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Moving Her World

Margaret Karmazin

    The crowd was considerable, and not one Natalie relished being part of since its political leanings were the opposite of her own. It was all she could do to refrain from screaming, in particular at the obese, straw-haired blonde to her right waving the God-Hates-Fags sign, or at the Obama-Half-Breed “Muslin” placard to her left. Not to mention the Respect- “Are”- Country-Speak-English waver behind her.
    Suddenly the platform filled with movement. Its knot of black suited goons parted to let the ultra conservative candidate step out in view to screaming and applause.
    Natalie had only seen glimpses of him on TV, being that as soon as he appeared, she would smash down the remote button to make him vanish. Now she had to look.
    He reminds me of a vampire, she thought. Not that he was pale, but he had the height, barrel chest and square jaw of a cartoon super hero and the plastic expression of a blood sucker pretending to be human before he drained you dry. Apparently, everyone else was too self-deluded to notice. The hatred Natalie felt for him was a snarl of black wire in her chest. All she wanted was to do what she came for and get out.

*    *    *

    For years, Natalie had flirted with the idea. She remembered lying in bed before they sold the old house and staring at a vase of dried grasses on top of an antique wardrobe. While her husband snored, she wondered what would happen if by her mind alone she caused the fronds to move.
    Two main fears kept her from seriously trying. If she succeeded, it would terrify her. Success would demonstrate that the physical world as she knew it was not true. If others found out, she might end up forced to perform and, in her stage fright, not be able to do it. Or if able, people might hound her day and night, turning her into a parlor magician. Would black ops military buzz her home with helicopters, then drag her off to an underground base where she’d be held prisoner till she died, forced to use her skills to kill people in third world countries? Wild and crazy, but....
    On the other hand, should she more likely not succeed, this would attest to herself either that all reports of psychokinesis are probably false, and by association other paranormal phenomena, in which case there would be nothing outside of this predictable, material world.
    Of course, this train of thought was quite a stretch, since just because she, Natalie Wynn, could not move an object with her mind did not mean that there did not exist others who could. According to reports, especially those from behind the former Iron Curtain, there definitely were such people.
    Whatever the case, she had not tried, at least not very hard, and for the most part stopped thinking about it.
    Seven years later, she and Rob lived in another house and there was no need for a wardrobe in their bedroom with all its built-in closets. What had happened to the vase with its fronds, she could not remember.
    Rob had gone upstate to turkey hunt for the weekend and Natalie’s friend Bindi was coming over for an evening of movies and martinis. Natalie had stocked up on flicks ranging from vampire romance to Sundance independents. All set for cozy fun and then she got the idea.
    She waited for Bindi to sip half her martini before she brought it up. “Have you heard of psychokinesis?”
    Bindi, an intern at the hospital, was skeptical about such things, but she surprised Natalie. “In India we have our Sai Baba, among others. They supposedly make things appear out of midair, bilocate, you name it.”
    “Yeah,” said Natalie, “but have you seen it with your own eyes? Or just heard stories that happened to a friend of a friend?”
    “Well...” said Bindi. “I’m a scientist type, remember?”
    “I was thinking,” went on Natalie, halfway through her own martini, “like what if you and I tried it?”
    Bindi flashed her one of her who-is-this-screwball looks Natalie could picture her giving to some of the nutcases she handled in her current ER assignment.
     “What did you have in mind to move?” asked Bindi. “With our minds.”
    Natalie shrugged. “I don’t know, obviously something lightweight. I don’t have any feathers in the house. What’s lightweight?”
    “Not my ass,” said Bindi.
    “No, not after that chocolate festival weekend,” kidded Natalie.
    Actually, Bindi was tiny and so, for that matter, was Natalie, though not as thin. Nor was she overweight. She considered herself the invisible type, having remarked to people over the years that she was so nondescript that she could disappear in a crowd and no one would remember having seen her.
    “How about a kleenex? Wanna try with that?”
    “You know,” said Bindi, her tone pedantic, “‚Kleenex’ is a brand name. The correct term is ‚tissue.’”
    “Whatever. A tissue then. Let’s do a tissue.”
    “How do you make me do these things?” Bindi mumbled as Natalie placed their chairs catty-corner to each other at the kitchen table.
    She poured them each another martini and held her glass up for a toast. “To our transcending the limitations of physical reality,” she muttered, clicked and downed a third of the glass.
    “Don’t you think you need to keep your intellectual capacities sharp for this?” warned Bindi.
    “On the contrary,” said Natalie. She pulled a tissue from the box, wadded it up a bit and lay it in front of them. “Speaking for myself, I need to quiet down that intellectual part of my mind, the “monkey mind” as my tai chi teacher used to call it. I need to assume a childlike state of trusting awareness, slightly out of focus.”
    “Whatever,” said Bindi.
    “Now, don’t comment, let’s just stare at the kleenex and make it move.”
    “Which direction?”
    Natalie waved her hand. “That way, toward the fridge. Forget everything else in your life, Bindi and just make that tissue go toward that fridge.”
    “Your wish is my command,” said Bindi and both women fell silent as they concentrated.
    At first, Natalie had trouble keeping her mind on the tissue, as she had fallen into a stream of thought about her friend’s name, which was also the word for the colored dot Indian women place in the center of their foreheads. Over their third eye, so to speak. Third eye. That is when she had the idea of projecting the force, or whatever it was, from her mind out of this hypothetical “third eye.” Perhaps Bindi had done the same, for as soon as Natalie executed that thought, the tissue moved ever so slightly.
    The women jumped, pushed back their chairs. “My God,” said Bindi.
    “Let’s get right back on the horse,” said Natalie, and once again they concentrated. This time the tissue did not move.
    “Take another slug of your drink,” suggested Bindi, which Natalie did.
    Third eye, third eye, she said to herself and the tissue slid a bit, stopped, then scuttled to the edge of the table.
    “How do we know we’re both doing it?” asked Bindi. “Maybe just one of us is.”
    “Well, go for it yourself,” said Natalie. “I’ll just sit back.”
    “Don’t think about moving it then,” said Bindi and she set to work, her brow furrowed. After a while, she stopped. “Nothing. You try.”
    But Natalie couldn’t bring herself to do it. The old fear had returned.
    “Let’s just assume that it took the two of us,” she told her friend.
    They needed a break from the intensity of the exercise and for some reason, neither discussed it further. The rest of the evening, they dedicated to watching movies and when Bindi left at midnight, neither referred to their former entertainment. Later, Natalie wondered if their reluctance to admit what had happened was akin to what she’d read about the sometimes strange clamming up of UFO abductees after their alleged ordeal.
    When she next spoke to her friend, Bindi did not refer to their astonishing accomplishment and Natalie again felt reluctant to mention it. That left her on her own still without knowing who had supplied the main energy behind the phenomenon. Was it like doing the Ouija board? Both supposedly supplied it equally? There was only one way to find out.
    The first night Rob was out (for some reason unknown to her she had not told him about this yet), Natalie set things up with the tissue box on the table, a cold martini in front of her and the phone off the hook. She drank with trepidation. This was the nitty gritty. She felt the alcohol hit her blood stream, then wrinkled a tissue and laid it in the center of the table. Another sip and she had a good buzz on. Time to go to work.
    Something seemed to come over her, a soft peace as if weightless silk cascaded down over her body. Her eyes half shut, she focused gently on the semi blurred tissue and within a matter of seconds, watched it slide across the table, hesitate a moment, then finish the trip and disappear off the edge.
    The event seemed oddly right, as if she’d been waiting her entire life to see what was perfectly natural to her. She stood up and looked around for something with more substance than a tissue. A cigarette would be perfect, but she no longer smoked, so she took a note paper from the kitchen counter, rolled it up like a cigarette and carefully taped it. Soon it was rolling about on the table surface. With practice, Natalie could cause it to turn.
    This was incredible. How many people existed who could do this? She felt special, yet very alone, as if she belonged to a secret club like the X-Men. Then she experienced cold terror. When Rob came home, he found her silent and ashen.
    “What’s the matter?” he asked as he poured himself a glass of burgundy.
    “Nothing,” she told him. “I guess I’m just tired.”
    Normally, she told him everything. Unless someone specifically said, “Don’t tell Rob.” But now she clammed up. The whole experience seemed deeply private, and she was relieved now that Bindi seemed to want to forget it. Because that made it her own secret world, a tiny one now, but one that could expand should she pursue it.
    She needed Rob to go out more, wanted more time alone. Since they worked roughly the same schedule, both of them teachers at the same high school, this was difficult. So when some of the faculty began setting up a soft ball team, she encouraged him to join, while bowing out herself.
    Over the next few weeks, as Rob attended softball practice, then played scheduled games, Natalie practiced. She graduated from rolled paper to pencils and from there to a one time success with a small paperback. It only skidded an inch, but it moved.
    When softball was finished, she suggested to Rob that he join the faculty bowling league. “You don’t want to join too?” Rob asked, but no, she didn’t. She didn’t care when he came home from bowling nights later and later. She was now refining her movements and no longer needed booze to get started. It was no longer enough to slide an object; she wanted to move it where she wanted it exactly. She wanted to maneuver something vertically from across the room. Had any of this ever been done?
    It was claimed that a Russian woman, Nina Kulagina, could separate a yolk from the white of an egg floating in fluid from across a room. But doing this so exhausted her that she slept for days to recover. Natalie, while sleepy after her experiments, did not feel depleted or exhausted. After performing her PK feats, Nina Kalagina had also suffered a dangerously racing heart and sometimes was unable to speak or see. Yet Natalie could now move matter from at least thirty feet away without any apparent damage to her health.
    Was she using a different method than had Nina Kulagina? There was no one to ask. She had never in her life felt so alone.
    Rob was out more and more. Had she made a mistake to encourage him to join these groups? Had he formed a “special” friendship with someone in the league? While this nagged at her and she felt guilty over allotting so little time and energy to her husband, she was compelled to keep working on her skills. Hadn’t Thomas Edison forgotten to eat and actually urinated or worse in his pants rather than stop working? She wasn’t yet that obsessed, but she understood how he’d felt.
    While she cooked dinner one evening, Rob was watching a court show with the usual caustic judge. “I can’t stand her,” Natalie called from the kitchen. “She never lets anyone finish, she jumps to conclusions that may be be wrong and she humiliates people.”
    “That’s why people like the show,” said Rob. “It’s the old watch-’em get eaten by lions mentality.”
    “Why are you watching it?” she couldn’t resist asking. He didn’t answer.
    She had hated this particular judge for years and now felt a strange compulsion to do something about it. Her laptop was open on her desk in the kitchen so she looked up how to obtain tickets to one of the show tapings. Would Bindi go with her to New York? Probably not, being so busy as she was. In fact, Natalie had, she now realized, not heard from her friend for a couple of weeks. Something held her back from even calling Bindi much now, possibly anger, certainly wounded feelings. Why had her friend backed away from her? Ever since that night when they moved the tissue, their relationship had not been the same.
    A neighbor, Denise, was willing to go so Natalie lined up tickets for the following week. She took a personal day from school.
    “Not bad,” said Denise, as they filed into the studio. “Second row back and nobody tall or wide in front of us. You go, girl!”
    Denise was so not Bindi and for a moment, Natalie endured a terrible emptiness in her gut as she tried to hold back tears. Bindi and she had been “besties” since college. She so missed the old frequent and easy companionship.
    “Yeah, we lucked out,” said Natalie drily.
    The judge was even more obnoxious in person, which reminded Natalie why she had come. Someone needed to give the woman a taste of her own poison. She hoped chatty Denise would quiet down so she could concentrate. The plaintiff claimed the defendant owed her money for staying in the plaintiff’s apartment for five months while she was in San Francisco caring for her dying mother, while the defendant maintained that the plaintiff knew he was looking for work and had offered him a free place to stay while he did so.
    “In exchange,” he said, “I protected her place by being there. There’d been robberies in the neighborhood and she was worried. I took care of her cats and plants and painted the bedroom for her.”
    “I’m on his side,” whispered Denise. “He’s hot too.”
    How Natalie missed Bindi’s dry, intelligent sarcasm. Whatever the case, Ms. Nasty Judge went on a vendetta towards the defendant until his balls were rolling on the floor.
    “I hate her,” said Denise, and Natalie had to agree.
    Now was the time, so she made her best effort to forget Denise’s presence and focused on the judge. Not having yet worked on living material, other than plants and insects, this was going to be a first. Natalie aimed her mental beam through her third eye at the judge’s stringy looking throat. Concentrate, concentrate, thought Natalie, narrow the passageway, rough up the membranes! Within a matter of moments, Nasty Judge was clawing at her neck and choking.
    “Ghhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” she hacked, bringing her assistants running. The taping ceased. A comedian darted out to entertain the audience, his jokes so-so, but the sudden complementary, sponsor gifts welcome. Apparently, there were bags under the seats waiting for such events.
    “Wow, I wonder if she’ll be back,” mused Denise.
    She was, and the show resumed only to end in the same disruption as before.
    “I’m afraid we’re going to have to stop for today,” a stressed looking young man apologized. “Thank you for coming and please do try another day.”
    “Whoa,” said Denise. “Long ride for nothing.”
    “Not exactly,” smiled Natalie.
    So...it was possible to stop people from doing things one didn’t approve of. Though she was exhilarated, she would need time to digest this. What a pity she couldn’t tell Rob. And what a gulf this opened between them. For that matter, what a gulf she felt between herself and everyone.
    Instinctively, she knew that Bindi would be even more distant if she knew in what direction Natalie had taken things. Yet Natalie could not stop herself from where she was heading.
    Out on the street from the darkened studio, she and Denise blinked in the sunlight though it was almost four o’clock. “I’m starving,” said Denise. “Do you want eat before we take the train back?”
    Natalie reluctantly agreed.
    “I can’t believe that of all the days they tape the show, we get the one where she chokes,” said Denise as they scanned the street for a restaurant. “Look, hamburgers are their specialty,” she said, pointing to a sign up the block.
    “Here’s a Lebanese place,” suggested Natalie, her mouth already watering. She adored Lebanese food.
    “Oooo, ick,” said Denise. “Let’s just eat American, okay?”
    Natalie signed and followed Denise. Missing Bindi, missing Bindi, who was adventurous about food.
    Just then, an imperious looking man walked out of a jewelry store, followed by three women swathed in burkahs. He was short and swarthy with an arrogant attitude that did not befit his less than glorious appearance. Two of the women giggled while the third tripped and almost fell. It was a wonder she could see at all. The man turned to reprimand her. Natalie could not understand his words, but his meaning was clear and though she could not see the woman’s face, she could sense her shrinking in embarrassment.
    “What a jerk,” said Denise, and for the first time Natalie felt in sync with her. “He needs someone to teach him a lesson! Maybe cut off his you know what! I don’t know why women put up with that shit.”
    Natalie reacted without thinking. She concentrated on the man’s chest, his nipples to be exact, and with all her mental might drew fat cells into each of his man-breasts. Visible under his shirt, for he was not dressed in robes as were his female chattel, small round, very feminine lumps appeared. Not large, but very much there.
    “Holy crap!” yelled Denise. “He has boobs!”
    Everyone passing on the street turned to look as the man patted his chest, his hairy hands settling on his curvy lumps. He grunted in horror and turned back into the store, crashing into his women and sending all three to the floor, sprawled in heaps of fabric.
    “Move along,” Natalie mumbled to Denise and speeded up her walk.
    “But wait,” said Denise, “what happened back there? I don’t get it. Why did he grab his man-boobs all of a sudden? I didn’t notice them at first, but-”
    “Let’s just go eat, okay, Denise? I’m about to faint from starvation.”
    Once in the restaurant, Denise gloated, “He has his nerve being all dominating and obnoxious when he has mammary glands!” She laughed as she perused the menu.
    Natalie, instead of joining Denise in her pleasure, experienced a frightening stab of horror. Wouldn’t playing God lead to terrible things? Would those breasts she gave him last or dissipate? As she ordered her meal, her hand shook as she handed the waiter her menu.

    She returned to an empty house, nothing unusual now, and had to remind herself it was Thursday, one of Rob’s regular nights out. Nothing to be upset about and even good to have the time alone to digest what had occurred. She craved a martini, but her heart was already thumping erratically, so she sipped tea instead. The cat did not jump into her lap as usual - did he sense somehow that she had morphed into a monster? She grabbed the remote to flick on the news.
    Okay then, she was a monster. Let’s work from there. Then what could she use her talent for that could benefit the world? Was this like being a good witch?
    As usual, the TV talking heads did little but rile her. Especially the announcement about a right-wing Presidential candidate coming to Scranton the next day. How had she missed this before?
    Though she liked Denise better than she had at first, the thought of spending another day with her so soon did not appeal. Asking Bindi to go was out of the question. She had not returned Natalie’s last two calls. Besides, she wouldn’t want anyone, certainly not Bindi, to see what she had in mind.
    Next morning Rob noticed she was not leaving the house for school at the same time he was. They took separate cars since their after school activities ran at different times.
    “I called in sick,” she said. “I’m going to Scranton.”
    “Why?” he asked, his face bewildered. “There’s going to be a gigantic crowd down there. That idiot is coming to campaign.”
    What could she say? He would never understand her wanting to go to that. “Um, they’re supposed to be having lots of sales on computer stuff and I was thinking about an iPad.”
    “You are? You never said anything about it. I thought we were saving for our trip spring break.”
    God, she hated to lie. “Well, like I said, they might have half price sales. It won’t set us back, really,”
    “Whatever,” he said, heading out the door. “See you.” Was he shaking his head? What did that mean?
    Easily flustered in heavy traffic, Natalie still managed to locate a parking spot three blocks from where the candidate was speaking. She steeled herself before walking. Okay, she decided, if I am now behaving as if I’ve gone to the dark side, then let me do it well.
    The crowd roared, dotted with the bigoted holding their godawful signs and when the candidate finally opened his mouth to speak, Natalie’s brain churned as she tried to decide what to do. He did not remain behind the podium, but grabbed a microphone and moved out from behind it, pacing back and forth as he whipped up the mob. His entire person was open for psychokinetic attack.
    “Family values!” he yelled. “Marriage is for a man and a woman! Not two men doing abominable things in the bedroom! Not two women pretending to be male and female! God made Adam and Eve and set up how things are meant to be! The Holy Book is quite clear on that!”
    The sign wavers screamed. Natalie eyes were drawn to his fly. God’s idea of how a man should be, was he? She focused her third eye laser beam on that zipper over his family-values “junk” and moved that slider slowly down, metal tooth by tooth until the whole thing gaped open. Then, ever so gently, she nudged his flaccid member out until a pink little head made its appearance. The candidate, apparently feeling the breeze, stopped suddenly and looked down.
    Someone noticed, then more and more people until they were pointing and screaming. Men guffawed, women tittered; the candidate had lost his hold over the crowd. His handlers, behind or beside him, did not at first understand the problem. But soon they saw and rushed him off stage.
    Natalie, smiling, pushed through the throng and hightailed it to her car. By the time she was ten minutes from home, the candidate’s fall from grace was on the news.
    That evening, she sat in the dark sipping tea while she mulled over her world as it had so strangely become. Rob was out, as usual.
    Afraid that Bindi might refuse a call from her house phone, Natalie turned on her cell, which she rarely used unless on the road, and pressed in Bindi’s number. Her friend answered.
    “It’s me,” Natalie said. “We need to talk.”
    First silence, then softly, “I do miss you,” said Bindi.
    “I don’t understand why you’ve cut me off.”
    Bindi sighed. “I don’t know.” She paused. “I’m a scientist type. I like things to be in order and make sense. What happened just didn’t. It screwed up my brain. I guess I associated that unpleasant feeling with you. It all got lumped together. Please forgive me.”
    Natalie wanted to jump right in, but she didn’t know how much truth telling Bindi could take. “Bindi, just because science can’t explain what causes something doesn’t mean it won’t be able to a few decades from now.”
    “I know, but it creeped me out.”
    “Well, I want us to be friends again, I so miss you. But you need to know that I’ve not stopped what we did that night. If you want me to keep what I know to myself, I will. Foremost I want us to stay friends.”
    Bindi was quiet for a moment, then said, “Okay, I can deal with that, I guess. Just don’t levitate in front of me or anything.”
    “I won’t,” laughed Natalie. They then enjoyed a relatively normal conversation with gossip and work stories. There was a lot to catch up on.
    Natalie felt such relief. One down and one to go, but Rob was another story. At least with Bindi, though she didn’t know everything Natalie was doing, she did know about the psychokinesis itself. Rob knew nothing. Though he claimed to be open to paranormal matters, all he’d ever run into were the stories of others and most of those from strangers on television. Natalie had a feeling that he wouldn’t deal so well with something weird on his own turf. This meant she would have to keep it all from him and it squatted in her mind, like a fat, ugly spider. If he ever knew what she’d done at the campaign speech in Scranton, he would look at her with horror ever after.
    When he came home near midnight, she was sitting in bed waiting for him.
    “You’re still up?” he said, his tone not exactly expressing pleasure.
    “Yeah,” she said tentatively. “Couldn’t sleep.”
    “I need a shower,” he said.
    “Come here first.” She reached out to hug him.
    She smelled it then, a mixture of odors including something floral. Her heart sank. “Go get your shower,” she said and like a dog happy to be released, he shot off.
    She flicked out the lamp and lay down, pulling the covers over her head. So she had been awakened to an unbelievable gift. How far could she, would she take it? But it had come with a great price as most valuable things do.
    Turned away from him, she was wide awake as Rob slipped into bed.
    “Natalie?” he said tentatively, but she didn’t answer.
    Her wet eyes were wide open in the dark, straining to see what would come.

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