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Limbo is a short story that first appeared in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. I originally published this under my alter ego’s name–she’s the eclectic one. I’m the one who writes dark paranormals. However, I’m posting Limbo here in the hopes that my agent will realize that I don’t always have to pen works of gloom and doom!

LIMBO

She wants me to steal the salt.

Just this afternoon, I let her grab a fistful of mustard packets from McDonalds. That should have been enough loot for one day. But now I’m on a date in a pricey restaurant, and she won’t shut up about the salt.

My date’s name is Chang. He’s a doctor; I’m a medical researcher. We met at a pharmaceutical conference.

Very romantic.

He has boyish dimples. In fact, if Peter Pan were Chinese, he’d look like my date. “Am I boring you, Adrienne?” he asks.

“No, I’m just distracted,” I mumble.

I knew it would come up, but it’s something you wait until dessert to mention; we’ve only had bread and butter. But I gulp down my wine, and say, “It’s just that my DSA won’t behave.”

“Your what?” He clearly thinks he misheard.

I feign nonchalance. “My DSA . . . my Displaced Spiritual Ancestor.”

Cue the tension. It’s like I’ve told him I have the clap. He quietly sips his water, probably praying that his pager will go off. “Chinese call our spirits Gui,” he finally says.

He’s trying to be gracious.

“Well, mine is Italian and she wants me to steal the salt. Actually now she’s more interested in the pepper-mill.”

He gives me a lopsided smile. “Was she a kleptomaniac? Is that how she ended up . . . you know, in Limbo?”

I like that Chang says Limbo instead of Purgatory and I like his lopsided smile. It gives me hope this date isn’t going to end in disaster. “No. It’s just–Big Ma lived through the Depression. She thinks that if the economy collapses, we’ll survive by selling stolen condiments on the black market.”

Chang laughs. This is a good sign. “Big Ma?”

“She was my great grandmother,” I explain. “Big Ma is her translation.”

Chang makes a face before he can stop himself. Most people imagine that when you open your life to a DSA, you’ll get an exotic spirit from a thousand years ago–some beautiful young woman who met tragedy on a lonely road. That’s the fantasy.

The reality is that I share my body with a ninety-four year old woman who spent her girlhood herding goats in the old country. Worse, Big Ma isn’t a stranger. I knew Big Ma when she was still alive. I still remember her sitting on the porch with her stockings rolled down around those elephantine ankles, drinking from the mini-liquor bottles she always snatched from airliner bars. Her house smelled like salami and she used to smack my sister and me with her over-stuffed purse to make us behave.

I want to smack her right now because she’s calling my date a chink and she wants to know if he’s rich. Ever since Big Ma returned from the dead she’s done nothing but nag me to marry a doctor. Now I find one, and she’s making racist comments.

“I admire that you’re willing to take her on,” Chang says.

His unmistakable tone is that he thinks I’m crazy.

“I couldn’t do it,” he continues. “I’ve got my residency and I guess it’s not very Chinese of me to say, but there’s no room in my life for an ancestor.”

I’m feeling defensive now. “You don’t really know what you’ll do until an ancestor comes knocking,” I tell him.

“But how is it your problem?” he asks. “If an ancestor is displaced, well, they should have planned better for the afterlife.”

I try not to snap at Chang. How exactly Big Ma could have planned for overcrowding in the afterlife, I don’t know. DSAs can either wait in Hell until new space is available, or live with a descendant. And I’m not about to let Big Ma live in an inferno with the condemned.

A white-coated waiter arrives with our entrees and Big Ma complains before I even pick up my fork. She thinks I should’ve ordered the chicken parmesan. But I know better; she’d have just bitched all night about how American restaurants serve ketchup and call it red sauce.

“So, your Big Ma lives inside you? She has to go everywhere with you?” Chang asks. “When you go out, you can’t…leave her with a relative?”

I’d like to leave her on the street corner, but I say, “There’s just me and my sister, and my sister has her own dead ancestor to deal with, so I really can’t saddle her with mine for the night.”

My sister’s DSA is named Henri. He’s a monk. A few weeks ago, while my sister took an afternoon nap, Henri tore strips from her leather sofa to make a whip, then scourged himself with it. My sister woke up to a bloody back and a titillated boyfriend who wanted to know if she was into S&M.

She hasn’t forgiven him yet—not Henri and not the boyfriend.

So, as much as Big Ma irritates me, I could have it worse.

“Your Big Ma must have some great stories,” Chang says. He’s really trying. Then Big Ma catches him stealing a glance at my cleavage, and she forces me to frown at him.

“So, she’s always with you, like, always?” Chang asks.

I blush. “Big Ma goes to bed early. She’s already drowsy, so soon we’ll have the rest of the night to ourselves.”

Chang and I talk about our work. He seems genuinely interested. Big Ma is decidedly not interested. Medical talk puts her to sleep and finally, Chang and I are alone.

The mood changes. We share a cup of chocolate mousse and he winks at me. A perfectly timed wink seems to be a lost art these days, so when Chang walks me back to my apartment, I ask him to come up. We kiss in the doorway. We keep kissing as we make our way down the hall, stepping over unpacked boxes and piles of research books as we go.

Chang yanks on the first doorknob and I stop him. “No, that’s her room.”

“Big Ma gets her own room? I thought she lived in your head.”

“It’s for her junk. If you open that door, you’ll be buried under an avalanche of salt shakers and gilded angels.”

Chang and I go to my room. We trip over an old rug Big Ma bought at a flea market and land hard on my bed. I don’t even have time to put down my purse. Chang has nimble surgeon’s fingers. He has my dress unzipped before I pull down the covers. I think about drawing limits, about telling him he can only go so far. But I haven’t had a date in six months. I haven’t had sex for more than a year. And with Big Ma around, who knows when I’ll have the opportunity again? So when Chang gets his pants half-off, I reach for my purse for a condom.

But when I grab the purse, I find myself swinging it, full force, into Chang’s face. It hits him so hard he topples off the side of the bed. On the floor, he holds his nose and curses in Chinese. Inside my head, Big Ma curses in Italian.

Cacophony.

She hits him with my purse again.

“Adrienne, stop!” Chang shields himself with his arms.

I wrestle Big Ma for control. “I’m trying, but she’s strong for an old woman.”

“Putana!” Big Ma screams at me. I don’t have to speak Italian to know she’s calling me a whore.

“Get away, Gui!” Chang tries to knock the purse out of my hands. Sugar and creamer packets spill everywhere.

He hops around my room, one leg in his pants, one out.

“I’m so sorry; she’s just really old fashioned!”

Chang is putting his pants back on. His nose is bleeding. And Big Ma is still shouting when Chang slams out the front door.

“Are you happy now?” I shout. “You want me to get married, but you just scared another man away.”

When she was alive, it was hard to understand Big Ma’s broken English. Now, I understand her perfectly. “Why would that Chinaman marry you, Adrienne? You can’t cook. You can’t sew. You can’t even milk a goat!”

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