The second choice I made was to separate, as sharply as I could, my emotional trauma from the immediate demands of the situation—in other words, how I’d deal with the legal consequences of what had happened. Justice and legal authorities were in contact with me on a regular basis; my day in court was fast approaching and lots of people wanted details, details, details. Now. Now. Now. I gave them what details I could: I would sue the hotel in a civil court, and I would participate in the criminal trial that I hoped would put my assailant behind bars for a very, very long time. I couldn’t ignore the demands these legal battles imposed on me, but instinctively, I found I could shut off the emotional demands of my trauma from my daily routines. It felt like slamming two thick, impenetrable doors over my psyche. Boom! Shut. Done. Onward.
A few years later, I found myself gliding up on a very steep and fast escalator in downtown Moscow. The subterranean subway tunnels doubled as underground evacuation facilities the Soviets had built during the Cold War, a vast complex comprised of tunnels dug deep into the ground under the city. These tunnels were meant to protect from nuclear fallout for those citizens who could make it down. Ingeniously, the Soviet urban designers had constructed a citywide subway within the tunnel system just in case the warmongers failed. (It was completely free of graffiti, I remember thinking wryly.) But as I rose out of the escalator and left the dark deep corridors, I saw the passageway I’d have to go through in order to reach the busy commercial street. Recessed on either side of the opening were two sliding heavyblackthickmetal doors. It took me a minute to recognize them. It was a kind of epiphany: Finally I knew, seeing those doors, what I had done—what I had slammed shut inside of myself during the early months of my healing. And yet, these doors were wide open, as if to suggest my heavy black thick metal doors might be opened—but not yet.
Though I didn’t yet have that specific image of the doors, I expressed that feeling of absolute segregation to my therapist very early on. My doctor tried to pry the doors open, or at least to get me to talk about what those doors meant to me. She was using all the right technical jargon, but I would have nothing of it.
“I really have closed the doors on this assault,” I told her as I sat on the upholstered high-backed chair in her office. “I know I cannot confront it now, or probably for a long time. But I feel I will be able to someday; not now, though. Not now.”
My voice trailed off, then I continued. “I don’t know if it’s the right or wrong thing to do. And I don’t know if it will stunt my emotional growth, or even perhaps my ability to love in a full fearless way. All I do know is that this is what I must do, for now. Later, I’ll strive to pull the doors apart from each other and let the hurt back in. But that won’t be for a very long time.”
The session was over. I thanked the doctor, and I assured her that I would call if I needed her, that I knew she was there for me anytime. But that was the last time I talked about the event to a professional, until I was called to testify in court.
Still seeking truths or absolutions or reasons why this man tried to kill me, I explored palm readers and the curanderos, or psychics, who practiced their ancient ways along the Mexican border. That search brought me to Esperanza, one such curandera who was well known among the medicinal plant healers, the elder physical therapists familiar with meridian energies, and even a few of the health food proprietors along the southern border. Esperanza had a warm countenance and worn brown skin. Her eyes were like deep earthen wells. She quietly welcomed me into her small home.
“Can I offer you a cool drink?” she asked. “A Coke, some tea?”
I welcomed the tea and sat in a living room replete with Virgin of Guadalupe shrines in all shapes and sizes. Crystals and dried plants were strewn from the kitchen to the dining table. Herbs growing in the back were visible through the sliding glass door. The air smelled faintly of cumin.
We began to chat. Esperanza did not know why I had come to her, but she could sense from my energy that I had gone through something terrible and painful. She also sensed that I was not a quitter, but she suspended judgment as to whether or not that was a good thing.
She gently cupped my hands into her own and peered closely at the lines in my palms. A low whistle escaped her lips.
“Andele! We have something here, mi hija.”
I leaned forward with renewed interest and concern.
“You see here,” she said, lightly tracing the lines etched in my palm, “this is your life line. It is very long, but it is broken—see—aqui—look!”
I had never considered my hands, much less my palms, in this light. I was here to get a spiritual reading, not a palm reading. So what was all this?
“You know,” Esperanza continued, “these lines are placed here in your hand at the beginning of your life by God. They are only yours, like fingerprints. But they can tell you many things about your life—what has been and what is to come.”
She showed me her own right hand. A long deep line began between her right forefinger and her right thumb, and continued, etched into her palm, all the way down to the top of her wrist.
“You see this line?” she said. “I am to become an old woman with a full life. I cannot tell you that this ‘fullness’ will always be a good thing”—she smiled—“only that when I was born, God told me that I was going to be on this earth for a good long while.” She paused. “Now look at yours.”
My lifeline did not look a thing like hers. Until this moment, I had never really noticed that my lifeline was broken. Split in the middle. Busted. A clear breach, not to be mistaken.
“Mi hija, you either have or will have nearly been killed,” she said, just like that. “There is no question. Is this why you came here today?”
I nearly fainted. “You mean that these marks are like a way to tell the future of a person’s life?” I asked.
“It is not that simple, Mirabelle,” Esperanza said. “You see, these marks tell about what our character can be or will be. They can also tell us something about our lives. Will we be happy or sad, divorced, blessed with children? There are many ways palm lines can communicate to us. There are also many interpretations about these things. One thing is for sure, mi hija—there is no mistaking this cut in your lifeline. Since you came into this world, it was foretold you would nearly die. But see right here—your lifeline continues. It was foretold that you would nearly die—and that you would come back to us!”
There was no mistaking it—just like there had been no mistaking the Light I had seen in that hotel room.
I met another profound woman, Lynda, who would influence and guide me for the rest of my life.
It was on a warm afternoon in an outdoor café immediately outside the long shadow of the single tall building in downtown Resaca. Lynda was holding her own sort of court in the patio as she often did. She and a locally admired artist, renowned for the use of brilliant hues of red, orange, and purple, were scheming how to raise money for local charity through art. Deep in conversation, Lynda was throwing out some ideas when she could not help but see her lunch companion blanche in the warm air. Both of them watched as my mother and I carefully made it over to a nearby table and I eased down into the chair. I still hobbled with my cane and had a black eye patch over my injured eye.
“Who is that?” Lynda asked. “What happened to her?” Before she could finish her sentence, her artist friend had left their table and was talking to my mom, whom she apparently knew quite well.
She returned to Lynda, shaking her head. “That poor girl. She was in Austin and was hurt terribly in a hotel. I know her mom, so I wanted to say hello.” Her friend relayed the story as best she knew, but still shook her head silently.
Lynda was deeply moved, especially looking at my face and sense-feeling my physical and spiritual strain. It was not until much later that she and I would forge a remarkable friendship that ascended into the spiritual realm that neither of us could imagine on that sunny patio. Lynda was the person, years later, to connect my ch
ildhood lily pad dream with the hotel assault and then quietly urge me to consider what it might be like to forgive my assailant. That would be a long time coming, though, with many surprising twists along the way.
22
SEX AND SOUL HEALING
Talk about information overload. I returned home from my reading and collapsed on my mom’s navy leather couch. My wounds still hurt, so Esperanza’s pronouncement was like rubbing salt on my skin. I was tired, tired, tired. And now I felt like I was at the precipice of insanity in asking why, why, why? Why me? Why am I even alive? Why was my spinal cord not severed; why were the deep cuts and slices between every major organ in my torso and not one was actually penetrated? There was no internal bleeding—what are the odds of that? Why did I have that dream about dying from knives raining from the sky when I was a child? And now this. My lifeline foretold of this episode—or something like it, I thought—and I had the message inscribed on my hand my whole life?
I slept on the couch. I could not even move at that moment. Then came another dream, another message, it seemed, from God. Another revelation.
I was alone walking from a wooded area toward a deep chasm. The trees were darkish foliage and the chasm was lit with the orange hues of late-afternoon daylight. The split in the earth was wide, as wide as the Grand Canyon. But the black depths had no end. Something in my soul knew it reached below this earthly plain into the confines of Hell itself. The fall would be infinite and final. The darkness beckoned me, closer and closer, to the edge of the vast canyon. The pull was undeniable. Come, come. I hesitated.
In a flash, I burst into red, yellow, and orange flames, yet remained firmly anchored on the rim. I had no limbs now, only an amorphous feel to my body. The call to the blackness below was more strident, menacing now. Part of me wanted to go; it would be so easy then, to give in, not to fight anymore. The tiny bits of flame from what used to be my hair succumbed to the pull below. More and more flames joined the first strands until my flame body was nearly off the cliff, falling forward.
Suddenly, a force within me snapped and the orange flames turned to a hot white light and ricocheted me back from the edge of the rim and back into my physical body. I stood up straight and tall. Held wide my arms, my white flaxen robes fluttering in the wind, reminiscent of angel wings I somehow had known before in another time and place.
I woke upon my couch bed and for the first time felt calm and serene.
I felt, finally, that my soul was on the mend.
Work was helping and I was well enough to return to my own townhouse just down the palm-tree-lined pathway from my mom’s home. I started going through the motions of housekeeping and doing my little bit of gardening in back. I loved my brilliant red ginger flowers and the stunningly gorgeous orange petals of the poinciana tree I had planted after returning from a Caribbean diving trip.
But all was not well. There was a part of me that had yet to be healed, a part deep inside of me that had not been assaulted in a physical way, below the scars and wounded muscles. When I dared to bring it up to myself, I thought, “I am a monster. I am wrapped up in bandages seeping yellow matter. I am ugly, I am repulsive. I hurt so deeply. But this cannot be who I will turn out to be. This is not what I want to become. I want to be a full person again. I don’t know if I will be strong enough to do this transformation by myself.”
What I needed was a friend and a lover I could trust to bring me back to my state of grace. Joseph was the one. The only one. My pulse quickened when I remembered the first moment I laid eyes on this exotic man. No other way to describe him other than a vision in a 1930s vintage tuxedo. He was tall, all smiles, with shoulder-length wavy light hair, blue eyes, broad face; an Amsterdamman, dashing like the Gatsby was sublime. His energy radiated up and down the aisle of the church in a matrimonial procession.
He was escorting the mother of the groom down the aisle in a white stucco Mexican-tiled church. She was wearing a red taffeta full-length gown, looking beyond splendid. She was radiant. Joseph conveyed that he was ecstatic to have the most beautiful woman in the world on his arm. Years apart in age, their eyes nevertheless reflected a joie de vivre which threw energy sparkles around the pews much like the rose petals that were scattered before the bride and groom.
At the receiving line, after the ceremony, I approached Joseph and asked him to marry me—right then and there. I had not met him formally, did not even know his name. I was starstruck for sure!
Over the ensuing years, Joseph and I had many great excursions and much excitement together in our lives. Romping across the Mexican border was fun and always a bit risqué. Joseph was an exuberant host at his theme parties. At his Blue Martini party, for example, manikins were on display as “art” in the front lawn and crowds of real people were in the back.
Here I was now, needing him to give back some of that joy—that passion for life. I walked outside to my garden among the soft rattles of the palm trees. Mink, my brown Burmese cat, was outside in the tall ginger flower garden and greeted me with his soft call. I surprised myself when I decided right then and there to call Joseph and ask him to come over. He arrived, late as usual, and brought a single tightly rolled joint for us to share. He somehow sensed that a little relaxation was in order.
“How are you feeling, my dear—meds got you going through all this nonsense? Don’t get so melodramatic, it will pass and you will be your old self in no time.”
I gave into the smoke and his impossible eyes. “Make love to me, Joseph. I really want to do this now.”
“Let’s just take it slow and we will be all right.” He gently moved toward me and in a dramatic flourish lifted me up and carried me across the threshold to my designer bedroom, complete with backlights, etched glass, and remotely controlled window coverings.
“I’m not going to ask a second time, Joseph!”
He grinned. Carefully and slowly he made love to me. I was playful in return where my body permitted. All in all, both of us saw stars that night and I was feeling much better about myself.
“Was that okay for you? Not too weird?”
Joseph replied, “Don’t worry about a thing. You know me. I am trisexual—I will try anything once, twice if I like it!”
23
LEGAL MATTERS—THE COURT AND THE VERDICT
“All rise.” The husky Latina bailiff had to raise her voice to be heard above the din of conversation in the courtroom. It was September and the Texas heat had not yet let up for good. The room was crowded, wooden benches almost full on either side.
Martha shifted her thick thighs to ease standing for the judge as he entered. Her arthritis encroached her ankles. She didn’t have time for those “mid-life crises” she read about in movie tabloids at her east side grocery. She was too damn busy just trying to get supper on the table for her kids. All six of them. And now this.
Martha was in this capital city courtroom and not happy about it in the least. Not only did it take her from the housecleaning job she had held for twenty years; she had also had to get up before dawn and get her sister to drive with her in time for the ten o’clock opening of the court for this case—the State of Texas v. Leroy Johnson, her twenty-five-year-old son.
She knew why her son was in court. He had begged her to come, and swore he was not the one who had committed this crime. Well, his mama was no fool; it still struck deep in her heart that this was his doing. This was not the first time. “Dear Lord,” she prayed silently, “this ain’t the first time this child done hurt another person. I remember when Officer Holden showed up at the screen door last year lookin’ for Leroy. Oh, lord Jesus, I know he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. The boy coulda used some help—the mental kinda help.”
Officer Holden knew Martha well and knew the trouble she had seen with Leroy. He knew she was truthful and a good woman. The rest of her five kids were good kids. A testament to her strong Christian values.
There was no bail bond money, so Leroy was forced to stay in the city jail u
ntil the Crockett judge could hear his case. People of Crockett v. Leroy Johnson. The hearing was pretty cut and dried. Catherine, the emergency nurse, was the key prosecutorial witness, with the store cashier chiming in what he saw and heard. Security cameras were hardly in the big cities, much less in Crockett, Texas. Leroy was charged with assault and battery and convicted of a felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He started doing time in the county jail. No money to pay a fine or restitution this time, either. Martha visited him and brought him some of her red beans and rice—the guards weren’t too fastidious with the visitation rules. And she always brought a Tupperware container full to share with them. She hated to see him that way, and still knew that something in her boy’s brain just wasn’t right. Nothing to be done now anyways.
Her daydreams back to that county jail cell were interrupted by a rustle of movement in the front of the courtroom and a newcomer to the wooden bench across the aisle from where she was sitting. It was a white woman about her own age. They each gazed hard in the other’s eyes, somehow knowing they were connected to this proceeding but without knowing why. Yet.
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