I’ve written over 60 tarot-inspired stories so far, but this is the first reverse story I have done. It also definitely has the most characters.
The characters Rebecca and Janice came to me early this morning and I decided to explore their dynamic. It led me to some unexpected places but it was like they became real to me.
I decided the archetype of a mother-in-law could be like an Empress — but in this case, was the Empress reversed. Rebecca has to channel her inner Emperor.
Read a short story inspired by the Empress (Reversed)
Rebecca’s mother-in-law took the title too seriously. The law part, not the mother. Janice phrased her comments like suggestions, but they weren’t. They were laws. And that made Rebecca an enemy of the state, since she wasn’t following them.
An example of a law: Don’t leave rice out for more than an hour, bacteria can form, and what if you want to have a baby? You can’t do that, if you’re dead. Law: Eat yogurt once a day but no fat, remember that, for Adam, he’s prone to collecting around the midsection. Law: invite my friends from the office to the wedding. No, not where I work now, where I worked in the early 2000s. I was invited to their kids’ weddings. What do you mean, no?
Instead of going to jail, Rebecca was slapped with a raised eyebrow. To her face, that is. Behind her back, in stories told at hair salons and lunches with friends, Rebecca was rapidly transforming into a ghoul. Look, watch as her long legs became freakish height (“I have to wonder, what did they feed her?”). How her strong gaze became bug eyes (“I can’t look a them too deeply, they see back”). This girl, this girl who had taken her son. This girl had one personality trait. Nerve.
To get around the no, Janice started giving her suggestions directly to Adam. He came to Rebecca for permission to enforce the mother-in-law’s laws. This, Rebecca had to admit, was not Adam’s most attractive configuration. Waiting for one of the women in his life to give him an order, waiting for the other to sign off. How did he go from husband to messenger?
When Rebecca tried to talk about Janice with Adam he looked at her like she was speaking computer code. In this world, and on those plane, we loved our mothers. That is my mother, he said, like mother was a word you should only say with reverence, otherwise not at all.
Then there was the thing Adam wasn’t saying, but she knew he thought. He thought Rebecca’s problem with mothers was that she didn’t have a mother. She has three and a half fathers.
Peter and James, Rebecca’s dads, split up when she was seven, but remained so friendly she hardly realized they broke up. Peter remarried a Broadway set designer years later and James has a partner who works for a shipping company and is gone for half the year. They all lived in the same apartment building in New York. Until Rebecca was about 14 she thought this was all quite normal.
Rebecca met Adam in college. She wanted her dads to love him. They did, sure, but none of them understood why she had chosen so quickly. “Was it something we did?” Peter asked. He was a psychology professor sometimes mistook people for their primary motivations. “Did you want tradition?”
No, Rebecca said, I just met Adam. But during the wedding planning seven years later, when the mother-in-law business truly began, she wondered if her dad Peter was right. Maybe she had picked Adam for his mom. For the experience of a mom.
Lee, the Broadway designer, didn’t weigh in on Rebecca and Adam. He said heterosexual relationships were a mystery to him and he wasn’t getting involved but he hoped she was happy.
James, soft spoken, took a long walk with Rebecca and let her say everything she liked about Adam when she came home from Thanksgiving her senior year of college after they met. He didn’t need to ask her, but that was the environment he fostered. She could just talk and talk.
It was only Hugo, James’ here again and there again partner, who brought up Janice two months before the wedding. He said: “She is camp, that one.” James swatted Hugo’s knee and reminded him to be nice. “That is me being nice,” Hugo said. “I could say other things.”
Rebecca found Hugo and asked him, “What other things?” She wanted someone to tell her why it happened: How she opened herself up to a mom, but was not mothered. Hugo pulled her away from the party and to the cold foyer of the apartment.
“I am not one to give a pep talk. You know this.”
She did. Hugo was of the mind that all advice was wasted and people had to figure out their own paths.
“That said, I do watch the most Housewives, which gives me an advantage in the field of dealing with Janice, which is why we are here. I am about to tell you something I believe with my whole core even if it would upset Peter. I learned this from the learned this from many, many months at sea trapped with people.” He breathed, then kept going. “It sounds simple, but it’s this: You don’t need to know why someone is like that. Trying to find out will waste you time. What you need to do is deal with the person that they are. And some people? They can’t be dealt with.”
“What do you with the people who can’t be dealt with?”
Hugh smiled. “You deal with them. You know? Eventually, you deal with them.” Hugo smiled like he had dealt with people before. Rebeca shivered at the prospect. She did not know how.
Until finally, she did. The first year anniversary of the wedding. She got a call from her mother in law who asked what we were doing that night.
“We?” Rebecca said.
“Yes,” Janice said. “For the anniversary.”
“We,” Rebecca said, “Are going out to dinner.”
“Exactly,” Janice said. “I’m calling to find out what time.”
Adam wasn’t back from work yet. If he was, she might have said the same words, but maybe not the way she said them. Maybe she would have been softer.
“Janice,” she said. “You are not in our we. Adam and I are going out to dinner. It is our anniversary.”
Janice seemed to expect this, based on how fast she hurled out her next answer. “But we paid for the wedding and so we should be involved with the anniversary celebration. If you want to speak technically.”
Rebecca felt like she was in a fencing match, and she had, until now, only run track and field. She was more accustomed to running from than running toward, and with a sword. But when someone is running at you with a sword, you grab your weapon, is what I mean.
“OK, Janice,” she said. “This is where we’re going.” She gave her the name of the restaurant she was supposed to meet Adam. The time.
And because she always had a question, Janice asked, “What is the type of attire?”
“Oh, anything you have will be nice, Janice, you have such nice clothes.”
Then Rebecca changed into her sweatpants, made popcorn, and settled on the couch.
This whole time she thought this was her fault. She had offered herself up to a mom but was not mothered. But no: This was Adam’s problem. Either he would deal with it, or he wouldn’t.
Either way: She would deal.
Sitting in front of the TV, watching Bravo, watching the clock strike seven — she had never felt so powerful.
About Tiny Tarot Stories
How will it go? I will choose a tarot card. I will write a story, poem or meditation. I will send it out.
Will I do it every day? No, probably not. But I’ll do it often enough that you can expect to see my email in your inbox more often.
Why am I doing this? Because it seems like fun middle finger to ChatGPT, and because a creative writing exercise that will kickstart my longer projects. This is a continuation of the project that I started on my Instagram, @kefi_tarot, during the pandemic. This is a way for me to access the creative engine that sometimes is under a layer of ice (and by ice I mean fear).
Who is this for? Me, but I’m so happy you are here with me. I hope these stories make an opening into tarot’s archetypes and allow you to start seeing the ways archetypes and stories uphold our lives and the people in them.
Can I submit a card? Yes, in the comments, or send me a message.