Dead: A Ghost Story by Mina Khan

 
     
    Nasreen watches in shamed
silence as her husband and the Hispanic woman have sex.
    He is on top, eyes
scrunched shut, thrusting, plunging in and out as if driven by hard
fury. Matin’s flabby arms shake under the strain. A series of short
grunts mark his efforts. Maria lies under him with her legs
sticking up in the air in a wide open V and red nails digging into
his pale, hairy back. She lets loose long guttural moans from time
to time and a few feverish “Ay, Papi!”-s, all the while watching
the flickering television over Matin’s shoulder. His belly slaps
into her body, over and over again. Slap, slap, slap.
    Finally, their faces
freeze in ugly grimaces. They let out joint yowls and collapse in a
tangle of limbs in different shades of brown. The sour smell of
sweat and sex bloats the small room.
    Hovering above them,
Nasreen sees Matin’s bald spot sticking out like an egg in his nest
of unruly black hair. Her gaze traces the age spots flecking
Maria’s arms and thighs and notices the faded pink flowers in the
twisted sheets that hadn’t been changed since she last slept in the
bed.
    In disgust, Nasreen turns
away and finds herself swept up to the rafters. She still isn’t
used to being dead and without the weight of her body. She swirls
around, despondent and unsettled.
    Watching the animal
rutting brings back bad memories of all the times her husband had
demanded his “rights.” Even now, she wants to scratch and kick at
him, scream her hatred. She’d tried. Instead of satisfying impact,
her fists simply went through Matin. Her mouth moved soundlessly
when she’d tried to hurl accusations at him. They don’t see her
now, standing there glaring at them. She doesn’t even cast a
shadow.
    A shudder of regret passes
through Nasreen. Why did she exist as a mere shadow when she’d been
alive? Why did she swallow all those bitter words in the name of
family peace? Why didn’t she use her God-given legs to simply walk
away? Now she is of even less substance than the fragile and
forgotten cobweb hanging in the darkest corner of the house. The
thought makes Nasreen’s eyes burn with hot, stinging tears. Loud,
heavy sobs wrench out of her as she realizes that in death, as in
life, she’s nothing.
    In bed, both Maria and
Matin tense up. Their eyes fly open, they lie very still, holding
their breaths.
    “ What was that?” Maria
whispers. “Did you hear it?”
    Matin, silent for a few
heartbeats, shakes his head. “It’s the wind. Just the
wind.”
    “ It sounded like a woman
crying,” Maria says, as she snuggles deeper into his soft chest.
“Such a sad sound.”
    Nasreen stops crying and
stares. Did they hear her or was it really the wind? She shouts,
“Matin, you selfish bastard!” Her words fall soundlessly into the
room.
    Disappointed, she sinks
down, through the floorboards, into the living room with its orange
shag carpet. The hum of the window unit fills the silence. The
smell of old cooking— laced with chilies and turmeric and cumin—
hangs like an oily curtain in the air. Nasreen winds her way to the
kitchen, her hand brushing against the peeling blue wallpaper with
its orange and white flowers. A whisper soft Shhhh-shhh-shh
accompanies her progress. Hope ignites inside like a candle,
already melted into a short stub. She plucks at the paper. But her
ghost fingers can’t grasp, can’t hold on. If only she’d torn the
paper off the walls while she’d been alive and able. With a sigh, a
last touch, she leaves the wall behind.
    She stands in front of the
kitchen sink looking out of the single window -- a familiar stance,
a familiar view. The sky is white hot. The earth, flat and dusty,
dotted with scrawny shrubs. The kiss between sky and earth is dry
and parched. The panorama stretches, unraveling, as far as Nasreen
can see, just like it had the day she’d arrived in Sand Lake,
Texas, seven years ago.
     
    Matin had bought a
second-hand station wagon, piled Nasreen and all their