Your Mother Knows...

by Mary King

It was right there in the window of the toy store; right there alongside the Travel Scrabble and Monopoly games: a Ouija board. God, her mother would have a fit if she even brought it into the house. Still, there it was with all the other games. That must surely mean that it was harmless, so harmless that a child could use it. Just a game. No big deal at all.

Jannie stared hard at the box in the window. She shifted from one foot to the other and jingled the coins in the pocket of her jeans. She had enough money saved up from her allowance and it was her money, after all, to do with as she pleased. Well, sort of, anyway.

Her best friend, Summer, gave her a sharp poke in the ribs. “Wake the hell up!” she said. “If you want it, get it and if not, then let’s go instead of standing here like a couple of freaks.”

Jannie frowned. Summer was right, of course — for Summer. Her parents let her do pretty much whatever she felt like doing anyway which made things so much easier. Her life was her own and if she wanted to buy a Ouija board or smoke a cigarette or even have a beer she didn’t have to worry about what her parents would say. She just did it.

Summer just couldn’t understand what it was like to have a mother who monitored your every move; someone who told you how to dress (like a dork), how to behave (like a little lady, i.e. dork), and who had to know where you were and who you were with every waking moment of the day. Summer would never know the intolerable misery of being kept a virtual prisoner by a tyrannical parent.

“C’moooonnn...” Summer groaned theatrically. “Just buy the goddamn thing and let’s go!”

Jannie suddenly heard her mother’s voice in her head: “When we curse, it makes the angels cry...” That decided her. She marched in, grabbed the box from the shelf, paid her money, and marched out again.

Later that night, as Jannie tried to concentrate on her homework, she thought of the Ouija board hidden way, way, way back in her closet. It would be so cool to use it now but the way her luck went, her mother would walk in on her and have a heart attack or something. And Jannie always seemed to get caught. It was a fact of her life that she could never get away with anything. Summer called it “parental telepathy” but how would she know anyway? She had a perfect life with parents who didn’t care what she did. Which, when you thought about it, was just as it should be because when a person reaches the age of fifteen, they are certainly mature enough to make their own decisions.

She sometimes wondered about her mother. Like, for instance, what kind of girl was she when she was Jannie’s age? Jannie knew from little things she had managed to overhear that her mother had “accepted Jesus into her heart” when she was in her twenties but Jannie wondered what she was like before that. Did she like to go out and have a good time with her friends? Did she laugh, dance, tell dirty jokes? Or was she, even back then, worried about always doing the right thing and going to church every Sunday, being a “good girl” and never, but never, taking the Lord’s name in vain? Jannie couldn’t even begin to imagine. Her mother always talked about making things better for Jannie than they had been for her. Jannie didn’t know what that meant. She’d asked her father once, long ago, but he had just raised his newspaper a little higher in front his face and said, “There are some avenues that are better left unexplored.” So that had been that.

Just as the hall clock began to chime the midnight hour, Jannie tiptoed to her closet and ever so quietly lifted out the Ouija board. She lit an unscented candle and turned out her light so that shadows danced on the walls and ceiling. With just the slightest feeling of apprehension, she carefully cut the shrink wrap and slowly opened the box. She sat gingerly on the edge of her bed and, balancing the board on her knees, placed her fingers on either side of the pointer.

And waited. And waited. Even though she was alone in the room, she felt a little silly. After all, what had she been expecting? Just as she was about to give up, the pointer moved a bit. At least she thought it did, but maybe it was just her imagination. But no, there it went again. It slid very slowly across the board, circling and circling as if searching for something. Jannie watched as the pointer moved, hesitated, and then paused on the H. Now, going a little faster, it went to the E, and in rapid succession the L and the L again and then the O. When it next moved to the J and then the A and N, Jannie caught her breath.

“Oh my gosh!” she said as the pointer started again. She watched in stunned silence as it moved to the F and then the O, L, L, O, W and stopped.

Before Jannie had a chance to wonder what it was that she was supposed to follow, the pointer began again. It spelled Y, O, U, R, M, O, T, H, E, R, S, C, O, U, N, S, E, L.

“Follow my mother’s counsel?” Jannie gasped. “My mother?” She felt an overpowering sense of outrage that now even the spirit world had decided to nag her. The pointer began to move again. M, O, T, H, E, R, K, N, O, W, S, B, E, S, T, it spelled.

With a cry of disgust, Jannie flung the board and pointer across the room, not caring if it made enough noise to wake the entire house. She blew out the candle, turned on her lamp, and sat staring at the Ouija board in dismay. If this was the best the spirits could do, then she didn’t want any part of it.

In the bedroom next to Jannie’s, her mother had heard the Ouija board crash against the wall. She pointed a finger in the direction of the windows and the curtains closed as if pulled by some invisible hand. A blink, and the picture on the far wall righted itself. Finally, she nodded at the bedside lamp which obligingly winked off. Satisfied, she eased herself between the covers. Her lips curved in a smile and she slept.