When Ghosts Come Home

by Wiley Cash

she thought vaguely but powerfully of time and change and tragedy and life and all the ways we hang on to these things, store them, and then take them out over the years to leaf through the memories in their pages.

“I tried telling him how hard it is in this country to raise a Black boy into a man.”

She did not feel like she belonged anywhere or to anyone, and in that moment a glimmer of freedom slashed through her like a knife.

In the story, Colleen’s mother would be lost in the woods, and she would discover a house that was an exact replica of their own. She would be surprised when her key fit the lock, and she would go inside to look around. In each room—the kitchen, the living room, Colleen’s room, her and Colleen’s father’s bedroom—she would find a different version of Colleen, some older, some much younger. Colleen’s mother called it the Magic House because it was a place she could always go to find all the Colleens that Colleen had ever been. “I

“That’s what it feels like to be a Black man in America, Winston. I’ve been on my belly for years, looking up from the ground, getting stepped on while I keep on crawling forward. The only difference between then and now is that I don’t have that one shot to look forward to.”

He was the kind of man who scared her, a man who acted like he had nothing to lose because he lived in a world without consequences.

All people, no matter their race, were motivated by fear and power more than they were motivated by money or pride,