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weeks late, after
Alan Berle and I had done it, I took a bus to the clinic downtown and got
tested. The test was negative. I didn’t get a period for another six weeks.
    I told myself it was more of the same. I convinced myself that a girl with such
erratic cycles couldn’t possibly get pregnant.
    On the third week, after being with Ken, the smell of Luke’s coffee made my stomach queasy, but other than that I felt good. I figured if I’d be upchucking every morning if I was pregnant. My Mom was sick for three
months with Beth, Jen and me. Doesn’t a girl usually take after her mother?
    By Halloween my nipples felt sore and when once—when waiting for my Dad to pick me up after my shift—the cold wind felt like razor blades slicing through them.
    I needed to get to the clinic, but I read in the paper they stopped the bus runs
from my neighborhood. I had my driver’s license, but I didn’t have enough money saved for a car. My father waited while I cashed my check
each week, took it all but ten bucks. He knew I kept my tip money in an
envelope. I’d hand it over to him every Friday as well.
    I put the extra in another envelope and stuck it under my tissues and makeup
bag.
    The only satisfaction I had was knowing my stash was hidden from my father.
    He said, “Dreamers only end up with dreams. Hard workers get what they want in life.” He changed jobs a lot and collected unemployment whenever he could. It angered
me that my hard earned money was being pissed away because my Dad didn’t deny his own dreams.
    I dreamed a lot about Ken. We’d be driving to the lake, holding hands as the sun set. The drummer sat between
us, lifting his hands up and down, his beats getting louder and louder. I saw
Belle clawing her way out of a shallow grave.  Three old women kneeled beside a screaming woman. They sliced open her belly
with kitchen knives and then removed a mass of slimy flesh from the hole they’d made.
    Nightmare images were everywhere, but somehow it seemed normal and as though I
was part of the horror.
    “Why didn’t you come back sooner?” I asked Ken.
    He didn’t answer. He just kept driving past graveyards and on deserted roads flanked by
lakes of blood and fire.
    There came a time when I dreaded sleep, but I’d always give in to it.
    While at work I went to the toilet more than usual, checking my underwear,
looking for telltale splotches of blood.
    I told myself my period would come any day and things would be alright.
    I’d jotted down the phone number in back of Ken’s truck, called it once. It rang—twenty times or more. I figured he was on the road. I’d try again. I’d get to tell him what was going down.
    I deceived myself a lot back then.

    *     *     *

    Flora’s room is like mine except she’s got a spider plant hanging on a hook by her window. The Ouija board box is on
her bed. A green sticker is on the upper right corner.
    $9.99. A Special From Woolworth’s Toy Department.
    Flora bites her lip as she presses her fingers on the plastic planchette. I can
feel her knees shaking against mine.
    “We’ll only speak to spirits of light,” she says to the board. “We won’t allow evil.”
    “That ought to do it,” I say, thinking of the dream I’d had and then wondering how something bought at Woolworth’s could conjure anything but dust and neglect.
    I think about the ghost girl Linda saw. Will she speak to us? Appear outside the
window with sooty hands clawing on glass as smoke pours from her lips?
    Flora sighs. “You ask it something.”
    Why not? “Will I ever see Ken again?”
    The planchette moves beneath our hands, flies across the board and points to YES .
    “Cool,” Flora smiles. “Are you in Heaven?”
    NO
    “Where are you then?” She leans forward as though a voice will suddenly erupt from the board.
    H-E-R-E
    “This is freaky,” she says.
    The planchette moves again—slowly from letter to letter. Flora and I say them aloud.
    “