Jazmín was applying sugar wax to my labia when she pointed out the woman standing behind my head.  

 

“She’s dressed all in black, in a beaded dress. She wears a veil like a widow. She’s very old and witchy. Was one of your grandmothers a witch?” 

 

No. One was a Protestant-born Mormon convert. The other was a Mormon-born Protestant convert.  

 

“Maybe not family. But she’s attached to you. She’s always standing right behind you. Some spirits stand next to the person, but she’s right behind your head.” She waved the air just behind her own head to suggest the proximity. 

Great. 

 

That Saturday morning, my conversation with Jazmín, my esthetician of seven months, began with her mentioning that she ordered a tarot deck. My goth bangs are witch-coded, so people are comfortable disclosing these kinds of things to me. 

“Do you know how to read?” 

I do. I’m not very good, but I read for friends. I don’t mention that I am an atheist and reading tarot is just an affect I picked up sometime between admitting that I don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus and converting to anarcha-feminism after watching the 1966 film Daisies. Not watching. Experiencing, worshipping. No, not worshipping. Reveling.  

 

I read tarot like I talk astrology. I can tell you how a Gemini moon will tamper the ego of a Leo sun, while a black moon Lilith in Taurus reveals the shadow work of someone overly reliant on creature comforts. It’s all bullshit. No offense to true believers. I adore the pagans and witchy folks in my life. I celebrate their knowledge of the medicinal properties of herbs and the gorgeous elixirs they make and the powerful intentions they imbue in their speech. I’ve cast a salt circle in my day. I’m fluent as hell in this stuff, but I’ve been disillusioned from magic for a long time. 

 

As I hugged my knees to my chest so Jazmín could wax my ass crack, she told me that she’s not properly trained in mediumship. She just has visions that she doesn’t know how to interpret. Sometimes she’s spot on. That same week she saw a little boy and woman standing next to one of her clients and it turned out that the woman had just lost her nephew and sister. The spirits wanted Jazmín to convey a message that it was time for her client to give-in to the grieving process. The woman wept, admitting that she was leaving the next day for a vacation as part of her healing journey. It was the sign she needed. 

 

My ghost didn’t have a message for me. She’s just hanging out. Five inches from the back of my head.  

“Her veil really scares me,” Jazmín said as I tapped my debit card on the machine. “I’d draw her, but it would take too long to do the beading.” 

 

I was in line at the pharmacy when I received a photo of a nineteenth-century woman in mourning with an obscured face and body swathed in layers of crêpe. A text message from Jazmín: 

This is how I see her that’s why I’m scared of her.  

The fuck. 

I texted back, Do you think she’s a good presence?  

She responded, I don’t feel that she’s a bad presence but she’s been around for a while now and everything is good. 

Another message a minute later: There’s nothing to worry about. 

 

Upon arriving at home, Louis asked why my face was all weird. I explained. 

“So, she was with us this morning? Are you saying we had a threesome with this woman?” 

Yeah, Louis. That’s what I was saying. Worse. She’s seen everything all these years.  

“Jazmín described her outfit like a Spanish beaded gown, kind of like a dancer. But she presented as a widow, too.” 

“A dancer? Like your old neighbor?” 

“Yeah. That’s what I’ve been thinking.” Maristella was a Spanish prima ballerina that danced for the fascist fuck Francisco Franco as a young woman before fleeing to the United States. She lived with her son in the condo next door when I was growing up. Rafael and my mother were close while we lived there. They bonded over both being devout Catholics who believed you had to answer to Jesus for engaging in homosexual behavior, despite Rafael being a gay man himself. They used to keep in touch after I left for college and my mother moved out of that place. They don’t talk much anymore. I don’t talk to my mother much anymore, either. Maristella has been dead for at least a decade. 

Louis thought about it for a moment. “Why would Maristella haunt you?” 

“She gave me some of her jewelry before she died. You know that pointy turquoise ring I always wear? That’s hers. Maybe she’s attached to it.” 

Louis is a gold star atheist who has never even attended a church service and who, like me, believes that when you’re dead, you’re dead. He nodded his head and raised his eyebrow. 

“Could be,” he chuckled.  

“Could also be the ghost of a woman whose hat or bag I bought at an antique shop?” 

“As long as she doesn’t take up any room in the bed. The cats take up too much space as it is.” 

I texted the story to friends who I thought would appreciate my ghost. 

Rita answered, I am speechless. Truly.  

Molly sent me a voice message: “Why did it freak you out when you saw the outfit?”  

I forwarded the picture. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I see.” 

Louis was getting a lot of mileage out of it. 

“Now that we have a third person living here, she can chip in for rent.” 

 

An eerie feeling settled over me all day that I hadn’t experienced since I was a kid. Despite never believing in god, child me was sure I was headed straight for the fiery pits of damnation. I felt the constant weight of supernatural surveillance. As if some dead relative has a window into my brain and heard every fantasy I had about other girls. As if some maniacal angel had been keeping a running tally of every time I transgressed. This magical thinking was trained into me by my OCD-addled Catholic mother and friendly but judgmental Mormon relatives and the Baptist kids at school who straight up told me that I was destined for hell. 

 

After dinner that Saturday, I announced to Louis, “I want to lick your abs.” 

“My ass? Between the cheeks? Je suis choqué.” 

“Abs,” I clarified. Slightly stoned, it dawned on me that our conversations weren’t so private. “Better be careful now. She hears everything we say.” 

“Like they didn’t do rim jobs in her day.” 

Louis fell asleep that night without issue. I was overly confident in my ability to sleep, but when the lights went out, I kept picturing the woman bent over me, the fabric of her veil inches from my face. What a ridiculous Hollywood image. Jazmín said she was standing behind me. Wouldn’t the ghost be spooning me or something? 

 

It made the most sense to sleep on my back. I put on a podcast about how the Christian Nationalists in charge of the government are unconstitutionally incarcerating immigrants and sending people to forever prisons — facts more existentially threatening than the ghost I don’t believe in. This is what it is to be alive in 2025. Evangelical nuts are taking over the U.S. and a dead Victorian widow watches me sleep. 

 

The next night was Louis’s turn to be restless. We had gotten through the excitement of my ghost but were now being haunted by a hoard of Jerusalem crickets that had taken shelter in our walls and floors. Also known as potato bugs, qalatötö, earth babies, and los niños de la tierra, these bugs are neither from Jerusalem nor are crickets nor are supposed to take residence in second-floor apartments.  

 

The nocturnal bastards had been chirping for days as part of their mating ritual. Maybe they heard moans coming from our apartment and thought it was the place to be. More likely the ongoing unusually high humidity on the Central Coast has driven them indoors. Maybe gardens just aren’t what they used to be. Maybe inside and outside conditions are becoming indistinguishable. Climate change fucking up another ecosystem. 

 

Over the course of a week, I took two of these bugs outside, Louis smothered a few by tissue, and the cats slaughtered dozens. On Sunday, Louis sprayed down a crack in the wall with insecticide to my disapproval. For every corpse we’ve chucked in the can, there is another night of chirping from the floorboards. They didn’t bother me, but they were Louis’s insectile tell-tale heart. 

 

According to a few gardening and exterminators’ websites, these bugs have a lifespan of up to five years and don’t often reproduce. They pose no threat to humans or human shelters. I told Louis this as he looked for more cracks in the walls. 

“We are genociding those poor bugs, Lou.” 

“Putain, now I feel bad.” 

Killing those earth babies is negative karma. I know this because I used to sit with a group of Buddhists.  

My mother was happy when I was practicing with a sangha. At least I believed in something, she told me. Even if it wasn’t Christianity.  

“The Buddhists I practice with are nontheistic, almost atheistic,” I corrected her. “They don’t practice any of the metaphysics of the traditional sects. They are socially engaged Buddhists.” 

She didn’t respond to this remark because, like many things I tell her, she didn’t want to know. 

Part of the reason that I stopped practicing with my sangha because they kept talking about the ancestors. I never felt a connection to the ancestors. When I touched the earth, I felt its cool rhythms and pulses but could never feel back in time to connect to anyone. My predecessors are just dead people I didn’t know who believed in things I could never understand.  

 

My mother has always wanted to see ghosts, but she doesn’t have the gift. Despite this, she believes she has guardian angels protecting her. She says she receives their messages in her gut. Really, it’s intuition. I think of calling her to tell her about my ghost, but I don’t. She is a proud Taurus who loves her creature comforts. The things I tell her make her too uncomfortable. She never really hears what I have to say. 

 

In a dharma talk on ancestors, Thích Nhất Hạnh mused on how when he looks at his hands, he sees the hands of his mother. I wonder if it works the other way. When my mother last saw my hands, she asked about the small symbol on my wrist. I didn’t tell her it’s an astrological symbol for Lillith, witch-coded like my bangs. It’s not that I believe in astrology, it was just the only way I could think of evoking the character. When I answered my mother, I downplayed it as some cute feminist thing.  

“I wouldn’t mind getting a cross tattooed just here,” she pointed to the side of her palm. I didn’t remind her it is forbidden in Leviticus near the passage that Christians like to quote about the sins of gay people. Those conversations aren’t worth having anymore. 

 

My black moon Lillith is in Pisces, which means I am a dreamer. I get lost in daydreams to avoid reality. But, like I said, I don’t believe in astrology, just like I don’t believe in ghosts or supernatural Jesus or samsara. I do believe in karma, but not in the gamified way that Californians talk about it. I just believe that all actions have consequences. Good actions lead to more good actions. Bad actions bring about more bad ones. Simple as that. 

No, I don’t believe in the witchy stuff, but I draw a daily tarot card. I keep a log of the draws for no other reason than it is something to do. Director Věra Chytilová supposedly described her film Daisies as a “a necrologue about a negative way of life.” That is, a reckoning of the ways that weren’t serving her anymore as a woman or a Czechoslovakian or a human. The quote is properly cited on Wikipedia, so it must be true. I think of my daily tarot draws as a necrologue of a lost spirituality. Each draw is an unrealized premonition dead upon turn.  

 

The Saturday that Jazmín told me about the veiled Victorian woman, I drew the Page of Swords. It signifies a burst of energy toward a new project or the emergence of a new way of thinking. Not long after, I started this essay. Humans are good at mistaking coincidence for synchronicity. 

 

No, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I keep encountering them. On the lawn of a Victorian house in Galveston, teenage me felt like my ovaries were going to rupture, nearly passing out from the pain. I was later told that the child bride who received the house as a wedding gift killed her old ass husband with a shotgun in that house after he beat her so badly that she had a stillbirth. His ghost antagonizes women who step onto his property. Before that, in my freshman dorm, friends kept telling me they saw a dead girl in my room. I never saw her myself, but I’d hear footsteps follow me in that building. Once someone grabbed my arm so hard in the hallway that the jerk ripped open the sleeve of my cardigan. There was no one there when I turned around. But I don’t believe in those ghosts. These were coincidences, too. To make correlations between any of this stuff is apophenia. 

 

“You are sensitive,” Jazmín told me as I put on my panties after the waxing. “You have to be careful not to get possessed.” 

I’ve been avoiding ghosts like I’ve been avoiding my white Christian parents since the election. They’ve always been conservative, but my mother especially has stumbled into conspiracy land over the last several years. Fluoride this, immigrants that. Trans kids in sports. The World Economic Forum trying to create a one-world government bullshit. I blame her willingness to engage in magical thinking. First with religion, then with politics. I refuse to engage in magical thinking. 

Her son-in-law is an immigrant. Her daughter is queer. Why can’t she connect those dots? 

 

No matter how old I get, the Christian stories of my childhood haunt me. I find myself tattooing my body with other subverted Christian symbols and Latin phrases, not because I support them, but because I have no other language, no other symbols, to get at the things that haunt me. I evoked Lillith as a symbol of feminist liberation, but in doing so, locked myself into a mythological system I reject. What else am I going to do? Tattoo a lotus on my ass? I’m not going to be another white girl with namaste tattooed on their collarbone. No offense to those white girls. I wish them well. But I’d rather defile the problematic idioms I was raised with. 

 

Before I went into my appointment with Jazmín, I removed the pearl rosary I had wrapped around my wrist. I had seen her rosary hung behind the register and didn’t want to be rude. I occasionally wear one in the same way that George Michael wore a crucifix earring. It looks wrong and offensive next to my Lilith tattoo. No bright-eyed Christian would mistake me as one of them. Still, I didn’t want to engage in a conversation about faith in god at 9am. Instead, she told me about my ghost. 

 

Thing is, atheism has its own set of rules. It can be so dogmatic sometimes. So absolute. I’m so sick of dogmatism and absolutism and stubbornness. When I first saw Daisies at seventeen years old, I was turned on by the disorder. I was ready to string paper streamers, wires, and sausages from my ceiling and set them on fire. I looked for any crystal chandelier to mount. I longed to feast on croissants and pickles from the tip of a spear. After shrugging off the yoke of Christian dogma, I didn’t need to bear another set of rules.

 

Why does everything have to be so neat and orderly? Why can’t we turn things upside down sometimes? And can’t we just leave other things be? 

 

The morning that I first drafted this essay I drew the Devil from my tarot deck. I would take it as a sign to let go of the negative thoughts holding me back if I believed in signs. But I don’t. I’ll embrace the negativity instead. 

I sometimes draw cards for Louis, but he doesn’t think of making a log. He just lets it be. I don’t write his down either, so I don’t know if they’ve had anything to say about the Jerusalem crickets. I asked him to stop killing them. 

“I’m not getting any sleep!” He snapped. 

To be clear, it’s not my concern if this dead woman is actually haunting me. She is Schrödinger’s ghost. As I write this sentence, she is simultaneously standing behind me and was never there in the first place. I don’t mind either way. The result is the same. 

And the longer that I stare at that picture of the veiled Victorian widow, the less I am terrified of the thought of her doppelgänger attached to me. Maybe the dead haunt us, the people and the bugs and the myths, but the living haunt us, too. Looking at the picture now, I am no longer so scared. She’s been around for a long time and there is nothing to worry about. Or maybe she was never there to start. 

 

I should call my mother to tell her about the ghost and the Jerusalem crickets. I should ask her if we have any ancestors that match Jazmìn’s description of the woman. I should. But I don’t think I will.  

 

 

addendum:

The photo that Jazmín sent me: 

“Mrs. Howes in deep mourning,” c. 1860-1870. Museum of the City of New York