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| Photo by Aral Tasher on Unsplash |
The
Fortune-Teller’s Daughter
Few
people I know possess the unique ability to give direction to a directionless
life.
In
fact, I can name only one person with that particular talent, and in the years
since our lifelines first intersected with one another, I have never crossed
paths with anyone like her.
We
met as children when her carnival arrived in town. Brimming with curiosity, I
played hooky from junior high and ventured out to the open field outside town,
parking my bike against a post of the rickety farm fence that bordered the city
land from the Johnson’s property. Beads of sweat rolled down my face and down
the middle of my back; the morning sun beat through the humidity, and vapor sizzled
off of and hovered over the dewy grass.
Already,
men were sweating beneath the autumn sun as they raised tents and erected game
booths and rides in an arrangement that seemed haphazard to my untrained eye.
There was doubtlessly organized in a way to lure curious young boys such as
myself into the labyrinth of fried food, glowing lights, and the chance to view
the strange, the peculiar, and the supernatural. Things that boggle the mind
and leave a kid with half a million questions.
From
a distance, I observed them until I noticed a girl about my age wandering from
the carnival along the fence in my direction. Glossy dark brown hair fell down
her back, loose despite the heat and humidity, which convinced her hair to
somehow cling to her neck while at the same time flying about her head in a
wispy, unruly halo. Her head was upturned, revealing the graceful curve of her neck
as she surveyed something above us. I lifted my chin to the sky and saw a flock
of birds flutter over, turning the blue dome black as they passed in a swarm. I
dropped my gaze before the girl did, and I watched her, unnoticed. She walked
barefoot and wore cutoff, frayed shorts that bared her lean thighs as she
stepped over and around the clumps of high grass; her T-shirt, a pale lilac,
hung off one slender shoulder, baring her collarbone upon which lay a simple
chain holding an oval locket. Her outfit wasn’t unlike what the girls at school
wore, though the dress code didn’t permit cutoffs shorts or bare shoulders. What struck me as odd, though, were her hands. Covering
them were black lace, fingerless gloves. With her otherwise muted-bohemian
style, the addition of the black gloves seemed out-of-place. Girls who were
part of the gamer cliques in school wore gloves like hers, but she didn’t look
like the gamer type to me at all.
When
she finally noticed me, she was only a few sections of the fence away. She
smiled hesitantly and waved, the universal greeting of all pre-teen children
upon meeting one another. I waved back, and she called out a cheery hello,
though she pronounced it hullo, her
vowels more rounded in a way I couldn’t—and still can’t—place. Not quite
Southern, but not Northern. Her accent had no direction, but then I suppose,
she had no direction either. She blew with the wind. But more on that later.
“Those
are magpies,” she said, pointing skyward at the retreating flock of birds and
shading her eyes with her opposite hand. It was then that I noticed the
spattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose, as though a painter flicked
his brush in a sloping line across her features. “Mama says they’re fickle
omens; creative and high-spirited birds, she says, but smart, too smart for
their own good—when shown a reflection of themselves in a mirror, they know
it’s them they’re looking at. Did you know they’re related to ravens?”
“No,
I didn’t,” I stammered, not knowing what to do or say to this girl who had
probably read an entire encyclopedia’s worth about bird breeds or Audubon’s Birds of America more than once.
“Or
that shiny things actually frighten them rather than fascinate them?”
“No,
I didn’t,” I repeated.
“They’re
smart,” she murmured, her gaze still fixed on the birds, which by now were
specks in the sky as small as the freckles on her face. “They’re smart enough
to be frightened of what they see.”
To
be entirely frank, I didn’t know what to make of her. She soon introduced
herself as Cassie after the magpies flew from sight. We chatted about birds a
bit more—her knowledge surprised me, and I wondered where she accumulated
it—then after a while, she asked, “Are you coming to the carnival?
“I
think my parents and I plan to come. Even if they don’t, I will.”
Her
smile, which was snaggle-toothed, faded when she heard my response. One would
think she would be happy about that, after all, she lived at the carnival.
Wouldn’t she be happy that people were coming?
“You
ditched school to come watch them set up the carnival,” she observed, her tone
flat. I suddenly felt transparent, the feeling you get when you dream about
being in public in nothing but your boxer briefs. “I ditched school to watch
the birds and to explore,” she continued. “There aren’t many children in the
troupe, and it gets lonely, but I get to travel and wander about as I please.
No one misses me but Mama, and even then, she knows I’ll be back.”
“You
don’t go to school?”
“Mama
teaches me.” She paused, and her face screwed up as she thought, her freckled
nose crinkling in a way that reminded me of a rabbit. “Well, Mama and the
others.”
Curiosity
piqued my interest in this already unusual girl, and my mind filled with images
of her lifting an immeasurable amount of weight with the enormous strongman,
flying across the room a mere hair’s breadth from the tent ceiling with the
trapeze artists and acrobats, standing before two or three lions with the
tamer, speaking to them as though they were merely kittens begging for a pet or
a jingling ball to bat around with their herculean, leathery paws.
I
scoured my thoughts for a starting point, wishing to learn more about Cassie.
“What does your mom teach you?” That was a safe-enough question, I thought.
Her
lips curled into a surreptitious grin, yet her dark eyes held no mirth.
“Fortune-telling.”
----------
Just after that revelation, which
sent my heart thumping wildly in my chest, a woman who resembled Cassie, only
about twenty years older, appeared at the border of the carnival and called
Cassie’s name, her voice loud and clear, pealing out across the field. It
commanded authority—that the hearer listen and take heed. Obediently, Cassie’s
head snapped in her direction, her glossy hair swinging.
“Mama,” she gestured toward the
woman. “I have to go,” she said, a fact I already assumed with some regret.
As she began to trot away in the
direction of her mother, I called a promise after her: “I’ll find you at the
carnival.”
“Don’t,” she mouthed over her
shoulder, as though she feared shouting the word with her mother nearby. I
observed the older woman, comparing her to the stock images in my imagination
of fortune-tellers in sheer veils with thick, black eyeliner and heavy lids,
gaudy, gold-plaited bracelets, some with vibrant gemstones and some with
intricate designs, covering most of their forearms, and wearing robes of silk
in an array of colors—crimson, turquoise, violet, topaz, and magenta. This
woman exhibited nothing to distinguish her from an ordinary person, much to my
dismay. She wore her curly hair in a messy bun atop her head and wore jeans and
a T-shirt that bared her tanned and jewelry-free arms. The woman continued to
beckon Cassie on as the girl ran toward her, and then the woman’s dark gaze
shifted from her daughter to me.
The moment they locked onto me, I
felt the urge to shrivel up inside myself and disappear forever; where Cassie’s
eyes were warm and swirling with secrets that dwelled deep within her; her
mother’s gaze was shrouded in complete mystery and sent rolling waves of chills
up and down my spine. My shirt, damp with sweat, clung to me, my skin clammy
and cold, like raw meat sitting in the fridge. It was far from pleasant.
Fighting the urge to scramble for my
bike, I watched as Cassie met her mother and the woman placed a protective arm
around her daughter’s shoulders. Cassie leaned into her mother’s side, and the
two disappeared around one of the now-erect tents. Only then did I allow myself
to slam my toe into my bike’s kickstand, hop atop the seat, and peddle away.
I didn’t go to school at all that
day, though the thought crossed my mind. I wasn’t a bad student; I was,
however, a bored one—a twelve-year-old boy with too much pent-up energy and
feelings (that within a couple years would turn to high-school angst) to sit in
a classroom all day. No, my mind swirled, imagining what it must be like to
travel with a carnival, to roam around the country and live in the silver RV
trailers that caravanned down the highway earlier that morning. The carnival
wouldn’t open for another day, so I spent the remainder of the afternoon riding
my bike around town—careful to avoid any of the busier streets where someone might
notice a boy playing hooky—and through the trails of the local park, returning
home at the usual time.
Of course, my parents grounded me
and confiscated my bike; Dad drove me to school the following morning and
picked me up later that afternoon. When I asked him and Mom about the attending
the carnival’s opening, the answer from both of them was an adamant and stern
“No—you’re still grounded.” They promised to take me the next day, but I had
already thought out a plan to sneak out of the house that night and slip away
to the carnival, bike or not.
----------
Shadows twisted and contorted, cast
by the strobing, colored lightbulbs that decorated the Ferris wheel and other
rides and the steadier, warmer bulbs hanging from the ceilings of the game
booths. Stars glinted in the sky above, but the glittering carnival lights
drowned out their gentle brilliance. Already, popcorn littered the ground, and
the buttery aroma mingled with that of fried cake batter wafted into the sticky
night air. Children shrieked with glee and fright. Older couples—some of them
high school kids I recognized—milled about, holding hands or sharing bags of
popcorn or a plate of funnel cake. From a distance, I spotted a couple of my
friends and their parents talking by the ring-toss booth, and quickly, I darted
behind a neighboring tent to avoid detection and, more importantly, someone
reporting my excursion to my parents.
I turned to look over my shoulder as
I jogged—my first mistake—and collided with another person. She yelped and let
out a harsh oof as she toppled to the
ground. Midair, I twisted around so as to avoid falling on top of her. As it
was, I landed on her ankle and bare foot and cringed as I heard and felt a
swift pop.
The girl gasped, and my head shot up
to see who I inevitably and unintentionally injured.
Cassie.
I
rolled off of her foot, careful not to bend it any further, and she clutched
her ankle closer to her body, distorted light glinting off tears that welled in
her eyes. “I told you not to come!” she hissed, her teeth clenched in pain and
anger as she massaged her thumbs into her ankle and foot, rubbing the sore
spot. Tentatively, she pointed and flexed her foot, wiggled her toes, and then
rolled the ankle around a couple times to ensure that it was not broken.
Defensiveness
swelled in my chest. “No you didn’t.”
She
shot me a dark glare as she rose to stand, dusted off the loose skirt that
swished about her bare calves—she still wore those fingerless gloves from the
day before—and didn’t bother to extend her hand to help me up. “Yes, I did. You
stupid or something?” When I didn’t answer, she fixed me with that gaze, and in
the shadows, she looked like her mother. The short hairs on the back of my neck
stood on end despite the damp sweat that clung to them and chills danced along
my spine. “You came to hear your future. I suppose you’re just curious,” she
remarked. “They all are.”
“People
who come to the carnival?” I swiveled my legs into a cross-legged position.
“No,”
she said, then paused. “Well, yes, though I was thinking about the people who
come to see Mama. Most of them are skeptical. They’re sure it’s a trick, but
others believe.”
“You
don’t?” I asked.
Folding
her legs beneath her, she lowered herself into a sitting position with her
knees daintily folded to one side, and that surreptitious grin tugged once more
at her lips. “It isn’t a trick, not like what the people think. Hold out your
hand,” she gestured with her own, the palm turned up. Taking mine in hers, the
thin skin on the back of my hand grazing the white callouses at the base of
each finger and the top of her palm through the lace gloves, she tilted my open
hand to the light and peered at it, studying it for several minutes. “You have
fire hands,” she observed, but failed to explain what that meant. I nodded,
feigning understanding and indifference. She traced a sloping line from beneath
my pinky up toward my first finger. “You have a long heart line. Be careful
with your feelings.” She moved on to a line beginning beneath my first finger
and running steeply toward my wrist, stopping under my middle finger “And a
short head line, so I take it you are impulsive yet creative, curious, although
you playing hooky from school and sneaking out of your house tonight already
told me that.”
I
gaped, my jaw going slack and mouth dropping open. Did fortune-telling show her all of that?
Delicately,
she then traced the fleshy mound beneath my thumb. “Your lifeline is short. See
how it stops near the middle of your palm?”
Leaning
in, I stared at the wrinkle she indicated; indeed, it stopped near the hollow
of my hand. “That means I die young?” I said with some alarm.
“Not
necessarily. Fifty or so,” she said nonchalantly, and released my hand. “Those
three are the basics of palmistry, or palm reading.” Leaning back, she placed
her hands in her lap. “Is that all you came for?”
“What
does yours say?” I asked, interested in knowing more about this odd girl.
She
shrugged her narrow shoulders, “Nothing important. I try not to think about
it.”
“Has
your mom ever predicted someone’s death?”
Cassie
shook her head adamantly. “She can’t do that. Most fortune-tellers can’t, but
she can usually see if someone is healthy or not based on their hands and other
things—tea leaves, but mostly cold reading.” Lowering her voice to a whisper,
she continued, “Originally, she wanted to be a nurse or psychologist. She had a
gift for reading people and telling if they’re sick or not, and she wanted to
use it. She says I have her gift.” She straightened slightly at that
declaration, proud to have that in common with her mother. “Then Mama met my
dad and got pregnant the summer before she started grad school; he left when he
found out about me. He left before I was born.” All of this she said with an
expression void of any feeling; she spoke as though reciting facts from a
science book. Heck, she was more enthusiastic about the magpies earlier than
about her mother or father. “Mama had a lot of debt,” she continued, “Since she
read people well, she tried her hand at telling fortunes, though she says she
really just offers people stuff that they maybe don’t see unless they go to a
therapist. Mama enjoyed it and worked out of her apartment until I was about two
or so, and she paid off most of her debts. The carnival came to town and hired
her as their fortune teller, and we’ve traveled ever since.”
“Do
you like it?” I asked, still romanticizing the ideas of an open road and
freedom from school.
“Sometimes,”
Cassie shrugged and made a face. “I like seeing new things and places. I like
trying new pizza, though Chicago still has the best, I think.” A wide grin spread across her face, and white, slightly
crooked teeth peeked out between her lips as she drew out the I. “They layer pizzas with cheese and
stuff the crust with more cheese, this thick!”
She demonstrated by holding her thumb and first finger in the air, a large gap
a few inches thick between them. Then her expression fell. “I don’t have many
friends, though. Not many people in the carnival have kids my age, and it gets
lonely sometimes.”
Frowning,
I cocked my head to the side in question. From somewhere beyond the tent, a
couple of children screamed in delight over something, possibly a funnel cake
or a balloon twisted into the shape an animal. “Have you told your mom?” I
asked.
Again,
Cassie shrugged, but her eyes drifted down to her palms where they remained
fixed for some time before she answered, squinting, studying, thinking. What
she saw, I could not guess. She muttered something under her breath, and I
strained to hear her, but despite my efforts, the only words I heard over the
clamor and pandemonium resonating from the carnival rides and booths were not enough time.
“What
did you say?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. I wanted to know what
she said and why such a heavy tone clung to her words.
Wordlessly,
Cassie shook her head in response, her hair swinging with the action; colored
lights played about her, casting eerie shadows and valleys on her face and
illuminating her in a peculiar aura. Saying nothing, she rose, and this time,
she extended her hand in offering to me, and taking it, I pulled myself up. But
I didn’t let go. Not before I turned her palm over, opened it flat, and yanked
off her glove, holding her bare palm to the inconsistent light.
Cassie
gasped and attempted to wrench her hand from me, but I held it for a lingering
second. Though the light was dim, and I released her quickly, I traced the line
along the mound of her palm beneath her thumb—her lifeline—with my gaze and
realized what she tried to hide, why she didn’t tell her mom she wanted to
leave.
Because,
despite her protestations, she believed in fortunes and fate.
A
small part of her believed.
A
small part large enough for her to doubt the uncertainty and shrouds of
superstition surrounding her mother’s particular talents and her mother’s
affirmations that she simply “read people,” for part of Cassie believed in her
mother’s craft. Enough to wear gloves to conceal the intermittent lines that
struggled to span the distance across her nearly smooth palms.
Our
problems couldn’t have been more different: she had no direction; I had too
many.
“I—I’m
sorry,” I muttered, dropping her hand and giving her back her glove, which she
snatched from my loose grip with such force that I feared she would rip the
material. “I wanted to know why you wore them.”
Blinking
back tears as her lower lip quivered, Cassie sank down to the ground once
again, holding her limp glove between her hands. “I’m scared. I know Mama just
sees people, you know? and tells them what she sees, but I—I—um,” her chest
heaved, her breath hitching, “I don’t know if it’s true or not. I know she just
sees people, but I think of the times she told someone they needed to go to the
doctor and we got a letter from the person saying that they went and the doctor
found a blood clot that could’ve caused a stroke or heart attack or found the
beginning of cancer, and I don’t know if she just sees things or if she…sees things.” She pressed the heels of
her palms to her eyes and rubbed at them furiously, and when she pulled them
away, red blotches darkened the surrounding skin, looking oddly shadowed and
zombie-like. “I wanna spend as much time with her as I can, but I’m not sure I
want to live here,” she waved her gloved hand through the air at the tents and
amusements surrounding us, the only two kids in the whole carnival not
entranced by the games and sights, the only two kids afraid of them—like
Cassie’s magpies.
----------
Cassie
and I wrote letters to one another over the following years, and when we were
old enough for our parents to deem us worthy of cell phones, we exchanged
numbers and texted almost every day, calling each other on the weekends to
talk. She stayed with her mom at the carnival and began telling fortunes
herself, but she always wore her gloves. In college, she followed in her
mother’s footsteps and pursued a degree in counseling psychology.
At
last, the girl with no direction gave herself one.
I,
on the other hand, bounced around from job to job through high school; nothing
kept my attention for long. I worked as a barista in a coffee shop in the town
where I attended college classes—my basic core (at that time, I still didn’t
know what I wanted to do).
Morning
sun shone through the windows, and the rich, palpable aromas of coffee beans mingled
with those of vanilla, chocolate, and the recently-made lavender syrup,
cinnamon and other spices, and the cloying, saccharine scent of fresh scones wafted
through the cozy café. The mechanical whirling of the coffee grinder filled my
ears, along with the low-fi playlist lingering in the background below the murmured
conversations of the morning’s customers—mostly college students returning from
summer break—scattered around at the various tables and booths.
Announcing
the arrival of another customer, the bell above the door tinkled lightly, and I
almost spilled a patron’s steaming pour-over when I glanced up to greet the
most recent customer and laid eyes on Cassie, taller than her twelve-year-old
self and willowy like her mother, but with the same dark hair, which hung in
two thick, messy braids to her natural waist, and glittering, haunted eyes. She
startled and then beamed when she saw me, her teeth still slightly crooked, and
waved, a gentle flickering of her fingers.
And although the day was blistering
hot and humid, like that first afternoon at the carnival grounds, Cassie still
wore lace gloves, black as a magpie’s wings.
She ordered a lavender-and-honey
latte and sat down at a window table, setting her backpack in the chair beside
her and withdrawing a stack of textbooks the size of a small mountain. She
opened one, took out a green highlighter, and hunched over it to read. I worked
until my shift ended and took the seat opposite her.
“Still don’t know your future?” she
asked slyly, an eyebrow lifting toward her hairline.
I inclined my head toward her gloves
and quipped, “Still afraid of yours?” Playfully, I eyed the mountain of
textbooks at our elbows. It had long been a subject of conversation for us—I
knew she no longer feared it.
“Not a chance, and you know it,” she
grinned coyly and nudged me with her toe beneath the table. Setting the
highlighter on the table, she waved one of her hands between us. “It adds an
air of mystery befitting a fortune-teller’s daughter, don’t you think?” Then
she leaned back, her posture straight and exuding confidence. “You’re still as
indecisive and impulsive as ever.”
Chuckling, I nodded. “I think you
might have ruined my chances of settling down that night at the carnival,
filling my head with pictures of adventure and traveling.”
“Was that all?”
“No,” I said slowly, observing her
reactions and response, “I can’t settle down. Not yet.”
If possible, Cassie’s eyebrow shot
higher. “Oh?”
“You said I have a long heart line
and should be careful with my affections.”
Cassie nodded, a tender smile
playing over her lips.
“And that I have a short head line
and am impulsive—see also the job-hopping.”
Her smile widened, and she laughed,
her dark eyes glittering brightly.
“So,” I sighed deeply, “honoring
both of those, I will impulsively tell you that you left a lasting impression
on me and that I couldn’t settle down without you.”
Cassie shifted in her chair,
intrigued, and glanced out the window before looking at me. “Did you know I
lived here?”
“I didn’t have a clue, but over the
years—and I blame you for this—I’ve come to believe in fate.” I winked in jest
and took her hand, running my thumb over the lace gloves, and I looked at the
girl who, so long ago, showed me something different. Showed me endless
possibilities of an infinite future, and in the years since then, showed me how
to live and lose my heart to the future, to fate, to fortune. Impulsively and
with no small amount of hope, I squeezed her gloved hand, and the
fortune-teller’s daughter squeezed back. I smiled. “Do you?”
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Now that summer break is only a week away, I hope that I will post more frequently in the future. In the meantime, I post a couple times a week on my Instagram account if you want to follow my progress and interact with me there! Have a lovely weekend, and thank you for reading!
~Abigael Blair
