HOW I CAME TO THIS: PART ONE
A CHILDS UNSEEN GIFT
Dixie Yeterian, circa 2004

When I was four years old, Amy (the little girl who lived down the street) lost her doll carriage. As I listened to her mother, Mrs. Dunlap, and my mother discuss the mysterious disappearance of Amy’s doll carriage, I had an image of the carriage hidden in the brush on the vacant lot where we went to play ball and hide-and-seek. I rushed out of the house. A few minutes later, I triumphantly pushed the doll carriage into our living room. I expected to be praised for having found it. Instead, Amy’s mother yelled at me. “You stole it! I suspected you all along. You stole it!”

    “I didn’t,” I replied tearfully. “I just thought I knew where it would be.”
    “How did you know?” my mother asked.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “All of a sudden, I just saw it in my mind.”

Mrs. Dunlap’s face screwed up and her eyes bugged out in an almost amusing caricature of outrage. “You’ve wanted that pram ever since I bought it for Amy,” she screamed. “I heard you tell Amy you wished you had one like it. It’s bad enough that you stole it, it’s bad enough to be a thief, but now to stand here and lie!” I couldn’t logically explain how I’d known where the doll carriage was, and I had often expressed a desire for one like it. The more desperately I protested my innocence, the guiltier I looked. I turned and ran from the room. 

Ever since I can remember, I’ve known things that other people didn’t seem to know. My perceptions often confused and frightened me. Other people were often distressed and frightened by my insights, too. It wasn’t easy to be a child with intuitive awareness.

One day, I asked my Aunt Emma if she was going to go back to Oklahoma for her mother’s funeral. (I assumed that everybody went to Oklahoma if there was a death in the family. We’d made a number of trips there when members of my mother’s family had died.) It didn’t occur to me that Aunt Emma might not know about her mother’s death yet, nor did it occur to me to wonder how I knew about it. “You little monster!” she screamed. “I’m tired of your constant lying.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me into the kitchen where my mother was working and yelled, “Edna, do you know what this brat of yours just said to me?” 

My mother made me apologize to Aunt Emma.

Later that day, when she received the call telling her that her mother had died, Emma became hysterical. “You killed my mother!” she screamed at me. “You’re the spawn of Satan! You cursed her! You killed her! I just know it!”

My mother sent me to my room, more to get me away from Aunt Emma than as punishment, but I could tell by her expression that she was nearly as upset and bewildered as Emma. Later, she came in and talked to me. “Dixie,” she said. “I don’t know how you know these things. I don’t know yet if it’s a curse or a gift you’ve got. But you’re going to have to learn to be quiet about things you know about people.” But I didn’t yet know how to be quiet. I was a talkative child and probably more tactless than most children. As a result, my relatives, neighbors and schoolmates began to fear and even dislike me.

When I was five years old, a revivalist minister pitched his tent on a vacant lot at the edge of our small town. Everyone was excited. It was a pious, church-going community, and the citizenry loved nothing better than a good, rip-snorting sermon. The tent was filled to capacity every night for a week. On the last Sunday, we all dressed up in our finest to attend the morning service, which was to be the grand finale. The preacher delivered a soul-tearing sermon about the evils of painted women. He literally scared the hell out of the congregation. I think half of the people in town were “born again”.

My grandfather was the local Pentecostal minister, so it was only natural that the visiting preacher be invited to our home for Sunday dinner. My mother and most of the women crowded into the kitchen to fry chicken, make the coleslaw, the biscuits, and the heaping bowls full of mashed potatoes and gravy. The men gathered in the parlor, drinking iced tea and praising the preacher for his inspiring sermon. I sat in a corner, listening to the men, sinfully unaware of the importance of the occasion and trying to figure out a way to avoid having to set the table.

It occurred to me that the best way to evade work was to be unavailable. So I quietly arose and tried to sneak out of the room. As I passed the preacher, he uncrossed his legs and accidentally tripped me. He pulled me onto his lap and held me there. I squirmed frantically, trying to break free from his embrace. The preacher gazed into my eyes and exclaimed, “What a beautiful little angel face this is!”

I stopped squirming. I didn’t like the preacher, but I was shocked into silence by his having called me “angel face”. He was a man of God. It occurred to me that he might be seeing something that I wasn’t aware of. Maybe that freckle-faced, stringy-haired image I saw in my mirror was someone else. It also occurred to me that my mother wouldn’t call me to do chores as long as the preacher held me on his lap. So I sat there quietly, listening to their discussion of that morning’s service.

During a pause in the conversation, the preacher smiled at me benevolently and asked, “Did you enjoy the service this morning, honey?” I was afraid to answer him. I’d hated every minute of it. Because my grandfather was a minister, I had to attend church at least three times every week, and I’d never learned to enjoy wearing stiffly-starched dresses and sitting still on hard benches for hours at a time. But I couldn’t tell the preacher how I really felt, and I knew that lying to a man of God would be a terrible sin, so I chose not to answer his question. Instead, I asked: “Sir, does God forgive you for anything you do wrong if you really pray hard?”

“Yes, angel. God forgives even the most desperate of sinners.”
“Oh, good!” I exclaimed. “Then maybe he’ll forgive you for that painted lady you were with last night.”

Ever since I could remember, my mother had been pressuring me to stifle my intuitive nature. In this case, physical pressures were brought to bear, leaving red welts across my bottom. After that, I tried harder to squelch my perceptions, but things still popped out of me without any warning. I was usually just as shocked by them as the person I was speaking to.

My grandfather’s congregation tried to pray the demons out of me many times. They were certain that I was possessed. Throughout my childhood I was accused of imagining things, inventing stories, and downright lying.