Storytelling

Heeb‘s critically acclaimed Storytelling series presents Jewish stories from an ever-changing crew of performers across the country. We now give you Heeb _Storytelling in its online incarnation. Check back here each Thursday for a new story. This week’s installment is “Danny” by Matt Passet._

“It’s going to rain on your birthday, Bernard,” Maureen said to me. There was no dramatic build-up. No getting into a trance. No crystal ball. Nothing. Just an older woman sitting across from me, sipping a cup of tea in what I’m sure she referred to as her “reading room,” the walls covered with overflowing book shelves, telling me what the weather would be like in several months. I was unimpressed. Dressed in navy blue pants, a matching blouse and matching blue sweater, Maureen looked like my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Fleisher, who would forever be in my memory wearing navy pants and a dark blue cardigan on top. I wondered if the two were related. I wondered if this was a sign.
“That’s the best you got? It’s gonna rain on my birthday? Big deal.”
She smiled. “That’s just the first thing that came to me, dear. There’s plenty more on the way.”

I thought my tea would have started to cool down by now. It felt as if I’d been sitting there for an hour. I took a sip and burnt my tongue. Not cool yet. The reading had barely just begun. I explained everything to her on the phone. The skepticism, the fear, the lingering questions. She was understanding. Said she’d heard it all before. Very natural reaction, she said. And she told me she could help.

“We see a young man. He knows you.” I thought she might have accidentally referred to herself as “we.” I asked about it. I didn’t want to miss anything. I didn’t want to be left in the dark. “I’ve been joined by some spirits,” she responded. A month ago, I’d have thought this was a bunch of shit, but somehow it now made sense to me. “I will sometimes say ‘we,'” she said, “And sometimes, I will say ‘I,’ but it’s not necessarily me speaking. I know this is somewhat complex, but try to stay with me. At times, the spirits will actually take over my body—my voice, my lips, my mind. ‘I’ does not always mean me. You follow, yes?”
“Yes,” I responded.

My hair was still saturated from the rain. Every few minutes, a drop of water would slowly descend my cheek, like a tear. I hadn’t cried yet. Not since Danny died. Five days and not a single tear. But my face was always wet. The rain was continuous. It’s hard not to see something in that. Everything feels like a symbol for something else now. When I was a younger, they told us that when it rained, God was crying. That stuff sticks with you. I used to think about God a lot then. They said I should talk to him. I did. “Take care of my family,” I asked. “Keep my mom and dad safe,” I said. “Make sure Danny is ok.” After my father died, God and I had our falling out. I didn’t speak to him again until this week, and then he began to cry.

Maureen must have seen something in my face. “I don’t want you worrying anymore, all right?” she said. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”
“I know,” I said.
“We’re going to do everything we can, but you’re going to have to start by telling us his name.”
“Danny.”

Danny wasn’t such a bad kid. He just did bad things. And he would be remembered for the last one. The whole country read about it in the papers. He even got his picture on the cover of a magazine—a picture of Danny standing behind a birthday cake, looking down at the candles and smiling. I took the picture of him at his 12th birthday party. Below the photograph, on the magazine cover, there was a caption in red, “Murdered?” it said. A question mark. Was Danny murdered?

Immediately after he died, my mind started to work overtime. I tried to put the pieces together in an attempt to form some sort of answer. It was a puzzle I needed to solve. Was it my fault for buying him the toy gun? No, not really. Should the police be blamed? Could they have known that the gun was fake? That he was only 13? Probably not. Should my mother have trusted him to go out at night alone? Did she know where he was? Did she let him watch the wrong movies? The wrong TV shows? Should he have read more books? Could I somehow find a way to pin this all on her? No, it wasn’t her fault. And on the third day, as I sat by a window in Danny’s bedroom, I saw a cloud and tried to find something in it. Some sort of sign from Danny. I couldn’t, and I came upon one final question that has been with me ever since. The question that brought me to Maureen, Communicator to Those Who Have Crossed Over, the last person I ever thought I would sit across from, and I was asking the last question I ever thought I would ask.
“Is Danny in Heaven?”
Maureen looked down. I tried to prepare myself for the answer I had feared. But why was I so nervous? What did this old woman know? Certainly, she wasn’t actually communicating with the dead. That idea was preposterous. This was all a show. Smoke and mirrors is all this was. Danny’s gone and I would have to accept it and I would have to move on. Once someone is dead, they are dead. They are no more. You can speak to them, but they can no longer speak to you. This was bullshit. I should have left. I should have stood up and walked out. I should have gone home. I should have mourned and started to live the rest of my life. But I couldn’t move. Maureen stared deeply into my eyes, as if she were using my pupils to see her own reflection.
“I am,” she said. “I am.”

What do you think?