The Glass Secret (Chain of Secrets) (18 page)

“So then you married Grandpa Stephen, right?”

“That’s right. I met him in Paris, when I was volunteering at one of the hospitals. It was the summer of 1945. We got married three months later. I suppose I was still a child bride at twenty, especially since he was twenty-one years my senior.”

“What does that mean?”

“Senior? That means he was twenty-one years older than me.”

“Wow, Grandma he was almost an old man. I mean—sorry.” I felt terrible as soon as the words slipped out.

“Oh, it’s okay. He looked like a young man. One day you will understand forty years old is still a baby.”

“Hmmm, well, actually, I like older boys, too. They are more mature, right?”

“Yes...they can be, I suppose.” She paused then added, “He was the love of my life—still is and always will be. I miss him so much. I wish he could have met you. You two would have gotten on so well together. He would have made a wonderful grandfather. He was the best husband a woman could wish for, such a great father and the smartest doctor around. Do you know he used to tell me that one-day people would be walking around with telephones in their pockets? If only he could see it now.” Her eyes glazed over, filling with tears. She wiped them away quickly.

My grandfather died long before I was born. I had never even seen a picture of him. My grandmother had lost everything in a fire and wasn’t able to salvage even one single photo of my grandfather…so sad. They lost everything.

It happened when my mother was eleven years old. Grandmother told me he was very brave and died a hero. He saved their lives; but he died a few weeks later from smoke inhalation. He had gone back into the house to save their family dog. The house ended up burning to the ground. There was nothing left of him after he passed away to remind her, only the memories.

“I want to marry someone just like him some day.” I confidently announced. “So, the only man you ever kissed was Grandpa, right?”

“I kissed him all the time.” She blushed but that didn’t really answer my question, and out of respect I didn’t ask her again.

“How did you know Grandpa was the one?”

“Brielle, if you feel it in your heart, then you feel it all over your body,” she said, crossing her arms over her heart then running her hands down the length of her lap. “Don’t worry, you will know when the time is right.”

“I wonder who I will marry?”

“Do you want me to read your future?” She pulled the deck of cards out from beneath the kitchen towel. I glanced around making sure my mother was not spying on us like I had on them.

“Sure.” I smiled broadly, feeling the rubber band on my braces stretching beyond its capacity. The band popped out and landed on the cards. My cheeks flushed with heat.

Yikes, hope she didn’t see that.

“Awe, a bit of you christening the deck.” Grandmother picked up the tiny band and tossed it over her shoulder and we had a laugh. As she laid the cards out on the table, I watched tentatively; she seemed to know what she was doing.

“I see you—oh my, you are filled with grace. Someone is taking beautiful pictures of you. There are lights shining down on you, and I see a halo above you.” She smiled. “That could be because you are my little angel; look at your hair.” Grandmother sprung one of my tendrils.

“I hate my hair,” I said as I flattened it with my hands.

“Never say anything negative about yourself, or it could come to you.” My grandmother warned.

“Okay. I’ll try not to,” I reluctantly said, and sighed.

“See this card?” She pointed to the card with a beautiful lady in a robe with men sitting at her feet.

“Yes,” I answered straight away, peering with hope at the bedraggled cards.

“When you are older there will be men, lots of them, all around you. You are dancing; I can see you flying through the air.”

She flipped over another card. “Hmm, this is odd.” She grimaced as she looked down at the card. Her eyes flashed to me, and then she quickly smiled, laying down another card. “This is a good one. You will steal the heart of many men, but you will only love one of them.”

“That sounds good to me. Is he cute?”

“Oh heavens yes, he is most handsome.” She beamed. I was happy too. I listened tentatively as she went on.

“What about my books, Grandmother? I want to be a writer when I grow up. Do you see anything about my books?” I asked anxiously.

She smiled fondly. “Well, let’s see what the cards say.”

I wanted to ask my grandmother what she really thought about the voices that I hear in my head. Instead, I bit my lip and kept the promise that I had made to my mother years before. I also relented, besides, the voices and I had a pact and, so far, it was working out pretty well.

I felt sorry for Grandmother Katie. My mother sometimes treated her as if she was a tad off her rocker. Who knows…maybe she was. Regardless, I loved her silly predictions. It didn’t change the fact that I didn’t like the conversation that I overheard between my grandmother and my mother. At the time, it was hard for me to comprehend some of my mother’s concerns about me. Too me, she was overly protective. My grandmother called her a worrywart.

Despite I had overheard what my mother had said, I felt fine, and I thought I was very normal most of the time. Nonetheless, there was a part of me, deep inside that couldn’t help but agree with my grandmother that my mother was overreacting when it came to the voices.

After all, I knew the voices were real. This didn’t mean that I was under some misconception about the voices; I knew the voices were not other worldly deities like ghosts.

They were my friends. Otherwise, as a child I would have been scared to death of them—even an adult would have been scared. Even though I had never actually seen one, I knew who the boogeyman was. I had also learned that seeing something isn’t always what makes us believe, or not believe in something. Besides, who would want to talk to a ghost?



Was hearing voices really so awful? I had to know why this was happening to me. Why did my mother consider my hearing voices a curse? Under the circumstances, I could not ask her, as doing so would have made her freak out again. However, trying to suppr
ess the voices from the entire world, as my mother demanded, was no longer doing it for me either. I wanted to share my experiences with the voices, and with others—humans.

I decided to bite the bullet and speak to my grandmother about my dilemma. I knew that she would be more open to talk about such things. After all, she secretly read my cards, palm and horoscope—all things that my mother would not approve of. She owned tons of books, almost anything that had to do with the supernatural world. I found them hidden under her bed.

It turned out that my grandmother was the one person that understood who, or what, the voices were. The day I finally mustered up the courage to ask her about them she confirmed what I already knew—she communicated with them, too. Just to be clear, she didn’t speak to the voices in my head, but she had her own voices, ones that spoke to her.

Grandmother claimed that they were the voices of angels—
guardian
angels are what she called them. The voices channeled messages through her, or at least, that is what she said. We all have one watching over us she explained to me. I could not help but wonder why the voices didn’t tell me this themselves? Nonetheless, I bought her theory.

“If you’re one of the lucky ones there is an entire army of guardian angels watching over you.” And, she told me that I was one of the lucky ones. As much as I thought that this could be a good thing, it could be a very bad thing too. I could not imagine having an arsenal of angels residing in my head, constantly whispering and guiding me along for the rest of my life. Would I ever have a moment of privacy?

My grandmother’s advice to me was to listen to the voices only and to avoid talking back to them. She said if I ever chose to talk to them, I should keep it a secret from any adult and, really, even from my friends. This would inevitably include my parents. She didn’t have to explicitly inform me of that. Basically, she gave me some of the same old jargon my mother said but with a twist.

Her advice was a little too late in my case however. I had been talking up a storm with the voices for years. My conversing with the voices had never done me any harm, so her advice left me more confused than ever. Although it really wasn’t complicated, it was simple; my grandmother didn’t want me to talk to them. However, this was very contrary to what she did.

“Just listen to them—but if you do talk to them, don’t tell anyone,” were her final words regarding the angels.

What?
My head was spinning. I guess my guardian angels were spinning in my head too—if they were angels at all. One day I aimed to find out.

-19-

A storm in my head

Eventually, the voices disappeared. Well, all seemed to have vanished except for one of the three voices. Ironically, he had always been the loudest guardian angel of them all. This was when I learned it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the oil, translation, the one who wins.

When the others vacated the cells of my brain, I could distinctly decipher this one voice. What a relief.  It became easier to communicate, since there were no longer three voices fussing about and talking all at once.

Before the voices dwindled to one, the voices always argued terribly amongst themselves. This drove me utterly insane, especially when I was trying to sleep. I assumed that the voices didn’t know the difference between night and day, because of the way they would go on at any given time. In fact, there were times that I would put my headphones on to drown out the rude buzzing between them. In doing so, I discovered that they liked music more than they liked arguing with each other. They didn’t exactly like my choice of music though. Nevertheless, the music kept them silent for a while. However, sooner rather than later, they began to complain that my music selection sucked.

I had to find a better way to shut them up so that I could get some peace. So I experimented with some different genres of music and this worked like a miracle. I discovered that the voices loved music from the nineteen-thirties and forties. Jackpot. With just a little musical experimentation, I learned how to silence them.

Eventually, I grew to love the songs from this era, too. Some more than others…
Green Eyes
by
Bob Eberly and The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra
was one of their favorites and, after playing it several times, mine too. Of course, I think this was because my eyes were green. I can hear the song playing now in the corners of my mind. The angels hummed along sometimes. Thank God, I could tolerate their humming.

After the other two voices vanished; I called the one that remained, Storm. It was just a name that I came up with because he reminded me of a storm. He came into my head like the sound of roaring thunder and then disappeared for days at a time before roaring in again.

“Hey, you should not talk to strangers. I heard you today talking to that old man in the church parking lot.”

“What? He’s our new preacher,” I revolted in a piercing tone.

“I know. I heard him up there pounding in his fist and raising all kinds of hell. He could be a devil in disguise...you never know. Remember what happened the time you thought—”

I loved to talk to everyone and anyone. This drove Storm nuts. He was overly protective when it came to me, and it seemed that nothing got by him. There were many times I wished Storm would just pop out of my head, so that I could kick him squarely in the shins for being so controlling. In spite of my desire to cause him pain, I learned the hard way to trust Storm. Still, this took a while. Years in fact. Who could blame me? I was young and really didn’t know what the hell he was—an angel, as my grandmother had claimed, or a curse.

“I know, Storm. I remember what happened. By the way, you better quit cussing. You are going to be in big trouble with God.”

“He’ll forgive me,”
he confidently said.

“Yeah, I hope so for your sake. Why are you so bossy?” I asked.

“I’m not. I was just reminding you to be careful.”

“I get it. Between you and my parents it’s all I’ve heard every day since the attempted”—my breath caught the word I could not say—“but seriously, you feel the need to warn me about our preacher?”

“He’s a man...isn’t he?”

“Yeah...a man of God. Just like you. Right?”

Storm mumbled. I couldn’t make out what he had said.

“Speaking of which...time for me to check on something.”

“Go on, go...leave. That’s what you always do when I ask you questions,” I nonchalantly said as if I didn’t care, but I did.

I had a lot of questions that Storm refused to answer. He promised me that when I was old enough, he would tell me great secrets.
Secrets?
Were they greater than the ones Grandmother told me? I didn’t think it could be possible, but still, I had a suspicious idea he knew something worth learning.

I hated it when adults, or even Storm for that matter, played the “
old enough card
” as an excuse to keep things from me.