The Healer

by Donna Freitas

  She doesn’t speak now, or sing. The room goes quiet, as she works on the bustle of the dress.

  “If the healing doesn’t work, do you give the money back?” I whisper.

  My mother rises up from behind me in the mirror. “Sometimes it surprises me, how naïve you are, Marlena.”

  Everything in me hardens against her. “But isn’t that how you like me, Mama? A child, naïve and stupid and sweet?”

  Bright hot lights flood the stage.

  One of the staff at the United Holiest Church has thrown the light switch, signaling that another audience is about to begin. Other staff scurry around, sweeping, moving pots of plants from here to there, placing great cascading flower arrangements at the entrance of the church and at the end of each aisle. Two women heave a small tree toward the stage. I am ashamed to admit that I don’t know their names. Shouldn’t I?

  “Marlena?”

  José is at my elbow, beckoning me into the back room.

  “Marlena?” José prompts.

  “Sorry. I was just thinking.”

  He chuckles. “Don’t do too much of that, cariño. Too much thinking is never good for anyone.”

  I follow him, nodding at Fatima, who is waiting for me. “Hello, Marlena,” she says. “You look especially pretty today.”

  I want to reach out to her, but I settle for words. “Thank you, Fatima.”

  She picks up the veil that is draped across the chair.

  “I’m not wearing that today,” I tell her.

  “But your mother—”

  “—my mother has no say in the matter.”

  Fatima’s mouth closes.

  I turn around, look out across the stage through the open door. This place was once just a garage, with folding chairs that my mother, Fatima, and José would set up, forming rows theater style. There was no stage, no other staff, no floodlights. If there were flowers, they were daisies or black-eyed Susans, handpicked from a nearby field. Occasionally there was a cactus, because they’re easy to maintain. A rickety table served as an altar. There was no platform. Audiences were simple affairs.

  I wonder if my mother was demanding money back then, too. Or if it was something that started gradually. Every now and then we’ve gotten an enormous donation from a wealthy benefactor. That’s how we built this church, in fact, and how my mother bought our beautiful house. Maybe those experiences gave my mother a taste of something she decided she wanted all the time.

  “Marlena?” José asks from behind me.

  I don’t answer. My eyes seek out my mother. She is in the middle aisle talking to one of the staff, gesturing at the seats she wants reserved for the people on her list. I wonder how much they paid her, how much she demanded, how much she promised. I wonder how many people she turned away who didn’t have the money, people like Mrs. Lewis. My mother looks every bit the queen, beautiful and thin and tall, confident and self-assured as she talks to the man who is roping off those seats. A plan forms in my head.

  “Marlena.” José is sounding desperate, like he gets when I have conned him yet again into taking me to Angie’s center. “People will start arriving and you cannot be seen here when they do.”

  “Sorry.” I turn around. “I was just thinking about the audience and how I want it to go.”

  José shakes his head. “I told you, cariño, too much thinking will get you in trouble. It’s not worth it, whatever is going through your head. Your mother will not like it.”

  I go to him now, shutting the door behind me. “You’re right. But maybe that’s the point.”

  Later, when I walk out, the crowd is hushed but murmuring.

  I take one step, then another, left, right, until I can grip the edge of the altar. Beautiful, flowered branches sit in a tall cylindrical vase. Cherry blossoms, which cost a fortune because they aren’t in season. My eyes adjust to the bright lights. Mama is standing at the podium, talking. I’ve come out before I’m supposed to. She hasn’t noticed me yet. She’s still reading a history of my healings, a litany of proof that my miracles are real, to convince people that I am truly a saint. She’s always loved this part, the proving, the convincing.

  Am I the only one who can see the snakes curling through her hands?

  Or am I the snake she’s handling?

  I reach the end of the stage.

  My mother turns, sees me, stops speaking. The eyes of the crowd have forgotten she is there. They are only for me.

  I look around.

  Finn. I wonder where he is. If he’s coming.

  There is the usual crush of tourists, craning their necks to catch a better glimpse, some of the children giggling, hands over their mouths. Some of the adults, too. The rest are seated, or half seated, since plenty rise from their chairs, or sit on the edges. I see Gertie way in back, table set with souvenirs to sell when seekers are at their most vulnerable, their most likely to hand over cash for a memory. I wonder if Gertie gives Mama a cut. In the last row I see Mrs. Jacobs, arms crossed, defiant, her entire posture seeming to say, I dare you, Marlena. I dare you to convince me. I stare at her until she is squirming in her seat. It’s the first time I’ve seen her at an audience since June.

  I am not worried. Something is happening in me, to me.

  I’m done with obedience.

  I put a hand over my eyes to shield them from the glare.

  Soon I am in the aisle.

  The front row of seekers has gotten to their knees, heads bowed. They look to be of the same family. They have shiny black hair and their round, brown faces match. A little girl glances up at me, afraid.

  I don’t want her to be afraid.

  I go to her, rest my palm on her head, feel the soft silky base of her ponytail, remembering the child on the beach who asked if I was an angel. Her mother and father gasp that I have chosen to grace their little one. As I let my hand fall from the girl, the rest of her family draws around her, touching her on her arms and back, like I anointed her the saint and they can touch me through touching their child.

  To my right, my mother is gesturing at the seats occupied by the people I am supposed to heal. The ones my mother promised miracles in exchange for cash. They sit there, backs straight, eyes on me, two women, one man, an older man with a girl, who might be my age. They don’t shout. They are quiet.

  Confident.

  But others jockey for my attention, shouting my name, some of them begging in the aisles until José forces them back.

  “Marlena! Please!”

  “Please, miss!”

  “Over here!” A woman in the middle of the fourth row to my left is waving a photo of a man in a military uniform. “I need your help!” She is wailing.

  There are people in wheelchairs, people on crutches, people with dark glasses over their eyes to cover their blindness. The tourists, the unbelievers, glance around; some of them are laughing, some of them have hands on the pockets where their phones are kept, like they’re reaching for a gun, fingers twitching. Mama doesn’t allow videos or photos during healings, only before an audience and afterward if you wait in line. Everyone always wants proof, wants a souvenir, a piece of me they can show to others.

  “Marlena!”

  “Marlena!”

  “Marlena!”

  The room is a cacophony of need, of desperation, of hope and hopelessness. The paying guests watch me, wait for me quietly, secure that their money has guaranteed my attention.

  I turn away from them, and two things happen.

  My eyes meet Finn’s. At the end of the center aisle.

  He stares intently. Like he can’t tear his eyes from me.

  A flood of emotion flows underneath my feet and lifts me up until I am floating. I am carried away even though I haven’t moved an inch.

  “Marlena,” my mother hisses, from the side of the room. “What are you doing?”

  And then, sitting in the very last row, I see Mrs. Lewis.

  Her eyes are deadened, so unlike the woman I spoke to in the ice cream shop, wh
o sent me away with a treat, kind and sweet and earnest, a woman full of love, ready to give it away. Her face is tilted down into her lap, like she wants to disappear, or is ashamed to have come. I stare until finally, her hands balled into fists, she looks up.

  I move in her direction.

  FIFTEEN

  “Why me?” Mrs. Lewis and I are standing in the aisle, face-to-face. She is shaking. Her deep-brown skin is covered in goose bumps.

  I don’t want to frighten her away, but I don’t answer her question. I don’t mention the ice cream she gave me, our conversation about faith and miracles. Our conversation about me. I want the chance to walk the town again anonymous and free. I want this so much I let sweet Mrs. Lewis hover in doubt and confusion. The saint is selfish.

  Mrs. Lewis’s eyeglasses hang on a metal chain along her front. She’s wearing pale green like she is dressed for Easter, the straight skirt reaching down to wrinkled knees. Her shoes are the same green, with heels maybe two inches high. Her hair is set, like she took the time to put in rollers last night, to sleep in them, and carefully take them out before making her way to this church.

  “Shhhhhhhh,” I tell her. I hold out my hands, palms up.

  So many people grab at me once it is allowed, once they are sure they are not violating Mama’s laws about touching the Healer. But Mrs. Lewis is reluctant. She twists the gold ring she wears, round and round.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “But . . . but I don’t . . . I don’t have . . .” The metal chain she wears shifts and shudders with uncertain, worried breaths.

  Money.

  Mama turned her away once, because she couldn’t pay.

  Before she can stutter more words of hesitation, I stop the wringing of her hands with my own. The second I do, the vision starts.

  Black is the color that dominates, black and gray, charcoal gray and light gray. I hear the rough, hoarse breaths from her lungs, sense the shaking in those wrinkled knees. The world spins, I am barely able to see. Someone, some merciful person—José I think—brings Mrs. Lewis a chair and she sits. I kneel down before her, never letting go of her hands. The blacks and grays grow shiny, bright and glaring like a newly washed car in the sun. They take the shape of a human heart.

  Mrs. Lewis’s pain is physical, not emotional. She is dying, or will die soon. I hold the vision of her heart steady, and see the way the left side is collapsing, caving in on itself, the blood in her veins unable to reach it with the force her heart needs. As we sit there, me on the floor, Mrs. Lewis in the chair, scenes begin, first from the past, of doctors and hospitals, the helpless faces of her husband and her grown son, her grandchildren still small, the swell of responsibility to care for them in this graying, kind lady.

  But then, nearly eclipsed by this expanding bubble of misery, something else stirs, powerful and certain and full of light. The blacks and dark grays gradually turn green and blue, as bright and strong as new blades of grass and as light and delicate as a robin’s egg. I can see her, literally see her. She watches her grandchildren graduate high school and college, she has dinner with her son, whose own hair is now gray with age. Little by little, her breathing eases.

  I get up, knees shaky. In the far back of the room I see Mrs. Jacobs start to stand, shaking her head. I am not afraid. I lean in toward Mrs. Lewis so I can whisper, “You’re going to be okay.” I kiss her cheek.

  When I pull back, something else starts to happen inside me.

  The tingling, the colors, the scenes from Mrs. Lewis’s future are pulsing through me and won’t stop, even though I’ve let her go. Everything in me shifts, expands to include other people, the other seekers who are here. I can see all their need at once, their wounds, their pain, the same as when I touched the MRI in Angie’s lab.

  I am once again that figurehead on the ship. I carry them on my back.

  I hold my arms wide and begin to speak. I can’t not speak. Names fall from my mouth. “Joseph. Benicia. Amanda. Christiano. Malcolm. Pilar. Jeremy. Concetta.” The names come from everywhere and nowhere.

  Soon I am surrounded by a crowd, someone in a wheelchair, others limping, one man with a woman sagging in his arms. Someone grasps my left hand and another my right. There are hands along my forearms and hanging on my elbows and shoulders. Across my back. People are everywhere, reaching for me.

  I welcome it. I welcome them, all of them. I have never been less afraid and I have never been more myself. The world is full of color and music and beauty and I am at the center of it all.

  Somewhere in the room, sounding far, far away, I hear Mama’s voice calling out. “Marlena, Marlena, Marlena! What are you doing?”

  “Dennis. Sarah. Claudio,” I say.

  The crowd around me grows and grows. They murmur, they pray, and I am taken up into their prayers and whispers. Taken over by them.

  “That is all for today,” my mother is saying into the microphone on the stage. No, she is shouting. “That is all. José? Help me here!” My mother cries for people to pull back. Eventually they obey, falling away, letting go of my hands and my arms, until once again, I am alone in the aisle. All that beauty and life, gone.

  I begin to weep. I am empty. Hollow without it. Without them.

  Everything grows silent.

  I place a hand to my temple. It feels like my head has split apart, straight in half, like a dropped bowl that hits the floor just right. I am depleted.

  But I am real.

  And now I am weeping for joy. I have never been more certain that I am real, that my gift is real. This is my job, my purpose, my reason for being. Nothing else matters. I don’t need Angie to study me, to prove whether my gift is real or a fraud. I am a healer and I always will be. It is what I am made for.

  How could I ever have doubted this? Doubted myself?

  “Back away. This audience is over,” my mother is saying, her voice booming through the church. José is next to me, gingerly taking my arm even though he’s not supposed to touch me, lifting me off the ground and carrying me away.

  Time goes by as I gather my strength backstage, enough to walk. Thirty minutes. An hour. My mother has yet to appear and I don’t know why she hasn’t come to speak to me, to scold me. Despite José’s protests, I make my way out into the church for the receiving line. I emerge into the sea of seekers and tourists who have waited for photos. People erupt into chatter and shouts.

  “Marlena!”

  “Marlena, I need you!”

  “Marlena, over here!”

  “Amazing,” shouts a woman.

  “I didn’t believe, but now . . .”

  I stand on the stage and look out over everyone. Then, in the very back, I see Finn, his face, the tilt of his head, the intensity of his eyes. I take in the fact that he just witnessed what happened. Witnessed me.

  What did he think?

  I descend the stairs and move through the crowd. “I’m sorry, excuse me,” I tell the people swirling around me. “I’m tired,” I tell them, in apology. It’s not a lie.

  I plow through everyone, and they scurry to move from my path. I am making a scene and I don’t even care if my mother witnesses it. I see Finn, hold him there with my eyes. I know he’s not going anywhere, that he’s waiting for me, but I feel as though he might slip away before I can get to him, that I will be unable to reach him before he does. He is beyond me somehow, beyond me already, or at some future date.

  What, what, what is this feeling? Where is it coming from?

  It’s like a half vision, an unformed premonition.

  When I reach him I head straight through the exit and signal for him to follow. I wait under one of the gnarled old trees whose branches are a canopy from the September sun. Me, in my wedding dress, breaths short and bursting, hem dragging through the dirt. Finn comes through the door and looks around.

  “Over here,” I call out.

  He heads toward me. “Well, that was dramatic.”

  “I guess it was,” I agree. Was he referring
to my audience, the swell of people around me, or the way the crowd parted as I moved through it? Or maybe the fact that I look like some runaway bride, and Finn the boy come to rescue me. “I don’t have much time. My mother . . . she’s angry about what happened in there.” The feeling that Finn might disappear is ever more potent now. It makes me want to place my hands on his shoulders and hold him there.

  A leaf flutters to the ground between us. “How could she be angry after that?” he asks. “Whether it was real or not, you have this way with people. You help them. You have something they need.”

  A pain spreads through my body. “Whether it was real or not?”

  Finn takes a step closer. The sunlight shines through the spaces between branches, the dappled light giving him an otherworldly look. “After what I saw today,” he says, with a mixture of fear and reverence and maybe a little bit of awe, “it’s difficult even for me not to believe.”

  SIXTEEN

  It is Monday, and I wake to noise throughout the house. Not the kind from Fatima cleaning, dragging the vacuum over the plank floors that double as sand catchers in the summer, or the use of a blender in the kitchen. I hear scraping and banging, like builders are getting ready for a renovation.

  There is a knock on my door. It opens a crack. “Marlena?” It’s Fatima. “Your mother wants you downstairs.”

  My mother and I aren’t speaking. Not since Saturday. In the tension and silence, I’ve been painting nonstop.

  “You’re supposed to shower and get dressed.” She shuts the door again.

  Uh-oh.

  Fatima didn’t even wait for me to reply.

  Intentionally slowly, I get ready. I step across the art supplies on the floor, careful not to kick anything over. I spend a nice long time under the hot water in the bathroom, then dry my hair until there isn’t a bit of moisture. I pull one of the white sheaths over my head and a long pale sweater over it. The weather has changed, the temperature finally dropping. Something in me has changed, too. I search inside my soul for what it is until I find it.