“Dead?” screamed the school teacher into her cell phone.
Mom stared at the two grown girls entrusted into her care and made the only rational decision possible. “We’re going to church.”
“All I’ve got is jeans,” cried Stephanie. “We’ll all wear jeans,” said Mom. It was the sixties around here sometime, though you wouldn’t know it now, and everyone wore jeans to mass. The priests loved it.
Mom has hated the church for many years on account of its asinine position on reality, but this was a situation where social issues could be placed aside for a moment and the men in long black dresses from her childhood could maybe be of use. She knew it was cliché to run to the church at the first hint of the supernatural—but that’s its job, isn’t it?
“The priest doesn’t like me,” noted Tiffany.
“Why do you say the priest doesn’t like you?” asked Mom.
“My last confession, which was, like, a million years ago, the priest accused me of using birth control after dating Timothy Marinelli for six months and no bump.”
“I was the one who put you on Depo, so blame it on me,” said Mom.
“Timothy Marinelli is a loser,” said Stephanie.
“He’s a loser with lots of child support coming out of his paycheck,” said Tiffany.
“A broke loser. The worst kind,” pronounced Stephanie.
“All right, girls. You’d be broke losers too if I hadn’t taken on Bayonne,” said Mom.
They glumly agreed. They wouldn’t have even been to Williamsburg, much less put in an application for the perfect apartment there.
They all tabulate the many universes they have entered and left since Timothy Marinelli was a feared obstacle in the form of a gorgeous high school football player. Mom had told him there was life after high school and he should prepare for it. He didn’t, but her daughter did.
“They’ve probably got a new priest by now,” said Mom.
“No, it’s still Father Jaime. He’s very popular in Spanish,” said Stephanie.
“How would you know?” said Tiffany.
“I’ve got connections at Saint Henry’s,” said Stephanie, meaning her grandmother.
“The old ladies know everything. If this church thing doesn’t work out, we’re going to hit up the Rosary Society for dirt on this ghost,” said Mom.
“That’s where I’d go first,” said Stephanie. “Those Spanish people know who to call about this kind of thing.”
“Mom’s going to work the system,” said Tiffany.
“For five minutes, until we find the right psychic,” said Mom.
“They’re called curanderas,” said Stephanie.
“How would you know?” said Tiffany.
“I consulted Señora Rosa to get the apartment,” said Stephanie.
“This is your fault!”
“She told me it would come if I pushed hard for it, but there would be consequences,” said Stephanie.
“I am not in the game of blame, but you girls are probably not high on the list for an apartment in Williamsburg at the moment. A man is dead, and while he was almost a hundred pounds overweight, he might have had two more weeks in this world without your little ghost shenanigans,” lectured Mom.
“I am on my way to church, and I am going to say a gazillion Hail Marys to get myself right with God after this,” said Stephanie.
“You’re twenty-two. You’re right with God,” said the school teacher, who knows a thing or two about how God deals with the young.
They all sat in the back row of church and tried to look normal. Mom brought a mantilla just in case, but concluded that only the diehards wore them, so she held back. Hypocrisy is not becoming on two hours’ sleep. Father Jaime caught sight of the liberal high school teacher and her two pet bad girls and wondered what was up. After mass and the dispersal of the faithful, the teacher asked if he had a minute. He didn’t have a minute for a hell-bound contraceptionist, but he did have a minute for a high school teacher. They trooped into his office.
“We have a problem with a ghost,” opened Mom.
“Mental health care is the first step in any alleged encounter with the supernatural,” Father Jaime said.
“It’s the Robbins Reef Yacht Club ghost.”
“Vance. They need to close the place down. There is no other way to deal with a permanent haunting,” said Father Jaime.
“Is there any way to harness the power of the ghost to get something?” started Stephanie.
“It’s called black magic, and I do not recommend it.” He stared hard at Stephanie. He never figured her for the type, but you never know with the old Germans. They had some tricks up their sleeves still. He continued, “The ghosts always get the upper hand in the end. You have to pay them and pay them, offerings and candles and liquor. It’s a full-time job to keep the ghosts functioning like that or they come after you. You don’t have the stuff,” he said.
You should have seen Mom’s eyebrows shoot up right through the ceiling.
“Who does have the stuff?” asked Mom.
“It’s usually the Latinos these days, and I do not condone it. It unsettled the dead. They should be resting in heaven or burning in hell,” he said.
“What about Purgatory?” Tiffany offered, finally grasping that catechism might have meant something. “Can’t they pay for their sins by helping the living?” prodded Stephanie. “That’s what Señora Rosa told me.”
“You never know the full story,” said Father Jaime. “Spirits don’t always tell the truth, and you people don’t have the brujería to control them like my abuelita did,” he said, crossing himself.
“What are you doing in the priesthood?” asked Mom. “I think you missed your calling.”
“The Church does the same thing as the brujas. It’s just a lot safer. If I were you, I would get far away from all of those practices. The old ghosts who don’t move on are different from regular people. They have a different sense of justice about things, and I can’t really do anything about it.”
“I wish I had heard these words thirty years ago. I would have had a much more interesting spiritual life,” said Mom.
“The Church does have meaning, and there is a reward for the just,” said Father Jaime.
“It’s just not that simple,” said Mom, who suddenly got it and was gratified.
Mom paused a minute and looked at the girls. She would be a grandmother sooner rather than later with these beauties out bopping around Williamsburg. Maybe she could find a middle ground with the God of her childhood.
“They ought to tear the Robbins Reef Yacht Club down. It’s not right to have a hole in the universe in the middle of a residential neighborhood.”
“And there’s no chance of an exorcism,” said Mom.
The priest just looked at her.
“I know. Lawsuits,” said Mom.
“We have many dark times to make amends for. I don’t want to go back to witch burning and inquisitions. I wish they’d tear the old building down and build a nice new Tikki Bar,” said Father Jaime.
Mom laughed. “That would spoil it.”
They stood on the sidewalk on Avenue C, their great-grandparents’ Baroque-ish church shimmering the power of eternity at their backs. Mom felt a vague urge to go back to the Club, but she knew the living would resent the disrespect to the Commodore so freshly of the other world. The girls were expecting the endless stream of steely guidance that they’d had all their lives from this titan of functionality, but she sensed that the time was coming for her to pass the baton to the next generation—and wavered.
For long enough to take out a cigarette, stare it down, and put it back in the pack. Tiffany smiled slyly.
“Where is this Señora Rosa?”
“Broadway and 45th.”
“Figures.”
The part of Bayonne with the most sirens.
“I’m ready for a big plate of tacos and an expensive deck of cards,” said Mom, taking out her car keys.
Señora Rosa was cleansing a client with a broom in the back area when they got in, giving them a few minutes to scope out the place. A large statuette of the Virgin of Guadalupe was highlighted, flanked by several other smaller saints, but what caught Mom’s attention was a side altar with nothing but a large chunk of limestone with a crack in it surrounded by corn husk crosses, glasses of liquor, and flowers. It’s not that the saints were for show, but this was a center of unnamed power, and it was Mayan power.
Years ago Mom had taken a vacation to the Yucatan with Tiffany’s father. They spent the bulk of their time lying on white sandy beaches drinking the obligatory umbrella drinks, but they did make a side trip to some of the sacred Mayan sites. She remembered offerings like this at some of the places they went. Corn. God is always about food.
Señora Rosa escorted her client to the door rattling off instructions in Spanish that Mom guessed were about prayers, perfumes, symbolic action of various types that they both knew. Then she turned and accepted the greetings of Stephanie, though in reality she and the school teacher were squaring off and sizing each other up.
“I hear you have a problem,” said Señora Rosa.
“News travels fast,” said Mom.
“The Robbins Reef Yacht Club is a serious spirit house. It cannot be taken off without a lot of prayers and ofrendas, many problems,” continued the witch. “It will be a big job, especially with a man dead. It will be at least ten thousand dollars.”
Mom elbowed Stephanie in the ribs. “How much did you pay for that spell?”
“Two hundred and fifty bucks.”
“Why didn’t you just throw it at the deposit?”
“She put it on her credit card,” said Tiffany.
“It’s not the deposit. It’s the rent. They won’t let us in without someone to guarantee the rent.”
Mom looked at Señora Rosa. “You did a spell to get Stephanie her apartment, and now the ghost is loose and a man is dead. I think you owe it to your client to fix it. For free.”
“Candles cost money, and there is a risk to my life when I take on a powerful spirit,” countered the curandera.
“Then you should do it for cost,” said Mom.
“The cost is ten thousand dollars,” the old woman stood firm.
Mom looked her down and saw not an ounce of doubt that there was a mechanics to the whole business that did indeed involve marigolds and tequila, but that Señora Rosa had no humanitarianism or responsibility in her to make good on her otherworldly messes—and this made Mom stubborn.
And curious.
Mom wagered that the Commodore was dead partly on his own steam and that the situation with the ghost was not murderous but eerie.
So she had something in her court that didn’t let her lay down the C notes. Yet.
“I’ll think about it,” said Mom, sweeping the girls out with her as she turned to leave.
“You should take the offer. My price will go up,” said Señora Rosa, who wasn’t going to extend charity to a white lady with a teacher’s pension.
“There are a lot of workers in New York.”
“I own Bayonne.”
