The Living Room stretched across the house in the fullness of the front room on the second floor. Only the bedroom was being rented. Any money was better than no money and the flat was empty except for his room. A university fellow somehow paid for a room and got a flat. My mother stood over my shoulder as I sat in one chair facing the male renter while he flashed playing cards at me and as he took one out that only he knew. I was to guess what was behind his back. One card then 2, then 3 and 4. I missed a few. It made a tally of 75 percent of my ability to guess correctly the cards he drew. He was doing a study on extra sensory perception. I was his subject. He told my mother I had ESP tendencies according to his test. It seemed to be a power to me which I knew nothing about. I did all feel magical.
My mother told me she knew what I thought. I dare not question her because she told me she was born with a caul over her head. I had question after question and what did it mean to a 12 year old? A caul? The thought frightened me and I now thought I could read a man's mind. My mother told me she could read my mind because of her birthright of being born with a caul. Perhaps another way to control her prepubescent daughter. I’m sure of her mind reading. My magical thinking continued.
Was all this a parlor game wrapped in superstition? Had I picked up cues from the man's face or body language. Did my mothers breath cue me. We slept together as sisters. All this fanciful thought because there was no knowledge of the amniotic fluid wrapping her head. (caul) was it an ignorance of what healthcare was at the time. My mothers was born in 1907 old enough to be my Grandmother. The back hills of West Virginia on the Ohio River was where she was raised. Stories ensued. Beliefs became a way of life and practice for my mothers colorful presence was how we continued to survive after my father died. I kept searching for my magic as I grew.
I got to experience more backwoods stories just 5 years ago. I was at a workshop and a Nurse Practitioner from Louisiana told a story of a faith healer at one of her clinics. He was called a Sin Sucker, freeing people of all sins to rise home to Heaven. When he was called to a home of a recently deceased person, flowers were placed on the body and then he laid on the body to extract the sins of the deceased. This was what was thought. He would rise in a weakness as he had absorbed all their sins.
When the sin sucker died his mother pleaded with her son to do the same for his father. He could not. Was he too educated and the son's world would not allow him to promote superstition? I will never know how to understand my upbringing in a Southern superstition and all my childhood awareness. How have I digested my childhood? I hope at this point I've let go and those beliefs are gone-reeducated away. I have always been open to the stories of the stories of others, giving me a fanciful and free spirited way of knowing people. My mother’s stories set the stage to create my own stories, some as the lost searching child looking for my truth.
