In a few months I’m supposed to go out and promote my novel. While I’m happy to talk to readers about plot and character, I dread being asked where I got my subject matter, how I did my research and whether I really believe in psychics.
The fact is, I do. My Russian grandmother, who called herself a healer, was psychic. One look into a woman’s eyes and she could tell if she was pregnant–and whether she was happy about it.
Bubbie suspected, even before I could talk, that I had her talent. When I was 4, I told everyone that my mother’s cousin Bertie was coming on a ship from London. The next day my mother got a call from the docks. “It’s Bertie! Come pick me up!” No invitation, no warning. When Bubbie heard, she told me, “You have my gift.”
But as I got older, being psychic began to seem too Old World to me. I wanted to do something modern, so after college I wrote for a magazine and then taught middle school. But wherever I worked, my psychic abilities came with me. I knew too much about other people, and that caused pain and embarrassment to me and them. I was gossiping with a co-worker one day when I suddenly blurted out, “Congratulations! When is the baby due?” And then I saw a funny look on her face and knew she hadn’t told anyone.
“How did you know?” she demanded.
“I don’t remember,” I lied.
A couple of days later, over lunch, I was moved to tell another co-worker, “I’m sure your father is going to be OK.”
“What are you talking about?” he said. “My father is perfectly fine.” An hour later he got a call that his father had been in a car accident and was in intensive care.
As it happened more and more, I had to admit to my colleagues that I was clairvoyant. Once I did, people no longer wanted friendship–they wanted the future. Finally I stopped resisting my calling and became a professional psychic, though one who was in hiding. For more than 25 years, I’ve given readings over the phone and told all but my closest friends that I make my living as a writer.
Keeping my occupation under wraps hasn’t been easy. I was once coaxed into attending the wedding of a client who believed my reading had led her to her husband-to-be. “Only if I can be incognito,” I told her.
“Of course,” she said.
At the ceremony, I joyfully wept at having had a hand in the young couple’s destiny. But during the toasts, the bride stood up, lifted her glass and said, “It was my psychic, Rochelle Shapiro, who brought Steve and me together.” The photographer shone his lights on me. Guests rushed over as if I were the Viennese dessert table. “Will my son-in-law pass the bar exam this time?” one demanded. “Is my dead father around me?” another asked. “Can I take you to the track with me?” another said.
I was so unnerved that I would have left right away, but I had to stop at the ladies’ room. “She’s in here,” I heard a woman say, seconds after I went in. “I recognize her shoes!”
“Where can I find a husband?” a woman called over the stall. “I’m next for the psychic,” another woman argued. There was a crowd out there! “We should take numbers,” I heard a man say. A man in the ladies’ room! I had gone from being a phone psychic to a bathroom psychic.
I’m no longer surprised by how quickly people get carried away. Once, a woman I’ll call Linda begged me to let her come to my house for a reading instead of doing it on the phone. “I need to be close to you when you contact my mother’s spirit,” she pleaded.
She sounded so distraught that I finally gave in, and after the reading, she looked so much happier that I considered working in person more often. She wanted to come back in two days, but I didn’t have an appointment available for two weeks. “I’ll just have to hold out,” she sighed.
The next day, when I stepped out of my front door, Linda was standing there. “Mama!” she cried, and threw her arms around me as tight as a vise. After that, I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder every time I left the house.
I don’t want to use my ability to promote my writing career. I work by candlelight, not spotlight, and my gift might leave me if I abuse it. I want to use it to help people, not to sell books. I’ll continue to give psychic readings, but I want to use my other gift, too, the one I practice in quiet when I’m alone–writing.
