"Ghost Grandma" by Alice Kinerk

Ghost Grandma

Enola was lying on her trampoline, eyes closed. It was a July morning and the air had yet to take on the leaden, defeated heat it took on in summer afternoons. Everything felt perfect.
There was the bang of the screen door, and Mom was calling her name, to which Enola responded dutifully, eyes still closed. 
“We decided to go for a walk!” Mom said. Then the sound of feet descending steps. It was just mother and daughter in their family. The “we” meant their dog, Buster. Enola’s mom was always doing this, acting as though she and Buster had held a rational conversation. She did it for Enola’s benefit, Enola knew, although Enola was ten and too grown up for such silliness.   
“Okay. I’ll be on the trampoline,” Enola called, which was her way of answering her mother’s inevitable follow-up about whether she wanted to come too. 
So Enola’s mom headed up the hill into the woods behind their house. They never walked Buster on the road, for fear he would find his way back and be killed. Only on the hill. Every day, multiple times a day, Enola and her mom went walking on the hill. Enola had lived there all her life and had walked the hill hundreds of times. There was no turn of the path with which she was not familiar. There was no pile of cast-off acorn shells which Enola could not have told you the history of. She had roamed, explored, imagined, built forts, searched for fairies. In the woods, Enola felt simultaneously on the edge of discovery and also safe, at home.  
Enola was never afraid in the woods. So she was surprised when, just minutes after her mother left, Buster came racing back at top speed, his red leash flying behind.   
“Buster!” Enola said, and Buster ran toward her with a terrified expression. It may seem unlikely to ascertain an animal’s expression but, living so closely with a dog one imagines to be rational, one begins to pick up on Doggy’s subtle facial differences which indicate joy or fear. 
Buster sped underneath the trampoline and ran wild circles in the unmowed grass. Enola watched him through the fabric. It frightened her. She was suddenly eager for her mother to appear, to learn what had scared Buster. Her mother would surely chase after Buster if he got away.   
“He’s down here!” Enola yelled in the direction of the woods. “Buster came home!” 
But her mother did not come jogging down the hill as she’d expected. Enola frowned. Something was making the hair on her arms stiff, and it wasn’t the trampoline’s static electricity. She bore her eyes at the spot on the hill where their little trail disappeared into the woods, the spot where her mom would appear. She stared at it so hard it broke apart. The trees and bushes fell into component shapes, lights and darks, devoid of context. 
Some minutes passed. Then, screaming. It was her mother. Her mother, who never raised her voice above “stern reminder,” who was too soft-spoken to even shout Hustle! Run! at softball games. Enola scrambled to the edge of the trampoline and stepped shakily down the ladder. She stopped, too afraid to move. The scream was coming down the hill. Buster came, and she clung to him. 
There was her mother. Her mouth was a big black hole, and she was screaming. Enola ran to her and pressed her face into her mother’s heaving chest, crying now. Buster ran loops around them, but he had not barked once since they got out of the woods. 
“What is it?” Enola said through tears. She had a firm grip on her mom’s hand and was pulling her toward the house. It seemed inevitable that the terrible thing would come barging down at any moment. It was hard for her to look at the woods, but also hard to look away. “What’s up there?” 
Enola’s mom did not reply. Buster was standing perfectly still, and it seemed, for a moment, every bird ceased twittering. 
Enola listened. A squeaking was coming from the hill.  It did not sound like an animal. It did not sound like anything from nature. It sounded like metal rubbing metal. 
“What did you see up there?” Enola asked again. 
“I don’t know.” Her mother’s voice was deep. 
That didn’t make sense. If she couldn’t tell what she was looking at, why scream? Enola saw now that her mother was covered with dirt and pine needles from head to foot, and there was a dull, faraway look in her eyes like she had just seen something that she would see in her memory forever. 
Buster, whose head had been tilted at the direction of the squeaking, finally began to bark.  
The squeaking got louder. It was coming down the hill out of the woods.  There was a glint of sun on metal, the round rim of a wheelchair.   
It was Enola’s grandma, her mom’s mom.  
“Grammy Sue?” Enola said. “Why aren’t you at Memory Care?” 
“Nevermind that,” came a deep, booming voice beside her.  It was her mom speaking. But it was not her mom’s voice. 
“Get me home,” Grammy Sue said in a similar tone. 
Enola held onto Buster while her mom bumped Grammy’s wheelchair across the lawn and pressed the front gate button.   
And then, without even so much as a goodbye, Enola’s mom began to push Enola’s grandma down the road. But Grammy Sue lived three states away. That wasn’t right. Even Enola knew that. 
“Mom!” Enola called after her. “Come back!”
But no answer. Enola knew it was not really her mom. She did not know how to make her mom return. 
And then the sun went behind a cloud, and the temperature dropped, and it became quite cold, unseasonably cold for July. And Enola just stood there watching her mom and grandma, until they reached the bend in the road and disappeared. And then she began to cry.

Alice Kinerk

When Alice Kinerk is not writing fiction, she loves to play Scrabble. She recently memorized the two-word list, now she’s working on words with three letters. She’s been published or has work forthcoming in Oyster River Pages, South Dakota Review, Rock Salt Journal, and elsewhere. 

Headshot: Ted Olinger

Photo Credit: Shayne Schultz