An hour, maybe. Or a day. Time doesn’t work the same way anymore.
The phone sits three steps down from the landing. Plastic. White. Red receiver. Googly eyes stare at nothing. I died on these stairs because I stepped on it without looking, my foot sliding sideways on the curve of its back, my body learning gravity all over again on the way down. Neck first. I remember the sound my neck made. I remember the cold of the tile at the bottom. I remember the taste of blood and the kids screaming and then nothing until I was here, in the walls, in the air, in the space this stupid toy occupies.
I can make it ring. I’m almost sure I can.
The phone has a receiver. Has a cord that doesn’t go anywhere. Has a button shaped like a star that you press and it plays music. I’ve learned its geography the way a prisoner learns the cracks in their cell. Learned that if I concentrate hard enough– if I take every part of myself that still exists and push it into the plastic, into the circuits, into whatever mechanism still remembers how to make a sound.
The bell chimes. Once. Sharp. Bright.
My daughter Breanne runs downstairs. “Mom?” she says to nobody.
Her father appears in the kitchen. “Phone’s broken, babe,” he says, and he picks it up and shakes it and puts it back down exactly where it was.
She walks away.
I didn’t have long enough.
Two weeks. Or four days. The light has changed angles multiple times.
I try again. Push harder. The whole phone vibrates. The googly eyes rattle. The receiver falls off the hook.
The cat. Our cat. My cat. The one I fed every morning before coffee, jumps on it. Bats the receiver.
Again.
The house is quieter this time. Night. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of my husband snoring from upstairs. I gather myself. All the scraps of intention I can find. All the desperate wanting.
The phone rings.
Rings clearly. No static. A proper bell sound. The kind that means someone is calling.
Nothing stops it. Nothing interrupts.
My husband gets up. I hear him moving around upstairs. Hear him coming down the hallway. His hand reaches for the receiver.
I am screaming. I am here. I am here.
He picks it up. Says, “Hello?”
There is nothing on the other end but static and distance.
He waits. Listens. Hangs up. “Probably a robocaller,” he says to the empty kitchen, and he goes back upstairs.
The phone goes silent.
I have been dead for six months.
I don’t know when I try next. The seasons have changed. The lighting in the house is different. New pictures on the refrigerator. School photos. Awards.
The receiver is off the hook again. I right it first. I’ve gotten better at this. Fine motor control. Intention translated into physical law. The phone is my medium now and I am learning its language.
I press the star button. The music plays. Then I stop the music and I make the bell ring underneath it. Layer the sound. A phone ringing and music and my desperation all vibrating through the plastic at once.
Breanne hears it from upstairs. I feel her attention snap.
She comes down. She is older than I remember. How long has it been?
She picks up the receiver.
“Hello?” she says.
There is a dial tone. Not me. Not my voice. Just the electronic hum of a system that doesn’t know she’s there.
She listens to it anyway.
Her father appears. “Honey, the phone’s–”
“I know,” she says. “It’s broken.”
She hangs it up and walks away.
I have learned to break things. That is not the same as speaking.
The next attempt is cleaner. Desperate. No flourish. Just the bell. Just the sound. Just the message: someone is calling. Someone wants to talk to you.
It rings at dinner.
The whole family is there. All three kids. My husband. Food on the table getting cold. The phone rings and everyone freezes because nobody ever calls the house phone anymore.
He picks up.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
But this time something is different. This time he waits. Listens. His eyes close. Can he feel me in the static?
“Hello?” he says again. “Is someone there?”
I push everything I have into the receiver. Everything. My love. My guilt. My rage at the stupidity of it. My need.
The bananas on the counter. Two of them, yellow, going soft, that I will never eat. The bananas somehow ring.
Not a phone. The bananas. They make a sound like a phone ringing.
Everyone looks at the bananas.
My husband hangs up the receiver and they all laugh. They laugh and they eat and I am nothing and the bananas ring and ring and ring. I scream until they stop. It takes a long time.
I stop counting after that.
I think maybe a year passes. Maybe more. The house changes. Redecorated. Different pictures. My children are taller in their school photos. My husband looks more tired.
The phone sits in the same place.
I have exhausted myself trying. But I also cannot stop.
This time when I ring it, I don’t hope for anything anymore. I just ring it. It’s what I do now. It’s what I am.
The phone rings.
My husband is alone in the kitchen. He picks it up before the second ring.
“Hello?” he says.
And this time. This time something holds. The static doesn’t break. The interference doesn’t come. It’s just the sound of me and the sound of the receiver.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Hey, babe.”
His voice breaks.
“Breanne,” he calls upstairs. “Breanne, come here.”
She comes down. She’s thirteen now. Fourteen. I’ve lost track. She’s almost as tall as I was.
“Hey, Breanne,” her father says, and he holds out the receiver. “It’s for you. It’s mommy.”
She takes the phone.
She listens to the static.
She listens to me.
“Hi, Mom,” she whispers.
