Slightly Body-Snatched

Speculative ghost story.... but truth, not fiction.

 ***

Beads, of every size, color, and shape are heaped here in front of me. They are in two standing racks, each with four deep bins. Every bin contains six trays. Each tray has eighteen compartments. The beads spill out of their containers, the profusion of color and texture invite my eyes to a feast of thanksgiving.

Opal’s beads have passed into my tremulous hands. This is a treasure; my head spins with ideas, concepts. The bins, standing beside my own chests of tiny luminous tri-cuts and seed beads, have suddenly extended my potential as a serious bead artist. I feel like King Midas with his golden coins, while my hands caress beautiful shape and color.

My friend Opal was serious about creating incredible jewelry, combined with aromatic oils and healing incense. Her work, sold to eager customers from a colorful tented table at craft fairs, was familiar to those who dared to wear true art. She formed beads and wire into personal statements. Each piece was unique. Most were created especially for her faithful customers. I too will create some remarkable pieces with this material, and I can even have her poking over my shoulder, helping.

How can that be, you might ask. I probably would ask the same question, except that-- well, let me tell you the story.

It has been several years since her death; she died about three weeks before my father, while I was his primary caretaker. He'd had a year of agony, all pointing toward these final days. We were both worn out. Nearly, I envied that he was going to rest, while I had to begin life anew, moving out of state after he was gone. This home of his would become the family home to my brother and his large family. Each night I would fall into bed, sick at heart over the illness stealing life from my beloved father.

One night, I woke with a start, not knowing who or where I was. Didn't know up from down, could not have told you my name. Had to go to the bathroom, threw the covers back, ready to move into a sitting position. Saw my bare legs and feet, screamed in horror. They were the most awful pasty WHITE!

“What has happened to my lovely brown legs,” I scream. “What has happened?? --Something’s not right, here-- A-ghh-h” I have a very sick feeling in my stomach, the kind where you know you have made a serious mistake and there’s no going back. Like driving off a winter-slick bridge into icy black river water. MIND is remembering how daily I preen my golden brown skin tones, filled with pride over my own beauty; I'd been blessed from birth with enviously smooth skin, the most delicious bronze brown tones on the block.

Now, though, here am I, looking down at ugly, --U. G. L. Y. -- ugly!! --white, nasty, boney, and yes, even blemished -- legs, with scrawny feet. Yagh-h-h!" I gag.

Confusion. I'm not brown, golden, or even ugly, scrawny. MIND is scattered, madly attempting to sort out the confusion. I wake, needing to go to the bathroom, remembering the dream I'd just had. Threw the covers back, ready to move into a sitting position. Saw my bare legs and feet, sighed with relief. Yes, there were my own white legs, comfortable and familiar.

The dream had been intense! The I-who-was-she had shown me a view of lovely golden brown skin; they’d felt like ‘my’ legs. It had seemed so real. It felt as though it was 'me', looking at them. Shuffling white legs and feet to the floor, I'm headed for the bathroom, and my day, letting the dream go as dreams do, wisping out of memory, until the phone rang. It was my friend Shirley, who had introduced me to Opal, years before.

"Opal's dead! I can’t believe it! She just died in her sleep last night! She was still so young!" My suddenly treacherous legs turned to rubber as I remembered the dream.

Somehow something had happened, something involving Opal’s death. But, what? What if Opal, not really knowing her body was lost to her, thought she was just waking up in ‘her’ body. Upon seeing white legs instead her own lovely hued limbs, she had unwittingly corrected whatever mistake was about to be made.

There was lots of time to think about all this, during the tedious and painful time of clearing out Dad’s home in the weeks that followed. Understand, my natural bend of thinking does not follow the ‘norm’, and my explanation for this event will appear to be either science fiction or fantasy to many readers. Let me assure you: the event is true, and I know, because it happened to me.

While my thoughts over what really happened can only be, at best, speculation, still, I like my final conclusion, and especially so, now that Opal’s beads have come to me. It being true that ‘there are no accidents’; that we agree to the experiences in our lives, then it might also be possible that we would be living some sort of contract, or Agreement.

There might exist many contracts, even, overlapping and layering the multitude of events that define our lives. In other words, we ‘sign on’ to events. Apparently the one I’d ‘signed into’ with my father, four years prior,was getting more difficult to experience than was originally considered. It was a time when my focus was entirely on Dad, with both our stamina and endurance extended beyond anything ever before experienced.

Some of us are more responsible than others in the living of our contracts. What if it became true that I, weary in mind and body after weeks of death and decay with Dad, had put out a Contract For Bid, so to speak, on my ‘contract’? --The want ad would read “Weary, used body, excellent fixer-up. Best offer.”

Opal had died in her sleep; maybe she was dreaming. When her physical body stopped being alive, her dreaming self saw this incredible want ad, and jumped right in. It’s probably a good thing she was filled with pride for her beautiful skin color, because I, original owner, had seller’s remorse, pulling the ad, but too late. She was ‘in’, but the shock drove her, confused, right back ‘out’. Lucky for me.

Luck? I think we make our own luck. But I can think about all of that while dreaming wonderful creations with Opal’s beads. And in some strange way, I suspect Opal will help me.

Oh, yes: I forgot to tell you the name of Opal’s jewelry business:

Opal’s Secrets.

She called them the secrets of the Universe, and here they are.

Work hard,

Give freely;

Think big,

Talk little.

Love much.

Take Cash!

Be Kind, and

Laugh easily.

 Opal, thank you for the gift of the beads, but most of all, I thank you for the Secrets. They are secrets to be shared freely, so that we all remember.

Copyright November 2002 by Judith Leigh Bailey All Rights Reserved