Imagine the Victorian mansion strung in Christmas lights for Halloween at my first gig as a fake medium. Imagine that not all mediums are fake. Imagine a stomach aching because in the war between groceries and rent, food lost.
Dressing like a fortuneteller wasn’t cultural appropriation if my grandmother did it to pay her bills before I was born. Charging a fee for channeling spirits wasn’t a sin if I was hungry.
A pirate spotted me with his one eye. He led me upstairs to where costumed college students circled around a flickering votive. A girl in black wings passed her finger through the flame.
“Let any spirit in the room feel our welcome,” I said, cringing inside. My mother always hated the parts of me that came from my dad’s side. The fortunetelling. The conversations with the dead.
A saxophonist shimmered in the darkness. “Why are you on the floor?” he asked.
“No chairs,” I said.
The pirate thought I was talking to him. “We don’t have enough for everyone,” he said.
The walls vibrated with bass from the party downstairs. The saxophone man flared like fire stoked with a breeze. “That’s not music,” he said. “That’s some bullshit.”
“A matter of opinion,“ I said.
He wasn’t in the mood to argue. “A matter of nothing, and that’s a fact. Now she’s mad I’m not getting to the point.”
“Who’s she?”
“The woman who stands behind you always. Your grandmother.”
I whipped around. Nothing behind me but an unmade bed.
He sucked his ghost teeth. “You can’t see who you come from same way you can’t see your own eyes.”
“What does she say?” I asked. You embarrass me. Stop talking to yourself. Get a real job. What my mother would say. My stomach turned to water. In the war between the fear of moving back home and the fear of being homeless, I would rather live under a bridge.
“She says there’s no shame using the gift to make some coin.”
The dark angel shook her wings. “This is boring,” she said.
My voice caught in my dry throat. Playing the part of a fake medium was impossible after a lifetime of being a real one.
“Time for the show,” the saxophone man said, and he blew one long pure note before a freight train of blissful sound ran through the room, rattling the windows close to breaking, the entire house shaken by sweetness beyond my shame. Beyond my hunger. Beyond my fears. The curtains bellowed as if with a great wind. The punks and angels and Vikings and pirates gasped. They swooned. They closed their eyes and clutched one another as if riding together through a gorgeous and terrible storm.
When the pirate put cash in my palm he said he did not know how I did the trick but would I please return for his Christmas party.
Yes, I said, imagining a heart free from shame. I said yes.