The People on the Roller Coaster
By Elizabeth Hardwick, first published in The New Mexico Quarterly Review
A lonely elderly woman approaches a nomadic spiritual woman and seeks advice regarding her young maid, from whom the elderly woman feels suddenly distant.
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Plot Summary
Chiena, her husband, and their little girl find a deserted cabin near a rollercoaster. Everywhere the family travels, they find an abandoned structure with two chairs inside waiting for them, one for Chiena and one for her customer. Chiena's husband distrusts Chiena's spiritual powers and wishes that they would not keep coming upon empty cabins with exactly two chairs. But they always do, and the abandoned structure is always next to an amusement park. Chiena's husband begins to clean the cabin while the little girl runs around outside. Chiena places a sign out front which reads "Chiena, Gypsy Fortune Teller," and then sits down to wait for customers. In the house across the street, Lavinia Prather opens the shades of her bedroom window and hears the Black girl who helps her around the house arriving downstairs. Mrs. Prather feels the girl has become different lately, and she grows restless and uncomfortable in the girl's company. She fears the girl will leave her. Mrs. Prather sees Chiena and her husband sitting in the cabin across the street from her house. Strangely, Mrs. Prather feels drawn to Chiena, and she walks across the street and enters the cabin. Chiena pulls out a deck of cards, and as the women sit looking at each other, Mrs. Prather begins to cry. She tells Chiena that her maid has begun to change, and that she has become afraid of the girl. Chiena's husband asks Mrs. Prather what the maid has done, and Mrs. Prather responds that the girl has not done anything, but that it is "different everywhere" now. In the distance, the rollercoaster goes by, its passengers screaming, and Mrs. Prather suddenly feels incredibly distant from Chiena. She rises and leaves the cabin, feeling afraid and certain that her maid has left her.
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