by Amber Foxx
The Thai restaurant Bernadette chose for their dinner offered things Mae had never tried before, so she ordered a dish that combined ingredients she couldn’t imagine going together—peanuts, tofu, and hot peppers. Mae found it delicious. She could just picture the reaction of some Tylerton peanut farmer to this unconventional use of his crop.
During the meal, Bernadette asked, “Did you read the Walking Thunder article? We haven’t followed up on that. On running from your calling.”
Mae set down her fork. Suddenly the food didn’t taste so good. “I think I’d be worse off if I didn’t run from it. And it’s not a calling. You still haven’t told me why you think that.”
“The creator doesn’t give you a gift for no reason. You can’t see any value in it?”
“My family can’t.” Mae thought about Margaret, though. And about Mack. And Belle, and Priv. “I can see some use—if someone had some awful disease they needed to know about. Or someone got lost again. But that’s about it.”
Bernadette’s green-brown eyes darkened. “People get sick or lost in other ways.” Then she looked across the room, as if the people at another table had suddenly taken her interest.
Recognizing that withdrawal, Mae sensed that Bernadette had come close to talking about herself and pulled back from the edge, like she didn’t let anyone get close. But she had to trust somebody. Maybe this medicine woman back home she talked about so much, Bessie. “You get back home much? To see Bessie?”
Bernadette smiled softly. “Not enough.”
Leaving the warmth of the restaurant for the icy street again, they walked a block to the movie theater and joined the line. The cold hadn’t stifled the enthusiasm or size of the crowd.
Bernadette said, “I’m going to New Mexico next week.”
“To see Bessie?”
She shook her head. “Meetings ... One of the tribal colleges ...” She slid her hands up her opposite sleeves like slipping into a muff. “I need ...” She looked down, then at Mae. “I need to be healed before I go.”
Mae wondered why, but knew better than to ask. Bernadette would only dodge such a question. “You must know all the healers in this city.”
“Oh yes, I’ve studied them. The ones that didn’t decline to be studied, that is. Case studies, placebo-controlled experimental studies, participant observer studies. Descriptive studies. I have squeezed all the juice out of them.”
“You mean they aren’t any good?”
“Some aren’t. Some are excellent, and I need to stay objective with those. In case I need to do more research with them. There can’t be any subjectivity, any ... vulnerability ... in the relationship.” The world vulnerability sounded like the hardest thing she’d ever said. “I’m going to ask a big favor of you tonight.”
It must have been difficult for Bernadette to ask, but she had asked the wrong person. “I can’t do that. I’m sorry. I’m not a healer.”
“All right.” Bernadette smiled, and her posture relaxed, her shoulders settling back. “Call it an experiment, then, not a favor.”
“You studying me, then?”
“You did the experiment in my class to show Dana that remote viewing worked. Now you can do an experiment to show me that you’re really not a healer. Prove it, and I’ll leave you alone.”
When they returned to the apartment and Bernadette switched on the lamp, her cat emitted a trilling mew and trotted to meet them, laying a large rubber tarantula at his owner’s feet. Bernadette picked it up and tossed it, and the cat spun on his hind legs and took off after the toy. He continued to bat and chase the fake spider as Mae and Bernadette hung up their coats and sat down, Mae on the couch, Bernadette in a graceful old wooden rocking chair with curving arms.
“What’s his name?” Mae asked, knowing she was delaying.
Something in Bernadette’s smile suggested she knew Mae was uncertain about doing this experiment. Rocking the chair, she answered, “The Yellow Gentleman.”
“Because he shakes hands like that?”
“And asks permission. I don’t know if his owners trained him, or if he’s just naturally polite. Charlie found him a few years ago and gave him to me.”
A gift from Charlie? After thinking Bernadette had no one in her life, it was almost worse to find out there was someone after all, when it was Charlie. Before she could put on the brakes, Mae blurted out, “What is with you and Charlie?”
Bernadette sighed, crossed her legs, and used both hands to pull her hair back, as much of it had slipped from her braid. “Nothing.”
“Like he’s just your boss?”
“He thinks you don’t like him.”
“I don’t.” Mae noticed the digression. “Do you?”
Bernadette laughed, uncrossed her legs and took her hair the rest of the way out of the braid. “You have no idea how much that annoys him, that you don’t like him. Everyone, he thinks, loves Charlie, unless he’s made an enemy for the fun of it. He thinks he controls it—that he can make people like him or dislike him, when it suits him. And he can’t make you like him.”
“I can’t see what’s to like. Sorry—you’re not his girlfriend or anything, are you?”
“I take it you’d be appalled if I was.”
“Kind of. I mean, he acts like he’s chasing Dana, and that really bothers me, with her being married and his student—and then he acts like he’s something with you, I don’t know what. It’s all too slimy for me.”
“Slimy.” Bernadette giggled and brought her hands together at her lips in a prayer position, still smiling. “He would go through the roof.”
“So, you’re not involved, then. I mean, if you think it’s that funny ...”
Bernadette ceased laughing and rested her hands on the arms of the chair. “Once upon a time, before he was chairman, it ... might have been possible.” She closed her eyes, seeming to hold something in, another withdrawal. “But no, not now...” She stood, walked to her bedroom, and came back with a dusky brown-and-black pot containing two smudge sticks, and a box of matches in her other hand.
Mae wanted to grab the tail of that dropped thought and ask what it had been, but whatever it was had changed already into this new act, this new intention. “I’d like to start our experiment,” Bernadette said. “Are you ready?”
“No. But I doubt I will be. Might as well start.”
Mae tried to remember which crystals were good for healing emotional issues. She knew Bernadette had no physical problems, but clearly her heart was troubled in some secret way. Then Mae remembered the point of this was to prove she wasn’t a healer, not to prove that she was. Still, she couldn’t cheat and not do her best. That would be as wrong as cheating to win, like throwing a game.
“Let me get my rocks,” she said, and opened her purse. The name of the black rock came to her as she opened the velvet pouch and shook some of the crystals into her hand. Apache tear. It was supposed to help with shedding held-back tears, healing grief, and helping change. If that wasn’t right for Bernadette, what would be? Mae also took a quartz point and the amethyst, the all-purpose crystals, and then closed the pouch, setting it on the arm of the sofa. She stood to join Bernadette, who led the way out to the back door of the kitchen.
“I burn smudges out here usually, so I don’t make the place smell too funny or set off the smoke alarm. Sometimes I do it in the bedroom with window open, if it’s raining.” She undid two locks on a door with a metal screen over the glass and opened it, then paused. “Possum.”
Mae looked over Bernadette’s shoulder to see a large white opossum sitting on the fire escape landing. It was bigger than the cat, and seemed totally fearless.
“Go on.” Bernadette pushed the door out at the animal until it took a hard shove, and without alarm it descended the metal stairs. “Creepy looking things. I wish they wouldn’t come up like that.” They stepped out and Bernadette closed the door just as the Yellow Gentleman trotted into the kitchen. “Be careful not to let him out. I hate to think what
could happen to him out here.”
The snow had stopped, and the air, although cold, had a crisp stillness that wasn’t unpleasant. Bernadette struck a match and held the end of one of the smudge sticks to the flame until it began to smolder, then dropped the extinguished match onto the metal platform. Below, voices chatted in the parking lot as a car door closed and steps crunched on the snow, rounding the corner toward the entrance to the building.
Brushing the earthy-sweet smoke over herself and over Mae, Bernadette said something in a language Mae guessed to be Apache, then watched the smoke until the smudge ceased burning, and placed the bundle back in the pot.
“That was to make our work sacred,” Bernadette explained, “and to keep bad spirits from coming in. Even if it’s only an experiment, we can’t disrespect the spirit world.”
Obviously Bernadette’s culture accepted the idea, although Mae had not thought about spirits being part of this, good or bad. But then, she had only read the science articles, not the spiritual ones. She’d started with the safer ideas, and then stopped.
They returned to the living room, leaving the smudge pot in the kitchen. With the Yellow Gentleman seated nearby, his white-tipped tail tucked around his feet, Bernadette sat barefoot on the living room floor, inviting Mae to join her. Since it seemed more comfortable, Mae also took her shoes off, hoping the informality would relax her.
“If you could do anything at all, take as long as you wanted, and be as strange and creative as you felt moved to be,” Bernadette said, “how would you go about healing me?”
“I guess,” Mae said, kneeling beside her, “I’d have to see what’s wrong first.”
“You sound nervous. Don’t be. I’m not judging you. This isn’t like your personal training class—no one’s checking up to make sure you do a good job. And you were fine teaching me those exercises. Think of it like doing the fitness tests, if that helps.”
“Not really. See, I know I can actually see what’s wrong with people. That’s why I’m nervous. I’ll probably see something and won’t be able to fix it. I mean, I’ve seen cancer and all sorts of things I couldn’t do anything about.”
“Healing isn’t fixing or curing. You unlock a door. Then if they’re willing, the person you’re healing walks through it.” Bernadette closed her eyes and slowed her breath, laying her hands palms up on her thighs. “Go ahead. See what you see.”
Realizing she was still holding the crystals she had chosen, Mae closed her eyes, too, and tried to slow her breathing. What would she do, if she had all the time in the world and didn’t care what anyone thought? As if someone was guiding her, in her mind Mae saw Bernadette lying down in the center of the room, so she asked her to do so, then waited for the next sense of guidance.
One of the other crystals came to her mind as if someone had held it up for her, so she rose and got it from the pouch, the white one with green patterns in it, although she couldn’t remember what it was for. Why do I know what to do? Who’s telling me? Is it me, really knowing? Is it Granma? Bernadette looked fully relaxed lying on the floor, her face soft, her arms lying at her sides with the palms up, her breath still slow and deep. Mae wondered if Bernadette had misplaced her trust in a beginner who was either guessing or listening to a ghost.
The guiding energy silenced the worry with a feeling like a hand on Mae’s shoulder. Had Bernadette’s prayer really brought in a good spirit? It really did feel like Granma Jackson. Mae knelt on the floor again, closed her eyes, and adjusted to the inner world again. Part of her rose up against what she was doing, afraid she might see more than she could handle and not be able to do anything about it. But Bernadette seemed so receptive, so peaceful, not anxious like typical clients at Healing Balance, and this guidance so sure. Mae let her mind go as quiet as possible.
Following an intuitive image that arose, she moved over to press the crystals in her hands against the soles of Bernadette’s feet. Mae felt a surge of emotion coming up both her arms, anger like a child’s tantrum, followed by a rush of agony as strong as a child’s tears. Then the tunnel opened and her vision felt sucked through it as if into a vacuum. She emerged in a room that looked like the living room of a trailer. The furniture was old and stained, with cigarette burns.
A slender young man whose features resembled Bernadette’s leaned down to kiss a girl child of about eight years old. “Walk me to my car, Bee?” He opened the door and let his little sister go out first. Outdoors, they walked down unpainted wooden steps to a gravel driveway bordered by towering evergreens beneath a cloudless blue sky. A single suitcase sat by a boxy-shaped car that might once have been red. “If they get real bad, you go over to Jane’s or Elaine’s, okay? But I told Mom and Dad to try not to drink, to take care of you. I gave them a real good talking to. I hope they listened.”
“They didn’t even get up to say goodbye.”
“I’m sorry. Maybe they’ll want to stop all that, now I’m not here to clean up after them. I told them to go see Mrs. Yahnaki. She can help them.” He squatted down, picked up the slight child in his arms, and rose again, holding her. “I’ll call you as soon as I can. And you write me letters, okay? Be brave. And really, go to your cousins if you have to. I want you to be safe.”
The vision shifted through darkness, and then Mae saw the trailer again, lit with kerosene lamps on the kitchen table and counter. The child sat alone in the kitchen, eating from a can of chili. The sound of adult voices arguing rose from another room, and the little girl looked up with frightened green-brown eyes in her narrow face.
A woman’s loud slurring voice said, “That boy did not go off with the Marines.”
A man snapped back, “Yes he did. He said he would.”
A short, chicken-built woman in baggy jeans and a stained T-shirt appeared in the kitchen door, holding the frame for balance. “Bernadette, did Michael go off to be a Marine?”
The child Bernadette nodded, stuck her spoon in the chili can, and rose from the table, moving nervously toward the back door.
“What are you doing? Running from me?” The woman lunged into the room and grabbed the little girl’s arm before she could open the door, slamming her against it. “Why are you running from me?”
Getting no reply, the woman shook the child and swung her face into the door. “You want to get out?”
From the next room came the man’s slushy voice. “Leave the kid alone. Hell, let ’em both run away.”
“This one’s not running away.” The intoxicated woman grabbed the crying child by both shoulders as the man stumbled into the room on spindly legs under a bloated belly. He shoved his wife aside, yanked open the back door, and separated the child from her mother. Then he hauled her by the arm to the open door, pushing her out into the darkness on the landing.
“Get out before she beats you. She didn’t want either of you.” With a drunken, half-tearful laugh he said, “Better go join the Marines yourself.”
As her father slammed the thin metal door, the girl ran down the steps, then tripped on the bottom one, skidding in the gravel. She looked back at the trailer as the sounds of the adults shouting at each other filled its shell.
In the vision, Mae felt something slipping out of the girl and into the black woods, a child-shadow shape Mae could feel more than see. Eight-year-old Bernadette got to her feet, looked at her bleeding hands in the moonlight, and stood tall. Without tears, she began walking up the driveway, then to the edge of a paved road, where she turned left and walked on.
How could her brother leave her with those parents? He had to have lied to himself to be able to leave, made himself think Bernadette would be all right.
Outraged and hurt by what she’d seen, Mae lost the vision. She was again kneeling in Bernadette’s living room. Forty years later. Forty years after Bernadette had shed some part of her soul and gone on down the road without it.
Looking at the adult woman, her dark brown hair streaked with silver, her face faintly lined around the eyes and mouth, Mae thoug
ht what all those years must have been like. It must have been hard. No wonder Bernadette was so strong—stronger than anybody ought to have to be. She ought to be able to lean on someone, ought to be able to cry. Maybe it was like how Mae had shut down some on losing Daddy, but no—Mae had never been hurt like this. Rhoda-Rae wasn’t a great mother, but she wasn’t violent, and sometimes she’d even tried to be maternal, in her own egotistical way.
Letting go of Bernadette’s feet, Mae looked at the crystals in her hands. What should she do now? After what she’d seen, she wanted to help. But no one was lost. If someone was, she could find them for sure. If only that was the problem.
Closing her eyes, Mae reminded herself she had all the time in the world and she could do anything she felt like doing. She didn’t have to know what she was doing or even succeed. She breathed slowly again. The guiding energy moved her to lay the crystals on Bernadette, so she did, gently setting them on her chest and belly. Mae then held Bernadette’s hand and waited.
The tunnel opened, and she saw the woods by the trailer again, and the child-shadow that had left Bernadette. Someone was lost. The energy line of anger and tears that had surged into Mae as she first touched Bernadette rose again, then shattered into a thousand dark shards, and the shadow-child dissolved into the night sky.
Mae’s vision changed to imageless color, a flow of every shade of green, a flash of white light, and then a soft gray mist, underscored by sounds of running water and wind through trees.
As the Yellow Gentleman began to purr nearby, Mae opened her eyes to see Bernadette still lying in front of her, eyes still closed. The cat had settled against Bernadette’s side while she rested a hand on his back and shed silent tears though a radiant smile.