Bless Her Heart

by Sally Kilpatrick

  In essence, we were to find something that hampered us from being the best person we could be and to either add something to address it or to give something up if it held us back. If you drank too much, then give up alcohol. If television kept you from your family, then give that up. If you were unhappy about your physical health, add an exercise regime. The sky was the limit, he said, as long as we examined ourselves and looked at what was holding us back and keeping us from being the person God intended us to be.

  Maybe Chad should look into giving up profligate spending and adultery.

  No, I needed to think about myself. Not Chad. Chad would mean nothing to me just as soon as I could figure out how to divorce him. I needed to think on myself and what I needed to do because Liza was right: I wasn’t happy.

  What could I give up—or add—for Lent? My husband? Nah, he’d taken himself away. Having a baby? That had been taken from me, too. Chocolate? Too trivial in comparison to the other two. What was something I had too much of, something that made me unhappy because it wasn’t good for me. Something—

  Church.

  The word came to me as if the Lord himself had whispered it, but I knew that couldn’t be the case. Why would God tell me to give up church? That made absolutely no sense. Of course, church did remind me of Chad, and I needed to stop thinking about him so it made sense in a crazy, weird sort of way.

  Come to think of it, Chad hadn’t believed in Lent or giving things up. He said that was something Catholics did.

  Heck, if Chad thought it was a bad idea, then maybe it was the absolute best idea for me.

  If I still missed God after forty days, I could always come back to the fold. Maybe I could even find a different fold, one that better suited me. Having the bank foreclose on Love Ministries might end up being one of the best things to ever happen to me because now I was forced to look for another job and, goodness knew, I hadn’t been doing anything more than stumble through life the past few years.

  But giving up church? That’s so . . . wrong.

  And what has doing all of the right things done for you?

  Oh, that devil on my shoulder had a very valid point. I’d gone to church only to have my self-professed minister husband leave me. I’d made excellent grades in school and completed my degree but never worked a day in my chosen profession. For heaven’s sake, I’d held on to my virginity until my wedding night, and my reward had been infertility. Doing things right hadn’t turned out so well. Maybe I should try doing things wrong for a while, see if that helped.

  The minister called for people to come forward, and I watched the pews empty in an orderly fashion. At the altar, the minister dabbed something gray on the forehead of each person. This really was a cult, wasn’t it? Well, getting dirt on my head was different than anything I’d ever done until this point, so why not? I followed my mother down the side of the church, inching forward toward the minister. He wore robes, something else Chad liked to make fun of and call too “high church.” My mother, head bowed, looked up just in time to get her ashes. The minister turned to someone on his other side and then it was my turn.

  He daubed ashes in a cross pattern on my forehead and softly said, “You are dust, and to dust you will return.”

  Cheery thought, that.

  He cupped my cheek for the merest of seconds before sending me on my way. Was this what it was like to have a father? Did daddies remind their children of life’s limitations even as they patted them on the cheek to remind them they weren’t alone? Mom grabbed my hand, and I realized I had stood there in front of the minister for a second too long.

  Finally, the last of the congregation received their ashes and returned to their seats.

  Funny, I felt lighter, almost giddy, at the thought I wouldn’t have to go to church again for at least forty days.

  Maybe not ever.

  It felt . . . wicked.

  But I could also breathe again, almost smile, and so I decided I would observe Lent for the first time ever—by not going to church.

  chapter 9

  We walked back to Au Naturel in silence.

  “Are you sure it’s okay if I move in, Mom?” I said as we reached the door.

  “Of course,” she said. We entered the store and she looked at the counter with a frown. “Could you possibly watch the cash register for me this afternoon? Your brother is supposed to be here, but he didn’t show. Again.”

  We’d spoken more sentences in a couple of hours than we had the previous five years, and she was going to let me sit behind the cash register? At least she trusted me.

  “Mom, I don’t know how the register works or what anything costs. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure out the cash register and everything has a price tag. Julia can help you if you have a problem. Now I’ve got to get ready for my afternoon classes.”

  Without waiting for a yes, she climbed the stairs.

  “How does she do that?” I muttered, not expecting an answer.

  Julia chuckled. “She’s a Leo.”

  Whatever that meant. I walked behind the scarred counter, admiring its age. The ceiling had the old elaborate tin tiles, too. Mom had renovated, but she’d stayed true to original spirit of the building.

  “It used to be a feed store,” Julia said.

  “Last I remember it was a discount furniture store.”

  “No, back when the building was first built. That’s why the back dock is raised and there’s such a large door. People could back up their wagons for supplies.”

  And thank you for that scintillating history lesson, strange lady.

  I shuffled through the papers by the register and stacked them neatly. Nothing left to do there I walked around to see what a natural foods store might carry. Mom carried organic foods—especially foods without GMOs or gluten and lots of things made out of nuts—but nothing perishable. Supplements, a few makeup products, clothing for yoga, and the books in the corner rounded out her inventory. I hadn’t thought out my tour of the store because I ended up in the very corner full of books where Julia sat with a table and several weird cards laid out in front of her.

  “Posey. Please let me do a reading. You’re practically vibrating.”

  Out of reflex, I shied away from the idea of any kind of divination. Chad had once called me the Witch of Endor just because I ate a fortune cookie and smiled at the prediction inside. That was the last of Chinese food in our house. Come to think of it, some hot and sour soup sounded really nice. Doing yet another thing that would tick off my soon-to-be ex-husband would be a pleasant bonus. “The first one’s free, right?”

  She grinned. “Absolutely, but I warn you: one reading may leave you wanting more.”

  “Pretty sure that’s your strategy,” I grumbled as I sank into one of the overstuffed chairs in the corner.

  “Sometimes, but, in your case, I really want to know. That, and I’m bored. Not as much call for tarot here as there was back in—”

  She stopped, and I didn’t press her for more details. She could keep her secrets. Goodness knew, I wanted to keep mine.

  Julia collected the cards that had been on the table and put them in the stack. Then she handed me the deck.

  “What am I doing?”

  “I’d like for you to shuffle the cards and let them pick up some of your energy. Don’t worry. There’s no wrong way to do it.”

  I fumbled with the deck of larger cards. In high school, I’d been a crack Spades player, but I’d given up cards once I married Chad. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to be playing cards before, but we’d never gambled and justified it to ourselves in that way. The larger cards wouldn’t yield to my whims. They butted into each other and didn’t want to shuffle.

  Julia chuckled, a sound I was beginning to heartily dislike. “That’s enough. They’re ready. You’re trying to force it, and they’ve shuffled as much as they want.”

  I was glad to give up the cards.

  “Now
cut the deck with your left hand,” Julia said softly. “I’m going to use something called a truncated Celtic cross.”

  A cross? In Tarot? Nevertheless, Julia gently lay down the cards ending in a circular pattern with a card in the middle. It had another card laid horizontally on top of it.

  Julia considered me, her head tilted to one side. Then she looked down at the cards and back up at me. She pointed to the card in the middle, the one underneath a scary looking—

  “Is that the devil?”

  I hadn’t even finished day one of Lent, and the Lord was going to smite me for giving up church and engaging in divination. My fingers dug into the upholstered arms of the chair. For the second time that day, I was ready to bolt.

  “Calm down,” Julia said. “It is the devil card, but it’s not as bad as it seems. We’ll get to it.”

  “Not as bad as it seems?”

  “Patience is a virtue.”

  The words I’d recently texted to Rain resonated in a way they shouldn’t have since the expression was cliché, but they still gave me pause. What had I gotten myself into? Forget about Chad and Love Ministries. Granny would have a flying duck fit that I was looking at tarot cards. I frowned. Did she know Mom was doing such things in her store?

  “Let’s start with your central card,” Julia said as she removed the devil long enough to show me a beautiful woman. “You have the Empress. Think about fertility and abundance, creativity and intuition.”

  I laughed bitterly. Oh, yes. I was the poster child for fertility. “That’s impossible.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t get pregnant. I’ve been trying for ten years.”

  Julia’s brow furrowed. She looked at the deck and back at me. “Well, there are other kinds of fertility. Maybe of the imagination or of getting in touch with your intuition or an abundance of something.”

  I held my tongue, but this whole thing was a bunch of malarkey. I didn’t have an abundance of anything except stripper shoes, and I’d tossed those in the trash. My intuition was obviously lacking since I didn’t see my husband’s betrayal coming, and I hadn’t done anything creative in years. Still, I nodded for her to continue.

  “Ah, maybe the Empress is about getting in touch with the feminine.”

  I snorted. Lucky guess since I was about to move in with my mother, my sister, my grandmother, and my brother. The house would be so full of femininity it might explode. At the very least, Henny would run screaming.

  Julia’s expression hardened, and I knew better than to laugh or snort again. “You need to claim that part of you that’s holy and blessed.”

  “I don’t feel either of those things.”

  “That’s why you need to claim it.” Julia looked down at the cards again. “That Which Crosses is the Devil Card. “You will have to deal with your dark side. Sometimes we have to step off the path to figure out where the path really is. Maybe you give in to indulgences or something taboo. You may have secrets or have committed transgressions—”

  Ridiculous. I hadn’t done anything wrong in ages. Other than give up church just a few minutes ago. Somehow that didn’t seem to be on par with murder or theft or, I don’t know, adultery.

  “The illusion is that you are the things you have done, but look at how loose the chains are on both man and woman on this card. You can slip out if you wish because the bondage is of your own making. Beware bad decisions and foolish choices that limit you—”

  Bondage? That reminded me of Amanda’s crazy book.

  And my even crazier husband.

  “Don’t be afraid of the devils on your shoulder, but you will have to deal with them or they will deal with you. Harshly.”

  I swallowed hard thinking back to that Vacation Bible School sermon that had impelled me to walk down the aisle to the altar. I couldn’t remember the words of that sermon, but I felt the same fear today. The crazy idea that I was at a crossroads and taking the wrong path would be the death of me. I wanted to get up from the reading, but I remained frozen in fear. Why was I here? So far I had a card for fertility even though I was barren, and a card that told me not to make bad choices. Surely the reading couldn’t get worse.

  “Your card below is Death—”

  “Death?”

  “As I was saying, don’t panic. Think of it more as a transformation and, yes, such change often involves loss. When you combine it with the Devil Card, though, it tells me the loss has been hard. Have you lost some things that matter?”

  I laughed again even though I’d told myself I wouldn’t. “My husband, my house, my car.” Yet another hope for pregnancy. “But you probably could’ve found that out from Rain or just about any random stranger in the grocery store.”

  Julia smiled. “Yes, but you shuffled the cards. I’m just telling you what they mean.”

  I didn’t have an answer for that. Rationally, I felt her interpretation might still be biased, but everything she said made so much sense. Well, except for the fertility part. And the bad choices I most certainly was not going to make.

  “Maybe some of the things you lost weren’t worth keeping. It may be rough going for a while, but death is part of a natural cycle, and it will give way to rebirth.”

  Rebirth sounded nice.

  “Over here you have the Six of Cups, Reversed. The card is about looking back, but the reversal means looking back isn’t a pleasant memory and that the past may be haunting you here in the present. Now this card along with the Empress and Devil? I’m guessing Mommy issues—”

  “Come on! Everyone knows that. You know that just from the few minutes you’ve watched the two of us together.”

  Julia stared through me. “Do you want me to finish the reading or not? Believe me, my personal curiosity has been satisfied.”

  Oddly enough, my curiosity had not. “Please continue.”

  “I was about to say there might be some acting out, but I think we’ve seen that. Just know that you need to resolve this conflicted energy if you want to move forward, and there’s a sense of urgency, which I’ll get to in a minute. Now above you have the Two of Cups which suggests you have a new romantic relationship.”

  “I’m about to get divorced, and I’m not sure I ever want to date again much less marry!”

  “So.” Julia picked up the deck. “I take it the idea is surprising.”

  “To say the least.”

  “Pick a card for clarification.”

  I picked another card even though I didn’t want a love interest. I just wanted to get rid of my old one.

  “Interesting! You drew the Knight of Cups which suggests your new love interest is a sweet and ardent lover.”

  Sweet and ardent? Well those were two words that didn’t describe Chad in the least. Selfish, efficient, and ruthless would be better words for him.

  Ruthless? Is that what I really thought about my husband?

  Soon-to-be ex-husband. And yes. As well as manipulative, bossy, and selfish.

  “Your Before Card tells what is to come, and you have the Eight of Wands which indicates sudden, unexpected news. This is the card of urgency I was telling you about earlier. You need to fix things with your mother and quick because something unexpected is coming. Often the Eight of Wands paired with the Empress means a baby is on the way since they are both symbols of fertility.”

  “Impossible,” I said.

  “Nothing is impossible with God,” Julia said.

  Had she just quoted the Bible in the middle of a tarot reading? On the day I’d decided to take a sabbatical from all things religious?

  “I’m telling you. It’s impossible.” I heard the anguish in my own voice, an emotion I’d been tamping down since the car ride to Walmart for more underwear.

  Julia shrugged. “I can only tell you what the cards say. I feel compelled to point out, too, that there are no Pentacles in this reading. That means a lack of stability, especially since even your positive cards suggest flux and change. You also don’t have any Swords. M
aybe your thinking is a little muddy right now?”

  I could only nod at how accurate her last interpretation was.

  “This doesn’t mean you can’t have stability and clarity,” Julia said gently, “It just means that your choices impact your ability to achieve them.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled. I wanted to curl up in the corner and have a good cry. Until Julia had started talking about stability and clarity, I hadn’t realized how much I still wanted those two very things. Any time I’d been unhappy in my marriage, I’d comforted myself with the idea that I had stability.

  In a daze, I stood and took my position behind the cash register. Whether or not I agreed with her reading, I owed Julia something. “Thank you,” I said, surprised a bit at how much I’d meant it.

  “You’re welcome,” she said as she returned the cards to a single stack.

  My thoughts jumbled around Julia’s words. I reminded myself that it was all bunch of hogwash, but my mind parsed her words even as my heart hoped against hope that she might be right about a few things.

  * * *

  That evening I drove what belongings I’d collected to my grandmother’s house.

  The white frame house that sat catty-cornered from the funeral home had been built around the turn of the century, and my grandmother had lived there most of that time. My mother had only left the house for her lost years. When she returned, she’d been pregnant with me. As I stood on the gravel drive looking up at the old house where I’d been raised, I wondered if prodigality ran in the family.

  One step inside and I could tell a new regime had taken over. Lavender wafted through the air instead of the mulberry potpourri that my grandmother had always preferred. The walls of the living room had been painted a cheery yellow, and colorful afghans were stacked on top of each couch. My grandmother sat in her favorite recliner, crocheting and humming.