Race Spirits

By Cynthia Portfolio

A Race Spirit is an entity who brings races ahead as Dr. Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Mahatma Gandhi. But in the course of one’s life many minor race spirts help you ahead on your path. This is their story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781982274795

Cynthia Portfolio

Cynthia Portfolio is a Dr. of Metaphysics. She worked as Head of Information in the District attorney’s Office of California for over twenty years. Cynthia Portfolio is a certified Legal Assistant and was a professor at Palo Alto College, San Antonio College and St. Phillips College. She is also a mentor and LIfe Coach. Cynthia Portfolio has traveled to more than seventy four countries. She loves people and studying their cultures. Cynthia Portfolio says, “one trip is worth one thousand books.”

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Copyright © 2021 Cynthia Portfolio.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue

in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-7478-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7479-5 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 09/17/2021

Dedicated to My parents

Margaret Portfolio and Edward Portfolio

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1     Race Spirits

Chapter 2     Mines, Minds, Remembrances, And Other Mysteries

Chapter 3     May Day, Mccarthy And Mothers

Chapter 4     The Knight of Carlisle

Chapter 5     The Powers Girls

Chapter 6     The Year of the Dragon

Chapter 7     Every Knight Needs a Jewish Mother

Chapter 8     Everything West of New York is Other

Chapter 9     PIC, a Peculiar Name

Chapter 10   Champagne and Other Spirits

Chapter 11   The Bed and the Bench

Chapter 12   Turning the Paige

Chapter 13   Other Duties as Assigned

Chapter 14   Too Many Uncles – Too Many Brothers

Chapter 15   Real Men Jump Rope

Chapter 16   Storming the Bastille July 14

Chapter 17   Roll those Bones or the Moss Green Scandal

Chapter 18   From the Shadow of Eagle Rock

Chapter 19   A Different Drummer

Chapter 20   Morphy’s Law

Chapter 21   Then Sunshine

Chapter 22   A Notebook Full of Dreams

Chapter 23   The Court Appointed Attorney

Chapter 24   Ladies in Waiting

Chapter 25   Landscapes of War

Chapter 26   The Legacy of Chivalry

Chapter 27   The Court Appointed Attorney

Chapter 28   The Retired Debt

Chapter 29   The Dam

Chapter 30   Sleeping with Svengali?

Epilogue   The Knights

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to acknowledge and thank the following people:

My mother, Margaret Portfolio, Buddhist, and a Christian clairvoyant. My father, Edward Portfolio, a Christian Metaphysical scholar and my first loving teacher.

I also want to thank my aunt, Lorraine Degelia, a Christian metaphysical clairvoyant, and influence from my loving grandmother, Angela Portfolio, who was also a Christian clairvoyant and a huge influence.

I want to thank Sonya Troncoso for whom without her love and motivation, this book would not have been written. I also want to thank my friends and colleagues, Mary Wiles, Shirley Bowzer, and Diana Bell. I also want to thank my lifetime prayer partner and kindred spirit for sixty years, Elenora Davidson Anselm.

RAGNELL’S JOURNEY BEGINS

CHAPTER 1

Race Spirits

I ran through the pantry, in my unladylike gallop, skimming the black and white squares, the taps on my black patent leather shoes sticking to the floor, as flour does to dough, leaving half-moon-shaped tracks wherever I tread. That brat, Cornelius, bobbing his yo-yo like a big game fisherman in one hand and his water pistol in the other, probably has a lizard in his pocket or something else that crawls. I hope he doesn’t smile at me. Those holes where teeth should be look like dark tunnels leading no place. Corny combs his smooth brown Alfalfa-like hair, giving that cowlick in the back all the attention. I wonder why everybody around here thinks he has quality. Grownups never think girls are as important as boys, except grandma. She says that girls should never want to be equal to men since girls are better.

Cornelius, don’t you dare get my new black velvet dress wet or I’ll tell your mother.

Cornelius pouts, the corners of his mouth drooping like a sail filled with rainwater. So what? Maura, he says with that impaired s sounding like a snake sputtering. I guess it’s hard to talk without teeth. I have forgotten. After all, it’s been four years since I was a child of six. Why should the family think he should go to college when he grows up? He can only add two numbers if he can do it on his fingers. He yanked my curly black ringlets as I ran past him. The ribbons tumbled to the black and white floor, sliding down my dress like skaters on a glassy pond. He stomped them with his oxfords, his thin pink flamingo legs hanging from his short pants.

At least, I didn’t get your pretty dress wet, Miss Priss, he said, scratching his neck and getting his tie crooked again, his nose wrinkled and his hands on his hips, defying me.

It’s no wonder your mother calls you Cornelius. You’re so stuck up. I pushed him out of the way and retrieved my sullied ribbons from the tip of the white square where they rested like butterflies on a long journey.

Cornelius, you know what your mother would say if she saw you pointing a gun, even a play gun at anything or anybody, I said holding power over him.

Yeah, she would lean on her broom while sweeping the floor and say ‘Cornelius, you are not being discreet. I hope I don’t have to go to LadyCliff Academy when I grow up and learn big words and be a snitch like you, he replied, retrieving his pet frog Rasputin" from his pocket, his dirty hands stroking its slimy body. I sighed knowing that the frog would probably be put in someone’s bed, not mine because we weren’t staying overnight.

"Cornelius, you won’t have to go to LadyCliff Academy since they only take young

ladies and you’re merely a boy, and perhaps you will never grow up. And besides you will probably have to go to reform school as Mickey Rooney did in Boys Town.

Did the washing machine come?" I asked as I opened the door to the central part of the basement. The huge furnace hissed as my cousin Robert shoveled in more coal. The pipes bellowed that terrible dark noise, a Dracula-like shadow leaping from behind the great heater and feasting on little children. Robert, the brave one, was okay for a boy.

The sun gleamed through the windows from the street level above like fairies dancing on a golden rainbow. They seemed to frolic onto the Bendix wringer washing machine. It stood proudly on the platform with the icebox and the stove, all frosty and pearly. Now when the clothes pull through the press, my aunties won’t have to use their scrub boards anymore. What an invention. Grandmother can be proud that she is the first person on the block with a Bendix.

I smelled grandmother’s soup, the one she makes with the little meatballs. While my aunts occupied themselves setting the tables, I slipped the big dipper ladle to the bottom of the large pot and gathered my bounty, two meatballs which I packed into a piece of French bread lying on the counter. Now, waiting until late lunch at 4 o’clock won’t seem so far away when Nonno would tell me a story. I munched my sandwich. It must be awful not to be Italian and have to eat plain American food.

Cornelius, what are you doing?

I want to sit next to Teddy and Robert, he said, switching his chair from the small table where the little kids are supposed to eat so that he can disturb the bigger kids.

Cornelius, if you don’t behave yourself, I’m going to tell your mother who started the fire in the woodpile behind the garage, drawing my two fingers in and pointing my forefinger and pinky at him in the horn pretending that a curse is being placed on him.

You almost got yourself killed, burned the garage and the car, not to mention Mrs. Victoria’s cat who is about to be a mother again and who lives in the garage, I remarked as I prepared a meatball sandwich for him.

I turned, giving Cornelius the swish of the sash on my dress and a whiff of toilette water. Young ladies always wear toilette water.

Sometimes, I think I can hardly wait for Sunday and then I think of Cornelius. Our weekly visits occur when the family gathers at Grandfather’s Victorian house in Union City, New Jersey on Sunday -- as involuntary as High Mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral or the Yankees’ home games.

The house stood on a Revolutionary War battlefield and during the dim early morning hours, visitation by the ghosts of the Revolutionary soldiers as they duel to the death are still seen-- like the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, they live on forever.

I knew great Grandma Concetta until I reached the age of five, the time when reality is supposed to enrich your life. Her presence and the soft aroma of roses when she wandered by me and touched my hair still made me believe that truth like reality is greatly overrated. She still guards her family and hasn’t gone to heaven yet, but she is still waiting for her time to be called even though thirty years have passed since they lowered her into her grave. They told me I couldn’t know her since she had been gone a long time, but what do grownups know anyway about the possibilities of childhood. How could I have described her small frame and curly gray hair and the fact that she had two fingers missing if I hadn’t seen her. How would I know how to curtsy properly if she had not shown me?

My grandfather’s residence occupies three levels, having its main entrance on the second floor, but we usually use the basement entrance. Formal dinner at Nonno’s house involves forty guests. The basement, set up in pub fashion, indulges these large groups. The tables stretch from the back of the house overlooking the vegetable garden to the front pantry where crates of fresh fruit line the shelves in grocery store fashion. Twelve supply rooms of canned goods circle the main dining area. The music of Chopin, Mozart and Grieg descends the stairs from the Music Room, their voices in distinct bright tones.

Nonno has eleven children, four sons and seven daughters; and eight grandchildren.

He tells the most splendid stories. So today, like all Sundays, I visited his room on the third floor. I raced up the basement steps to the second floor. My cousin Teddy, the artsy one, played the Polonaise in A-Flat on the grand piano.

Tonight, Teddy pulled out the projector so that he and Robert could see the film, The Mummy. Naturally, I would invite myself. When can we see the picture? I asked in my not so timid voice. "Only Robert and I will see the movie. It’s too scary for little girls and you are already too preoccupied with Dracula, ghosts, insects and snakes. How come you never think of Dolls?’ Teddy said.

I bet I see that movie and am not as scared as they suppose. Corny is definitely not invited since he is only six.

Maura, what would you like me to play for you? he asked as my velvet dress darted past him.

Anything that isn’t Bach, I replied. And don’t run, Maura, it isn’t ladylike, he continues, his long fingers crouched over the keys in little curls stretching to the black keys and then the white keys.

From his position over the fireplace, The Cavalier stared at me. That dark portrait seemed to breathe as his eyes followed my every step. I ignored his gaze as I sprinted into the library, closing the double French doors behind me. The great grandfather clock ticked. I watched the giant silver disc dangling on the chain inside the clock. It swung back and forth stretching to reach each side of the elaborate timepiece as I plopped down into the Queen Anne winged chair, the maroon one, and waited for the chimes. My favorite book, Dante’s Divine Comedy, has a special table of its own. Nonno received the ancient handwritten book from the monks at the Vatican when he visited Italy. Four tiny wheels jut from its bottom leather cover to support the great volume. Children were not allowed to touch the book and could only see the inside in the presence of an adult, but since I was no longer a child, this rule didn’t apply to me. On the table next to the great book, another book grabbed my eye, maybe because the blue color flashed as the glare from the window struck the cover, The Tales of Camelot. I flipped the pages to the middle of the book since it takes most writers halfway through to get to anything good.

What do women desire most? I wondered about the tale as I scrolled further, its binding loose from old age. Why do I live at this time and place? Why did I not live at the time of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table? I sighed as I continued, the cold leather of the wine-colored library chair sinking beneath me. My eyes closed, droopy from daydreaming.

...If the king could find the answer to this riddle, What do women desire most? his life and the kingdom would be spared...

I laid the legend on the leather-topped mahogany table. Did I want the answer from the reading or did I want life spread out before me as an unfinished puzzle? I craved to experience everything and the answers to all those words followed by a question mark--and if I made mistakes -- at least life would not be colorless.

I ran to the third floor and counted the seven bedrooms. This one was Uncle Dan’s; this was Aunt Anita’s and so on. Each room had its own sun porch with white wicker furniture. The huge bathroom had a fireplace and a stained glass skylight. And now to Grandfather’s room. Unable to leave his room being confined to bed, Nonno invited the world into his special place through radio or paper. The London Times rested sprawled across his bed like a black and white Dalmatian puppy. Nonno read in five languages, but liked The Times because it carried news from Europe which absorbed him. He explained that American papers didn’t tell us the happenings in small provinces such as his home in Schiavi. Today, the Times with a by-line from Reuters International News Service reporter conveyed a sad story. Today, Nonno’s face wrinkled in hurt, his eyes swelled, red like your eyes do when you go swimming in a pool for a long time. These eyes sought me out over the top of the tabloid.

Maura, how is my little girl? Nonno said."

I’m fine and you? Are you unhappy? I asked, seeing something in his face that was peculiar.

Yes, gloomy today, he replied. A very great man died.

"Who, Nonno?" I inquired.

Gandhi, he answered.

Why was he a great man? I asked as I climbed on the bed to see the picture of Mr. Gandhi in the paper. The article said, Mahatma Gandhi Assassinated.

I didn’t understand the word Mahatma. Grandfather explained as he looked at me through his Ben Franklin glasses as the light bounced from his hairless scalp that Mahatma was a title given to a holy man.

We held hands. Darkness lingered under his eyes. His breathing sounded raspy like the actor Robert Donat.

Why was he a great man? I asked again.

I believe he was a race spirit, said Nonno as he kissed my cheek. I didn’t understand race spirit so grandfather explained that God looked down and saw his children in India in severe problems. Sooo, he said as adults do when they tell a story, God sent India a great spirit, born of Indian parents and of their faith to help them. Gandhi, in grandfather’s mind, was a race spirit. In the course of your life, your family, teachers and friends are minor race spirits. There are people you meet along the way who will help you find your way

Why did he have to die? I asked.

When a great spirit’s work is finished, he is called to the presence of God, said Nonno.

He asked for the small globe on the table. He showed me where Mr. Gandhi lived.

Grandfather said, "Maura, you better go to lunch now. I am a little tired and need to

rest. I love you very much."

I love you too, Nonno and I’m sorry that you’re tired. You better take your nap.

Don’t forget me, I heard him say as I jumped off the bed.

Oh grandfather, how could I forget you?

Goodbye, he said. I was afraid. Something in his voice gave the word goodbye a finality.

When I arrived on the second floor, Teddy was practicing his Chopin, still picking away at the keys. I hurried back to the library to see the large sphere on which India appeared more clearly. As I made the globe spin, all the continents sped by. The library appeared changed. The great book balanced on its wheels laid open, bearing the picture of Dante descending into the underworld in search of his Beatrice. The great clock stopped ticking; the silver disk lingered in the middle of the clock. Only silence remained.

THE SPELL IS CAST (RAGNELL BEGINS WANDERING)

CHAPTER 2

Mines, Minds,

Remembrances, And

Other Mysteries

The window pane dripped tears, a melancholy rain. My hand marked each bead as I

gazed outside as if I alone inhabited the house. My life changed because I could no longer touch my grandmother. Nonno had only been gone two years. Her sight failed and progressive diabetes became more uncontrollable. She beat the odds for so many years, said Robert. She suffered too much.

It’s true. She watched her family one by one leave her for marriage or career, all her seven daughters, but I alone was the heir of her soul. I felt guilty that I had seen her less when we moved to Dallas.

The doctor said, Stress caused it.

Her hair changed to chalk, but her skin remained charmed by the Florida sun, that particular Pensacola color. The matron, at last liberated, went to live with my grandfather.

The dark house still called the spirits of the dead. The Cavalier in the hanging portrait gazed his perplexing stare as if he protected the library entrance from all intruders. The French doors hung slightly ajar as the cousins gathered in the library as we had on so many occasions when we wanted to shut the world away. It had remained our secret place, a place where we could dream and dare and do, a place where we could escape to far-away cities and into the pages of books and hide ourselves in other worlds, my grandfather’s library.

Cornelius pouted his droopy sail sulk trying to get answers. What are grandmothers anyway?

Cornelius, they are ladies who take your hand when you are scared, like when you see a Frankenstein picture, said Robert.

And who makes the best food and always buys you presents whether you deserve them or not, I added trying to add lightness to his sorrow.

And who owns that finger that wags when you have disappointed her, said Teddy.

And they dry your tears in the absence of your mother and tell wonderful stories about places and people, sobbed Cornelius.

They possess great wisdom and always make you feel that you are their favorite grandchild even though there are lots of others, maybe others who are more intelligent, better looking, and talented. Isn’t that right Corny? added Teddy.

I sank back into the deep wine chair feeling its cold embrace. It didn’t comfort me, but made me shiver.

Where do people go when they die? Cornelius asked.

Daddy says they each inhabit a heaven of their own making. Their unfulfilled dreams on earth become their new reality and that we meet them again in that mystical place where the spirits are propitious and the prospectors are perhaps not so unlucky, I offered.

Will I ever understand why things happen? asked Cornelius.

Probably not. No one ever does. Look at grownups. They just wander from one episode or tragedy to the next, involving themselves in a series of small happenings, said Teddy.

Does the plan include something more, I thought?

"Our existence might be considered a constant progression of overcoming, coping, learning, failing, baffling, developing, thinking-- just incidents or is it just making mistakes and spiritually sprouting? ‘’ said Teddy.

How could I help Cornelius when I couldn’t even help myself? I was now twelve years old, but there was still so much I didn’t know.

I want to live like she did, said Robert.

So does everybody. She had what every woman wants or thinks she wants. Eleven children didn’t break her independent spirit, I chirped, wiping the tears from my eyes.

Robert walked over and fingered his covered wagon remembering a trip to the Arizona desert. And she maintained autonomy charting her course after my Nonno died. He would have wished it, he said with head bowed.

She spoiled me for ordinary ideas and prosaic people, I said looking down at The Divine Comedy and the lithograph of Beatrice descending from heaven to guide Dante through Paradise where he discovered the greatest of mysteries, man’s union with the divine." If my grandmother had a guide through heaven, it wouldn’t have been Virgil, but probably Saint James who would have examined her opinions on hope.

We learned in second grade science that molecules and atoms dwell in all things and that nothing really dies, said Cornelius. It just changes form.

That’s right Corny. Just think of her as a great spirit changing form. Cornelius thought about it.

How should I visualize her?

I took his hands and told him In the kitchen making meatballs.

When I thought about her it wouldn’t be in the house or the garden. They would be too confining. I saw her in the remote canyons of Arizona pointing out plants to me. Who else will teach me fearlessness, adventure, and delight in the unknown?

I already yearn for the Sunday meals we shared and the visits to Florida. Perhaps, the ventures into the obscure will allude me because she is not here to coax me. She welcomed the unfamiliar and uncommon. The Utes will have to seek another friendly face when they bargain their wares on that isolated road in the Southwest near Gas Station, USA. If family vacations continue, the smell of her perfume will not linger in those small shacks with Confederate money wallpaper plastered on the walls.

Maura, do you remember when we bought this? said Robert.

I remember her enchantment in selecting souvenirs.

Cornelius pouted his usual attention getter and said, What are souvenirs anyway? Do people buy them to prove to others that they have been somewhere?

I looked at Cornelius and felt sorry that he had not known her that well and said, They are small treasures that capture your gaze when you sip your cocoa in the morning and they allow you to drift back to that special time to a secret spot where your feet may never tread again,

Grandma Angela’s face showed stern characteristics when trading with the shopkeepers. After they accepted her offer, she then winked as though she and I shared the biggest secret. When my lonely spirit pines, childhood remembrances cannot be stolen from me.

My dad says, in time when I think of her, those shared spans of weeks will be the ones I’ll remember the most and they will bring revitalization. Those times will be summers, summers where waves of heat bounce off the pavement, that steam that creates fire in the air on those grey ribbons that furrow across the United States.

Is there a place that is not a place, but a merging of time where rock, aliens, Anasazi, and Grandma Angela and I all melt into one? Where do the space people come from? Daddy says they may not be from outer space, but from under the ocean or the center of the earth or maybe our own earth somewhere. The little men will be the most exciting history, as important as the end of the war, but when we turned on the radio today, there was no news at all, almost as though it had never happened. Superstition Mountain abodes nearby, that mystical place where the spirits are propitious and the prospectors unlucky. It was a road trip through the desert and the memory of it resurfaced unexpectedly.

The radiator of the 1941 Plymouth sizzled, that hiss that sounded like Cornelius who was always missing a tooth from some part of his mouth. Daddy placed two ice bags on the car’s radiator to pacify the hiss. On both sides of the highway, the red dirt stretched to a place where it disappeared, but it will return tomorrow over the next horizon. Grandma sat center back like the dowager empress reviewing her domain and didn’t get out until it was time to shop, sleep, sup, or sightsee. The first words I learned from her in Spanish were La Venta.

Judy and Robert ran into the decrepit, leaning main dwelling of the snake house searching for the two headed one, while I stayed near my dad because of the hives. Hives burn and itch and grow. I could barely sit still. The doctor said nothing could be done except application of calamine lotion.

Dad wants to do everything-- travel, eat out, spend money-- all the things that make life merry.

The reaction might have been caused by milk, even water. The condition might last for two weeks although mercury poisoning might take an entire year, the doctor continued.

The white tender spots appeared even on my eyelids and the knuckles of my little fingers. I yearned to dive into some cold pool or lake to freeze the sores that caused so much anguish. I dreamed of thunderbolts that might slice the sky and bring coolness to my pain.

My mind drifted to the snake farm souvenir shop where my relatives investigated treasures made by the Hopi and the Navajo. I remember Grandma Angela and daddy had selected a broach for my sixteen birthday-- a hand carved silver frog in the leap position. Its dark green heart shaped turquoise stone body felt cool and smooth to the touch.

"The artisan