GREEN SPIRIT

Words by Georgina Hernandez 
Art by Lily Jimenez 

In a house where domestic fights were a day to day routine, the truest disturbing thing happened to me in the middle of the day. 

Fontana was sunny that day, albeit blanketed in smog, but the persistent sun shone through. 

Mid days we’d find ourselves lounging about inside, making sure we kept to ourselves as children so as to not remind the adults we were around and be assigned chores. 

Our main hallway never caught sun, being the farthest away from natural light. I don’t think those walls saw light if ever, making for a dark walk between rooms. 

This day in particular, I’d stayed inside while my mother and siblings were in the backyard, undoubtedly releasing that energy my stay at home mother needed gone in order to stay sane with 3 kids. 

I had a habit of reading my books in different rooms, a way of adding variety in my ever-presently chaotic life but in a way I could control. 

I’d finished reading in my brother’s room, pleased that I was able to get through my YA novel before anyone came inside. I stepped out into the hallway, the house still and quiet. 

I’d felt dis-ease as I wasn’t alone often, if ever. 

I turned my head to the left as I walk down the hallway, seeing exactly why my spirit felt on edge. 

In the dark hallway, a green phantasmic figure walked towards me. It was an outline of my mother, wearing her trademark blue mervyn’s knit sweater, the shoulders slumped and head down as if she’d just been scorned by her partner. I rubbed my eyes, is this real? I thought. 

I called out, “mama?” 

The figure kept moving as if she couldn’t see me, as if stuck in her thoughts and continued walking, looking down at the ground. 

Whether animal instinct or spiritual intuition, I walked towards the kitchen anyway and out to the backyard as if I hadn’t seen what I had just saw. I told myself she probably couldn’t hear me. 

A feeling of relief and California sunshine washed over me as i stepped outside, my siblings yelling and running barefoot along the bougainvillea bushes. 

A feeling of uneasiness crept back into my stomach as I see my mom watering her prized flowers in shorts and a t shirt, a completely different outfit from what her doppleganger had been wearing. 

My stomach dropped, hadn’t I just seen her? If it wasn’t her, who was inside with me? What did I just interact with? I asked my mom if they’d just been inside, to which she answered sarcastically how the hell would she have been inside if she had all those outdoor chores to do. 

I did not find answers that day, nor would I find them for decades to follow.

I’d always wondered why I saw that spirit that day, as my mom was in good health, alive and well. 

My mother suddenly got sick in 2023, an abdominal aortic aneurysm that led to a 3 month long healing journey, only to succumb to a bacterial infection. 

A woman who everyone around her almost thought was immortal, akin to the stray chihuahuas that roamed Fontana streets, was just as mortal as the rest of us. 

Each of us siblings were shattered, our glue and our purpose for being was no longer alive. A woman who we thought would outlive us, who we planned our future around her inevitable need for home care and which of us siblings she’d live with. 

To this day I do not understand why she died. I still feel at times it was a mistake and that we must have jumped timelines into the wrong reality. Reflecting on this sighting that’s eluded me for years, I now consider it a sign. A sign that her spirit was going to roam, that her soul would eventually leave her young body. 

I’d seen a glimpse into the future and that she’d one day leave her physical vessel on earth. I question why I was the only sibling it happened to, if I was going crazy. 

I can say that we’d made sure we lived life with her as if there were no tomorrow, she was our life and she knew that all the way to her last breath.