The Memory Giver (#Wattys2014)

Chapter 10

                                                           Chapter 10

        Bernadette Pinkstring awoke on Saturday morning with a jolt.  She hadn’t had one of those in a while.   She bolted upright in bed, eyes wide, and realized she was perspiring.  At first she thought it was her blood pressure acting up again, but after shuffling off to bathroom where she checked it three times (140/99) she knew it had to be something else.  Her pressure was up there, all right, but not in the danger zone, not for her, at least. 

        “Oh, Lawdy me,” Bernie sighed. The jolt she’d felt meant there had been some powerful spiritual energy nearby. 

        Any spirit in the area with a bone to pick with a loved one, or affairs they needed settled before they could rest easy, usually found their way to Bernadette Pinkstring.  This one hadn’t.   This one had chosen someone else.

        That was all right with Bernie.  She’d had her fill of spirits knocking on her door in the middle of the night, disturbing her sleep. Or catching up to her on the crosstown bus, making her seem like a crazy person when she asked them quite politely to leave her be.

         The question as to why some spirits remained earthbound while others moved on was a puzzling one, and the answer wasn’t always clear, even to the spirits themselves. In nineteen sixty-nine, Bernie encountered the angry spirit of an attractive twenty year-old woman, Ruby Johnson, while walking home from a parents-teachers night. Ruby’s spirit was standing in front of the gate of a lovely cottage on Featherbed Lane looking angry as a polecat. She was wearing a yellow party dress with a pleated skirt. There was blood on the skirt.

        The spirit complained to Bernie that she’d been in a fender-bender and was waiting for the tow truck driver to either bring her car back or take her to it.  One or the other, that was it. The poor thing had no idea she was dead, had been dead for all of five years by the time Bernie happened upon her. 

        Ruby had been driving home drunk (on Bacardi and coke) from a frat house party at one of the houses on fraternity row, when she lost control of her Ford Falcon, careened into a tree, and wound up on the sidewalk crashed into the gate of the house on Featherbed Lane. Her neck had been snapped like a twig. It took quite a bit of explaining for Bernie to convince Ruby she was dead and needed to get on over to the other side. Eventually, she did.

        When Bernie was seven, her grandfather died in his sleep.  After the funeral, the family convened at the house for the repast.  Bernie had gone into the bedroom to fetch some barrettes from Grandma Ida May’s dresser, and there she found her Grandpa, Albert Pinkstring, dressed very nicely in his gray twill suit, straw topper in his hand, seated on the edge of the bed.  Grandpa explained to Bernie he had to stay around to look after his wife of forty-three years.  He’d always looked after Ida May, and he wasn’t going to let death get in the way of duty.

        That was the first time for Bernie.  That’s when she discovered she possessed the gift, the second sight.  Bernie’s parents didn’t believe her at first, but Grandma, Ida May did.  She sensed Albert’s spirit was still in the house.  Said Bernie wasn’t the first one in the family to have the sight.  Her great cousin Oneida (on Albert’s side) had it, as did another relative she’d heard about.

        It took several trips to Grandma’s for a seven year-old to convince her grandfather he needed to get on over to the other side. When the deed was done, and Grandpa Albert had moved on, Grandma Ida May thanked Bernie, baking her her very own peach cobbler for seeing Grandpa off safely.