and there is yet another episode waiting at school!
Spoon and I have plans to see the Hollywood Forever cemetery on Gower. It isn’t like a regular cemetery, but more like a park. There are rolling hills and palm trees, little fountains, emerald grass, and shady areas to eat a picnic lunch. Over dead people. I want to be buried here because it is so peaceful, a haven hidden away from the ugliness that is Los Angeles. Spoon wants to be buried wherever I want to be buried. Benni wants to be cremated and scattered on a windy day over a vast river in Taiwan. We all have our differences.
The guard winks one crinkly eye at me and lets me in. since spoon is not there yet, I wander around. I walk into one of the island mausoleums, and walk immediately back out. The pictures of the family where frightening. I pass the rose crematorium garden, and sit down by a grave marked Jacob S. Miller. I pull out some parchment paper and a number six pencil from my bag and begin a grave rubbing. But then there’s this sound, a high pitched giggle, and it echoes and vibrates and pulses in my ears. I look around. No one is there. I shake my head but it doesn’t go away. “This is enough” I say to myself, getting up to find the origin of this joyous bubble of childhood innocence. I leave my bag and begin a trudge uphill, past the Rosenfelds and the Smiths and the Greens. I keep going, only seeing more family plots. I see a lake, I see a dog, I see an old soda can. I pass a thicket of trees, and then decide it would be best to explore them. I pull myself into the wooded greenness of it all and just as soon as I was outside I am inside, surrounded by a cool blanket of shade and the breeze hits my hair and I feel deliciously content. Now the sound is louder.
I hear a rustling behind me and it is Spoon and Benni, they say they are glad to see me, I explain, and we continue to search. We reach a wall; this is the end of the cemetery. But now I can feel the sound, on the other side of the wall and Spoon hoists me up. Benni says that she can hear it now, too. Spoon does not hear anything. When I see over the wall, it is a weed-ridden garden, and I call out to the dead leaves. Spoon lifts himself over and we move in a straight line towards the other side of the garden, where there is a very tiny wooden door. Benni taps it but nothing happens. She turns to me, eyes wide with anticipation, but she can’t move. She is frozen stiff, as if something has just affected her, but my eyes have been on her the whole time. I shake her and she murmurs, asking me if I heard it, the voice of the giggling telling her how to get over. “It said ‘use your feet’” Benni says, staring at the door. But Spoon and I have heard nothing. Benni raps on the door, lightly, with her toes. It opens wide. Then she crouches down and looks through to the other side. She gasps. “It’s not real. It can’t be. It is too perfect.” Now I am beside her. Soon she is through, on the other side. Spoon and I slide through the door, and end up in the middle of perfection. We jump right into the translucent blue waterfall, diving and screaming and rejoicing. Benni clambers out of the refreshing water and begins to play along the bank. She is building a castle out of sticks and leaves. She crawls up into a tree and comes back down, holding hands with a small, blonde boy and girl. They are wearing sailor suits. Each of them has a washed out, piercing blue eyes and a wavy halo of hair. They are barefoot. The girl is giggling, along with Benni, who is smiling from ear to ear. I nudge Spoon and he turns to Benni. “Aren’t they fascinating?” I ask him. But he doesn’t seem to understand. “Who?” he asks me, turning back to the water. “Them!” I shout, frustrated. And then I realize it. Spoon cannot see the girl and boy. Because they don’t exist.
Benni tells us their names are Tiffany-Anne and James. They jump into the water, but there is no splash. No noise. Just them. Benni whispers in Spoon’s ear. He swims off. We eat a lunch of raspberries that grew from the bushes around us. Then tiffany-anne and james stand over a plot of ground marked by the bright and varied array of flowers growing in to parallel rectangles. There is a small cross at the head of each made with sticks. Tiffany-Anne smiles, waves and grabs hold on James’s hand. James squeezes his eyes shut, clenches his jaw and tightens his muscles all over. Then he and Tiffany-anne are gone.