Saving Elijah

customs in both religions. Sam took the kids to mass with him on Christmas, we lit Hanukkah lights, and had a little Passover Seder every year. Our children made out like bandits in December.
    "Are you saying you wanted to do the rituals," he said, "and I was holding you back?"
    How in the world had this turned into a fight? I just wanted him to understand.
    "No, no."
    "So what is it? My mother was holding you back?"
    Each grandchild's birth had created a crisis between Sam and his mother. Mary Galligan always said she didn't care what we did about religion, so long as we baptized the children. Sam refused. Though he never told his mother why, he'd told me that he had no respect for any belief that a baby would be deprived of heaven, or whatever it was, just because the child wasn't baptized. Mary always let the matter drop until the next child was about to be born, at which point she'd start working on him again.
    "Sam, no. I just want you so see that something extraordinary is happening, something—"
    "So they pretended they were swimming," he said. "They're kids." But he hadn't seen it.

    *    *    *

    A few weeks later, in early April, I have a new dream.
    Elijah is lying on the bed, hooked up to suck-hissing machines. I am standing beside him with Charlotte, who pulls a small scissors and an envelope out of her purse. She has prepared for this, she has brought things with her. And she takes in her fingertips an inch-long curl of Elijah's hair, now brittle as dull red straw. There is so much hair. The body without consciousness is on mechanical grow mode, the bones lengthen, puberty arrives, the hair gets longer, parched and wild as an untended garden.
    Snip-snip.
    She slips the lock of hair into the envelope, tucks the envelope and the scissors back into her purse. She doesn't look at me, because she thinks I am upset by what she's done. I am not upset, the living dead have no emotions. But I'm still plenty smart, I know why she has done this. My mother has taken his hair so that she'll have it when he's gone. And he will be gone, I know that, though I don't know when. I realize then that taking a lock of Elijah's hair might be something I want to do, too. Then I'll always have it, even when I have no way to get to him, even when he's in his grave.

    *    *    *

    I opened my eyes, awake in the middle of the night again, buffeted back and forth by the twin winds, fear and hope. The demon, who played with time like it was bouncing a ball back and forth, back and forth, had been watching me sleep.
    "What kind of woman are you? So ungrateful."
    I got up and went into the bathroom to pee. I had taken to doing that, ignoring it as best I could.
    It stood there while I did my business at the toilet. "You know, I will possess you again." It never raised its voice. Never seemed angry. It murmured, it whispered, it insinuated. I hated that.
    "Rape, you mean."
    It leaned against the back of the sink, crossed its limbs over its midsection, and smiled sardonically, a cartoon devil. I blinked and I could see the heavy black boots again, caked with mud. Just for a moment back to Seth. I blinked and he was gone.
    "I can see your body beneath that nightgown," it told me.
    I stood and pulled up my panties. "I'm a middle-aged woman. Find someone young and supple."
    It laughed, and I could see its teeth. "You would wish me on a mere babe?"
    "Go away." I tried to pretend it didn't scare me, a useless deception.
    "Oh, zip your lips," it said.
    Zipped lips?
    "You stay away from my son."
    "Your son?" It was behind me, hissing like a steam engine in my ear. "Breathe deeply, Dinah. Shall I tell you what might have happened to your son were it not for me, what still could happen?"
    No.
    Yes.

    *    *    *

    Night. A luminous full moon bathes row upon row of identical stones in a pale light. The air feels like late autumn, gusty with a chill wind. The wind whips at my nightgown; the leaves dance in the air, skate over the stones, make scraping noises like scratching animals. I am old, very old, my flesh has begun to sag.
    The demon ghost takes my hand and we walk among those stones, over the graves. I see dark shapes shuffling here and there, a netherworld of lost souls.
    "There." It points with a ghost finger in the moonlight. "There it is."
    I look. Carved into the headstone are the words: Elijah Rosenberg Galligan. Beloved Son, Grandson, and Brother.
    I kneel down at my son's grave and trace the letters with my fingers.