One Saturday night, we went out to a Hibachi-style dinner where individual chefs put on a cooking spectacle—with food, drink, and fire—in front of a table of twelve. The large room had several such tables, and while we waited for our show to begin, we watched a nearby cooking surface burst into controlled flames. G started to cry, begging for them to stop the fire, getting increasingly incoherent. Having had no negative fire experience in her short time with us, her reaction was curious. The children nearby seemed fascinated by the light and color display.

Her dad—a skeptic, I might add—took G outside and asked her, “Did you have an experience with fire before you came to us?”

She nodded. “Dere was fire in da hopsicle [hospital] where my baby was not born.”

A few days later she told me, “Sometimes oven burn. Mama was right dere. Oven burned my baby. My baby went to hopsicle.”

Again I shivered with curiosity: could her spirit have been present when her brother’s body was “not born” and cremated? He died at the hospital and was placed in the morgue. After I was no longer drugged from surgery, we went in to say goodbye. Then his body was moved to the crematorium, and we decided to go there, too, for one more farewell.

“Forst I was a boy,” G remarked as I watched her care for her babies and then cover them with blankets over their bodies… and heads.

G’s loving gestures reminded me of holding our tiny son for the last time. After imprinting his miniature feet and hands in clay, we covered his head and body with a soft white handkerchief, said goodbye, and released his body to dust.