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“You two are getting so grown,” she says, opening the windows to let in a breeze before striding over to the table and taking a seat next to Margaret. She rests her head in her hand, her hair a mess of thick, brown curls cascading over her shoulders, and I can see dried remnants of the always-there paint peeking out from behind the sleeve of her robe: royal blue and emerald green and blood red. A rainbow of birthmarks that never really leave. “I wish you could stay my babies forever.”
She puts her hand on Margaret’s cheek, rubbing her skin with the back of her thumb, and smiles, looking at us in a dreamy kind of bewilderment. Like she almost can’t believe we’re real.
“Have you named her yet?” she asks, gesturing to Margaret’s doll, her fingers absentmindedly twisting through her hair.
“Ellie,” Margaret says, tilting her head. “Like Eloise.”
Mom is still, quiet, her fingers stuck in the strands.
“Eloise,” she repeats.
Then Margaret smiles, nods, and the silence is broken again by her lullaby—“And if that mockingbird don’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring”—followed by a burst of my mother’s laughter, high-pitched and fragile, like shattering glass.
CHAPTER NINE
NOW
I hop into my car and drive downtown, gliding into a parking spot along Chippewa Square. The early March air is crisp and clean, and I decide to stroll without direction until the vigil starts, walking past the fragrant azalea gardens and a tarnished brass statue of General James Oglethorpe looking down on us all. Walking the squares always gives me a sense of peace, a sense of calm, which I know I’ll need tonight. Eventually, I find myself on Abercorn, on the outskirts of Colonial Park Cemetery, staring through the giant stone archway topped with that big bronze bird.
There are over ten thousand headstones in that cemetery, a useless piece of trivia I learned on my first day atThe Grit. I look to the left—the office, my old office, is only a few blocks north, closer to the river. I used to be able to see it every day: the Savannah River, winding in the distance through those gorgeous floor-to-ceiling windows as I sat at my desk, tapping out articles.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
I remember looking up at Kasey, my tour guide and mentor. She was a lifestyle reporter, too, two years my senior and tasked withgreeting me at the front door on my first day of work. I remember thinking everything about her was perfect that day, the surrealism of my dream come true painting everything in a warm, white glow: her blond ringlet curls and the way her talon fingernails tapped against a glass coffee mug filled with a latte dispensed from the office coffee maker. I tried to keep up with her heels clicking against the floor, a restored hardwood, as she gave me the official tour.
“Sorry, what?”
“Ghosts,” she repeated. “Savannah is supposed to be haunted. The most haunted city in America, in fact. Even this very building has a ghost story or two.”
I looked around, the modern office looking the exact opposite of a haunted house.
“Sometimes, people say they can feel a cold little shiver go down the back of their spine when they’re the last one to leave at night.”
“Oh.” I laughed, unsure if she was kidding. Judging by her expression, she wasn’t. “No, actually. I don’t think I do.”
And that was the truth, sort of. I didn’t believe in ghosts—not the traditional kind, anyway, the kind they show in the movies—but my mother used to tell us stories about something else, something harder to explain. She used to tell us that all those little experiences you could never put your finger on—a tickle on the back of your neck, a nagging feeling that you were forgetting something, that creeping sense of déjà vu that flared up when you visited someplace new—were other souls trying to send you a message. Living or dead, it didn’t matter. Just other souls. I never thought of it as beinghaunted, exactly. Just gently reminded. A peaceful prodding that there was something that needed to be remembered. Something important. Margaret and I used to try it sometimes, squeezing our eyes shut and attempting to will each other to sneak into the other’s bedroom at night or grab a cookie out of the kitchen pantry.
I used to imagine my thoughts guiding her hand like the planchetteof a Ouija board; her little body being pulled through the house by an invisible string with me on the other end, tugging it gently. It never worked.
“Well, you’re about to.” Kasey grinned. “Out that window is Colonial Park Cemetery. Home to over ten thousand headstones, but that’s not even the creepiest part. You know Abercorn Street, the sidewalk you walk down to get to Oglethorpe?”
I nodded, tucking a rogue strand of hair behind my ear and letting my fingertips rest on that familiar patch of skin.
“That’s technically a part of the cemetery, too, even though it isn’t gated. There are bodies buried beneath the sidewalk, the street—hundredsof bodies—that people just walk over every single day.”
I glanced out the window again, remembering my commute to work. Walking over those very sidewalks. I didn’t like to think about it.
“Over here is the art department,” she continued, a change in topic so abrupt I felt a bit of whiplash. I looked at a cluster of desks housing giant Mac computers and graphic designers. They waved at me meekly; I waved back. “On this side of the office, we have our editorial team—which, of course, includes you!”
I remember looking at my desk, imagining all the people I would meet and worlds I would explore. Dreaming up all the stories I would get to tell; stories that so perfectly encapsulate an entire way of life that’s so familiar to some but so foreign to others, like where to find the best quality bird knives or a long-form feature on a Louisiana shrimper family who supplies seafood up and down the East Coast. Directions on how to make a crawfish étouffé or set a table the proper way; the evolution of country music and the well-kept secret of a perfectly tart tomato pie.
The office was amazing, truly. Everything I had hoped it would be. Even the name, to me, was perfect—The Grit—because there was a double meaning to it that rang so true. There was the nod to shrimp and grits, of course, that creamy, decadent, indulgent Southern staple.But there was also the other noun,grit, the one that seemed to hiss through the teeth. A dirty type of determination that reminded me of cane farmers and fishermen and toiling away in the hot summer sun; the sting of a sunburn on your neck and calloused hands and digging out dirt from beneath your fingernails before going home and sitting in front of the air conditioner with a sweet tea in hand. A pebble in your shoe or a sticker chafing against your heel; the remnants of sand coating your tongue after prying open an oyster and swallowing it whole.
It was the effortless blending of those two completely different things into one perfect word. A contradiction, of sorts. But one that made sense.
To be honest, it reminded me of me.
I decide to walk toward Lafayette now, putting some distance between myself and that memory. I don’t get within a block of my old office anymore. I didn’t know it at the time, but my career atThe Gritwas over before it ever had the chance to start. It’s hard to say that I regret them, my choices, because I don’t. But when I’m down here, just steps away from where my old life was starting to begin, it’s hard not to think about how different it all could have been.
