The Kitchen Light Flickers

When I was a kid, maybe five, my little brother was two, and our grandmother used to watch us on weekends. Our parents worked late at the diner, and Nana would come over with her knitting bag and a tin of cookies. She was strict but kind, always humming old hymns while she moved through the house. This particular evening, she was changing my brother’s diaper on the living room rug, and I had wandered into the kitchen. It was a cramped little kitchen with a window over the sink that looked out onto the alley. The fluorescent light above the stove buzzed and flickered, casting a sickly green glow. Nana called to me twice, ‘Leon, get back here,’ but I didn’t listen. I was drawn to the drawer where she kept the wooden spoons and the paring knife. The third time she looked up, she saw me standing there, and beside me, floating at my eye level, was the translucent head of her own mother, who had died when Nana was just a girl. The head was shimmering like heat off asphalt, lips moving without sound. I looked at Nana and said, clear as day, ‘She’s just saying hello.’ Nana later told me she dropped my brother’s diaper and grabbed me tight, but the head faded like smoke. I don’t remember any of it, of course. But when Nana came to visit last year, she told me the story again, and I asked her, ‘What did she look like?’ Nana got very quiet and said, ‘She looked like she wanted to say goodbye.’ Since that night, every time I walk into that kitchen, the light flickers, even if the bulb is new. And sometimes, when the tap is off, I hear a faint rustling, like a voice trying to get through. I’ve never told anyone, but I started carrying a small mirror in my pocket, because once I caught a reflection in the toaster that wasn’t mine. It was an old woman, and she was crying. Nana passed away last spring, and I haven’t been able to step into that kitchen since. But last week, my brother, who is now forty, called me from the old house. He said he was baking a pie and that the light above the stove started flickering. He said he felt a cold breath on his neck, and he turned around, but no one was there. Then he swore he heard a voice whisper, ‘Tell Leon I’m still waiting.’ He laughed, but I didn’t. Because waiting for what? I used to think it was about the story, but now I’m not so sure. This morning, I went to the kitchen to make coffee, and the light in my own apartment flickered. I looked up, and in the dark glass of the window, I saw a faint outline of a face, distorted by the rain. It was my grandmother. She was mouthing the words, ‘I’m sorry.’ I don’t know what she’s sorry for, but I know one thing: I’m never going back to that house, and I’m never looking at a mirror in the dark again. The kitchen light flickers everywhere now, and I think it’s not her mother after all. It’s her, and she wants me to finish something.