Page 10 of Earthly Ties

“No.”

“I’ll look into it. Can you keep this between us for now? The fewer people who know about this until I can figure out where she’s been, the better.” Gilda groans. “The last thing we need is fearmongering about a Pox outbreak just before school starts.”

“Did she have the Pox?” Esther asks, a note of panic in her voice.

I frown. Did I have the Pox? I don’t remember a herald patch, and the Pox would have taken much longer than a few hours to kill me. At least a week, if not longer.

“Not as far as I know. But even if she didn’t, I get enough shit from the dean and relics in our department about women being unreliable professors.” Gilda scoffs. “I already took a risk hiring a colored woman when Cassius kicked the bucket.”

“Try that again, Dr. Frederick!” I snap, glaring at the tiny video box on Esther’s laptop. Without realizing it, I’ve pulled myself from the window to look over Esther’s shoulder. “How dare you speak so callously about Cash? And ‘colored woman’? Really? Really?!”

That is something the living version of Dr. Monae would never have dared to say, especially to the head of the department. I would have thought it—hard!—but I would have just tucked the anger and resentment into my heart, along with the rest of my feelings, for the sake of professionalism.

Just like how Mom trained me.

But now that I’m dead? My filter is long gone after a month of no one hearing me. And oh, it feels good. How did Cash work with this woman for years? I was ready to rage quit after only a semester. Hell, after the first interview! It was only Cash’s admiration for her, his encouragement for my career, that made me accept Gilda’s offer.

Esther seems to be upset too, only she is hiding it way more professionally than I am. She tentatively raises a finger as a squeak of protest leaves her.

“Yes, Dr. Voigt?” Gilda’s tone is dangerously cool.

“With all due respect, the preferred term is ‘woman of color’ these days. Or, in Dr. Monae’s case, Black or African American woman. Though more importantly, I’d contend that there isn’t anything inherently risky about hiring any person of color—no more so than hiring anyone.” For once, Esther’s tone is decisive, even if her voice is still soft. She sounds more patient and kind than I would at the moment. “And many people, myself included, would appreciate Dr. Berger’s untimely passing being discussed with respect.”

“It was a figure of speech.” Gilda waves her hand. “But I am not above feedback, even from adjuncts. We live in unprecedented times, after all.”

I’m not sure which point was the “figure of speech,” but that is as much of an apology as anyone would get out of Dr. Gilda Frederick. Still seething, I murmur a quiet “thank you” to Esther, and turn back to the window to…to watch my purple oxalis slowly fade away.

As much as I try to clear my mind, the reality sinks in like a poison until I can’t think of anything else: I haven’t shown up to work in a month, and the only impact of my absence is hushed up damage control from the one coworker who noticed, and a decaying plant. The pressure behind my eyes tightens, and I wish I could cry it away.

Instead, I remain, trapped here with nothing to do but look out the window, wondering what the point of all of this is.

Five

Our weekly department— No. I’m no longer part of the Philosophy Department. The weekly department meeting will be held in person today. Esther and I are on campus, crowded in the tiny closet she calls an office, in the hourlong gap between her early morning class and the meeting. The laptop is bright blue in the morning dim of her office; it gives her normally rosy skin an eerie sheen, an echo of my own.

Without a single ounce of shame, I read over Esther’s shoulder as she checks her emails. I can’t help it. I’m nosy. And who can judge me anyway? I haven’t met any angels, spirit guides, or other ghosts. No one living can hear me. There’s no one to tell me to mind my own business. There’s no one to tell me anything at all.

Frankly, being a ghost is incredibly boring, and the excuses students come up with for not attending classes are relatively entertaining. We’re only two weeks into the fall semester—at least that’s my best guess, assuming Esther’s syllabus is on track—and already Dylan’s grandma is in the hospital with the Pox, so he is going to visit her. Strange that anyone would visit someone with a contagious disease, especially when that same someone allegedly died of cancer last week.

Even in the middle of a plague, some things never change. Students will always find a reason to not attend their early morning classes.

Esther’s been struggling to write a reply for half an hour, trying out different ways to call him out on his lie, without actually accusing him of lying. She’s drafted several responses, each one progressively more passive and less aggressive.

Her groan, as she once again deletes the draft to start over, makes me smile; when I was alive, I’d do the same thing. Write a snarky reply, delete it, write another slightly less irritated reply, delete that, and eventually send a generic: Hope she feels better. Let me know if you need an extension or additional support.

“It could be a different grandma, and he’s worried about his surviving grandma after recently losing the other one.” Esther scoffs and rolls her eyes, as if she doesn’t believe herself.

“You know he’s lying to you, East.” It feels weirdly personal to call my colleague a nickname, but calling someone around my age such a grandmotherly name is even weirder. Calling her Dr. Voigt after haunting her for this long is far too impersonal. Hopefully, Esther doesn’t mind being likened to the sunrise. Not that she’ll ever find out. “He used the dead grandma excuse three times in my Introduction to Logic class last semester.”

I shouldn’t be talking back to Esther’s constant stream of consciousness. I know better than that. Some days, I have better self-control, and I only speak my notes aloud to myself. But on the nights when my only anchor to reality is her sleep talk, I forget to stop when she wakes up. Pretending is…comforting, after an endless night.

Like today. The sun is barely up, Esther struggled to drag herself out of bed this morning, and I still feel…not fully back to myself. Moments like this, where I fill in the gaps when she talks to herself, it almost feels like a real conversation sometimes. As humiliating as it is to admit, I talk more—laugh more—with Esther now than I ever did when I was alive.

“I’m probably doing this ghost shit all wrong.” I shake my head, floating back to perch on the bookshelf. “Are we supposed to enjoy being dead more than we liked being alive?”

Then again, is there anyone else to care? No one knows I’m here, let alone to tell me off for enjoying myself while haunting Esther. Despite what Besant and other early theosophists predicted, there’s no sign of any emissary to teach me the “essential truth” underlying religion, philosophy, and science. I can just be a silly ghost, who giggles as she reads her colleague’s emails over her shoulder and gossips about the students.

What happened to the reclusive Dr. Monae I used to be?