orma Parker was a mousey woman, not old yet but certainly not young. She had lived in her mother’s house all of her life. Her mother birthed eight children. The twins, John and Jacob, were her first born and died in infancy. Alan was the third born, oldest surviving, who had moved to Utah with a young wife years ago. Catharine, the fourth child, had felt a calling and had become a Christian missionary in parts unknown. Jeremy and Jason were another set of twins, the fifth and sixth children. They had quarreled irreconcilably, but both were lawyers living in Manhattan who had married on the same day women of the same age, hair color, and eye color. Margaret, the seventh child, had died moments out of the womb. Norma was the youngest of all of them, born when Jeremy and Jason were ten and her mother was already a middle-aged woman.
Mrs. Mary Mae Parker was fond of saying that after Norma’s birth she was never the same woman again. The labor of pregnancy, not to mention childbirth, so late in life was a burden to her, and she began complaining about it before she even knew she was pregnant.
“Joe,” she said (Joe being her husband), “I just don’t seem to feel well anymore. I swear, I am sick every day of my life these days!” She swore that she could tell the date of conception to a second, since for precisely 269 days, she felt sick, as well as tired and swollen and generally uncomfortable. The 270th and 271st days were spent in a sweating agony of labor, during which she openly cursed Joe and little Norman inside her (for she was certain this much trouble must be from a boy). When she lay back on her bed, exhausted and relieved, and was handed a little pink girl, Mary Mae did not feel sorrow for her mistake, since she had not recovered from her grudge against the small package.
“Well, I suppose we’ll have to call her Norma, then,” she said.
The grudge, though silent, was undying, and Norma spent most of her lifetime unconsciously aware that she must somehow make everything up to Mother. After recovering from her pregnancy, Mary Mae’s health generally began to decline. She was confined to her bed, and from the age Norma could toddle, the child took on a role of caregiver and bedside attendant.
Despite Mary Mae’s growing irritability, Norma loved her mother with a deep and undying devotion. In her girlhood, games and studies could not distract her from Mary Mae’s bedside. In young womanhood, no puppy love swept her off of her feet or out of her mother’s house.
Norma lived to comfort her mother, reading at her bedside, and fashioning needlework gifts for her pleasure. Inevitably, Mary Mae died, and Norma was left without occupation. She continued to live with her father, Joe, and keep the house in a mechanical way.
Six months after her mother’s death, odd things began to happen. It began with Norma awaking in the morning on the cold kitchen floor.
“Sleepwalking,” said Joe.
“N—no,” said Norma, “I couldn’t possibly!”
She began to lock her door at night, and found that it made no difference. She would awake on the kitchen floor. One morning, she found herself there amid a barrage of broken crockery. After that, the noises began. There were cracking sounds, rumblings, and crashes that Joe never seemed to hear. When Norma rushed to see what happened, she would find everything in place.
My mother was a natural storyteller. She knew Norma through a friend of a friend, and she learned all about her life and her problems. Once she had obtained the invitation for us to visit Norma as spiritual advisors, she excitedly chattered about the Parkers for days on end. She would insert descriptive detail whenever the mood hit her, and run off on tangents of speculation. My mother built up characters in her own mind and colored a picture of Norma Parker’s life that was cobbled together from everything she’d heard, mortared with her powerful imagination.
Resentfully, I listened to my mother’s chatter. I did not want, particularly, to be a spiritualistic medium. I did not want to go to Norma’s house. I figured that Norma was a sap, a martyr, a stupid woman.
I was supposed to go sleep over at a girl’s house, but my mother cancelled my plan in order to take me to Norma Parker’s house. I hated Norma Parker. I hated my own stupid mother.
I didn’t realize how emotionally purging the visit to Norma Parker would be.
Charlotte and Miriam Rowe came at Norma’s request. Miriam made a great show of wandering about the house, discussing emanations, clairaudience, and astral movement. Charlotte, rather moody and restless, followed along with a pouting expression on her face.
The three settled on a small sofa in the sitting room.
“What do you think?” asked Norma, anxiously. “Can you help me?”
“It is difficult to say,” said Miriam with much consideration. “There are definitely presences here.”
Charlotte kicked her heels strongly against the sofa.
“Charlotte,” said Miriam, “do not kick the sofa!”
“Go away, Mother!” Charlotte shouted.
“Charlotte!” said her mother, turning red.
Charlotte was staring blank-eyed in front of her. “Mother—Mother—Mother,” she repeated.
Miriam registered Norma’s intake of breath. “Your mother—she has passed on,” said Miriam. “It’s your mother Charlotte must be sensing.”
“Exorcise her! Get her out! Get rid of her!” shouted Charlotte. She fell off the sofa in hysterics. “Get her out! Get her out! Mother! Be gone Mother! Get out Mother! Mother must go! Mother must go!”
Miriam fell to Charlotte’s side, and Norma stood behind her, watching with wide eyes.
“Is she—?” asked Norma.
“Don’t worry,” said Miriam. “It’s the presence of the spirits. The spirit of your mother is here with you. She is hanging on, unable to let go.”
Charlotte let out an ear-piercing scream and echoed, “Let go!”
Miriam said, “We will need to help your mother pass on. This happens sometimes, when spirits are too attached to the material plane. She loves you so much.”
Norma smiled a very gratified smile.
Once Charlotte was calmed and settled in the kitchen with a bowl of fresh strawberries and cream, Miriam began unpacking her exorcism equipment. She had potions and concoctions of her own making, along with amulets, containers, and figurines. She spent hours writing and revising incantations, and worried over recipes for holy oils and incense. Miriam’s rites and rituals were her special devotion, and working through them, the sitter always felt a true accomplishment.
Meanwhile, Charlotte sat at the kitchen table, eating the strawberries and cream, feeling particularly calm and happy. The temper tantrum had purged her and soothed her. Her own anger at her mother subsided. Instead, her mind was taken with sweet strawberries.
When Miriam and Charlotte left, Norma was drained, completely empty.
“Remember,” Miriam said as her mantra of wisdom. “It is your duty to let your mother go. You must deny your daughterly feelings and force her away. Only this will allow her to pass on to the next spiritual plane.”
The noises and somnambulism ceased, and Norma Parker became a most verbal proponent of Charlotte’s amazing powers.
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