Page 2 of Divine Oaths

“You know you owe me back pay, right?”

It was a low blow, sure. But I was desperate.

“First, you come in late. Then you try to pawn something off instead of starting your shift. And now this?” Gus scoffed.

“You’re the one who makes the schedule.” And it wasn’t like this was my only job at the mall. In the afternoon, I’d head down to Louisa’s psychic stall, and people there paid way more for readings than Gus ever did for my hourly wage.

I held out my hand, trying to give more “savvy negotiator” than “desperate beggar.” But the gloves I wore said otherwise. The elbow-length fabric was riddled with holes, a reminder that even as I tried to sell my mother’s set, my own clothes were deteriorating rapidly.

“I’ll take the back pay. And eight hundred for the set.”

Gus laughed. “If you want to quit, Sianna, you can just say so.”

“I’d rather you fire me. I need the benefits.”

“You’re part-time.”

“Which you should be paying me overtime for. But do I say anything to the state when you don’t?”

We did this dance every time I tried to sell my stuff to him; he’d pretend it was worthless, and then I’d remind him that if it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t be selling half of what he did at the prices he charged.

“I need more than just your old stage name and some vague information to sell this,” Gus said. “Where was the fabric woven? How long ago can you date it? Is it original, hand-dyed, or one of those cheap factory reproductions?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Fine,” I said.

Then I unrolled the sleeve of my gloves, pulling them off entirely before reaching for the two-piece set with my bare hands.

The burnt flesh of my fingertips brushed along the waxy fabric, lightly but just enough that I could still see Gus standing in front of me, even as in my mind, a vision of the past came to life.

The world around me spun into a spectrum of color and time. Silver veins caked against the back of my eyelids and a burst of cold gnawed at my cheeks as the images of the past raced through my mind. My view of the present eroded completely, like a thin layer of film falling over my eyes.

It was jarring channeling my powers, even after all these years since the fire at Westfield—when they’d first awakened.

Most psychics would take your hand, trace the lines of your palm, and claim to see into the threads of time. Yet unlike them, I wasn’t a charlatan. I didn’t rely on the whims of Ouija boards, spirits, or lesser gods. Through touch alone, I could access the lifelines of a person or thing, living or dead. I could even control how long and how often my visions happened. All because of that fateful day of my Westfield audition, after a fire tore through the auditorium. I lost everything: my parents, my connection to music, my hopes for my future. And most of the money was gone too, squandered away by my parents rather than placed in a trust. The only things I gained were these strange abilities to see into lifelines through touch, and the permanently scarred and burnt skin on my fingertips.

As I touched the printed fabric, the sustained contact allowed me to see the last person who had held it. In this case, that was a past version of me, shoving the two-piece set in my canvas book bag as I left my aunt’s home for Center City Mall that morning. I delved back to two weeks earlier, when Louisa had first come across the set in her attic. Folded within the set, she had found an addendum to my acceptance to Westfield University—the first of many I’d received over the years.

Sianna Grace Adu,

I’m writing to you upon learning of the tragic news of the passing of your family. We here at Westfield send our deepest condolences. I’ll keep this letter brief, as I’m sure you’ve heard enough from strangers who couldn’t know or understand the extent of your grief. I spoke with the Board. Requested it of them, actually. They’ve decided that we are able to extend your acceptance to Westfield. If within the next five years you determine that you would like to attend, the Board will be holding your spot, your scholarship, and your place among Westfield’s garden of lilies.

Yours truly,

A concerned member of the Board of Westfield University

The first of the letters had been handwritten, and the official notices from Westfield came not long after.

It’s your last year of the extension, Aunt Louisa had said before tossing the letter on a stack that had built up over the years. Are you sure you don’t want to attend? You don’t have to come to Rhode Island with me. But going to Westfield would be better than staying here by yourself.

I pulled against the invisible threads of time in my head, venturing deeper into the past to when my mother, wearing the two-piece set, had taken a six-year-old me to my first piano recital. The sight of her, even simply in my own mind, choked me up.

The vision unfolded like a film reel rewinding at triple speed the more I retreated.

In my mind, a scene played out of my mother, fresh in her youth in the ’90s, buying the dress during a trip back home to Ghana. At the vendor stall, she’d met my father, an African American student studying abroad for the summer.

Time rewound more, to the moment the top part of the set had been sewn together in the capable hands of a local seamster. He’d been trained in the craft of weaving kente only to find himself selling Ankara dresses to foreigners as the wax prints surged in popularity. I watched him work, muttering softly to himself about the foreigners who were convinced that the Dutch connections to the cloth outweighed its other origins, from its Indonesian batik heritage to the artistry of the Indigenous Africans who had crafted a language into its pattern work.