Somebody's Mother

The psychic scam that helped me get to where I was going.❤️

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A few weeks ago, Kevin, Raffi, and I were heading home from a friend’s event in Chelsea. As we were walking toward 7th Avenue, I saw it: a fluorescent “Psychic” light beamed in the window of a storefront.

Photo by our downstairs neighbor’s daughter.

I hadn’t clocked this particular sign in almost 15 years. I’m not even sure I’d thought about it until that moment, nearly 6 p.m. on a gloomy Sunday, everyone getting cranky for dinner. But for some reason, Kevin noticed I was suspiciously distracted, even with the rain coming down steadier. “What’s the matter?” he asked as we headed toward the 2 train.

I pointed across the street, “I went to that psychic once when I was trying to get pregnant with Raffi,” I said. “And I think she scammed me out of $1k.”

I had never said that out loud before. To anyone.

“WHAT??” He said, looping his head around in his hood to face me. “Come again??”

We were getting on the subway, and I didn’t want to talk about it with Raffi in earshot. But when we got home, soggy coats and shoes off, a pot of soup heating up on the stove, and Raffi cozying up w/her favorite show, I told him the story.

After my third or fourth miscarriage, when Kevin and I were still living in our studio apartment on Atlantic Avenue, someone who had also struggled with this kind of loss told me that she’d gone to see a psychic. “She changed everything for me,” she wrote emphatically in an email. One of my dearest friends had connected us, someone I trusted (and still do). This woman had been one of her clients and apparently had always raved about this particular psychic. “Maybe she can help?” My friend had said to me. I knew her heart…and honestly, I could sense hers and everyone else’s helplessness in offering any comfort, guidance, or advice that would actually make a difference. The funny thing about failure is you gradually become open to ANYTHING…including a psychic at a storefront in Chelsea.

So, I connected with this woman I didn’t know and got the details of this clairvoyant or “healer,” as she described her, who allegedly had real gifts and a knack for helping people unblock their blocks. At that point, every grim phone call or meeting with a doctor cost as much as our rent, every paycheck instantly gobbled up by some test or treatment that had “a 54% success rate.”

Seeing a psychic in Chelsea really didn’t seem all that different.