A Hallowe'en Tale

Of sorts. That is, a Hallowe'en tale of sorts. On this All Hallowed Eve. It began (and largely ended) with naught to do with the old Celtic holiday. Except that small reality that this is the night the spirits roam...and most do entertain a link between fortune-telling and spirits from the hidden world.

I usually make a point of avoiding eye-contact when I am walking to & fro. One of those safety features requisite for a woman in the city as much as the added one of too many people in a day: the shield of privacy is needful. Too, that other reality--when the homeless say hello, it's usually a buy-in to the story of their life/request for some of your cash.

Which I rarely carry. Another rule of the city. Easier to not give what yer ain't got.

This man caught my attention because I thought he was asking directions. Thick accent, Western business suit, tie, neatly trimmed beard.

And a purple turban.

Okay. We pride ourselves here on being an international city.

So he rather had my attention before I understood what he was saying and if I grasped "lady" first or "woman" coupled with something indistinguishable (and almost coy) that was just beginning to concern me, his appearance was not the sort that--umm.

Might be so bold as to ask for favours.

"You are a very lucky lady, a very happy woman. Good things are--something good is--going to happen to you. I can tell because your forehead is so bright." He was touching his forehead as he spoke. A genteel Old World graciousness hummed about and the incompleteness of the way he said and resaid was absorbed in it.

My brow is perennially puckered--and my head largely down--in the city. It's as much so I can see where I am going as so I won't step in anything--err. Untoward. (To say nothing of the above: preference for privacy. It amazes how often people feel the obligation to tell me to hold up my head! It's a lovely day! Don't be downcast!)

But that is another story.

I stopped to listen. He asked to see my palm, even as he continued assuring me in his kind little voice that wonderful things were going to happen to me. Seems he even said, God wanted me to have these things--God would be giving them to me. Although he did not give specifics, specifics seemed inherent in what he was saying.

As though he needed to stop to tell me--just me. Out of all the people on the street that day.

(Okay, don't need that part of it added to my story. Gullible? They can see me coming?? Please. I was minding my own business! Just walking down the street!)

I have actually had my palm read before. Yup. One time in my small life. And fairly recently--last November, in fact, on a visit to a town I lived in long ago. My hostess took me.

I happened to mention the visit to my man as I switched my bag to the other hand and obligingly opened my palm.

(None of the major stuff predicted from that reading has come true, to be sure, and--the primary two items revealed were/are very important to me.) (And yes, I am laughing, even as I write. You don't know me. So I have to tell.)

(Would you like to know how easy fortune-telling is? Think female...love...unhappy. Why else would we be asking our fortune? Even if the visit wasn't our idea and never in a million years would have been.)

(I almost had this gypsy flummoxed; I could tell. My face revealed nothing.

Neither did hers.)

(And then inadvertently--. Because she was telling things no one could know. Not the sort of things you find in your average love affair! That uncontrolled dilating of the eyes. I suspect they are trained to watch for it.)

(And I am still waiting for the main two items to happen. I am I am I am.)

(And because you do not quite know me, I reiterate I am not the fortune-telling sort. Yes, I know. Number of people might disagree with that assessment. But they don't know anything about the subject at hand.) :-)

So this guy in the turban is telling me how wonderful my life is about to be and how important what is about to happen will be.

And then he's looking at my palm.

I was asking where the marriage line was, remembering some lost tidbit I'd read recently wherein some young girl reads the palm of a man who would later marry twice--.

His marriage line told her that, at the eve of his first marriage.

My new friend pointed it out (it is actually the love line), still crooning his fortune for me.

Then in the next beat, oh no.

You're broken-hearted.

Ouch. Hey, I do walk around with a smile on my countenance (as distinguished from my face)--likely why people try to railroad me into holding that head up when I am genuinely down...heart-shaped faces tend to both youthfulness and joy. None of which applied today. (Brightness of my forehead, remember?)

My young gentleman was plainly surprised to see what my palm was telling. But no details (and did I tell you I was in somewhat of a hurry?)--.

I'd already begun to mention I didn't have any money--from the get-go, I'd said that--if he wanted to be recompensed for my fortune, it wasn't going to happen.

And I need to go--my connection.

But he barrelled on. Opened his dayplanner and began tallying quickly as he queried. Colours. Numbers. He'd already told me (writing it down, too) "January 2008. That is when you are going to get what you want--this thing that is coming to you."

We ended up with 'blue' and 'seven' and that date.

Hey, I really only want two things in my life! All else is Subheaded Under. And those two things are very major. I used to play games with them (I am being silly)--but I did posit the Grave Question, time & again, testing my loyalty: if I could only have one--which would it be.

We're talking Very Serious Stuff here. But neither of them is blue and...

Hm. Seven. Well. Okay.

Change the subject.

My little friend handed me a small piece of paper (one-quarter by one-and-a-half inch, yellow) on which he'd jotted something. Wadded it up and said, "Put this in the center of your palm & squeeze tightly."

I kept interjecting not pay & train to catch. But he had me. When your life is a wreck, you kinda like fortune-tellers, even in Midtown Atlanta (bygawd) walking down 15th Street to the station to get to your neat & tidy little part-time job.

The little sheet of paper only said 'blue' and '7.' Which we'd already discussed. (Was he a fortune-teller in training?) What am I supposed to do with blue and seven? Not like they are lottery numbers (I could have used one of those). And he never told me why I had to hold the tiny wad so tightly--or why he asked to have it back! He was pointing to his open planner by then, intoning something about 'money for the poor.'

I lost most of it.

Tried to tell him I am poor.

He wasn't buying. I began to realize I'd been caught in this place where hospitality mattered--not a place of what you had--a place of what you give. A place quite consonant with that Old World way.

And I knew you have to cross a fortune-teller's palm with silver for a fortune to come true.

But this man was no gypsy. (I repeat, I am not the fortune-teller type.) (So why can I quote their ways quite so facilely?)

He kept intoning, money for the poor, pointing with his pen to his open daytimer. (It was a slim thing--leather.) He'd become the man for whom they named Time by then. Very serious.

You wouldn't want to trick him.

Or be so beastly as to not give to the poor.

Well, I had a quarter. I put it right where he pointed and it seemed sufficient to him to meet the need.

But the story doesn't end there.

I began to walk away, both of us still caught up in the charitable energy of the whole--his gift to me--my gift to the poor--in life, the energy of a moment tells all.

Still polite. Still unworldly.

Still confusion edged with wonder.

But as I walked away, I half-turned and finished, God be with you.

Can't even say why. I say it sometimes. It, too, is a gift.

But he returned, "And also with you."

The response of the Apostolic Church.

I think the tale ends there, unfinished (or, perhaps, unresolved) though it be. But the questions do not. International city that we are, I rarely see men in turbans. On the ride to work that day (a five minute trip down three stops), I saw three. I looked a long while at the second one. He finally turned away with that half-smile that says he saw me watching--and, perhaps, knew something I didn't know.

But I didn't ask if he told fortunes, too.

All Hallow's Eve. Because it all happened today. Was it some prank they were playing? Or something from an Indian custom I do not know?

And where did the response from an apostolic liturgy fit in.

And will I in truth 'get everything.' All two of my everything. Magical thinking, you see. That is what my best friend tells me, more than I want to hear. (Okay, so I am prone to things like synchronicity and do believe in dreams...and possess that fiction-writer's necessity to see e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in terms of connecting points, connecting lines that bleeds over into how I see life in spite of everything I do to forestall it....)

Hey, I was minding my own business, walking down the street to....

(And will I last until January 2008 to find out.)


[Editor's Note. Do treat yourself to the delights of Wikipedia's history of Hallowe'en and the Scot-Irish Sidhe and Samhain. If not a handful of candy corn....]