It was, quite literally, a sign from above: a cardboard placard that lofted down three stories and then, again literally, hit me on the head. It said:
Chakras Read
~
Buzz No. 14
One sees these signs in North Beach, but they are usually at street level and wooden, or if three stories above, they are neon and unlikely to slip out of an open window. I had just exited a little restaurant on Stockton called China Beach, a nod to its place in the nexus of Chinatown and North Beach. The place served neither Italian nor Chinese but rather California cuisine and attracted a broader mix of clientele—economically, geographically, and ethnically speaking—than was usually seen on that side of town.
I was a graduate student, but already feeling like an established sophisticate. I was established—my grandmother lived several blocks away, on the eastern face of Russian Hill—but it's arguable how sophisticated I was, having been raised and gone to college in the city and pursuing my doctorate in the humanities just across the bay in Berkeley. But I had just played the gentleman, double-checking that all was in order with the reservations I'd made for that evening. I'd confirmed my sweetheart and I would be seated at the table in the back nook where we had dined for the first time a year before and where, on that night, I had foreseen this one. We'd not been back since that night; after six months of dinners and then breakfasts and then shared door keys we tacitly agreed to save our second visit for our first anniversary. I had an hour to wait.
Twilight in San Francisco is a moody affair, the day's last licks of sun filtered through clouds, conjuring a particular blend of lugubriousness and romanticism. It may well be the fog that both connects all the disparate parts and peoples of the city and obscures and sometimes eclipses their most marked differences such that they can somehow coexist, to a degree, anyway. Such it was perhaps that I, an otherwise skeptical (if not downright cynical), urbane history-professor-in-the-making, was not devoid of a whimsical side.
My maternal grandmother had a canister of Chinese fortune sticks that my sister and I would play with—building houses with them, though, rather than architecting our future—and we grew up hearing folk tales of all the ancient peoples whose diasporas reached San Francisco, a pastime that led me to my profession. But it was an abundance of kindness and a spontaneous outpouring of youthful effervescence that inspired me to ring Number 14 rather than slip the sign under the grate as I might normally have done. The single word that replied moments after I released the call button was a "yes" so lethargically spoken I thought the person might fall asleep before I could convey my message. But scarcely had I said "Your sign—" when the grate buzzed, indicating I should enter. I stepped up to the marble stoop and peered through the main door into the foyer, unsure whether the person—who sounded to be female—would descend to meet me or expected me to bring the sign to her. I didn't hear footsteps on the staircase, nor was the elevator called, and I had energy to burn, so I trotted up the stairs. I paused at each floor, peered left and right, looking for an open door, but saw no clue of where to deliver the placard until I reached the third.
The door at the top of the stairs was open a crack and as soon as I raised my hand to knock on it the occupant swooped it wide to let me in. The door left her hand and toppled some item behind it, which clattered when it hit the parquetry. She ignored it and so, so did I. We faced each other and drew our conclusions. She was much younger than I had expected, as young, perhaps as I was, but dressed decades older in a caftan with a Middle Eastern pattern done in blues and purples, accented with golden threads. She was barefoot. More than her age, her mien surprised me: she was not an ethnic Gypsy; she appeared to be of stock originating no further east than Berlin, more likely the United Kingdom, and by way of Ohio or Indiana, to my California-calibrated eyes. I had two thoughts in quick succession: She was either an abject fraud, not appearing to have at least inherited the profession, or she was suckered twice: first to believe that fortunes could be told, and then that she could tell them herself. An image appeared to me: having reached the same conclusion, she'd tossed that sign out the window. I held it out to her.
"Your sign." She didn't appear to hear me, so I repeated the words and told her the sign had hit me on the head. "I'm glad it wasn't tin. I might have required stitches." I smiled at her, to convey the levity I intended in the remark, but she continued to stare at me as if she'd heard none of it.
"What do you make of it—my sign hitting you in the head?"
It was my turn to stare. I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it, fearing that the comment on my tongue, "I make of it that you should use stronger tape," would come across as snide, rather than just flip.
"Come in." She leaned over and grabbed my cuff, pulled me across the threshold. "Come in. Sit down. I have much to tell you."
Her quasi immigrant syntax irritated me, reinforced my earlier negative impressions, and yet the whole package began to seduce me. I found myself enticed by an obscene fascination for this badly styled soothsayer, felt the repulsive pull of a messy train wreck and so I offered no more than an "I…" in protest. I'd cut myself off from telling her that I was on my way to a dinner date, not wanting to reveal anything to her that might aid her in "reading" my chakras.
"No charge," she retorted. "Your reward for carrying the sign up the stairs."
I decided to give her five minutes, half of what I could spare without throwing off my evening plans. I was startled to hear her say at that very moment, turning her head only slightly toward her shoulder to speak to me:
"I can read you in less than five minutes. Explaining it, however, may take a little longer."
I glanced at my watch, marked the time.
We crossed the small vestibule and she pulled aside a red velvet drape that separated the entryway from her inner sanctum, a shrine to clutter. The room was crammed with furnishings and paraphernalia: bookcases that stretched three quarters the height of the walls disgorged their charges onto end tables and ottomans; curios were loaded with knickknacks, cheap figurines, statuettes, crystals, and two geodes in which spiders must have lurked; twisted towers of newspapers and magazines, one of which was serving as an end table, holding a forgotten glass of what appeared to be iced tea, threatened to topple. The place smelled of cat. The only flat surfaces left unencumbered were two unmatched Victorian parlor chairs and a period velvet serpentine-back settee, all looking like they would give up ghosts of dust when sat upon. Again, curiosity overpowered revulsion: She didn't seem to have lived long enough to have accumulated such detritus and filth. The whole package mortified me and yet I could not walk away. I was impelled to ascertain what sort of fortune this medium would concoct and project onto me.
She plopped herself into the green barrel chair and motioned me to the settee. As soon as my thighs were parallel to the floor a calico cat leapt upon them. I took great pleasure and nearly commented my delight that the feline was not regulation black. It began to purr as soon as my hand touched its head. I wondered aloud what its name might be.
"Flip Wilson likes you. That's good. It's difficult for me to give readings for people she doesn't like."
Again, I was torn between being offended on behalf of the visionary comedian who popularized the phrases "What you see is what you get" and "The devil made me do it" for the association with a so-called clairvoyant and being admiring the unique name. I inquired about provenance.
"I found her on a playground, cowering between a deflated Wilson football and a trash can. I thought she was a boy so I called her Wilson. When the vet told me she was a girl, I kind of flipped, because I'm a big believer that the first impression is the right one. But then I realized, 'Oh: Flip Wilson.' It fits. Believe it or not, she also answers to 'Geraldine.'"
I would have been ashamed to admit it then, but I was at that point so caught up in my guilty fascination with the chakra reader charm that I had nearly forgotten my date—until she stood suddenly and asked if I wanted a cup of tea. I looked obtrusively at my watch and told her I had a dinner engagement to make and instantly regretted revealing my plans, for I had not wanted to give her any material beyond what she saw to work into the equation she was going to calculate for me. I was anxious to see how she would assemble the evidence she had, season it with her own assumptions, biases, and proclivities before speaking it all back to me. Here is what she had so far: a 24-year-old, five-foot-nine, trim, clean-shaven, well-groomed man with American manners and certain Asian features; someone on his way to meet someone for dinner and wanting to make it there on time; a curious, thoughtful person, willing if not eager to do a kind deed and who liked or at least did not mind cats.
"OK. I'll read your romance. Everybody wants to know about romance." I remained impassive. I willed myself to radiate nonchalance. She studied my eyes as if my thoughts were written on my retinas.
"You're meeting a woman."
I decided I would not respond to any of her remarks, neither encourage nor discourage her, fully aware that she would assume herself to be accurate if I did not correct her.
"She's younger than you are."
I am sure my lips flickered, nearly formed a smile. She was reading a menu.
"You're Asian."
Here, under any other circumstance I would have interrupted, gently or firmly, depending on my interlocutor, the context and my mood, to say that I am not only third-generation American but also third-generation San Franciscan, on both my Anglo and Sino-Anglo sides, my maternal grandmother being first-generation Chinese American and the only American-born of her family's three children. But I made no stray move, did not break the rhythmic stroke that began between Flip Wilson's ears, followed the curve of her head to her neck, and down her spine to the end of her tail, which she flipped out of my hand each time, appropriately enough.
"She's not."
Here again my lips twitched despite my best effort to betray nothing.
"And she's not the only one."
I bowed my head to hide a smirk which I am sure the woman saw. I looked at my watch again, noting that two minutes had passed, and asked her what all that had to do with my chakras.
The chakra reader narrowed her eyes and stared at me again, but this time she appeared to be looking into my chest. She inhaled deeply through the nose and exhaled through her teeth, making a hiss that Flip Wilson answered in kind before leaping from my lap, leaving me so suddenly cold so that I shivered involuntarily.
"Two chakras are particularly remarkable right now: the heart and throat vortices, which govern love and communication, respectively. An interesting combination. The heart chakra is normally green and the throat chakra turquoise blue, but right now they are nearly the same blue-green shade. Either your heart wants to speak and your throat is stopping the words, or your throat is trying to communicate a message that is reaching it muddled. I see a lack of understanding, a failure to communicate—not a defeat, but a breakdown. Maybe you fear disapproval? Rejection?"
I offered no assistance.
"You must pick one of these women. You must pick one or risk losing them both."
I suppose that in allowing the medium to practice her craft on me I was entertaining a romantic caprice, wishing, that is, however fancifully that she might serve up a bon mot or quaint vision I could savor on the way to dinner, a nugget that would become a kind of verbal trinket we could keep in our pockets over the years to bring out now and again to remind us of this night. I don't believe, however, that I sought any affirmation of my own premonitions. The thought had never occurred to me that the chakra reader might plant doubts within me about myself or the bond my love and I were feting that night, nor did I need her to assure me I was following the right star. Not only because I didn't take her talent seriously, but more because I knew that night with the certainty only youth can afford and the courage only innocence can amass, that this was to be the first of many anniversary celebrations, and I'm not tipping my cards too far toward you to say that I was correct in that. I had expected her to miss the mark; I had only wanted to see by how much she would fall short. And I had hoped to be entertained. Thus, I was finding this jaunt into the esoteric thoroughly banal.
I stood. "Is that all?"
She remained seated. I counted to five waiting for her to answer, then shifted my weight from one foot to the other, prepared to shuffle around the coffee table that separated me from the path to the door. She inhaled deeply, then sighed. She appeared to be struggling with her words.
The chakra reader stood abruptly and took my arm, led me as decisively back through the drapes we'd passed through but five minutes earlier. The coat rack she'd toppled was still prone, one jacket and several scarves strewn around it. I noticed an open door I hadn't seen on the way in and suspended in the lower darkness of it were two yellow-green dots. I nodded toward them. I opened the door to the hallway and turned to shake her hand. She bowed to me. Neither one of us spoke; I did not thank her for her visions, she made no remark about my bringing the sign. I gave a little wave, and when the door slicked shut I ran down the stairs.
Here I must concede the limits of my retrospection, allow that exactly what happened next is not so clear as all I've just recounted. I could describe the feeling of the ocean air on my face, the dim cast in the sky that yet filled me with a hopeful longing; I can tick off the cafes and bistros I passed on Columbus Avenue on my way to Green, where I made a detour to Russian Hill, but those might well be memories of other nights. I was a young man in love, with another errand between my dear one and me.
I can't remember if on that brisk walk I replayed the psychic's words, if I bristled at her poor characterization or laughed off the textbook generalities (not to mention inaccuracies) of her yarn—even while noting that somewhere betwixt and amongst her all but rote lines lay some kind of truth, if not my own.
For years after and even still, when I recall the rest of that night, this is what I see: a young man walking to his grandmother's house to share a bit of soup before helping her to bed; his listening as she sang songs and told tales in her own mother's tongue, which she reverted to inexplicably and spoke exclusively the last year of her life, a language she obstinately refused to teach her own daughter, who therefore could not teach it to the grandson, who then on this night could only smile and nod in response, as the immigrant parents must have done with their granddaughter, his mother, who could not communicate directly with them.
I see this young man's attention drifting. As I smile and nod along I am conjuring the image of the man I have loved, ten years my senior and now three years gone, ever in my sight while my grandmother sings to me: I see him making his way to that table in the back where it felt safe to touch a hand to a knee or to brush lips to an ear when leaning in to speak over the jazz trio.
But now I revisit my memories not only to relive them but even more so to mine them for details I've missed, the small points that were eclipsed by the large, the subtleties obscured by the transparant certitudes, so when my attention returns to the chakra reader, I don't fault her for her faulty insight. I see that the misfortune she told me was quite probably her own. I don't presume the kind of clairvoyance she affected, and I was certainly too preoccupied with my own visions to pay attention to what I could have seen, so I won't speculate as to which party of the trio she ascribed to me she represented, but I have known an equal measure of sorrow to the joy I felt that night, so I recognize a soul in pain. And I have learned that it is not joy but suffering that makes us wise, so I can forgive her whatever artifice she engaged me in that night. For despite her myopia, I do believe she was sensitive to the simple ecstasies of a young man's heart and aware of how they can become tangled and mired and most of all amplified in the fog of anticipation. When I'm feeling particularly generous or wistful I squint as I recall her doing and I allow that it's not that she couldn't read chakras but rather that in the telling the stories simply became scrambled in her throat.
