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[nvrcmplt]

Ship Tags 3.

[grumkin]

Early, Brooklyn, Present Day

On my seventeenth birthday, my mother sent me to a psychic. It was the summer after my high-school graduation, and I was having some trouble deciding what to do with my life. Summertime in Brooklyn—the street trees fluffy with leaves, sparkling soda can discards glinting in the gutters, loud music pouring from every open window—is not conducive to buckling down and becoming a grown-up. Under the magnet on the fridge, Mom left a note that said, You have a noon appointment at La Botanica Divino Nino. You better go. Happy Birthday Love Mom. It was hot and humid that morning and although the light that pierced the curtains threatened to aggravate my headache, I put on some sunglasses, slipped on my flip-flops, and left the apartment.

           The seer operated in the back of a Dominican botanica in Brooklyn, a few blocks away from where we lived. The sign in the window flashed neon green and pink: Psychic – Palms Read – Futures Told. The seer had a slight mustache and a tragic dye job. She gripped my hand to her billowing chest as I entered the door, and cried, “My dear, I have just forseen your death!”

            I stumbled across the peeling linoleum threshold. The walls were lined with shelves containing cardboard boxes labeled in Spanish, and pungent incense wafted from a small cauldron on top of the glass display case. The seer dragged me to rest on a squeaky folding chair.    As my eyes adjusted to the dim interior, I saw my mother, Agatha, sitting in the corner, smoking and pretending to read, and I jumped almost out of my chair. She was always doing stuff like this. It was very exasperating, and hard on my nerves. While I was startled, I wasn’t surprised.

           “Mom!”

           “What? I’m reading, leave me alone.” Mom burrowed back into her book, something called Dancing with Depression, like she just happened to decide Divino Nino was the best place to catch up on her mental health. Puff-puff.

           The seer took my hand again and shook my arm a little. “Don’t you want to know the date of your death?”

           “I’m not sure I do,” I said.

           “Early,” my mother barked, “Do you want to know what it is to really live?” She shook her thick grayish-blonde braid over her shoulder and glared at me through her reading glasses.

           I, who had been listening to Rihanna, smoking cigarettes, and playing solitaire on my bed only hours before, felt this question was unfair. “Mom, could you just give me a break, please?”

           Mother believes. In all kinds of things. Psychics are high on her list. She loves the famous television psychics. She believes in television, too. She believes in angels, guardian angels, one or many of which we all have. She believes in past lives. She believes in children. She believes in the benefits of grapefruit for the digestive system. She believes in vitamins. She believes in inner light. She believes in Jesus. Mother is credulous. Mother believes there is a cure for everything.

           The seer wanted to get back on task. “I am Madame Borbala, and I see your future. Listen to me, I have foretold the hour of your death, but not its nature.”

           “You haven’t even read my palm yet; how have you foretold anything?” I looked around for cards or a crystal ball or other kind of divinatory device but saw only the bare card table, shelves full of tiny bottles, and an army of red and black candles marching in rows along one wall.

           Mom rolled her eyes at me. “This one, she doesn’t believe anything you tell her,” she said to Madame Borbala.

           “They’re so difficult at this age,” the Madame agreed. She turned my hand over and peered at my palm. “Yes, it’s very clear, here; you can see the indication on your life line. Your death,” she announced, “will be one year from now, on your eighteenth birthday.”

           “I’m hungry,” I said, gently pulling my hand out of her grasp. “Mom, can we go? I could eat a hamburger so fast right now.”

           “She’s gonna eat me out of house and home,” my mother groaned through the incense and cigarette smoke. “It’s like she’s got a bottomless stomach.” Madame Borbala made sympathetic noises. “I’m convinced she has a worm.”

           “Mom, I’m leaving now.”

           Mother sighed and tucked her book into her purse, stubbing out her cigarette into a straggly potted plant beside her. “Thank you Madame, you’ve been really helpful.”

           “No problem.” The seer nodded graciously.

           My mother discussed all of my problems with the neighborhood.  Madame Borbala probably knew all about what mom called my ‘rebellious ways,’ and not in the psychic sense, either. No, my mother had a big mouth. My drinking! My smoking! My habit of staying out till all hours of the day and night! I’m sure she told her friends all the details of my bad attitude.

           I spent the next few days considering the possibility that I might die in a year; that I might ever die at all. I have to say I just didn’t believe it at first. What teenager ever thinks she’s mortal? I ate my hamburger; later I went swimming with George at the community pool; and I forgot about the visit to Madame Borbala.

             Fast forward to this year. Brigit and I meet on June 14, at Dunkin Donuts next to the hospital. Supposed to be studying for Regents exams, I have taken to spending the mornings at Dunkin Donuts, reading books and getting hopped up on the iced hazelnut blend. DD is across the street from my apartment, and it’s got A/C, and one of the girls who works there was my partner in Earth Science before she dropped out, so they let me stay as long as I want. I always sit in the window booth, and before I met Brigid, I read and watched the street and watched my own reflection in the glass. I saw her, a tall girl with pink hair and big tits, come in almost every day. Her tattoos were kind of intimidating, and she held her mouth in a tough way, so I pretended not to notice her. Then one day she just plunked down next to me with her coffee.

           “Can I sit with you?”

           I startled and pulled myself out of my book. She was looking at me as if she expected me to say no.

           “Sure,” I said.

           “So what’s your deal?” she asked.

           “I don’t have a deal.”

           “Everyone has a deal. What are you reading?”

           Reluctantly, I showed her the cover of my book. Suddenly Psychic; a Skeptic’s Journey. “I got this one off of my Mom’s bookshelf.”

           Brigit nodded and said, “That’s cool,” in a way that didn’t make me question if she meant it.

           “What’s your deal?” If everyone had a deal, she was sure to have one as well.

           Brigit was an outpatient at the hospital’s psych ward. She came in every day for six hours of “partial hospitalization.” On her lunch break they let her come get coffee. “It’s the only drug I’m allowed to have,” she explained. “Coffee addictions are socially acceptable. Cigarettes too. Oh and the psych meds, of course! Wanna come outside and have a smoke with me?”

           I did.

           Brigit was an ex-Moonie. That is, her parents were members of the Unification Church, a religious movement started by a Korean dude named Sun Myung Moon. Members of this church think this guy is the second messiah, no shit. Brigit was brought up this way. When Brigid was ten, her parents were indicted on charges of fraud against little old ladies, and she was sent to live with her grandmother, a little old lady who was like, the OG Moonie.

“Gramma hates that I don’t believe in The Reverend any more. She’s always threatening to send me on a mission somewhere. But she won’t,” Brigit said, exhaling sharply.

“So what are you in here for?” I asked, indicating the hospital across the street. We leaned against the glass of the Dunking Donuts window and flicked ashes at the shimmering sidewalk.

           “Me? Oh, the partial hospitalization? Yeah. Um. I tried to kill myself again in March. I do it every year.”

           “How many times have you tried it?”

           “Three. Since I was fourteen. It keeps Gramma on her toes”            “In March, every year?”

           “Yeah, around there.”

           “Why March?”

           Smoke came out of Brigit’s mouth in a rush. “The spring is always a time of transformation and change for me.”

           “You’re obviously not very good at killing yourself.”            “O, I’m sure the cigs will get me one day.”

           We both took a meditative drag.

             “I hate July!” I complain to my cousin Honey, who has a straight back and a six-months-pregnant belly. It is disgustingly hot today, one day after Independence Day. The street is littered with red, white, and blue confetti. We sit on the stoop, fanning ourselves with party fliers. Honey is in her usual long white habit, which she took to wearing when she got pregnant, with a white rope tied high over her baby bump and under her rack, which is so enormous that the habit isn’t even doing a good job of hiding it. She’s practicing to become a nun, plans on entering the convent soon as she has the baby. Honey wants me to call her Clare, which is the saint name she plans to take. Everyone, in fact, has been calling her Saint Clare. Saint Clare, the pregnant teenaged nun. You could laugh, but it’s actually a shitty story, which nobody tells, as though by not telling you could, like, erase what happened to her, which involved being raped and impregnated by her own stepfather. Honey had always been religious, praying to the Heavenly Father and the Dear Lord, please this, please that, always in church, except that one fateful afternoon when she wasn’t, and after she found out she was pregnant, she decided that was all the calling she needed. Now she’s carrying her baby for Jesus.

Honey’s white hood is pushed back against her glossy dark hair, and her skin glows with a pearly sheen.  

“August is even worse!” She says, fanning herself harder, and suddenly my insides go queasy. Something ticks inside my skull and Madame Borbala comes swimming up from last summer.

           My 18th birthday is on August 13th. I’m a Leo. My little half-brother George sometimes tells me, when my hair is ‘fro-ing out, that I look like a lion. All this humidity drives my curls crazy. My mix of Dominican and Polish does not make for easy hair. If I die on my birthday, my hair better look good.

           Honey and I squint into the street and the sun presses down on us.

           “Last year a psychic told me I was gonna die on my 18th birthday.”

           Honey nods her head. “I’m pretty sure psychics are tools of the devil.”

           We contemplate that for a while. It is so hot here in this corner of Brooklyn, it is easy to believe the devil has had some influence around here. I want a cigarette but I’m trying to be good and not smoke. This morning, Mom accused me of stealing hers and if I admit it to myself, I have been doing that a lot.

           “On the other hand,” she says after a moment, “The Holy Spirit might be using this means to bring you to Jesus.”

           “I’m not sure I want to spend my last month on earth devoting my life to God.”

           “I can’t think of any better way to spend your last month on earth,” Honey says, staring nobly into the distance. She leans against the railing on the stoop, caressing her belly.  

           “You’re a little more religious than me,” I say. A cigarette would be just the thing.

           “I know,” she says, sighing. “So if not Jesus, what are you going to do with yourself?”

           “One thing for sure: if I die on my birthday, my hair better look good, “ I tell her. “That could literally take all month to achieve.”

           “You crazy-“ Honey loves calling people you crazy “- your hair better look good on your birthday whether you’re dead or not.”

           She has a point.

            “I have been thinking about it, now that it’s July,” I say. “I don’t really think I’m going to die on my birthday…but pretend I was.”

           “Are you worried you won’t go to heaven? I worry about that all the time.”

           “No,” I say, “I’m not worried about going to heaven.”            “Not at all?” She goggles at me.

           I stare back at her. “I don’t believe in heaven any more.”

           Honey turns away from me.

           “Okay, so pretend you’re gonna die in…how many days do you have?”

           “It’s July fifth. My birthday is August 13th. So that’s forty days.”

           “That’s how long it took Noah to build the ark. Or wait, was it Moses on the mount for forty days? I forget. Anyway, dang girl, you better get cracking.” She won’t say ‘damn.’

           I stare into Honey’s brown eyes.  

           “That’s what I was thinking.”

Thus the Birthday List is born. First item:

           Good hair.

  Honey leaves, hauling herself up, wiping away sweat from her forehead. She’s gotta pee, and wants to get back inside where it’s cool. She’s my uncle’s daughter, but her parents are divorced. She lives with my uncle, my missing father’s brother, Tito. She left her mom’s house after she got pregnant. My uncle lives close by, with his new wife and baby. Honey kisses me and heads down the street, slowly, her belly swinging in front of her. She’s got chores to do.