The Knowing: Awake in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page B

inner knowing although I was a mere observer.
    I called this “
pictures”
behind my eyes, but others might say “prophetic visions” or “psychic visions” to describe the same thing. I didn’t know why I received
pictures
about some things and not others.
    After we moved from Angie’s neighborhood, I was still angry at my mother. It was Saturday morning and the sun was beginning to warm the chilly morning air. I sat perched on the cold cement steps that led to the second floor where we lived. Bent nearly in half, my cheeks planted firmly between my scabby kneecaps, I peered down between the steps and let a long tendril of spit slowly drip onto a delicate spider web that hung there. The vision began.
    Two women were sitting at a kitchen table talking and smoking cigarettes.
    Their cigarettes dangled with ash, their breath hot with coffee, and their hearts were heavy with judgment.  As this scene became clear to me, it was like I was an invisible ghost floating in the room and I knew what they felt and thought—like we were all connected—like we were one.
    “Can you believe it!?” exclaimed the first woman. “She is barely twenty one, not married, and on her second baby!”
    Somehow, I knew this woman’s name was Tanya. She wore cutoff jeans whose fuzzy trimmed threads circled her perfectly smooth and lightly tanned thighs.  She had a longish face that reminded me of a horse.
    “My god,” Tanya snorted, “My brothers would kill me!” she leaned her slender body forward and widened her pale brown eyes to exaggerate her point. “I mean they would kill me after they killed him of course.”
    Unfolding her long legs, she pushed back from the table.  She then made her way to the sink, and poured the coffee down the drain.  The small, dingy kitchen had sticky counters stacked with dirty dishes.
    Holly, the other woman at the round table, lifted a cigarette to her lips, pulled hard, and blew smoke towards the ceiling as she considered her response. “She has always been trash,” Holly commented.  “Always will be, I guess.”
    Holly was petite with delicate features and had the exotic look of a beauty queen.  She wore a homemade halter-top in the shape of a kerchief that was tied so tightly at her neck and back that it burrowed into her soft skin, leaving deep marks from the weight of her surprisingly large bosoms.
    “I mean,” Holly continued, “I didn’t even have sex until I was nineteen and even then Billy and I had already been together, what, two years?” Holly held up her tiny hand and showed two fingers, a testament to her virtue. Crushing out her cigarette, she leaned back.
     At that moment, I felt, her sweaty shoulder stick to the plastic chair. 
    She took a sip of coffee that was now cold, made a face and glanced proudly into her living room.  A tattered green floral couch and cheap knickknacks with dust covered neglect filled the room. 
    Holly was lying about her sexual past.  She told the truth about her relationship with Billy, but she had omitted the fact that she lost her virginity at age fourteen in a dark musty room to someone else, which no one knew about, including Billy. We all have our secrets.
     As the women continued to gossip, I knew they were talking about me, and although they were not my friends, I knew they were from somewhere in my life that was waiting. I lost all sense of time as the 3-D movie unfolded in my mind. I accepted what I saw without question or judgment. I didn’t fully grasp the meaning of what I had witnessed and, like any kid I quickly dismissed the event and returned to bitter thoughts about my mother. It wasn’t long after that day when the phone calls started between my parents.   
    “If you weren’t such a selfish prick,” my mother screamed into the phone, “none of this would have happened. Oh c’mon Dell,” she continued, “you don’t give a shit about these girls.”
    The accusations and bitter disputes went on for months until