thinking of what you will cook together tonight. And when all is done, you wait. Just a moment, really. A moment in which you expect, ever so briefly, for her to come through the door like she always has. No one is coming.

No one is coming. But you don’t move. Can’t move. You keep waiting, even after the spell is broken, even after you remember. This is not home. You are as much a ghost here as she is.