Chapter Twenty-nine
A MULTITUDE GATHERED in the old Tanner Radford school building waiting for the Healer, the Miracle Woman, Martha McGill to appear. Kim and Ruth and Kathleen had organized it all – the rental of the building, and the discreet notice in the paper – and had contacted all those on the crowded appointment waiting list, inviting them to come along to Martha’s first open healing session.
Mike McGill drew in a deep breath on seeing the large number of people who had turned out on a cold wet Saturday afternoon in mid-February to see his wife. Nervously his eyes flicked to the exit door at the back of the hall.
Also nervous and full of misgivings, Martha could feel herself trembling, for she was not used to standing up in public in front of groups of people. Evie gave her arm a reassuring squeeze as she took in the huge crowd that had gathered for the healing session. There were far more present than any of them had expected. How could she possibly help so many people, talk to them, even connect with them! Martha’s stomach churned with anxiety and dread; she had no idea what lay ahead.
As she walked up the hall through an open passageway between the metal chairs, every eye seemed to follow her, every head turn. Curious, needful, sick and hopeful, they stared at her. Martha’s mouth was dry with anxiety, perspiration already clinging to her pale lilac shirt. Mary Rose, Evie and Martha had spent almost an hour back at home trying to figure out what was the right kind of thing to wear for a healing session without wanting to appear too clerical or flaky. A white suit, a long floor-length cream dress, a smart, figure-hugging black two-piece? Eventually they decided on a pale grey knitted suit that was both comfortable and classic. Mary Rose, hugging her, told her she looked just great.
‘You OK, Martha?’ asked Mike, concerned and sensing her shock at the numbers.
‘Yeah, I guess.’ Taking a deep breath, she tried to reassure him as much as herself, knowing full well his opposition to the afternoon and his reservations about holding such an event.
‘They’ve all crawled out of the woodwork,’ he muttered darkly, ‘the poor divils!’
‘Mike!’ she chastised.
Evie marched on ahead of her. Kim, Ruth, Kathleen and Rianna, already sitting there in the front row, got up and hugged and warmly welcomed her, the crowd breaking into a spontaneous round of applause as if she was some sort of entertainer who was going to perform for them.
Evie stood on the raised dais and turned to face them all. She began to speak but a few people from the back called out that they couldn’t hear her, as the microphone wasn’t working. Martha and Evie’s eyes locked apprehensively. How on earth had they got themselves in such a position? The janitor appeared from the side and produced an old-fashioned microphone. After a few minutes’ fumbling, he got it to work, it crackled loudly before settling into the level necessary for Evie to speak.
Evie coughed, clearing her throat, and Martha recognized the familiar dogged ‘I can do this!’ expression set firmly on her face as she began to speak to the audience.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are all very welcome to this hall today. I know that many of you have been writing and phoning and emailing Martha for the past few months, trying to reach her and hoping that she might be able to provide some healing for you and whatever situation you find yourself in. Today is a response to that need, and I can tell you that both Martha and I are amazed at the numbers here.
‘Martha McGill is one of my oldest and dearest friends and I count myself lucky to have known her for so long and to witness this gift of healing that has been bestowed on her. Martha is a good person, she has always been that way and I know hand on heart that she will do her best to help each and every one of you!’ Evie smiled, looking over at her. ‘The format will be as follows. For those that need healing: each one of you come up, in turn, to meet Martha. There will be no singing or choirs, and Martha asks that you all try and keep as quiet as possible during this session of her laying on her hands, so that she can hear and talk to those she is working with. We hope that you will all have individual time with Martha and ask those who are finished to exit quietly by the side door on my right. Now I would like to introduce you to the woman herself – Martha McGill.’
A ripple of applause went through the room as Martha stepped forward. She could feel herself almost shaking at the huge expectancy of the crowd, but managed to steady herself as she greeted them.
‘Friends! Thank you for coming along today. I don’t know what will happen over the next few hours but all I can do is ask the Holy Spirit to guide all of us gathered here.’ Glancing around the hall she felt the overwhelming wave of good will towards her, but was slightly taken aback to notice the journalist Lara Chadwick sitting only about six rows from the front.
She stepped back from the microphone as Evie called the first person. An elderly woman walked stiffly forwards, her joints obviously causing her pain and slowing her down as she approached the dais.
‘Marjorie Buchanan from Lexington,’ she introduced herself. ‘My daughter Felice drove me here.’
Martha studied the resolute face of a woman who had lived through much joy and sorrow in her long life, and was now almost disabled by chronic rheumatoid disease. ‘Sit down, Marjorie,’ she offered, taking hold of her hand automatically, feeling the stiff swollen fingers and sensing the other woman’s discomfiture at having to seek help from anyone.
‘Can you do anything to help? I know I’m no spring chicken and I shouldn’t expect much at my age, it’s just that sometimes the pain gets so bad that I . . .’
‘It’s all right, Marjorie.’
Martha ran her hands over the older woman’s shoulders and down the length of her arms, feeling the pain and discomfort there. She then placed a hand firmly on either knee and felt the jarring misplacement of inflamed and diseased joints, an intense heat flowing from her hands, soothing the inflammation and damping it down. Very gently she ran the palms of her hands down along each leg and foot in turn.
‘Can you feel anything, Marjorie? The healing is passing through me to you.’
The grey-haired head nodded. ‘I feel like a burning inside me, everything feels hot and different.’
‘That’s good,’ murmured Martha, concentrating.
She took Marjorie’s hands in her own, massaging the fingers and knuckles with her own hands, wanting the joints to ease and loosen. The older woman watched intently as Martha prayed.
When she’d finished, Marjorie slowly left the platform and the crowd watched in expectation as her daughter stepped forward to help her. If they had expected the seventy-five-year-old woman to bounce out of the hall like a twenty-two-year-old then Martha knew they must be disappointed, but she herself felt better, noticing that Marjorie was a little less stiff and took her daughter’s hand easily.
A tall handsome young man was next and Martha tried not to flinch when Harry Broderick told her that he had been diagnosed with Aids two years previously and wasn’t ready to die no matter what any doctors or hospitals said. She embraced him, feeling the pain deep within the realms of his soul, the pain of rejection and fear that was making him worse. Closing her eyes she laid her hands on his chest, right over his heart, sending the warmth and healing through his body and spirit, asking the Lord to mind this precious son and protect him from further hurt. A shudder went through him and Martha sensed some of the release that Harry was going through. ‘You OK?’ she asked as she held his hand and prayed, touched by his inner spirituality, which would help him much over the coming months.
Andrea Bennet blushed when she first stepped up. The overweight young woman from Cambridge was deeply embarrassed as she told the woman healer about the medical condition that made the hair on her head fall out yet forced her to have to shave her body; her ovaries were covered in small cysts that she felt had destroyed her chance of becoming a mother even though she and her husband George were anxious to start a family. ‘I don’t feel like a woman no more,’ she whispered, her eyes welling with tears. ‘I d
on’t know how George can stand it.’
Martha’s sympathy went out to the young wife and she placed her hands firmly over the area that was causing the problem, both of them praying for the spirit to help. When Andrea stood up to leave, Martha wished her and her partner well.
‘You are a wonderful young woman, Andrea, and when the time is right you will be a wonderful mother too.’
Andrea’s eyes stared into hers searching for the truth, and Martha was delighted to see the flicker of belief which now shone from them.
Kim led a small child and his nervous mother up to her next. The little boy was about six years old and the mother whispered to her that he was a bedwetter. Martha could see the look that shot between the child and his parent and the embarrassment of the small boy Taylor that his secret had been revealed to a stranger. ‘I was wondering, ma’am, if you could do anything to help my boy with his problem.’
Martha thought of all the things she had done with her own three; Mary Rose had been the one who had the odd accident at. night when she was small. Lifting them to the toilet, not giving them too much to drink before they went to bed. She supposed his mother had already tried most of these avenues.
‘We got a mattress with an alarm and everything, but Taylor has already gone and wet himself by the time he wakes up. I honest to God don’t know what to do!’
‘He’s not sick, though?’
‘Oh no, ma’am. The doctors did all sorts of checks on him and say he’s right as rain otherwise.’
‘I see.’ Martha smiled.
She patted the chair, trying to entice Taylor to come and sit by her. She could sense his wariness after all he’d been through already. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Taylor,’ she promised.
Eventually he moved closer to her and Martha chatted to him about his favourite TV programme, trying to put him a little at ease. He was bright and intelligent and from being close to him and just holding him she could tell that when he slept he went into a heavy dream state. Just laying her hands on his straw-coloured hair Martha sensed that already he was beginning to feel different and alienated from his friends and classmates, humiliated by what was happening to him.
‘His older brother John Junior won’t sleep in the room with him no more and he’s too shamed to go visit any of his friends. When we went down to Orlando last year, to visit Disney, why, I had to bring all sorts of plastic sheets and the like and Taylor didn’t like it one bit, sure you didn’t, son?’
The boy nodded, embarrassed, dreading the attention that was being focused on him.
‘Mrs . . .’
‘Farentino.’
‘Mrs Farentino, I think it’s best if I just talk to Taylor on my own a minute if that’s all right with you.’
The mother’s face was suffused with red under the glow of her tanning salon colour, but Martha could understand her worry for Taylor and what would happen to him in the future.
‘That’s OK, Taylor,’ she smiled.
Martha, leaning forward, asked him about Orlando, and what he thought of the Magic Kingdom, a subject most kids had a lot to say on, whether they’d ever visited the place or not. As the young boy relaxed she placed her hands on his stomach. Energy surged through her as she thought of the child’s shame and humiliation at not being able to achieve what his brother and sister and friends had done easily.
‘You mustn’t be scared, Taylor! When you go to sleep you must not even think about what happens. Other people don’t think about it or worry about it, believe me. They just close their eyes and sleep. Your bladder is a perfect piece of engineering and you are just going to have to trust it to work while you sleep. Do you feel that hot spot?’
‘Yeah,’ he replied, puzzled.
‘I think that’s what was causing your little problem, and we’ll ask Mother Nature and the good earth to help you.’
When she lifted her hand from his T-shirt he still seemed puzzled. ‘Is that it?’ he asked.
‘Yep, I’m afraid so,’ she said, laughing and sending him back to his mother.
Kim and Ruth were signalling frantically that she had to move a bit faster, but Martha knew she had to take time to talk to people if she wanted to help them.
Hank Freeman pushed his way into the hall through the open back exit, he and his cameraman Don White getting seats at the end of a row. His corduroy jacket was soaked as it was still pissing rain outside and he’d had to park more than half a block away. He gestured to Don to keep the camera hidden: there was no point antagonizing the good folk sitting around them.
He cast his eye over the large assembled group, noting they were a hotchpotch of senior citizens, mothers with sick kids and the usual new age types that always believed in that kind of mystic stuff. He sighed. This healing gig was going to be a load of crap! A total waste of the afternoon. The only saving grace was the fact that he and Don were at least in out of the rain. They were supposed to have covered the huge organized protest at the cutting down of an ancient oak that shaded the children’s playground over near Roxbury, where neighbourhood parents and kids had chained themselves to the tree while the chainsaws buzzed. It sure would have given them great footage for the evening news but for a last-minute stay of execution – the tree had gotten a reprieve from the parks department for another week! Left with no story for the evening news he’d chased over here, the address scribbled on a notepad by one of the station’s researchers.
He watched the Martha woman up on the stage. She seemed to have spent an age with the small boy, whatever his problem was. Funny, she didn’t seem like one of those usual gospel type faith healers and she had none of the glittery fire and brimstone showmanship of other healing ministers he’d seen on the TV. Although the audience were intent watching her, she seemed oblivious to them, concentrating on those she was working with. He noticed Lara Chadwick, sitting a few rows from the front. The two of them covering the same story – that’s if there was a story. Sitting back into the hard wooden seat, he passed Don a square of peanut brittle, chewing on the syrupy sweetness as he waited.
So many of those who stepped forward had already done the rounds of doctors and hospitals and had no need for her to diagnose what was wrong with them; batteries of tests and X-rays and ultrasound scans had already done that. What they needed was to find a way to accept those diagnoses and in some way to heal themselves. She could lay her hands on them but they in turn needed to be able to receive that healing energy and have faith and let their body do the work. Migraine sufferers, diabetics – Martha was trying her utmost to connect with each and every one of them.
A fifty-year-old businessman with sky-high blood pressure, his wife worried out of her mind that he would die and leave her to raise their four children on her own. Hildi Jenkinson, a pensioner of seventy, too scared to agree to the bypass surgery she urgently needed, and yet in too much pain not to have it. Martha tried to soothe and calm her and remove the fear that was increasing her constant chest pain.
Martha prayed God to help her, to let his Holy Spirit fill her as she reached out to those in need of his healing. Laying on her hands she tried to ease the burden of constant pain suffered by many as they filed up to her. Not just the physical pain but the emotional and mental anguish of those who were lonesome and felt lost and totally alone in the world.
From the right side of the hall an emaciated eighteen-year-old had to be helped by both her parents, her skeletal figure drawing gasps from those around. Martha herself had to disguise her disquiet at the girl’s appearance. She was obviously suffering from a severe eating disorder. Anorexic, she’d been in and out of clinics and psychiatric departments since she was fifteen and had all but destroyed her parents’ life and marriage. She had only come to the session at their insistence, and appeared totally uninterested in both Martha and her surroundings. Her child’s body hid a now adult mind. Her once pretty features were gaunt, her skin covered in a fine down of hairs, her eyes huge in her head as her parents, holding back their emotions, begged Ma
rtha to help her.
Taking hold of her hand, Martha told her truthfully, ‘Melissa, I’m not sure that I can help you at all! The only healing that will help you now is for you to heal yourself. Your body has its own healing energy but you have tried to kill that. If you do not eat, it is no matter to me. Or in truth to anyone else. Your parents will grieve for you, that’s natural, but they will live, and go on living without you.’
She could see the shock on the mother’s face, how she wanted to protest.
‘Time and nature have decreed you are a young woman, so you must shed the skin of a child self and put on a new garment – that of a beautiful young woman. Melissa, do you believe me that this time has come?’
Melissa just blinked, staring at the floor, refusing to make any connection with her whatsoever.
Ignoring that, Martha laid her hands on her and silently prayed for the spirit to guide this lost child-woman, for food to nourish her body, and love and acceptance to nourish her heart.
At the end her sympathy went out – to the parents as they led their daughter away.
Evie brought her another jug of water, but Martha refused the sandwich she was offered. She felt no hunger and had no sense of time or place as she worked, the energy channelling through her to those who needed healing.
The crowd moved on gradually. Most were patient and calm. Those that complained or were peevish were soothed by Ruth and Kim, who did their utmost to make sure that Martha was not distracted.
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