(First draft; An excerpt from my short story who we were)

The thing no one tells you about wedding dresses is that after a while even the simplest, the most expensive, the loosest or tightest fitting ones all start to feel like prisons after a while. Even if you love your spouse, even if it’s the happiest day of your life and you’re married for 100 years, the side of the dress dig into your ribs and the fray at the bottom of your dress somehow end up tripping you. Yes, what beautiful gowns. Yes, what a lovely day. But if you’re being really honest with yourself, there was a moment, fleeting sure, but it still existed where you thought “I cannot wait to get this thing off of me.”

I sat on the floor of my now very empty apartment, drinking whiskey directly from the bottle, staring at my wedding dress draped across the TV. 

To prove to myself that I was okay, I had decided that I was going to some “spring cleaning”, even though it was the middle of October. Spring cleaning was metaphorical anyway right? Plus my husband of ten years had walked out of me about a week ago and I needed to send him his things. And by “send them” I meant ritualistically burn them while I spat curses into the fire. 

He didn’t deserve any of my spite and yet I had it in reserve. He’d been an excellent husband. Patient, great job, funny, kind, attractive in a way that made other women both hate and respect me. On paper, we should’ve been together forever. 

We’d met in college. I was a sophomore and he was a junior and we were both taking Today’s Gender Roles. I thought it was very cool that he wanted to take a gender class and he was surprised I was surprised considering he was trans. I joked that I thought it would be transphobic of me to assume he was interested in gender and he joked back it would be transphobic to assume he wasn’t. After about two more classes, he asked me to get coffee with him that night. Coffee turned into drinks which turned into late night cigarettes which turned into the shitty college breakfast of almost expired yogurt and very dry cereal. 

We were obsessed with each other after that. Spent every single day together, tried to take as many classes together as we could. My friends ands family said we’d grow out of it but we never really did. When he graduated undergrad and went to med school about a thousand miles away, everyone was convinced that’d be the end of the saccharine love story but if anything the distance just made us more obsessed with each other. Every sentence I said started with “Well Micah and I…” 

No one wonder half my friends just stopped asking. 

After I graduated undergrad, I went to a small liberal grad school right by where he was in residence. My grandmother said my master’s in translation was a good degree for a wife and I hated her for that. I loved languages my whole life and by 25, I was fluent in five languages. That had to count for something on its own. 

But then again, every doctor and lawyer I knew who also married a doctor or lawyer were either divorced or hated each other. I didn’t pursue translation because it was a “good wife job” but it burned through my skin that she was right. 

After med school, he got placed in one of the best hospitals. Became a top surgeoun and somehow still found endless time for me. I was never sure how he made so much room in his life for me so I tried to keep myself small. He noticed pretty early on and just made more space. He’d told me once he wanted me to expand not deflate. 

Years passed and we were still each other’s favorites. Still the first person we thought to tell whether we had good or bad news. Still each other’s biggest fans. Got married at 27. Bought a house at 30. Had two playful cats and a very loyal black Lab. Were told every day what a beautiful couple we were. 

And around 31, Micah started talking about kids. He’d been upfront since the beginning that that’s what he wanted and I was more than happy to try. Growing up, I always thought I’d have a daughter, name her Alice after my grandmother who raised me. I didn’t see more than one kid but I would’ve been happy with two. Any more than that and you’re outnumbered. 

God bless the women who could do that but I wasn’t one of them. 

So we tried at 31. And then again at 33. And then again at 34, 35, 36…and now at 37, I wasn’t sure I could take it anymore. My body was tired. Three miscarriages. Too many false positives to count. And so, so many injections. I was exhausted. 

I’d asked Micah if he was sure, if he really needed kids to feel complete. He said yes and suggested adoption. But I’d see how adoption worked (and frankly didn’t) and I couldn’t get on board with that. I know that makes me sound cruel and it wasn’t a biology thing. I didn’t want to go the adoption route because adoption agencies are cruel, for profit businesses, and would I really feel comfortable contributing to that? No, I couldn’t. I asked for surrogacy and Noah said no to that. Too many legal loopholes, he said. 

And we reached out first stalemate. The first problem there was no working through. Our house started to feel cold, unlike us. I suggested a cooling off period. That I’d get an apartment down the road and we’d try to fix what was broken in our marriage. Micah saw that as me leaving him and I begged him to hear me out. He claimed that he did but I think that was first unfixable break. The first piece of undeniable proof that I wasn’t going to change my mind.

I honest to God thought I might. I spent the next six months researching and learning everything I could about adoption. I got in touch with a friend of mine who was a family lawyer and asked her what she thought. I devoured every good story I could find, talked to friends who were adopted who had great relaitonships with their parents, sought out counselors and therapists. 

And nothing changed my mind. 

To keep us connected we agreed I’d spend three nights at the house and he’d spend three nights in the apartment and then we’d spend one night on our own but suddenly all the time he’d carved out for me vanished. Suddenly work got very, very busy and he was the apartment maybe once a week. Maybe. 

Meanwhile I was now cleaning two different abodes and losing my mind in both. 

Finally, I told him we had to come to an agreement about kids. I asked him to come over to the apartment on his day off. I wanted us to have a good day. I made his favorite meals and we played our favorite games and had amazing sex. It almost felt like we reforming, coupling together after a short, tenuous break. So I pleaded with him. I told him that this life with him was more than anything I could ever want and that we, just us, were already complete. And that’s when he pulled a folder out from his bag and slid over divorce papers. And then he left. As the door slammed shut, I looked down to see he’d already signed them. 

His mind was made up before he had even come over. 

I reached out to a notary so I could sign the papers and mail them to him. I didn’t tell him I was doing that and I saw that as vengeance for him not telling me. But these days I still felt yucky about that. I should have risen with grace and instead I drowned myself in grief and anger. 

After I mailed the papers, I came home and cried for a week. Then, I decided my ancestors did not almost die crossing over into this country for me to be crying on the floor over a man. 

I pulled myself off the floor, decided to do some “spring cleaning” and started by throwing all of Micah’s things onto the floor. While on a rampage pulling one of his shirts of the closet, my wedding dress caught my eye. So I yanked it out of the protective bag it was in and threw it over my television.

I tried to google a witchy way to dispose of my dress but most of the spells I found would also mean detaching myself from Micah and as angry as I was, I wasn’t ready to “cut the cord” between us. I’d spent most of my life thinking this man was my soulmate; I wasn’t ready for him to be just some guy. 

So instead I grabbed a bottle of whiskey and decided to stare at the dress. Very productive, Em. Good job. 

As I started to consider whether or not I’d finish this bottle alone, my phone rang. I wasn’t really in the mood to talk to anyone but something nudged me to pick it up anyway. Without even looking who it was, I answered.

“Whoever this is, unless you have a million dollars or a time machine, I do not have time for this today.” 

And then they laughed. I immediately knew who it was.

My cousin Jacks who was still very happily married to the love of their life.

“What do you want, Jacks?” 

“Have you opened it?”

“It?”

“I mailed it to you. Madam Mayhem gave it to me to give to you.”

Madam Mayhem. How on earth had a woman who had been named Miriam Moran landed on Madam Mayhem? Jacks and I found her on a dare years ago and for some reason Jacks kept going back. 

I got my palm read by her once and not a single thing she said was true. Not even my name which I told her when I first walked in. I told her my name was Emyln and she insisted on calling me Emmeline. 

She was a con artist and not a very good one. 

“Jacks, can this not wait?”

“Nah. She told me to tell her after you tried it.”

“Tried it?” 

“Come on, Em. Is the package there?”

Somehow I had been checking the mail every day in my deep depression though I hadn’t bothered to actually look at any of it. I put Jacks on speaker and then walked over to the mounting pile and sure enough found a small package from Jacks. 

“Alright, one second,” I said as I ripped open the package with my teeth. 

Inside was a cell phone. A Nokia. The kind they stopped making as soon as smart phones took off. It was heavy but somehow still too small. God, why did we accept this as a way of communicating? Next to the phone was a very cryptic note.

“So what do you think?” Jacks asked, their voice bouncing off my walls like the Cheshire cat. 

“I think you’re insane.”

“Read the note.”

“Jacks–”

“Okay hold on. I’m coming over there.”

“Wait, Jacks, don’t–”

But they’d hung up and there was no stopping them. 

Twenty minutes later, Jacks knocked on my front door while I scrubbing the shit out of my kitchen. There was a rule in our family: never have a dirty kitchen or bathroom. A rule I was never quite able to follow but absolutely would not be judged for.

Though, being honest with myself, the last person to judge me would be Jacks. 

I opened the door and Jacks sped in directly to the phone, reading the note with it. 

“Do you want to try it?”

“No. It sounds insane and while my life is absolutely falling apart, I am not quite ready to give up and bury myself alive using a bad psychic’s toy phone.”

“She’s not a psychic. She’s a witch. And we were both raised to believe in witches.”

“A woman with loose, Bohemian clothing and messy hair does not a bruja make.”

Jacks slid the paper back to me and explored my apartment as I re-read the note from Madam Mayhem. The gist of it was simple enough. Supposedly, heavy on supposedly, I could talk to the dead with the phone so long as I was also buried underground. There was some small print towards the bottom that said it had to be someone who was alive when I wasn’t. 

Hell of a catch. 

“Let’s say you did try it. Who would you want to talk to?”

“Jacks, I’m not going to try it.”

“Okay but if you did.”

“My mom, I guess. She died when I was young so–”

“But doesn’t that count as alive as the same time as you? Like even if it was temporary?”

I was one year old when my mom died in a car accident. I’d been in the car too and everyone always talked about what a miracle it was I’d survived. It felt more like a curse. My dad wanted nothing to do with me after that. I don’t think he really ever wanted kids and with my mom gone, he definitely didn’t want me. So I went to live with my grandmother, my mother’s mother, and she raised me as her own.

She took Jacks in when they were 15 after they came out as queer and their parents kicked them out. My grandmother had a way of taking in the kids no one wanted. Her house always filled with wayward kids from the neighborhood who’d found their way to Abuelita Alice’’s house. 

I missed her all the time and woud’ve chosen her if it weren’t for the rule. And the fact that there was no way in hell I was going to do this. 

“Jacks, now is a really bad time. I’m cleaning.”

Jacks did one of those slow, cinematic looks around my apartment and ended on the wedding dress. 

“I’m sorry about Micah, Em.”

I nodded without saying anything. If I didn’t answer Jacks’ question, I’d have to talk about Micah and I didn’t want to do that. 

“I guess I’d want to talk to Granny Elena.” 

Jacks turned around to look at me, fully lit up from excitement. 

“Oh, that’d be fun. She was a witch!”

“I think she was just eccentric.”

Jacks pulled out their phone and showed me their search results. All of them wondering how long someone could stay alive buried underground. The answers varied from six minutes to 6 hours. And all of the websites strongly advised against doing it. 

“Jacks, I’m not doing this.”

Their whole face glowed, as if I had said I was doing it. Jacks had that effect on people. They believed in something long enough until it was true.

“I would need a coffin. Who is going to lend me a coffin?” I asked, thinking maybe some reason would get Jacks to change their mind.

But of course Jacks had already thought that part out. They had a friend (why does someone always have a “friend” in times like these) who worked at a funeral home. There was a way they could bury me, alive, where I would have an hour before I had to come back out. 

I have no idea how we went from talking about this in theoretical to the next day driving to see Jacks’ friend at the funeral home. I wish I could give you the play by play of how Jacks convinced me but some people are just like that. In one moment, you’re saying “hell no, absolutely not” and in the next you’re wondering how they’d gotten you in the end. 

So I went from “hell no, absolutely not” to being buried in a “controlled environment” with an old cell phone in my hand. 

A full five minutes passed before I finally decided I might as well give this a try. To make the phone work, you had to dial the person’s birth date ( day, month, then year) and then say their name out loud. So I pressed 08081948 and very, very, very reluctantly said:

“Elena Juliet Mejia”

…

My head hit the side of the coffin as I passed out. If I wasn’t dead, that would definitely leave a bruise later. 

But when I opened my eyes, I was covered under linen sheets. I pushed the sheets off of me to see I was in a room I only recognized from pictures. The bright red and orange walls. The smell of fresh tamales and Johnny cakes permeating through the air. The heat that danced across my skin welcoming me to my ancestral home.

I was in Belize, circa 1966.