Seers (3 page)

My stomach began to churn and ache, and I clenched my teeth. My nostrils flared. I knew I was wearing the anger on my face. I knew I was glaring at Jennifer. She looked me in the eyes. She challenged me. She was convinced she could—would—win. I was just a kid. A dumb kid, to her. Dumb enough to be friends with her fat sister. I went in.

This time I traveled faster than usual. Grayish blue. Average. Properly functioning.

I swam through layers without bothering to properly assess. She was in working order. She was of average intelligence. So what? I was in here for something. What? What could I do to her in here that would hurt her?
Permanently.
Suddenly there was something purposeful about my trip.

Each layer has a general feeling to it. All beings give off a mood in each layer. It’s like summing up a year of your life, the mood of that year of your life, in one or two words. Only you don’t get to do it. I do. So if the mood that permeated a year of your life was loneliness, insecurity, rejection, you don’t get to say “fulfilling” or “satisfying.” There is no lying or hiding your true emotions or your deepest, darkest secrets when you don’t even know I’m in your brain.

Usually an event, a single moment, will determine the emotion for the layer. People underestimate the power that hours, even minutes, play in shaping who they have become. A scene that plays out in an afternoon, an afternoon of hugs, kind words, beautiful weather, maybe a picnic, complete acceptance and security, can brand, say, a third-year layer “content.” The more neutral or positive layers a being has, the more neutral or positive the being.

Jennifer’s outer layers had been neutral. Where was her emotional gauge set? Why were there so many years set at neither good nor bad? Had nothing notable happened to her? Or had she put her guard up somewhere, at some layer, to protect herself? What had happened to her?

The angry, churning feeling in my gut was replaced by the feeling you get when you swing too high on the swings. That little ping—if it had a sound—would sound like the one a tuning fork makes. Was that a feeling of concern? Was I
concerned
about Jennifer? Seriously? I hated her. I loathed her. I wanted her to trip up the steps while every boy in her school watched. I wanted to see her cry the way I had seen Sharon cry because of something terrible Jennifer said. Didn’t I?

Sixth grade … neutral. Fifth grade: neutral/negative. Why? I went down another layer. I knew it would get worse farther down. Fourth grade: Negative. What was the word? What was the mood? It was murky. She wasn’t clear water. She was a pond, an iced-tea brown. I knew that layers became cloudy when the being was working hard to forget a year. This was pretty murky. She was working hard to conceal whatever was here.

The word:
pretend.
Pretend? The whole layer was “pretend”? I had to go lower.

Third grade: negative. The word:
betrayed.

It was a thicker muck in this layer. The layer had gone from iced tea to iced latte. Foamy and creamy. She worked daily, maybe even moment to moment, on keeping this layer churned up. She was not trying to forget this layer. She needed to forget this layer. This layer could break her, and she knew it.

The tuning fork feeling in my stomach was now a tuba blowing an endless low note. My eyes were burning, and I knew this meant I should bail. But what had happened to her? Who had betrayed her? I had to stay in this layer and look around. This was the key to why she always attacked Sharon. Why did she relentlessly spit hurtful words at her? Why did she want to dash Sharon’s confidence so badly?

There was a thick whirlpool in front of me. I knew how to find it because I followed the cold.

“Keeping it on ice,” as Seers say. It’s amazing how many clichés mean a whole different thing to a Seer. When a being is repressing, hiding from, or blocking out a particular moment in a layer, the layer is noticeably colder than the one before it. It will be colder still and moving, usually churning, around the moment itself. This complicates my getting at the moment, of course. I tread in front of it, straining my arms. If I can fold my fingers in the direction of the whirlpool as it passes by my hands, I can enter it.

I felt the icy thickness pass my wrists. I cupped my fingers and propelled forward. I moved with the thickness and began to spin. By now my eyes had gone past burning to feeling as if someone had pinned my eyelids back and was raking my eyeballs with coarse sandpaper. I took a deep breath to readjust to the new pain level and hoped to find what I needed before it was too late.

The thickness now had chunks, rocks, globs, that I had to swim through. A rock of pure sadness, a glob of old tears and anger and pain hit me in the shin, and I knew I’d pay later for each hit I took. I surged to the right to avoid another and saw her.

A nine-year-old Jennifer. It was late afternoon. She was standing by the window at the front of the house. She was waiting for someone. Behind her sat a man in a swivel recliner that usually faced the TV. But it was now facing Jennifer. As she clutched the curtain, her shoulders heaved and shook. She’d been crying for some time. Her swollen eyes scanned the top of the hill for the promise of a friendly car coming to save her. Finally the familiar golden beige of the Buick descended.

Jennifer thrust the front door open and took the steps two at a time. Her mother had barely put the car in park before Jennifer was yanking at the door handle.

“Hold on, Jennie! Give me a minute! You’re going to break the door… . Honey, you’ve been crying! What is it? What happened?

“I didn’t mean to. I tried to do everything he told me to do. I was quiet. I cleaned up my messes. I only asked a question, Mom.” Jennifer was spitting the words out as quickly as she could. Her mother needed to know how good she was. Her mother needed to know that she had followed all the rules, had eaten all her lunch, and had picked up her toys. She had only asked a question.

Another rock slammed me back. It hit me in the chest. They were getting bigger. Stronger. Angrier.

“What are you talking about? What happened?” Jennifer’s mother’s voice tightened. “Davis, what is she talking about?” She turned to her brother for answers. Davis had been babysitting that day while Jennifer’s dad took Billy to the day camp where the boy was working and Jennifer’s mom took Sharon to an event at the library.

“She’s upset with me because I told her she couldn’t have a snack. She had just eaten all her lunch. She had enough. She didn’t need any more food. Other than that she was good. She’s just upset—that’s all.” Davis watched Jennifer as he lied.

“Mom, that’s not true. I mean, yes, I asked for a snack, but Davis hit me. Mom, he hit me.” Jennifer’s lip quivered, and her eyes pleaded. She had been waiting for her mom for so long. She needed to be held and told that it’s okay. That she didn’t do anything wrong. That she didn’t have to be afraid anymore. Uncle Davis had never hit her before, had never raised his voice to her before. Though she had never been left alone with him before …

“What? Jennifer, come on. Uncle Davis wouldn’t do that, honey.” She turned to him. “Davis?”

“Of course I didn’t hit her! I pushed her hand away from the snack drawer. A nudge! Honestly, Sue. She eats too much. I was just trying to help her to pace herself. Really, she had just eaten lunch.” He avoided Jennifer’s gaze now. He seemed to be looking everywhere else.

“Jenn. Honey. You know I’ve talked to you about waiting a while in between meals for a snack, and what were you asking for? Junk? Please. And Uncle Davis was nice enough to stay with you today. You shouldn’t make up stories like this!”

Jennifer slumped forward. Her body had been poised for embrace, for her mother to wrap her up and squeeze her in, and tell her that no one had the right to put his hands on her, that she didn’t deserve the back-handed slap Uncle Davis had used to bat her away from the snack drawer, that she didn’t eat too much, that she looked just fine, and that everything would be okay now because Mom was here.

And now a whole new level of betrayal.

Mom? You don’t believe me?
She couldn’t bring herself to say the words aloud. She couldn’t bear to hear her mother’s answer aloud. She had no confidence left. She had never imagined that she wouldn’t be believed. She had worried that her mother might not approve of her snacking; that had become the norm lately. Jennifer had always been encouraged to eat, to finish her plate, praised when she did, and then always offered seconds. But this year …

She felt so unworthy, so pathetic, so betrayed. She had learned in a single moment that she didn’t always rank. That she wasn’t always heard. That she was fat.

In that moment Jennifer’s mother ripped out a part of her that left a gaping hole. The mistreatment by Uncle Davis was hurtful. No one wants to be physically attacked for wanting something to eat. But for her mother to back him up? Devastating. For her mother to believe Uncle Davis? It ranked her below her uncle. It stripped her of the idea that she had a parent who would ride in on a flaming chariot to save her. She must have been crushed. She must have chosen every word carefully from that point on. She must have watched every mouthful. It must have shaped the way she behaved.

Fourteen-year-old Jennifer hardly ate. Her hip bones jutted out of her low-rise jeans. She was obsessed with the way she looked and seemed fidgety and self-conscious around her mother. The way Sharon was fidgety and self-conscious in front of Jennifer. Did chubby eight-year-old Sharon just remind Jennifer too much of herself at this layer? Could she not help but to belittle Sharon the way she was belittled at that age? Did she even know why she did it? Was it beyond her power to stop?

Usually at this point, I’d close my eyes and leave. I had the information. I knew why Jennifer hated Sharon. Jennifer
was
Sharon, and in every moment Jennifer was around Sharon, she was reminded of the pain she felt that day, the day her uncle, her mother, and her own body became her enemies.

But something had happened to me while I was fighting to stay in, fighting for this memory, fighting for Sharon. It hit me that maybe I was able to do more than travel into a being’s brain. Maybe I could maneuver or manipulate the memories. As I veered left and right to avoid the masses of tangled tears and pain, I wanted to defend myself. I wanted to throw something, kick something, and tear something apart. No. The idea of an attack wasn’t it. There was something else I needed to do.

For the first time, I felt this overwhelming desire well up inside me. I wanted to do more than know what was at the core of Jennifer’s troubles. I wanted to
take
something. I wanted to grab at something that would end the struggle. For
Sharon.
But what? I had to grab at something that would end the whirlpool of hurt and muck and at the same time change life for Jennifer and Sharon. Could I do that? If I could feel the assault of Jennifer’s repressions, feel them hit me and send me reeling, then I could touch, grasp, and pull something out with me. Couldn’t I?

I reached out and down, back to the center of the revolving brown sludge. My icy fingers would barely bend in response to my commands, and I fumbled for a second before I felt anything. And then I was there. At the car. The three of them were there.

I extended my hands as I neared them. I passed Jennifer. I passed Uncle Davis. I was taking the mother.

I curled my fingers past her shoulders and around her collarbone. I dug into the flesh beneath and used it as a handle as I yanked her upward. Her head slumped forward, chin on her chest. I stared down at the top of her mother’s head and flailing feet as we sailed upwards. She looked and felt real, and yet I knew I was holding on to an image burned into Jennifer’s memory. I was
holding
an image. The magnitude of what I had discovered began to set in. I could control a memory. I could alter a layer of a being’s life. If only I knew what this would do to Jennifer. How would it change her?

I had removed her mother from the moment. To Jennifer, only the memory of her uncle would persist. She would continue to hate him. She had been betrayed by him. He had made her feel judged, unloved, fat. But her mother had not. Her mother was not at the car. The details of the rest of that day would be fuzzy. Jennifer would not remember how the incident had been resolved. She would just know that she had moved past it enough not to continue to dwell on every detail of that day. Jennifer would be able to see her mother and feel safe and accepted. She could see Sharon and not feel reminded of hurt and betrayal.

I snapped back to my travels as a new level of pain I had yet to experience reminded me that I had to get out of there. I had never been in for so long. Suddenly I was aware of the flames that seemed to be roaring in my eye sockets. My legs were heavy. My arms ached, and my fingers screamed for me to dislodge them from their collarbone prison. But I held on. I pulled Jennifer’s mother up with me through the layers. My once-sharp view of these neutral layers was replaced by a red haze that seemed to be getting thicker. The red haze parted a bit. I could see the cloudlike film of Jennifer’s outer layer that I needed to swim to and break through. The top of my head touched first. As soon as I felt contact, I closed my eyes. I was out.

Jennifer’s mother disappeared from my hands. I panicked at first. What had I done? Common sense kicked in, and I reasoned that once I removed her from her space in Jennifer’s third-grade layer, she wouldn’t exist in that state anywhere else. Members in a memory have a specific age, haircut, outfit, facial expression, and feeling attached to them. Jennifer’s mother was only in her memory looking as she did and behaving exactly as she did in that layer. I hadn’t erased her mother completely or harmed her or Jennifer in any way. Jennifer would be able to reshape her opinion of herself and her relationship with her mother now that her mother hadn’t betrayed her by siding with Uncle Davis. Her mother hadn’t agreed that Jennifer was a liar or fat and disgusting and that it was okay to be slapped if she tried to eat something. Only Uncle Davis had done that. And maybe that was damaging. And maybe that would explain her obsession with weight and her looks, but she would still have her mother by whom she could feel loved and accepted and could have a general feeling of self-worth. And she wouldn’t hate and want to attack Sharon.