35th avenue and Greenway road is the epicenter of my old neighborhood. At this intersection you could find a Shell gas station, a Wendy's, a shop that sold inexpensive mattresses and a liquor store. The liquor store is where a lot of us from the area would congregate. Across from the liquor store and caddy corner from the shop that sold inexpensive mattresses lived my friend David Nuñez.
David was a small guy with a big personality. Everyone seemed to love him. He also had a big family and everybody at our school seemed to be one of David's cousins. David Nuñez's mom was a tax accountant and she took advantage of her prime location on the corner by converting the front of her home into an office where people from the neighborhood would come to make sense of their taxes and unravel their personal financial goings-on. David's mother installed dark tinted glass windows and commercial glass and steel doors. Outside she hung a large light-box sign that read "Maria's Tax Service" so that passers-by would be privy to the types of services offered inside her home-office.
When David and I were both in the 10th grade, he and his family moved out of their corner house with the converted office. David and I shared Mr Streeter's sophomore American History class and I remember him leaving well because his last day was conveniently the very same day we had an exam on the events leading to America's declaration of independence from the U.K.
It was a little more complicated to find tenants for David's old house due to the customization. Whoever moved in would need to have a home business, like David's mom. If they didn't that front space, with it's large tinted commercial windows and office carpet would be wasted or at least very awkward for normal home purpose.
3 months later the corner house came in use again. The new residents did, in fact, have a home business. It was my sister, Mandi, who first alerted me to the presence of our new neighbors. The house being on 35th and Greenway, and that corner being an epicenter the way it was, my sister walked by the house every day on her way to the stop where she'd wait for the bus to take her to her job at the mall. When the new tenants began to move into David Nuñez's old house my sister took notice that their's seemed to be a matriarchal arrangement and she described to me the plump woman who appeared in charge. Mandi described to me how she wore a colorful floral-print moo moo & wrapped her head in a turban similar to those worn by the Sikhs of the Indian subcontinent. She was also careful to specify that our new neighbors were not Indian or Middle Eastern or foreign at all, but rather as Anglo as she or I.
The next day when they replaced the light-box sign that read "Maria's Tax Service" with one that read "Psychic/Palm Reader" my sister called me from the bus stop to tell me about the peculiar development on the corner. The new sign used a font similar to the type on David's mom's sign but the new sign appropriated a graphic of an Egyptian Pyramid with a cycloptic eye in the center, like on a one dollar bill. On the tinted front windows the fortune teller applied acrylic decals, listing additional services; chakra alignment and something called "Reiki" among them.
My sister and I were raised absent from religion or spiritual faiths. We weren't atheists or secular humanists, per se, we were just unexposed to the world beyond the tangible and scientific. This generally worked to our advantage as adolescents. What I mean is that we got to sleep in on Sunday as teenagers.
My sister was 17 when she watched our new neighbors, with their claims of clairvoyance, set up shop in that corner house. With no spiritual instruction to help her decide whether these New Agey claims set forth by the woman in David's old house held water or not, her curiosity got the best of her.
The next day she left work 15 minutes early with a failsafe plan to test our new neighbors psychic abilities. "I'm going to stand in front of her house and think as hard as I can" she said "If she's a psychic, she'll sense it and come out for me".
That day Mandi did just that. On her way to work at the mall she stood in the fortune tellers driveway. She thought and willed for her to come out so hard it was just left of an audible scream. She thought and willed and concentrated in her driveway. After 15 minutes my sister's bus was in sight of the intersection and the glass and steel commercial doors remained unopened. My sister walked from the fortune tellers driveway and boarded the bus to her job at the mall selling costume jewelry and hair accessories, having learned a lesson in Universal taxation and Earthly representation that could have never been taught to her by Mr. Streeter or David Nuñez's mom.
