Come Josephine in Your Psychic Machine

(Sorry in advance for the longer-than-usual post, but a promise is a promise...)
In honor of the ten-year anniversary this month:

Her name is Josephine and in north central West Virginia her psychic status remains legendary. (She may be dead now, if women of her power ever die…I don't know and would prefer to think of her as alive and kicking, if you don't mind.) For many of my Morgantown years, she remained a theoretical mysticism, only spoken of in third-hand accounts. To add to her intrigue, she had no advertisements for her services and you only got her phone number through personal references.

I'd always heard rumors she did private home readings, so when a brand new friend invited me across the Pennsylvania state line to a "party with Josephine" I breathlessly shared my enthusiasm. We made the trek with several other excited girls only to discover the address and directions led to an empty house, fully furnished but certainly unoccupied on that date. We drove home with a palatable disappointment.

My life went on, of course, always nagged by my unfulfilled psychic visit. Part of my routine became to peruse the pocket books in the supermarket checkout. Each month there would be new installments to decode your dreams and astrologically decipher your life and I ate it up.

One early spring night I visited the all-night grocery with a potential suitor (we'll call him "Dave" because that's his name) who had taken to cooking savory dishes after midnight. I looked at those tiny books along the aisle and wondered out loud at my supernatural fascination. While Dave paid the bill, the customer in front of him looked over at me and mentioned out-of-the-blue, "I just came from Josephine tonight. Do you want her number?" He then pulled out a coupon card from Garfield's restaurant, wrote that long-coveted phone number on the back and handed it to me, dumbfounded, in the check-out line.

Strangely enough, I did not call that number right away. That night I mulled it over with Dave and pondered the reasons I wanted that psychic vision. What did I want to hear? For what did I search? Days and weeks and months later, I still reached for those answers and left the card in my planner, a daily reminder of that for which I both longed and feared.

The spring turned to summer, which flew into fall. The circle of friends I had adored so much had broken into fragments and scattered, not by my choice but certainly to my advantage. Still, my little life started to feel foreign a bit lost.

One night, while under the influence of Molson Golden and pure adrenalin, my new roommate and I decided to finally call Josephine on the phone and make an appointment. Why that time? I can't say, except that whatever Josephine told to me could certainly not disappoint. At this particular low point, you could say I had the most open mind ever.

Josephine answered on the first ring and informed me I would be coming on Monday at 6:00. No negotiations or wrangling. No directions. I'd call one half hour before I left my home on Monday to find out how to get there. I'd bring someone with me, of course. I hadn't told her the appointment was for two.

So, I called her Monday afternoon and got the directions. My roommate and I drove the twenty or so miles to find a small residential home, where we entered a welcome, warm kitchen. It smelled like it looked: a grandmother's house, all electric heat and remnants of food and soft surfaces. A middle-aged lady sat at the round kitchen table and told us she had a standing appointment with Josephine every week. Josephine had predicted all the major mine disasters in the town, a neighbor's husband's death, and any births and deaths on the typical horizon. Sit, she told us. We were in for a treat.

Josephine's bedroom door opened and she summoned me inside. She stood barely five feet tall hunched over. She had gray hair in an old-lady frizz on her head and wore a calf-length housecoat and slippers. When I see the Oracle in The Matrix movies, I picture Josephine, with only the ethnicity swapped.

She motioned me toward a card table and metal folding chair. Josephine handed me a deck of playing cards, directed me to sit, and told me to shuffle and place them, face down, into four piles.

I formed my four, fateful piles. Then, she turned card after card after card and began to lay out my life's plan, as she saw it. A half hour later, I left a vastly different girl.
***
The details of her reading intrigue to this day. While on an early date with my eventual husband Scott, I realized he was a "dark, handsome man from my past" just as I'd been warned one would try to contact me. Josephine had told me I'd be married or engaged within a year of that reading, that I'd likely marry someone "a little above me" in terms of money or education (since I do not prefer a "caretaker" role) and that he'd likely be named William, yet use an alternate moniker. So when I became engaged to William Scott less than a year from the psychic visit, it seemed spooky to say the least.

A great deal has already materialized in ten years – my move south, my career switch, my additional education, the marriage, an increased financial state. I still think all the time of my visit – me, with my "long, happy lifeline." I wonder if I'll ever meet that third child of whom she spoke (there were three kids in my lifeline, not all of them mine; same with the two marriages; Scott does have two kids from his first marriage, you know…)

Over the years, Scott has grown to worry about my turning right in the rain or mist (because "that is it" she warned) even though he maintains an outward skepticism. Yes, Josephine does play a role to this day.

These past ten years only solidified my belief in her truth. And also in my belief that nothing beats a good story – especially if it's a story about a seemingly truth-telling psychic around Halloween.

So what if it did take me years to get her number? It was well worth it, I'd say.