THE HOUSE INSIDE ME by Camelia Wheatley

Author:Camelia Wheatley [Wheatley, Camelia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambee Press Publications

17

Cassidy’s Birth Story 1963

Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge.

Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge. It is knowledge itself.

~Plato

I shall now tell you the story of my birth, a story I have heard as much as Maw Sue’s story, so much that they intertwine, connect and converge. Or that’s what Maw Sue says.

It was 1963. John F. Kennedy was president, Beatlemania had hit America like a storm and the first episode of Bonanza hit the airwaves of television. And I was about to make my appearance known in a rather unusual way.

Click. Click. Click. Maw Sue’s tiny heels announced her entrance to the third floor, across the shiny buffed hallway of the hospital. There were strong smells. Her nose twitched. Her heart beat in raps, filling in the space between the clicking of her shoes. She didn’t like coming here because the smells, the sounds and the closed doors reminded her of places she’d rather not return to. Castle Pines was much worse than the hospital, but the familiarity was too close; yet she knew she had to go, for the newborn child. It was her duty as a Seventh Tribe member and a great-grandmother.

She knew even though the bloodline had skipped a few generations, the child born this day, October 31, 1963 at 3:33 AM would be gifted. It was in all the signs. When she turned to face the door, she noticed something she hadn’t before. Her eyes blinked in disbelief. How—could—she—have—missed—it? In bold black numbers it read, #333, and underneath it on a piece of paper slipped inside a gold bracket was the name, Collard.

Her mind shuffled through the memories of the past few months. A foretelling of what was to come. Like the day she went to the chicken coop to gather eggs. She put one egg aside for her breakfast with some bacon and biscuits. But when she cracked the egg against the pan, it spilt out a triple yolk, something she had never seen. At first, it sent a racking spell of shivers down her spine and she almost threw it out, but she didn’t want to waste an egg so she looked past her silly notions. After all, she had put away the serious, superstitious side of herself long ago. Days later, she went to pick up a tablecloth at the catalog counter of Sears and Roebuck. The clerk handed her a ticket while he went to the back to find her package. She glanced down at the ticket and it said, 333. Her heart literally jumped into her throat. The clerk came back and handed her the packet and she just stood there besieged by an unknown. Finally, after the third time, he said, “Ma’am…are you okay?” She quickly regained focus and left. Once again, she ignored it as a fluke. A week later, though, things got strange. Her alarm, although she sat it for six AM every morning, instead went off radically at three o’clock, scaring the bejesus out of her.

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