Lady Oracle (14 page)

In this one I was sitting in a circus tent. It was dark, something was about to happen, the audience was tense with expectation. I was eating popcorn. Suddenly a spotlight cut through the blackness and focused on a tiny platform at the top of the tent. Upon it stood the Fat Lady from the freak show at the Canadian National Exhibition. She was even fatter than I had imagined her, fatter than the crude picture of her painted on the hoarding, much fatter than me. She was wearing pink tights with spangles, a short fluffy pink skirt, satin ballet slippers and, on her head, a sparkling tiara. She carried a diminutive pink umbrella; this was a substitute for the wings which I longed to pin on her. Even in my fantasies I remained faithful to a few ground rules of reality.

The crowd burst out laughing. They howled, pointed and jeered; they chanted insulting songs. But the Fat Lady, oblivious, began to walk carefully out onto the high wire, while the band played a slow, stately melody. At this the crowd stilled, and a murmur of dismay arose. It was obvious this was a dangerous thing for her to be doing, she was so enormously fat, how could she keep her balance, she would topple and fall. “She’ll be killed,” they whispered, for there was no safety net.

Gradually, inch by inch, the Fat Lady proceeded along the wire, pausing to make sure of her balance, her pink umbrella raised defiantly above her head. Step by step I took her across, past the
lumbering enterprises of the West Coast, over the wheatlands of the prairies, walking high above the mines and smokestacks of Ontario, appearing in the clouds like a pink vision to the poor farmers of the St. Lawrence Valley and the mackerel fishermen of the Maritimes. “Good Christ, what is it?” they muttered, pausing in the endless hauling-in of their nets. Several times she faltered and the crowd drew in its breath; the wire oscillated, she concentrated all her forces on this perilous crossing, for a fall meant death. Then, just before the bell went and the period was over – this was the trick – she would step to safety on the other side and the people would rise to their feet, the roar of their voices her tribute. A large crane would appear and lower her to the ground.

You’d think I would have given this Fat Lady my own face, but it wasn’t so simple. Instead she had the face of Theresa, my despised fellow-sufferer. At school I avoided her, but I wasn’t altogether a heartless monster, I wished to make reparation, I had good intentions.

I knew how Arthur would analyze this fantasy. What a shame, he’d say, how destructive to me were the attitudes of society, forcing me into a mold of femininity that I could never fit, stuffing me into those ridiculous pink tights, those spangles, those outmoded, cramping ballet slippers. How much better for me if I’d been accepted for what I was and had learned to accept myself, too. Very true, very right, very pious. But it’s still not so simple. I wanted those things, that fluffy skirt, that glittering tiara. I liked them.

As for the Fat Lady, I knew perfectly well that after her death-defying feat she had to return to the freak show, to sit in her oversized chair with her knitting and be gaped at by the ticket-buyers. That was her real life.

W
hen I was in my third year at Braeside High, Aunt Lou invited me to dinner one Sunday. I was surprised, as I knew she reserved Sunday evenings for Robert, the accountant from her company. But when she said, “Wear something nice, dear,” I realized she was going to let me meet him. I didn’t have anything nice to wear, but it was like Aunt Lou not to acknowledge this. I wore my felt skirt with the telephone on it.

I was prepared to be jealous of Robert. I’d pictured him as tall, overpowering and a little sinister, taking advantage of my Aunt Lou’s affections. But instead he was small and dapper, the most trimly dressed man I’d ever seen. Aunt Lou had even cleaned up the apartment for him, more or less; though I could see the toe of a nylon stocking nosing out from under the best chair, where he sat sipping at the edge of his martini.

Aunt Lou was ornamented from head to toe. Things dangled from her, her wrists jingled, South Sea odors wafted from her. As she bustled about, putting the final touches to the feast she’d prepared, she seemed to warm and expand, filling the room. Robert
watched her as if she were a gorgeous sunset. I wondered if any man would ever look at me like that.

“I don’t know what your aunt sees in a dry old stick like me,” he said, ostensibly to me but really to Aunt Lou.

Aunt Lou bellowed. “Don’t let him fool you,” she said. “Underneath it he’s a devil.”

After we’d finished the chocolate mousse, Aunt Lou said, “Joan, dear, we were wondering if you’d like to go to church with us.”

This was even more of a surprise. My mother went to church for social reasons; she’d subjected me to several years of Sunday school, with white gloves and round navy-blue felt hats held on by elastic bands and patent-leather Mary Janes. Aunt Lou had sympathized when I said it was boring. She herself had occasionally taken me to a small Anglican church, though only on Easter Sundays, for the hymns, she said, but that was as far as it went. Now, however, she applied one of her astonishing hats to the top of her head, powdered her nose, and took her white gloves matter-of-factly in hand.

“It’s not exactly a church,” she said to me, “but Robert goes every Sunday.”

We went in Robert’s car, which he parked on a pokey side street north of Queen. The semi-detached houses were old two-story red brick with front porches; the neighborhood looked squalid and sagging. Dirty snow fringed the lawns. One of the houses stood out from the others because it had bright red window curtains, illuminated from behind so that they glowed, and it was this house we entered.

In the front hall there was a table with a large brass tray, a pile of paper slips and several pencils; beneath it, overshoes, rubbers and galoshes drained onto spread newspapers. Aunt Lou and Robert each wrote a number on one of the slips of paper, then placed the folded paper on the tray. “You write a number too, dear,” Aunt Lou said. “Maybe you’ll get a message.”

“A message?” I said. “Who from?”

“Well, you never know,” said Aunt Lou. “But you might as well try.”

I thought I would wait and see what happened. When we’d gone through a pair of purple velvet curtains, we were in the Chapel, as I later learned to call it. It had once been the living room of the house, but now it contained five or six rows of folding bridge-table chairs, each with a hymnbook on it. In what had once been the dining room there was a raised stage with a pulpit covered in red velvet, and a small electric organ. Only a third of the chairs were occupied; the room filled up a little more before the service began, but on my subsequent visits I never saw it completely full. Most of the regular members of the congregation were quite old, and many had chronic coughs. Aunt Lou and Robert were among the youngest.

We settled into our front-row seats, Aunt Lou ruffling herself like a chicken, Robert sitting primly upright. Nothing happened for a while; from behind us came throat-clearings and shufflings. I opened the hymnbook, which was quite thin, not at all like the Anglican one.
The Spiritualist Hymnbook
, it was called; and, rubberstamped below the title,
Property of Jordan Chapel
. I read two of the hymns, at random. One was about a joyous boat ride across a river to the Other Side, where loved ones were awaiting. The other was about the blessed spirits of those who’ve gone before, watching o’er us for our safety till we reach the other shore. This thought made me uncomfortable. Being told in Sunday school that God was watching you every minute of every hour had been bad enough, but now I had to think about all these other people I didn’t even know who were spying on me. “What kind of a church is this?” I whispered to Aunt Lou.

“Shh, dear, they’re starting,” Aunt Lou said placidly, and sure enough the lights dimmed and a short woman in a brown rayon dress, with gold button earrings and a matching pin, crossed the
stage and began to play the electric organ. A chorus of quavery voices rose around me, tiny and shrill as crickets.

Halfway through the hymn, two people entered from the door that led to the kitchen, and stood behind the pulpit. One, as I came to know, was the Reverend Leda Sprott, the leader. She was a stately older woman with blue eyes, blue hair and a Roman nose, dressed in a long white satin gown, with an embroidered purple band, like a bookmark, around her neck. The other was a skinny gray man who was referred to as “Mr. Stewart, our visiting medium.” I later wondered in what sense he was visiting, since he was always there.

When the hymn had wavered to its close, Leda Sprott raised her hands above her head. “Let us meditate,” she said, in a deep, resonant voice, and there was silence, broken only by the sound of uncertain footsteps, which went out through the purple curtains and then, very slowly, up the stairs. Leda Sprott began a short prayer, asking for the help of our loved ones who had gained the greater light for those of us still wandering in the mists on this side. Distantly, we heard a toilet flush, and the footsteps came back down.

“We will now have an inspiring message from our visiting medium, Mr. Stewart,” said the Reverend Leda, stepping aside.

By the end of my time with the Spiritualists I’d practically memorized Mr. Stewart’s message, since it was the same every week. He told us not to be downhearted, that there was hope; that when things seemed darkest, it was almost dawn. He quoted a few lines from “Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth,” by Arthur Hugh Clough:

And another line, from the same poem: “If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars.” “Fears may indeed be liars, my friends; which reminds me of a little story I heard the other day, and which can be of help to us all at those moments when we are feeling down, when we’re feeling nothing matters and what’s the use of struggling on. There were once two caterpillars, walking side by side down a road. The pessimistic caterpillar said he’d heard that soon they would have to go into a dark narrow place, that they would stop moving and be silent. ‘That will be the end of us,’ he said. But the optimistic caterpillar said, ‘That dark place is only a cocoon; we will rest there for a time, and after that we will emerge with beautiful wings; we will be butterflies, and fly up toward the sun.’ Now, my friends, that road was the Road of Life, and it’s up to each of us which we will choose to be, the pessimistic caterpillar, filled with gloom and looking forward only to death, or the optimistic caterpillar, who was filled with trust and hope and looked forward to the higher life.”

The congregation never seemed to mind that the message was always the same. In fact, they’d probably have felt cheated if it had varied.

After the message the collection was taken up by the brown rayon woman, and after that came the serious business. This was what everyone had come for, really: their own personal messages. The brown rayon woman brought in the brass tray, and Leda Sprott took up the pieces of paper one by one. She would hold each piece unopened in her hand, close her eyes, and give the message. Then she would open the paper and read the number. The messages were largely about health: “There’s an old white-haired lady with light coming out from around her head, and she is saying, ‘Be careful going down stairs, especially on Thursday’; and she’s saying the word
sulphur
. She’s warning you; she sends you love and greetings.” “There’s a man wearing a kilt, and he has a set of bagpipes; he must
be Scottish; he has red hair. He’s giving you a lot of love, and he’s saying,
^‘
Cut down on the sweet foods, they’re not good for you.’ He’s telling you – I can’t quite catch the word. It’s a mat of some kind. ‘Be careful of mats,’ that’s what he’s saying.”

After the pieces of paper were finished, Mr. Stewart took over and did free-form messages, pointing to members of the congregation and describing spirits which were standing behind their chairs. I found this much more disturbing than the numbers: Leda Sprott’s messages seemed to come from inside her head, but Mr. Stewart did it with his eyes open, he could actually
see
dead people right there in the room. I slouched down in my chair, hoping he wouldn’t point at me.

After this there were more hymns; then Leda Sprott reminded us about the Healing Hands session on Tuesday, the Automatic Writing on Wednesday, and the private sittings on Thursday, and that was all. There was some scuffling and crowding in the hall as several elderly men struggled with their galoshes. At the door people thanked her warmly; she knew most of them, and would ask, “Did you get what you wanted, Mrs. Hearst?” “How was that, Mrs. Dean?”

“I’ll throw that medicine away right now,” they’d say, or, “It was my Uncle Herbert, that was just the kind of coat he used to wear.”

“Well, Robert,” said Aunt Lou in the car. “I’m sorry she didn’t come tonight.”

Robert was visibly disappointed. “Maybe she was busy,” he said. “I don’t know who that other woman was, the one in the evening dress.”

“A large woman,” Aunt Lou said. “Hah. It sounded like me.” She asked Robert up for a drink, but he said he was discouraged and should probably go home, so I went up instead and had a hot chocolate and some petit fours and a shrimp sandwich. Aunt Lou had a double Scotch.

“It’s his mother,” she said. “That’s the third week in a row she
hasn’t turned up. She was always a little thoughtless. Robert’s wife couldn’t stand her, she refuses to go to church with him at all. ‘If you ever do get to talk to that old horror,’ she told him, ‘I don’t want to be there.’ I think that’s a bit cruel, don’t you?”

“Aunt Lou,” I said, “do you really
believe
all that stuff?”

“Well, you never can tell, can you?” she said. “I’ve seen them give a lot of accurate messages. Some of them don’t mean all that much, but some of them are quite helpful.”

“But it could just be mind reading,” I said.

“I don’t know how it’s done,” said Aunt Lou, “but they all find it very comforting. I know Robert does, and he likes me to take an interest. I feel you have to keep an open mind.”