Kait Leonard
In the Wind
The crystal warmed and Gretta’s fingers began the familiar tingling. She saw the boy. Not literally. Not pictures. But she knew he had ginger hair and grease under his nails. He radiated sadness and anger.
“Red head, like his mother,” she said, offering proof.
The young woman sucked in breath. “Yes, that’s Benji. You can see him? In the ball?” She glanced at the crystal as if it might project an image, like an old, home movie camera.
They paid Gretta cash up front, but each one of them went through that same moment of shock when she got anything right. She still found that odd. Keeping her hands on her crystal, she met her client’s wide, grey eyes. She was pretty, not beautiful, but homecoming-queen pretty. She wore too much makeup. Was her name Amanda? Gretta reminded herself to listen better, but their stories were all pretty much the same--something to do with a young man named Jack or Max or, in this case, Benji. And the client longed to hear that he loved her in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Amanda couldn’t be older than twenty-two or maybe twenty-three. Just a child, Gretta thought. She wanted to grab her by the shoulders and yank her from the chair. She wanted to say. Go! Have adventures. See the world. Find yourself on a freaking mountain top for God’s sake. Don’t give it all up for this ginger-boy.
But Gretta didn’t say these things. Her grandmother had long warned her about telling too much truth.
“Grandma, why did you lie to that lady?” She would ask after eavesdropping on a reading.
Gretta pictured her grandmother pushing her glasses up her nose before saying, “Not telling the truth and lying are quite different things. No one wants to know everything, and anyway you shouldn’t be listening.”
Her grandmother told no one the whole truth, not ever.
Gretta forced her attention back to Amanda and her ginger-boy. “He’s had a tough life,” Gretta offered, which actually meant, He’s damaged goods. Run. Run as fast as your young legs will carry you.
“Yes,” the girl whispered. “His mother died when he was little, and his father can be…” she didn’t finish the statement.
Gretta could feel the violence and brokenness around this Benji. But she stopped herself short of feeling for him. That was a different thing altogether.
“You can’t let yourself get caught up in their stories,” her grandmother would say. “That’s not your job.”
Gretta would argue that she didn’t want this job anyway. She wasn’t going to be a witch like her grandma. She wanted to be something normal, like a schoolteacher. Sometimes, Gretta dreamed of leaving behind everything she knew and going on adventures. Maybe she’d go to Egypt and discover mummies and pottery and stuff. Mostly, she wanted to do anything that didn’t require a crystal ball or tarot cards.
“Don’t be silly,” her grandmother would say. “You know we’re not witches. And none of us wanted this. We were chosen.” She’d go back to cooking or watching television like they were having any normal conversation. But even as a child, Gretta knew there was nothing normal about her grandmother or any of the women in their family. She wondered if her mother had left because she didn’t want to be a witch either. Gretta hoped that was why. She longed to talk to her mother, at least one time, just to know for sure why she ran away and to ask if it was better out there. Maybe if her mom saw how much alike they were, she’d let Gretta join her.
The throbbing in the crystal forced Gretta to return from the past and look into the future. She willed herself to see what this girl needed her to see. A cute little house with a tree in the front yard. A big scruffy dog. Her wonderful Benji sitting next to her on the porch swing, both of them drinking sweet tea. Gretta always tried to find this picture, though sometimes she plugged in a cat or a baby instead of the dog. It depended on her mood. When the sight did show her a happy story, she told the whole truth, even about the slight bumps in the road ahead. But this rarely happened. Happy people didn’t need her. They trusted their own knowing.
“I see that you want a little house on a quiet street,” she said.
“Yes,” the girl said, nodding so energetically she jostled the table. “I’m sorry! Did I mess it up?”
Gretta wanted to laugh, but she shook her head and slid her palms over the crystal, like she might be bringing it back into focus. Her grandmother’s voice played like an endless loop in her mind. Take your time. They won’t believe you if you give them everything too quickly. They have to feel like you’ve earned your money. She glanced at the girl who stared at the crystal ball.
What would she do if Gretta simply told her what she saw? A few years of struggling to make it work in spite of Benji becoming more and more like his father, a baby who needed special care, finally a divorce. Could anyone handle that? Did Gretta have an obligation to tell the truth whether it would cause pain or not?
Gretta always came back to the same questions. But she only ever had her grandmother’s answers and her own doubts. Had her mother found some other answer? Had she found a lighter path to walk?
* * *
When Gretta was in junior high school, she would spend hours on the couch in the living room. Her grandmother kept a huge photo album on the end table. Gretta thought of it as a kind of treasure book. It held clues to a family history she could never quite bring into focus. Fading pictures of her great grandmother and other women, most in dark babushkas, staring solemnly at the camera. Glued next to them were pictures of the men who came and left during each of the generations. A man wearing a jaunty fedora, her grandfather, smiled at the camera from the front steps of a house Gretta had never known. And other men, uncles and cousins, took their places in the album. Somehow Gretta never questioned where all these men had gone. She knew what it felt like to live knowing your secrets were not your own. Unbearable. Good for them leaving.
But the real reason she spent time with the album was because her mother lived there. It was harder for Gretta to comprehend her, going out into the world with the gift, having no one around who understood you, keeping it secret. And leaving her behind. That was the part Gretta really couldn’t make sense of.
She studied the photographs, some of them already yellowing, colors blending, hoping they would help her make a connection, willing them to guide her energy to her mother’s. In one, her mother wore a two-piece bathing suit covered in daisies. She stuck her tongue out at the camera. Older in the next one, she held a gigantic knife, as she posed in front of a pink cake covered in frosting, pink candy roses, and candles. Once when Gretta was little, she squinted and counted the candles, sixteen. Her mother’s smile looked like the kind that happens after someone yells “Say cheese.”
But one photo mesmerized Gretta. Her mother sat in the tire swing in the front yard, her arms draped over the dirty rubber, her head leaning against the taut rope. She had long, tan legs and bare feet and a faraway look in her eyes. Gretta always felt that if she could just put her own energy into the picture in front of her mother’s gaze, something magical would happen. Her mother would see her, and then maybe recognize how alike they were. Mother and daughter.
But it was only a photograph. Gretta had never found a way in.
By her early teens, Gretta had mostly given up asking about her mother. “She had a different path to walk,” was the most her grandmother would ever say. But just because she didn’t ask, didn’t mean she’d given up. When her grandmother instructed her to practice using her gift to make connections with people who weren’t around, specific people, not just anyone who felt like popping in, Gretta knew exactly who she’d practice on, and she pretended to believe it would be okay. She was following instructions. And she needed to understand why her mother had vanished. Why she never called or sent birthday cards. Mostly she wanted to know why it hadn’t been possible to leave the life without leaving everyone.
So, on days when the refrigerator calendar showed that her grandmother would be working for a long time, Gretta would slip out the kitchen door, go to the park, and sit under the big maple tree. She’d offer a new penny to one of the thick roots, and then sitting with her back against the strength of the tree, she’d let her vision go soft.
“Mama,” she’d think more than say. She’d wait for the air to begin swirling, the way it always did when she sent out her will in search of an answer or a person or a spirit. Sometimes when the energy was really strong, a breeze would build, blowing her hair into her face. But with her mother, it wasn’t like that. When she called on her mother, the air just stopped. In fact, Gretta would feel like she had a thick cloud of cotton wrapped around her head. Not squeezing. Not making it hard for her to breathe. Just blocking any chance of a connection.
After the last time Gretta tried to find her mother, she returned home confused and sad and a little bit mad, though she wasn’t sure who she was mad at. Her grandmother sat waiting at the kitchen table, her coffee mug in her hands. Gretta poured herself a glass of sweet tea. When she turned around, she found her grandmother looking at her, brows furrowed.
“Do you have a question, Gretta?” her grandmother asked, voice gentle.
“No, not really,” Gretta said, averting her eyes.
Her grandmother nodded and sipped from her mug. They both stayed still for what seemed like a long, long time. Finally, her grandmother set her drink down and opened her arms. Gretta walked into them, pressing her face into her grandmother’s shoulder, allowing the tears she normally kept at bay to flow.
“It wasn’t about loving or not loving,” her grandmother said, patting her back softly. “Sometimes people get so afraid of the knowing that they have to search for someplace where they can shut it out. Sometimes people can’t make the best choices when they’re filled with that much fear.”
When Gretta had no more tears, she stood back and said, “It’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not. None of this is fair, and none of it’s easy,” her grandmother said. “But you’re strong like me, and you’ll find your way.”
Gretta didn’t feel strong. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be. And she knew how to find a lot of things, but maybe not her way.
* * *
Hot need radiated from the young woman at her table. Gretta recognized this energy, not only from reading for so many clients who longed to hear what they wanted to hear. Amanda’s need reminded Gretta of her own. It had a kind of substance like it came from somewhere deep and solid.
“The road for you and Benji won’t be easy,” Gretta tested the waters with this statement that meant almost nothing. She could picture her grandmother raise her painted-on eyebrows and push her glasses up her nose.
“Of course,” the girl said with the confidence of inexperience. “I understand that relationships take work.”
Gretta looked up and nodded encouragement for her to continue.
“I mean, I know there will be ups and downs, but…” she paused.
Whatever she said next would show Gretta how to proceed.
The girl looked up from the crystal, eyes pleading. “But I know that as long as we love each other, we’ll make it through the hard times. Right?”
Gretta returned her gaze to the crystal. “It’s true. A deep love can overcome almost anything,” she finally said, her grandmother’s words flooding in. People will do what they have their mind set to, no matter what you say. You’ll go mad if you tell them the truth and then have to watch them reject it. It will break you.
“Then why do we do this?” Gretta used to ask, especially when she was little and just beginning to understand how her grandmother paid the bills. Her grandmother would tell Gretta to do her homework, or tidy her bedroom, or practice shuffling the tarot cards that were too big for her hands.
Stroking the crystal ball, Gretta glanced up to find Amanda looking at her, wide eyes filled with hope and fear. If this girl built a future around her ginger-boy, those eyes would dull, and it would be partly Gretta’s fault. She was tired of bearing that burden. It had always been too heavy. She ignored her grandmother’s warning.
“For this to work, you need to concentrate very carefully,” Gretta paused for dramatic effect. “I want you to picture yourself ten years from now.”
Amanda closed her eyes.
“Look around. Try to see the space you’re standing in? When it comes into focus, I want you to look for Benji.” Gretta watched, hoping this girl could find the truth that already lived somewhere inside her.
When her grandmother caught her using this strategy, way back in high school, she made it very clear she didn’t approve.
“Gretta, look at me. I’ve done this work all my life, since I was 12-years old. My mother did this work, and her mother. You will not survive if you try to make them accept the truth.”
“I’m not forcing them,” Gretta blurted. “It can’t hurt to try to really help. Can it?”
Her grandmother grabbed her by the shoulders as if she wanted to shake her, but instead she brought Gretta into a too-tight hug. “It can hurt you, Gretta. Only you,” her grandmother whispered into her hair.
She had stopped short of ordering Gretta to give up probing her clients to see what they could handle. So, Gretta persisted. Any time she saw true pain in someone’s future, she tried. She convinced herself that it was the best compromise between brutal honesty and giving people the fantasy they longed for. But Gretta could always feel that moment when the wall went up. She never pushed after that.
Gretta studied Amanda. Eyes closed, Amanda’s head shifted this way and that, as she scanned the room in her mind. After a minute or two, she stilled. Gretta took a deep breath.
Amanda opened her eyes but took a moment. “I can’t find him,” she finally said, shaking her head. “I don’t understand. Can I try again?”
* * *
“Will you read for me, Grandma?” Gretta had asked one Saturday afternoon as she selected a smoky quartz cluster to place on her grandmother’s table in preparation for the next client.
Her grandmother looked at the crystal and nodded. “You’re getting good at knowing what kind of helper is needed.
“The next lady feels kind of angry,” Gretta said. “Will you read for me after?”
Her grandmother flicked open her silver lighter and held the flame to the tips of two sticks of incense, bayberry for protection and cinnamon for prosperity. “You don’t need me,” she said, placing the smoking incense into its brass holder. “You can read for yourself.” She smoothed the black velvet cloth that draped her table and centered her crystal ball and her tarot cards, just the way she liked them. She paused, looking toward the ceiling, listening. “You were right. This one’s a bit high strung. Better turn the kettle on and get out the nettle tea.”
Gretta didn’t turn to go. “I can’t always read for myself,” she said.
Her grandmother stopped fussing over the preparations. Gretta felt her grandmother’s energy begin to spiral. When it stilled, her grandmother pulled out the client chair and took her own seat at the table. She placed her hands on the surface of the crystal ball and waited for Gretta to sit down.
“So, you want to know about your mother,” her grandmother gazed into the ball. “So, I will tell you what I see.” She ran her hands smoothly over the crystal. “In the old days, the wise women called those like your mother Readers-of-Wind because they didn’t need a crystal or cards, or any other tool of divination. They had a direct connection to the knowing.” Her hands stilled. She gazed deep into the crystal. “Your mother, like so many before her, had to work hard to silence the energy in order to hear her own thoughts and feelings.” Suddenly, she jerked her hands from the ball as if it had grown too hot to touch. “She left you here with me so she could be alone for a time to practice controlling the knowing. I see her now, making progress, but with work still to be done. She promises to return as soon as she masters her skills.”
Gretta bit her bottom lip. Her heart pounded in her ears and her eyes. Her grandmother had read for her as if she were a client, telling her a story somehow only close to the truth.
Seeming to understand Gretta’s expression, she said, “You see, you can read for yourself. Now go turn on the kettle.”
Gretta pushed away from the table and stomped out of the room.
* * *
“Maybe I just need to concentrate a little harder,” Amanda said, interrupting Gretta’s memories.
Gretta had never been asked for a do-over because every other client had imagined exactly what they hoped to see. She studied this woman for a quiet moment. She didn’t possess the sight. Gretta would have felt that immediately, but she had something that wouldn’t let her lie to herself, at least not completely, at least not right now. But was she strong enough to hear the truth?
Gretta gazed into her crystal the way she used to when she was little, letting her mind soar through the sparks of light without trying to steer her energy. She swooped through images of Amanda, the way her life would be if she married her ginger-boy. She would survive, but it wouldn’t be easy. There were bruises, harsh words, and vicious laughter. But Amanda would come out the other side, and she’d get her child to safety with her. Still, while the outer bruises would heal, her energy would be stained. Her spirit would dim. If Gretta’s gift could keep the light in Amanda’s eyes, it would all be worth it.
Continuing to ride the light beams, Gretta saw another possibility for Amanda. A man with sandy hair and a jolly laugh that shook his whole body. A future man. Would Amanda have the courage to wait for better? Would she simply hate Gretta and go marry her Benji anyway? The crystal couldn’t say whether someone would choose to override the wisdom offered. Each person owned a will that was uniquely theirs.
Amanda shifted in her seat. Gretta was taking too long. She needed to deliver a message. She could send this woman away happy. And at least Gretta knew this one would be okay in the long run. Or she could tell her the truth and trust Amanda to be strong enough to handle it. Her fingertips pulsed against the crystal.
“You have choices, Amanda, so many choices,” Gretta said, buying herself time.
Amanda titled her head and waited.
“The ginger-boy wants you. But more than that, he needs you. He thinks you can heal him. But farther down your path, a laughing man with light hair and a bright spirit will cherish you. The choice is all yours.” Gretta took her hands from the crystal and sat quietly.
“Is that all?” Amanda asked.
“I can’t tell you what to do,” Gretta said.
“No, I mean about the other man. Can you tell me about him?” Amanda smiled, her eyes betraying a little sadness.
Gretta opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. She hadn’t expected this response. Crying, yes. Walking out without speaking, yes. But never this. She drew her energy back into her hands and placed her palms on the crystal.
“Yes! I can tell you a bit about him.”
Gretta completed the hour, Amanda jumping in here and there with questions. When the session ended, Gretta felt a tingling running through her body, like champagne bubbles coursing through her veins. She was actually sorry to stop. Standing at the door, Gretta held out her hand for a farewell handshake, but Amanda leaned in for a hug. For a moment, Gretta felt their hearts beat together. Then she watched Amanda walk down the path and out the gate.
Once alone, Gretta sat listening to the birds outside the kitchen window, the mug of her favorite oolong tea growing tepid. She felt unsettled but happy. She had told the truth, and it had gone so well. But not all clients were as strong as this one had been, she reminded herself. Most would leave devastated, and for what? They would end up convincing themselves that she was a fraud, and then go do whatever dreadful thing they were determined to do. Her grandmother had always been right about this. Gretta closed her eyes, remembering Amanda’s gratitude, their parting hug. She tried to picture herself with her next client, spinning a pretty picture based on their dreams and her omissions.
She dumped her cold tea in the sink.
* * *
Gretta placed a new penny on the maple tree’s thick root and sat with her back against the rough, wise bark. At this hour, the park had emptied of children kicking soccer balls and pumping their legs to make the swings soar to the clouds. A staccato chirping of birds rained down on her. She looked up to see sparrows, some with the bright orange breasts of mating season, flitting from branch to branch, so clear in their knowing. The sky had just begun to drain of its blue.
Gretta let her eyes close. She pulled energy from the ground and the tree and the shimmering air. She pictured her mother’s smile and sad eyes.
“Mama,” Gretta whispered. “I understand.”
The shimmering dimmed. Her world went silent as if the cloud of cotton had begun to form around her. She pressed harder into the tree, tears escaping closed lids. “I understand the weight, Mama.” The atmosphere around her continued to thicken.
Gretta opened her eyes and wiped her tears with her sleeve. “But it’s a gift too,” she whispered, as she pushed herself up from the ground. The birds’ chirping broke through the oppressive silence, but it was different. So crisp and distinct. She stood listening. The songs grew louder, like birds from miles around had joined the flock. She brushed away a strand of hair that blew across her face. She felt the fizz in the sparkling air and the champagne bubbles coursing through her. Around her feet, fallen leaves danced.
Kait Leonard writes in Los Angeles where she shares her home with five parrots and her gigantic American bulldog, Seeger. Her fiction has appeared in Roi Faineant, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Every Day Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, among other online journals. Stories will be appearing in Sky Island Journal and Academy of the Heart this year. Her favorite novel is J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey because who doesn’t need “consecrated chicken soup”?
