A Patch of Green
By Ebony Haywood
When my student, Cristina, told me that she lived next door to a cemetery, my ears perked.
“A cemetery?”
“Yeah. Sometimes it feels creepy.”
Cristina is fifteen with eyes that are always alert and a ponytail that sweeps the air like a pendulum. She is one of those students who believes in the vastness of her future as she invests in academic expenditures that will yield nods from universities: junior varsity basketball; Junior State of America; The National Honors Society; Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement. She lives with her family in Compton, in a house that her parents bought in 1994.
“My mom and Aunt Teresa have heard strange sounds. But my mom says it’s because my aunt played with a ouija board.”
“Think your mom will talk to me about it?”
I drove down Santana— a narrow street lined with single story houses caged in chain link fences. Small pit bulls with big egos and menacing growls guarded most front yards, some grassless and dejected, others cluttered with an assortment of relics— rusty tin water pails, chipped terracotta flowerpots, lopsided swing sets that creaked in the breeze, inflatable swimming pools next to half coiled water hoses. Dusty parked cars flanked both sides of the street. I grabbed the first parking spot I found in front of a house where an old woman sat silently on the porch, watching me, studying me.
At the end of the cul de sac stood the foreboding cement wall, nearly ten feet tall, that separated the street from the cemetery. Adjacent to its gray facade was a vivid patch of green— the Jimenez's front lawn.
Cristina’s father, Luis, welcomed me. He spoke very little English; I spoke very little Spanish.
“Sit,” he said with a warm smile as he handed me a chilled bottle of water. He called for his wife, Carolina, who came out of a bedroom shadowed by their youngest daughter, fourteen-year-old Maria, who spoke fluent English.
“Cristina is on her way home now. My mom just called her. She lost track of time.”
When Cristina walked in five minutes later, she was full of smiles and apologies.
“I’m so sorry! I was still in MESA when my mom called to say you were here.”
She sat snuggly on the sofa between her mother and sister. Luis muted the television as he relaxed in his recliner and listened to his wife tell the story of her sister, Teresa.
Teresa was the youngest daughter of the family. She enjoyed the amenities that most children prize— popsicles and baby dolls, bicycles and cartoons, hot dogs for lunch and ice cream for dessert. She had friends with whom she laughed and played. But by the time Teresa turned sixteen, things began to shift.
Her mood grew dark. The laughter that used to rumble in her belly and echo out of her mouth dissipated into a deafening silence that neither Carolina nor any of her family could pierce. One by one, her childhood friends that shared her smiles and giggles dropped out of her life, avoiding her in the school cafeteria, avoiding eye contact with her during passing periods. A new breed of friendships emerged, morose and mysterious. They studied the occult, and Teresa’s family looked upon them as strange and dangerous. Packaged with these new alliances was something that Carolina found even more disturbing— a ouija board. “She would play it over her friend’s house. Ever since then, she’s never been the same.”
By the time Carolina and Luis married and settled into their new home in Compton, Teresa was twenty-one and married to her husband, Alex. Things had been rocky between Alex and his bride. She saw things that he couldn’t see— spirits— around their apartment. She claimed to see the ghosts of people she never knew— men, women, and children who followed her and watched her. They never spoke, they never conveyed messages. They were just there, suspended in the air. She couldn’t sleep, and Alex decided it would be best for Teresa to stay with her sister for a couple of weeks, hoping that the time away from their apartment would dispel her visions. Carolina and Luis agreed, and Teresa took residence on their living room floor, the coolest place in the house during the stifling heat of August.
Around 8:30 one balmy night, Carolina went to prepare a bottle of milk in the kitchen for Jessica, who was a few months old. The house was quiet. Luis was away at work; Jessica lay wide awake, gurgling quietly in her crib, and Teresa lay dozing on the floor. Carolina suddenly heard a loud tick-tock, tick-tock. Her limbs froze, and her heart pounded as her eyes searched the kitchen for the source. There were no clocks in the house, only a digital clock on the VCR and the plastic digital wristwatches that sat atop her bedroom dresser. Tick-tock, tick-tock. It sounded as if the noise were coming and going, disappearing and reappearing in different rooms and at odd angles. She tightened the bottle lid with haste and ran swiftly to her daughter’s room. Then she heard Teresa scream.
“The clock! It’s going to get me! It’s going to get me!”
Carolina grabbed Jessica and dashed to the living room where Teresa sat on the floor, crammed in a corner, terror streaming from her eyes. Carolina needed to think clearly and quickly. She heard the clocks too, but she didn’t want to feed her sister’s horror. She glanced out the window at the looming cemetery wall and still couldn’t see anything that would explicitly explain the sounds she and Teresa could hear. She took a deep breath and huddled with her sister in the corner, holding her with her spare arm, crying with her, whispering in her ear, “It’s nothing. There are no clocks. You’re okay. Go back to sleep.”
I watched Carolina as she recalled that night. She seemed so certain that something supernatural had taken place. I wasn’t so convinced.
“Where do you think the sound was coming from?”
“I don’t know. It sounded like it was coming from everywhere.”
“And you’re sure there were no other clocks in the house that might have sounded?”
“There were no other clocks.”
“Perhaps the neighbors had loud clocks?”
“No. They sounded like they were right here, in the house.”
“Did Teresa eventually get better?”
Teresa didn’t get better. She went back home to her husband. Two children and ten years later, they divorced.
“She should never have messed with that ouija board,” said Carolina, “Things just got worse and worse. The evilness follows her wherever she goes.”
Luis, who up until this point had been mostly silent, interjected, “No. Your sister has schizophrenia.”
My eyes widened as I looked over at Carolina, who looked as though she had been reminded of something that she would rather forget. A memory that had been dusty and was suddenly being polished.
About five years after her divorce, Teresa was diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed in a mental institution, where she stayed, according to Carolina, for two weeks. According to Luis, she stayed for two months.
There is one thing of which I am sure: Carolina loves her sister. She visits her often at their mother’s house where Teresa lives, rising every morning at 5:00 to shower and eat breakfast, a routine she hasn’t broken in the last fifteen years. She doesn’t work, but she runs errands on foot every day, and she goes to church on Sundays. Perhaps Carolina didn’t mention Teresa’s diagnosis because if she did, she would have acknowledged the death of the sister she once knew— the sister who laughed and played. Perhaps the cemetery and the eerie ticking of the clocks are reminders to invest time wisely and purposely. Or perhaps it means nothing at all.
I gathered my things to leave and took a final look around this once haunted living room. Family photographs— the kind you take at Sears on a Sunday afternoon when everyone is clad in their starched dresses and suits and patent-leather shoes— hung carefully in arranged rows on their wood-paneled walls. There were other photographs, homespun and archival: Carolina and Luis, young and garbed in white, standing in front of their wedding chapel; the eldest daughter, Jessica, proudly holding her USC diploma. Tucked away in a corner was a faded picture that captured the youthful exuberance of Luis with his soccer team, standing with assurance and ruddy cheeks, and with the same alertness that twinkled in Cristina’s eyes.
As I sat in that living room, as I sat surrounded by warm bodies and happy family pictures framed in silver, I nearly forgot that less than fifty feet away lay a graveyard burdened with the dead— people who once had hearts that pumped blood and dreams and promises and hopes. People who at one time had their own patch of green.
END
Author Bio: Ebony Haywood is a writer, teacher, and energy healer who helps people unblock their creative flow and generate solutions for their personal and professional lives. After grappling with writer’s block, Ebony Haywood talked with other bloggers and discovered they struggled, too. In 2020, she launched her podcast, “Motivation To Write,” to inspire writers and entrepreneurs to become the best versions of themselves. Ebony lives in Southern California, where she enjoys cheese pizza, anything with avocado, and classic films.