Ghosts and Other Lovers by Lisa Tuttle Page B

shoulders and wriggling my hips, determined and indifferent to discomfort.
    And then I was through. I was in the garden, and I had done it all by myself! Wouldn't Jean be proud of me when she knew!
    I had to find her. She must be here. Maybe she had found a playhouse or some other wonderful treasure that the high wall had been built to conceal. I ran across the velvety lawn, between spreading oaks and glossy-leaved magnolias, aware of the big house which dominated the garden, although I did not look at it directly. I felt giddy with excitement. I felt as if I was in the middle of a game of hide-and-seek, but I couldn't remember if I were hider or seeker. Years later, trying to remember details, I couldn't recall anything specific that I might not have seen in a dozen other gardens. Just grass and trees and leaves and flowers, greens and darker greens glowing slightly in the twilight. And yet the air, warm on my bare skin, was charged with significance. The lengthening shadows promised mysteries within. The evening held its breath: something was about to happen.
    She saw me first. She saw a child with tangled brown hair and dirty feet, wearing pink pajamas and running in wide circles on the velvety lawn, through the gathering dusk.
    The child felt her unexpected presence and froze, like a wild animal, and turned her head, and stared.
    There were two of them, a man and a woman. They were standing very close to each other, but not touching. Not yet. He was looking at her. She was looking at me.
    We stared at each other as if we knew each other, and yet as if we had never seen each other before. There was something about her that was like my mother -- like my mother disguised as someone else. I knew her and yet I didn't. I waited for her to say my name and tell me who she was.
    But instead of moving toward me, she half turned to look at the man beside her, and she reached for his hand. Then they were gazing into each other's eyes, a unit which excluded me, and I was suddenly terrified.
     
    * * *
     
I suppose I ran away then. I don't remember what happened next, or how I got home. I must have told Jean about my adventure because we spent the rest of that summer searching in vain for a high brick wall and the garden behind it. We never found it. Jean lost patience, or belief. Her interests led her in other directions. But even though I stopped talking about it, I never forgot. I was sure I would find the walled garden again someday.
     
    I was thirteen, I think, when Jean -- who was in high school by then, and dating boys -- bought a hair-coloring kit and streaked my hair blonde. I can't remember exactly why: whether I had wheedled, or she had decided it was time her little sister emerged from the cocoon of childhood into a brightly colored adolescence. At any rate, it brought us together. We were happily intimate, perched on stools in the tiny, warm, brightly lit room, inhaling the acrid fumes from my hair while Jean worked with her pencils and brushes and pots and sticks of makeup to redefine my face. We weren't using the mirror that covered the whole wall behind the sink; instead, we gazed solemnly and intently into each other's faces. Every now and then Jean would draw back to look at the effects of her work, and my heart would lift when she nodded with satisfaction. I imagined that she was going to make me over in her own image. At last, I was going to be like Jean -- I would be grown up!
    When she was done, Jean took hold of my shoulders and turned me toward the mirror.
    "There," she said. "The girl becomes a woman. What do you think?"
    The face in the mirror did look like a woman's, and I knew I'd seen that woman before. I stared at eyes larger and more blue, higher cheekbones, a narrower nose, a complexion without freckles, and saw a familiar stranger. I remembered the woman in the garden, and suddenly, finally, I understood. I knew . That woman, of course, was me.
    Was the garden real? That wasn't the question. The garden