Reincarnation (25 page)

blacks. It was solidly built with polished wood floors. Amber shades kept out the blistering

sun, giving the place a golden glow. It was interestingly furnished, too, with pieces from

several recent decades and others that had to be antiques.

One glassed-in china cabinet was filled with exquisite pottery: modern pieces like a hand-

blown glass vase in swirling colors and a large plate with a Picasso print at its center; an

ancient-looking Greek urn, and a whiskey flask from the Civil War era; there was even a blue

stone hippo that looked like it was from Egypt.

He spotted a hardcover book on the table:
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale

Hurston. He didn't know the author. Reading the back cover he learned it had been written

by a black woman in 1937. The book was falling apart. Checking inside, he discovered it was

a first edition and signed by the author.

His eyes slowly adjusted to this dark room. Small fans buzzed softly from bookshelves and

whirred from elegant doily-draped tables. It was pleasant there.

On one of the tables was a collection of black-and-white photographs. A woman who was

clearly a much younger version of this woman stood in a wedding dress beside a white man

with slicked-back black hair. He looked like a gangster in the old movies Mike's parents

liked to watch on
The Late Show.
There were lots of other pictures of the

252

woman with many different people. Some were signed
to
Del; that must be her name.

But wait ... He checked his clipboard. He had come to register a Mrs. Louisa Raymond to

vote. He looked back at the autograph in
Their Eyes Were Watching God.
It said:
To my pal,
Delilah Jones. Friends always! Zora Neale Hurston.

Delilah Jones? Where had he heard the name Delilah Jones before? It wasn't déjà vu; it had

been recently.

As he went to return the book, a photo fluttered from its pages. He stooped to retrieve it

and froze the moment he turned it over. It showed this woman at about seventeen: radiant,

bold, and lovely in a red satin dress. And at her feet sat a black panther in an emerald-

studded collar -- the black cat he'd seen in his mind's eye out there on the porch!

Louisa Raymond -- or Delilah Jones, or whoever she was -- began to stir on the couch.

"Are you Louisa Raymond ? " he asked. "Yes."

"Who is Delilah Jones?"

"I am ... And you're Bert Brody."

"No. I'm Mike Rogers."

She nodded. "Him, too."

"I've gone back to my given first name, Louisa," she said as she poured him a glass of

lemonade. They sat at her kitchen table, the sunlight through the unshaded

253

window making the ice in the pitcher shine. Across the vinyl daisy-print tablecloth, she'd

spread out more of the old photographs.

"I saw your wedding picture," he said. "Is that Mr. Raymond?"

"Lenny, yeah."

"Is your husband still alive?"

She pushed a photo of Lenny toward him. "Just before the war ended, the men who were

his partners back in Chicago had him shot. By then, he was spying for the Allies and they

had Axis Power sympathies. They didn't feel he'd done right by them. The war was horrible

but it was good for Lenny. I think for the first time in his life it was clear to him what was

right and what was wrong. The war saved his soul."

"He found his dharma," Mike murmured.

She didn't know what he meant. "I know about karma," she said. "Everybody's into it these days. The things you do come back to you, right? What's dharma?"

"It's hard to explain, and I'm not certain myself," he replied. "Do you believe in the soul?"

"Mmm," she murmured thoughtfully. "I suppose I would have to believe in it to say what I'm saying to you right now about having lived before. Do you believe in it?"

"I'm not sure."

"Of course you don't know," she said. "Only fools think they have all the answers. The universe and beyond the

254

universe -- it's so vast, so mysterious. How could anyone know everything that's going on

out there?"

"I guess that's true," he agreed. "But I can't remember any lifetime other than this one."

"Do you remember being a baby, even a toddler?" she challenged him.

He shook his head. "No."

"But you know you existed."

"Yes," he admitted.

"Exactly," she said, "and besides, there are people who do remember other lives, especially under hypnosis. Back when I was a young woman in Paris, I was under the

care of a Dr. LeFleur. He brought me back to several lifetimes during our hypnotic

regression sessions. In the first hypnotic session I had that day I was talking about, I was a

man, a soldier in the Civil War, a Yankee, and a white person."

Mike nearly sprayed his lemonade out. "You were a man?" he cried, aghast. "Is that

allowed?"

This caused her to laugh uproariously. She never could get over it herself. "Apparently so!

Male and
white!
Wouldn't
that make
them crazy down at the court house? I can just see it:

'Officer, I can too sit at the Whites Only lunch counter. I've already been white, black, and

every shade along the way! I've been white more times than you've been born! I'm past all

that now, so I'll sit where I please!'"

Mike was laughing now, too. "I would love to see that."

255

"Anyway," she went on, her laughter quieting, "that first session changed my life."

"How?" he asked.

"The part of that life I remembered most clearly under hypnosis was after the Civil War,

opening up a pottery shop. It seems I always loved pottery, but apparently I was so jumpy

around fire that I was afraid to work the kiln. So I got myself a partner. While I was

hypnotized I could see her face so clearly and hear her talking to me. She was a former

slave. It seems I made good on a promise to a friend by finding her after the war."

"Did it change your life because it proved reincarnation was real?" Mike asked.

"Yes, but there's more. I recognized the partner's face while I was hypnotized. She looked

just like my grandmother, Eva Jones, a former slave. My mother dumped me on her as a

baby and Grandma raised me until she died when I was about four or five. I was young, but I

remember. Plus, I have photos of her."

"Let me get this straight," Mike said. "You're telling me that in one life you were Eva Jones's business partner -- a white man -- and then you died and were reincarnated as Eva Jones's

granddaughter?"

"That's it," she confirmed. "I have read a great deal on reincarnation and it's considered quite normal for people to be reborn near other people they know, often in the same family.

As the white man, John Mays, I must have felt quite

256

fondly toward Eva, so I came back as her granddaughter in order to continue to be near her.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it."

"It does make sense when you put it that way," Mike admitted.

"And then, as a young woman, I met you -- when you were Bert Brody -- and you told me

how your grandfather had been the founder of Mays' Dishware and he had been afraid of

fire and had a partner and such. Did some research and discovered that the company had

originally, from 18 70 to 1910, been called Mays and Jones Pottery -- John Mays and Eva

Jones."

"Your grandmother was a partner in Mays' Dishware?" Mike asked.

"You got it. John Mays died in 1910 and Eva Jones sold her half of the business to his

nephew -- who was his heir -- because she was getting too old to work. She was nearly

eighty when she died, leaving no will. No one knew she had any heirs. But, apparently I had

a big inheritance coming. By then the government had taken most of her unclaimed money.

When I came forward as her granddaughter I was able to claim this house and, hidden in a

closet, I found a pile of Mays Dishware stock that was worth a bundle of money."

Mike put his hands on his head and squeezed.

"Is it too confusing?" Louisa asked.

257

"So you inherited stock money from the company that you yourself had helped found in an

earlier incarnation?"

She shook her head at the sheer incredibility of the story. "Yes! Isn't that wild? It killed my singing career, unfortunately. Since I no longer
needed
to work -- I didn't! It's been a fun life, though -- at least once World War Two ended -- I've been traveling and whooping it up."

"How did you end up back here?"

"This was Grandma's house. I couldn't sell it, and as I got older, it seemed a good place to

settle down."

"Do you have any regrets?" Mike asked her.

"One. I recorded an album of songs. It's not available anymore. I'd like to hear it again."

"You said I was Bert Brody."

"I believe you are, yes."

"Why do you think so?"

"I feel it. I had a few hypnotic sessions that went into the future, like premonitions. I may have seen you then."

"Who was he?"

"A songwriter I knew. The songs on the album are written by him."

"I write songs now."

"Well, there you go."

Mike jumped up, knocking the ice from his glass. "That's where I heard the name Delilah

Jones before!" he cried. "I listened to your record last night!"

258

"Where?"

"It was sitting on an old record player. I thought it was so great that I wanted to tape it for myself. It's in the trunk of my car. I'll be right back!"

Mike's head was spinning as he returned to the sweltering, sun-drenched outside world.

Inside, in Louisa's darkened, cool house, it was easy to believe her. Out here in the hard light

of reality he began to doubt. Her story was so fantastic.

He
was this Bert Brody?

She
had inherited money from her own past-life self ?

He hurried down the steps to his car, his mind working out the various connections. Was

everyone's past so entangled, so connected to a previous lifetime?

He stopped and shook his head. She was just putting him on -- having some fun with the

naive, dumb white college kid.

That was it.

It had to be.

She'd probably loaned this record to a friend and knew it was on the turntable at the place

they were staying.

Ha-ha! Very funny. Have a big laugh at the do-gooder dope from up North.

He was astounded at his own stupidity.

The woman had really had him going, though. What an
idiot
he was! What a good actress

she was.

259

His face grew hot from within and he knew he was blushing. Mortified and embarrassed, he

got into his car and sped away.

Louisa stood at her window and watched Mike drive off. She'd scared him. It wasn't his fault.

It had taken her more than twenty years to come to terms with the revelations she'd come

upon under hypnosis with Dr. LeFleur.

"Humph." A laugh burbled up inside her. "Imagine, me -- a nun. If that doesn't beat everything." At first that lifetime had been the hardest for her to believe, but she'd finally come to understand it. Her devotion as a nun to Mary the Virgin Mother of Jesus was totally

fitting when she lined it up with the other lives she'd uncovered.

She took a holy card showing a Black Madonna and child from her dress pocket. The image

was known as Our Lady of Czestochowa from Poland, and it dated from the thirteenth or

fourteenth century. Turning it over in her hand, she gazed at the dark-skinned figures. She

loved this picture and sometimes wondered if she had loved it when she was Mother

Abbess Maria Regina. To her it was Mary and all the other goddesses she had ever revered

rolled into one. At any rate, she found it comforting and liked to look at it often.

Someone rapped at the front door. Not waiting for an answer, a woman stuck her head in

the door. "Louisa?"

"Right here, Birdy. Come in."

260

The slim young woman in a nurse's uniform stepped into the room. She was of obviously

mixed race with a wide spray of freckles across her dark olive skin. Her tight

red curls were bundled neatly to the back of her head, though stray strands coiled prettily

around her cheeks and greenish, amber-flecked eyes. She wore a yellow cardigan over her

uniform. "How are you doing today, Miss Louisa?" she asked.

"Not bad," Louisa replied. "I just had a visit from one of those young voter registration people."

"I give them credit," Birdy said, putting down her purse. "The whites down here are giving them a terrible time. It's like the Civil War is still being fought. There's a bunch of them living down the road here in Arthur Adams's grandma's old place, the one that was empty for so

long."

"I know the place."

"How's the ankle today?"

"It hurts."

"Sit down, let's unwrap that Ace bandage and have a look at it."

Birdy was a practical nurse working in the Colored Only clinic. One day when Louisa was

there consulting with the doctor about her cancer, she'd struck up a conversation with Birdy

while waiting. When Birdy asked why Louisa used a cane, she'd told her how her right ankle

had never been right. Birdy had said, "I pass your house on my way home. I should stop by

and check up on you to make

261

sure you haven't fallen. Now, with your other problems, you could be too weak to get up."

"You don't have to do that," Louisa had replied.

"I'd like to," Birdy had insisted. "It would give me some experience. If I can ever save the money, I'd like to go to nursing school for my RN degree and become a full nurse. Maybe I