Suddenly her mind was crowded with vivid pictures. They came swirling at her, and for an instant she panicked, worried that she would lose all this valuable information.
“I see a young girl, I think. I am a Chinese girl. I am being held, captured. People are after me. Chinese miners or something. They’re going to kill me, kill the person who is holding me. I can’t see his face.”
“Relax, Jenny,” Kathy instructed, touching her shoulder. “Let the images pass. They can not harm you. Don’t concentrate too much. The images will find their way to the surface of your memory. Wait.”
“I see a bedroom. An old-fashioned bedroom, you know, from the forties,” Jennifer began again. “It’s a little girl’s room.” She tried to scan the dark room. Though it was daylight, the blinds had been pulled, and the room was in shadow. A dozen dolls were stacked neatly on shelves, and there was a large dollhouse in the corner. “It’s my bedroom, I just know!” she exclaimed.
“Is anyone there?” Kathy asked.
Jennifer shook her head. She was frowning, straining to see deep into her history. “There’s a woman coming in,” she said. And then, in her mind, the door opened and a shaft of light filled the dark bedroom.
“It’s Margit!” Jennifer told Kathy. “She’s my mother and she’s come looking for me. I’m there, I know, somewhere in the room.” Jennifer turned her head from side to side, trying to force the recollection, to pull the hidden memories to mind.
She saw herself then. She was just a teenager, not yet fifteen. She sat up in bed, just wakening, it seemed. She was naked. Then Jennifer saw the man, the young man beside the girl, saw him roll over in the bed. She knew even before she saw his face that it was Simon. And she knew, too, that these two were brother and sister. Her mother, Margit, screamed and brought her fists down on her daughter and son, striking them in blind rage.
Jennifer was shaking. She could not control her own body. She let Kathy tuck the warm flannel sheet more closely around her, then gently, expertly, Kathy began to massage Jennifer’s temples. It took Jennifer several minutes to focus on what Kathy Dart was saying.
“You had an episode, Jenny, that’s all. It happens sometimes. You pull up a past life that fills you with enormous guilt or remorse, and the realization has too much pain for you to handle now. But once it is uncovered, then the trauma is released. It won’t haunt you. You have lived through the experience.”
Jennifer was weeping quietly, and she kept crying, but her tears made her feel better. She was purging her body of the memory.
“I didn’t know it would be this therapeutic,” Jennifer whispered to Kathy, who was still ministering to her, arranging a small pillow beneath her head, wiping away her tears.
Kathy nodded. “At times, it is. We made tremendous progress this morning, but I think it’s time for you to let your body rest.” She smiled down at Jennifer. “I’ll turn down the lights and leave you for a while. You’ll be able to sleep. Often such past life experiences completely knock you out.”
“I’m just haunted by the thought of me and Simon. I mean, in another life
brother and sister
“
“That’s why you found him so attractive in this life,” Kathy said. “Brother or not, he’s quite handsome.”
“I have a lover.”
“We all have many lovers, Jenny.”
“Not me.”
“Why?” Kathy asked. She waited patiently for Jennifer to respond.
Jennifer shrugged. She was suddenly uncomfortable talking about her life in such detail
“I think you would feel less stressful if you allowed your true emotions to emerge.”
“I don’t think that the way to establish a permanent relationship with Tom is to become involved with another man, with Simon,” Jennifer replied. “You know we’re living in the age of AIDS! Women don’t sleep around. Why do you want me to sleep with Simon, anyway?”
Kathy nodded toward the stack of silver and gold acupuncture needles.
“I can only do so much with my treatment. I think that a loving encounter with Simon, where you share the pleasure of each other, will enrich you. It will help break down the tensions you feel, the rage you have against men.”
“I don’t have any rage against men,” Jennifer said quietly.
“Eileen told me what happened in the motel.”
“Okay, I was angry, but you would have been, too, if you had seen him. Look, I’m not going to sleep with every man who hits on me just to show that I don’t have hidden hostility toward men. What are you trying to say, anyway?”
“Look what happened to you when you saw Simon in that recall from the forties,” Kathy said patiently.
“Kathy, he was my brother! I was sleeping with my brother!” Jennifer began to cry. Lying back on the massage table, she choked on her own tears and had to lean up on one elbow, coughing and sobbing.
Kathy waited until Jennifer had gained control of herself. She used the corner of the flannel sheet to wipe the tears away, then said softly, “I am not judging you, Jennifer, or prescribing a course of action. I am merely an instrument. The anger that you’ve been expressing, the conflict you have with your lover, Tom, are simply manifestations of a deeper and more profound unrest that is lodged within the cells of your body. Your spirit holds these memories and carries them forward, from one incarnation to the next. The body remembers everything, Jennifer. Everything! You have reached a critical moment in your life.” She leaned back. “I don’t know, Jenny, what is suddenly haunting you, driving you to such primitive rage. But I do want to help you discover its cause. Only by ‘seeing’ your past lives, by conversing with Habasha, by accepting who you were in other lifetimes will you find out who you are today. Jenny, you must accept your past.”
“Am I to achieve this by fucking Simon McCloud?”
Kathy shrugged. “I only know that you two have a strong attraction to each other and that perhaps by sharing such an intimate moment, you’ll learn something about yourself.” For a moment she was silent. Then, slowly, she began to speak. “Our most intense experiences in life, Jenny, are with our family. Our lives are shaped from childhood. We’re drawn to the kind of people we grew up with. I don’t know yet what your parents are like, but I can guess.”
Jennifer glanced over at Kathy Dart and waited for her explanation.
“You were born late in their lives, and I sense that you were an only child.”
“I had a brother,” Jennifer corrected.
“Yes, but he was much older, wasn’t he?”
Jennifer nodded. “Eileen would have told you this much.”
“I haven’t discussed your family with Eileen.”
“But she knew them. Eileen and I went to high school together. My parents are retired. They live in Florida.”
“Yes, but you were never close to them. They were older. They were not pleased that you came along so late in their lives. From childhood, from infancy, really, you felt that you were unwanted. They did not give you the nurturing you needed. It was your brother—”
“Danny,” Jennifer whispered.
“You lost Danny, didn’t you?”
“Yes, in Vietnam. He never came home. They said he was killed in a bombing raid. They never found his body. I was only twelve when he died.” She began to cry.
“You know, Jennifer, what you have to realize is that we choose our parents, choose our siblings. And we do this to resolve our experiences from previous lives.”
“Why did Danny die and leave me?” Jennifer blurted out. “Was his death caused by something I did in another lifetime?”
Kathy shook her head. “I really don’t know. Perhaps he had to fulfill another destiny. His destiny. But you were not really left, Jenny. You have seen him in your dreams, haven’t you?”