I go into the bathroom and look in the mirror, stare into the face of the girl who looks back. Once again she wears the uniform of Marlena the Healer. This Marlena looks exactly the same as before on the outside, dark hair falling around her shoulders, long-sleeved cotton dress, demure and tentlike, concealing all the curves of her body.
My body, the shape of it, is unchanged, my skin may be unmarked, but inside I am different.
A body that has been loved by another is somehow different from the body of someone who’s never felt love.
But maybe if I can go back to that other girl, then Finn will live.
There are some lines, Marlena, once you cross them there is no going back.
Those words from my mother have been ringing within me all night. Was my mother right? Did I cross too many lines? Have I ruined my gift?
But loving Finn didn’t feel like ruining myself.
It felt like finally making myself whole.
Helen’s words keep plaguing me, too, Helen the unassuming prophet. “But what if someone is sick?” she asked me the night of the party. “What if I came to you now in that chair? Would you turn me away?”
My answer had been a nonanswer, a sidestepping of the question to avoid staring the unthinkable in the face, the possibility that someday I would want those healing powers again because I would need them to save someone I love. I was naïve to think it wouldn’t happen because it had never happened before. It hadn’t happened, I guess, because before I never really had anyone to lose.
I see myself shudder in the mirror.
I turn away from my reflection, return to my room, and get in my chair without attempting to sleep, curling my legs up underneath me and pulling my cotton sheath over them to my toes. I look out over the sea, waiting. Waiting some more. Waiting for that feeling to come back to me, the feeling of healing. I wait for it to return to my body, for it to take me over again, to possess me like a demon.
How does a person who knows love unknow it? Can I unweave it from my being? The phrase steeling oneself crawls to the surface of my mind. Is that how I must do it? Become steel, a hard and cold unfeeling metal, in the face of Finn? Would hardening myself against Finn make me stop loving him? Would it help me forget what I’ve lost?
I hope so.
The thought of never being with Finn, never having him to myself, never feeling his eyes on me or his lips on my lips, makes me want to die. But isn’t that why I’m doing this? My life for Finn’s? Because if I don’t at least try, then Finn will surely die, because he is dying already. This is the bargain. I would rather be in a world where I know Finn is alive, even if I can’t have him. Even if that.
It is the middle of the night, but I find myself leaving the house.
I head down the stairs and onto the beach. My feet slip and slide in the dry sand as I walk toward the water. The sea is rough, the waves churning like a storm might be coming. I stop when I get to the high tide line and stare into the black ocean. I concentrate, prodding every corner of my body and soul for the hint of a vision, but I am blank. A vast white space of nothingness.
My gift has disappeared and I know it, as intimately as the lines on my own hand.
How do I get it back? What do I do?
God, God, if you are listening, I will do anything. Anything!
I’ve heard of artists getting blocked, of writers who can’t find words, painters who’ve lost their inspiration. But healers? Do we go through periods where the gift won’t come to us? I am inching my toes across the wet packed sand and toward the cold churning sea when it comes to me.
The dark night of the soul.
The mystics always talk about this. These long periods when they feel their connection to God—their ability to see God, to talk to God, to receive words and images and visions of God—has left them entirely. They write of total abandonment, being banished into silence and isolation, a despair beyond any consolation. For them, the dark night is torture. It is the loss of the will to believe, to have faith in anything.
I feel this darkness in me now, spreading through my veins.
A tiny wave crashes over my ankles, splashing my knees and shins with icy, salty droplets, soaking the bottom of my shift.
Maybe my mother knew something I didn’t. Maybe she always has known. Maybe that’s why she’s kept me in long white gowns and thin, fragile slippers, a girl from another era, a ghost from centuries long past. My gift belongs in another time, when people believed in such things. When religion was all the science they’d ever known. Maybe my mother has tried to keep me living not quite in this world because she knew that once I stepped foot into the world as it is today, the gift would die with me, an ancient object that can no longer withstand the air and the elements and gives way to nothing. For Finn’s sake, I should’ve stayed in that liminal place between then and now, between there and here. Maybe then he would be okay. Maybe then I could save him.
The black water rushes around my ankles and up to my knees. For the mystics, the dark night was a test from God, after which their visions returned with even more force, more glory, than ever before.
This is my test.
I must take the shipwrecked pieces that I am, hold them together with all my might, and weather whatever comes.
By the time I go downstairs in the morning, the sun is high. My mother is busy, Fatima is busy. Papers are everywhere. There is the feeling of anticipation, of urgency. Fatima keeps glancing at me from the kitchen, like she wants to say something. But she doesn’t.
“Oh good,” my mother says. “You’re up.”
“I’ve always been up. I never slept.”
My mother pushes a sheet of paper across the table. “We need to do this as soon as possible. To quell the rumors.”
I peer at the paper in front of me. On it in big capital letters above and below the photo it says, “The Anniversary of the Day of Many Miracles, a Special Audience with Marlena.” The photo is of me on that day last year. I am surrounded by seekers, everyone reaching out to me. My eyes are closed and my arms are extended. My forearms, my elbows, all the way to my shoulders, are covered with the hands of others.
My mother doesn’t ask if I like the announcement or if I approve. She just goes about the business of restoring things to their former state, goes about the business of me, like there has been no break or vacation. She snatches the paper back and studies it.
“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.”