Fortune Tent

by Michelle Kicherer

This story first published by 8142 Review

The next-door neighbors often set up bounce houses in their front yard. The multicolored castles would gyrate to the rhythm of screaming, jumping children inside. There was always a part where one kid was crying. Their dads would sit on the porch mildly supervising while they sipped Tecates and talked and laughed. One of those guys must have worked for a party company, or had a cousin who did or something because those things aren’t that cheap to rent and I knew my neighbors didn’t have money. None of us did.

Their yard was like a lot of yards around: thin brown grass halfway covered in flattened cardboard boxes; a couple pieces of old furniture on the sidewalk out front; a pile of garbage stacked on one side of the house next to a rusting wheelbarrow, its tire deflated. Their recycling bins overflowed with beer cans that the neighborhood Vietnamese couple would come collect every morning. They were both old and looked dehydrated; the man would wear a wide-brimmed nón lá hat, the woman would wear blue surgical gloves and they both carried a stick across their shoulders, a black plastic garbage bag bursting with flattened cans tied to each end. Seeing them reminded me I had it easy and I took no offense that they never returned my hello when I greeted them.

I worked from home a lot of the time. I did nutrition consulting for a company based in Minneapolis. On the phone interview I’d told them quite confidently about the meal planning and consultations I used to do when I still worked at the school. It was wonderful, I exaggerated. I have a passion for helping people live their best lives, I lied. By the end of the call they offered me the job, which I accepted without negotiation. I knew that the company wasn’t paying me enough compared to how much they were raking in but I didn’t care, it was paying my bills and such. This was the type of person I’d become. I’d often roll mindlessly through my menu planning then take long pauses to stare out the window of my attic room, which I rented from a man with whom I’d started having a kissing affair. No sex, on his insistence. He just wanted kisses. His wife, Kim, was dying of colon cancer and he needed a sweet young release, I liked to joke. 

Our kissing affair started about four months after I moved in and I would have felt more terrible about the whole deal had it not been for Kim’s history. For years, apparently, she had been “getting” with at least four of her students, that we knew of. One day she brought home an undergrad named Jonah who was taking her ethnic studies course at the community college. I heard them discussing natives one afternoon when Tomás working late. One time I asked Tomás if it ever bothered him that his wife was white and teaching ethnic studies. 

“I just feel like she’s not that ethnic,” I told him, assuming he knew what I meant.

He just shook his head and leaned both hands on the kitchen sink, looking out the window with a lost-eyed expression. I wanted to ask if I’d offended him but I didn’t know if that’d make the moment more awkward so I said nothing. He said nothing. We watched a pregnant chihuahua hobble by on the sidewalk. Her engorged, drooping nipples made me feel sad.

When I first moved in Tomás told me that he was a coal miner, and although there weren’t any coal mines around as far as I knew, I believed him because his hands were always stained dark black, his fingerprints swirled with soot. The first night we kissed we were at the taqueria down the street. We were supposed to bring tacos home for Kim. When he asked if I wanted to eat ours at the counter, get a beer before we walked back, I said sure. 

  I asked him if he could make fingerprints with those dirty hands. “Let us see,” he said, taking my napkin. He pressed his fingers down and when he lifted there was a vague representation of his prints. 

“Those are like, when they only get half the prints off a crime scene,” I said. “Have you ever seen Unsolved Mysteries?”

“No,” he said blankly. Tomás was from Columbia and though he’d lived in the states for many years by then, he missed a lot of my cultural references. I was also almost fifteen years younger than him. A millennial, he always called me, which I resented. Well, I was born early-eighties though, I’d argue. One time he asked me where I worked before I moved, where I lived, and I used my youth as an evader. You know us millennials can’t sit still, I said, which made him roll his eyes. But like most things, Tomás didn’t press for more information. I liked that about our situation. No one talked about anything. 

“Here, you do it like this,” I said, taking his thumb first. I pressed firmly from left to right. “I used to do fingerprints for the school,” I said, holding his thumb as if it were a lighter. We looked down at a light gray print. “Wow, your hands are dirty.” 

“They are,” he said. He leaned in, then, cool Tecate on his breath. 

A few weeks after that night we were at the same taqueria. Kim was in the hospital again. They had to keep her for treatment, testing. Tomás was lost in all the details and that evening he said, “Is it terrible that I feel--” 

I set my taco down because it felt strange to eat when he might say something important. I knew that Kim was not doing well. I also knew that several weeks before her hospitalization, Kim had been put on leave because she was accused of giving preferred treatment to some of her students. She’d been caught behind closed doors with a student named Tatiana and another student, Ray, who accused Kim of coercion. Soon after her suspension Kim told the dean she had cancer and that it was advanced but hopeful. You can function without part of your intestine, I’d offered Tomás as some sort of comfort, I hoped. I was curious what he felt terrible about but was also relieved when he didn’t keep talking.

I waited long enough that I knew he wasn’t going to say anything and pulled his hand from his lap. It was dead-weight heavy but he allowed me to take it. I turned it over and proceeded to trace the lines on his palm. Head, heart. He leaned closer like, forget the comment, forget the wife. “What,” Tomás said low and close. His spicy breath warmed my face. “Do you see?” I wanted to look up and kiss him then, taste the tangy onion and cilantro in his mouth but it didn’t seem like the right moment. 

“Hmmm,” I hummed. I looked up at the donkey piñata hanging just behind his head, at the pin the tail on the donkey tacked to the wall. A lot of burros in here, I considered and said, “Give me a moment,” as I traced my finger over Tomás’ rough, sooty palm.

I once read fortunes at a school carnival. The woman who was supposed to do it called in sick that day and the principal knocked on my door and said, do you mind? All you have to do is put this scarf on your head and sit in that tent. He went on as if I had no choice. Here’s a key for how to do the reading, he said, handing me a sheet of paper with a big red palm, arrows pointing to its different creases. He also gave me a stack of tarot cards, which I put in my back pocket. I looked at the hand key. Life line, heart line, health line. It seemed easy enough. The principal said, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but try to make these encouraging. 

The school I worked at was a nonprofit for emotionally disturbed kids. It was a K-12 grade school, which meant you’d see lanky teenagers slapping palms with their little first grade homies when they passed each other in the halls. I was one of the many white people who worked there with an almost entirely black population. We had a few Latino kids, too, and one Vietnamese student who rarely spoke to anyone but whom everyone bullied. They called him Ching-Chong. One day he was teased so bad that he let loose, screaming and flailing and saying, I’m not Chinese! I’m not Chinese! and a bunch of other things that were terrible. The teacher and his aides tried to hold him back but he still managed to bite Mr. Keffler on the cheek. Poor Keffler had to get shots and antibiotics to treat what became a terrible, scarring infection. After his sick leave ran out we never saw Keffler again.

Each student that went to that school had had some sort of terrible abuse history: kids locked in dog crates for hours at a time; devastating sexual abuse; assault of all kinds. One kid had half her right hand blown off from her dad lighting a firecracker while she was still holding it. I went into the fortune tent that day not knowing a thing about tarot cards or fortunes or life lines or what to say to those kids but after the ninth grade teacher came in and drew thick black liner around my eyes and tied a red floral scarf to my head I felt legit. You look like a real gypsy woman, she said. I blinked at her as some vague version of correction then went into my little tent and sat on a short stool at a small round table. I smoothed the dark red tablecloth then called out in a soothing, almost witchy voice that I was ready. 

The first student to come in was a teenager who I knew had just become pregnant. I was mad at her at first, because she’d attended my Health Club sessions for weeks. It was an all-girls club taught by myself and Tracy. I was the nutritionist, Tracy was the nurse. Together we thought that maybe we could connect with the girls in a way their teachers and therapists couldn’t. Apparently not, I thought to myself, rather bitterly, when I heard the pregnancy news. In several Health Club sessions we’d gone into extensive detail about contraception and STIs. Afterward I considered that maybe all of her questions were because she wanted to get pregnant. Your body your choice, I’d tell the girls. 

Okay, I said, taking her hand. She sat on the short stool across from me, her small round belly already apparent. Her hand was warm and soft and several shades darker than mine. Wow, your life line is very close to your fate line, I said. She nodded very seriously, saying nothing. I went on: this means that your life is more in your hands than you think.

It is? She said. She frowned very seriously at the lines on her hand and nodded for me to go on. I wasn’t sure what else I could offer and felt surprised at my reading’s immediate effect. I moved aside my battery-operated candles and leaned forward. I also see, that your heart line here is deep and forked and gives plenty of room for a strong head line. You know what that means? I paused here, peering through my dark-lined eyes in a way I hoped looked serious and mystical.

What? she whispered.

It means that you have a huge heart, and so much love to give. And that even though you may have been hurt in the past--I paused, lowered her hand, leaned back and hovered my palm over a fake candle--your head is strong and will give you the power to forge a brand new future. I folded my hands on my lap to show that I was done.

She wiped her eyes, which made me feel both guilty and empowered. I pulled a single stem of lavender from the small basket I had sitting next to me and said, here take this. It will give you calm energy. You smell it. Try it now, take a long, deep breath. 

She did. I told her to try doing it with her eyes closed and she did. When she opened them she wiped at the corners and said very quietly, thank you. Holding her lavender with both hands she stood up from her stool and left my little tent. The teacher outside was ready to usher in a new student but I said, hold on, I need a moment to clear the aura. Whatever that meant. I was a little flustered, like maybe I’d gone too far. I’d worked there for six years by that point and had never felt I’d done anything terribly useful for those kids. They weren’t really eating an apple a day, they were making two-pointers to the garbage bin with those apples then pulling Spicy Cheetos out of their backpacks. But who was I to take away such joy?

Back in my tent I collected myself. Glanced at my cheat sheet. Life line, heart line, head line, sun line. Okay, I’m ready! I called.  

The next student to enter my tent was a tall boy who had to crouch low to not hit his head in the entrance. Before sitting he stood in the most peaked point of my tent, his short afro brushing against the striped canvas. Plastic, whatever it was. I raised a slow, pointing hand toward the stool across from me like, sit there. He sat and rubbed his knees. I waited until he was still. Dramatic effect. I recognized him from one of the high school classes but forgot his name. On another day I would have told him to pull his pants up. I can see your drawers! I’d tell the kids, to which they’d often say snarky back, why you lookin? 

He was a very handsome boy, maybe thirteen or fourteen. I remembered a therapist once saying that it’s always the most beautiful ones who have the most trauma. Okay, I started, sure to speak in a low, mysterious voice. I tried not to sound like I had an accent, reminding myself that most of the students probably recognized me from around campus. Put your hand out like this, palm up, I told him.

He reached his hand out palm down, flat as if he were balancing a bead of water between his knuckles. Slowly, he turned his hand over to reveal the pinkish warm skin of his palm. 

  Ah yes, wow. I see, I said. I let him rest in my left hand while I used my right index finger to trace his lines. Life, heart, head, life, heart, head, I was repeating in my mind. I kept forgetting the other ones. I pressed gently into his life line and he twitched so I stopped. Palm reading was the only time I’d ever made physical contact with a student outside of restraining them. It was a place like that; we were all trained in how to safely hold back a child if they were being unsafe to themselves or others. It was a terrifying place to work, at times. 

What do you see? He asked. He seemed nervous, maybe. 

I couldn’t remember anything about this kid but couldn’t get it out of my head that he was beautiful. I thought of what that therapist said, then I remembered a day when another lovely boy managed to climb on top of a classroom roof to tell anyone within earshot about how many times he’d been given meth and raped. He raised his hands in the air while he cried out and everyone kept thinking he’d jump. We all watched for a long time, unsure what to say or do. Even the old pros were speechless. His therapist was crying. We had to have a campus-wide staff meeting about it the next day to process what had happened and how to better respond next time. But what are you supposed to say to that? 

I see that you have a thin fate line. 

What the hell is that supposed to mean? He pulled his hand away.

No no, I said. Here, give it here. I felt sweaty and my jaw felt tight and clenched and for a minute I forgot how to make words. I remembered this kid, or it might have been a different one, slamming a teacher’s aid against a wall and pressing her throat with his thumb then later that day, crying when his uncle came to pick him up. I’d watched from my little nutritionist office as that kid cowered, as the uncle yelled in his face and punched his shoulders until the kid fell over sobbing and staff had to protect him until the police arrived. Who was I to work at that school, to tell those kids to eat their apples, to tell them to toss the Cheetos? 

I glanced at my palm reading cheat sheet on the floor next to my stool. Ah, I said. I took his hand again and ran my finger from fate to sun to head to heart. I had no idea what I was doing and started spitballin. I nodded to myself and said, Hm yes, I’ve never seen this. When your fate line is so thin like this, it means that it’s incredibly valuable, I started, and in case that sounded odd, I added, valuable as in, powerful. It means that you get to control your fate, from here on out. There’s still a higher power involved, the Fates and such, but you--I pointed, going for witchy again--you have so much power in your choices.

He leaned back and took his hand away from me. What about the other lines? He asked. 

With a heart line like that? You have calm powers of love within you, but you must remember to never lose sight of your life line. You know what that can mean for you? 

He shook his head. I’d really lured him in. I thought of the other beautiful students. The roof boy.

It means that no matter what fate might give you, you have a special power to overcome. And to love and trust only the people you love and want to trust. 

He smiled at first, a big dimply smile that gave me a flush of admiration. Then a troubled look washed over him, something like guilt mixed with recognition. He teared up and pinched at the place between his eyes. 

I’m sorry, I said instinctively. I wasn’t sure what for. Maybe I went too far. 

He looked down at both his hands and held them out like he wanted me to give them one last read. I took both his hands in mine and rather than read his lines I just held them and squeezed. It was meant to be motherly, nurturing, but maybe I was too young to come off like that. He pulled his thumb out from my hold and gently rubbed the top of my hand. A quick flash of feeling rushed from hand to limbs to core and I felt ashamed and hot and sick. I wondered if he saw it, that flash of something brief but detectable. 

It overcame me. I pulled my hands away. I cursed my pale skin for flushing and instead of handing him a lavender flower I reached for a tarot card, which I’d forgotten were still in my back pocket. Before you go, I said, hoping to change the subject, the moment, whatever it was. I will show you your cards. 

I laid out one card, face down. I didn’t know how many tarot cards people usually do. I didn’t have a key for that. I set down two more then flipped them all in a slow, deliberate way. One card depicted a jester-looking guy holding a cup, one was a prince with a sword, another was a naked woman crouching at a pond. Whose cards were these? I picked up the jester one and handed it to him. I said, this is the one you get to take with you. What do you think it means? 

He held the card sideways then upside down and smiled that beautiful, dimpled smile. It means I’m funny, don’t it? 

Yes! I said, feeling like I might cry. Yes, that's what it means.

Back at the taqueria I pressed my hand flush with Tomás’ and rubbed our palms together until they were hot. I tried to look serious as I peeled our hands apart and flipped his palm facing up. I felt like a physician conducting an exam so I slowed, ran my finger along his various lines. Wrinkles. “Hm,” I started. “I see that your head line and your heart line do not intersect.”

“What about my love line? Is that somewhere?” Tomás asked, which I thought was lame.

“Your fate line almost reaches your head line,” I said, feeling serious then. As I ran my finger slowly across his palm and down, pressing lightly into the meaty part by his thumb, I thought of another thing I’d heard about Kim. An affair, if that’s what you’d call it, with a beautiful boy. 

“You have a hard time making decisions, but your heart line is warm and thick.”

“Thick?” 

I didn’t look up because it sounded like he was amused. Smirking, perhaps. I said, “Your heart has the power to overcome your head.” I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, exactly, but I thought of Kim in the hospital, then. Of the nights I’d heard them fighting downstairs. I’d try to replace the noise of angry shouts in the room below by opening my window and letting in the sounds of the street: kids laughing and bouncing; men speaking in low Spanish; a woman calling Baby! Bay-bee! for her dog as it wandered down the street. Sometimes Kim would comment on all the garbage outside. Why can’t they just take that shit to the dump?

I wanted to talk back to that, to tell her that maybe they couldn’t afford it. To tell her to go read an ethnic studies book. But who was I? I didn’t feel I belonged in that home, that neighborhood, nor the school I left months ago where the dimpled boy never said anything as far as I knew, but he’d look at me when he passed my office, when I came into his classroom to teach a health lesson. It was a look of recognition, of testing. I quit at the end of that school year saying that my time had come to move on in my career. I never wanted to work with kids again.

I considered telling Tomás that he should go visit his wife. What if she died alone in the hospital? Or what if she didn’t die, if she came home with half an intestine and found Tomás and their young tennant with hot sauce and husband on her breath. I wanted to ask Tomás what he so felt terrible about but instead I asked, “Are you actually a coal miner?”

He looked down at his hands, where I’d just read his fortune, where I told him how his fate almost reached his head. The skin around his nails was stained black and I imagined that it would never come off, like the tiny piece of lead that was still embedded in my thumb from third grade, when I pushed my cuticles back with the tip of my pencil. “Wait,” I said, closing his sooty palm. “Don’t tell me,” I said, because I didn’t want to know. —