What I Wanted to Hear

She didn't look like a psychic. She looked like a dog walker I know...

photo by Tonya Morton

A psychic stopped me last month as I was trying to cross the street, just a few blocks from where I live in New York City. She walked right up to me in the crosswalk. She was staring at me intently, like she already knew me. She looked like she was about to say my name, but instead she said, “Hello.” And then I realized I didn’t know her after all.

I looked up at the walk signal to make sure the light hadn’t changed. She said, “Let’s get out of the street.” She put her hand on my arm and led me to the other side of 10th Street.

“I want to do your reading,” she said as we reached the curb. I tried to gently pull my arm away from her.

She didn’t look like a psychic. She looked a little like a dog walker I know, which is why I’d allowed my eyes to meet hers as I stepped into the crosswalk. I don’t generally make eye contact with the people on the street.

She asked me what my name was.

I said, “I’m running late. I really can’t–” I started to look off, in the direction of my apartment.

“Just your name, honey.”

I didn’t know how to say anything else, so I said my name. “Tonya.” Then I said again, “I’m running late.” That’s usually how I get away from people who try to talk to me on the sidewalk. I say I’m running late and then I just walk away. But I was struggling to walk away from this woman.

The psychic was shorter than me, maybe 5 feet tall, and skinny in an unhealthy way. Her dark blonde hair was unbrushed under a winter cap. She had thick gloves and a denim coat. She seemed very serious, oddly brusque and business-like, and not like a fortune teller at all. She wasn’t spooky, and she didn’t look homeless. She didn’t seem like someone who was asking for something. If anything, she seemed annoyed with me.

She spoke rapidly, calling my attention back to her. She repeated again that she wanted to do my reading. She said that the Archangel Michael had some things to tell me. My colors, she said, were lavender, turquoise, and silver. Then she said that my name was going to become famous worldwide this year.

That’s how she said it. “Famous worldwide.” Which struck me as odd phrasing. It also struck me as something a lot of people in the West Village would want to hear. But it wasn’t something that I wanted to hear.

I said, more forcefully this time, that I needed to go. She asked me if I would give her a small donation and I said “I’m sorry” and then I walked away. I went three blocks, then turned on the wrong street, hoping she hadn’t been watching.

Lavender and turquoise? I was an idiot to make eye contact with her in the first place.

By the time I reached home, I started to feel guilty about not giving her money. I probably would have if she’d said something that sounded halfway real. Anything remotely related to my life. Even if she’d just said something hokey and supportive— “you’re on the right path” or “It’s all going to work out” —I might have appreciated it enough to give her cash for a cup of coffee.

It was embarrassing to think that I’d stood with her so long, even after she’d come out with the whole “Archangel Michael” thing.

I had wanted to be wrong about her. I had wanted her to be the real thing. Why? What did I think she could give me? Some kind of reassurance? Answers?

photo by Tonya Morton

Only once, when I was a teenager, did I deliberately visit a psychic. I was in San Francisco with my mom when we saw one of those neon lights in an upstairs window, and, because we were on vacation, and because I asked to do it, we walked up two flights of stairs and knocked on the door.

I remember old flowered wallpaper on the walls. I remember the couch was sunken in the middle, where the woman had me sit down. She cleared away a few magazines to sit next to me. She was younger than she should’ve been, but still ancient for whatever age she was. Maybe late-20’s, with smoker’s skin and dirty hair pulled up into a scrunchie.

The young psychic took my hand. She glanced down over my palm and then she sighed. She told me that I was destined for something great, something in… science. She didn’t sound sure. When I didn’t respond, she added, “maybe in medicine.” I kept looking at my hand, resting in hers. I waited for her to say something else. But she only sighed again, then closed my hand and gave it back to me. And that was it. Ten bucks, please. Science. Maybe medicine. Back down the stairs we went, and I remember having the same thought I had with the psychic on 10th Street.

“I guess she thinks that’s something people want to hear.”

I still remember that psychic’s little walk-up apartment in San Francisco. Her baby was waiting for her. I saw him briefly, out of the corner of my eye, as I came into the apartment. Curly hair, red face. He was sitting in his high chair in the kitchen. I could hear his little fists beating helplessly on the tray, from the other room, while his mother held my palm and said whatever came into her head.

I didn’t feel superior to her. I didn’t feel validated after we left, or pleased to know she wasn’t a real psychic. I understood why she’d hung up the neon sign in the window. It was a job she could do easily from home, folding laundry between sessions and looking after the baby. And maybe some weeks, enough gullible people would climb the stairs to cover their groceries, or some diapers. I understood, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I left feeling weary. Like I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Like the world was always going to be like this.

Disappointing.

My whole life, I’ve been enchanted by those neon-lit psychic windows. But, other than that one time, I’ve never gone in. I don’t want another letdown, another bleak walk down the stairs back into the street. I don’t want to be made a fool.

I know I’m an easy mark. I linger at night, staring up at the windows, trying to imagine the room beyond the sign. The gauzy curtains and lit candles, and one woman—always one woman, alone—tying a scarf over her hair before the night’s first customer arrives.

What is it I want from her? Do I want her to give me answers?

Yes, one answer.

I live in a city of eight million people now. A large enough crowd to hide a few miracles. And I keep thinking one day, if I don’t seek to find it, the real thing will find me.

But a year passes, then another year, and another, and each time I hope for it, I’m disappointed. Each time I end up thinking, “Maybe this is all the world is. Just this.”

I have enough scars now, you’d think they could read me from a block away. I have these ghosts trailing behind me.

Why don’t they see me? I walk out into the street every day with my palms wide open.

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Tonya Morton is, among other things, the publisher of Juke.

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