The Blazing World

  The next morning while I was fixing my blooming green tea, I knew I had to answer the angelic voice by finding Harry, and I looked down at that blossom opening up in my tea and felt the expansion in my sacral plexus chakra, and the feeling of orange drifting up in the room. I remembered Harry’s red, smudgy auras. I found her name in the Brooklyn phone book, and I called her up. I had a speech ready in case she didn’t remember me. I was going to explain about the voice in the street, even though I know Harry wasn’t into the master’s teachings and astrology and chakras or anything like that, but it wasn’t Harry on the phone. The person on the phone said, “I am her daughter and my mother is very sick right now, and she isn’t seeing anyone except her family and closest friends,” and her voice made a little quaver that came right through the phone and into my body as a tremble. I asked her what her name was, and she said, “Maisie,” and I said, “Maisie, this is Sweet Autumn Pinkney. I used to know your mother on account of my relationship with Anton Tish, and I was an assistant for the artworks, and I think I can be useful to her now. You see,” and I spoke the next words slow and clear, “I have been called.” Maisie said, “But you called me,” because she didn’t understand my greater meaning, but that didn’t matter. I put on my vintage paisley purple dress with the full skirt, the best color for emergency healing, and packed up Kali in her carrying case and grabbed my bag of stones and called a car service because Red Hook is the absolute worst for subways. You just can’t get there underground, so I called up Legends, the trusty service I use in times of need.

  I had the address written down, but I couldn’t find the exact building, and I saw some kids standing around, and I asked them if they knew where Harry Burden lived, and one boy with a tattoo on his neck and a black baseball cap said, “Oh, you mean the rich witch.” After we talked a little more it was pretty clear we were talking about the same person, and I asked him why he called her that, and he said he didn’t know except there were lots of rumors about “creepy shit” in her studio and crazy noises and yelling about Satan and God that sometimes came from the building. They petted Kali a little bit and then showed me the door, and I rang the bell. I explained to Maisie and to Bruno, who was Harry’s boyfriend, that I had come to see Harry, and he had to go in to Harry and ask her if it was okay to see me, and she said yes, and so I went up the stairs and into a great big room with windows all over the place and light coming in all over and a super beautiful view, and Harry was lying in a hospital bed with the railings, you know, the kind that lift up on both sides, and an IV drip in her arm. I could see her elbow sticking out from under the floppy sleeve of her T-shirt, and sure enough she was just bones, and then I knew she wasn’t going to get well at all. It made me hushed inside.

  I saw the aura sludge around her and the dull colors—whites, grays, some ochre—and the toxins from the losses and the traumas built up over the years. My mission was not healing but cleaning the chakras so the luminous body would not be earthbound. I had to spin Harry’s luminous anatomy free. But she needed to give me permission. You can’t just run in and start cleaning and spinning without permission. Kali started barking, so I put her in the hall in her case. I knew she would whine a little but then probably go to sleep.

  I approached Harry with my soft walk. It’s a toe-heel walk like a dancer. I do it to show respect and not make noise, and I stood beside her. She was propped up in the bed. Her hair was short and stringy, not curly the way I remembered it, and her cheekbones stuck out over her hollow cheeks. The skin under her eyes was dark gray, but her green eyes were clear and hard. She looked straight at me and said in a husky voice full of the disease, “It’s the little mystic, isn’t it? The clematis?” And I smiled and put my hand on her arm. Then she squinted at me. I knew she was feeling the warm flow from my fingers. She closed her eyes. And I said, “Harry, can I pray for you?” Before she could answer, Maisie was standing right behind me and asking me what I was doing, and she said they weren’t a praying kind of family. Harry hated praying and on and on. Maisie had a blue aura but a little smoky because she was sad, clinging to her mom, so understandable. But I said in a firm tone that I wanted to know from Harry because she was the person I had been called to see.

  Harry said, “Clematis, I’m a Jew.”

  I said it didn’t matter and that every religion had its own ways, but God was the same everywhere. I told her that Peter Deunov’s Christianity was renewed by the principles of karma and reincarnation. He liked phrenology, too, head-bump reading that was popular all over the world when the master was young. And then, while I was staring into Harry’s sunken face, I saw pain in it, and her mouth stretched out, and I felt pains in my solar plexus, such hard strikes I had to put my hand down there to steady me. And after the pains, I had the revelation. The calling, the higher planes. Sweet Autumn, I said to myself. (I talk to myself like that when something is really important.) Sweet Autumn, I said, that was the message the voice was trying to deliver to you on Atlantic Avenue! A master is someone who has taken at least five initiations and completed the human stage of evolution and gone beyond it. Didn’t the master say, “A new earth will soon see day.” Didn’t he say that fire would come to “rejuvenate, purify, and reconstruct everything”? And some of the masters are artists—Michelangelo is one, an artist like Harry. He’s moved on to a higher planetary system called Sirius. The Siri Pharmacy! The voice! It was an angelic master, maybe it was Michelangelo, speaking to me from Sirius. I was pretty excited, and I told Harry. I could see Maisie’s face getting all screwed up and angry. And Bruno was looking funny at me, but Harry was listening with her eyes closed and then she said in a whisper, “I remember Deunov now. Clem, he helped save the Bulgarian Jews.”

  And I said yes, yes, and I was really happy because Harry knew the story, and that was another sign. Forty-eight thousand people were saved because Master Deunov sent his messenger, Loulchev, to look for the king of Bulgaria, who was hiding out somewhere, to get him to save the people who were going to be deported. The king’s name was Boris the Third or the Fourth or something. Well, Loulchev looked and looked, but he couldn’t find the king, so he had to go back to the master and say he had searched every nook and cranny but no luck. So the master meditated, and the name of the town was sent to him, and lo and behold, the king was in that town, and the king respected the master, and the Bulgarians were behind both of them, and the king made a law that saved the Jews from being killed.

  “I remember,” Harry said to me, “Tsar, not king.”

  And I said I thought they were the same thing, and she said I was right; they were pretty close.

  The signs were coming faster and faster, and it was almost too much for me. I felt dizzy, which sometimes happens when I’m feeling a lot in the atmosphere around me, but all the threads were coming together. That’s how I think of it, the threads were binding together to form circles, and Harry gave me permission. I could pray for her and clean up her luminous anatomy for its passage on to the next stage. The shamans in Brazil say you walk into mountains and see everything around you with new eyes—a sacred vision.

  I came every day for five days. On the fifth day, Harry died.

  I want to say that I knew the others didn’t really accept me and that they don’t believe in what I believe in. Maisie called me an “interpolator,” which means an uninvited guest coming in from the outside, and, on the first day especially, Bruno and Pearl, who was Harry’s day nurse, sent me nasty looks from across the room while I was cleaning up the auras, spinning them first counterclockwise and then clockwise. It’s slow work, and they were rolling their eyes at me. Don’t think I didn’t see them. I’ve taught myself not to care, that’s all. People have been making fun of my gift since I was little, so it’s an ancient story. I wasn’t like the other kids, not ever. I was always seeing and feeling stuff they didn’t see and feel, colors and waves and electricity in my arms and legs, and they used to wait for me after school and yell “ugly albino
” and “moron” and “retard” at me. Sometimes they’d trip me or knock against my backpack or rip it off me and throw all my stuff on the sidewalk. Not too original when you think about it. You just have to learn to walk with your chin up and let them scream their heads off. It doesn’t come easy. It took me a long time not to care about it.

  Anyway, after the first day with the eye rolling and the interpolator business, things got better. Maisie had her little girl, Aven, who had to go to school, and she had her husband, Oscar, who was a really sweet man with a deep voice that made you feel warm when you listened to it, and she couldn’t just forget about them, after all. On the second day, I told Maisie I would cover for her because she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. They kept fluttering shut. I said I’d sit with Harry and that she should try to nap or she wouldn’t be much good for anything. Maisie could see Harry liked the feel of my hands and the comfort of the crystals on her belly, and she liked my singing—I sang some old ballads to her that my grandma Lucy used to sing to me. Harry especially liked “Leaving Nancy.” “The parting has come and my weary soul aches / I’m leaving my Nancy, oh.” Harry liked Kali, too. And Kali liked Harry. She licked her face and sniffed her, and after that, she stayed with us in the room and it was easier.

  Harry said to Maisie, “Go and rest, love. I’m not dead yet. I’ve still got some kick in me.” Maisie told me she was sorry about being mad at me, and I said it was really okay and not to worry.

  Bruno could get upset at all of us and furious at the hospice doctor, Dr. Gupta, who was actually a pretty decent man. He had a green aura, just right for healers. Dr. Gupta came and went to check on things because the meds didn’t always work the way they were supposed to. I remember Bruno in the hallway with the doctor, getting all excited but trying to keep his voice low so Harry wouldn’t hear him, and he kept saying over and over in his gruff way, “She’s not going to suffer. You hear me. She’s not going to suffer. You have to make the pain go away.” After the doctor left, Bruno sat down on a chair and covered his face with his hands and cried hard but not loud. I tiptoed over and put my hand on his shoulder. He looked up at me and said, “Who are you?” He didn’t say it in a nice way, and I didn’t answer him. I didn’t think it would help. Then I thought he said, “She called you untimely.” And I said, “Untimely?” And he said, no, not untimely, a word in German: un-hime-lick. It means uncanny, freaky, weird. I told him that was okay with me. I don’t mind, I said. Bruno shook his head at me, but he smiled just a teeny bit at the corners of his mouth, so I felt better with him after that, and, oh, I have to say, he loved Harry. I’d say he had a gift. He knew how to love her. It was a strong, pure, radiant beam, and he’d sit with her and kiss her hand and pet her head and whisper to her. I heard them laughing, too. I realized I’d like to laugh before I die. I hope I can. But I could tell Harry had been hurt, probably at home somewhere along the line like lots of us. Sometimes I could see and feel the anger burning out of her and into the room, the old red flames dark with smoke and negative energies, the ones I saw when I knew Anton. And I realized Harry had to get clear with everyone she loved before she went on, and that is awfully important no matter what you believe. Then I realized some of those people were already on the other side, and some of them were ghosts with their dim white bones still bound to this side. Poor Harry.

  I didn’t meet Ethan until the second day. He had this warm hat pulled down to his eyebrows even though it wasn’t cold outside, and he looked scared and alone. As soon as he came in, I could see he was all blocked up with fears. I had to concentrate and walk around him, but then I saw a hole, a kind of tear or sore spot in his rear heart chakra. And I could feel the wishes flying out of Harry toward him. He sat down in a chair by the bed and he talked to her. He knew a lot. Right away I could tell he was a very intellectual person like Harry. I really didn’t know what they were talking about, but I could tell they were not saying the authentic words they needed to say, and it made me anxious. I started to feel pressure in my chest, so it got a little hard to breathe, and I had to take a break, go into the hall, and clean my own aura. I lay down on the floor and meditated for about half an hour. Winsome, the night nurse, was coming on duty. Isn’t that a pretty name, Winsome? Anyway, she went into the room and Ethan came out, and he sat down on the floor and we talked.

  Gosh, I can’t remember everything we said to each other. Ethan petted Kali for a while and asked about her, but then we somehow got onto the subject of being a kid and how hard it can be just because you’re little. Well, I ended up telling him about the time Denny broke my arm. He was having one of his big fights with Mom at the dinner table, and I was just trying to get out of the way because I knew what could happen if I didn’t, but he grabbed me by my arm to get to Mom and threw me against the wall, and then I fell on the floor hard, and a bone broke and my arm was sticking out in a crazy direction. It hurt so much and it looked so different from before, I started screaming. That stopped their fight, anyway. They both looked so surprised. Then Denny came over to me, and I was scared of him and backed away, but he grabbed my arm and set the break. It hurt like the dickens, but right after, it felt much better, like a miracle, really. He did that for me, even though he was the one who smashed my arm to begin with. We all went to the emergency room in the car. Denny and Mom lied about how it happened. They said I fell out of a tree, and the doctor congratulated Denny on his great job, and Denny was proud. Jeez, I could see it in his face. It was like he forgot about hurting me. All he could remember was fixing my arm, not breaking it. Ethan said that was pretty ironic. I said, yeah, it was. We were quiet for a while and then I told him he had aura blockage, and he said, “Really.”

  Anyway, I talked to him about Harry and Anton. He wanted me to write something that said I knew it was Harry’s work, and Anton had told me so. I said I would for sure. I asked him why he was talking to his mom about some book when she was about to go over to the other side. After a while, Ethan mentioned this world Harry made up about the Fervidlies, and Ethan said he thought about the bedtime stories she told him and Maisie all the time, and that’s why he became a writer, but he had never told her that. “You ought to tell her,” I said, “because your mom is not going to be here. She’s going on, and for her sake and yours you ought to tell her.” Ethan said he didn’t know why but it was awfully hard for him. He let me put my hands on him then, on his face and shoulders. The laying-on of hands is the oldest healing method and goes back to the Bible. “Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” It gave him energy. I could feel it. And then we kissed a couple of times. I know this is for the book, and Ethan will probably read it, but that’s okay. The kissing made him feel better, and the colors around him got brighter, and I could see how handsome he was, and I took off his hat. He had nice hair, curly but not as curly as Harry’s used to be, kind of silky curly, and I asked him if I could touch it and he said yes and so I did. I stayed at the lodge, that’s what they call the place. Ethan, Kali, and I slept together in one bed, no sex or anything. In the middle of the night I heard someone talking loudly down the hall about angels. Ethan said not to worry, it was someone called Barometer. He’d explain in the morning.

  The third day, Harry looked whiter and weaker. She had to squeeze the drip for more morphine, too. Still, she had a black-and-white checkered notebook on the table beside her and a pen, and even though her hand was shaking badly, she managed to scribble down some words into it. It took a long time, and when she had finished, all her energy was gone. Big pains. I dabbed away her tears with a Kleenex. We put lip balm on her mouth because it was cracking. I put a new crystal on her stomach under her shirt, and we had to adjust the sheets. For the first time I saw the scar with puckered skin around it down there where they had to cut her open. Her whole belly looked funny, really white and soft, but you could almost see through the skin. I kept cleaning the chakras, making the circling motions to clean and comfort. It was working
all right, and it made me feel good that I was making progress. I wanted Harry’s last dreams on this side to be good ones, and I knew the purifying would make for peaceful dream pictures.

  Sometime in the afternoon, a short, trim older woman came into the room with Maisie. Her gray-and-white hair was cut short and straight at her chin, and she was wearing a long, light green skirt that went all the way down to her ankles, and swished a little when she walked with fast, small steps. Ethan told me she was Harry’s oldest friend, Rachel Briefman. You could feel how wise and confident she was right away. She sat beside Harry for a long time, stroking her cheek and talking to her in a low voice. I think they were remembering when they were girls or maybe Rachel was remembering for Harry. Actually, I had to turn my back for a little while. I pretended to play with Kali because I could feel Rachel missing Harry already, missing her before she was dead, if you see what I mean, and I felt like crying all of a sudden. Harry’s doctor came, too, her shrink doctor, not Dr. Gupta. He was a white guy, pretty old, with thin hair, bald spots, brown horn-rimmed glasses, and a potbelly, not too big, though, just well-fed and comfortable. I liked his eyes. We all left the room, even Bruno and Pearl left. They must have been in there alone for close to an hour. Bruno was pacing back and forth, pushing his hair back with both his hands over and over again. When the doctor came out, I could see on his face that he was sad. He shook my hand in such a polite, respectful way. He let Maisie hug him. Bruno walked him downstairs and outside. I don’t know what they said to each other but the mood around us was changing fast because of time, the time here on earth, not the other time of forever. I prayed and meditated and prayed and meditated for strength to finish the job. Nobody had to know about my praying. Kali knew. She put her head in my lap and looked up at me so tenderly. Sometimes the purest energies come from animals.