SO GIVE ME PEARLS
Fiction
by
Daisy Bassen
by
Daisy Bassen
Walter’s ghost haunted Rainbow Valley and no one in Glen St. Mary could begrudge him. He was a gentle wraith, as poetically abstracted in death as he had been in life, and if there was a melancholy fading piping faintly audible whenever his silvery form was glimpsed between the trees, no one minded that either. He wasn’t mischievous as he had sometimes been as a boy; he’d been known to guide a lost child back towards the pale red shore road, obscurely comforted, tears wiped away. No one spoke of it to his mother but she knew. Anne always knew.
***
Joyce Blythe was a quiet ghost. She’d never cooed at her mother nor crowed as she batted at her father’s pocket-watch, the bell of his stethoscope dangling before her dimpled hand. She’d been silent as a blossom, bloomed briefly as a daylily, a flower Anne refused to plant in any garden. Joyce’s cry was soft, like the sound of a distant bell caught on the wind and carried across the water. Anne heard her and Gilbert, in the House of Dreams and Ingleside, where’d she’d never been; they thought no one else ever did until the night Shirley came to them in his nightdress, to them and not to Susan, and asked why Mother hadn’t gone to tend the baby. There was a flutter of the muslin curtain and then a larger stillness. Gilbert never spoke of it to Anne but she knew what it cost him. Anne always knew.
***
On the anniversary of Ruby Gillis’s death, Avonlea woke to find colorful ribbons in every odd corner and alcove, tied around the slimmest birch bole, neatly wound up at the base of a fern just like the fiddleheads. The sun shone as it did every year, no matter what the clouds had forecast the night before. It was a funny, rich, altering sort of light that fell on them all like a blessing. Every young girl, just for a moment, had a look of Ruby about her—chestnut hair gleamed flaxen, sallow cheeks were red as poppies. There were fleeting dimples and a charming, fey vivacity that livened the dull and made the shy girls bold. No one heard Ruby speak a word, but all day there was laughter, a low, delighted chuckling that no one could resist smiling at. The schoolteacher gave up her lessons by midmorning and let the children collect the ribbons for a May-pole, though it wasn’t May and all they had was a spindly elm by the hitching post. Diana wished she could write about it in her next letter to Anne, but it sounded like silliness when she put pen to paper; she wished Anne would come the next year to see it for herself, to marvel at it, to understand how their old friend came home again. Diana wouldn’t have to say a word. Anne always knew.
***
Marilla Cuthbert didn’t believe in ghosts. She was equal parts God-fearing and practical; between the two, there was no space for anything spectral and no use for it either. Rachel Lynde might jump at a certain time of night, when a certain shutter thudded against the window, but Marilla only thought of the broken hinge, whether it could be mended or needed to be replaced. She didn’t believe the pattern of the frost on the windowpane meant anything, nor the chill that crept along the split-wood fence at farm’s south pasture, though there wasn’t an explanation for either she could name. There was no reason Matthew’s empty rocking chair still creaked besides hers, companionable at twilit, never a fearful thing, no reason the first bucket of well-water was waiting for her once the first frost came. Marilla didn’t believe in ghosts so Anne never spoke of the wrens that came, nor the hymn that sounded in the trees, the sweet, blue scent of pipe-smoke. She smiled at what she recognized. Anne always knew.
***
Anne only saw her mother’s ghost once, reflected in a looking-glass. It was not a day of tremendous grief, not a day when Anne felt joy within her like a second soul. It was an ordinary day of unruly red hair that Gilbert loved and the smell of flowers drifting through the window, a day Anne wished to be a bird and then a fairy, when the toast was cut too thick and the tea cooled in her cup. Her mother put her finger to her lips. Anne wasn’t to speak of it except to the wave that broke on the shore when Captain Jim sailed away, to the first mayflower Jem would pick for her, before the blossom appeared. She never told her own daughters. She didn’t have to. They knew.
***
Joyce Blythe was a quiet ghost. She’d never cooed at her mother nor crowed as she batted at her father’s pocket-watch, the bell of his stethoscope dangling before her dimpled hand. She’d been silent as a blossom, bloomed briefly as a daylily, a flower Anne refused to plant in any garden. Joyce’s cry was soft, like the sound of a distant bell caught on the wind and carried across the water. Anne heard her and Gilbert, in the House of Dreams and Ingleside, where’d she’d never been; they thought no one else ever did until the night Shirley came to them in his nightdress, to them and not to Susan, and asked why Mother hadn’t gone to tend the baby. There was a flutter of the muslin curtain and then a larger stillness. Gilbert never spoke of it to Anne but she knew what it cost him. Anne always knew.
***
On the anniversary of Ruby Gillis’s death, Avonlea woke to find colorful ribbons in every odd corner and alcove, tied around the slimmest birch bole, neatly wound up at the base of a fern just like the fiddleheads. The sun shone as it did every year, no matter what the clouds had forecast the night before. It was a funny, rich, altering sort of light that fell on them all like a blessing. Every young girl, just for a moment, had a look of Ruby about her—chestnut hair gleamed flaxen, sallow cheeks were red as poppies. There were fleeting dimples and a charming, fey vivacity that livened the dull and made the shy girls bold. No one heard Ruby speak a word, but all day there was laughter, a low, delighted chuckling that no one could resist smiling at. The schoolteacher gave up her lessons by midmorning and let the children collect the ribbons for a May-pole, though it wasn’t May and all they had was a spindly elm by the hitching post. Diana wished she could write about it in her next letter to Anne, but it sounded like silliness when she put pen to paper; she wished Anne would come the next year to see it for herself, to marvel at it, to understand how their old friend came home again. Diana wouldn’t have to say a word. Anne always knew.
***
Marilla Cuthbert didn’t believe in ghosts. She was equal parts God-fearing and practical; between the two, there was no space for anything spectral and no use for it either. Rachel Lynde might jump at a certain time of night, when a certain shutter thudded against the window, but Marilla only thought of the broken hinge, whether it could be mended or needed to be replaced. She didn’t believe the pattern of the frost on the windowpane meant anything, nor the chill that crept along the split-wood fence at farm’s south pasture, though there wasn’t an explanation for either she could name. There was no reason Matthew’s empty rocking chair still creaked besides hers, companionable at twilit, never a fearful thing, no reason the first bucket of well-water was waiting for her once the first frost came. Marilla didn’t believe in ghosts so Anne never spoke of the wrens that came, nor the hymn that sounded in the trees, the sweet, blue scent of pipe-smoke. She smiled at what she recognized. Anne always knew.
***
Anne only saw her mother’s ghost once, reflected in a looking-glass. It was not a day of tremendous grief, not a day when Anne felt joy within her like a second soul. It was an ordinary day of unruly red hair that Gilbert loved and the smell of flowers drifting through the window, a day Anne wished to be a bird and then a fairy, when the toast was cut too thick and the tea cooled in her cup. Her mother put her finger to her lips. Anne wasn’t to speak of it except to the wave that broke on the shore when Captain Jim sailed away, to the first mayflower Jem would pick for her, before the blossom appeared. She never told her own daughters. She didn’t have to. They knew.
Daisy Bassen is a writer and practicing physician who graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Oberon, The Delmarva Review, The Sow’s Ear, and Tuck Magazine as well as multiple other journals. She was nominated for the 2019 Best of the Net Anthology and was doubly nominated for a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family and has not given up hope of convincing her daughters to read the Anne series.