Chapter 9

Mrs. Jefferson's visit kicked of a budding friendship. Now that she had her very own 'haint' to talk to, she couldn't get enough. At least a couple of times a week, I'd arrive home from the lab to find her in my kitchen sipping tea and gossiping with Annie about everything that had happened in the neighborhood and the rest of the world since she died. The old lady's worldview was interesting to say the least. About President Obama, she said, "Oh, he a smaht man, a real smaht man. He jess ain' black 'nuff."

Daisy had an insatiable curiosity about what Annie could and couldn't do as a spirit. She laughed and laughed about the chocolate thing and wickedly wondered if there were chocolate smears on my body parts in the morning. She might have been a religious lady, but she was no innocent.

I always invited her to stay for dinner and she always accepted. Within a month, I could see that she was actually starting to put on a little weight, and that made me wonder if she'd been eating regular meals at home. Probably not.

When it snowed, I made it a point to shovel and salt her walk and front steps. When the temperature plummeted, I insisted on checking her thermostat and always had to turn it up several degrees. She kept turning it down because she couldn't afford the heating bills, but I persuaded her to allow me to take care of that for her. The utility company agreed to send me her monthly statements.

She wouldn't let me do her shopping for her, but she accepted a weekly ride to the grocery store. I noticed she mostly bought microwavable meals. They were better than nothing, but not much. But then she was ninety-four years old, so I suppose it was a little late in the game to worry about the negative effects of highly processed foods on her health. Nevertheless, I insisted she have dinner with Annie and me at least three times a week. Annie didn't eat, of course but her presence at the table made it feel like we were a family. I went out of my way to cook healthy, nutritious meals, and any leftovers went into Daisy's refrigerator.

Mrs. Jefferson had lived a hard life. She was born and grew up in the Jim Crow South. She and her second cousin escaped to the north when they were in their teens, eventually got married and bought their two-bedroom bungalow in 1941. She'd been living there ever since. Her husband, Calvin was conscripted as a ship's porter and went down with the rest of the crew after their ship was torpedoed by a U-boat in the North Atlantic. They never had children.

She worked most of her adult life as a maid and a housekeeper, scrimping and saving until she finally made the last payment on her house in 1969. She continued working until they made her retire, and she'd be working still if she were allowed.

Daisy was a treasure trove of information about the neighborhood. She made it her business to know all about every family within three blocks in any direction, so living right across the street, it wasn't too hard for her to figure out my house had been turned into a brothel. The cars in the drive were too fancy and the men were too well dressed to be locals.

She apologized to Annie for getting the place shut down, but she held firmly to her belief that it was for her own good. "A girl purdy as you aughtn't haff t' be no ho'! Why, you could'a come live wit me n' Ah'd o' seen to it you b'come a nice young lady."

Annie laughed and teased, "Really, Mrs. Jefferson, I liked what I was doing. I think some girls are just made to be whores, don't you?"

"Oh, you don' mean dat, girl! Puttin' up wid dat nasty ol' woman n' havin' t' do it wit ugly ol' men?"

"Mrs. Trevino wasn't that bad. The only reason she hit me with that bottle was because I was being mean to her. She felt terrible that I died. In fact, she felt so bad that she took her own life."