Miriam the Medium by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro

Author:Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER
Published: 2004-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

13

“M A, THERE’S A MAN in my window!” Cara screamed.

I raced up the steps to find Cara in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. Through the glass, a man was shouting back at her, “I’m from Tip Top’s.”

“Shush, honey,” I said to her. “He’s fixing our roof.”

“Nice to tell me now,” Cara said.

“I didn’t know myself that they were coming today.” I stepped to the window. “You should have phoned before you started,” I shouted, but the man’s work boots were already disappearing from the top windowpane.

“This is a loony bin,” Cara said.

“At least it will be a dry one,” I said, and pulled her shades down as I had always asked her to do before she went to sleep.

Cara got up. She was wearing a long black T-shirt that I didn’t recognize.

“Is that a Halloween shirt?” I asked.

“No. Smashing Pumpkins is a rock group.”

I knew it was Lance’s—it smelled of cigarettes and a dusky cologne.

“You’d better give it to me to wash,” I said. I wanted to boil and bleach until it was a pale, shrunken tatter.

“No thanks, Mom,” she said, smiling. “I like it this way.” She ran her hands down her sides as I imagined Lance had.

Sighing, I climbed to my office. The roofers were scrabbling along the roof, tossing old shingles into the garden.

The phone rang. “’El-lo,” a man said. “Am I speaking to the psychic?”

“Yes.”

“Aaah. I am so pleased,” he said in singsong. I could barely understand him, but he was so cheery that I knew why he was calling.

“You called to sell me an ad.”

He giggled. “Oh, you are a clever, clever psychic. Yes, indeed. I represent the most widely distributed Hindu newspaper in New York.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have any money.”

He hung up quickly.

I slumped on the desk, my head in my hands. No one had prepared me for being broke. My father had had a cash business. And my mother had had a cash business, too—skimming from the household budget.

“This is where I keep my pechel, ” she’d told me, delighted, as she took down one of her hatboxes. It was the only Yiddish word she approved of. Inside her tall, black-feathered gendarme hat with the rhinestone clip, she opened the bunched tissue paper to reveal a wad of cash like the one Bubbie had sewn into her own hem when she was escaping her shtetl.

“Rory and I will always trust each other, and we’ll share whatever we have,” I said somberly.

“Well, some people have to learn the hard way,” my mother had said as she put her stash back into the feathered hat and closed the closet door.

The phone rang again. “Do you rid a house of bad spirits?” a woman asked in a hush-hush tone.

I was so panicky about getting the money for the roofers that I was willing to try anything. “Yes,” I said.

“I chose you from the psychic ads because, from your number, I could tell you live in Great Neck, too. What do you charge to come to the house?”

I hesitated, then tripled my fee.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.