Andrew Rihn

Giving Up the Ghost

Remember Jacob Marley? As children, didn't we just know that Jacob's theatrical chains had to be real? I felt bad for the actor, forced to carry the guilt of another's fiction. Although the narrator told us Scrooge was a miser, we all knew there was good left in him. Now, another narrator tells us Canton is a miserable city, and we don't know what to expect from the ghosts that visit us. Abandoned factories become haunted houses, profits trickling in six weeks a year like the tingle of an amputee's phantom limb. Yet another narrator tells us the patron saint of cancer, St. Peregrine, was healed by a vision of Christ, but there is no Holy Ghost willing to heal an amputee. Do you think the body is sensitive enough to feel a missing organ, or does it lose touch, like neighbor from evicted neighbor? Before we ever visited the hospital, a narrator instructed us to sign insurance forms in triplicate: thefleshyyellow and pink sheets on bottom, the white sheet on top, pale as a ghost. Before there were oxygen tubes, there was a padlock on the front door. Before there was a padlock, there were Marley's chains. Like a ghost that wears the clothes it died in, some foreclosed homes still have garland on their railings and Christmas lights along their gutters.

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Copyright of Minnesota Review is the property of Minnesota Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.