It was a stucco house, rough texture, pointed roof,
five houses up the road from the tidy suburban home
where I grew up. My best friend, whose parents were
theatre people, lived in that Hansel and Gretel House.
All the breadcrumbs of my psyche lead back there.
At first, there was fun, games, music, costumes, candy,
Kool-aid, Devil Dogs. Lots of fun until my friend’s uncle
put on the red clown wig, told us we were going to play
a special game. something of fingers, mouths and bottoms.
Isn’t this fun, girls? my friend’s mother laughed. It was
a secret game, our secret, a heady brew of excitement
and shame. I kept mute, buried the dangerous knowledge.
For years, my mother sent me back there… my friend
and I were inseparable.
The secret hovered, a dark cloud as we played together.
We dreamed up our own game we called The Ghost Club.
We hid behind the couch from the ghost, wrote him letters,
left it gifts in the sewer grate, offered it cakes we baked
in a toy oven.
Thirty years later, the ghost we had appeased returned
to haunt me in dark dreams, terrifying memories, bile
that burned my throat, meals I couldn’t digest. By then,
my friend had moved away, we’d lost touch but her sister
remembered what happened in that gingerbread house.
