I didn’t want to put the money in a safe deposit box. I didn’t want to bring it anywhere near a bank, but Cher said, “It’s not safe to keep that kind of money lying around,” and I figured she knew more about the dangers of living in New York City than I did.

I told her that first, I needed to clean the money. 

She said. “You don’t have time to waste. You are in danger. Hurry. You need to put the money somewhere safe.” 

It’s not that I didn’t believe her, but I was compelled by a deeper sense of urgency, an uncanny sense that I could still feel my father’s hands on the money. The way the bills were stacked—arranged, bound together with paperclips and banking strips and haphazard rubber bands—it made my skin crawl, and I didn’t want to lock that energy inside another box. So I devoted a quiet afternoon to cleaning the money. I threw away all the clips and sorted the bills by denomination, arranging them in neat stacks that I first anointed with sage smoke and then sealed into plain white business envelopes. Then I took the stack of sealed envelopes filled with cash and put them back into the paper box they came in. Then I put the box of envelopes in a hand-me-down canvas tote bag that a previous tenant had left behind when she moved out of my apartment. The bag was embossed with a bagel and advertised a delicatessen. I threw my wallet and keys into the bag, knowing that if I dropped the bag on the street or if anyone stopped me, it would appear that I was just a girl on an errand, walking to work or coming home from the store.

In those days,  I was deep undercover and thought a lot about disguise. Before I visited Cher’s psychic storefront for the first time, I had taken off all my good jewelry. I made it a point to wear only inexpensive, childish clothing, alternating between a short green sundress and cut-off jean shorts, paired with a thin purple tank top. I wore tiny silver hoops or a pair of small chandelier earrings shaped like rainclouds that dangled silver bolts of thunder and lightning, signifying my rage. When I assessed my reflection in the mirror, I did not appear to be a monied person, but my friend Mariam pointed out to me that you could tell wealth by the fit of the clothes. Rich people wore tailored clothes that draped well over the body. “You can tell a poor person,” she explained, “Because their clothes pull or fit poorly. Your clothes,” she continued, “fit you perfectly.” 

I put on dark glasses, shouldered the bag, and walked all the way to the bank. Cher had instructed me to open the safety deposit box at the old Brooklyn Trust Company building on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, just a few blocks from her ofisa. It was a grand marble building with interior pillars, now decorated in the sapphire banner of a national chain. 

The bank manager was a tiny woman who wore a navy uniform blazer and matching ballet flats on her impossibly small feet. I signed some papers and paid the fee, and she led me down the grand marble staircase. The vault was perfectly still and silent as a mausoleum. I passed through the round door—two feet deep with heavy reinforcements—and imagined the banker closing the vault and turning the dials like a the wheel of ship to lock me inside, where I would languish in the dark tomb of my guilt. 

Instead, she led me into a small room lined from floor to ceiling with stainless steel drawers. She stood on a rolling stepladder and inserted two matching keys into two matching keyholes, and withdrew a long metal box from the wall. Then she led me to a private, windowless room where she left me alone. I glanced over my shoulder several times just to make sure the banker wasn’t watching me from around a corner or from behind a mirrored wall. Then I reached into my bag and hastily arranged the white envelopes in the box. Then I quickly closed the lid and rang for the banker, who returned the box—now full of cash—to the empty hole in the wall and handed me the key. 

I shivered my way up the marble staircase and out onto the street, weaving between the morning commuters. At the corner of Court and Atlantic, I nearly ran into a young man carrying a box full of Pampers. He held the box with both hands in front of his solar plexus as if he were carrying a shield. The package glimmered ominously in the morning light. This strange knowing washed over me. His impassive mask dropped for a moment as we locked eyes, and I “knew”: the box was a cover, and the man was carrying something else—maybe drugs, maybe money—packaged between the baby diapers. And I wondered if he could see me as clearly as I could see him. 

I ran straight to Cher’s ofisa and rang the doorbell. 

“I just saw something!” I announced. “This man was carrying a box—and it was as if I could see straight through it, like I could see through him.” 

It was after ten o’clock in the morning, but Cher wasn’t a morning person. She stood in the doorframe, squinting and watching me blearily. “Maybe,” she said, “Maybe not.” 

I tried to explain that I was beginning to see things clearly. 

“It’s like my third eye is opening,” I said.

“You have many gifts of your own. God gave you the gift of writing,” she said. “But you don’t have my gift.”

She drew her sweater more tightly across her broad shoulders and looked across the street.

“Sweetie,” she said. “I need 10-15 minutes. Could you go to the bagel shop across the street and get us some coffees?”

“How do you take it?” I asked, always a student, always a waitress.

“Large,” she said. “Light with cream. Three sugars.”

I went across the street to the bagel shop and bought a small black coffee for myself and a large coffee, light and sweet, for Cher. I ordered two bagels with cream cheese and a black and white cookie because I was a good listener and I knew that was what Cher liked. When the order was ready, I sat by the window, watching the clock, counting down the minutes until I could politely return to her door. 

When she let me in, her hair was wet and she looked more awake. 

“Come in, Sweetie,” she said, ushering me into the cold little room. 

She took the coffee but waved the bagel and the cookie away, so I packed them back in my bag to bring home to Mariam. We sat sipping coffee and watching pedestrian traffic on the street. 

Cher didn’t say anything more about the man with the baby diapers, but she did want to know how things went at the bank. “Did you do it?” She asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“How much money was there?” She asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

Cher looked like she didn’t believe me, but the truth was I had lost count. She drew the curtains and changed the subject. 

“Have you talked to Mom?” she asked.

“No,” I shook my head in the dim light, sinking further into the recesses of the big brocade chair. I hadn’t spoken to my mother since our violent altercation at the lake house on the 4th of July. My mom kept calling, and I kept refusing her calls, letting them all go to my voicemail box, which, of course, was already full of her pleading messages: Sweetie, it’s Mommy. Please call me, please.  

“I have nothing to say to her,” I hissed. 

I was adamant.  What I felt toward my mother at that moment was unspeakable—a sense of disgust, beyond betrayal, bordering past rage—but Cher didn’t care how I felt. She was old-fashioned and adhered to a sacred and arcane code of family conduct. To ignore my mother was to Cher—both as a mother and as a daughter—reprehensible.

“Call your mother,” she said, smoothing her skirts over her knees. 

“I don’t want to talk to her,” I insisted.

“It don’t matter what you want,” she said. “Your mother is worried sick. She needs to know you’re okay.”

“But I’m not okay.”

“I don’t see no gun to your head,” Cher said, the index and pointer finger of her right hand lay on her thigh in the shape of a weapon. “You’re not bleeding. Your mother needs to hear your voice. She needs to know you are alive.”

“She’s holding me hostage,” I said. “She’s been holding my whole life hostage, like she owns me or something,” I explained to Cher. My mother kept my legal documents in a safe deposit box in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and I didn’t have a key, so I couldn’t access my papers without her permission. My social security card and birth certificate, and car title were all locked away in that box, and my name wasn’t on the signature card. 

“Just apply for new documents,” Cher said.

“Can you do that?” I said. 

“Go down to the Social Security office tomorrow. Tell them you lost your card and apply for a new one.” 

“I didn’t know I could do that,” I said. It had never occurred to me that I had that kind of power, that I could simply take what belonged to me, to own what was rightfully mine. 

“Look,” Cher said. “You’re an adult. You should have your own papers, and you should call your mother. It’s the right thing to do.” 

I nodded begrudgingly.

“Any news about that job?” She asked.
“I have a second interview next week,” I said. 

Cher leaned back in her chair and pulled on her sweater excitedly. “I told you so!” She laughed. “I told you so, you’ll be working again very soon.” 

“I don’t have the job yet,” I said. 

“Don’t you worry. You leave that to me,” Cher said. “We’re working on it behind the scenes.” 

I didn’t like the tone of her voice and was about to ask what she meant by that—we— I was about to ask but just then Cher’s husband, Alfie—who was tall and heavyset with a thick head of dark hair that was just beginning to thin at the forehead—entered the parlor through the interior door. I fell silent and watched him carefully. Alfie had clear, mint green eyes that seemed nearly invisible; his expression was open, friendly, and impossible to read. I hadn’t realized anyone else was there, that Cher and I weren’t alone, and though we spoke always in hushed tones, under the blare of the air conditioner, I wondered how much Alfie could hear of our conversation from within the inner sanctum. 

Cher gave him a meaningful look. 

“Pardon me, Ladies,” Alfie said politely, opened the outer door, and disappeared onto the street. 

“Now,” Cher said, turning back to me, wrapping her cardigan more tightly over her breasts. “Where was we? 

I wasn’t done with my mother. I said, “My whole life, I’ve been trying to tell my mother the truth, and my whole life, she’s been lying to me, and so for my whole life, I thought I was crazy.” 

“You need to be patient,” Cher advised. 

“Decades,” my voice was quivering with rage. “It’s been decades!”

“Money makes people forget. Didn’t you only just remember the truth? How do you think your father got away with all that stuff he did?”  

“He tricked people,” I said.

“Not only that,” Cher shook her head. “Your father was a very spiritual man.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He had a very dark spirituality about him. He understood how to work on people’s spirits.”

I was quiet. 

She continued, “So when you was a child, your father hurteded you, but he also took you to the store. I am right?”

I nodded.

“So he hurteded you—and then he bought you a toy, am I right?”

“Yes,” I said. 

“Then instead of remembering the hurt, you remembered the toy. And the toy seemed like a good thing, but the energy of the hurt was inside the toy. And as you got older, he hurteded you in other ways and bought you other things,” she explained. “Nice clothes,” she said. “Like a ring,” she looked at me pointedly. “And he filled your whole life up with these things until you couldn’t see the bad no more. You could only remember the good, but the good wasn’t real.” She was speaking quickly. “Nothing means nothing. People don’t know this, but everything has a spiritual meaning. That’s why you never felt good about nothing. You had everything, but you had nothing.” 

I thought about my childhood bedroom, the closet still bursting with dolls, stuffed animals, and clothes. And then my mind flashed to my stepmother Darlene,  who wore a diamond heart at her throat and diamond rings up to the knuckles of both hands. And I knew on some level that what Cher was saying was true. Every object was imbued with an essence, everything infused with my father’s influence and presence. 

“He made it look like he was giving you everything, but in truth, he gave you nothing.”

I started to cry. 

“Like I was a whore,” I said. “Like I was my father’s whore.” 

“No,” Cher was adamant. “No, you was not.” 

Now I was weeping, and Cher seemed to be searching desperately for the words. “Look Sweetie,  whore sells pleasure for money. There was no pleasure in what your father did to you. And there was no exchange.”

Cher thought for a moment. “It’s better to say, in some ways, you was a puppet. He controlled you, pulled the strings. You didn’t have a mind of your own. He said, Jump, and you said, How high?” 

“I didn’t mean to,” I said, coughing on self-hatred and remorse. “I didn’t want to do it.” 

“Of course not, Sweetie. Of course, you didn’t want to do those things. In somewhat, it was almost like you was his slave. Your father bought you things in order to own you. As I said, he worked on in all kinds of ways—bought and sold your spirit.”

“Is that possible?” I said. 

“Of course it is,” Cher replied. “But you have to understand, it costs a lot to buy a soul. This means your freedom will be costly.”

“How much?” I asked.

“That depends,” Cher said, leaning back in her chair, “On how much you are willing to give.”

This response seemed purposely opaque. I studied her face for a moment in silence, but she gave nothing away.

“The problem with my mother is that she doesn’t want to know the truth. She doesn’t want to be free.” 

“And how long was they together before you was born?” Cher asked. The answer was eleven years. I didn’t say this aloud, but the truth hung in the air between us. “Your father worked on your mother much longer than he worked on you, am I right?”

“Yes, and in the end, he left her, threw her away when she was no longer useful.”

“But he gave her the house!” she said. “Am I right or am I right? He made himself seem good, like he cared, but that caring meant he was still in control. You see,” she said as if she had proved her point. “Money makes people forget.”

I felt sick.

“Now your father wasn’t all bad,” she said. “Nobody is,” she said. “You take the good with the bad, but in your father’s case, there was much more bad than good. Just nobody could see it. And so the problem is you are just waking up to this now, and your mother isn’t ready. You can’t force understanding,” she said. “Everything in its own time—though there are things you can do to speed up the process.” 

“What are you going to do with my ring?” I asked. 

It had been almost a week since I had taken the ring off my finger—the diamond ring with the filagree setting, offset with sapphires, which my father had given me and which I had worn continuously for eight years—until last week, when I took it off the middle finger of my left hand, and it disappeared into Cher’s drawer. 

“I’m holding it safe,” she said. “Meditating on what is to be done with it, but one thing I know for sure: you must never put that ring on your finger again.”

I nodded in assent.

“And besides, I’m not going to do anything,” Cher said. “That is the work that you must do.”

“What do I have to do?” I asked.

“It’s not time for that yet,” she said cryptically. “You’re not ready yet.”

“I’m ready,” I said, desperate and eager. “Tell me what I have to do.”

“The fact that you think you are ready proves you are not,” Cher said, as cryptic as an oracle. “This is very serious work. All the energies must be aligned. Everything must be in balance—especially your energies. And before we can go any further with this work,” Cher said, “We must first change the way you see yourself.”

I looked at her blankly. 

Cher reached into her drawer and withdrew a flat, square object, wrapped in a red satin cloth with a tattered edge.

“You don’t see yourself clearly.” There was an edge in her voice, almost a threat. 

“You don’t know that,” I said.

“Sweetie, I know you better than you know yourself,” she said. 

She withdrew the cloth to reveal a mirror in a silver frame. It was backed in black velvet and had a little kick stand, so it could be freestanding on a shelf. It was the kind of mirror you might buy at HomeGoods for twenty dollars—except for the fact that there were two lines of carnelian crystal chips, hot-glued to form an X across the reflective surface. Where the lines intersected, there was a little cluster of jade, and at the center of each of the resultant quadrants, larger pieces of jade and carnelian were affixed to the mirror’s surface. 

I was not impressed. “What is this?” I asked, handling the object and then handing it back to her.

“Think of it as a magic mirror,” she said, and I thought for a moment that I almost saw Cher swallow a smirk, but there was no change in her voice as she continued. “Every morning, you is to sit with this mirror. Look into it. Meditate on your reflection.”

“I don’t see how that’s going to help anything,” I laughed, handing the mirror back to her.

“This is a very powerful meditation. Made just for you and your energy.”

“So did you make it for me?” I asked.

“Sweetie, everybody has different gifts,” she said. 

“That’s not what I asked,” I said.

Cher was quiet for a moment. She looked down at the mirror and thought for a moment. “I had this made for you.”

“By whom?” I asked. “Who made it?”

“It was made for you at my church.” 

That’s when I realized that Cher wasn’t working alone. “So let me get this straight? I’m not allowed to talk to anyone about you, but your whole church knows about me?”

“Sweetie, your soul is in danger,” she said. “So, yes, there are people praying for you. You understand.” 

I laughed. There was bitterness in my laughter. 

“You laugh because you don’t understand,” Cher said knowingly, wrapping the object in the tattered cloth, slipping it into a plastic grocery bag, and handing it back to me. “But before we can go any further with this work, you need to remember who you are.”