Fall River palm reader not optimistic about a pandemic quick cure

FALL RIVER — Even though Mary Miller has been a professional tarot card and palm reader for nearly her entire adult life, she’s not about to predict when a coronavirus vaccine will become available.

One thing for sure is that she’s not overly optimistic.

“I really feel this is something that’s going to take a long time, my friend,” Miller said, during an interview in her front parlor.

She added: “I think this will be around another two years. We should have stayed closed a little while longer.”

Miller for the past 21 years has been the resident palm and tarot card reader at Sally’s Palm Reading at 1022 North Main St.

She took over the business after her mother-in-law Sally Miller died.

Before moving into her late mother-in-law’s house on the busy North Main Street block near President Avenue, the Baltimore-born Miller read tarot and palms for 22 years at her residences, first in Seekonk and then Somerset.

During that time she and her husband Ricky, who had a contracting business, raised two sons.

Miller, 61, said that the pandemic has essentially killed off her business, which hinges on face-to-face consultations for dispensing advice.

She said she’s lucky if she sees one person a week who is willing to pay from $35 to $55 per tarot card reading session or hand over $20 per palm reading.

She closed down in late March after Gov. Baker ordered the closure of all non-essential business and didn’t reopen on an appointment-only basis until mid-June.

“I really didn’t do a full reading until July,” she said.

Miller says even her most loyal customers and friends are far from being comfortable with the idea of sitting in close quarters.

And she herself is reticent about encouraging anyone to visit.

“Look, I used to go to Dunkin’ Donuts three times a day,” she said, glancing across the street at the North Main Street Dunkin’. “But I haven’t been there in over two months.”

Even before a national state of emergency was declared in March, Miller said that the demand for her inter-personal business had been falling off in recent years as more people have turned to the internet for cheap or free spiritual advice.

Miller says she used to regularly do house parties and pre-Halloween bashes, but that it’s been two years since she’s gotten a call for the former. And she said it’s no surprise that COVID-19 has killed off any demand for the latter.

Miller, who met her husband Ricky when the two of them lived in Miami, said her chief concern is for all of the hardworking people who have lost jobs and have to figure out how to ensure that their children don’t fall behind in school.

“I feel hurt for people who are going through too much. They live paycheck to paycheck, but how do you look for a job when there’s no jobs?”

Miller noted that Walmart and some other major retailers are hiring seasonal workers, many of whom after the Christmas season will be back to looking for work.

"What do they do the rest of the year? And what does Walmart do if people don't have the money to spend?" she said, adding that “one hand washes the other, and everyone has to be good with each other until this is over with."

Miller said her late mother-in-law Sally and her husband initially lived in an apartment house further south on North Main Street. Another local landmark back then, she said, was the former Jerry’s Hot Dogs.

“Jerry’s was Sally’s tenant,” she said.

Miller said it’s no coincidence that her maiden name is the same as her married moniker.

She said Sally and her husband were third cousins and that everyone on both sides of the family have Romanian Roma, or gypsy, roots, although Miller says her mother, who also was a professional card reader, was of Sicilian origin.

Her mother, Miller said, gave her and her six sisters first names based on songs sung by singer and entertainer Al Jolson. 

Miller said she became aware as a young girl that she had a talent for tapping into people’s psyches.

“I could hear the thoughts of people and what they were saying,” she said.

She says it became such a distraction that she refused to go to school and instead was home-schooled.

But Miller said that wasn’t the case for her two sons who went to public school and eventually took over the contracting business from their father, who is now unable to work due to medical problems.

Miller pointed to a license issued by the city to run her tarot card and palm reading business. She said she renews it each year and is not aware of anyone else in the city who is licensed to be a professional palm and tarot card reader.

Miller said her predictions don’t always immediately come true. But she says they nearly always are manifested in one way or the other.

“They often come true. People tell me that all the time,” she said.