“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, who 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.