A great memoir piece by Cathy Hilliard from the Best of the Memoir Writing Conference 2012

The Tarot Card Lady

By

Cathy Hilliard

 

This small piece of memoir begins Cathy's journey to Ireland and the adventures she encounters during her two years of living there. Cathy belongs to the Bucks County Writers Workshop and would like to thank her fellow members for their suggestions and encouragement.

 

Early September 2002, Wilmington, Delaware

The digital clock on the stove read 7:25 p.m. I debated whether or not to be a couple minutes late in case she wasn’t prepared. Nancy seemed apprehensive about having visitors. A few minutes passed as I flipped through a stack of mail. The clock read 7:29 p.m. I quickly got distracted looking at my newly re-finished kitchen. It had taken several years, but finally I'd removed much of the white paint on the brick wall, had a ceramic tile floor installed, and distressed the cabinets. I loved my little home. The distraction was just enough time to get to 7:30.

I closed and locked the back door and hopped down the concrete steps. Cutting across the back yard, I leapt to the driveway from the small, wooden retaining wall, and walked towards the street. The sweltering heat of mid-Atlantic summer had started to lift. Evenings had turned into cool, comfortable nights perfect for sleeping. I hesitated at the end of my driveway, giving Nancy more time. Nancy's next-door neighbor, Chris, had advised me to have a reading, “just for the hell of it.” The pragmatic side of me—the one that believed nothing until I saw it with my own eyes—had always been suspicious of that sort of thing. Eventually, though, my initial reluctance to meet with Nancy developed into irresistible curiosity.

I crossed the street and stepped into Nancy’s yard which was directly across from my driveway. Wild geraniums and ivy spread all around her house. After my fretting about perfect timing, I didn’t even have to knock on the door. Nancy stood waiting in the open entryway to her house. 

She smiled when she saw me. “Hello, Cathy. How are you this evening?” She wore a long, flowing, purple skirt and a loose-fitting, black linen shirt that fell easily over the skirt. Tonight her long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Freckles covered her high cheekbones. She looked nowhere near her seventy years of age. “Come on inside.” She stepped aside to let me in. “Have you seen the place since I moved the shop into my house?”

“No, I haven’t.” 

The house was a flea-market full of knick-knacks, antique jewelry, and vintage clothing, including a lamp that would be perfect for a desk in my upstairs sitting room. I glanced around in amazement at the items filling the large space that once functioned as a living room and dining room. All of this used to be in Nancy's costume shop at the Booth's Corner Farmers Market in Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, just north of the Delaware state line.

“Where are all your cats?” I asked.

“Oh,” she answered, “I’ve moved them all out to the back room and back porch. They would break everything if they were in here now.”

The only time I had been inside Nancy’s house was five years earlier to see a litter of kittens. There had been twenty-two cats in the two rooms. The kittens were flea-infested, even though their eyes had not yet opened. Nancy defined “animal lover.” She adopted every stray cat she found, neutering and vaccinating all of them. The entire Bellefonte neighborhood raccoon population also dined nightly in her back yard. The house she and her husband shared was a mere bungalow like my own, and there were two dogs there in addition to the large cat residence. 

The sweet smell of incense disguised the odor of cat urine that could have overwhelmed the house. A small table with two proportionately tiny chairs on either side sat on the right side of her “shop.” A green, flowery tablecloth covered the table which was flush with the wall. 

“Why don’t you have a seat here?” Nancy pulled out one of the small chairs. She sat in the other chair across from me and wasted no time with small talk. “Now I’m going to tell you the things I see. I try to only tell positive things. If I see anything negative, I tell those things as gently as I can.” She dealt the cards onto the table. There were different figures on each of them. Since I knew nothing about tarot cards, none of them were significant.

She pointed to the first card. “The Ten of Cups,” she explained. “You have a very positive feeling about you. It’s as though you actually have a guardian angel with you all the time.” I nodded slowly, suspiciously. “This guardian angel will keep anything really terrible from happening to you, even if you go through very difficult times.” That seemed a typical enough tarot card prediction. She turned the Ten of Cups over, pointed to the second card, and continued, discussing my job.

“This is the Seven of Pentacles.” The figure on the card was upside-down. “There’s something that isn’t quite right about your job right now. You like it, but there are some things you don’t agree with there.” Was there anybody who didn’t feel that way about his or her job, I wondered? “Is there anybody in particular where you work that you don’t feel comfortable with?” she asked. The real question was how many people did I feel comfortable with at work? 

I shook my head. “No, I don’t really think so.” 

“I see there is a person you work closely with that you would never tell any secret to, because that person would run and tell everyone. Do you know anybody like that at your job?”

I smiled in spite of myself. Even though that was another generic statement, I worked with somebody who fit that description exactly. She was the friendliest of all my coworkers, but I wouldn’t normally disclose something strictly confidential to her. “I do, I do know somebody just like that, actually.” Being able to somewhat relate to her statement allowed me to relax into the straight-backed chair.

“You’ve had a very trying time the past year or so,” she began, straying to a different topic, something any semi-observant neighbor would notice. “But things are starting to get better.” My husband and I had split up a year and a half earlier.

Nancy returned to my job, mentioning that something would happen to me in a couple weeks at work. “Do not tell anyone about it.” She carried on with more general predictions: that my parents were healthy and would continue to be, that I would be healthy myself, that money would not be an issue for me. She emphasized the money aspect. “Your very nature will prevent you from having financial troubles.”

I smiled again. She gave me a questioning look, her eyebrows raised. “I’m very careful with money,” I explained. Surely she might have perceived that, living across the street from me for five years.

She didn’t reply. Instead, she kept with her findings. “This is the Two of Cups which signifies romance. In three weeks, you will meet your soul mate.” Of course I would. No tarot card reading was complete without predicting a soul mate. I nodded for her to resume. “This is somebody unlike anyone you’ve ever met before. You will find that this person thinks very much like you. You will meet him in a very social place.”

Nancy repeated her final prediction several times which came from the Chariot card. As I walked out the door to return to my house, she mentioned it again. “You’re not going to stay in your house. Not only are you going to move out of your house, you’re also going to be moving out of this state.”

Leaving my house was the last thing I would consider doing. I had spent the past two years laboring over my house, making it exactly what I wanted. I surprised myself by answering, “I’m not going to move. I love my house.” I didn’t think I would actually react to anything she said.

“Oh no, you’re moving. And the reason for the move is a very good one. You’ll be here through the winter, but this spring you come and see me and tell me where you’re going to be moving.”

I walked through her yard on the tiny stone path that led to the street and turned to close the small, iron gate. 

Nancy repeated one last time, “Remember to come and see me about where you’re moving.”                            Copyright 2012©Cathy Hilliard