The Hiccups

The Oracle Lives Upstairs

The house and Garden Street was a brown place, one in which the residents lived in sepia where the roof leaked rust-coloured water and dreary mole drew quivering lines along the baseboards. The house was falling apart: the wallpaper peeled at the corners, the front door handle frequently came off in my hands and when I reported this to the landlord he was unwilling to pick up a hammer or fiddle with a screwdriver. He told me in his broken English that he'd never do a hands turn.

My flat was on the first floor of the house, 1A, next to Mrs. Mag, 1B. The main floor had a lean-to with a sloped roof which was the staircase to the second floor that had three more flats. A second set of stairs, shorter and steeper than the first, led up to the remaining flat in the attic which was affectionately referred to as 'the eye' for the wide quarter circle-shaped window featured in the unit and for the woman who once lived there, Mrs. Onoprijenko, or Mrs. O.

Better watch ourselves the Gypsy is rousing spirits again. This is what the residents of the house said about Mrs. O whenever she skulked about the house at night and the foundations would creak and shudder. Mrs. O was not, in fact, a gypsy but there was something about the whispering looseness of her clothes, the black cataract of her hair the wind chime jangle of jewelry that accompanied her every movement that made one think of caravans and campfires.

There was no doubt that she was odd. I admit that Mrs. O's nervous energy and her slight violent gestures frightened me. Once I thought I heard her scream in the middle of the night and so I hurried out of the apartment and into the hallway. I took hold of the banister and leaned over, calling out for her in an insistent tone. I waited to hear footsteps rush towards me but instead I heard footsteps walking above. I thought I heard a voice ask for help, carried down wards by a draught that swept down the staircase. I followed the voice upstairs to 'the eye' and found the door ajar. Mrs. O appeared dressed in an iridescent fabric, her long black hair fell loose around her shoulders; a rather round, pink face out of which two small dark watery eyes peered out. She stepped towards me, her head tilted slightly to one side, sympathetically, and both arms outstretched. I moved forward and nudged the door opened further with my hand. I mumbled something as I stepped over the threshold nervously.

"I thought I should come up and see if you are okay," I said. Mrs. O told me to watch my step and then leaned against the door which slammed shut behind her. I stepped further into the apartment and looked around, gobsmacked. By the heaps of clutter towering in every corner. From where I stood I saw a baby carriage, brakes and hose and other gardening implements. A rusted bicycle, a glass chandelier left unhung and perched on top of a bookcase. A dressmaker's dummy, a plaster bust of Elvis Presley, a kerosene stove placed precariously close to stacks of

Paperbacks, guards of silk and cotton; several broken clocks an American flag and piles of tapestries and rugs. I entered the cramped living room and, seeing no other chairs, stood as Mrs. O sank into the corner of a love seat. She exhaled and then she opened her arms to each side exposing the dimpled skin of her rubbery upper arms. She let her head roll back onto the cushions, her eyes were closed and she breathed in noisily for a few seconds then her eyes popped open and she lifted her head.

"Sit, sit. Are you breathing," she said, "you look like you're not breathing. Always breathe, chicken, it's what has gotten me through life.

"Thank you," I said. I sat down opposite her grinding my back into the corner of the love seat. I noticed a pack of tarot cards fanned out in front of Mrs. O. The cards were face-down on the coffee table.

"You have this extraordinary energy," said Mrs. O. "Whenever you come into the house I can feel you even though I don't know you. It's as if the whole house contracts a little when you move around it." Mrs. O's expression grew distant for a moment and then suddenly she clicked back to life. "If you want a reading go ahead and cut the pact with your left hand." And so I did.