PITFALL PALM-READING

She Read My Palm for a Pack of Cigarettes

A very unorthodox bus stop transaction

I was standing in a bus stop somewhere in the middle of Transylvania in my first year abroad. I’d gotten there early since buses only came through this particular stop about once every hour on the weekends.

I’d been alone, but now I wasn’t. I’d just been joined by a Gypsy lady and her son. Just the three of us huddled together in this broken glass box.

It’s one of those situations when I’d really rather be alone. The old Southern hospitality ingrained in me makes me think I should say something to break the silence, but the more introverted half of me very much doesn’t want to say anything at all.

Also, I have like zero linguistic skills at this point.

I’m in that awkward middle stage where my language is on par with a toddler. I understand most of what’s being said, but I can’t necessarily form an appropriate response. Now, I understand why two-year-olds throw things so often.

So, I do what I usually do in such situations — I pretend to be highly engrossed in my phone. Of course, since I’ve just moved here, it’s a burner phone that flips to open and has no internet. So, there is only so much you can do — it does have that little worm game on it, though.

Where I come from, this phone trick is like holding up a Do Not Disturb sign and everyone respects it. But, when you move to a new country, not all of those old tricks work the same way…

The lady sees me on my phone and asks to borrow it.

Great.

What do I say? I don’t want to give her my phone because the last time someone in a bus stop borrowed it, I got calls from random family members of that person for almost a month after.

But how do I say, no? I’ll still have to endure 30 minutes of waiting in a worse kind of silence.

I hand her my phone while I internally remind myself to stop showing my Nokia off at every bus stop for goodness sake. She kills 10 minutes of our wait time talking to someone — probably begging them to come pick her up so she doesn’t have to wait at this deserted stop — and finally hands it back to me.

She asks me to hold out my palm. Like a good toddler, I obey.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“Does he love you.”

“Sure,” I continued this game.

“You will become pregnant with a baby boy,” she drops the news bomb and my palm at the same time.

Wow. I don’t even have a boyfriend, I thought.

“Now go get me a pack of cigarettes,” she gestures to the nearby store.

Wait… what? I never asked to enlist her services. She did that entirely on her own. As a newbie, I didn’t want to seem rude. Just nod and smile along, you know? Also, cigarettes are expensive.

“No.” My toddler vocabulary came out.

“If you don’t buy me a pack of cigarettes, you won’t have a baby boy,” she tried to threaten me, but really at six months in a new country, a baby was the last thing I’d had planned right now.

“I can’t,” I say.

I show her my empty pockets, but I see by her face that she doesn’t believe me. Is her x-ray vision burning through to my back pocket where my bus money is stashed? I can’t say, but I put on my best poker face.

I would have probably thrown something at this point, but all I had was my phone and my secret money.

Her son gets involved and tells me I’m pretty while rubbing his hand on my arm in an effort to be creepy. He’s almost succeeding in his efforts, too.

Then, just when I’m starting to think maybe I should leave now and take a two-hour walk home, my bus rounds the hill, rescuing me from this complicated bus stop conversation.

In a funny twist of fate, I did find a boyfriend in this new country that loved me. We got married and I got pregnant soon after.

Wouldn’t you know? It was a boy.

Sometimes at night I lie awake and wonder…

Do I owe that lady a pack of cigarettes?