Forged in Grace (22 page)

“
Grace, look at me,” Adam says. It takes everything I have to find his eyes, to leave behind the blank gaze of the dead girl, and the spiky waves of pain in him.

I look at him, and he looks at me—monster and maiden both—as if I am beautiful.

My serpent catches another scent and flicks back to the center of Adam, alerting me to small injuries along the way: a barely healed broken clavicle from a bicycle accident; a tiny bee-bee gun pellet still embedded deep in his left shoulder; a gall stone small and unnoticeable sitting at the throat of his gall bladder. He gasps as though I have poked him, and though I try to fight it, my serpent curls its tail around these damages and fixes those it can. Once it has satisfied itself with the physical ailments, it dives near his heart again, into a deep ache, not quite grief, not quite sorrow at the sight of a patient groaning for relief in her hospital bed, thumbs sewn deep into her abdomen in order to heal them. “Smother me,” she says. “No one will know you did it.”

Me.
Thirteen years ago.

“
In order to save your thumbs, we have to do a special surgery,” the resident tells me casually, like we are discussing the hospital menu. My thumbs burned badly. I’d reached toward my face to protect my eyes, plunging them into the corona of fire fueled by my hair-spray and the polyester boa wrapped several times around my neck. “I won’t lie to you, Grace,” he says, pursing his lips. “It will be difficult. You will need lots of support.” I barely had eyelids and couldn’t smile. I had not been to the bathroom by myself in one-hundred days.

“
More help than this? What’s the difference?”

He sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair by my bedside and took my hand, squeezing the wrist lightly.
“We’ll make an incision on the lateral side of your abdomen. There are lots of blood vessels there, with rich blood supply. We’ll insert your thumb and sew it loosely into the incision so that your thumb gets this much needed blood flow to save the damaged arteries. This way, you won’t have to lose your thumbs. The thing is, you can either do them one at a time, or both at once.”

“
How long?” I asked, as if time meant much anymore.

“
Each side will take about three months.”

“
Both.” I decided. “Do them both at once.”

“
You’re sure? You’ll need someone to do everything for you, Grace. Absolutely everything. You might feel…trapped.”

“
I already feel trapped.”

I thought I was making the right choice, but within the first hour after I swam through the haze of anesthesia to feel myself pinned, I realized I’d underestimated what it would be like to lose the use of both my arms and appreciated that there were conditions worse than being burned alive. The only thing that kept me from rolling into a position where I could smother myself—which I thought about at least once a day—was Adam’s kindness.

“Grace, you’re crying,” Adam-of-the-Present says.

I push him away. It
’s the only way I can break the cord, pull the serpent back from its descent into parts of Adam even I can’t bear to go.

“
I’m sorry.”

He looks stricken and I know it
’s only partly due to my confusing messages; in touching upon these pains, I’ve awakened them inside him. Is this truly my lot? He murmurs, “It’s okay” several times into my ear. I’ve never felt less sure of that.

Marly
’s trilling entry jars us both. “Hello love birds! Grace you have a healing—”

Fortunately she catches the warning in my widened eyes and the slight tilt of my head.

She starts again. “A healing day at the spa scheduled.”

Adam looks between us. If he has registered anything odd in her words, he doesn
’t reveal it. He plants his hands on his pressed khaki thighs and rises, face remade in his well-meaning-doctor expression of general cheer. “Well I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“
Adam, I—” But I don’t know what.

Adam kisses the top of my head, and murmurs into my ear,
“I’m staying at the Best Western about twenty minutes from here. He smiles politely at Marly. “It was nice to meet you,” he says, and then he pushes past her and at the sound of the apartment door clicking shut, my stomach lurches.

Marly turns and stares in the direction he
’s gone, then back to me.

“
I can’t tell him, Marly. And if I can’t tell him about the healings, then I can’t be with him, can I?”

“
Why can’t you tell him?”

“
I can’t believe you’d ask that! He’s a
doctor
.”

Marly
’s expression is on the verge of offended, but she shrugs. “Kind of came a long way to see you, didn’t he?” She strokes her belly. “But you do need to get ready. It’s your last group healing.”

Chapter Twenty

My mother’s words travel with me
: You have to believe in something bigger than you.
Today I am healing in a church—one that has been converted into a meeting hall, but which still bears the pews, altar and stained glass panels of the story of Jesus’s crucifixion. I stare at myself in a mirror, and recoil from what I see. Perhaps it’s the sallow fluorescents, but my skin looks shinier, puckered at the edges of my scars worse than usual. Or have I become too much a stranger to this face? Sometimes, more than anything else, I miss my hair. I hated it, back then—frizzy and flyaway at worst, and I could never go more than a day without washing it. But now? To run my fingers through it, to smooth its softness against my skin instead of these competent wigs, oh! Several weeks back I’d whipped off my wig in the middle of a healing just for relief from the heat without even knowing it. The audience had cried out with a kind of wild joy.

“
They want to see the whole you stripped down to nothing,” Marly’d said. So we adopted the “removal of the wig” as part of the event. I come out, say a few words, meet people, and then before I begin, I pull off the wig. It felt a little showy at first, but I liked the symbolism of it—and now I don’t have to worry about over-heating.

Marly is out front gathering money and chatting people up, taking their names and ailments down on little slips of paper, which I will draw from once I get out there.

I scratch a suddenly very itchy patch of skin at the back of my neck, and Marly is at the door to the little room “You okay?” she asks. “Grace, I think there’re a hundred people out there!”

I
’ve seen crowds of thirty, but never one hundred. I can work on maybe eight people in a sitting before the heaviness forces me into a blackout sleep. “I’m tired today. I feel funny.” I must sound like a diva.

She frowns and taps her fingers on the door jamb.
“What can I do to help you feel better?” Marly comes over and gently strokes my shoulders. “Only do a few healings out there.” She nods toward the door. “I don’t think anyone’s going to be disappointed.”

I feel like a reluctant toddler as Marly escorts me out to the stage.

From the cup I select the first name and ailment, call out “JoAnne Templeton,” and a middle-aged woman in a pale blue pants suit limps up to the dais upon which Marly’s dragged a chaise lounge from who-knows-where. I instruct JoAnne to rest into the chaise lounge, put pillows behind her neck and under her knees. She has skinny legs and arms, but an enormous belly. The little piece of paper reads:
Uterine cancer
. The swelling is bloating, I know. Cancer patients seem to take on water like leaky ships, as if to buffer the healthy cells from the sick.

My hands ache as I hold them over her. When I rest them upon her, I feel as though someone has opened a window and let in a humid and cloying draft of air. She groans slightly and shifts, and my serpent and I make our way into the wet and sticky interiors of her illness. It
’s like diving from a high ledge into a stagnant pond, thick with debris and sludge. I feel momentarily nauseous as we burrow into the sickness until my serpent’s light begins to cut through it, pull it apart like taffy, dissolve its darkness…
Can’t get comfortable. It hurts. Not just change-of-life.
I hear these words in my head, which is not uncommon, but my serpent suddenly moves away from the woman beneath us, pulling me as though beyond the door. Much farther away than that. My client shifts uncomfortably.
Damn doctors will just try to make me pay for expensive treatments.
I will my serpent back to my client’s body, but the words just keep coming.
Nothing anyone can do anyway. Grace doesn’t need to know. She can’t heal me.

“
Ma?” My hands pop off my client and I sit up, staring straight ahead but not really seeing the crowd. “Oh my God! Ma.” Though I am vaguely aware that the woman on the chaise lounge has had an incomplete healing, I can’t stop myself. I’ve picked up on Ma’s thoughts. Ma is sick, and she has no plans to tell me about it. I ease down off the stage, which cramps my right leg, and stumble down the center of the aisle. People stare at me and murmur to each other.

Time slows not unlike dreams, in which I can run but not get anywhere. I walk fast, panting, several blocks away from the building and find myself standing on a corner populated by fast food restaurants. It
’s a few minutes before all the swirling energy of urgency settles long enough to let me think clearly. I must look a strange sight standing on the corner, my hand shading my eyes from the lights, dazed, like I’ve just been thrust out of a moving vehicle. The cell phone I keep on me is tucked into my skirt pocket, and I withdraw it. It takes my ungainly fingers a long minute to dial my own phone number.

To my great surprise, without more than a couple of rings, Ma
’s croaky voice answers, “Yeah?” The phone makes her sound tinny, distant.

“
Ma, God damn it, why didn’t you tell me you were sick!”

Ma clears her throat several times.
“Gracie, my little heathen,” she says, though her tone is tender, not irritated. “How in Heaven’s name did you know that?”

“
I felt it—or heard it, I guess—your thoughts, while I was doing a healing on another woman with uterine cancer. That’s what you have, isn’t it?”

Ma makes a whistling sound.
“I prayed for miracles, Gracie, but I have to say, I never saw this coming.”

“
If you’re not going to let the doctors help you, then you need to let me come home and do it. You know I can heal you.”

Ma snorts.
“No, Gracie. Of course I’m seeing the doctors.”

“
But I heard your thoughts about how there was nothing they could do for you.”

“
I will admit I’m amazed that you know this, Gracie, but don’t you think it’s more likely you picked up on the thoughts of the woman you were…healing?”

“
It was your voice. I heard it clearly.”

“
Well, sorry to disappoint, Gracie, but I’m under treatment, and it’s not so bad. It was a little tumor. A tiny dose of chemo, and one small surgery for now. If they want me to have the whole kit and kaboodle taken out, that’s what I’ll do. Nothing to worry about, I promise you.”

“
Ma, I could fly or drive home in a day and heal you, and you wouldn’t even have to bother with surgery or chemotherapy.”

“
Grace, live your life. I will be fine.” Her voice is sure and strong and there is no arguing with her. “You’re good, I hope?” she asks, “Marly too?”

I can barely believe my ears. She
’s asking after Marly? “Yes, we’re all good,” I say, because what more can I say? “Are you getting out?” It’s hard not to imagine the house as having cancer along with her, its stacks and piles like polyps, tearing the place down slowly by its seams.

“
Gracie. Don’t worry. Just keep doing what you’re doing. I’m serious.”

There
’s no point in fighting her over the phone. “Okay, Ma. I love you.”

“
I love you too.”

I still have the phone held up to my ear, though Ma has hung up, when Marly finds me, red in the face and out of breath. She must have run after me—and I must have gone further than I realized.
“I started picking up on Ma’s thoughts.” I’m quick to my own defense. “She’s sick.”

Marly takes a deep breath and looks at me as if I
’m crazy. “You just, picked up on her thoughts from all this way away?”

“
She has uterine cancer, too. I think that’s why. I was already on that frequency; does that makes sense?”

Marly looks at me and I want to look away because there
’s pity in her eyes. “Grace,” she says, in a voice so soft it looks as though she’s mouthing the words. “I’m so sorry.”

I nod, then tuck my chin toward my chest. I have to go home. I can heal her. She can
’t deny me if I go there in person. “Come back to Drake’s Bay with me,” I state plainly.

Marly takes a step away from me.
“No.” She sounds surprised at herself. “I understand if you need to go. I won’t make you stay here, but I…can’t go back there.”

I can
’t decide if she’s playing the martyr or being sincere. “I’m not going back there
to live
. I have a bad feeling about Ma. If I can heal her, then I can stop worrying and wondering.”

Marly
’s face becomes entirely blank then, as though her soul has ducked out for a smoke. “How do you know you can heal her?” Her voice is sharp.

“
Excuse me? What is it I do all day every day?” I say.

I am unpleasantly reminded of many occasions when I came to her house just in time to stop her from throwing back a bottle of pills or pressing an X-Acto knife into her wrists when we were girls.
“You could have helped
me
more.”

I don
’t know if she means back then, or now, but her face crimps into a hard, unattractive grimace.

“
I can’t make you do anything!” I shout. “My mother may be
dying
of uterine cancer and all you can think about is yourself?”

“
I have given you a life! If not for me, you would still be living with your mother,” she says in a low voice. “It’s like you’re trying to sabotage that. Like you’re back where I found you in Drake’s Bay.”

A vent of accusations wants to burst out.
“If I remember correctly, I ‘found’ you. Because you didn’t have the courage to face me.” The words come out flat, pressed between plates of outrage. I stand up as straight as I can. “I didn’t know you could be this selfish.”