“This will appear in all the papers and online,” she is saying, more to herself than to me. “And José has already talked to the print shop about the posters for the town. It will go out as an email to the local merchants and on your mailing list of people waiting for an audience, past attendees, tourists, etc.” She looks up.
“That is great, Mama,” I say quietly. “Thank you.”
In a way, I do have to thank her. My mother is nothing if not efficient with managing my life as a healer. Soon the trappings of it will be in place again and all I have to do is slip back into them. Like I never stepped away from them at all.
“Where is the bag of mail?” I ask Fatima the next time she looks at me.
Her expression is worried. “I can call José to have it brought in.”
I tear my eyes from her. “I would appreciate it.”
“What are you going to do with the mail?” my mother asks, sounding distracted.
“I’m going to answer it.”
“It will take you weeks to go through it.”
I clasp my hands. Try to seem like I am at peace. “I will work as long as it takes.”
“Whatever has gotten into you, Marlena, it is a very good thing,” my mother says.
“I’m glad you feel like Finn dying is a very good thing, Mama,” I reply.
“That is not what I meant,” she snaps.
“Isn’t it?”
“I meant that what you are doing now, coming back to your senses, is what needed to happen regardless of that boy.”
I turn, ready to leave, because I can’t take standing here any longer. “What I am doing now, Mama, is penance.”
The rest of the day I go through the mail, letter by letter. I respond at length by hand to each one. There is so much mail. My mother was right. It will take me weeks to get through it.
It’s not like I’ll be out doing other things.
It’s not like I’ll be with Finn.
The hours pass and my hand aches from holding the pen.
Dear Amy . . .
Dear Gero . . .
Dear Lupe . . .
Please forgive me . . .
I’m so sorry . . .
Please, please, please.
I beg for understanding, for forgiveness, I apologize again and again. I do this until my fingers are callused and bleeding. I keep going. I used to think that people who crawled to my audiences were crazy, but now I understand them in a way I never could before. When someone you love is sick, when they might die, you will do anything for any little bit of hope. Nothing is beyond you. You would give your life for theirs.
Dear Mario, I apologize . . .
Dear Tamika, It is unacceptable that I took so long to respond . . .
Will all of this begging and repentance make up for what I have done? Will it transform me back to the healer-saint I was? In writing these letters, I am begging God to hear me, forgive me, to allow the gift I never asked for to flourish again inside me.
Please. Please. Please.
Letter by letter, I do my best to pay for what I have done. It is true, what I said to my mother, that this is my penance. Penance is a form of payment, like currency exchanged between humanity and God for one’s sins. How much payment might God require to make my gift work again? How much payment does God want from me to help Finn? Does helping Finn require more penance because I fell in love with him?
At four o’clock in the afternoon I hear voices downstairs.
I set down my pen and wipe the blood from my knuckles. Then I go into the hallway and listen.
“I need to see her—”
“She doesn’t want to see you!”
My knees give way and I slide down the wall. Finn has come to my house and is fighting to see me. Fighting for me.
“You ruined my daughter!”
“Mrs. Oliveira, I am in love with your daughter!”
Finn is in love with me.
I should go to him, I should . . .
They yell back and forth. There is desperation in Finn’s voice and a clear tone of satisfaction in my mother’s.
“My daughter never wants to lay eyes on you again!”
“I won’t believe that until Marlena tells it to my face!”
I can barely swallow.
Steel. I must steel myself. Harden my heart so that it is cold metal, impervious to dents and marks. Impervious to Finn. Loving him isn’t going to appease God. I made a bargain and must keep it. Still, I strain to hear each and every word between Finn and my mother. Soon they become too muffled to understand. My mother must have pushed Finn outside, hoping I don’t realize Finn is here.
There are footsteps on the stairs. I look up.
Fatima is crouching down to my level, a few steps from where I sit, curled into myself. “Marlena, querida, your boy needs you to come and see him.”
I drop my head back to my knees and pull my arms tighter around my legs.
She sits down and keeps talking. “Querida, I don’t know everything that has happened, but I know at least some from what I’ve overheard. I think I understand what you are trying to do, but querida, please, it does not have to be this way.”
“Yes it does,” I say into my knees.
Fatima sighs. “Marlena, I have worked for your mother a long time, and I am grateful to her for many things. She has been loyal, and pays me more than anyone else would ever pay for this job. But it is like I have said, I do not agree with her about the way you’ve been raised and treated because of this gift. It does not have to be all or nothing—I beg you to hear me on this, querida. I have watched you become a different person these last weeks. I’ve watched you light up and laugh and live. You do not have to give that up. This boy loves you, so you should go to him. The God I believe in celebrates love and wants love for us.”
“The God I believe in forbids it,” I say. “At least for me.”
“Marlena.” Another long sigh from Fatima. “Do not do this to yourself. Do not do this to that boy who is standing there, taking on your mother.”
The front door slams, the house shaking with the force of it.
“Marlena,” Fatima says again, her tone urgent.
Finn must be leaving. He is probably walking away right now. What if he never comes back? What if he believes the things my mother said to him?
Steel, steel. I tell myself this over and over. The tears pour from my eyes regardless. My body shakes with them.
“Oh querida.” There is a hand on my back—Fatima’s hand.
Quickly, as quickly as I can, I shift out of reach, as though Fatima’s hand is burning. “Don’t touch me,” I snap, looking up. Fatima’s lips part, this time her words lost. I stare at her. “I am not to be touched. You know this. Everyone does.”
THIRTY-FIVE
I take a deep breath.
Gertie’s shop is in front of me. The posters about the anniversary for the Day of Many Miracles are going up, but I wonder if the townspeople already know from the messages my mother has sent out. From the look of things on Main Street, maybe not. The town seems deserted, and Gertie is not in her usual spot in the doorway, gossiping with people walking by and just generally keeping an eye on things. I can see her behind the counter, though. The doll of me is gone from the window, leaving a gaping hole among the candles and T-shirts.
A handwritten letter is clutched between my fingers and a stack of other letters is folded neatly inside my bag.
A huge puff of air bursts from my chest. I keep forgetting to breathe. I tug the edges of my sleeves down to my wrists. I force myself inside Gertie’s shop.
She looks up. “Marlena?” Her gaze sweeps over me.
I make my way to the counter, past an aisle of sale items. Is it my fault so many things are reduced price? I hold out the letter. “I wanted to apologize for the other day.”
Gertie doesn’t take it. She stares at it; then her eyes slide back to me. “What is this?”
What do I say? Do I tell her the truth?
“My vacation is over.”
“Yes. I got your mother’s messages. I was surprised. You seemed to have . . . moved on.”
I nod. “I . . . I . . . realized that . . .” My eyes flicker upward, as though God is sitting there in heaven, looking down, arms crossed and judging. “I realized that everyone was right and that it was terribly selfish of me to have done what I’ve been doing. Healing is my true calling. People depend on me, people like you, and I have failed you. I’m sorry. I really am. I regret everything that’s happened. The letter says this more eloquently. I hope.” Tears fill my eyes, but they aren’t tears of apology or repentance. Everything I am saying to Gertie is one big lie. The only reason I’m here is because I don’t know how else to get my gift back. In truth, I regret nothing. Those were the best weeks of my life. My only regret is how they ended, that somehow I may have squandered Finn’s future.
“Now that my audiences are resuming,” I go on, with a catch in my voice that I try to swallow away, “the tourists will return and your shop can go back to normal.”
“Marlena.” Gertie sounds hesitant. Or maybe worried. It takes me back to that day when she didn’t recognize me and was concerned about my well-being.
Is she concerned about it now? Even though she knows it’s me this time?
“What?”
“This shop isn’t going ‘back to normal,’ as you put it. I’ve decided to stop selling souvenirs related to you.”
“But I need you to keep selling things! You have to.”
She studies me. “That doesn’t make any sense. The other day you . . . you were enraged, Marlena, that we’ve been taking advantage of you for years.” Her eyes lower to the counter. A sign is taped there that reads “Cash Only.” “You were right.”
Stars flare across my vision, and a rushing sound fills my ears. I grab the edge of the counter. “No,” I whisper. “No, I wasn’t. Please. Gertie, please.”
“Please what?”
“Please make things go back to the way they were.”
She tilts her head. “They can’t, Marlena. I decided I would do my best to sell the rest of what’s left in the shop until the day of the anniversary audience, and then I’d be making changes about what I sell. It’s about time.” She leans forward. “This town can’t survive on you forever. You made that clear, and it was good you did. We needed to hear it.”
As Gertie is speaking, it’s like she has one of those plastic beach shovels and is scooping my heart from my body and tossing it aside until there is nothing left of it.
She eyes my bag and the stack of envelopes sticking out of it. “If your plan is to go to the other store owners, I wouldn’t bother.”
“Why?” I croak.
“It’s up to you if you want to apologize, but if it’s your hope that we go back to the way things were, you’re too late.”
I try to swallow but I feel like I’m choking.
“We had a town meeting. We decided that it’s time for us to get out of the Marlena business.”
I don’t even remember taking the stack of letters out of my bag but I must do this, I must leave them with Gertie, drop them on the counter of her store, because when I get home later on they are gone.
For a long time, I sit, staring out the window.
Staring into space. Thinking.
This is all my fault.
I brought this on myself.
I brought this on Finn.
But then I am up, crossing the room like some robot, grabbing more of the mail I haven’t yet responded to, and getting down to work again.
Maybe things can’t go back exactly as they were, but maybe if they go back enough . . .
I bargain and bargain some more as I plead with my pen and paper. I bargain with myself, with these people I am writing to, with the world, the universe, the galaxy, and all the stars and planets within it. Most of all I bargain with God, this being, this divinity, whatever God is, that has chosen to reveal himself only when he wants to punish me.
I bargain about my gift.
I bargain about my future, the possibility that I will never get married and have children and my own family.
I bargain about sex and my body and all those things I was supposed to guard as though my entire gift depends on them.
In my bargaining I promise God to give everything up that has ever meant anything, I promise that I will never allow myself to be touched again, that I will be a good healer-saint for all the rest of my seconds on this earth, that I will live like those women mystics of the past, cloistered and obedient and utterly devoted to the service of God, a good anchorite even if I drown in the process. I promise God that if he will just spare Finn I will never ask for anything else again. I promise God everything, all that I am and ever will be, in exchange for Finn. I promise God my own life, because what is the point of a life if Finn is not there to live it with me?
Are you listening, God?
Are you?
Is this enough?
Send me a sign, God!
Send me a fucking sign!
My breath catches after this last thought echoes through my room and I realize I’ve actually said it out loud.
“I’m sorry, God,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean that last part.”
Yes I did.
I press my pen harder to the paper, blood trickling down my fingers and onto the clean white sheet. I wonder if the recipient will realize what those dark splotches are. I think about all the relics of saints I’ve read about, the tiny swatches of fabric claimed to hold the sacred drops of blood of one famous apostle or another, how worshippers have encased them in glass and exquisitely wrought jeweled containers in order to showcase them. I wonder how much a letter with my blood on it might fetch in one of the souvenir shops downtown. If anyone would try and sell it.
They certainly would have before.
My eyes sting as I write.
My fingers sting even more.
THIRTY-SIX
The anniversary of the Day of Many Miracles arrives. I’ve spent all my time preparing. Every letter has been answered. Main Street has gone back to something like normal, even if it’s only temporary. I have settled into the familiar routine of the life I used to know. Once again, my mother sticks to me like sand after a swim. She goes everywhere with me, does everything with me, setting things right, helping me make up for my crimes.
“Marlena,” my mother says. “Turn to the left. And suck in your stomach.”
I do as she asks as she buttons me into a wedding gown. It is fit for a ball, with a skirt that bells out wide and metal boning throughout.
“Suck in your stomach more. And your chest.”
I close my eyes as she tugs and tightens, careful not to brush my skin.
“You ate too much candy.”
The top of the dress is like a cage around my torso, imprisoning my ribs and my lungs, all the way up my neck to my chin. It is elaborate and conservative. I think of Catherine of Siena, who starved her body, and other women like her who purposely made their bodies uncomfortable, who harmed themselves, as penance for having bodies at all. Denial of the body and its physical needs is classic among these women. I try and imagine that my imprisonment in this dress, my inability to expand my lungs fully, is the same thing.
“There.” My mother finally sounds satisfied.
I open my eyes. There I am in the mirror. The dress, I admit, is beautiful, with its hand-sewn lace. But I swore to myself that I wouldn’t wear another wedding gown again. Not unless I decided marriage was for me and I was going to my own wedding. And maybe not even then.
“You look like a queen. Regal. As you should.”
I look sad. Lost.
A memory flashes of that giggly afternoon with Fatima, when she took me to try on bathing suits. How nervous I was to see my reflection in a bikini. How excited I was to finally pick one out. Fatima didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with showing off my body at the beach. She thought it was normal and fun. How is
it that what is normal for so many people is forbidden for me? A threat to my gift? Why did people make it this way? Why did God make it this way?
“You could at least smile,” my mother says. “People have come from far and wide to see you on this day.”
I plaster a smile on my face.
The car is silent as José drives us to the church.
He is in the front, my mother and I are in the back. I can barely fit inside wearing this dress. My mother is in one of her signature white outfits. The scenery goes by in the window, and I see it, but also I don’t. I know there is ocean and seawall and eventually the church up ahead. The closer we get, the more I wonder if I might pass out. Not because of the tight-fitting gown, but because I am terrified.
What will happen today?
Will I feel my gift returning to my body?
Will it finally be there when I need it? When others do, too?
“José, please pull around back,” my mother directs.
He does as she asks silently.
Don’t we all?
The parking lot is full. Cars spill onto the street. A crowd of people has gathered on the lawn and snakes up to the doors, which are not yet open.
“People are here so early,” I say.
“I’m not surprised,” my mother says. “This is a very special day.” I feel her eyes on me. “And of course, this is your first audience in weeks.”
José pulls up to the private entrance and opens my mother’s door. Then he runs around and opens mine. He doesn’t extend his hand to help me out, even though I’m struggling in this gown. We are back to the way things were. I am Marlena the Untouchable. I don’t even meet José’s eyes as he waits for me to get both feet on the ground. I focus on the task of arranging my skirt and righting myself so I can walk inside. I am halfway to the door when I stop.
What am I doing? Why am I really here? What do I truly think is going to happen when I walk out there onto the stage? That all will be fixed?
“Marlena, hurry. You don’t want people to see you before the audience starts.” My mother acts like I really am a bride and the crowd gathered in front is my groom.
The Healer Page 24