Emma: The Caretaker of Buenos Aires’ Ghosts

Overview

Emma is the first-person narrator of “My Sad Dead,” the third story in Mariana Enriquez’s collection A Sunny Place for Shady People. She is a sixty-year-old doctor who works an administrative job at a private medical company, having left hands-on patient care years ago. Emma lives alone in a decaying worker’s house in a Buenos Aires neighborhood that has become an island hemmed in by a housing project and a slum. Her defining trait is an ability to see and calm ghosts—a power she discovered after her mother’s agonizing death from cancer. Over the course of the story, Emma becomes the neighborhood’s unofficial ghost‑soother, but her most consequential choice is to refuse to help the spirit of a murdered teenage boy, Matías Cremonesi, thereby holding her neighbors accountable for their cowardice.

Plot Role

Emma’s actions drive the story’s central conflict. She first appears as a witness to a collective trauma: the ghosts of three teenage girls appear in the street after they were killed in a revenge hit. Emma is the only person who can calm them, and she does so by chatting with them about clothes and the party they were coming from, gently coaxing them to delete the photos that show their decomposition. This event cements her reputation among the neighbors. Soon after, the ghost of Matías Cremonesi begins a nightly ritual of pounding on every door, begging for the help the neighbors refused to give him when he was alive. Emma opens her door but refuses to soothe him. She later tells her ex‑husband that the neighbors “didn’t even do that” (referring to a simple, unnamed act of help she believes was owed). Her refusal is a moral indictment: she wants the living to face the consequences of their inaction. By the story’s end, Emma accepts that she is a magnet for ghosts and chooses to remain in the house with her mother’s spirit, the murdered girls, the thief who fell from a roof, and the angry Matías. She says, “All of them, my sad dead, are my responsibility.”

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Emma’s actions reveal a woman torn between compassion and a fierce sense of justice. She soothes the murdered girls out of empathy—one of them reminds her of her own daughter, Carolina. Yet she refuses to soothe Matías because she holds the neighbors accountable for their cowardice; she sees this as a necessary reckoning. She also helps Paulo’s family by calming the ghost of a thief who died falling from their roof, but she does so mechanically, noting that the work becomes routine. This suggests that her motivation is not purely altruistic: she also feels an adrenaline rush when many days pass without a neighbor asking for help. She admits, “I’d start to get impatient.” Emma is also deeply pragmatic. She stays in the dangerous neighborhood not out of naivety but because her dead mother “lives” there. She refuses her ex‑husband’s offers to move south, even though she knows her daughter, Carolina, rarely visits. Her decision is both emotional and practical: she is the only one who can care for these ghosts.

Emma’s intelligence is evident in her wry observations. She mocks TV ghost‑hunter shows, calls herself “a small‑time god” when describing Paulo’s choice to let the thief die, and reflects on the nature of ghosts with scientific detachment. For instance, she compares ghosts to her former cat Florencia: they have a tiny brain that compels repetition. She distinguishes between her mother’s ghost, which does not decay, and the murdered girls, whose images show putrefaction. This indicates a careful, almost clinical attention to the rules of her supernatural world.

Chronological Arc

Emma’s arc begins with the discovery of her ability after her mother’s death, described in the past tense. She initially tried to deny it, but when neighbors started coming to her in secret, she accepted her role. The story’s present timeline covers three major ghost encounters: the three girls, the thief, and Matías. With the girls, she acts out of instinct and succeeds. With the thief, she acts out of obligation and succeeds mechanically. With Matías, she makes a deliberate moral choice to withhold help. This escalation shows Emma moving from reluctant participant to active judge. In the final scene, she is fully committed: she sticks out her tongue at her mother’s ghost, laughs, and imagines growing old together, surrounded by her “sad dead.” This ending suggests she has found purpose in caretaking, even if it means perpetual vigilance.

Relationships

Mother: Emma’s mother appears as a silent ghost. She wears a blue dress with anchors and sometimes nods or laughs. Despite being dead, she is an anchor for Emma’s decision to stay. Emma talks to her and feels her presence; she cannot abandon her.

Daughter Carolina: A fashion editor who lives far away. Emma uses Carolina’s professional eye to describe the murdered girls’ clothes, and she thinks of Carolina when she sees the ghost girl with the Victorian pendant. Emma does not tell Carolina about the grandmother’s ghost, partly to protect her and partly because Carolina rarely visits.

Ex‑husband: He lives in Patagonia with his new wife (who is pregnant). He urges Emma to move south. Emma values his friendship but lies about considering relocation. She no longer wants to be “on the side of the living.”

Neighbors: Julio, Mari, Paulo, and others form a community of shame. They come to Emma in secret, asking her to handle their ghosts. Emma respects some (like Julio) but condemns the collective cowardice that allowed Matías to die. She refuses to let the neighbors off the hook.

Matías Cremonesi: The murdered boy whose ghost haunts the street. Emma opens her door but refuses to soothe him. Their relationship is adversarial yet dependent: his knocking becomes her lullaby, and she wonders if he will ever let her soothe him. Her mother’s ghost humorously sticks out her tongue at the idea.

Other Ghosts: The three girls (one with a destroyed face, one with blood from the neck, one with holes in the abdomen), the thief who falls repeatedly, and the drunk thief who died on Paulo’s patio. Emma sees each as a distinct personality; she calls the thief on the roof “expectant as an owl.”

Key Decisions and Consequences

Decision: Calm the three murdered girls. Consequence: Her reputation as a ghost‑whisperer spreads; neighbors begin visiting her for help. She becomes the local mediator between the living and the dead.

Decision: Refuse to soothe Matías. Consequence: The boy’s ghost continues to haunt the street nightly, serving as a constant reminder of the neighbors’ cowardice. Emma herself cannot sleep without his knocking. This act deepens her isolation from the living community and cements her role as the dead’s caretaker.

Decision: Stay in the house rather than move south. Consequence: Emma embraces her life as a ghost‑keeper. She accepts that her magnetism for spirits is permanent, and she will likely grow old with her mother’s ghost, the murdered girls, and Matías.

Decision: Help Paulo’s family. Consequence: She expands her practice to include other ghosts, but she describes it as mechanical. This decision reinforces her usefulness to the neighbors while highlighting her growing disconnection from living society.

Decision: Keep her secret from Carolina. Consequence: Emma maintains a normal relationship with her daughter over the phone, but she cannot share her true life. This keeps Carolina safe from the supernatural burden but also underscores Emma’s loneliness.

Theme/Symbol Connections

Emma’s story is a rich vehicle for several of the collection’s central themes.

Collective Guilt and Moral Reckoning: Emma’s refusal to soothe Matías is a direct intervention in the neighbors’ moral failure. The boy’s ghost is a physical embodiment of guilt that cannot be exorcised until the living acknowledge their cowardice. This connects to the theme explored in the Collective Guilt and Moral Reckoning section.

Trauma and the Supernatural: The ghosts in Emma’s world are not metaphors; they are real consequences of violent death and unprocessed grief. Emma’s own trauma—watching her mother die screaming from cancer—opened her eyes to the supernatural. The murdered girls’ photos of their own decomposition represent the horror of self‑awareness in trauma. See Trauma and the Supernatural.

Bodily Autonomy and Transformation: Ghosts in Enriquez’s work often suffer bodily decay. The girls’ rotting bodies, the thief’s silent fall, and Emma’s mother’s cancer‑ravaged form all highlight how the body betrays the self. Emma herself is sixty and tired; she feels “at risk for an arrhythmia.” The story suggests that death does not end bodily suffering but may prolong it. This echoes themes in Bodily Autonomy and Transformation.

Mental Illness and Social Isolation: Emma’s ability isolates her. She cannot invite friends over because her mother’s ghost might appear. She withholds her secret from Carolina. The neighbors see her as a strange, necessary resource. Her position mirrors that of the mentally ill or traumatized person who is both needed and shunned. Relevant to Mental Illness and Social Isolation.

Historical Violence and Ecological Decay: The neighborhood itself is decaying—houses ruined by poor renovations, bordered by a slum and projects. The violence of the hit on the three girls and the express kidnappings are part of a larger social collapse. Emma observes that fascism starts with fear and turns into hatred. The story connects supernatural haunting to a society haunted by political and economic violence. See Historical Violence and Ecological Decay.

Questions and Answers

1. Why does Emma refuse to soothe Matías’s ghost?
   Emma refuses because she wants to hold the neighbors accountable for their cowardice. They saw Matías escape his kidnappers and be shot, but they did nothing to help. By not soothing him, Emma ensures that his nightly knocking reminds everyone of their moral failure. This is explicitly stated in the narrative: “I couldn’t or didn’t want to help. Or is it the neighbors I help? The two things are intertwined.”

2. What is Emma’s role in the neighborhood?
   She becomes the unofficial ghost‑soother. After calming the three murdered girls, neighbors come to her in secret to ask for help with ghosts that haunt their homes. She sees herself as a caretaker of the dead, not the living. By the end, she declares, “All of them, my sad dead, are my responsibility.”

3. How does her mother’s death affect Emma’s supernatural abilities?
   Emma discovered her ability to see ghosts after her mother died of cancer. She initially tried to deny it, but the ghost of her mother appeared and occupied a physical space in the house. This personal loss opened Emma to the world of the dead, and she eventually accepted that she is a magnet for spirits.

4. Why does Emma stay in the decaying house instead of moving south with her ex‑husband?
   She stays because her mother’s ghost is there, and she feels she cannot abandon her. She also feels responsible for the other ghosts of the neighborhood—the murdered girls, the thief, and Matías. She tells her ex‑husband that she is “no longer on the side of the living.”

5. What does Emma mean by “my sad dead”?
   “My sad dead” refers to the ghosts she cares for. They are not just any spirits but the specific dead of her neighborhood that she has taken on as her duty. The phrase appears at the end of the story, after she lists them all: her mother, the rotting girls, the thief, and Matías. It conveys her ironic, affectionate, and burdened relationship with them.

For further discussion of Emma’s choices and the story’s meaning, see the ending explained and questions and answers pages. Return to the main book page.