by Alexandra Leila
It was five-past-ten when Diego found his way to Royal Street. Sunday had commanded the Quarter to stillness and ease, a pleasure lost to those who fear God, and most shops followed suit. All but one hazy yellow cottage.
He pressed his hand against the wooden door and slipped into the foyer. There was a small seating area and a table, presumably where a greeter would normally sit and beckon customers over. West African masks and unlit candles lined the walls, and Diego felt a profound, all-consuming emptiness in the small, cramped space.
“Hello?”
He turned towards the voice. Down the hall, he could see the angled silhouette of an older woman with a shroud of long black hair flowing down her shoulders. Even from a distance, he sensed the familiar darkness of her eyes.
“Are you here for a reading?”
“Yes.”
“Then come in,” she spoke curtly and flicked her wrist.
He nodded and followed her to the back room. It was smaller than the entranceway, made smaller still by the abundance of totems on the floor and black lace hanging from the ceiling. Light streamed from a single barred window to the center of the table, cleared except for a purple floral tablecloth. The fortune-teller sat in a wooden chair with peacock feathers arranged like a sunburst, sprouting from the backrest. Diego sat in an unremarkable chair across from her.
She leaned forward. “Place your palms on the table.”
He obeyed, stretching his hands towards her.
She looked at him for a moment and smiled before taking his hands. “What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you can tell me.”
“Well,” she cleared her throat before continuing, tracing his palm with a long index finger. “You have so much left to discover in this world. Like so many other young men, you’ll find yourself a failure and a success in many respects. You ought to bypass risky business ventures, at least for the time-being.”
Diego nodded.
She read his silence as ambivalence and continued. “But here, you see, you’ll find success in love.” She lifted her gaze to his and smiled. “Or have you already?”
“You can’t tell?”
Her smile widened. “Ah, so you’ve found someone special already, someone who adores you just as much as you do. And soon she and you will be blessed with children who will love and cherish you. For as long as you live, you will never want for company or affection – from your wife, your children, or grand-children.”
“You can see grandchildren?”
“You can too.” She twisted his hand upward so could see in the light. “That there… is your love line. See how far it extends, to the back of your hand?”
“Do you have any bad news for me?”
She pulled his hand back towards her, examining it thoughtfully before proceeding. “You’ve had some troubles, haven’t you? Your past is jagged and painful—it has left a mark on you. Perhaps in time your pain will subside.”
“Do you know when that will be?”
“It’s too soon to tell, I’m afraid. The line is deep. But I can see that you are a traveler, and travelers are adaptable. In time, you will move past this suffering.”
“Do you see anything else?”
“No, nothing else,” she said and released his hand. “Not unless you have a specific question to ask me.”
“Thank you.” He dropped his head and reached for his wallet in his back pocket. “Do you do séances?”
“Sometimes.” She leaned onto the right armrest, resting her chin under her knuckles. “Who are you trying to reach?”
“Adela Lopez.”
The room fell silent as the fortune-teller’s dark eyes burned right through him. In an instant, her face had transformed from that of a vulnerable old woman to a furious apparition. He recalled the image of a shadow woman on horseback, leather reigns wrapped in her fingers and a bundle at her chest. As a boy, he thought she had vanished with the dawn.
“How do you know Adela Lopez?” Bile dripped from her words as she spoke. “What do you want from her?”
“I want to know where she is. I have some questions for her.”
“Such as?”
“Why she left me.”
The woman’s mouth tightened, unable to speak as she searched his face for answers.
“I’d also like to know,” he continued. “Where she took my little sister.”
“Your sister?”
“Julianna Stewart, but I don’t know if that’s still her last name. She’s probably married by now.”
“Diego?”
He raised his head. He bore her likeness: dark eyes amidst tousled black hair and skin that blistered in the Texas heat. As handsome as she was pretty when she was seventeen and married to his father.
“It’s nice to see you again, Mama.” He had rehearsed this homecoming many times in his head, but bitterness still broke through his even, measured tone. “I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”
“I know that—”
“—It’s funny, I do think you found your calling here. You’re a pretty good palm-reader, just not good enough to recognize your son when he walks through that door.”
She exhaled, adjusting in her seat. “Why are you here?”
“I told you I just have questions.” He shook his head. “I can pay you for your time, but I think I’m entitled to a family rate.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged.”
They both smiled. But once they recognized themselves in the each other, the light in their faces faded.
“When you left, where did you go?”
“El Paso, where your abuela lived.”
He nodded. “How long?”
“I don’t know, maybe days, maybe weeks. I just remember being exhausted when I arrived. It was such a long ride, and with your sister crying…” She stopped herself when she noticed her son’s cold expression. “I don’t know how helpful I can be in this.”
“Why?”
“Because… my memory…” her face became soft and sad as she spoke. “It’s gone gray and cloudy.”
“But you can see into the future?”
“That’s all I can do.”
“It’s alright. Just tell me what you remember.”
“Then, I went to Austin looking for work as a caretaker.”
“Caretaker for what?”
“Horses and dogs mostly. I was never good with children, but animals, I understood them.”
Diego smiled.
“Is that funny?”
“No, it’s just that I remember you riding our horse.”
“Rosie.”
“Yeah.”
“I loved that horse. I remember riding her with you in my arms.”
“What happened to her?”
“She couldn’t make it to Austin, so I left her in El Paso.”
“And Julianna?”
“She’s living in a plantation house in Evangeline, married to some rich Creole doctor.” She looked at him thoughtfully before continuing. “Your intuition was spot-on.”
“Does she have children?”
“None of her own yet, but she’s got step-children that keep her plenty busy.”
“Is she happy?”
“I believe so.”
His mouth was tight as he nodded, looking at his hands. “I wish I knew her.”
“There’s still time.”
“But it’s different… you took her away. She was my little sister, and you took her.” His voice cracked against the weight of his words. “I thought she was dead.”
“I didn’t take her away from you.”
“Do you know what that was like to wake up and find your mother and sister just vanished?”
“I know it must seem like that, but—”
“—That’s what happened. You can’t change it.” His face twisted with anger and pain. “Or is that memory ‘gray and cloudy too?”
“So that’s why you’ve come, isn’t it? You don’t want answers; you just want to harass an old woman. To make me feel guilty for all of the choices I’ve made, all of the terrible things I’ve done.” She rose to her feet in a smooth, slow motion. “Well I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I am not going to apologize for what I did.”
“You mean for leaving your only son with a monster?”
“What choice do you think I had?” Though she spoke in a steady tone, her eyes welled with tears. “Everyone in town reported to your father. His family, his staff, the sheriff. They all knew and didn’t do anything.”
“But you still got away.”
“I didn’t think I would.” She shook her head. “You remember the morning you woke up and I wasn’t there, right? But what you don’t remember is I had taken you with me many times before then. And he caught me every time.
“The last time I took you, he decided enough was enough, that I was stupid and hadn’t learned my place yet. There was only so many times he could threaten and beat me. So he put his hands on you.”
“I remember,” he said, his voice like ice.
“And then Julianna. My baby was four years old. She was mine, and I couldn’t do anything to help her. I couldn’t even argue.” Tears flowed and parted down her weathered face. “I would never be able to make her forget what he had done to her.”
“So that’s when you decided to leave.”
She nodded and sat back down. “And your father knew I would too. He sold all of our horses, all except for Rosie because she was old and wouldn’t get far. He locked you or Julianna every night in his bedroom, so that if I wanted to leave, I could only take one.”
“So you chose to take her.”
“It was not a choice.”
Diego sunk into the chair, his focus on the notches in the table. The table must have been at least fifty years old, the building even older. How many customers had his mother seen in this room, how many spirits had she enticed to her halls? Children searching for long-dead parents, spouses seeking an assurance of reunion in the afterlife, bearing the weight of an immense loss. What could this tired old woman offer them? He let his hands fold over his eyes, shielding himself in darkness from the woman on the other end of the table.
“So, are you a fortune-teller or a necromancer?” he asked finally.
“I’m an alchemist,” she responded in Spanish, her eyes burning amber in the lamplight. “I heal the sick and spin their despair into gold.”
“Help me then. Please.”
She considered him, silent in her own thoughts. After a moment of pause, she stretched her left hand across the table. “I can try.”
He looked back at her, then the lines on her palms. They were jagged and disordered, a constellation of scars that seemed to stretch through her fingers and down her arm. He wondered how many times she had been punctured and prodded, and how many times she had stitched herself back up. What kind of thread was holding her together? How had black hair continued to grow strong as rope and woven with scarves and beads, past the burns on her scalp? What kind of magic did she hold in her fingertips?
“Thank you.” He placed his hand in hers, lacing his fingers around her wrist. “Do you think I could be an alchemist too?”
“Of course.” A warm smile was painted across Adela’s face as she gently touched the ends of his long dark hair. “You’re my son.”
About the Author
Alexandra Leila is a writer based in Austin, Texas. She spends her days working as an attorney and her nights writing novellas next to her cat on the couch. In the last year, she has published an article on domestic violence law in the Journal of Law & Sexuality as well as short stories in Chaleur Magazine and The Remembered Arts Journal. She has a BA in history and human rights from Southern Methodist University and a JD from Tulane University.
As a woman of mixed Caucasian/Middle Eastern descent living in the South her whole life, she grew up using writing as a way to understand and make sense of the world around her, with a special focus on family, identity, history, interpersonal relationships, and systematic marginalization
