Telling Fortunes in Phoenix

Sara

Tent City had been established in 1993 to ease overcrowding in the jail system. Often there were over two thousand people in Maricopa County awaiting trial and Joe Arpaio, then long running Sherriff of Maricopa County, had seen a way to keep these generally non-violent souls out of the expensive confinement mandated for convicted criminals.

He set up an outdoor holding cell on seven acres of county land down by the Dog Pound. Surrounded with cyclone fencing and patrolled by four to six armed guards, this great mass of unconvicted arrestees, with a sprinkling of minimum security convicts, sheltered from the sun under canvas awnings and bedded down in a series of tents and cots.

From June through October the thermometer usually recorded triple digits in the Valley of the Sun. In an attempt to cool the air, jailors hosed the tents and used giant fans to provide evaporative cooling, an ancient and somewhat effective method of air conditioning. The evaporation that causes the cooling occurs in dry conditions, so for an hour or two each morning this method alleviated the heat. On still days, however, without a natural breeze, the moisture had nowhere to go and the camp became as hot and humid as the Mekong Delta.

There was also an odor problem. The original plan to locate the outdoor jail far from the city center should have ensured fresh desert air but other unpleasant utilities had also been banished to the remote site, leaving the jail adjacent to the waste-treatment plant, the dog pound and the rubbish dump. There was a constant pong. Many inmates prayed for an early conviction, preferring the dangers of prison life to the ongoing discomforts of Tent City.

Sara sat in a shaded area absorbing the smells and the view and the people, glad that full summer had not yet born down.

“Whenever you’re ready to talk I’ll get you out of here,” Detective Blake had said as he handed her over at the City of Phoenix Police Station downtown. “Maybe you need a few days in jail to remember that you are responsible, as a citizen, to assist the police in the execution of their duties.” Then he’d strolled his long form out of the intake office and back to the bright spring morning.

The holding cells were shoulder to shoulder with women, many of them on drugs, some of them in deep depression and others violently angry. The women who demonstrated violence were taken aside while Sara and thirty others were transferred to Tent City.

She preferred the outdoor holding facility though she heard that when evening came the population would double as work furlough inmates flooded back in. The crowding at the downtown station had drained her and she hoped for a moment of solitude to recharge. This was not to be.

“You want a cookie?” Dark eyes, dark hair long enough to sit on, a large young woman towered over Sara.

“No, I’m good,” said Sara, “but thanks.”

Long hair sat down. Even sitting she loomed. “So what are you in for?”

“Obstruction of justice,” Sara said. “You?”

The trip over on the bus had been filled with chatter as more knowledgeable inmates shared information. Sara was not the only one listening hard and taking mental notes. Any women that were now here didn’t have day jobs as work furloughs were easily bestowed and most employees were eager to get to their jobs. What were left were prostitutes, drug dealers, housewives, welfare mothers and a few lucky homeless. Sara was the only fortune teller but being self-employed did not entitle her to work-release. She had asked.

“How were you obstructing justice?” Long hair was talking again.

“I wouldn’t tell a detective what I knew about someone.”

“You wouldn’t snitch?”

“I guess.” Sara thought a moment. “There was nothing to snitch about, but the detective didn’t believe that.”

Some other women had wandered over. It must get boring in here, Sara thought

A newcomer, short, voluptuous and black, asked, “So what is it you didn’t tell him?”

Sara laughed. “That would be a secret.”

“Well why did he think you knew something?” The crowd around her had grown and Sara felt like she was talking to a hive creature as they took turns asking questions.

“I don’t know. Someone they were interested in was at my house.”

“Couldn’t he just ask him? The person?”

“He did but I guess he wanted a second opinion.”

The lack of answers seemed to pique curiosity. The prisoners drew closer until Sara was at the center of a ring of women, most of them younger and stronger than she. The energy was without form as yet but unfocused hostility seeks an outlet and Sara didn’t reckon to volunteer for the job. She stood, climbing out of the table and bench contraption and brushing the dust off her shorts.

“Does anyone have a deck of cards?”

Confused looks and sneers flashed around the group but one girl said, “I have some cards. Are we going to play strip poker?”

“No, I’m a fortune teller. I can read your fortunes.”

The group of gang bangers suddenly became a bunch of girls at a party, all wanting a piece of cake.

“Me first,” said Long Hair. “I saw her first.”

“Give her the cards.”

“Yeah, but me first.”

“No.” Sara was firm. “You’ll draw cards for position and you’ll go in turn. And,” Sara went on, “I have to have privacy.”

“Fuck that,” Long hair said. “I’m first and you don’t get no privacy. We want to hear.” Long Hair seemed to be a leader in this temporary world.

“No.” Sara stood with her arms crossed. “Readings are private. I’m not doing them if you don’t follow the rules.”

Long Hair pulled herself up to her full height and seemed prepared to join battle over the issue but a blonde girl pulled her aside and spoke into her ear. The whisperer had influence and a nice style, informing without embarrassing. Another little cluster formed around them while this occurred but when she finished being whispered at the long-haired one shook them off.

“Okay, okay. We’ll go by your rules.”

Sara admired her restraint. It must be hard being that angry all the time.

Just then another little group showed up and there, in the middle, was Jewel. She was nearly unrecognizable in black hair and thick mascara but Sara knew her when she looked into the girl’s clear blue eyes. Ah. This must be what they’d seen in the cards.

The teenager gave her head the barest of shakes and the moment passed when someone handed over playing cards. Sara shuffled expertly while standing, then spread them out in a fan.

Detective Blake had not been entirely mistaken in thinking of Sara as a con artist. You did not spend your childhood in a traveling carnival without learning certain little ways of dealing with the public. Their traveling show was not the Greatest Show on Earth; her childhood was beset with poverty. When her grandmother’s Tarot cards didn’t buy the groceries she’d bring out a different set of cards. It wasn’t really gambling the way Gramma did it.

It always began at church, Gramma and Sara kneeling in the pews humbly beseeching God’s blessing. None of the congregation recognized the aging blonde widow traveling with her cousin’s orphaned daughter as the turbaned clairvoyants from the fair the night before. The pastor and his wife would invite them to victuals with the town’s spinsters and widows, clustering the road weary strangers with the town’s other unwanted females for an afternoon of maidenly companionship.

After Sunday dinner, with religious authority safely gone, Gramma would tickle the lonely old maids into a forbidden game of cards. Sara watched carefully as her guardian gently fleeced the other ladies, usually to great laughter as the neglected women kicked up their virtuous heels. Sometimes liquor was found in the cellar and sometimes liquor was found in Gramma’s purse but nearly always pies and cakes that had not appeared for the pastor helped make the party last into the evening. There were never complaints when Gramma Sybil rode out of town.

While Sara never mastered Sybil’s ability to delight, the child easily learned her gramma’s gifts with cards and the little family whiled away many a winter evening at games of chance and sleight of hand. That afternoon at Tent City Sara had no trouble arranging the order of her clients. She needed to talk to Jewel and Long Hair wouldn’t tolerate an extended delay, so Sara made sure those two won early slots.