Mother's Curse

It was the middle of the melancholy season, when the intensity of the reds and yellows faded to gray and brown. The trees outside the living room window were bare, and a normally shadowy corner of her home, illuminated by the filtered morning sun, gave up its secrets. It was still too early for the cars and school buses and people walking dogs or rushing to grab a bagel before work, that would soon fill her neighborhood with noise.

She sat with the quiet, sipped her cup of tea and stared out at her tiny bit of the world before she had to start work. She watched several crows coming and going on the naked limbs, their shiny black aspects stark against the cold blue sky.

Crows were ubiquitous in her neighborhood. They stayed in their territories all year. In the spring and summer, they were a part of the larger ecology, camouflaged by explosions of life and color; they competed for city food along with the rats and squirrels and homeless folk; defended their homes from predators from above and from humans who ventured to close below. (you haven’t lived until you’ve been dive-bombed by a grumpy grandmother crow).

In winter, the squirrels fell silent, the homeless sought roofed shelter, the colors turned muted; but the crows stayed the same. She considered that could be the reason they were so often associated with death and darkness—because they are austere; black against the gray of a rainy day or the white of snow.

But she knew better. Crows were smart; they cared for each other; taught their young to survive, to recognize danger and which humans they could trust. When they congregated in a barren tree, she didn’t see death—she saw resilience and permanence and an ownership-without-apology of the spaces they inhabited; a species more adapted to city living, and those twisted creations of glass and concrete, than she. She envied their young.

Amelie avoided thinking about death or the end of all things. She craved hope, sought it everywhere she looked. But lately, her dreams denied her that desire every night, and each morning as the weather grew colder, she found it harder and harder to overcome the shade that stuck to her like an inky film.

The nightmares started soon after her mother died six months ago; dreams full of fire. Every night was the same; she stood in the middle of a conflagration whose source was never revealed.

She hadn’t spoken to her mother in decades, but it still hit her harder than she’d expected. Mother’s church was nearby, and after several weeks of feeling haunted, Amelie visited; thinking it might give her some closure.

At first she timed it so she arrived late. She stood at the back, near the door. But on the third visit, she was found out; the pastor had assigned a parishioner to waylay her. When she told him her name, his smile froze, then melted. “Well, welcome just the same,” he said. “We loved your mother, and we are sorry to lose her. Come by any time.”

Amelia didn’t feel welcome. But the nightmare kept dragging her back. She attended for another month, every Sunday and Wednesday, and eventually, she sat down with the pastor and told him her dream. His interpretation sounded like something her mother would say. He said she was dreaming of hell and that it came from a place of rot inside her. He admonished her to confess her sins and follow her mother’s path.

At first, she followed his instructions, repeated his incantations, accepted the twisted invocations from the council and the old woman who led them. She sprinkled water around her building and squeezed drops of her blood onto the ground near the trees, and the dreams grew worse. Every night she could hear the roar of the fire, smell the smoke, feel the heat, but always, she stood alone in the center of the blaze. Every morning, she woke to the echo of her mother’s curse. “I curse you; you will suffer despair and unhappiness for the rest of your life.”

She had always found her way alone. She went to college, had a satisfying job, dated wonderful men and a couple of women. But always, in the back of her mind, she fought her mother’s words. Fought to feel worthy.

Amelie sighed and stretched. She lost touch with time when she was in this mood. Her tea was cold, so she put on a pot to make more. She would have to log in to work soon. The lab had a new protocol to discuss, and she was tapped to write the final draft for approval. It was tedious work, but it absorbed her totally and gave her time away from the dark thoughts that, lately, had been nipping at her.

She enjoyed working from home, even if it meant a long day alone. She didn’t have friends outside of work; she could never figure out how to find them. After she left her mother’s church, she lost all the social connections that came with that life and never found replacements. Her colleagues found her reserved but friendly, and she occasionally joined them for after-work drinks or movies on the weekend. But she kept her mask on; she didn’t want to set herself up for the fulfillment of her mother’s prophecy.

That night, she spent more time than usual watching videos of dogs and cats to make herself laugh. She determined to take control. She wasn’t living the full life she wanted, but she had stayed true to herself, and that would have to be enough. She fell asleep on the couch. That didn’t save her from the nightmare, but she entered the dream with a new awareness.

She stood on the sidewalk next to the bakery and waited to be transported, like every other time, to the middle of a city square on fire. But instead of crying and wishing she could wake up, she called out. “Who’s there? Hello?” She opened her eyes wide and peered into the fire, hoping to see what was on the other side. She could feel the heat on her face. The roar grew louder, but she stood her ground. She was finished with fear.

She awoke in the middle of the night, standing on her deck looking out at the street below, and shivering in her bare feet and nightgown. A homeless man stared up at her as if she were as crazy as he was. Embarrassed, she hurried back inside. Her feet and hands and nose were freezing.

The next morning, she called in sick and went online looking for information about dreams and sleepwalking. A webpage dedicated to lucid dreaming claimed to have answers, and she reached out for more information. But she felt restless, needed to move, get out of the apartment. She’d always found physical research soothing, so she bundled up and headed to the library.

She spent the whole day reading about the history of dreams and prophecies and that night, fell asleep with much worse images than fires. Flying bugs with men’s faces and hordes of zombies with boils and rivers of blood raced through her head. They were so absurd they were funny.

A man from the website called her the following day and invited her to stop by their meeting. They were close—a couple of blocks away at the community center. Amelie hesitated. The last thing she wanted was to join another religious group. But she was getting desperate; she needed sleep.

That weekend she braved the cold and her trepidation and walked to the center. Several young people and a few her own age, congregated in small, hushed groups and engaged in animated chatting stood outside. A tall blond man approached her.

“You must be Amelie,” he said. As soon as he did, everyone stopped talking and looked over at her. She blushed and pulled back her hand. “This was a bad idea,” she smiled but turned to walk away.

“Oh, I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, we are all eager to meet you, I promise, we don’t bite, please, join us.” Amelie looked into his eyes. They were kind, so unlike the pastor or her mother. Amelie let him pull her toward them as the small groups coalesced into a single group of twenty people and followed them inside.

“This is Martha, and Clyde, and Kathy, and Aaron, and…” He called out everyone’s names, and Amelie forgot them instantly, but nodded politely. They all sat in a circle of chairs. Amelie expected the chair to be stiff—it wasn’t. She sank into the cushions and relaxed a little.

The man—he introduced himself as Bartholomew—called the meeting to order. “Welcome everyone. Thank you for coming and thank you Gladys for bringing cookies and Kevin for the coffee. Tonight, we have a visitor. She’s been having disturbing dreams, and she would like to understand them.”

Amelie flushed and smiled, crunching the half of a cookie still in her mouth and wishing she could crawl under the table. But she was here, and she was working on her second cookie, so she couldn’t just leave.

“Amelie, would you like to describe your dream?” asked Bartholomew. They all turned expectantly toward her.

“Um, well, yea, I…” her words came out in a scratchy whisper. She took another breath and gulped down some coffee. “Sorry, I’m not used to talking to large groups of strangers.”

“Oh, don’t worry about this group dear, most of us are introverts and this is a safe space,” said Gladys.

Amelie described her dream. As she talked, she noticed that the room was getting warmer and the dark walls were moving closer. She heard music; haunting, soft, like something ancient.

She was back in the fire, only instead of being alone, the group formed a semi-circle around her. One of them reached out to touch it, and the fire changed from red to blue to white, then froze into ice sculptures. Amelie felt the cold on her face. “Wha’, how?”

“Isn’t this what you wanted? To have your dream interpreted, understood?” asked Bartholomew. “This is how we do it, we interact with the symbols, reduce their power, and we’ll study what it means when you feel safe.”

“I want it to go away. I don’t care what it means, only to be free of the dream and the curse, the prophecy that spawned it,” said Amelie.

“Only you can defeat a curse dear,” said an older woman.

“How. Tell me how.”

“What is it, what is this prophecy you are so keen to get rid of?” asked Bartholomew.

“My mother died recently, she cursed me when I was young because I rejected her religion, then she kicked me out of the house. I thought I had put that all behind me until the dreams started. They are relentless, the same night after night.”

“You fear that if your mother’s curse comes true then somehow this dream will happen to you?” asked the woman sitting next to her.

“Do you know where the fires are?” asked Bartholomew

Before she could answer, Kevin shouted; “I know, I know where this is!” Eyes still closed, he sat forward and said, “This is downtown, near Town Center. There’s a homeless encampment here.”

Amelie was suddenly transported back into the community center, sitting in the comfy chair surrounded by the group of strangers. “What does it mean?” she asked, she wiped tears from her cheeks.

“I think you’ve been given a gift,” said Bartholomew. “Let’s go there, now. Let’s see if we can make sense of it.”

Bartholomew led them down to the corner bus stop. There were only two other passengers sitting in the dark behind the driver, where the lights from the back cast shadows. It was surreal, like an Edward Hopper painting; as if they were on a bus passing the café in Nighthawk.

She turned to Bartholomew. “Is this real? Or are we still dreaming?” she asked him.

“No, this is real. I know, I feel it too; floaty …” he waved his hand to take in the seats around them. “…the dim light, the washed out colors, it’s like a dream because we are on a quest together.”

They traveled in silence, all wide awake but wrapped up in their own thoughts. Amelie wondered again that she might have traded one cult for another, but she couldn’t walk away. They were weird, but curious and kind.

Once downtown, they exited the bus in a quiet line. The area Kevin recognized was a few blocks away. It was cold, and their breath made white clouds as they walked up a hill from the stop to their destination. Lights flickered like tongues of fire on the side of a dark wall across the street, and Amelie broke into a run, with the others following close behind her.

And there she was, in the place from her dream. The fire hadn’t engulfed the square, but a small one was gathering in one of the tents—the occupant had started a fire on their camp stove for warmth and fallen asleep. They ran to it, yelling for people to wake up.

Soon, most of the encampment was awake and helping to pull out the family—a man and two young children. Someone called 911, and soon EMTs were there to attend to the man’s burns.

The children were lucky to be unhurt, but Amelie wondered what was going to happen to them. Where was the rest of their family, and how was it she lived in a world that allowed these little ones to be cold and homeless?

She looked around at the other tent-city people, their dark, dirty faces—lined with the worry that comes with being hopeless. She recoiled from their despair at first, her greatest fear. A little one came up to her and tugged on her coat. She bent down to hear the child whisper, “Thank you.” Amelie kneeled and gathered the child in her arms. “You’re welcome, you’re safe now,” she whispered back.

And in that moment, she knew how to break the curse. She smiled to herself as the freedom she’d felt all those years ago when she first left her mother’s house, welled up inside her once again.

Bartholomew was watching her, his eyes wide and serious. Her heart was pounding as she made her way through the crowd and stood before him. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. He walked with her in her dream, and she was better for it.

From that night on, Amelie never had another nightmare or gave her mother or her mother’s curse another thought.

A year later, after preparing breakfast for her husband and newest foster child, Amelia sat with the quiet and a hot cup of tea in front of the picture window of her new home, bulging with her first baby and full of wonder at the twists and turns of her life. She gazed out the window at the gray overcast day and the naked trees and the gently falling snow and watched the five crows who made her yard their home. They never seemed to stop moving. They chased each other up and down the tree, swooped to capture a bug on the ground and back up again to sit on the highest branch and groom their partners.

Amelie stepped out onto the front porch and threw out their favorite, a handful of Cheerios and peanuts. One of them hopped up onto the newel post to thank her, and she bowed her welcome. As she turned to walk back inside, she placed both hands on her stomach, and like she did every day, recited her blessing: “May you know joy and peace, may you live in the sunshine of your own making, may you love and be loved, may you find your own way always knowing the way home.”