The Knowing: Awake in the Dark (3 page)

“Will you tickle my back till I fall back to sleep?” she would ask through tears.

I would then dance my fingers across her back until sleep found us both again.  By some miracle, the disease went into remission by the time Maggie was nine. Before that, she suffered years of experimental drug treatments rendering her fat and bloated one year and emaciated the next. She underwent surgery to remove a tumor caused by the disease and the doctors predicted more. The reason for her reprieve was never known, the disease simply went into remission sparing Maggie more suffering and possible death.

It’s likely that you or someone you know has had an angelic encounter. Hundreds and thousands of people report seeing an angel or having experienced an interaction with what they describe as “angelic intervention.” Some claim their life or the life of someone they love was saved by our angelic brethren. There are literally countless blogs, articles and books devoted to the subject, some from the beginning of documented literature. I personally know dozens of people who claim some angelic experience. I came to believe the angel was there for Maggie to help and protect her through the ordeal of her disease.

The Angel and flying lights in church weren’t the only things I saw that others didn’t. I had a childhood friend named Angela who lived down the street in an old, white, clapboard house. We spent one summer playing together nearly every day. Angela had stringy, light brown hair that always had a snarl in the back like it was never combed. She was so skinny that she reminded me of Olive Oyl from the Popeye cartoon.

One afternoon while we played, our hands clutched together in girlish delight as we ran into her house. The air inside was cool and the rooms were small and completely separate from one another, walled off like a house of tiny box’s. I could smell the faint scent of flowers, although, I never found them.

I loved the gauzy mauve colored curtains that hung in the front room window, delicately tied back at each side with a pretty bow just like in a catalog. A giant wooden cabinet filled with tiny porcelain figurines of couples dancing and delicate women in big hats all smartly displayed through glass doors dominated the dining room.

Angela held my hand, pulling me like a mother elephant through the house. We passed a small parlor and I saw an old woman sitting rigidly in a chair facing the backyard near the window. She didn’t speak or acknowledge us as we ran noisily past.

Her hair was white and her lips were pursed in discontent. Throughout the day, each time we went inside to play, the old woman sat there, never smiling or looking in our direction and I wondered why. I assumed she was Angela’s grandmother. After seeing her several times, I finally asked, Angela “Is that your Grandma who’s always in that chair?” We were poised at the top of the stairs, my finger pointed down at the woman.

Angela turned to look at me, wrinkled her nose and shrugged, “Huh?”

Somehow, I knew better than to ask again. I saw the woman plain as day, but Angela clearly did not. It was the first time I remember confirming that I saw what others didn’t. Sometimes while playing in Angela’s room I’d hear music that came from elsewhere in the house floating on the air like the gentle scent of flowers I never saw.   Increasingly, I began to notice that people did not see the things I saw, and although I wondered why, I never had the courage to ask anyone.

It was around the same time period that I began to notice an energy light that hovered around people. I would later learn the light was commonly called an (aura or electromagnetic field.) But at the time I simply knew them as lights that people had. Some of the lights were easier to see than others. The lights had patterns in them and were different depending on the individual. The first time I recall noticing the light around my mother, she was in a fury.

My mother was beautiful with coal black hair that she would later dye blonde and piercing blue eyes that looked like shattered glass when she was angry. She could cripple me with one look. Along with the hostility in her eyes, I saw my mother’s light move with razor-like edges and stiff patterns similar to what I saw reflected in her eyes. It took decades for me to understand what the patterns I saw around people meant.

I was six the first time I saw the rage that surrounded her body move in an arc and it was over a missing container of Cool Whip.  I was rounded up along with my three sisters and marched into the hot, airless garage where we stood like soldiers lined up by age. My mother bent down, riffling through the contents of the standing freezer like a madwoman, shorts exposing the fleshy meat of her thighs.

“Where is the goddamn Cool Whip?” she shrieked as thick clouds of cold air puffed around her. My oldest sister, Karina, was first in line. “Did you eat the Cool Whip?” my mother bellowed.

“No, ma’am,” Karina said, her voice trembling. “I haven’t been here all day.”

“Don’t get smart with me, young lady,” my mother warned. “I’ll knock that smirk right off your face.”   “Isla,” she snarled, “Did you eat the Cool Whip?”

Isla’s blue eyes widened with fear. “No ma’am,” she whispered. Isla’s white, bloodless fingertips were wrapped in rubber bands—evidence of the bad habit she had for collecting them from random sidewalks.

Mom stepped closer to her. “Don’t you lie to me missy.  Someone damn sure ate it and I will find out who and then I’m going to kick your little asses for lying to me.”

She pointed a wooden spoon down the line at each one of us. Turning to Maggie, she asked her question again. Maggie too denied eating the Cool Whip. Mother’s temper boomed.

“Now you listen to me, goddammit! I will beat the shit out each one of you until whoever did this admits it.”

My stomach pumped in quick succession in and out in a nervous habit under my tee shirt.

“Nita, did you eat the Cool Whip?"

“No, ma’am,” I squeaked, tears already slipping down my cheeks.

“That’s it!” she screamed and her hands flew into the air in a tantrum. “Nobody ate it? Fine, Nita, you’re first!” she snarled, snatching me by the arm and holding me tight.

“Noooo,” I cried, “I didn’t do it. No, Mom, please.”

The wooden spoon stung the back of my thighs and butt as she swung wildly. I danced around, my free arm swinging behind me hoping to ward off the blows. Before each spanking, she asked the question again and again. With each “No, ma’am,” the spoon landed anew.

Each of us took the punishment until it was Karina’s turn.

“I did it! I ate the Cool Whip,” Karina screamed, hoping to escape the beating with a lie, because she didn’t eat it either, but it was too late and Karina, like the rest of us, got what was coming.  It was that experience where I first saw the light that moved in patterns around my mother and it was her anger dancing, cutting and sharp that drew my attention.

Ultimately I would notice that all living things had a pattern or light specific to them, like a thumbprint.  It revealed information about who that person was and what might be occurring in their life.  I would learn over time to tune into the vibration that surrounded people and read the field of energy like a map of their inner self.

From a young age my sister Isla saw the energy too but not around people, instead she saw it around animals. She could commune with them, hearing them and seeing their special energy. I remember one afternoon not long after the Cool Whip episode our parents took us on a rare family outing to the Japanese Tea Gardens in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Before we left the car our mother turned to the back seat giving stern directives for the day.

“Remember to hold hands at all times until we reach the park. Karina, you hold Isla’s hand and Maggie and Nita hold hands. Do not talk to strangers under any circumstance, do you understand?” She asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” We said in unison.

“And I will only tell you ONE time to do something,” she said staring us down. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Isla, don’t let me catch you picking up any goddamn gum. And you girls better behave,” she warned pointing her finger at us. We muttered our yes ma’am’s and shook our heads in agreement.

We were not allowed to chew gum at home and Isla’d had a bad habit of finding discarded gum on sidewalks plucking it from the ground and popping the already chewed wad into her mouth. Our mother railed at Isla when she did this screaming, “You’ll get worms, Isla! That is a disgusting habit! Stop it, I mean it Isla!”

That summer Isla, Maggie and I had been searched for worms more than once. The hunt for the tiny worms began at night and consisted of our mother bending us over without our panties in a darkened room. She’d spread our bare cheeks and shine a flashlight on our exposed bums to see if we had the worms. This was a traumatic event always starting and ending in tears.

Our mother was an R.N. working at a doctor’s office which may have been the reason she was so vigilant.

That day at the tea gardens we ran around screeching with delight racing down the tiny winding paths and curved bridges that went over and alongside of a stream filled with giant koi-fish.

I spotted Isla squatting at the stream’s edge watching intently as the fish swam languidly past. I sidled up next to her to see what was so intriguing and Isla said, “Look at that fish. He’s the happiest fish in there.”

“But how do you know?” I’d asked looking into her wide blue eyes.

“Because he told me so and he’s shinier than the others, it means he’s happiest, see?” She said pointing at the fish.

I saw a golden fish with beautiful black spots and shiny skin that reflected the sun, but he looked like all the others who swam past. As I gazed at the fish in the gurgling stream, Isla nudged me and said in a whisper, “look, I have something for you.” She opened her sweaty palm and there in the middle of it was a pale green morsel of previously chewed gum.

“Here,” she offered. “It’s for you.”

I snatched the sticky wad and plopped it happily into my mouth. “Thanks, Isla!”

“Don’t let mom see or she’ll give you the worms.” Isla warned.

I didn’t know that Isla had the gift of the Clairs that manifested through animals, but she did and she would use it for the rest of her life.

An intensely private person, my mother did not offer insight into her past. As a woman, I discovered that my mother had low self-esteem, self-loathing, and a general inability to cope with children. These traits were well hidden, mostly from herself. She had a photo album that was black with gold lettering on the front that read: “PORTRAITS of Caroline Penry.” The large hardcover book was filled with 12x10 black and white photos of her from three months of age to twenty-one years old. Among the images, was a picture of her mother, my grandmother, clad in shimmering sequins with a matching headband and veil. I was fascinated with the album because the pictures were beautiful—complete with elegant poses, fancy clothes, and ornate jewelry—and provided the only window into my mother’s past.

One afternoon I eagerly opened the book, pointed to photos and asked my mother, “Is this you?”

“Yes,” she replied.

Then I reached a photo of a smiling woman who was grossly fat. I thought the woman looked imminently sad and not at all like my mother. I asked, “Who is this?”

She snatched the album from my hands and slammed it shut.

“Put this goddamn thing away before you ruin it,” she snapped.

Years later I would discover that the fat girl in the album was my mother at age fourteen. In her youth, she struggled mightily with her weight, reaching what we label today as “morbid obesity.” My mother struggled with that image of herself. It was a reminder of a sad, dysfunctional, childhood that held no joy.

She grew up in a wealthy suburb with both money and opportunity. She was a debutant and had a “coming out party,” something that was from fairytales for me. Her family had domestic staff who cooked, cleaned and tended the grounds working daily at her large, whitewashed home sitting quiet on a stately street.

We would never know our grandparents as our mother never spoke to them. Our grandmother would commit suicide two decades later. Three years would pass after her death before my mother would even know. My mother had a sister who was one year older than herself. I knew her only from photos. She had a half-brother too with Down syndrome who lived in an institution. She rarely spoke of her family at all.

My mother would tell me years later why she married our father. “I never loved him,” she said. “When I got pregnant with Karina, my father forced me to marry her father, who was abusive. I divorced him in less than a year and moved back home. It was like a living in hell.

Both of my parents were alcoholics and I hated them. There was no love in that house. I married Dell, to get away from them and to make them angry. They disowned me and cut me out of their wills for marrying beneath my status, but I didn’t care, they could keep their filthy money. He was my ticket out. When we met, your father was uneducated and poor with no future. I drug him through flight school. If not for me, he would never have gone anywhere in life.”