Manuel’s Ghost

When I was seventeen, I was insatiable for experiences that would leave me breathless.  No matter that we lived in Campos, a tired village with one dusty street and crumbly homes.  I liked to tell myself that adventures could be had anywhere.  Here, we rode our neighbor’s horse across cornfields, swam in lakes and rivers, climbed atop abandoned houses to look at the stars.  We did all this when we weren’t helping Papa pick arroz, which was intricate and laborious work in that the rice was hidden between spongy sheaves of swamp grass underwater.

Certainly, Rio de Janeiro, a half day’s drive away, was more enticing in comparison.  There, skyscrapers touched the sky, people turned on the light with the flip of a switch, and the Carnaval went on for days and days, an explosion of extravagant floats and beautiful people like you’d never seen.  At least that’s what folks said.

In a few week’s time, Manuel, lucky in that he was the older sibling by two years, would move to Rio for college.  Until then, I wanted to create memories that would float me along a slow-moving stream when I was feeling bittersweet about his absence.  You see, Manuel had been my best friend and also my rock since I could remember — his name was the first I happily yelled as a babe, his arms the ones I reached for when I fell out of the tree in our backyard.

So the morning Papa told me we didn’t have to work, I whooped and ran into Manuel’s room.  There, I lightly trailed my fingers across his sleeping face until he woke up, laughing and smacking at my hand.  When he agreed to come with me to the lake, I rushed to pack a worn blanket and a loaf of Mama’s pão.

Once there, we waded into the water in our clothes and splashed each other.  We floated on our backs and kicked our legs, the cool water spraying our faces.  We ate bread while lounging in the sun, our skin darkening to a rich brown.  We climbed trees with boughs leading up like ladders.  From the top of the tree, we could see the entire curvature of the lake, the fiery red hills in the distance.

By the time we headed back, we were feliz, exhausted.

But just as we neared home, we saw her, the girl with the doe eyes, Maria.  Manuel glanced at me, his cheeks red.  I knew what he wanted, and so I sighed and took the basket from him.

They spoke in whispers while I balanced the basket on my hip and pretended to look in the other direction.  It wasn’t long before Manuel ran back to me.

“We’re going for a walk,” he said, excited.

“Mama will want you back for dinner,” I said in my bossiest voice, and then I turned and walked away before he could say anything more.

At home, I dropped the basket off inside.  I went to the back of the house where I sat on the grass and watched chickens peck at the ground.  Soon, I became bored with this and went for a walk along the dusty road in front of our house.  The road led past one small grocery that was closed for the day.  Beyond this were a few homes much like our own with their sweeping porches, gardens, and water wells.  I’d barely made it past the grocery when Pedro, our old neighbor, went riding by on his horse.

“Why aren’t you off running around with your brother?” he asked, his grin lopsided.  His face was deeply carved with wrinkles, his eyes bright reservoirs of green.

I shrugged.  “He’s with some girl.”

Pedro kept on grinning, ran his hand through his sweaty hair.  “Hardest thing when the person you love takes a different road.”

I shielded my eyes against the sun.  “He’s leaving for Rio soon anyway.  Nothing I can do about it.”

“That’s right, garota,” he said.  “Let the bird fly.  You’ll be flying soon enough too, no doubt about it.”

With that, he winked and rode away.  I went back inside and stared out the window.  Surely Manuel would be getting back any minute now.  With him gone, I had no desire to go adventuring.  All I wanted to do was sleep away the sadness that had crept into my bones.  It was as though he was gone already, except that he wasn’t.

Later, Mama called me in to help warm up the feijao.  At dinner, I told them that Manuel had gone on a walk with Maria hours before.

“I’m sure he’ll be home soon enough,” Papa said, unconcerned.

I looked at Mama to see if she would say anything about it, but she looked cansada, the darkness under her eyes telling me she’d been getting little sleep lately.  I picked at my food and didn’t say another word.

After I helped Mama with the dishes, we sat in our rocking chairs on the porch.  Dusk settled over the land like a crimson veil, the flowers’ dark profiles leaning toward one another, embracing.  Mama was quiet, but she held my hand in that way she sometimes did to let me know she loved me.

When finally I became sleepy, I gave Mama a hug and held on for a moment.  She smelled like garlic and peppermint, and her hair, thick and curly like my own, was soft against my cheek.

In my bedroom, I changed into my nightgown.  I tried to fall asleep, but my earlier sadness had dug a hole into my chest, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether the hole would continue to grow after Manuel had left, whether it would take over my world with its incessant crying.

~

Sometime in the night, I awoke to the sound of wails.  I stumbled from bed and ran through our dark house until I’d reached the kitchen.  Maria stood there with her parents.  Even in the dim light of the oil lamps, I could make out her face, pained and twisted like a knob on a diseased tree.  Papa turned toward me, his face twisted too.  Mama was kneeling on the ground, clutching her chest like she was in pain.  She muttered incomprehensibly, but I could still make out Manuel’s name.

I looked at Papa and asked him with my eyes, my breath stuck in my throat.

“Manuel fell off the roof of that old abandoned house down the street,” he said, choking on the words.

Before Papa could say anything more, I grabbed one of the oil lamps and ran down the hallway.  I stopped at Manuel’s bedroom door.  He was lying there, just like that morning when I’d woken him up.  His complexion was pale and yellow though, not dark olive like usual.

I dropped down beside him and shook him, my face wet with tears, my throat tight with denial.  When he didn’t respond, I grabbed hold of his hand and squeezed, dug my fingernails in as hard as I could.  Still, he did nothing, and his hand was cold, too cold.  A wild animal screamed then, the raw sound devastating.  Papa rushed into the room and wrapped his arms around me, and it was then that I realized the scream had come from me.  I buried my face in Papa’s shoulder and sobbed.  Mama came in too, and we all held each other in the dark of Manuel’s room, the moon outside his window the only reminder that there was still light in this world.

~

In the morning, I woke up in my own bedroom.  My parents were sleeping on the ground near me.  I leaned over and touched Mama’s brow, and then I slowly got to my feet.  My chest had become hollow overnight.  At my window, I watched Bonita, our dog, sniff around the yard for something that didn’t exist.  The sky was barely holding onto nighttime.

When I first saw the silhouette near the pond, I pushed the palms of my hands against the window like I could break through.  “Manuel,” I whispered, my heart fluttering.  I flew out of the house, my voice lifting in a song.  “Manuel, você está aqui!”

I reached for his hands but grasped air instead.  “Oh,” I said, taking a step back.  It was then that I noticed how filmy he was, no more substantial than the one sheer curtain in my parents’ bedroom.  He shimmered gold and turquoise like a lake beneath a setting sun.

Manuel quickly glanced at me before lifting his face back up to the sky.  I looked in the same direction — ghostly figures were slipping through clouds, disappearing behind them.

I went and stood right in front of him so he had to look at me.  “Please don’t,” I whispered.

He put his hand to my cheek as though to say goodbye, and then he began to lift.  I cried his name and lunged for his legs but fell in the mud.  I pulled myself to my knees and watched as he floated higher and higher.

I couldn’t let him leave, not again.

“You go now, and I swear I’ll throw myself from the same rooftop,” I yelled up at him, my hands in fists.  “I swear I’ll do it, Manuel.”

He was way above the trees, but he must have heard me because he stopped and stared at me like he didn’t believe what I’d just said.  I held my breath, waiting.  When he finally came back down, his hue shifted to gray all at once.  He sat down beside me, his face expressionless.  Still, I sobbed with relief and moved closer to him.  He didn’t seem to notice.  He was staring at the sky, where the clouds continued to disperse until they were gone.

~

I moved to Rio two years later, Manuel trailing me like a comet, a ghostly boy with the shadow of a beard and vacant eyes.

Tia Rebecca, a tall woman with dyed blonde hair, picked me up at the bus station.  I had one satchel with me.  Manuel had already disappeared and was probably exploring on his own.

“Julia, you look so much like your mother,” Tia Rebecca said, reaching out her hand to touch my face.

I blushed.  She smiled and grabbed my arm like we were good friends and led me to the car.  Though I’d glimpsed Rio on the bus, I wasn’t prepared for the grandeur once she began driving — the city buildings huddled close together like stony, majestic creatures, and the ocean stretched forever, a tapestry of glorious blue.  The people on the streets shouted at one another with unnerving familiarity, and the cars relentlessly honked at pedestrians and other vehicles.  I sat back in my seat, startled by the loudness of this world.

Tia Rebecca laughed at me, though not in an unkind way.  “You’d be surprised how quickly you get used to it,” she said.

I didn’t think so, but this I kept to myself.  I didn’t stray from her apartment, not at first.  I slept on her living room sofa and spent the first few days watching television, the incessant images reminding me of warped dreams.  Late at night, I woke up to city lights glittering outside the window.  Pulling my robe tight around me, I stepped onto the porch.  Young men and women walked by the apartment often, their laughter and spontaneity infectious.  Like this, Rio reminded me of a suspended globe, all lit up with music inside.

Sometimes Manuel appeared when I was out there, his eyebrows furrowed, his mouth a thin line, his pallor almost black.  Before I could get in a word, he’d vanish into the dark of the night, a firefly here and then gone.  I’d step back inside, sit down on the sofa and stare at the city lights until sleep overtook me.

~

Before long, I was working at the furniture store Tia Rebecca had taken over after her husband died.  She gave me several dresses that no longer fit her, showed me how to style my thick hair like Sônia Braga’s.  I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror, this woman with lustrous hair and almond-shaped eyes.  When I spoke to customers, especially the men, they stared at me with unmasked curiosity.

Eventually, I found a tiny and inexpensive apartment in Flamengo.  The living room I filled up with one sofa and a couple of plants.  Tia Rebecca had given me a painting of the blue ocean which I hung on the wall above the sofa.  Manuel came inside sometimes, rested on the wooden floor near the painting.  I sat down next to him, my heart aching for some reason I couldn’t identify.

“Cristo Redentor?” I cried one evening, desperate for something to bring us back together.  As children, we’d always spoken of how mystical it would be to see the towering Jesus Christ statue.

His lukewarm nod was all I needed to laugh with relief.  For the first time since I could remember, I slept through the night.

The following day, we took a bus to Corcovado Mountain just as the sun was starting to rise.  Manuel’s color matched the pale blue sky’s, and I wore my favorite white dress with pink flowers embroidered along the bottom.  When Cristo Redentor came into sight, I kept my eyes on him, the light feeling inside me like a buoy.

Once there, we craned our necks back to look at the impossibly large Christ.  His arms were wide open in welcome as he looked out toward Rio, his head slightly bowed as though praying for all of us.

“Que lindo!” I exclaimed.  Tourists and cariocas milled about, cameras in hand.

Manuel stared for a long time.  It was then that I remembered the time he’d pretended to be Jesus.  He must have been eleven when he climbed onto a forest log and passionately preached about the need to have compassion for all life.

Now here we were, in front of the prophet he’d always loved, but his eyes were more troubled than I’d ever seen them, black orbs swirling with intense despair.  When I reached for him, he turned away and wandered to the other side.

My delight faded.  Suddenly, I yearned for the quiet of Campos, for my family.  Nevermind that since Manuel’s death, my parents had worn their pain like a cloak of sober wisdom, their world a series of chores and quiet despair.  They’d warned me there was nothing left for me in Campos, but home was familiar, the only nest I’d ever known.

Still, something kept me in Rio.  I took to spending my evenings with the television, the soap operas addicting in the same way cajuzinhos are.  At first, Manuel watched them with me, his silhouette like a dreary sky before a storm.  Then he began to disappear for a couple of days at a time.  When he returned, he never lingered for more than a few minutes.

A couple of months passed, my life a blur of mundane routine with erratic visits from Manuel.  My only pleasure came in the mornings.  I’d make myself a cup of tea upon waking and sit on my porch.  With the warm mug nestled in my hands, I’d watch as the sun slowly crested over Rio. For a brief moment, I could almost taste what my life might be like if I let myself fall into it, and it was delicious, like ripened berries on my tongue, or chocolate that’s melted a little in the sun, or whipped cream that’s been slowly stirred by hand.

~

At work, men asked me out sometimes.  I always muttered that I was too busy, and then I hid in the back room until they’d gone.  It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to go with them.  Once in a while, I did.  But as soon as they asked, I became dizzy at the thought of being close to a man, something I’d never done.

Only one man waited around.  Luiz, whose hazel eyes were unsettlingly perceptive, was more patient than the others.  When I came out from the back, he looked at me like he knew something about me that even I didn’t know, and then he asked me once more if I’d go on a date with him.  My cheeks burning, I nodded.

The night of our first date, we dined at a restaurant not far from where I lived.  My nerves were afire, my palms sweaty.  I avoided eye contact and spoke little.  Even so, Luiz filled the quiet by talking comfortably about himself — he was a closet poet, a lover of nature, a future psychologist.

“A psychologist?” I asked, taking a delicate bite of fish.

“That’s what I’m going to college for.  I want to help people understand themselves.”

“Maybe you can help me,” I said, joking.

“Only if you tell me all your secret thoughts.”

I laughed.  “Actually, I do have a question.”

“Ask me.”

“How do you let go of the past?”

“You always focus on the present moment.”  He spoke without hesitating.

“How can I do that when my brother died?  You see, he’s gone, except that he’s not.”  I looked up to see if he’d laugh.

He didn’t.  Instead, he reached for my hand.  We sat there for a few moments, our food untouched.  Then Luiz cleared his throat.  “My mother died a couple of years ago.”

I stared at him, this man who’d offered up kindness in spite of his own pain.  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, knowing my words were flimsy.  Nothing could take the place of his pain.  I knew this as well as anyone.

His eyes followed a busboy wiping down tables.  “Está bem.  Death is natural, right?  We fear it, but who’s to say what’s on the other side?  My mother told me in a dream once, ‘Go on with your life, Luiz.  Don’t go around making up stories about how I’m unhappy after leaving this life.  I’ve never been happier.’”

“You really think she’s happy?”

“I do,” he said.  “Otherwise I couldn’t let go.”

After dinner, he walked me home.  We sat down on the wooden porch swing and watched folks walking home, women with bags of groceries in their arms, old men who grinned in our direction, young couples immersed in conversation.  At first, the sky was streaked with violet and fuchsia, and then it was dark, just a few scattered stars and one lonely moon.

Luiz left not too long after nightfall.  The next evening he stopped by again.  I made us tea, and we went out to the porch again.  The smell of dinner drifted over from other homes, and kids raucously laughed as they played hide-and-seek in the street, peering from behind cars and buildings.  When Luiz’s hand grazed mine, I invited him inside.

On the sofa, he curled his fingers into my hair.  We kissed, our tongues strong with the taste of black tea and honey.  Then I leaned my head onto his chest, breathed in the cinnamon scent of him.  We’d dozed off when I felt Manuel’s presence.

I sat up and peered into the kitchen.  Manuel stared back, his face partially masked by shadows.  My breathing grew uneasy.

“Manuel, why do you look like that?” I whispered.

He continued to stand there, his eyes glowing with anguish.  I shook Luiz awake and whispered to him that he had to leave.  He slowly pulled on his shoes and stared at me with confusion.  He didn’t ask though, and I was grateful.  I wouldn’t have known what to say.

Before he left, he hugged me and kissed my forehead.  I wanted to hold onto him, but I knew he had to go.

I waited until Luiz had disappeared down the road before seeking out Manuel in the kitchen.  But he’d already gone too.

~

The next morning, I stood in the dim bathroom light in front of the mirror, tracing the violet shadows beneath my eyes, my fingers tender the way Luiz’s had been.  My shoulders and chest felt heavy, deflated.

When I saw Manuel’s reflection in the mirror, I jumped.  I stepped out into the hallway and faced him.  “Manuel, please tell me what you want,” I said.

He swept by me then, left through the living room window.  At the window, I searched for him, desperate.  I went to turn away, but a mad fluttering caught my eye.  A fly, trapped inside the window, flapped its tiny body against the pane, its wings iridescent in the triangular patch of sunlight.  When I opened the window, the fly plunged into the morning air, frantic to get away.  It was then that the memory flooded me — the mysterious parting in the clouds, Manuel’s yearning to leave, my threat to throw myself off a roof if he did leave.

Shame hit me like an avalanche of self-loathing.  I’d suppressed the memory, convinced myself that Manuel wanted to stay.

I ran out back and breathed in the thick air.  Silver clouds were rolling in, the sun slipping behind them.  I sat down near the untended garden bed and looked at my hands resting in the dirt.  They looked skinny and childish.

When I looked up, Manuel was standing near the fence.

I stood up and quickly walked toward him.  “I’m sorry I kept you here,” I said, my voice tremulous.  “I’m sorry.  Maybe I didn’t want you to go before, but I swear that I do now.  I want you to be happy, Manuel.  I want that more than anything.”

Manuel stared at me.  In the neighbor’s yard, a dog barked like mad, a shrill and whiny call.  Bossa nova music reached us from a neighbor’s house.  At the front of my apartment, two people loudly argued about who was going to make dinner that night.

Just as the rain began to fall, Manuel came and stood next to me, gave one slight nod.  The subtlest hints of yellow and teal were now coming through the nighttime blue of his ethereal form.  I laughed and cried all at once.  Manuel turned his face up to the sky, the rain falling through him like thousands of diamonds.

~

A few days later, Manuel and I went to Pão de Açúcar.  From up there, the ocean and Rio came together like electric lovers.

“You’re leaving soon, aren’t you?” I asked.  I leaned back against the railing, the wind like soft feathers against my skin.  A couple of people were just feet from me, but I didn’t care if they heard me — they’d think I was talking to myself.

Manuel nodded, his eyes shining.  A frigatebird soared across the sky, dark wings stretched wide.

“I wish I could hug you before you go,”  I said quietly.

His arms came around me then, a waterfall of light I couldn’t feel.  Nevertheless, I leaned into him and closed my eyes.

After we left Pão de Açúcar, we took the bus to Copacabana and went for a long walk along the beach.  Eventually, we settled on a bench in the park.  Children were on the swings, laughing, their heads thrown back in childlike bliss.  Their parents watched from nearby, some of them smiling as though remembering their own childhood adventures.

When the children and their parents had left, I sat down on one of the swings and pumped my legs until I was flying as high as I could.  I laughed too, the past and the future leaving me like ghosts I no longer needed.  At one point, I glimpsed Manuel from the corner of my eyes, a dazzling flash of rainbow colors.

Just as my feet touched the ground, I realized he was gone.  The sun was a golden coin tucked against the horizon, clouds like angels in white gowns.  I whispered goodbye and began swinging again, the wind dancing all around me.

_______

Juliana Crespo’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in North American Review, Hobart, Literary Orphans, Flash Fiction Magazine, Ruminate, and Fiction Southeast, among others. She is an English teacher at a high school in Bloomington, Indiana, where she also lives with her family.