Lauren Lee Smith

The Playroom Ghost

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2023: VOL. 38.

There is a ghost in the playroom, but no one believes me. I doubt they even heard me suggest the idea, sensational though it was. My voice has become dull background noise, something to be ignored like the drone of a television commercial or the cacophonous hum of a barful of blathering strangers. A humanoid sound that isn’t constructed of real words worth listening to. But the ghost is there all the same, whether anyone cares to know it or not. I wonder if I turn around quick enough and look into the playroom I might see it, piled with toy camouflage like a Desert Storm soldier trying to hide from everyone but me. The idea almost makes me laugh. I’m going nuts in this house.

I haven’t seen the ghost, not really. But I can feel it when I’m in other parts of the house. While I’m cursing the endless laundry pile that might as well be a mountain of straw I’m expected to spin into gold, the ghost itches at me. A sentience squatting in the playroom corner like a little toy-shaped toad. It tries to blend in amongst the rubble of discarded board books and games missing half their pieces. But it’s there. I am home alone every day; I should know what’s in my house.

Alone, but for the baby, though his company is very close to being alone. I’ve tried talking to him, but I am really only talking to myself. I might as well be clothed in rags and shouting on the street corner. Once, I tried giving up talking altogether to see if anyone would notice. They didn’t.

I try to make the house as quiet as I can during the day, to make room for the baby’s crying. This way, I might be able to tolerate the reverberations of banshee shrieks that crash against the ceiling and back into my ears. But whenever the house is still, the ghost moves. And it is on such a quiet day that I hear the ghost speak for the first time.

The baby is asleep in his crib in the other room after an hour of mindless rocking. I wander out into the kitchen, my stomach rumbling. I want to grab a plate, but if I open a cabinet, a dish might clatter and wake the baby. It isn’t worth the risk, and I’d rather be hungry with a few moments of quiet. I sip the dregs of my coffee, similarly unwilling to press any loud microwave buttons to warm it, and stretch myself out on the playroom couch like a cat. I know there are hours of chores left to do—days’ worth—and a pair of eyes that will wordlessly ask why they haven’t been done. I hate the contempt in those eyes, but I’m exhausted. So, I bargain with myself. Just a moment of rest—no one will know. But then a tiny voice buzzes in my thoughts and I know where it is coming from. It’s the ghost.

They will see what you didn’t do, what you could have done if you spent your time wisely. If you were organized. If you weren’t so lazy.

I chase the thought away with a shift of my hips, a dry swallow. Half-formed hushings flitter through the playroom like invisible moths spinning dust motes into sunlit spirals. I stare into the gelatinous thing my coffee has become like it might reveal a prophecy: the curdled creamer pale at the edges and a tiny insect trapped in a death spiral. I scoop the bug out with a fingernail and drink until my breath stops. A sharp object cuts against the soft flesh on the roof of my mouth. I spit a mouthful of coffee into my hand and a tiny toy brick comes with it, algal green in a puddle of foamy brown saliva.

You’re going to miss something tiny just like this, and the baby is going to choke. He will turn purple in front of you and the paramedics will take too long. They’ll know it was your fault because you couldn’t keep a house safe for a baby. Because you laid out on the couch when you should have been cleaning. Because you’re a terrible mother.

I pour the coffee out in the sink and spend the rest of the afternoon looking for anything small enough to lodge in a baby’s throat. I look under cushions, couches, and chairs. I find hardened chunks of discarded food, wads of dog hair, and broken plastic. I stop only when there is nothing left to find. But the ghost isn’t satisfied. It murmurs a new musing—this time a picture of the baby falling against the brick hearth and cracking his soft head on the edge. I see the injury unfold in perverse detail like a movie playing. I am immediately nauseous, but there is nowhere I can look to escape. The image is cauterized into my vision like pyrography. So, I cover the edges of the hearth with foam strips and take the baby to the park. Far from the playroom ghost.

The next day I find my nine-year-old’s box of vintage Barbies spilled onto the ground. I stare at them for a few minutes before getting my coffee. Then I come back and stare at them some more. To the best of my knowledge, they were tucked away in a closet. Now they are on the clown hair rug with limbs askance and staring eyes peeling from age. The disturbance of their rusted carrier and tiny clothes fills the room with a musty, thrift shop smell. I finally kneel to pack them back up and notice the dog has chewed on the hand of one doll, leaving a mutated anomaly where fingers belonged. I carry the Barbies to another room and prop them on a high shelf out of the way.

The following day, the dog goes missing. I search all over the house and finally find her whimpering under the bed, surrounded by golden, foamy bile. I wipe up half-digested grass and a few plastic fingers and I know the ghost made the dog sick as a punishment for me. Because I couldn’t keep the house clean enough. I couldn’t keep the baby safe enough.

The next day, the ghost won’t shut up.

Don’t go to the park, the baby will catch a virus. He’ll be admitted to the pediatric unit and put on a breathing machine before dying. You won’t even be allowed to see him because they’ll know it was your negligence that put him there. Don’t take him to the market—he will fall out of the cart when you turn to grab an item. He will crack his head open, bleed out on the floor in front of everyone, and they will all know what a terrible mother you are.

The way I know that you are.

I try to plan out my day, but it is next to impossible with the whispering. I stay home and speak to no one. Even with the ghost’s badgering, the house is safer for the baby. I can control the house. I keep him away from the playroom, but the images still come. The ideas, the possibilities have no end.

I decide to call the doctor. Maybe he will believe me about the ghost. But once in the office, I begin to second guess telling him anything. I am naked from the waist down with a drape over my lap. My thighs are sticky with nervousness even though it is freezing. I wait so long I consider just getting dressed and leaving, but the doctor finally materializes in a flutter of hurried, distracted movements. He skims the chart with sightless eyes before giving me a bemused look. I wonder if there is something funny on my chart or on my face.

“Do you think about hurting your baby?”

The doctor’s voice is flat. I know he has asked this same combination of words so often he doesn’t bother adding any enlivening inflection. When I move, the paper beneath me crackles loudly. He waits. Expectant; bored, even.

“No, the baby is beautiful,” I say it and I mean it, but I worry how my voice must sound. I would never hurt my baby. Only the ghost knows all the ways the dark and terrible world can hurt a baby.

“Well, then you are going to be fine.” The doctor’s pen digs into a pad and scratches too loudly in the tiny room. I try not to screw up my face at the sound, but it bothers me. Every sound bothers me lately. I endure my exam, though tears prickle in my eyes from the pain of it. I take my new pills home and spend the rest of the day cleaning.

I clean for hours. Everything small I can find, I place out of reach of the baby—everything the ghost shows me that is in any way dangerous. I clean for so long my nose itches from the dust and my tailbone aches from my bare heels pounding over the hard floor. By the time I get the baby to sleep, the playroom is perfect. Perhaps the ghost will finally be satisfied. Order restored within the chaos of this house. With any luck, the ghost will be lulled into a peaceful silence and leave me alone.

That night I drink wine at the threshold of the playroom, daring a box to fall or a toy to move on its own. I sip the acrid liquid until my nerves grow mercifully dull and only a mouthful remains at the bottom of the bottle. I leave it so I can pretend I didn’t finish the whole thing alone. The ghost is quiet when I go to bed, its mouth invisible in the corner like it has been taped shut by my efforts. I can finally breathe. I can finally sleep.

In the morning, the ghost is screaming. It is the loudest it has ever been, and the playroom has been destroyed. The shelves are nearly empty, the contents swept onto the floor. The garish, orange clown rug is barely visible beneath heaps of toy cars and magnets and marbles and meaningless bits of plastic with no known origin. I cry on the threshold of the room but can’t go in. I can’t even look at it. I can’t understand why the ghost is so angry. What have I ever done but clean and wipe and sort and spray? When I got pregnant, I didn’t know that being a mother was synonymous with being a maid. I do my best, but that is never enough. Not for the ghost and not for anyone.

I go out on the balcony instead. A chill wind whips in off the sea, bearing the reek of rot and salt. I’ve sometimes thought of walking off the pier and plunging into the deep water. I’ve imagined the pressure on my chest, the taste of brine in my mouth replacing the air I don’t want or need anymore.

Somehow, I am on the other side of the balcony bars, not remembering how I got there. And the ghost is in the doorway, eager to keep me company.

The baby doesn’t want you. The baby doesn’t need you. You’re crazy.

I shake my head as the words repeat over and over. The sour sea of wine churns in my belly, the new pills bobbing like little boats bracing against the foul stink of the ghost. The pills are supposed to help me. They are supposed to quiet the squatting thing that won’t shut up. But it’s only getting louder, more unbearable.

No one cares if you are here or not. In fact, it would be better for them if you were gone. You’re sick. And you’ll never be better. Not ever. This is how it is now. Forever. How long can you stand it?

The ghost is at my back now, breath rank in my ear. It is the smell I know my body will make after they find it in the dirt at the foot of the balcony. After they shake their heads and lift me up—wooden and worthless—they take me to a mortuary somewhere to molder like an animal. I have birthed a healthy baby, but the ghost is right. He doesn’t need me anymore. I will pollute him, infect him.

I look down at the ground below me. I envision how my neck will snap on impact, how death will find me swiftly. Then everyone will be free of me, like the ghost said.

When has the ghost ever been wrong?

You’re crazy. Love your baby enough to let him be happy. Happy without you.

The ghost is no longer whispering. It is shouting, spittle wet on its face, tears in its eyes, and I will do anything to make it be still. So, I listen to it. I’m falling into infinite quiet. All I can hear is the wind in my hair, and it smells like the sea.