Anna, Waiting by Tracy Amond

I'll start us off. I wrote this piece Summer 2004 after an interesting encounter in Jackson Square.

Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project
tcamond@cox.net

Anna is in Jackson Square past her bedtime. She has big round eyes and angelic blonde curls and tells me straight up that Draco is not her father.

“He’s not my dad. I don’t have one.”

Draco’s table is elaborately furnished: black and white cloth, Runes, candles, hunks of crystal, and, of course, his well-worn cards. He is insincere and seems bored with his own invention of himself. I chose him from among the other readers for the anger I saw in him earlier, as girls from a church youth group stole his potential customers with their “Free Psalm Reading” table. He was angry when I snapped a picture of George sitting at the table while a teenage girl read the Psalm he chose and wrote down his prayer requests. I smiled over at Draco.

“Quite misleading, isn’t it,” he says.

“Maybe so, but clever,” I shoot back. He doesn’t laugh. He glares at me and then at the girl.
I tell him I’ll be back later for a reading and he rolls his eyes. “I promise,” I say. He glares.
I return after dinner that evening and he is surprised that I have kept my promise. Jackson Square is not crowded; most of the tourists are at supper or in bars. The river provides a slight breeze, and St. Louis Cathedral frowns down upon those of us dabbling in the darker side of mysticism.

Draco introduces me to Anna and says that she is his apprentice, Lady Gaseous. She collapses in great peals of laughter, in between which she confesses, “I farted on him!”

“Did you really?”

“I did! He threw me over his shoulder and I farted right in his face.”

I look to Draco, who nods solemnly. He tells me to cut the cards three times and place my stack of choice on top. He begins turning them over, looks hard at me for a moment, then instructs Anna to sprinkle a red, sandy substance around the perimeter to cleanse the negative forces. From the way he looks at me, I guess I am the negative force.

Anna takes her apprenticeship seriously, sprinkling the red substance, then walking the circle counter-clockwise. Then the child in her takes over, and she walks faster and faster until she is running around the table and Draco says, “Anna, hon, chill.” I assure him that she’s not bothering me. She is the real story here, not the angry tarot card reader who cannot muster up the energy to dazzle me with his powers or at least his ability to hustle a country girl out of twenty bucks. At first I think he is coy or trying to act cool, but then I realize that he is genuinely indifferent—to the cards, to me, and especially himself.

“Where’s your mama?” I ask Anna.

“Working.”

“Where?” I press. Draco turns over more cards.

“In the Quarter,” he answers for her.

“It’s not what you think,” she says quickly.

“How old do you think she is?” Draco asks. Anna looks straight into my eyes, as though she’s sending me the answer.

Without hesitation I say, “Nine.”

“Exactly,” says Draco, placing a smooth pink stone on three cards he has just dealt.

Anna beams at me. “You’re quite perceptive,” she says.

“You’re quite intelligent.”

“Yes, I am,” she confirms.

Draco loses a layer of indifference long enough to remember that his payment (or donation, he calls it) is at stake and re-engages me with tales of how I’ll be traveling soon unexpectedly and then moving to that place. How a colleague is going to give me a large sum of money, and how I’ll change jobs due to sexual harassment.

I feign interest in these predictions as Anna sneaks away weaving rapidly among the row of tables like a mouse in a maze. Draco tells me I’m affectionate and indecisive.

When he’s done and I’ve donated more than I know I should, Anna produces two large red plastic cups. “Where’s the penny?” she asks and stares deeply into my eyes. Without breaking our gaze, I point to the left cup.

“This one.”

She dumps the penny out, looks at me mysteriously and says, “You’re extremely focused.”

Draco takes the cups from her. “My turn,” he says, and Anna turns her back to him. He puts the penny in the left cup. “Now,” he says. Anna turns to face the cups, staring solemnly between Draco’s eyes.

After a long pause, she points silently to the right-hand cup. Draco turns it over, empty, and Anna stomps her foot. “Do it again,” she commands, and turns her back.

Draco looks at me, rolling his eyes but halfway smiling. He puts the penny back in the left cup and tells Anna to turn around. She stares between his eyes again, longer this time.

“She’s really trying,” I say.

“She’s trying too hard,” he says, as though there really is a trick to knowing which cup the penny is in.

Anna chooses the right-hand cup again, and when she discovers she’s wrong, storms off before returning for one more try. This time Draco winks at me and hides the penny under a card on the table, holding up two empty cups for Anna, who repeats her routine of gazing into his forehead. She chooses the left-hand cup, and when Draco shows her that it’s empty, she grabs the other cup out of his hand, seeming to know that he cheated her. She throws the cups at him and flops down into her chair, pouting.

I reach into my backpack and hand her a dollar.

“For me?” She’s immediately back to her exuberant self.

“You’re an excellent apprentice,” I say.

She looks over her shoulder at the iron gate surrounding the park. “Come with me,” she commands, and takes me to the steps. She looks around, then points down to a nickel that I can see is glued to the step.

“Pick up this nickel,” she says.

I bend down and pretend to struggle at removing it. “It’s stuck. I can’t move it.”

Anna looks immediately dejected. “You are not the chosen one.”

“No, I guess I’m not.” I am truly sorry that I can’t pick up the coin for this little child of the Square.

“Don’t worry,” she assures me. “One day he will come. He will come and release this coin.” She is suddenly animated. “I will hold a crystal ball and he will gaze into it, and when he does I will have all of his power and I will be taken up,” and she raises her arms to the hot night sky, her fingers dancing wildly, her eyes shining like twin flames.

I bid her goodnight and leave Anna there on the steps, staring at a nickel filled with hope.