Nine of Cups

Vikki Coffey is thirteen years old. She will be fourteen on August 12, 1995. Her siblings are all showered and in bed. All school uniforms for tomorrow are ironed and ready to go. Lunches are packed in brown paper bags complete with crust-less prosciutto cotto and sliced artichoke sandwiches. She can go to sleep now. It’s 9:45 pm. Today’s her favorite day of the week: Sunday! Every Sunday she takes all her siblings with her to a gathering at her school. It is a peaceful routine compared to the chaotic and unstable household she lives in. Vikki takes them to the park behind the school afterwards too. She attends a non-denominational school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. At the weekly gatherings they learn about manifesting, affirmations, astrology, chakras, growing your own food, grounding techniques, herbs, and how to meditate. Learning these tools for life gives her strength and hope. She sits on her bed to meditate. She opens her well-worn journal. Vikki reads a passage out loud that she learned at school: “Whatever you visualize during meditation, believe that you have already received it, and it will be yours.” Vikki starts to purposefully write out her manifestation statements just like they do in homeroom every morning. After meditating, she writes a new affirmation: “Thank you love energy for this, for me, that you financially provide a way for my mother, siblings, and I to all live together without our father in a new home in the best way for me and all involved or something better and thank you love energy for this, for me.” She meditates carefully visualizing her affirmation and opens her eyes to write about her day in her journal:

April 2, 1995

I was in the garden earlier today. Dad came outside before he left to fly to the Dominican Republic. He noticed a stray cat in the garden. I watched him walk over to the cat, lift it up by its tail, and swing it over the wall. I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t say a word to him. I carefully kept my gaze in the opposite direction. I started humming hymns to distract myself. Lost in thought, I remembered the last time Dad went to the Dominican Republic. He came back with suitcases full of money. I spent the whole day nervously counting $40,888.00 by hand. He left without saying a word to me. I wished that would be the last time I ever saw him. Earlier in the day, I took the children to a gathering at school. They played in the park in the backyard of the school. Many of my friends from school were also playing. I wondered what it was like to be carefree as I sat on a bench watching everyone have fun. When we were walking home, I saw my favorite home for sale. We all stopped. I asked my siblings to imagine us all living there. I instructed them run up and down the steps of the home. While meditating, I keep picturing us living there together over and over again. I keep imagining us eating an enormous Sunday dinner and so it is.

Vikki wakes up startled from sleeping. She looks at her watch. It’s 11:11 pm. She hears loud banging. Vikki realizes that someone is trying to break down the front door of the apartment where her brothers are sleeping. She immediately jumps out of bed. She gets up and walks to the apartment door that is in her Mother’s bedroom. She can hear voices in the hallway. Vikki looks out the peep hole. The hallway is full of cops with bullet proof vests on. She can hear the cops talking about the Fulton Fish Market. Vikki remembers reading in the paper that there was a fire there a few days ago. She realizes they are there to question her father. The family lives on the first floor of the largest apartment building on 86th Street in Brooklyn, New York. They live in three apartments that are connected. The Coffey’s own the apartment building but they need to quickly pay the mortgage. Their father refused to pay the mortgage, electric, and oil for past several months. They have kerosene heaters, kerosene lamps, propane tanks for hot water, and multiple generators to keep the place warm. Child welfare services visited the household many times. The last time they explained to my mom that we would all be taken away if we were found here living in these conditions again.

Vikki dresses in seconds. She runs through her mother’s room and her sister’s room waking every one up. Her mom starts crying. “Mom we don’t have time to cry but we have time to get out of here so we can all stay together,” Vikki gently tells her mom. Her Mom just nods. Vikki notices that she just looks aged, bruised, and exhausted. Her mother has two black eyes. Mom used to be flawlessly beautiful. She is a shell of who she used to be. Vicki looks over at her sister. “Neeve, get dressed now for school tomorrow,” Vikki whispers. “Get all the knapsacks and put the lunches that are on the rack in the ice cooler in them. Don’t drop them in the melted ice either, Ok? “May I have a hug?” Neeve quietly sobs. Vikki forces a smile and quickly gives Neeve a loving hug.

They exit from apartment 1C to apartment 1B where the police are doing their best to break down their sturdy steel apartment door. Her brothers Sean and Liam are in apartment IB. Vicki runs down the long hallway that connects both apartments to wake them up and get them dressed. They all file quickly to the back door. Vikki turns around and looks at Sean: “Backpacks for school tomorrow, now,” She exclaims, snapping her fingers. Vikki looks out the back door window. She sees a man in a grey suit with a large automatic rifle as she lifts up the deadbolt and locks the door. She quickly scans the backyard and notices that there are a total of thirteen agents in grey suits with FBI gear on. Vikki puts her fingers to her mouth and whispers to her mother: “We have to go out though the basement.” “What, what did he do this time?” her Mom stammers. “I think he may have set the Fulton Fish Market on fire,” Vikki quietly responds. “That is what I hear them talking about.” Her Mother doesn’t say anything. She just shakes her head in disgust while looking hopelessly at the floor.

Vikki moves the dining room table, rolls up the rug that was under the table, and lifts the wooden trap door. After she walks down the stairs, Vikki takes two green military flashlights from behind the Chinese staircase and gives one to Sean. Sean clutches his stomach. They are headed to a staircase in the basement that leads to trap door in the closet of apartment 1A. The apartment also has a private cement patio nestled between two buildings. Underneath the patio is an alleyway that leads all the way to a trap door beneath an old gazebo in a garden on a residential property on 85th street. The elderly owners are unaware of its existence. Vikki stays behind to conceal this passageway from the basement.

As Vikki exits from the brick passageway, she loses her footing. She manages to frantically grab onto one of the bricks. Vikki is able to steady herself but the lifesaving brick falls to the floor. With her flashlight, she peers into the wall where the brick was. To her surprise, Vikki sees a small copper container. She opens the container. She finds a small black book, and a tarot card that reads: “Nine of Cups”. When she touches the card, she sees herself looking into a camera and doing tarot readings in her mind’s eye. The book contains a crudely drawn map of the basement of the building leading to what the Coffey family affectionately call the Green room. It reads that there is a room hidden behind the massive brick wall in that room. She puts the box back behind the wall and puts the little black book and the strange card in her backpack. The little black book has journal entries dated from 1925. “I feel like Nancy Drew.” she says out loud. Vikki conceals the opening to the tunnel of apartment 1A with stacks of National Geographic magazines so her family isn’t discovered. She takes a deep breath and visualizes herself safely at her Grandmother’s home.

Unable to contain her excitement, Vikki re- opens the little black book and starts to read some passages. She learns that the basement used to be a Speakeasy during the Prohibition era. On the heading of each page reads: The Veil of Isis. Vikki walks into the Green room. She loves the old wooden bar in this room. The room is complete with gorgeous beveled mirrors, chandeliers that can hold dozens of thick candlesticks, and tons of green glass antiques that the family decorated the room with. It’s Vikki’s favorite room in the basement. She counts five rows up from the bottom, ten rows from the side and presses the brick in as the directions read to do it in the notebook. Half the wall opens on a 90 degree angle inside the room. To her amazement there are thousands of dollars and jewels nestled in wooden cubbies within the small room. Vikki is careful not to touch the bricks as that is how the wall closes. She notices a picture of a woman on the wall. She points the flashlight at the painting and it reads: H.P. (August 12, 1873). There are paintings, jewels, manuscripts, and many different beautiful crystals in the room too. She quickly counts the money. To her surprise, it adds up to $20,000.00! She puts the money in her backpack, takes one of the large emeralds, and closes the secret room. Vikki pauses and thanks the universe with gratitude for this monumental discovery.

She walks back to the wooden staircase and goes up through the trap door back to their apartment. She rolls out the large Persian rug over the trap door. Vicki carefully pushes the dining room table back over the trap door. Vikki exits the apartment through the kitchen window overlooking the alley way. She jumps to the patio of the adjacent building. She carefully climbs over the wall to the adjacent property, up the fire escape, to the roof, and then back down the fire escape on the front of the building to the street. She runs to catch the R train heading towards Manhattan to go to her Grandmother’s house in Sunset park.

Once at her Grandmother’s, Vikki turns to her Mom, “Mom, we can sell the apartment building. We have enough money for a down payment to buy a new home!” She explains to her Mom. “The universe is kind and loving!” her mother exclaims smiling with tears of gratitude.

The Coffey family buys the home on Bay Ridge Parkway. Their father doesn’t return from the Dominican Republic. He’s been charged with the Fulton Fish Market fire due to video surveillance evidence. Her Mother chooses to keep the apartment building as a source of rental income. In the distant future, Vikki becomes a world renowned Astrologer, Medium, and Tarot Reader. She doesn’t know it yet, but in 2005, she will own a Youtube channel called: Nine of Cups, where she will provide guidance to millions of people.

On the first Sunday living in their new home, the happy family sits down to enjoy their Mother’s signature gravy with fresh sweet sausage, mozzarella, and the best semolina bread you’ve ever tasted in your life all from Cangiano’s Salumeria on 3rd Avenue – just like Vikki envisioned. A colorful sign in the dining room reads: TOGETHER, a great place to be.