Ghost Story

By Dafna Steinberg

When you died, I stopped believing in ghosts.

I told Mama this and she told me it was ok. Let the ghosts fend for themselves, she said.

Growing up I always loved stories about the supernatural. Whenever I would read books filled with banshees and witches, you would make fun of me. You would raise your arms up in front of you, walk across the room like Frankenstein and say “ooooo spoooooookkkkyyyy!” in an attempted Transylvanian accent. It didn’t seem to matter to you that you were combining so many stories that had nothing to do with each other. You just loved that it made me laugh. Later, when I had finished one book, you would happily buy me another. You were a man of reason and I was a child filled with imagination.  You encouraged me to trust in things that I felt even though you didn’t share the same beliefs.

List of Supernatural Events That I Have Experienced

Terezin, Czech Republic: I stood in the empty grass fields, feeling a weight in the center of my chest that I could not explain. It pushed me down to the earth.

Jerusalem, Israel: At the Wailing Wall. I remember closing my eyes and touching the stone brick with my forehead. It felt like the world was spinning and I went somewhere else. When I opened my eyes again, it was fear that made me walk away backwards.

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico: A shadow of a man woke me in the middle of the night. He stood in the doorway of my locked bedroom. I couldn’t see his face but I knew he was staring at me. A few days later, the woman I was staying with told me about her alcoholic neighbor who died when his trailer burned down a few months earlier.

Warrenton, Virginia: In the Old Jail Museum, I stopped dead in my tracks and couldn’t move into the room where prisoners had been kept. A hateful masculine presence filled the air. I thought if I walked any closer to the prison cells, someone would grab me through the metal bars. As I exited out through the gift store, I asked the manager if there were any ghosts in the maximum security wing. She nodded emphatically. “Oh yeah,” she said. “And he’s a MEAN one.”

Dreams In Which The Dead Have Visited Me

Savta: She sat on the edge of my bed. She whispered stories to me and called me by my pet name. She looked so radiant.  The dreams (there were multiple) never lasted long but when I would wake up, I would feel like I knew her a little bit better. She hasn’t visited me in a long time.

Robert: My photo professor and college mentor was next to me, smoking a cigarette and wearing his uniform of a white button down over a black t-shirt and black pants. I talked about what I was doing with my work. I told him how he had changed my life. He smiled the half smile he always gave when something pleased him.

It would be a long time before you visited me. When you finally did, it was just an image of your face that then disappeared. Where did you go?

Moments When I Knew Things Before They Happened

The Party: I dreamt of being with friends, strolling down a path. Up ahead there was a building that was large with so many windows, all of which were lit against a dark night sky. We couldn’t find a way in. Then a voice in my ear screamed WAKE UP. I jumped up from bed, certain someone was in my room with me. But I was alone. Later I met up with friends to go to a party. When we arrived at the address, I looked up and saw we were walking into the building from my dream.

The Street Corner: I was talking to my friend Ken on the corner of 14th and U in DC. It was late and the bar where we had been drinking just closed.  A wave of panic took hold of me. I looked around. There wasn’t anyone on the street aside from the two of us. But something didn’t feel right. I made some excuse about needing to leave and went home at a pace between speed walking and jogging. The feeling went away the moment I locked the door to my apartment. I knew I was being ridiculous. The next morning, Ken sent me a text asking me if I had a sixth sense followed by a link to a news article. Two blocks away from where we had been standing and at the exact moment that I felt the panic, a man stabbed a couple in an alleyway.

This was years ago, when the world was still a place worth living in.  It was a world where you still existed. My extrasensory perceptions helped me so many times. Why couldn’t they help you?

I always referred to it simply as intuition or “knowing things.” My grandmother knew things. I used to think I knew things too. But you died and I stopped believing.

Looking at you, lying cold on the bathroom floor, I saw your eyes. There was no light in them. No sparkle. There was nothing beyond the blank stare into emptiness. Where did you go?

From that day on, the only thing that haunted me was your absence.

And yet…

One morning, when I still lived in the house on Lady Bird Drive, someone came into my room and looked over me while I slept, the way a parent does when they want to take in their children during a moment of peace. I sensed the figure standing close to me, like they were reaching out to touch my hair. All I felt was love floating down and wrapping around me like the blanket on the bed. Even through my sleep-drenched brain, I knew Mama was checking up on me. She always did when I was sad or not feeling well.  At breakfast, I told her I knew she came to make sure I was sleeping and I teased her for treating me like a child. She stared back at me, surprised.

“I didn’t come into your room this morning,” she said. “You got up before I did.”

Sputter

By Ahana Ganguly

For a moment, the pillar of spit connects me to the dirtiest part of the sink. Imagine this as load-bearing: that when it collapses — because it will collapse; it is spit, after all — the whole structure will come crashing down.

The drain and I make eye contact. In unison, we ask: is the lower lip the roof, then? What’s the house, with this curved floor? 

When it collapses, my face will be rubbled with the sink.

The drain clutches its filth tight. New toothbrush tucked away in its mug, I make plans to take an old one to task here. I look and keep looking. What looks back: clustered rot on a very small scale. Spit from yesterday and before, mouth debris, food or hair softening as it decomposes, whatever feculence has been on my hands from the outside or from myself, and discarded skin darken together as they stay touching. Soap and toothpaste, too. They become scum when you’re not scrubbing at other things with them. They are snug in their trench, nourished by the water I sweep at them. I mean to dislodge but they bask and bask. 

I become hyperaware: the toilet, this sink filth, is too close to my bed. Just a door that lets me pretend the dirty is distant from the clean. The bathroom is a failing technology, refusing: despite itself, to conceal what it tries-claims to conceal. We consume the signs of cleanliness, whether or not they are indicators of actual cleanliness or health. Gorge on them in a space specifically corralled off for urination and defecation: 

Tidiness obscures dirt, which is evidence of an object not detached from time: there have been people touching this. Other grasps, then fingers, then their heat and their fingerprints. This is the problem: matter that refuses to dis-appear and therefore facilitates intimate touch, even across delay, even across disavowal.

My spit is the structural integrity here. A gauge: how far can it get from my mouth until it’s gross: where is the inside, where is the outside. For now it stands pillared between us, so the three of us are stuck here in this moment of non-collapse. The spit is still an extension of my inside, and it touches the sink, which touches  its dirt, and the floor with its discarded hair, and the whole of the bathroom. I stay standing, tongue to spit to sink, newly a creature with a toilet in my mouth.

What Not to Do When Examining an Ancient Portrait

By Tatiana Dubin

I sit before many layers of incomprehensibility: a PDF of a scanned photograph of a reconstructed disk-shaped portrait of a woman. A mouthful, a brainful, an eye full of severed limbs and glued alabaster. Forming an image of a straight-spined woman with an elegant wide-rimmed bonnet, the tallest figure in the frame. Thus, the most important person in the frame, meaning the room. A room where she is standing between naked men pouring libations. Libations meaning she’s pious. A pious woman with a sad stilted face, a ridiculous fluffy dress and no feet. 

One scholar claims that her nose is “sharply aquiline” and her features “intent and intelligent.” Another scholar says she’s a blank slate, a tabula rasa, that reflects whatever we wish to see. Both are true. Anything you see is true, because she is a woman who was etched into a disk 4300 years ago and all referents have been lost to time. A disk that might as well have been lost to time, and will be smashed over & over again through time, until she too comes undone, is mutilated & exposed. [Mutilated multitudes—]. [Multitudes mutilated—]. 


Come sit next to me—I didn’t mean to scare you! There’s nothing obviously dangerous about her portrait. To the naked eye, it brings to mind a Christmas ornament, which brings to mind her name, Enheduanna, which can be translated any number of ways, including “Ornament of the Heavens,” a pretty thing papered in gold that you can hang on your tongue to help you seem interesting at cocktail parties, like a woman with original things to say, new ground to break. It’s okay if you stop here, take in the mutability of her portrait & her cheerful name and run for the parties.  

We might agree that the most contemporary thing about her portrait is her right arm, raised in a greeting—hello there!—that appears jovial but also seductive, maybe a bit manipulative; that lures you in just to smack you over the head. If you think you felt a hand slap your forehead, I would remind you not to get ahead of yourself. She lived 4,300 years ago and there is no way for you to have reached through time with so little effort. It takes concentration, commitment, a lifetime of trying to cross such thresholds. I would remind you that she was born at the beginning of history, and you were born at its end. Her image should appear to you as hopelessly stylized, hopelessly out of fashion. The moment you begin to enter her image is the moment time folds in on itself / you fold in on yourself, and the world you worked so hard to build [your husband, your children, your homemade dinners—] comes to a crashing [smashing—] end. But it’s too late. I can see it in your eyes: you’re hooked. 


Her eyes are drawn with particular precision. Thick rings of kohl embolden her gaze. She gazes towards some unknown point beyond her frame, and you’d like to follow her there. Beyond this room, into a time that marks the beginning of time. But you prove too lazy to truly follow her. Your phone rings and she suddenly doesn’t matter. You are erratic, toggling in and out of focus. You grow irritable. Starving. The gulf between you and her widens as you chew your processed dinner, as you fall asleep to TV. It’s clear: your eyes are plastered in the present just like hers are plastered in the past. 


Yet you persist and try harder. Proving me wrong! You immerse yourself in context. Day after day, reading obscure books to get a sense of Mesopotamian culture & language & the flood prone landscape & natural resources & linguistic philosophy. You begin gazing into the distance. You begin asking good questions. Who is Enheduanna? What is the relationship between Enheduanna and her portrait? Is Enheduanna a sign or a woman? Well, her portrait is made of alabaster, chemically identical to eggshells, seashells, snailshells. Alabaster: the shell that lets us move through space and time without falling apart. 


Definitions help you rationalize your travels & situate yourself in the task ahead:  

“To gaze” is an alien act, an alienating action, something only alienated people do. It is a verb without an etymology, rootless, changing meanings at will. It means constantly shifting to get a better view, a visual selfishness, positioning yourself neither here nor there: on a threshold. A dangerous place to be, one that exposes your deepest desires → “Threshold” as signaling a boundary only to imply its crossing. An example of a threshold is an alabaster disk, a vessel through which to travel through time → 

You grow bold enough to jump inside a flat land with raging rivers that have since changed their courses, with a tiered temple that has since collapsed, inhabited by a woman who has since been smashed—

+++

So who is she? If her mouth wasn’t broken, she’d tell you she’s the most esteemed religious official in the land, the High Priestess of the Moon God, hailing from the holiest city of the Akkadian Empire. She might brag, boast that she’s history’s first poet, then start sputtering adjectives—righteous, brilliant, radiant-hearted, highly-driven—descriptors that will stay in your head for weeks. If she thinks you’re smart, she’ll start chanting full verses, crowd favorites like teeth can shatter flint [5 lines missing] and divine impetuous wild cow [2 lines missing]. She too only has access to fragmented versions of her poems, so it’ll sound like there’s bad reception. At times, you might just hear the desperate sounds of someone buried alive. She won’t sound as impressive as you thought she would, but stick with her. It isn’t easy to communicate after so many years in isolation. 

To progress beyond this point, further than biographical facts and quoted poetry, you must learn a few conceptual things. She is an unknowable woman, so don’t ask her personal questions. She lingers in the space between what is meant and what is said, in the failed attempt to cross a threshold, and in the moment you fall flat on your face / her face. She is resuscitated not via excavation, but by accepting her fragmentation—and her essential untranslatability. 

Untranslatability leads to extreme loneliness, so she will eventually decide to confide in you, reach through time—no, not to touch your hand—but to make herself heard. She is lulled by your sweet-smelling curly hair & gentle sweaty fingers zooming in and out of her face. Alabaster dissipates in water, so her profile begins unclenching under your fingers. You have no time to think—instantly, she unleashes her monologue, and this time her voice comes in spastic whispering bursts like you’d hear in a Beckett play, a sound that nearly shatters the screen—

[She cried] tears of beer; [she was] stripped my crown, [a man] entered my temple, someone destroyed me. [Middle figure] head lost: [left arm ] mutilated and [lower portion of] dress lost: [ arms and apparently head in profile but body full face. Figure is clothed in flounced kaunakas skirt, 6 tiers of flounces showing. ] Dress [ covered upper arm but left forearm ] exposed. [Left hand rests on chest, right arm held upright and ] hand lost. 


She repeats this story too many times to count, less haggard each time, and you grow impatient; wonder what this has to do with her portrait, with anything. She sounds like a crazy person on the street. What portrait? she cries. What street? When you tell her she’s flanked by naked men, she looks at you like you’re the crazy one. / You are crazy. You are the crazy one. Crown stripped—! tears stripped—! entered stripped—! stripped destroyed entered—! entered entered—! Mutilated and hand—! /

Hours go by before you regain composure, and she is happy she rattled you. Her voice has smoothed by now, and she begins speaking to you like an old friend, lucid and rambling. She explains that back when this happened, she didn’t have the language to tell you what he did to her. She tells you that there’s no word for rape in Sumerian. That she had to learn English to express herself properly.

You are deeply confused. You did all this research to enter her world, not for her to suddenly blur the boundaries. You remind her that you weren’t there back then, that she couldn’t have spoken to you all those years ago. “If I had been there, I would have saved you,” you say, trying to reassure her and establish a sense of place.

But she has no sense of space, no handle on time, no idea what you’re talking about. You couldn’t even save yourself, she leers, and again you know she’s right / you see yourself reflected in her glossy reflection / soaked in sweat, you sob tears of glue, trapping yourself in this timeless lonely alabaster place where you grasp what she meant / meant that time isn’t an excuse for anything / you should have / could have / been there for her / you should have / would have / cradled her / you should have plucked her out from that [1 line missing] scene but it’s too late / —. 

because grief turns itself inwards, to a childhood self, grief for a girl not unlike yourself pinned to a bed & 

I didn’t cry then [tears of beer;] watching him play [stripped my crown,], my body [entered my temple, someone destroyed me.] a puppet [head lost: left arm mutilated] a self I thought lost: [ arms and apparently head in profile but body full face. Figure is clothed in flounced kaunakas skirt, 6 tiers of flounces showing.  ] yet found in someone else’s surface [ covered upper arm but left forearm ] exposed. [Left hand rests on chest, right arm held upright and  

] in the moment: something radical / 
in retrospect: a concept without a word, a dangling Signified, impossible to express 
/ all that that Signified
I thought lost! then found!
lost then found!

hand lost found tied to that bed found! forever,

so no feet / no hands either, 
cannot run / crawl away, 
stuck in lost found / lost found grief.


You become angry. Anger as a tool to burst this frame and exit. To think distancing things, to gaze at her like she’s an alien again. It’s been 4,300 years, and she’s not over it already? But she’s fluid enough to read your mind. It’s been eleven years, and you’re not over it already? she squawks back at you, because she suddenly becomes a bird. A bird with a busted mouth, so when she screams, sound comes jagged as stones hurling from cliffs into millions of pieces, but high-pitched enough to travel at the speed of light → such that you are enlightened & blinded in the same moment [her portrait sharpens into life and you can see her fragmenting—] [because an ungraspable woman wants to be grasped but not in that way—]. She spoke to you because she thought you would help her, but you instrumentalized her instead. You crashed your desire and trauma into her voice and look what you did—

She is back inside the alabaster. 

+++

You are back on the outside. I would advise you to stay! Stay gliding in the temperate realm of externalities. It’s fun, and her portrait is larger than you would expect: diameter = 25.6 cm, the same size as a healthy dinner plate; or, it turns out, my vanity mirror, lots of space to move things around, experiment with various facial expressions. My obsession with her is also larger than you would expect, the size of an alabaster disk I sit before…