The Healer

by Donna Freitas

  The woman’s eyes are vacant. Her mouth is twisted in pain. She is nearly catatonic. When the man hears the soft brush of my slippers on the wood floor he turns. While his mother’s face displays a bottomless emptiness, his has the full bloom of desperation and hopelessness, like a black flower that swallows all the light around it. He is quiet and hesitant, uncertainty on his face as he takes me in and I stand there, in front of my grandfather’s chair.

  “Hello . . .” His mouth is a round O, but nothing else comes out.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell him, because I know just what to do. I have remembered, once again, who I am. I am ready to perform the duties of my gift. In an instant, I am Marlena the Healer. It is like slipping on old, comfortable shoes.

  “What is your name?” I ask him.

  “Pedro,” he says quietly.

  “And your mother?”

  “Guadalupe.”

  I nod. I don’t bother to sit. There will be no small talk like sometimes with seekers who are nervous, who have questions, who want to have a conversation with the Healer before anything else happens. The son, Pedro, looks at me with fear, afraid to let his mother go, to cede her to me, even though this is what he came here to do.

  “Really, don’t worry,” I tell him again.

  “But don’t you need to know what—”

  “—please,” I say, and he presses his lips together into a tight straight line, his arms retracting from his mother. He gets up from the couch and stands aside. She still hasn’t looked at me. Not with eyes that can see.

  My mother was right.

  I have never known grief, or loss, not personally. Not the kind that breaks a heart, never to be the same again, or that immerses someone in a fog for months, even years, the world dimmed and dull and cloaked in perpetual gloom. But I know when I see grief on the face of another person, and it is what I see in Guadalupe, who sits, shoulders slouched, body leaning to one side now that her son is no longer there to support it.

  Pedro is pacing in front of the couch, eyes on the floor.

  I sit down next to Guadalupe and take her hands into mine. She doesn’t acknowledge my presence, doesn’t flinch or react. But I think touch must be a basic human instinct. I know just how to smooth my fingers over the lined palms of this sad woman, how to rest my forehead against the thickly veined backs of her brown hands, how to coax the person hidden inside this shell of a body into the world outside again.

  I clutch at my chest when I feel the sharp pain of Guadalupe’s grief in my heart, and as the colors come. A burned rust sweeps through me first, burned like the dead leaves of fall that turn to dust in your hand. It’s followed by the dark red and orange of age, of exhaustion, of a forest after a fire has swept through it. I push past these scenes, the despair that enshrouds Guadalupe in darkness. I see that she has lost a son, her youngest, and her husband, too. My heart cries out at the depth of her pain. Pedro has lost a father and a brother, but people move through grief in different ways, and some, like Guadalupe, enter it as though it is an underworld that traps them in its grip forever.

  Visions of tragedy, of untimely good-byes and trauma, wash over me in sepia tones. I draw them into myself, into my own body, taking the burden from Guadalupe into my mind and heart and soul, into the hands that hold tight to hers. I absorb the worst of it, the depths of her affliction. That is my job.

  Then, I see a glimmer of yellow. Then another of green and blue. Hues of pink and lilac, accompanied by happy memories, the beautiful and the bright, the ones that lie buried under the cloak of Guadalupe’s despair. They are there. The life and future of Guadalupe is buried deep, but waiting. I uncover it for her. I draw it back into view.

  And I stay, holding her hands, forehead pressed against her skin, chasing away the thick storm of her affliction until I feel the hope stirring in her again, until I feel the sight returning to her eyes, and until I feel the life in my own body draining away.

  When I wake I am staring up into the face of Fatima.

  I am lying on the couch on my back in the receiving room. Pedro and Guadalupe are gone. I must have passed out.

  “Marlena,” Fatima says. “Are you okay?”

  She holds a glass of water. I struggle to sit up. My head swirls and tips. “I’m fine,” I croak.

  She nods.

  I take the water and gulp it down. Watch as Fatima leaves. Wait for enough strength to stand and to walk. Did I heal Guadalupe’s pain? Did I remove enough of the despair from her heart so she can make her way back into the realm of the living?

  Will my mother tell me if I did or didn’t?

  I get up slowly, my legs unsteady. The sun is on its way down along the horizon. I wonder where my mother is, if she showed Guadalupe and Pedro out while I was asleep. I pass by the kitchen on my way to my room. Fatima is there, standing behind the island. Her hands are powdered with flour, palms pressed into a fat ball of dough for the sweet bread she knows is my favorite.

  She stops kneading when she sees me. “I didn’t show your mother that dress from your swim, Marlena,” she says. “I would never. She found it on her own. If I’d found it first, I would have washed it before she could have known.”

  “Don’t worry,” I tell her. “It’s okay.”

  Fatima’s dark hair is streaked with gray even though she is not yet forty. Like Mama, Fatima came here from São Miguel as a child, with her fisherman father and her seamstress mother. She has four children at home and no husband to help her. Mama pays Fatima well, pays her quadruple what anyone else would because she knows how difficult it is to make a new life in a place where you weren’t born, when you are alone and have people who depend on you. It is good to remember that Mama has a lot of kindness in her. Kindness she shows to Fatima.

  Fatima is still watching me, hands balling and pushing at that pillowy dough. “Marlena, is there anything you want to talk about?” she asks. There is a beat of silence, broken only by the hollow sound of her palm against the dough, but she seems to want to say something else. “You can talk to me. I’m . . . I’m here for you.”

  I stare at her, considering this strange new offer, and the deal Fatima and I made earlier today to not tell on each other. But then the handle on the front door turns, my mother about to enter the house from wherever she’s been. “See you later,” I say and run to the stairs before Fatima can respond and before my mother sees me there.

  A big bag of mail, of letters and petitions, has been deposited outside my bedroom door. It rises nearly to the top of my knee, a drawstring pulling it closed at the top. I get one every month. Tonight I walk by without touching it. I’ve had enough of healing today.

  I shut the door of my room carefully, hoping my mother will think I’m asleep and not come up to see me. I wonder if Fatima is telling her she found me passed out on the receiving room couch. I wonder what my mother will think it means that I did, or if she won’t think it means anything at all.

  I grab a book and sit in the chair by the open windows, grateful for the evening breeze. My attention floats from the pages to the wall. Across it are my careful drawings, my paintings, my collages of favorite visions. More than one—if you look closely—take the shape of a human heart, hearts I’ve healed. Colors define them. Hues of purple, green, yellows and reds and oranges. One is dominated by bright, hot pinks. Some of the drawings are a collection of the tiny scenes that sometimes accompany the vision about the life and future of a person I’ve healed. But mostly they are intricate, detailed bursts of light and color. I have never chosen to paint the dark gray and black storm of despair like I saw today. I’ve always tried to capture the light that peeks out from those murky depths, the yellow of hope and the aqua blue and pink of joy.

  My easel stands nearby, in the far corner of my room, waiting for me to go to it.

  Tonight I’m too tired to paint.

  I try to focus on the book that sits open in my lap, but my mind keeps drifting. My thoughts shift to Finn. The waves beyond my windows are crashing
against the rocks, and I hear his voice intermingled with these sounds, calling me a fraud. Images of him fill my vision, a flush starting to burn across my skin.

  Who am I kidding?

  Gorgeous, genius Finn surely has a million girlfriends, probably has a girlfriend now. Why would he ever want someone like me? These thoughts send me into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin. I don’t care that it’s humid, that my body sweats, that I haven’t eaten dinner.

  A strange thing happens while I sleep.

  I have a vision, the kind I get when I’m about to perform a healing. The strange part is that I’m not about to perform a healing and the vision is about Finn. I’ve only had visions of people I’m meant to heal, and usually that is only while I’m touching them.

  In the vision I see Finn, clear as day, as though he is standing in front of me. He’s looking at me in a way that no one has ever looked at me. This vision is less about color and more about scenes, scenes of the future, but in this one, I am a part of Finn’s future. In Finn’s eyes, I see love. Real love. Romantic love. Finn loves me, my vision reveals. But then, I watch as Finn turns and walks into a dark tunnel, or maybe it’s a dark wood. I try to follow him but I can’t. I’m rooted to the spot where I stand. I call out, but he keeps on going, walking until he disappears into the darkness.

  It’s so vivid, so powerful, so upsetting, that it wakes me.

  I sit up in bed, covered in sweat, sheets drenched. My stomach groans with emptiness and my heart is pounding and pounding in my chest. I get up and stand by the open windows and let the breeze cool my hot skin. Try to breathe.

  If my vision is right, it means something wonderful and terrible at once.

  Finn will fall in love with me.

  And then he’ll break my heart.

  I press my hands against the frame of the window.

  Maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe it wasn’t a vision at all.

  Maybe, maybe, it was only a dream.

  TEN

  Over the next two weeks, I go to see Angie every afternoon.

  I am an addict, José my reluctant dealer.

  Finn and I have reached an unspoken agreement to remain at a safe distance. I think he is keeping this distance out of respect. I wish he wouldn’t. I wish for less respect.

  I learn bits and pieces about him. He’s three years older. He’s a prodigy. At twenty-one he’s already far along in his PhD in neuroscience. He finished his undergrad at nineteen, just one year older than I am now. He is an actual, living, breathing genius. He and Angie are close, almost like a mother and son. I am jealous.

  Today when I enter Angie’s office she is sitting cross-legged on the floor, piles of paper spread in front of her. Finn is nowhere to be seen. The windows are open even though it is hot. Angie doesn’t like the air conditioning. The sounds of the sea help her concentrate, she told me.

  Angie pats the spot next to her on the rug.

  I sit down and cross my legs like Angie’s, sink into the luxurious wool of the rug and wait for her to speak. I can tell she is thinking about something. Her eyes are halfway closed, and she breathes slowly, like she might be meditating. Angie’s blond hair is loose and falling around her shoulders, all that thick butter yellow.

  Her lids fall open and her eyes are on me. “Tell me something, Marlena. What do you think about our visits so far?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer carefully. “It’s weird, to be studied. By someone who doesn’t believe in me,” I add.

  Angie doesn’t seem offended by my comment. “You think I don’t believe in you?”

  “Well, you’re a scientist.”

  Her fingers press deep into the rug. “And you think scientists can’t believe in the unseen?”

  “I think scientists don’t believe in miracles.”

  “Do you believe in miracles?”

  Her question comes so quickly, so easily, it almost seems she hasn’t just asked me whether I believe in the very thing that has defined my entire life. “Of course I do,” I say.

  Angie switches the cross of her legs. “You don’t sound certain, though.”

  She’s right. If she’d asked me several months ago, the certainty would have been plain. “There was this woman who came to my audience in June. Actually the same day you showed up.” I tell her about Mrs. Jacobs and what Mrs. Jacobs claimed.

  “Do you think she might be right?” Angie asks.

  “No. I mean, I didn’t think so before.” I pull my knees into me and wrap my arms around my shins. “But I don’t know anymore. So many people come in and out of my life at my audiences, it’s not as though I keep track of everyone. Maybe some of my healings work, and some don’t. That would make sense, right? For me not to have a perfect track record?”

  “It seems reasonable,” Angie agrees. “But what do you think might make the difference between a healing that ‘worked,’ as you said, and one that didn’t?”

  Her question makes me laugh. “Talking to you is like what I’ve imagined it would be to talk to a therapist.”

  Angie waits for me to say more, the good scientist-therapist she always is.

  I roll my eyes. “Okay. Your question is good, but I don’t know how to answer it. I don’t think I’ve ever articulated out loud that some of my healings might work and some might not, until right now.”

  She picks up a pen and takes a few quick notes. “Would you feel okay if it turned out that you didn’t have a ‘perfect track record,’ as you put it?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “You seem pretty certain of that.”

  I think of what my mother said the other day, about how I am people’s last hope. How my gift isn’t allowed to fail. “It wouldn’t be fair to those who depend on me.”

  “You feel responsible for a lot of people.”

  I rest my chin on my knees. Grip my shins tighter. The understanding on Angie’s face, the sympathy, makes me want to hug her. Like I wanted to hug Fatima the other day. Does growing up and turning eighteen make you more affectionate?

  “I am responsible,” I tell her simply, but there is a force behind those words. A strong gale of something not quite identifiable. “To the townspeople and their shops, to people I haven’t even met who need me, or who will. What if I suddenly couldn’t help them? What if they died and it was all my fault?”

  Angie leans forward, the papers in her lap sliding off. “But . . .”

  She does this. Angie inserts a single word, then a pause, because she wants me to finish my thought. I do my best to keep going, to give her a real answer, the gale slicing through me. “Sometimes I don’t want to be responsible for anybody. Sometimes I want to go to school like everyone else my age. Sometimes I want to walk down the streets of town and not see a single image of my face on a T-shirt or a key chain or . . . or even a kite. Sometimes I want to know what it’s like to not have people whispering about me, or treating me like I’m special, or worse, treating me like I’m some freak.” The list pours from me like a poison my body needed to purge. “I’ve had healing audiences every week since before I can remember. I’ve been given gifts and treated like I’m a saint and I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but . . .”

  “But?” Angie presses again.

  Anger flashes in a fiery orange ball and I wish I could hurl it at something. “But sometimes I hate it, I hate all of it.” The word hate comes out hard and cold and vicious. I dig my fingernails into the woolen knots of the rug. “I don’t have any friends. I’ve never been out, just to have fun. I’m never, ever touched.” I push my fingers deeper into the rug, prying the fibers apart. “I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’m eighteen and I’ve never kissed anyone and I probably never will.” I look up. “All because of my gift.” My breaths come fast. “Sometimes I don’t care if not being a healer means that people will die,” I add, these words flying out of me.

  Right then, Finn slinks around the corner.

  Our eyes meet.

  Then mine flee his.

  How muc
h did he hear? The last part surely. But the part about never having a boyfriend, never having been kissed or touched? I wait for Finn to tell me I’m a horrible person, who he’d never consider touching if I was the last girl on earth.

  All Finn says is “Nice outfit.”

  Angie gets up, a little awkwardly. Her eyes narrow at him.

  But Finn’s eyes are on me. I am wearing one of my white dresses today.

  “The girl-in-an-asylum look really suits you,” he says.

  Angie looks like she wants to kill him. “Finn!”

  I cover my mouth and start to laugh, and Finn grins.

  “Ignore him, Marlena,” Angie says.

  “No, he’s right.” I pull myself off the floor. “I’ve often thought I have that escaped-from-an-asylum thing going on.”

  Finn’s grin settles into a smile and it’s hard not to smile back. “What, did your mother drive you here instead of your chauffeur today?” He makes finger quotes around the word chauffeur.

  “He’s not a chauffeur, he’s José,” I say. “And no, my mother didn’t drive me. She’d never let me come here if she knew about it.”

  “Marlena!” Now Angie turns her exasperation on me. “You have to tell your mother.”

  I lift my chin. “I’m eighteen. I’m not a minor. I signed those release forms you gave me, so it’s none of her business whether I do this.”

  Finn whistles, then eyes Angie.

  Angie shakes her head. “That may be true, but you are not just a study subject. You are a person, a girl, and one who depends on her mother. I do not want to put your well-being at home in jeopardy. I’d be a bad researcher if I did.”

  “More like she depends on me,” I say under my breath. Then I glance at the clock on the wall of the office. An hour has gone by already. “I should go, actually.”

  “How do you feel about an MRI before you leave?” Angie searches my face for a reaction.