Listen to Becky Hagenston read “Ghost Story.”

The ghost has traveled across two counties to end up tangled in our fence. It bobs in the late autumn breeze, one eyehole caught in a post. Decorations are still turning up two days after the Halloween tornado: plastic pumpkins in ponds, skeletons in magnolia trees. And the candy! The sky opened up with Smarties and Laffy Taffy and Hershey’s Kisses. A caramel apple fell on a dog in Ackerman, knocking it unconscious.

My sister brings the ghost inside. Its Styrofoam head is dented but its sheet is mostly fine.

On TV: drone footage of flattened land, splintered houses, trees with their limbs shorn off. Candy wrappers like butterflies trapped in shrubbery.

Maybe a tornado will hit us and then we won’t have to clean this place, my sister says, and she doesn’t sound like she’s joking.

She drapes the ghost across the chair where our father used to sit. There, she says.

I feel like it’s watching us, I say, and she says: You’re supposed to feel that way.

In my childhood bedroom, I peel yellowed tape off the purple wallpaper I chose when I was nine. Across the hall, my sister fills
Hefty bags with her old plastic horses.

Our real houses are not far away, but they feel very far.

Our husbands are in new houses with new women.

When we ask our children what they want us to save for them, they say: Trash everything.

—

The ghost eats breakfast with us. My sister puts orange juice in front of it and says, Drink up.

I say, You’ll be late for school.

Then we load up my car and drive to Goodwill. Three strong men unload our old books and end tables and our mother’s overcoat and our father’s flat-­screen TV.

I have the feeling that the ghost will be gone when we get home, but it’s still there.

It has a name, my sister says, but I don’t know what it is. It’s driving me crazy.

I drive to my lover’s apartment, and instead of having sex, we talk about tornadoes. We talk about shredding versus burning and decide shredding is better. I think about telling him about the ghost, but what would I say?

Carefully, we ask about each other’s families.

When I get home, my sister is at the kitchen table eating a sandwich and there’s another ghost draped across our mother’s chair. I recognize the blue sheet from the bathroom cabinet. The mouth and eyes are magic-­markered, and there’s a piece of red string around its neck to make a head, stuffed with old rags.

Is there any sandwich meat left? I ask my sister, and she says, Yep.

After lunch, we pull Tupperware from the cabinets, fill trash bags with old shoes and Christmas decorations and shredded bank statements.

I can’t stand this, my sister says finally, and goes back to her old room and shuts the door.

Later, I sit alone in the dark kitchen and drink Bud Light, and the ghosts pretend not to notice.

—

In the morning, my sister and her car are gone. There’s a new ghost sitting in her chair, made from the sheet that used to be on her bed. I sit with my ghost family and scroll through the day’s terrible news.

When the wind picks up, I carry the ghosts outside and lay them on the lawn, close enough to hold hands if they had hands. I lie down with them, the cold grass against my back; we flutter together in the wind and stare up at the sky, the distant clouds. We can see for miles, but we can’t really know what’s coming. ■

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