Mother is the Name for God

Eloise had gone to the cemetery after her mother’s funeral and waited patiently in hopes that she might return, but she never showed up. She tried for several days, waiting there from morning to night and beyond, in sunshine and in rain, but there was no sign of her. Her mother had not returned as a ghost. There would never be a goodbye.

A year had passed since her mother’s death, and Eloise wanted to spend time with her, or as near to it as she could. Edgewood was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence that prevented the spirits within from leaving. It prevented Eloise from entering as well. But she could get close.

There were usually one or two ghosts in the cemetery somewhere, but she saw none as she approached. The ones she had met were very aloof and detached from reality, and they were not fun to talk to, so she often avoided them. But she was not there to talk that night, so it didn’t matter that much. She just wanted to be close. She wanted to pretend.

There was no light near the cemetery, but Eloise no longer needed such things to see where she was going, even in the darkest night. She found her way with barely a glance up, instead focusing on the way her feet drifted through the grass, disturbing nothing and yet remaining level on the ground. She did not understand how it worked. How being dead allowed her to do some things but held her fast to other rules. It was a very confusing state to be in.

She could see the mausoleum from the iron fence and followed it to the place where it was closest, a stone’s throw from the big, stone building. Her mother’s body was at rest in there, and Eloise wondered what it was like. A morbid thought, perhaps, but she had spent so much time with her own corpse that the idea had lost any horror. A body was not a frightening thing; it was just a thing. An empty shell like one shed by an insect or the skin of a snake.

Eloise sat in the grass near the iron fence and faced the mausoleum. The night was as still as any she had ever known, like it had been waiting for her to arrive. If her heart still beat, she thought it would be audible, the world was so quiet.

“Hello, Mother,” she said, feeling only a little self-conscious. “I hope it’s been a good year for you.”

The stillness swallowed her words, and she felt more comfortable as she continued. No one was there to hear her, but maybe her mother would, somehow. Eloise did not know where the other spirits went. Those that didn’t return had to go somewhere, she thought.

“I’ve been doing better. And I know my way around all over. I’m not afraid of anything,” she declared. “Well, nothing out here.”

A breeze she could not feel rustled some of the weeds that grew long at the fence’s edge. Blades of grass and dandelions fluttered.

“I wanted to say that I’m sorry you were so sad after I… disappeared. I didn’t mean to go. I didn’t want to. I tried to come back, and I tried to talk to you. Every time you came to the house, I tried to talk to you. I just didn’t know how.”

She focused on the blades of grass, and the way they twitched and moved in the breeze. She wondered if they could feel cold or if they were like her.

“I wish I’d stayed with you that day. I could have stayed at the table with you and the lady of the house and just listened to you talk. I could have behaved like you wanted me to.”

A dog howled somewhere in the distance, and the sound carried so faintly on the breeze that she was not even sure what she heard at first. It was as though the rest of the world were a sound she heard through a dream. All that existed was her and the iron fence, the still mausoleum, and the night.

“I waited to see if you’d come back,” Eloise whispered to the quivering grass. “I thought perhaps if I did, then you would, too. I thought we could see each other again.”

“We can,” a voice replied.

Eloise lifted her head. A shadow waited at the mausoleum door, a dark hand against the stone wall as it peered out from the open doorway. She got to her feet and approached the fence as close as she dared without touching it.

The voice was hollow, like the breeze had wound through the mausoleum and found purchase in a way that allowed it to form words. It was not the sweet and comforting voice of her mother, but the voice of something lost and forgotten.

“Mother?” she asked, unable to focus on the figure. It was shadow wrapped in shadow, as though it had pulled a cowl of night around itself to stay hidden. The shape was thin, wispy, and frail looking, but there was a sort of gracefulness in the way the thin, shadowy fingers caressed the stone wall.

“Yes,” the spirit replied. “My beautiful girl. I’ve missed you.”