I Told My Mother I Was a Ghost. Period.

By Roberta Schine

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One Halloween, I put on a white sheet with a blue line down the center and marched around the neighborhood as a proud sanitary napkin. My friend, Joannie, was a tampon. Clad in cotton batting, her red socks completed the look. We were both thirteen.

Mrs. Nelson gasped and slammed the door when I told her what we were. She called my mother. She said she didn’t call Joannie’s mother because she could tell it was my idea. (She was right.) My mother scolded me because when I left the house I said I was a ghost. Then she laughed.

Roberta Schine is a yoga instructor, former karate instructor, immigration activist, and writer living in New York City. She teaches yoga classes for people with Parkinson’s and for people with cancer at Mount Sinai Union Square Hospital. Her writing has appeared in Rattapallax, Passager, Pandemic Diaries, Penmen Review, Portside.org, Hawansuyo.com (in Spanish), Perigrinosysuslettras (in Spanish), and other literary publications.

Why we chose this piece: We desperately hope this is nonfiction, but even if it’s not, this piece is so fucking funny. In just a few lines, Roberta shows us exactly what the narrator and Joannie’s friendship is like. The whole thing feels like a memory that isn’t even ours.