Our house seems big from the outside, but not when you realize that at one time all seven of us lived here. Yes, seven. Mum, Dad, my oldest sister Abbie, the two boys Cillian and Patrick, Joanne and then me. People always ask me what it’s like having so many siblings, unaware that there’s fifteen years between me and Abbie, thirteen years between me and Cillian, ten between me and Patrick, and seven between me and Jo. It’s more like having a load of parents.
“Hey,” calls Jo from the kitchen. She’s baking. It’s something she’s into at the moment. She broke up with her girlfriend a couple of months ago and is living with us while she finishes her Master’s degree. I really don’t want them to get back together, although Mum thinks it could be on the cards. It’s so boring when it’s just me and Mum and Dad.
“Hey, you’re home early,” I respond, dropping my bag in the hall and making my way into the kitchen. “What are you making?”
“Ugh, there was some mad Christian protest happening right outside the library window, so I came home.” She sucks a little bit of batter off her finger. “Pistachio and almond blondies.”
“God. What were they protesting? And why do you always have to bake things that taste like salt?”
“They’re not salty,” she says, crushing the nuts up with the end of a wine bottle. She’s always despairing that there’s no proper equipment in this house, but with five kids and a career, Mum could never really be bothered. “They’re savoury. And they were protesting about the Kate O’Brien exhibition, saying the taxpayer shouldn’t pay for art about queer people. As if there would be any good art left.”
She cups her palms and scoops the nuts into a mug. “How was in-school suspension?”
“It was … fine.”
“Did you apologize to Mr Bernard, like I told you to?”
“No.”
“Maeve!”
“It didn’t hit him!”
“That’s not the point. You should at least apologize for acting up all the time and purposefully disrupting his class.”
I hate that. Acting up. Why are people always in a hurry to categorize you being funny as you being a sociopath? When a girl is quiet, they just say: “She’s quiet. It’s her personality.” If she’s a massive overachiever, they just say she’s ambitious. They don’t question it. Jo was so completely anal about school that she gave herself stress-induced psoriasis during her Leaving Cert, and all anyone had to say was that she was goal-orientated.
“And anyway,” she says, sprinkling the mug of nuts into her blondie mixture, “I don’t see why you find languages so hard. You’re verbal enough. You just have to memorize the right verbs in the important tenses. Everything else is simple.”
Just? You just have to memorize them?
Does she not realize how impossible that is?
And yet, other people do it. All the other girls I hang around with got at least eighteen or nineteen out of twenty in the last vocab test, while I struggled to make it past ten.
Just before I started at St Bernadette’s, Mum took me to a special examiner to see if I was dyslexic. I think everyone was really hoping that I was.
“I just know she has some hidden gifts,” Mum told the examiner, trying to convince herself as much as him. “She was the earliest to speak of all my kids. She was talking at eleven months. Complete sentences.”
They wanted an explanation for my underachievement. Especially the boys, who are both so science-y. They called up every day with new theories on why I was falling behind so much. “Have we considered that it might be her hearing?” Cillian suggested one weekend when he was home. “Maybe she can’t actually hear what the teacher is saying.”
Ironic, seeing as the only reason I know he said this was because I overheard him from the next room.
I’m not dyslexic, or blind, or deaf. Unfortunately for everyone, I’m just thick.
I lick my finger and start dabbing the worktop, picking up crumbs of pistachio and putting them in my mouth.
“Maeve. Gross. Stop. I don’t want your spit in these blondies.”
“Why? Who are they for?”
“No one. God, do I need an occasion to not want spitty blondies?”
“They’re for Sarra, aren’t they?” I say, needling her. “You’re meeting up with Sarra.”
“Shut up,” she says, sweeping the nut crumbs into her hand and then folding them into her mixing bowl with a wooden spoon.
“You are!” I say, triumphant. “Well, don’t expect her to appreciate them. She’ll probably say she loves them and then cheat on them with some brownies.”
Joanne stops mixing. Her face is going red. Oh God, I’ve done it now. Sometimes I forget that, even though we’ve all known about the cheating for so long that it feels like old news, Joanne still relives it every day. I might be over her being cheated on, but she certainly isn’t.
“Hey,” I say. If I can make her laugh, then we can both have a giggle about it, and Sarra’s memory will be thrown over our shoulders like lucky salt. “Brownies are horrible. Probably the most overrated baked good in the world. And slutty, too.”
Joanne says nothing, and just spoons the mixture into her baking tray.
“If you like brownies you’re probably an asshole,” I try again, watching her guide her tray into the oven.
“Jesus Christ, Maeve, will you just leave it?”
Suddenly she’s shouting, so angry that she loses her concentration and burns her forearm on the side of the oven. She screams and instinctively clutches her skin, dropping the entire tray of batter on the floor. I grab the kitchen roll and start trying to clean up the sticky yellow globs.
“Stop!” she shouts, pushing me away. “Just get out. Get out, get out, get out! Go to your room.”
“I’m trying to help, you cow,” I say, my eyes tingling already. God, don’t cry. Don’t cry. Nothing worse than being the baby of the family and crying. “And you can’t tell me to go to my room. You’re not Mum, so piss off.”
Now Joanne is crying. Sometimes I think that she spent so long being the baby of the family that she’s even more sensitive than I am. She had her baby status taken away from her, after all, while I’m desperately trying to leave it behind.
The kitchen door swings open and Mum’s there, holding the dog’s lead and looking exhausted by us already. The dog charges in and dives for the batter, stuffing as much as he can into his mouth before Mum starts shrieking about his irritable bowel syndrome.
“GRAB TUTU!” she yells. “Maeve, get Tutu AWAY! Tutu, STOP! Tutu, BAD! Joanne, is there butter in this? I am not cleaning up rancid dairy diarrhoea. Do you have any idea how that’s going to smell?”
We lock Tutu outside while we clean up the mess and Joanne tearfully explains what a bitch I am.
“I can’t believe you,” I snap at her. “You’re in your twenties and you’re snitching.”
Then I say a bunch of horrible stuff about her and Sarra that I instantly regret but will also never apologize for. Tutu and I go to my room, two outlaws.
There are fifty WhatsApp notifications on my phone, but all of them are from groups I’m part of. Niamh Walsh and Michelle Breen @’d me a few times, asking what Miss Harris made me do during my first day of suspension.
I cleaned out the Chokey, I write back.
Lots of emojis.
What a bitch, someone says.
I found so much crap, I type. I send a picture of the Walkman with the grungy mixtape.
They all register their surprise, but quickly move on to something else. There are at least fourteen of us in this WhatsApp group, so it’s hard for everyone to keep up. I find myself wishing, not for the first time, that I had a best friend to talk to.
I had one, once. But that whole thing with Lily is over. It’s been almost a year and a half, now.
Then I remember the cards. The brilliant reds and purples, the serious expressions and strange symbols. I pull them out of my bag and start sifting through them, laying them out in numerical order.
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1. THE FOOL.
A guy with a dog and a flute. He’s kind of hot in that long-haired Prince Valiant kind of way.
2. THE MAGICIAN.
A guy at a table, mixing a potion.
3. THE HIGH PRIESTESS.
A woman with a moon on her head. She reminds me of Miss Harris, beautiful and stern.
I peer at each one, hoping that I’ll get some kind of psychic vision if I make close-enough eye contact with the people in the cards. Nothing happens. Eventually, bored of my own ignorance, I open my laptop and search: How to teach yourself tarot.
And then, the evening disappears.
CHAPTER THREE
“HEY, GUYS, WELCOME TO MY CHANNEL. I’M RAYA SILVER of Silverskin Magic, and today we’re going to learn how to give a standard three-card tarot reading.”
The woman in the YouTube video is sitting cross-legged in a wicker armchair, impossibly gorgeous in the New Orleans mystic shop that is also her family home. Raya has two kids, a dog, a cat and a third eye.
It has been two hours, and I am obsessed with her.
I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that the “face” cards – like “Death” and the “Magician” and the “High Priestess” – are like main characters of the tarot, and they’re called the Major Arcana. The rest of them are suits, just like in regular playing cards, and they’re the Minor Arcana. Cups represent emotions. Swords represent the mind. Rods represent passion. Pentacles represent money.
“Swords, cups, rods, pentacles,” Raya’s e-book says. “Head, heart, loins, feet.”
“I want you to get warmed up with a nice juicy shuffle,” she instructs, her cards slipping through the air and into her fingers like silk scarves. I mimic her movements, and the cards splay out of my hands, falling onto the bedspread. I’m still trying to get the hang of my shuffle technique.
“Or, if you’re reading for someone else, get them to shuffle. The cards are living, breathing things. They need to soak up all the energy from whoever you’re reading for. Then, ask the client to cut the deck into three with their left hand, and put it back together. Fan the cards out so they have plenty of choice.”
I do as she says.
“Now pick three. They represent past, present and future.”
I pick carefully and turn all three over. The Moon, the Chariot and the Tower. The Moon is just the Moon, a big luminous, pearly illustration. The Chariot is a man on a two-horse chariot, and the horses look mad as hell. The Tower is the only one I’m anxious about. It looks horrible. A medieval tower is broken in half, orange flames licking the stone. Two people are falling out of it, plunging to their deaths. It gives me a chill. But I trust Raya. She says there are no truly bad cards, that there’s a good side to everything, and I believe her.
Pausing the video, I consult my Kindle to see Raya Silver’s descriptions of the cards. All of Raya’s interpretations are friendly, text message-length and written in ordinary language, not in some weird obtuse magical language. It’s why I like her so much. She feels like a friend.
THE MOON: The Moon rules over our periods, so there’s a lot to be mad about here. This card represents deep subconscious energy, maybe even stuff that you are suppressing. Remember, all evil has to come to the surface eventually!
THE CHARIOT: Woahhhh! Slow down! Your chariot is about to veer off the track – or are you going so fast that it just looks like chaos to everyone else? Ask yourself whether you’re in control of your situation or not
THE TOWER: OK, I know this looks bad. Real bad. But sometimes old structures need to come tearing down so you can build something new.
I unpause the video, and Raya instructs me on how to put these three cards together. “Use your intuition,” she says breathily. “Let the cards talk to each other.”
I gaze at them, and ask myself how I’m feeling. The moodiness of the Moon has definitely been a thing for me lately. A profound loner energy has ruled over this year at school. The last two years, if I’m honest. It seems like everyone’s deeper in their cliques than ever, and I’m lagging behind, no best friend, no firm group, no academic success. Then there’s the Chariot, the guy trying to keep his cool while his two horses go crazy. Yeah, that feels like me.
“Speak your truth,” Raya says. Her voice is breezy, but her chocolate-brown eyes are focused and direct. “Speak it out loud.”
“I’m not very happy at the moment,” I say aloud, and to my complete surprise I feel a tiny hot tear come into the corner of my eye. I quickly blink it away. “And I’m trying to make out like I’m fine, but I’m not.”
“Go to your place of fear,” Raya Silver says, as though she can hear me. “Say what you’re afraid of.”
“If I don’t sort myself out, things are going to get really, really, really bad,” I say, and before I have a chance to get upset about it, Dad calls me down for dinner.
When I get downstairs, it’s just Dad at the table. Jo has gone out – probably to Sarra’s house – and Mum is correcting exam papers in Abbie’s old room, so she’s eating in there.
“I heard you were giving Joanne hell,” Dad says disapprovingly, shoving me a plate of lasagne.
“If that’s her side of the story…”
“You should be nice to your sister. She’s going through a hard time.”
“I am nice,” I say. “I can be nice.”
“You’re better than nice, Maeve. You’re good. There’s so much good in you. You just need to show it.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Nice people,” he says, stroking Tutu, who is pawing at his lap for scraps, “will smile and listen and say, ‘Oh no, how terrible’ when they hear a sad story. Good people do something about it.”
Dad is the youngest in his family, too, so he tends to have a bit more sympathy than everyone else. But he was the one genius in a family of idiots, and I’m the one idiot in a family of geniuses. It’s not exactly the same.
We talk for a while, and he asks me if school is going any better, and I lie and say it is.
“How’s Lily getting on?” he asks, pushing his food around. “Do you still talk?”
“We’re not friends any more, Dad,” I say quickly, and take my tarot cards out of my pocket.
“What are those?”
“Tarot cards,” I respond. “Do you want me to give you a reading?”
“I don’t know. Will you tell me nasty things about my future?”
“Tarot doesn’t tell the future,” I say, mimicking Raya Silver’s calm, guru-like voice. “They only help you analyse your present.”
“Jesus. Are you in a cult now? I heard on the radio that all the young people were joining a cult, but I didn’t think they’d nab you.”
“No. I’m just interested in the cards. They’re part of history, you know. They were used in Italy in the fifteenth century.”
“So you’re into history and Italian now? I think I like this cult.”
“Here,” I say, handing them over. “Shuffle these bad boys. Get your juice into them.”
“My what?” Dad looks appalled.
“Your energy! Get your energy into them! Cards are made of paper, Dad. Paper is made from trees. They’re conscious.”
“Uh-huh,” he says, clearly bemused. “And when did you get these cards?”
“Today,” I answer. I get him to shuffle and split the cards into three piles. Then I fan the cards out like Raya did. “Pick three.”
He picks three. Ten of Rods, Two of Cups, the Fool. I study them.
“It looks like you’re working really, really hard,” I say, pointing at the man with a bunch of rods on his back. “And that you might be neglecting Mum in the process. The cards are suggesting you go on a holiday or an adventure together so you can feel, y’know – in love again.”
My dad’s face goes dark. “Piss off,” he says. “It did not say that.”
“It did!”
“Has your mother put you up to this?”
“No!” I say, gleeful.
“Why? Am I right?”
“Je-eeee-eee-sus!” He starts raking his hands through his thin, sandy hair. “Well, I guess we’re going to Lisbon then.”
“Lisbon?”
“Your mum has been on and on about us going to Lisbon. Flights are cheap at the moment. And I’ve been working like a madman.”
“Go!” I say, truly excited to have been right. “Go to Lisbon!”
“Who’s going to make sure you get to school every morning?”
“I’m sixteen! I can wake myself up for school. And Joanne will be here.”
He takes our plates to the sink and rinses them off. “My God,” he says, still dazed. “I guess I better check Ryanair.”
I shuffle the cards again, delighted by my success. “I find it very interesting,” he says, before leaving the room, “that you can learn all these cards in an evening, and still haven’t quite mastered your times tables.”
“Shut up! I know my times tables! I’m sixteen, Dad, not eight.”
“What’s sixteen times eight?”
“A million and three.”
“Wrong. It’s 128.”
“Oh, look,” I respond, drawing my cards. “It’s the Death card. I’d hurry up about booking those flights.”
He leaves, and I’m alone with my deck of Chokey cards. Thinking that, despite his stupid maths joke, it is a little weird that I’ve managed to learn the cards so well in an evening. But it’s not like learning everything else. It doesn’t fall out of my brain the minute I move on to something else, like school stuff does. It sticks, like song lyrics. Like poetry. Like feelings I already had but finally have a map for.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NEXT DAY MISS HARRIS MAKES ME SPEND MOST OF MY lunch break finishing the Chokey. I don’t even really mind. Dad gave me some replacement batteries for the Walkman, so I’m enjoying the job now, eager to see the Chokey looking clean and orderly, and I attack it while singing to 1990s goth music. I keep the cards zipped into the front of my school bag and try to resist the temptation of playing with them.
All Our Hidden Gifts Page 2
