Concentric Circles – A Tarot Reading (May 1988)

Christie Ellen

 

The Present
[Death – endings, transition, upheaval]

Science class. The lesson is on ripple effect. Which is to say an initial disturbance to a system propagates outward to disturb an increasingly larger portion of the system.

I dip a finger into the shallow metal pan and lift it out. A single droplet falls, landing in the water. Concentric ripples spread, widening until the outermost reaches the edges of the pan and stops.

Around me, fourth graders take turns doing the same, our small voices offering guesses to the teacher’s questions. “How do the ripples happen?” “Why do the circles grow wider?”

Knock knock. 

We all turn towards the sound and I see my mother standing in the classroom doorway.

“I’m here to pick my daughter up.”

My mother’s smile contrasts with something in her eyes. Is she nervous? Tired? 

I glance at the clock. Dismissal isn’t for another 15 minutes and I normally take the bus home. Why is my mother here? 

Confused, I gather my things together, drop notebooks into my bookbag, lift my spring jacket from the hook at the back of the class. I follow my mother out of the room, the buzzing fluorescent lights escorting us down the hall and through the front doors of the red brick elementary school.

The May afternoon is warm and while the mornings are still cool enough to warrant a soft shell, it’s now mild enough by dismissal that I am able to sling my coat over an arm and carry it. 

I’m still unsure as to why she is picking me up early and my chest stiffens when I spot our powder-blue station wagon slouched low in the parking lot. Something is different. My heart quickens and pushes a wave of blood through my body, making my ears pulse. 

When I get close enough to reach the door handle, I can see the inside is brimming with boxes, lampshades, baskets of clothes piled in the backseats.

I wonder how I am going to fit inside and if I will have room to squeeze myself in between the things shoved into every available crook and cranny inside the car from floor mats to ceiling. I recognize some of the objects as my own. Books and clothes that just that morning were resting comfortably in my room. Other things I recognized from elsewhere in the house. A plant from the living room, the edge of a picture frame protruding from a box. 

Fingers on the door handle, I look up. Mom’s eyes meet mine. There’s worry hiding in the hollows of her cheeks. 

‘Where are we going?’ 

‘What happened?’

 

The Past
[Five of Pentacles – loss, struggle, being left out in the cold]

Mom has been sick for a few weeks now. She almost never gets out of bed, preferring the darkness of her room to the bright lights and noise of the rest of the house. She suffers from occasional migraines so I’m used to her disappearing into her room for a day or two at a time but never for this long. 

For the past three years we have been living with my stepfather and his two daughters. They are both younger than I am but not by much – just three years between the youngest and me. 

I get along mostly fine with my stepsisters but my stepfather treats me differently and makes little effort to hide it. Mom has addressed it with him before and it gets better for a while, until it doesn’t.

These last few weeks, I only have about two hours after school to see Mom before he comes home. Once he’s home, he says she needs her rest and won’t let me in to see her. I rush upstairs as soon as I get home. 

Gently, I push open her door and a crack of light spills across the carpet. I refill the glass on her night table with cold water and freshen up the cloth for her forehead.  “Thank you, dear,” she whispers.

“Can I get you anything else?”

“No, love. This is fine.”

Nothing about this seems fine.

Before school earlier this morning, I tried to say goodbye to her but my stepfather’s pudgy belly stood in between me and the closed door of her room. He wouldn’t budge. I swallowed my detest for him in a thick lump and left, knowing that I would be able to see her again once I came home. 

I hoped she would be ok until then. 

 

The Future
[Wheel of Fortune – change, decisive moments, cycles, fate]

I wake up in unfamiliar surroundings, on a bed vaulted high up in the air, close to the ceiling. My eyes crust open and a few liminal seconds tick by before I begin to piece together what’s happened. 

Bunk beds. My cousin’s room. Boxes piled in the corner. 

The edges of my thoughts continue to sharpen. 

Yesterday after I left for school, my mother spent the day packing up what she could with her best friend and her brother while my stepfather was at work. She told me some things were put in storage until we could find our own place and came to pick me up from school with what fit in the car. 

Instead of going home, we drove to my uncle’s house where we’ll stay for the summer. She will  drive me across town every day until school ends but in the fall, I’ll have to start over somewhere new.

“Breakfast is ready,” my uncle calls from the kitchen. Mom is still in bed resting. Every ounce of strength having been packed away in boxes and shoved into our station wagon, she’ll need a few days to recover. 

I swing my legs to the side of the bed and my feet find the top rung of the ladder. 

“What’s the name of your school?” My cousin’s reflection is talking to me as she’s brushing her hair in front of the mirror. 

“Queen E,” I reply as I carefully navigate going down the ladder front ways.

“Mine is Claude D. Wanna get ice cream after school today? There is a corner store near here, we can walk.” 

My cousin is just a year younger than I am and we’ve always gotten along really well. “Sure, that sounds fun.”

Ice cream after school. A store close by. Bunk beds. A new roommate for the summer. 

Yesterday, I watched as a tiny drop of water slipped off my finger into a pan. Such a small thing – that droplet-sized displacement. Deceptively small. 

How was that just yesterday? Concentric circles were put into motion but this time there is no edge to contain them. Circles that will continue to radiate outward in perpetuity. 

Echoes without end. 

 

 

Christie Ellen (she/her) is a mom of two, living with metastatic breast cancer on Canada’s east coast, on the traditional unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) and Mi’kmaq peoples. In her professional life she is a copywriter and content strategist. You can read “Clava Cairns” in the fall issue of The Fiddlehead and “Mother Wound” in the September issue of The Argyle Literary Magazine. You can follow her on Instagram: @christie.ellen.content

Cynthia Yatchman is a Seattle-based artist. A former ceramicist, she studied with J.T. Abernathy in Ann Arbor, MI, though after receiving her B.F.A. in painting from the University of Washington, she switched from 3D art to 2D and has stayed there since, working primarily on paintings, prints and collages. Her art is housed in numerous public and private collections and has been shown nationally in California, Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Michigan, Oregon and Wyoming. She has exhibited extensively in the Pacific Northwest, including shows at Seattle University, Seattle Pacific University, Shoreline Community College, the Tacoma and Seattle Convention Centers and the Pacific Science Center. She is a member of the Seattle Print Art Association, Women Painters of Washington, and COCA (Center of Contemporary Art).

 

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