Unlocking the Future Sometimes Painful, Always Expensive

The desperation business is booming in bungalows and storefronts throughout the San Fernando Valley, where women with hypnotic eyes hawk the future for cold cash.

Checks accepted, grudgingly.

Burdened with a small expense account and an illness in the family, a writer consulted three of the many fortunetellers who advertise clairvoyance for sale throughout the Valley.

If there is such a thing as fate, then just maybe Madam Ivy or Sister Angela could foresee what no doctor has--whether the cancer eating the writer’s mother alive is fatal.

A decade ago, you could count the number of so-called spiritual consultants in the Valley on one hand, according to the 1983 Pacific Bell phone book. Today, there are more than 25 in the Valley Yellow Pages.

That’s because Los Angeles and nearby cities banned fortunetelling until 1985, when the state Supreme Court invalidated those laws, ruling that they violated the state Constitution’s free speech protections.

Since then, Sister Duda, Madam Joanne and other “psychics” have hung their shingles out all over the Valley, from upscale Ventura Boulevard to graffiti-scarred Van Nuys.

Breast cancer also ignores class distinctions. When it strikes, sadness is not far behind. When it strikes your mother, the only living relative with whom you have a relationship, fear and heartache drive even the most independent 35-year-old woman to desperate acts.

Jumping on planes without regard to the cost.

Showering her with hand-painted ceramic bowls and $78 vests, as if they could make up for the jagged scar that overnight replaced her left breast.

Sobbing uncontrollably in the office bathroom.

Going to fortunetellers.

In an otherwise ordinary tan Canoga Park bungalow, except for the “European advisor” sign in the front yard, Madam Ivy doesn’t need to study a crystal ball or even a sweaty palm to get an accurate read on the writer.

Just $35 and a quick once-over during the 60 seconds she asks the new client to close her eyes and make a wish are enough.

“You make money, but you don’t save money,” she intones shrewdly, surveying the writer’s khaki slacks, platform shoes, brand-new rawhide belt and orange T-shirt (total cost, $160).

Ivy, who looks about 50, is wearing a floor-length maroon velvet gown, an odd choice for a 90-degree day, but one that combines with her wispy strawberry-blonde hair and eyebrows tweezed into a high arch to create an exotic look.

Sort of suburban-cum-harem.

With a show on how to hook big fish flickering on her big-screen TV, Ivy announces that she detects “a shadow” on the writer’s “aura.”

“You sleep, but you do not sleep,” she says, refusing to be pinned down.

Then she asks point-blank the reason for the visit.

“I can start working for you, lighting candles,” she responds to the desperate outpouring of worries, “but it takes a donation. Let’s say $300 to $500. When you come back, I’ll have something for you. You cannot eat it or drink it, but you will have it for the rest of your life to remind you.”

A big, fat bill, perhaps?

Across town in Van Nuys that same day, a framed 5-by-11-inch picture of Elvis Presley guards the nether world from a spot on Sister Angela’s wall. Sharing the wall with Elvis are snapshots of Angela’s two black-eyed little boys. Everyone peers down on a glass table covered with an enormous white candle and pictures of Jesus.

“Now, promise me you won’t get mad when I tell you what I see in your palm,” begins Sister Angela, a petite, black-haired woman in her 30s wearing a hot-pink sun dress more in keeping with the weather than Ivy’s get-up.

Hell no, I already have a shadow on my aura, the writer thinks. What could be worse than that?

“Someone is against you,” Sister Angela announces. “Every time you think you’re getting ahead, she obstructs you. But do not fear, I can do something about it. You see that candle?”

Sister Angela points to a gilt-encrusted, rose-colored candle the size of a gallon tub of ice cream.

“For $100, I can light a candle for you,” she says.

And for my mother? the writer asks.

“I will do the best I can, but you must come back many, many times to ask the help of the Lord,” Sister Angela says, briefly taking on a nun-like persona before grudgingly accepting a $25 check made out to cash at her request.

Naturally, many psychics shop at the Psychic Eye Bookstore on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, where black, red, white and olive green skull candles can be had for $5 apiece. Not to mention nose rings, crystals, a Barbie-doll-sized statue of Isis, the Egyptian god of eternal life, and the Voodoo Handbook of Cult Secrets.

And in the back of the Psychic Eye, in a dimly lit cubicle with glowing red walls, Kelly shuffles Tarot cards like a New Age card shark.

Told about the writer’s mother, she refuses to gamble on a prediction. Yet her next earnest, but insensitive, statement makes it clear she may not be playing with a full deck.

“You gotta think of it this way,” said Kelly, a cherubic-faced woman with brown curls who constantly giggles: “When she dies, she is going to come back anyway.”