Imagine a Visit to a Psychic

"Emily?" Grizzly asks.  And it is as if my mom can hear my thoughts as she's giving this man my history.  And we have this conversation about why she's not his type.  It isn't that my mother has never brought home a much older man, but this man has clothes that are perfectly tailored, and his cane looks as if it was hand-carved from the ivory of an elephant.  And I listen to a different Grizzly, and this Grizzly talks about the future.  My future.  But she isn't talking to a man anymore, we're in the middle of a forest.  And she's whispering about me to the trees.

It's quiet here, comfort like I've never known.  Images pop into my mind.  My best friend is here from elementary school, her basketball shoes, my dad, the big Lakers game (everything at the same time). 

The trees and I have conversations about my best friend, how I coveted her food.  What begins as food envy, turns into wanting her shoes and then her same eyes, and hair, and life - her house (a shade of pink, "pale Camelia," she said), and her parents (they could afford the tickets to the big Lakers game and the signed basketball shoes).

My friend stammers through her presentation about poisonous frogs and a dead dog.  We're in the fourth grade.  And I tell her, "Everyone is worried about what they're going to say when it's their turn."  My new best friend gives me Star Crunch and Creme Pies.  I forget my lunch, even though Grizzly packs chili and cornbread, the kind of meal I beg her to make now.

Girlfriend's chatter in lunchrooms miles away and many years later.  I'm a senior, but it feels as if I'm repeating the grade (because of all the drugs and drinking last year).  Grizzly's new boyfriend or the man that hunts the elephants turns into a girlfriend.  Julian becomes Jillian.  And she could be my Aunt Ally plus ten years.  Bossy, perfect hair, fake nails, her clothes are pressed too, she smells like a field full of flowers (but strangely none of them are wild, they're grown in a lab where I bet the mushrooms for her face cream grow too).  This psychic tells me, "A good reading means not knowing."  And I imagine a visit to a psychic goes like this: you don't know it's happened until later.