The costume was in a box labeled HALLOWEEN in my mother’s handwriting.

I found it three months after she died.

There were other things in the box.

A string of orange lights with half the bulbs burned out.

A plastic witch missing her broom.

Two paper ghosts folded flat between sheets of tissue paper.

A bag of candy corn that had somehow survived at least fifteen years.

And underneath everything else—

the dress.

I knew it immediately.

I hadn’t seen it since I was eight.

It was a princess costume, although I had never actually been a princess for Halloween.

That was the part I remembered most clearly.

I had wanted to be a witch.

My mother had wanted me to be a princess.

We had compromised by making me a witch princess.

At eight years old, I had considered this a completely reasonable solution.

The dress was pale blue with silver stars sewn around the collar.

There was a little cape attached at the shoulders.

The hem had yellowed with age.

One sleeve was torn.

I held it against myself and laughed.

“Jesus.”

It was tiny.

Of course it was tiny.

I was forty-nine years old.

The dress had been made for a child.

I was standing in my mother’s basement surrounded by forty years of things she had refused to throw away.

There were my old report cards.

My first pair of ballet slippers.

A box of drawings.

A photograph of me missing my two front teeth.

A plastic bracelet I had apparently considered important enough to preserve for the rest of civilization.

My mother had saved everything.

She saved grocery lists.

Birthday cards.

Movie tickets.

The little paper wristbands from summer fairs.

Things I had forgotten within days of receiving them.

She had kept them for decades.

I used to think this was clutter.

Now I understood it differently.

She had been afraid of forgetting.

Or maybe she had been afraid that I would.

I put the dress back in the box.

Then I took it out again.

I don’t know why.

Maybe because grief makes you stupid.

Maybe because sometimes you want to touch something that belonged to the person you’ve lost, even when you know it can’t possibly contain them.

I carried the dress upstairs.

I held it against myself in front of the bathroom mirror.

The reflection looked ridiculous.

An adult woman holding a child’s costume against her body.

I laughed.

Then I noticed something.

The dress fit.

Not perfectly.

That would have been impossible.

But the shoulders sat in the right place.

The waist fell exactly where my waist did.

The sleeves reached my wrists.

I stared at myself.

Then I heard my mother’s voice.

Not really.

Not exactly.

Memory is strange that way.

Sometimes you don’t hear a dead person’s voice.

You simply know what they would say.

And I knew what my mother would say.

See?

I put the dress down.

That night I dreamed about Halloween.

I was eight again.

My mother was kneeling on the floor fastening the silver buttons at the back of the dress.

“Hold still.”

“I’m holding still.”

“You’re wiggling.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

She laughed.

I could smell her perfume.

I could smell the hairspray she used when she fixed my hair.

I could hear children outside.

Doors opening.

Porch lights clicking on.

Someone shouting, “Trick or treat!”

My mother stood up.

She looked at me.

And then she said something I couldn’t hear.

I woke before I could.

The next morning, I found the costume lying across the chair in my bedroom.

I had left it in the basement.

I was certain of that.

I stood there for a long time.

Then I picked it up.

I should have put it back.

Instead, I put it on.

Just for a minute.

That’s what I told myself.

Just to see.

I stood in front of the mirror.

The dress was still too small.

Still old.

Still ridiculous.

But somehow—

it looked right.

There was a knock at the door.

My neighbor’s daughter stood outside.

She was about seven.

She looked at me.

Then she frowned.

“Are you going trick-or-treating?”

I laughed.

“No.”

She stared at me.

“You look like a kid.”

Something cold moved through me.

“What?”

She shrugged.

“Not like you.”

She pointed down the street.

“Like before.”

Then she ran away.

I closed the door.

I took the costume off.

I put it back in the box.

I carried the box downstairs.

And I forgot about it.

At least I thought I did.

Until Halloween.

That evening, children began appearing on the sidewalk.

Princesses.

Superheroes.

Ghosts.

Witches.

A tiny dinosaur.

A little girl dressed as a firefighter.

I sat on my porch with a bowl of candy.

The air smelled like wood smoke and wet leaves.

For a while, I felt almost happy.

Then I saw her.

A little girl standing at the end of the sidewalk.

Pale blue dress.

Silver stars.

Yellowed hem.

My dress.

She was eight years old.

Exactly eight.

She looked at me.

And smiled.

I stood up.

The little girl walked toward me.

She stopped at the bottom of the porch steps.

“Trick or treat,” she said.

My throat tightened.

“What’s your name?”

She looked at me as if the question were strange.

Then she said my name.

My childhood name.

The one nobody had called me in forty years.

I dropped the bowl of candy.

Pieces scattered across the porch.

The little girl looked down at them.

Then back at me.

“Mom said you’re supposed to remember.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“Who is your mother?”

The girl smiled.

And for one terrible second, she had my mother’s face.

Not the face she had when she died.

The face she had when I was eight.

Young.

Beautiful.

Impatient.

Alive.

Then the girl’s face changed again.

She was just a child.

Just a stranger.

She picked up one piece of candy from the porch.

“Happy Halloween.”

Then she walked away.

I watched her disappear into the crowd.

I didn’t follow.

I didn’t call after her.

I went inside.

I opened the box.

The costume was gone.

In its place was a photograph.

I had never seen it before.

It showed me at eight years old, standing on the porch in the blue dress.

My mother was behind me.

Her hands rested lightly on my shoulders.

We were both looking at the camera.

But that wasn’t what frightened me.

It was the writing on the back.

My mother’s handwriting.

Four words.

You looked so happy.

I turned the photograph over.

There was one more line beneath it.

Written in a different hand.

Mine.

But I didn’t remember writing it.

I wasn’t.

I sat on the floor for a long time.

Then I turned the photograph over again.

My mother was smiling.

I was smiling.

And suddenly I understood something I had spent most of my life refusing to understand.

Sometimes the person we remember being isn’t the person we were.

Sometimes the costume fits because we never really took it off.

We simply grew around it.

And sometimes—

on Halloween—

the past comes looking for you.

Not because it wants you back.

Because it wants you to finally admit that you were there.

Milanka Sulejić
Latest posts by Milanka Sulejić (see all)