The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts

by Laura Tillman

  “I thought I told you to throw these out,” I said to Chris, though it felt more that the shoes had decided to stay of their own volition.

  He looked back at me, confused. They weren’t old, nothing was wrong with them.

  I put them in the garbage.

  The remnants of what had happened were long aged—nearly a decade had passed—but I couldn’t wear the shoes that had tread on floors where so much blood was spilled.

  When I walk around any big city, I know I’m stepping in the prettied-up path of bloodshed. It might be possible to trace a murder to every block in some neighborhoods. Reflecting on our nation’s origins, founded on murderous theft and enslavement, every valley and plain recalls a spilling of blood, a bad history that surrounds us, silently begging to be recognized. Sometimes it seems easier not to know. Easier to forget the murders and the bloody concrete, the remnants of DNA, the graphic histories of violence, to live in a world where the horrors of the past are invisible, or else you’d have to throw out your shoes every time they touched the street.

  Another letter arrived from John. I held it between my fingertips, looking at it the way Minerva regarded me when I’d told her I’d gone inside the apartment—as if something might rub off, something that couldn’t be washed away.

  Julissa

  John Stephan

  Mary Jane

  (Photos courtesy of John Allen Rubio)

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  Belief

  Can the devil make you do things? I don’t know—I thank God for that. I’ve never been in that predicament, and I hope and pray that I never will be in that predicament.

  —LUIS ORTEGA, SWIM TEAM COACH

  What was that intangible darkness, the tar that seeped through my skin, when I went inside the building? I didn’t sense it the first time I visited, as an uninitiated reporter with no attachment to what had happened there. Minerva said I needed holy water to erase the damage from my trespass. I’d sought none, but had begun to doubt whether I could put what I’d seen behind me.

  While I’d noticed the hierberias, little storefronts downtown that sold herbs and amulets used in folk healing, I’d never had a reason to spend much time inside one. As a reporter, I’d covered Ash Wednesday, when worshippers spilled out of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral with wavy crosses on their foreheads. I’d gotten dizzy with heat inside a sweat lodge and followed the teenage girl dressed as the Virgen de Guadalupe raised on a float and carried through the streets each year on December 12. In one of my first assignments for the paper, I went to a backyard in the Southmost neighborhood to write about an image of the Virgen that had appeared on a woman’s tree trunk. My questions had been almost comically superficial: How does it make you feel to have the Virgen here in your backyard? Why do you love her so much? I approached these rituals as an outsider, unsure how to engage in a conversation about convictions to which I couldn’t relate.

  But as I got deeper into my inquiry, many of those I interviewed described the metaphysical connection to what had happened and its legacy. The attorneys had seriously considered a defense of devil possession. John and Angela had practiced the ritual of the huevo, the egg, the night before the murders, to determine if evil was in Julissa. The neighbors had diagnosed the building with a spiritual cancer, which they said continued to run through it, untreated. The role of spirituality was central and yet ethereal, a set of dots I couldn’t connect.

  One day I went into a hierberia on Market Square. I’d passed its hand-painted yellow sign many times before, with the Eye of Providence peeking out from the top, a deck of tarot cards spread along the bottom. Inside were the statues and candles used to create altars, and the herbs that might be prescribed by a folk healer for a cleansing tea or bath. Some of the items were familiar—chamomile or clove—which you could also find in a supermarket, while others were more obscure. Here were statues of Santa Muerte, the death saint, who had become stunningly popular in recent years in Mexico, partly because it was believed that she delivered results expediently and responded to requests purer figures such as the Virgen de Guadalupe would not. These statues are of a cloaked skeletal figure carrying a scythe and sometimes a globe to symbolize world domination. Many consider her to be a comforting, protective presence, so much so that they tattoo her on their skin. Inside the store, I spoke to a young man named Joe Uvalles, who said his grandmother was a curandera and card reader. A TV blasted the sighs and arguments of a telenovela as we spoke.

  Joe grew up in Southmost and watched his grandmother minister to the people who came to her house. Only in middle school, when his friends began hanging out at one another’s homes, did he realize, “This is not something everyone does.”

  Joe picked up his grandmother’s techniques as he followed her to cleanse homes and treat clients. She had a gift, he said, an ability to intuit what ailed those who sought her counsel. As he grew older, he realized that he had the same ability.

  Curanderismo, he explained, is not about curses or vengeance. “It acknowledges that there are negative things, that bad things exist, bad things happen to you. But at the same time its focus is sort of, the work is to cure, to heal.”

  Part of his job at the hierberia, when a client came in, was to determine whether the person was suffering from a genuine curse or whether that supposed curse was a scapegoat for the person’s misfortune. One man, he said, complained that a curse had caused him to lose his job, but after intuiting he was free from any malediction, Joe concluded that the man’s unemployment might more easily be explained by simple incompetence.

  “They kind of become upset because you’re not telling them what they want to hear.”

  Curandero Conversations, authored by Brownsville anthropologist Dr. Antonio Zavaleta, was recommended to me by Joe and others. Dr. Zavaleta had been studying folk healing of the border for four decades, and as a native of Brownsville, a scientist, and a spiritual man, he balanced the roles of insider and academic.

  Dr. Zavaleta was partially deaf, and his booming voice moved with the rushed cadence of a busy, cluttered mind. Tall, paunchy, and verbose, he dominated whatever space he found himself in. I’d met him many times over my years at The Brownsville Herald—he was nearly always suggested by the university as an expert in subjects tied to local culture. But curanderismo was his true specialty, and one that he was often interviewed about when it came up in the news. Dr. Zavaleta was intensely open-minded, delighting in analytical discussion as much as anyone else I’ve met, but he could quickly put up a wall to protect the healers he’d spent his life studying. I didn’t blame him: the knowledge they’d shared with him was sacred, and I wasn’t committed to understanding these beliefs in the manner of a convert.

  Curandero Conversations was his most open offering on the subject. In the book, Dr. Zavaleta shares a written dialogue with curandero Alberto Salinas Jr., who had since passed away. In 190 entries, individuals write in with their concerns, and Salinas responds. Dr. Zavaleta then adds commentary and context.

  Most of the entries are related to concrete life events. People are reaching out for advice on the dramatic and the mundane, and symbolism is everywhere. A politician is running for office and worries when his opponent hires a bruja to ensure victory, but is relieved when a white dove appears in a dream. A person is losing his or her mother to cancer and wants advice on how to deal with such a loss. A parent is concerned about her one-year-old, who has suddenly gotten irritable, and speculates that the mal de ojo has been cast upon the child. Interpreting a strong look or an unusual dream is common in curanderismo, and seeing either as a cause of illness or bad luck is not considered paranoid; it’s common knowledge that they are often connected.

  In some of the entries, the clients openly discuss medical diagnoses of mental illness with the curandero. Early in the book, an unidentified follower writes:

  I was diagnosed with paran
oid schizophrenia when I was a teenager and for years I was not able to attend school or function normally, to hold a job or to have a lasting relationship.

  My mother turned to spirituality in order to help me and eventually we were referred to you for help. Even though I take my prescription medications and see a therapist regularly, it was not until I began coming to you for counseling that I was able to keep my mental illness in check. My illness will never leave me but I know that you are protecting me from the evil spirits which surround me.

  The curandero responds by thanking the individual for his or her testimonial, adding that the client’s stability “should continue as long as you take your medication, see your therapist and place your faith in God.” The curandero instructs that a candle should always be burning on the client’s home altar and reassures that they have successfully built a protective spiritual wall. It’s an ideal manifestation of the way folk healing and mental-health care can work symbiotically to achieve a stable outcome. It also upends a stereotype about the relationship between religion and mental illness: instead of amplifying this person’s paranoia, the spiritual connection actually helps tame it.

  But, in many letters, it’s impossible to discern the true cause of the client’s distress. Dr. Zavaleta volunteered that curanderos are in no way equipped to diagnose or cure mental illness.

  “The curanderas are regular people, often your neighbor living down the block,” Dr. Zavaleta said. “They don’t have any special training. For the most part they have no training at all. They have a gift, and through that they’re able to practice.”

  In the courtroom it became necessary to address the issue of possession and the authenticity of John and Angela’s beliefs, to show whether they were invented so as to pretend insanity, or if they had an authentic connection to John’s mental state. The prosecuting attorneys also seemed aware that some jurors might believe that a possession was responsible for the couple’s actions. In his opening statement during John’s first trial, Assistant DA E. Paxton Warner went as far as to tell the jury that the evidence presented would show that “there was no witchcraft that day, that his children were not possessed by the grandmother or any other spirit.” John’s grandmother had an altar in her home and he believed her to practice witchcraft, something he spoke about to Gina and his family. His grandmother’s voice, he said, came out of Julissa’s mouth that day in their apartment.

  Dr. Zavaleta was called to testify during the first trial. He hadn’t been given much information about the case beforehand, other than John’s confession and a tour through the apartment. Depending on which parts you read, the testimony favors either the defense or the prosecution. When answering questions from the prosecuting attorney, Dr. Zavaleta indicated that, indeed, perfectly sane people can and do have religious beliefs, and that merely hearing God speak to you or seeing a family member in a dream does not indicate you are abnormal. He also said that John and Angela’s apartment lacked an altar or complex collection of objects that would indicate a serious practice of witchcraft.

  But when defense attorney Alfredo Padilla questioned him, Dr. Zavaleta allowed that possession is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, and that people who are not devoutly religious would be more likely to label such behavior as symptomatic of mental illness:

  Q.And there is no guidelines and there is no manual to say, this is a possession, this is not a possession. It all has to do with how the person perceives the occurring act?

  A.I think that’s exactly correct.

  Q.And whether this is a possession or not, there are certain individuals who believe that somebody may be possessed. And, again, there is no established criteria as to what possession entails; isn’t that correct?

  A.That is exactly correct. In fact, if you believe in possession, then you treat it appropriately. If you don’t believe in possession, then you take the person to a mental health practitioner.

  Q.And how that person reacts to the belief that a possession exists, a lot of times, is, again, we go back to that person and how that person perceived the concurrent act or the acts that he was able to observe, that’s what we are looking at, what that person perceived. Because, I mean, what I may perceive can certainly be demonic, but may not be what you consider to be demonic. Isn’t that correct?

  A.That’s correct.

  Q.If the light burns out here and I may concede, well, you know what? That’s a demonic act. Somebody in here produced a spirit, you know, to burn that lightbulb out. Now you may not have the same perception—you may not have the same belief, but I can feel real comfortable. I can sit here and say, “You know what? That light burned out because somebody out here in the audience, you know, put a spell on that light.” And you’re not right, and I’m not right. We just have different perceptions about the act, is that correct?

  A,That’s absolutely correct.

  This is a crucial exchange. Padilla explains why it’s so tricky to consider the role of religion in this case: a person’s behavior, and indeed every act and occurrence in the world, can be the result of spiritual forces, or none whatsoever. It all depends on your perspective. It’s impossible to make a judgment as to which perceptions are real, and which are false, without assuming your personal view to be more valid than your neighbor’s.

  • • •

  Most people do not suffer from a “classic” case of mental illnesses like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but rather have an individual presentation of an illness or mixture of illnesses. Dr. David Novosad, a psychiatrist who often gives forensic testimony, told me that it’s difficult to find a criminal with a so-called textbook case of schizophrenia, but that only such cases would likely cause a jury to find a defendant not guilty by reason of insanity. In a textbook case, a person who has grown up in a stable home has a sudden, clear, and otherwise unexplainable break from his or her former behavior, experiencing the delusions and hearing the voices that are hallmark symptoms. But many schizophrenics, such as John, also use drugs or have had traumatic experiences in childhood, making it challenging to pinpoint the start and cause of specific behaviors.

  “We don’t really understand a lot about mental illness,” said Dr. Novosad. He works in a state hospital in Oregon with three categories of patients: the involuntarily committed, those charged with a crime but too mentally ill to work with an attorney, and those found not guilty by reason of insanity. Dr. Novosad said that, even for psychiatrists, clear-cut diagnoses are elusive, a reality that’s not palatable in the legal arena. That’s why reading expert testimony from John’s trial is so confusing. Different psychiatrists deliver divergent evaluations of John—that his behavior was the result of schizophrenia or spray use or some combination. That he was not schizophrenic at all, that his behavior in interviews showed he understood his life and was not governed by delusions. The truth is potentially impossible to pin down because drugs can trigger mental illness and can also make people behave as though they were mentally ill. While the high from spray use is short, and John said he’d not huffed in several days, some psychiatrists would argue that brain damage from such chronic use can alter behavior after the initial high is gone, mimicking an illness such as schizophrenia.

  Dr. Raphael Morris described a laundry list of John’s symptoms during the second trial. It muddied the water for the jury, while also getting closer to a realistic description of his mental state.

  “I picked up on different symptom clusters related to delusions, related to hallucinations, related to mood, related to sleep disturbances, related to concentration, distractibility, restlessness. His substance-abuse history was also very complicated. He had used different substances, mostly spray paint and marijuana, but I know there had also been positive urine tests for cocaine at some point. So I was trying to get a thorough substance-abuse history, and also taking that into consideration in forming an opinion about his mental state and what were the driving forces in his behavior; basi
cally, doing a—trying to do what I call—what we would call a thorough risk assessment.”

  So many details are presented at a trial like John’s, it’s difficult for a jury to weed through such testimony and determine how much to blame John’s choices or his illness for his actions that day.

  “They want certainty. As an expert witness, you will lose if you express uncertainty,” Dr. Novosad said.

  A forensic psychiatrist who often testifies in New Jersey courts, Dr. Daniel Greenfield, told me that successful testimony has as much if not more to do with effective communication as it does content: “I’ve seen highly qualified experts go down in flames because the jury didn’t understand what they were talking about.” The law, he said, is often incompatible with scientific nuance. To further complicate matters, attorneys naturally seek out experts who they expect will support their theory of the case. In the Northeast, where Dr. Greenfield works, “lawyers rely tremendously on word of mouth. Certain people develop reputations for being mainly prosecution witnesses or defense witnesses.”

  Dr. Morris was among the experts to conclude John had paranoid schizophrenia. The delusions both he and Dr. Valverde elicited, he testified, “have to do with making these unrealistic connections, seeing something that—a sign, a picture, a person on the bus, and then folding it into his system and misinterpreting it, thinking that it means something that it doesn’t mean, like that there is a danger, that there is witchcraft, that there is possession.”

  This is some of the most persuasive psychiatric testimony I read in John’s case. It includes all of the behaviors that often coexist for those with serious mental illness, painting a picture of a troubled person with many layers of symptoms. Ironically, these can cancel one another out for a Texas jury trying to decide if the legal definition of insanity has been met.