Page 36 of And Still Her Voice
“Try me. Come on. What are you talking about?” He slipped off his shoes.
The moment had come. Except once I let Grandma out of the bag, there would be no putting her back in, but I was desperateto unburden myself. My gut told me I could trust him. “Can I see your matches?”
He didn’t hesitate to reach into his pocket.
I struck a match, shook it out, taking in a breath of not just comfort, but courage. I closed my eyes, trying to gauge the words I’d use, but when I opened them, he examined me like I was some sort of foreign object.
“So, you know the other night when I told you I was in Paris working for the Red Cross during the war?”
“Yes.”
“World War I. Come on?” I stared at him. “I wasn’t even born yet.”
He scrunched his eyes. “You’re right, but I wasn’t going to say . . .”
“But my grandmother was and she was the one talking through me.”
“And you say you’ve never done LSD?” Eyes widening, he laughed and then quickly turned somber. “Go on.” Elbows on his knees, he rested his chin on his fists.
I rubbed the used match between my fingers. “I’d always heard a voice in my head that wasn’t mine. I was four when I first heard my parents talking about how my grandmother had transferred her consciousness to me at my birth. Before that, I really didn’t know the difference. I mean, how was I to know that all the people in the world didn’t think the way I did—didn’t have multiple consciousness. After a while, I was kept at home for my own protection. We never knew when or where Grandma was going to pop in.”
“So, it’s like reincarnation?” River asked.
“Not exactly. It’s actually an eastern religious ritual called Phowa, but next level; sort of like the last rites given in the Catholic Church just before someone dies. Like a priest, or anyone really, prays over the dying person. It’s their last chance to beforgiven for their sins, so they can get into heaven and not go to hell.”
“Oh Lord. Sorry but I was raised Methodist. To me it all sounds like mumbo jumbo. I’d need a whole church full of priests to do their voodoo magic on me,” River said with a laugh.
“Darling, I told you he wouldn’t understand.” Grandma only needed to whisper for attention.
“Wait, there’s the voice again. How do you do that?” He peered into my eyes.
I stood and reached for the cigarette. I held in the smoke. “It’s not me.” I blasted out the vapor wishing Grandma would disappear with it. “Anyway, there’s not much written about it, but there was a book at home, probably Grandma’s. I’ve done a lot of research at the library, but there’s nothing except I guess if you believe in Albert Einstein’s speed of light theory or his theory of relativity, then you’ve got to believe in his law of energy conservation.”
“I wasn’t the best student in school, but please go on.” He looked at me as if I were a mad scientist. “This is all just fascinating.”
“Anyway, Einstein says energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can change forms. It’s the ‘law.’ So, it’s like we’re all light, energy, and somehow, Grandma transferred her energy over to me.”
“But how, exactly?”
He didn’t interrupt me as I described to him what I knew of the process, including the piercing of the fontanel, at which I detected a slight flinch in his demeanor.
“You see babies are pure at birth, so lucky me. I inherited more than just her ear for music, and I can tell you right now, the only thing that’s pure is the hell she’s put me through.” His mouth opened to suck it all in. “So now, I just need to find a way to send her back.”
River nodded, then looked off to the side, squeezing his lips with his hand and then using a pointer finger as if deciphering a math problem in the air, he asked, “What about anyone else in your family? Do your siblings share a consciousness?”
“Just my father with his father,” I said. River arched a dubious eyebrow. “When I was around eight, in a moment of atonement, my father told me that he’d also been cursed and that he’d suffered because his father had used him the same way my grandmother used me.” It was one of the reasons I’d forgiven Dad for hurting me, one of the reasons I felt sorry for him—sometimes even more sorry than I felt for myself—it’s probably the main reason for the stabbing—but not the only reason as it would turn out.
River cocked his head. “So, your grandma uses your voice to talk. How—what does it sound like, in your head? Is it like a thought or like someone whispering in your ear?” His eyes widened as he focused on me, elbows on knees, chin resting in his hands.
“It’s difficult to describe, especially if you’ve never heard voices yourself. It’s like she’s standing right next to me or like her voice is a thought. Sometimes it’s both. You know how sometimes you’ll hear a tune and later you find yourself humming that tune and you never made a conscious decision to start humming that tune and then you can’t get it out of your head?”
River nodded. “It’s so annoying, especially if it’s Bob Dylan.”
I laughed. “I happen to like Dylan. But yes, exactly. Sometimes we have a conversation.”
“Like what? Does she ever make you do things you don’t want? Like things that could hurt you?”
Can I trust him to tell him about Dilbert or my father? That’s a lot to dump on him right now.
