Valley of the Moon (16 page)

She stopped in front of the last storefront. A faded, handwritten sign taped to the inside of the window read:

Fortunes, Tarot, Palmistry, Clairvoyant, Séance, Soulmates, Love, Romance, Success!

By appointment only
~ SE HABLA ESPANOL

Señora Isadora

I sighed. “Maya, I don't know if this is a good idea.”

She spun around and yanked off her sunglasses. Her hair, usually glossy and perfectly blown out, was a disheveled mess. Her eyes were blood shot and puffy. There were dark circles under her eyes. “Lana, look at me! I’m a total disaster.” I couldn't argue with that. “I need to try this. I need to know about Evan.” She pushed me towards the front door. “And I can’t go in alone,” she whispered.

I pressed the buzzer outside the red curtained door.

The woman who opened the door ushered us into a dingy waiting room. A few folding chairs were set up around a small round table covered in a black lace shawl. Containers of Chinese food sat opened on the table and the smell of greasy noodles filled the air, along with the scent of incense.

“Señora” Isadora looked like she had gone to a Renaissance faire or a Wiccan thrift shop to pick her outfit. She had long, frizzy gray hair and wore a voluminous black skirt and a complicated black blouse held together with various strings and laces.

“Which one of you is Maya?” she asked, peering at our faces. I stopped myself before I rolled my eyes. Would a real psychic have to ask?

“Uh, I am,” Maya said.

“Did you bring your spirit donation, Maya?” she said. Maya pulled a wad of cash out of her jeans and handed it to the woman, who took it, counted it carefully, and tucked it into a pocket in her skirt.

She pushed a beaded curtain aside with a bony arm. “This way.”

She led us back through a dimly lit hallway. Maya squeezed my hand. Dozens of candles in red glass votives filled niches set into the walls on either side of the hallway. As we walked, the woman stopped to light each one with a long yellow plastic lighter.

“We are lighting the path for the spirits among us,” she intoned.

“My dad has that exact same lighter,” I whispered to Maya. I wanted her to come to her senses before this charlatan stole more of her hard-earned babysitting money. At the end of the hallway, another curtain of red beads hung down. Señora Isadora parted the beads and gestured for us to walk through them.

Suddenly, we were inside someone’s cramped living room. A faded red velvet couch was pushed up against one wall. It was covered with crocheted pillows and someone’s plump, snoring Spanish grandmother. Her gray hair was pulled back into a tight bun, her brown face heavily lined. She wore a long shapeless black dress and a worn white knit cardigan covered in pills. A fringed purple blanket lay across her lap. There were two sagging red velvet ottomans in front of her, and she had a leg propped up onto each one. Her swollen, cracked feet looked like loaves of bread stuffed into scuffed black sandals. But her toenails sported a fresh coat of blood-red paint.

“Señora,” the Wiccan called. “The girl is here.”

“Who’s that lady on the couch?” Maya whispered to the woman.

“That’s Señora Isadora, of course,” she replied.

“Who’re you?” I asked her.

Her eyes widened in surprise. “I’m her apprentice, Cheryl. Go ahead girls—the Señora is expecting you.” I looked over at the real Señora Isadora, who was slowly rousing herself from her siesta. She gazed at us through bleary eyes.

“Si, si, venga. Assiete acqui, niñas.” Her voice was low and gravelly. My Spanish was a little rusty. In fact, nonexistent. I had taken Latin and French since 8th grade. Maya was third-generation Mexican-American and her Spanish was almost as bad as mine.

Maya chewed a fingernail and fidgeted. “Um, do you speak English, Señora?”

The Señora nodded and swung her swollen legs onto the floor. She patted the vacant ottomans and we obediently sat down.

We were directly in front of her, almost touching her. She gazed at Maya with a befuddled stare and said nothing. Maya looked at me and cleared her throat.

“Um, so I—”

“Shh!” She put a cigar-sized brown finger to her mouth and looked over at me. Her heavy lidded eyes seemed to sharpen a little as she peered at me. I dropped my eyes and squirmed on the ottoman.

She looked back at Maya. “Your hand please, pretty one.” Maya held her hand out. Señora Isadora took it and examined her palm closely. “Ah, I see. You want to know if your boyfriend still loves you, is that your question?”

I heard Maya’s voice crack as she talked. “Yeah. I mean, I’d like to know what’s going on. He told me he loves me, but he’s away at college. Does he still like me, or do I need to break up with him?” Maya sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Señora Isadora stroked Maya’s palm and stared into the middle distance. Her head swayed back and forth. “Shh, it’s okay, pretty one. Good news, pretty one. This boy, he loves you.”

Maya gasped. “He does?”

I rolled my eyes. Was Maya actually falling for this baloney?

“Yes. But—he is scared. He doesn’t want to miss out on something. He can’t decide if you are the thing he will miss out on, or the thing that will cause him to miss out on other things.” Thank you, Señora, for describing every college boy in the world ever. How dare this woman give Maya false hope! I glared at her, but she continued.

“Your boyfriend…his name…it’s an E name. Ah, I see it! Elvis, yes, Elvis.” I clenched my teeth so I wouldn’t laugh out loud. Maya didn’t correct her. “Elvis is a nice boy. Smart. He has dreams of his future. He loves you, but he isn’t sure if you are part of that future. He can’t see what I see.”

Maya sat utterly still, mesmerized. “Do you see me and Elvis together?” I stifled another laugh.

Señora Isadora clucked her tongue. “I see that you will be happy in your life.”

Maya took a sharp intake of breath. “With Elvis?” Señora Isadora stroked Maya’s hand. She squinted like she was straining to hear a faraway sound.

“Today you are too young to be worried about that.” Her lined face cracked into a wide smile and she released Maya’s hand. “Okay, pretty one. I have told you what I see. Now go—go and be happy.”

I cleared my throat. “Good advice. We should probably get going, Maya.” The Senora’s watery eyes swiveled over to me. She cocked her head. The lines running across her brow deepened.

I uncrossed my legs and stood. My knee brushed the Señora’s leg.

She shot straight up on the sofa. Her meaty arm shot out like a snake striking its prey and her hand grabbed mine before I could pull it away. Her hand was fleshy and soft but had a grip like an iron clamp. A wonderful, strange sense of calm filled me.
I remember this feeling…from the dream with the old lady.
I sank back down to the ottoman.

“Um, Lana, we should go,” Maya whispered.

“SHHH!!!!” the Señora hissed. Her pupils were dilated and she started panting rapidly, her mouth open, enormous bosom heaving up and down. She stared into space, her eyes unfocused.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention.

“Lana,” Maya whispered. “What’s she doing?” I just shook my head, since I couldn’t talk or move. Señora Isadora sucked in a big, deep breath. There was a wheezy rattle in her throat. Her eyes, which had not blinked once, swiveled to mine. She licked her lips.

“Someone is here with us,” she announced calmly.

Maya gasped and stage-whispered my name. But I couldn’t talk. I was locked into the Señora’s gaze, transfixed by some kind of invisible energy swirling around me.

Señora Isadora rocked back and forth and muttered to herself. “So many good-byes. So many tragedies.” I had to remind myself to breathe. “There is one here,” she whispered.

My heart tightened into a singularity in my chest.
You don’t believe in psychics. You don’t believe in ghosts. This is fake.

“Is it…Tanith Fremont?” I asked in a faint voice.

Her eyes widened, and she chuckled. “No, not Tanith. Someone else.” I squeezed my eyes and shook my head.

“Who’s Tanith?” Maya asked. I ignored her.

“This spirit is restless, tormented by something that happened many years ago,” the Señora continued. “Now she is trying to make things right.” The spirit was a she. Heat and blood flooded my head and I felt like I was sinking through the overstuffed ottoman.

Señora Isadora’s eyes flicked back to the middle distance, like she was staring at something in another dimension. She spoke again, this time in a strange, high-pitched voice. In French.

“Ma chère…ma chère! C’est moi, Tumarane!”

She spoke with a perfect French accent! I was floored.
Maybe she’s part French. Lots of people speak French.
Maya dug her fingernails into my thigh. She was sitting on the edge of her ottoman like she was ready to bolt and her face was ashen. Señora Isadora blinked and looked up at me, back in the moment.

“You understand what she said?” she asked. “I don’t.” How could she not know what she said? I replayed the words in my head.

“I think you said, ‘my dear, it’s me, your…something.’ I didn’t catch all the words.”

“Not me, pretty one! I didn’t speak those words.” Suddenly the Señora’s eyes widened. “Quick! Ask her a question before she goes!”

There was only one question to ask, obviously. “Who are you?”

Señora Isadora cocked her head like she was listening to something no one else could hear. She shook her head and squeezed my hand tighter. Her nails cut in to my skin. “No! Say it in French.”

I sighed. “Okay. Um, qui est vous, s’il vous plait?”
You just asked a ghost a question. In French. You have officially lost your mind.

Señora Isadora started trembling violently. Maya shot off the ottoman and stepped away from her. “C’est Tumarane!” the Señora shouted in the strange, high-pitched voice. “Cherchez la colombe! C’est Tumarane!”

“Oh my God, what is she saying, Lana?” Maya whispered breathlessly.

“I think it means ‘I am Tumarane. Look for the…something.’” I looked at Maya. “I have no idea what it means or who Tumarane is.”

And with that, Señora Isadora let out a long wheezy sigh and collapsed into the back of her plush sofa. Talking to a French ghost seemed to have exhausted her. “Ah! That’s all. She’s gone.”

***

I knelt in front the bookcase in my room and scanned the titles until I spotted it. My old French dictionary was wedged right between
The Scarlet Letter
and
Black Beauty
. I flipped it open as I rewound the Señora’s voice in my head:
C’est Tumarane
.

Who or what was a Tumarane? All that time cramming for French and I had no clue.

I flipped to the T words in my dictionary. Nothing matched. Then, a brilliant idea popped into my head. What if she’d actually said “tu marane?” “Tu” meant “your.”

I flipped to the M words and ran my finger down the page. No “marane.”

But then I saw the word “marraine.” I didn’t know what it meant.

I moved my finger over to the English translation. The Earth shifted under me.

Marraine was the French word for godmother.

Tu marraine meant “your godmother.”

In other words, whoever was speaking through the Señora was my godmother.

Who was a ghost. Who contacted me through a random psychic in a strip mall.

My bedroom lights would definitely be staying on every night for the next fifty years or so.

And there was another small problem—I didn’t have a godmother. You had to be baptized in a church to have a godmother. I hadn’t been baptized. I didn’t have any female relatives or family friends who would have been my godmother.

I tried to put together all the bits of information into some coherent storyline.
My mother had refused to tell my dad much about her life growing up in New York. She’d left and changed her first name.

Maybe they kicked her out.

Maybe she was running away from something.

Or someone.

I typed “Annie Goodwin” into Google. The same old link still appeared at the top of the list.

Missing Glen Ellen Woman Found Dead

Body Discovered Near Bridge; Probable Suicide

The body of a woman missing since earlier this week was discovered early yesterday on a deserted beach near the Marin Headlands. The Marin County coroner identified the remains as those of Ann Goodwin and confirmed that her injuries were consistent with a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge. Her car was found abandoned in a lot nearby. No note was found, according to investigators, and foul play is not suspected.

She leaves behind a husband and young daughter.

No matter how many times I read it, it always had a sad ending.