Surviving Valencia

I slumped back down. Her words were the pinprick of relief I had been yearning for.

“Do you have something with you that you wear all the time?” she asked. I naturally thought of my wedding ring and I touched it, began removing it.

“Not a wedding ring,” she said. “I need something that is truly yours. What about that?” she asked, nodding to the ring on my right hand: Valencia’s old class ring.

“Okay,” I said, reluctantly removing it.

“It’s harder for you to part with this one than with that big daddy,” she mused.

“I guess you’re right.”

“Keep drinking your tea.”

It was cooler now and easier to sip. There were pieces floating everywhere in it. “Are you going to read my tea leaves?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

“Does it matter that I set it down on the saucer, and maybe tipped it a little when that happened?”

“No, it will be as it should be.”

“Oh.” I sipped it, aware of more cats, at least five different ones. Zemma sat before me, her eyes closed, her fingers rubbing the ring. Her face looked light and pleasant at first, but it was darkening.

“This is not your ring,” she said.

“It is. I mean, it used to be my sister’s, but it’s mine now. I’ve worn it for years. I never take it off.”

“Why do you have it instead of her?” she asked, handing it back to me.

“You mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t know everything. Some things come to me very clearly, and some things hide from me.”

My tea was nearly gone and she took the cup from me, pouring some of the tea onto the saucer. She handed the cup back to me. “Cup it in your hands with the handle to you and swirl it, gently, counterclockwise, yes, like that, now turn your cup over and set it on the saucer. And tap the bottom three times.” I did what she said, though I felt ridiculous, like a kid playing magic.

She took the cup from me, sliding it carefully across the table to herself, and she flipped it over with the handle close to her. She studied it for a very long while, periodically looking up at me. Then she turned it to me and pointed to the part of the cup to the left of the handle. “This shows me what you have done, and where you have been. This takes me back across your whole life, and it helps me see what your childhood was like.”

I leaned in, curious.

“The way the leaves spread out and become very thin, through here, makes me think you may have lost someone, or perhaps you relocated away from your family. Did your parents get divorced, and one moved away with a brother or sister of yours? Or did you get sent away to live with a relative?”

“No. It was worse than that. My brother and sister died when I was eleven.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

She went back to the cup and pointed to a shape further up on the left part of the cup. It looked quite a bit like a letter A, complete with seraphs at the bottom of it and a faint cross line through it.

“Has anyone or anything significant come into your life whose name begins with A? A person, or perhaps a city?”

“My husband.”

“There is heaviness here, like he anchors you, but I also feel that you may feel a little trapped?”

“Sometimes.”

“Another interpretation, with symbols as clear as this,” she carefully turned the cup and showed me, “can be had by examining them from different angles.” As she turned the cup, the A became a V. “You can see, this is now clearly a V, and we can apply the opposite meaning to it. Instead of weight, think of lightness or flight. Did you know anyone whose name began with a V, or does the letter V mean anything to you?”