Confessions of Madame Psyche. Dorothy Bryant

was her oldest. I understood. Her spirits, she thought, were fipally answering back, much the way I did, with infuriated impudence. “No, I …” I had been about to wreck her hopes, but she brushed away my attempt at confession.

      “No, it’s your mirror, the one Dilly gave you, the one you look at all the time. Oh, May, it’s your mother showing you she’s here with you all the time. Just the way I said, but you wouldn’t believe me. So she had to do it drastic like so you’d see.”

      “No, no, no, it was ….”

      “Oh, you’re right, it could be a poltergeist. There’s good ones and bad ones, but the ones that break things … you know, when I was a little girl like you, I heard things in this house, noises at night mostly, like a footstep creaking the stairs.”

      This was the first I had heard of her hearing noises. Sophie was simple but inventive. A flock of “memories” gave a continual supply of evidence to support whatever beliefs comforted her.

      She began sweeping up the pieces of glass. “Now, I think we won’t mention this to Father. He just gets mad, and Signora Renata says we have to be patient with him.” She put the glass shards into a paper bag. “But we’ll ask Signora Renata what it means. Want to come with me tonight?” I shook my head and ran out, waiting till I was in the wet marshes near the water’s edge before I burst into laughter, which I cut off quickly when tears came to my eyes.

      That night when Sophie returned from her seance, I pretended to be asleep. I did not want to hear whatever foolish talk had gone on about my broken mirror. But after she was in bed, I tossed restlessly, unable to sleep. I had made myself a toy that day, what we called a slinger, a piece of string tied around a rock, which we then spun round our heads and let go—a forbidden toy because, of course, it could be dangerous. My slinger was hidden under the bed I shared with Sophie. I reached for the string, pulled it up, accidentally jerking it so that the rock hit against the wooden wall with a sharp crack.

      Sophie stiffened. “What was that?”

      Instantly I saw the possibilities of a new game. “I don’t know.” At that moment I jerked the string again and produced another rap, this time on the floor.

      “What … who is it?” whispered Sophie. “Teddy? Are you trying to call me, Teddy?” I lay very still, the two of us listening together. “Who are you?” We listened. “Is it May you want?” We lay in silence. “May? Is it little Psyche, little Mei-li ….”

      At that point I pulled the string in a wide sweep under the bed and managed to produce three or four rapid knocks before dropping it. Then, afraid Sophie would look under the bed to investigate, I cried out, “Oh, Sophie, I’m afraid!” and threw my arms around her. It was the first time I had ever let her embrace me. She held me tightly and said, “Don’t cry, May, don’t cry.” I was shaking with laughter which I managed to smother in her large bosom.

      So it all began with a joke, a prank, and it grew with one prank after another. I soon found better ways to produce sharp raps in darkness or in the full light of day. There were loose boards all over our roughly built house. By slipping a finger or a toe under the edge of a thin plank, then releasing it to snap back into place, I could produce a “thwack!” that shuddered throughout the house. All I need do was to watch until Sophie’s attention was engaged, then a quick flip of my foot, and we were receiving messages from the dead.

      In the kitchen, Sophie busy at the stove, an orange might fly across the room and land in the stew pot. By the time she jumped and turned around, I was seated on the floor, oblivious, absorbed in my book of myths, six feet from the fruit bowl. Things disappeared, then turned up in odd places. Once, all of Sophie’s freshly laundered underwear was found in the mud behind the house. But to make up for that nastiness, I put her daughter’s doll under her pillow. Sophie wept happily as she hugged pillow and doll and fell asleep murmuring her daughter’s name.

      I was careful not to try any tricks when my father was at home, for even when he was drunk, he remained skeptical. But Sophie talked incessantly about her “messages,” until Father forbade her to speak of such things to him. “And you …” he said, looking sternly into my face. But then, seeing my mother’s eyes staring out at him, he seemed to forget what he was going to say. The truth was that if Sophie’s grief absorbed her, so did his, which was as strong, as total as his indifference had been wheri my mother was alive. Our house was a crazy wasteland of grief.

      It was bad enough when Father’s monthly check was gone by midmonth. But then his father died (his mother had been dead for years), and by the terms of the will, he was given a final settlement of a few thousand dollars. A few thousand more was to be settled on his issue, if any, but as all the money had to pass through him, we never saw any of it. If Erika had known, I think she might have salvaged some of it, but we saw nothing of her in those days. The money, all of it, was gambled away in six months. After that, Father remained drunk somehow—perhaps he won just enough at gambling to keep him in liquor. All the French and Italians in Butchertown made wine and were free with it, indulgent toward a “gentleman” who probably reminded them of the gentry they had served in the old country.

      Sophie and I still grew vegetables and scavenged around the shrimp sheds and slaughterhouses, where entrails were given away free, so there was no danger of starvation. But there was no money for flour and sugar and coffee and for the clothing I was rapidly outgrowing. That was why, during a nasty rainstorm in January of 1905, on my tenth birthday, I agreed to go with Sophie to a seance at Signora Renata’s house. I went because I knew that after the seance cookies were served.

      In the winter months, the lower lying parts of Hunters Point were flooded. Especially during high tide, some areas were under a foot or two of salt water and never usable as vegetable plots. We were lucky that our crude house had been built on high ground and on piers sunk deep by some unknown fisherman who, understanding the hazards of living near water, had put most of his labor and timbers below the actual house. That night Sophie and I walked. on streets (mostly unpaved) like muddy rivers, Sophie in high-top boots, I in bare feet, skirts tucked up, because I had outgrown my wading boots. We crossed to the north side of Hunters Point along the edge of India Basin to a house overlooking the Bay. A wooden sidewalk stretched for a few yards in front of it, and a large awning protected the wooden front door. There Sophie removed her muddy boots, and both of us put on light slippers to wear inside.

      Signora Renata was probably only forty (though at the time I thought of her as ancient), very stout and very gray, but with a smooth, rosy complexion. She spoke rapid, broken English in a deep, rough voice, fixing her hard black eyes on me. Sophie, of course, had been telling her about my psychic sensitivity, about the ghosts who now populated our house like noisy boarders. “Ah, Ia mezzo cina,” she greeted me, and that was what she always called me when we were alone—the half Chinese. She took us immediately to her parlor, a tiny, dim room where everything seemed to be covered. The round table in the center was covered with a red velvet cloth drooping almost to the floor. The two windows were draped in black. One corner of the room was hidden behind thick flowered drapes. The straight chairs surrounding the table were draped with shawls to hide, I think, the stained, moth-eaten plush seats and backs. Signora Renata herself always wore a black lace, red-fringed shawl which almost entirely covered her dress, all the way to the floor.

      We were the only people who had ventured out on such a stormy night. The three of us sat down together, Signora Renata and I watching each other suspiciously. I wondered what tricks she would play, yet I half-believed she was genuine. I was worried about the spirits she might call up; what if they came to tell her and Sophie that I had been playing tricks? But nothing like that happened. Nothing at all happened. We sat at the table in total darkness for a long time. Then Signora Renata went behind the flowered drapes for what seemed like an hour.

      When she came back, she lit a candle while she grumbled that the spirits had all stayed home out of the rain too. Sophie laughed politely. Signora Renata stared into my eyes for a while, then passed a hand across her forehead, closed her eyes, and began to talk about my mother. She described her, told me how much she loved me, how reluctant she had been to leave me, how happy her hard life had been after she had me, and so on. I no longer remember