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there to put me back together in bed at night. Now it feels like my mind too.
    In Charlie’s apartment I put the flower in a teacup and look at myself in the mirror I found on the street. I can hardly stand to see my face. Pinchy and hungry-looking. I don’t need a hummingbird around my neck for people to see I am searching for love.
    I wrap the mirror in a sheet and hit it with a hammer I found in a kitchen drawer. Feeling the smooth whole thing turn into sharp jags shifting under the sheet, spilling out all bright and broken. I don’t even care about seven years’ bad luck.
    But then I look into the jags and there I am—still all one scary-looking Witch Baby in every piece.
    I just want to disappear. Everything to stop.
    That’s when the whistling flower lights up again. I sit staring as the light jumps out of the flower, all around the apartment and lands inside the globe lamp, making it day all over the world. And instead of whistling the light starts singing a song—soft and snap-crackly like an old reel of film.
    “R-A-G-G M-O-P-P, Rag Mop doodely-doo.”
    Lanky lizards, as Weetzie would say. Maybe I am cracking up.
    “Who are you?”
    The voice doesn’t answer. Only keeps on singing—“R-A-G-G M-O-P-P.”
    Why would somebody write a whole song about a mop made out of rags? And why would they spell it?
    The light dances out of the globe lamp and all over the walls to the tune it is whistling. It’s jiggling doing a jig.
    Then it flashes in a piece of broken mirror and I go over to look but instead of me I see this guy.
    He’s black and white and flickery like an old movie; he’s wearing a rumpled black suit and a top hat like a spooky circus ringmaster. Light is filling him up like he swallowed it and it is coming through his pores, making him kind of fidget-dance around in the mirror like one of the plastic skeletons on my charm bracelet. His eyes are ringed with dark shadows like the negatives of two moons before a rain. He wrinkles his forehead, moves his hands and opens and closes his mouth.
    “Who are you?” I ask.
    Finally he coughs, clears his throat and says, “You’re my baby’s witch baby and you are witnessing a spectacular spectral spectacle sort of.”
    I try to look deeper in the mirror but it’s like a smog-mirage in L.A. when the heat ripples and blurs like water or like looking into the Pacific Ocean so dull with crud it’s like a smoggy sky. I can’t see too well but I know it’s him.
    Charlie B., Chucky Bat, C. Bat, Mr C. Bbbbb-b-Bat. My almost-grandpa-Bat Charles.
    He’s a lot like he was in the pictures Weetzie showed me but if he didn’t look healthy then he really doesn’t look so well now and he’s not in color anymore.
    What do you say to a ghost? “I’m not Weetzie’s real kid.”
    “You look real to me.”
    “I don’t feel like it lately.”
    “Neither do I.” He laughs soft. I think about the pop in the film before a Charlie Chaplin movie starts. “We have some things in common.”
    “Yeah. I mean besides the unreal thing. I take pictures which is kind of like making movies. And you made things up in your head.” I stop. Do you say made or make to a ghost?
    “Make,” says Charlie, smiling a little.
    “ Make . I do that.”
    “Something else, Witch Baby.” I wonder if he has curly toes. But he says, “I was by myself a lot too. I played the pain game.”
    So am I going to end up like him, alone and losing it because I don’t find Angel Juan? I wonder. I remember the made/make thing. I hope he can’t always read my mind.
    “You don’t have to,” he says. “End up like me.” Oh well for secrets.
    All of a sudden I wish he was real. I wish he was my real grandfather or even my almost-grandfather but alive with his heart beating and sending warmth through his body—warmth that would turn into hugs and those plays he wrote. I wish he could pick me up and hold me. I’d smell coffee and cigarettes on his collar. We’d eat hot cinnamon-raisin