A Palm Reader, A Dream, And Standing Naked

On a whim, I’d hired a palm reader as part of the evening’s joint birthday celebration for my husband and me. When she arrived, prim as a Midwest librarian, I lead her to the quiet seclusion of my bedroom which afforded her privacy. A line quickly formed outside the room. Barbie waited next to Lou Costello. Jesus swiped a glass of wine from the tray held aloft by a passing waiter. After checking with caterers, I had a few words with the Queen of England and Hugh Hefner, who encouraged me to cut the line and have my palm read. I hesitated to take a turn because the palmist was there to amuse our guests, not me. When Colonel Sanders exited the room, Tina Turner pushed me inside and closed the door behind me. 

The palm reader put her water down and smiled as I settled myself on the oversized chair beside her. 

“You’re quite the draw,” I said picking a fleck of lint of my black velvet Jessica Rabbit dress; I was playing GiGi, as Leslie Caron and I are both July babies. “There’s a lot of people waiting out there.” 

“That’s great news. Means you have a solid crowd here. Reading hands is art and science. It changes people’s lives.” 

I nodded, hoping that she couldn’t also read faces. “Cool, I’m just happy to be sitting down.” I slipped my heels off.

“I see.” She took another sip of water. I could tell by the precise way she put down her glass and cleared her throat that she pegged me as a skeptic. I offered her my right hand. “No, I need the left,” she said, taking my other hand in hers. While she traced her finger along various lines on my palm, I relaxed and allowed my mind to wander. I wondered if we’d ever throw such an elaborate party again. I wondered if my husband would dance with me. 

I thought of other milestone birthdays, and other themed parties we’d hosted. 

I was ten, wearing red shorts and a yellow tee-shirt, my hair in braids as my friends and I ran from my mom’s station wagon through the doors of Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor, the company slogan, “I made a pig of myself at Farrell’s.” The trough of ice cream was carted to the table by two servers, each carrying a stretcher pole. Atop the ice cream were miniature plastic animals.

Those bright plastic animals reminded me of another birthday, this one in Italy where my husband and I discovered the magnificent and whimsical glass figurines and animals created by Lucio Bubacco. 

Outside the door, I heard Barbie singing her theme song about living in a Barbie world while someone else yelled that they were going to get a hose. 

My worries as a host overcame me enough to get up and investigate, but the palm reader gripped my hand tighter. It occurred to me, I hadn’t been listening to her at all. 

“…put them away, the colored pencils, pens, paints. I’m serious about this.” There was an urgent tone in her voice. I looked up at her trying to get a bead on what she was saying. “Go to Costco,” she instructed, “buy boxes of legal pads. Your future is writing books, not designing costumes.” 

She had to be joking. 

I could have told her about my Phonological dyslexia. It makes spelling near impossible, because I can’t translate words from my head to paper; letters and sounds don’t make sense. It’s a fight to even sound them out, like a numbed tongue pushing words through a mouthful of frozen peanut butter. I never complained about it, never even questioned it, because it’s all I’d known. Like someone color-blind at birth seeing the world in their own particular way. 

Her words made me sad. 

I’d already reinvented myself so many times, and it was inconceivable that I could do it again or feel the need to. What I needed was affirmation of my choices, to be told that my life had purpose and I’d spent my time wisely. Elvis and Mao Tse-tung peeked in through the door, then quickly shut it. 

The palmist looked up at my face and shook her head. She gripped my hands even tighter and leaned closer. “Trust me.” For a moment I was swept away by her conviction, curious if my palm had indeed revealed something that I tried to keep hidden. 

Could others see my dissatisfaction in life so clearly? This reader could’ve been a harbinger from God, there to show me a path. 

Then I heard something drop and shatter in the other room. Someone said, “Oh shit.” It was followed by a giggling retreat. I got up, and she stood with me, our hands still clasped. 

I nodded at the door and told her I needed to go.

It took me around a decade before her reading came back to mind. 

I awoke from a dream so visual, so staggering, and memorable that as I lay in bed, I was able to replay it again and again in my mind’s eye. Even in the morning, while driving my family home from Tahoe it played: Two women making love on the floor of a steamer ship. The sheen of sweat on their skin, the wrinkles upon the crisp voile petticoat edged with Battenburg lace. I could practically taste the difference between the delicate hints of their separate perfumes.

I didn’t know their names then, but I came to know them as Jamison and Bepa, two very different women who I’ve learned a great deal from in the process of writing this series. These women, and all the characters I’ve come to understand, are reflections of me; some are deviant, others the epitome of grace. Writing these incarnations of myself became like standing naked in the middle of a stadium, unable to hide, daring those who see me to embrace the view. 

As the palmist predicted, I went through numerous legal pads; the first drafts were written on both paper and computer. It took me a while to get comfortable with the computer; my skills in that department are still less than hotsy-totsy. Typing was faster than scribing it on paper, but each sentence and every page became a digital nightmare of red squiggles below misspelled words; it was hard to decipher and discouraging, and exhausting, and frustrating, but in the manic three-month sprint, the characters shared their stories with me. 

It became a novel of more than 340,000 words, which then became over seven more years of editing to confine the story into four books. And I can say that it still promises to expand even further. 

They’re still talking to me and I’m still listening.

 —

D.K. Silver is the author of The Weight of Flowers, the first in a genre-bending saga. The series explores themes of sexual exploitation and dalliance, greed in its many guises and the quest for self-worth.   

D.K. Silver is fearless in her determination to explore taboos, using her gifts to relentlessly dig below the surface. As a costume designer, she’s been trained to visually reveal a character’s truer nature—as a writer, she takes it to another level, passionate to unmask the deliciously decadent, the deviant, and the downright misguided aspects of our collective humanness. Her stories are paced like a slow-motion car crash that’s difficult to look away from. 

Find out more about her on her website https://dksilverauthor.com/

THE WEIGHT OF FLOWERS

Born in 1900, Jamison grew up believing that there only existed people of value and those without. This belief was conditioned by her misogynistic father, the Colonel-a man who ruled their Kentucky stud farm home like a dictator, reminding her every day under his roof that she belonged to the latter because she wasn’t born a boy.

Determined to control her own fate, Jamison secures an assistantship with a successful feminist author in Switzerland. However, within days of her arrival, she receives news that her position has been mysteriously withdrawn. When her father descends upon her Swiss hotel with a suitor in tow, she realizes her role as a pawn in another one of his self-serving schemes. A desperate turn of fate presents itself in the form of a bouquet of flowers along with a party invitation from a stranger, rubber tycoon J.D. Roe, a man who believes his redemption is in her hands.

Between them all is Carrington Marcs, Jamison’s childhood friend, who spent his young life pining for her. His plans to prove himself on a hunting trip with her father, becomes eclipsed by the Colonel’s own selfish plans for him.

Against the background of Swiss neutrality, Jamison takes a stand against her father, the restrictive social mores, and her own fears in a bid for independence and value. The Weight of Flowers tells Jamison and Carrington’s story and how far the Colonel will reach to bring everyone into his own damnation.

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