by Philip Smith
People sat bolt upright in their chairs. The doctor’s accusations had created a tangible tension in the room. There was a long pause before my father responded. “Dr. Michaels, why are you allowing your wife to suffer the pain and indignity of chemotherapy when she is so close to death? You know that the cancer spread very quickly from her breast to her lymphatic system and then to the rest of her body. It’s now in her brain. You know that there is absolutely nothing you can do to cure her, yet you continue to pump her full of poison that is worse than the cancer. Right now she is so sick from the chemo, there’s no turning back. You need to let her die with dignity and not as a failed medical experiment. I only regret that you did not come to me last year when all of this began. I could have helped.”
Dr. Michaels stood silent. He didn’t say anything, but his face became bright red with anger and then he exploded. “You charlatan! You faker! You called the hospital and had me checked out before you came here tonight. They told you about my wife. This is just the kind of pathetic magic trick that you use to sucker the hopeless and take their money. I’ll make sure you don’t get away with this.”
The audience was astonished by this outburst. They didn’t know who to believe.
My father responded calmly, “You know as well as I do that hospitals cannot release that kind of information. I never met you until just now and had no knowledge that you were going to be here. The information I relayed to you about your wife was given to me by one of my spirit guides. I told you this in an effort to help you open your mind and consider that there are other avenues of healing and that yours might not always be the only or correct way.
“Look, I am not against the medical profession. Doctors perform a wonderful service. But the people who come to me are the rejects of the medical profession. They are the ones that you could not help or that you made worse with needless surgery and toxic medications. Rather than make empty accusations, I wish you would take the time to meet with me. I am sorry to tell you that your wife will pass over by the weekend. There is nothing anyone can do now; she is too far gone. You need to be with her, to express your love to her, and help make her transition smoother. I know she will forgive you.”
“Forgive me? Forgive me for what?” By now the doctor was screaming at my father.
“I don’t want to say it here in front of everyone. You know what has transpired between you two. Now is the moment to settle that past history between the two of you. I know how painful it will be to admit that you were wrong and that you hurt her, but you must. She will be gone soon, and it will haunt you the rest of your life. I would like to—”
At that point, Dr. Michaels, who was sitting in the middle of the row, just started bulldozing his way out of the room. He turned to my father and said, “Mark my words, you have not heard the last of me.” With that, he left.
I hated when people threatened and confronted my father. Pop took all this anger and aggression as just part of the job. This was one of the main reasons I didn’t want to become a healer. Not only did I not want to deal with all the sick people, but more important, I didn’t want to deal with all the people who would scoff at what I was doing.
My father turned to Miss Orson and said, “I’m very sorry for the outburst. He is in a lot of pain. His wife is going to die very soon, and he needed to hear what I had to say. It was the only opportunity of repairing the past.”
Miss Orson didn’t know how to respond to what had just happened. She was clearly upset by the fireworks from a prestigious member of the hospital. She turned to the audience and with a forced smile said, “Well, this has been an interesting evening.” It was evident that she wanted to end the lecture as quickly as possible. “I want to thank the Reverend Lew Smith for his time and all the wonderful work he is doing, and I hope you have all learned something. Are their any further questions?”
One of the male college students stood up and said, “My mother has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and the doctors aren’t helping her. Is there anything you can do to make her better? The doctor says there is nothing he can do.”
“There is a lot that we can do to help your mother. I would be happy to see her at my house, or if you want to have her call me, I can work with her over the phone. I will know in a matter of minutes how to best diagnose her condition and what form of treatment I would use. It’s quite possible that her dis-ease is due to a karmic debt from a past lifetime, which we can address, or the issue could be hidden emotional causes. It could be a physical manifestation. There are many causes. Remember that just because we name a dis-ease does not mean that this is the cause of the problem. After we’re done here tonight, I’ll give you my card. There is no charge for my services.”
Another student, a young woman, stood up and asked, “Um, I think I’m getting, like, an ulcer. And you know, I have stomach pains all the time and—”
My father interrupted her. “Your diet is the problem. You drink coffee constantly, smoke cigarettes, and eat French fries. You’ll end up with colon cancer if you keep going this way. You need to reduce your stress and stop taking so much pressure from your parents. If you call me, we’ll work with spirit to remove all the pressure you’re under and get you on a healthy diet. I’d like to see you undertake a series of high colonics to clear out the waste from your intestinal tract so that you can get a fresh start.”
“Oh my God, oh my God, how’d you know I eat French fries? Oh my God, that’s, you know, all I eat. This is so incredible. Oh, this is so weird. I don’t believe this. Wow!”
People started laughing. My father was the only one in the room who took her seriously. He said, “Please don’t hesitate to call me; you need to make these changes. You may pay a huge price for your bad habits later on. Better you should correct the imbalance now.”
She had broken the ice. Now there were about a dozen hands in the air of people wanting to ask questions. My father pointed at another student. Before the woman could ask her question, Miss Orson leaned over to the microphone and said, “Unfortunately, we have run out of time. I promised the booking office that we would be out of here by nine o’clock. Let’s thank Reverend Smith for his time and his wonderful lecture on psychic healing.”
With that, there was an enthusiastic round of applause. As the students began to file out, a few stopped to talk to my father and ask questions. He handed his “Reverend Lew Smith, Temple of the LOGO” calling cards to quite a few people. I was looking for the young man whose mother had multiple sclerosis. I expected him to come up and get a card. He didn’t.
When everyone left, Pop said, “Let’s go eat, just the two of us.”
“Aren’t you going to invite Miss Orson along?” I was surprised that we were going to eat by ourselves. Usually we left each lecture with a crowd of curiosity seekers.
“No, just us.”
We walked over to a Denny’s restaurant across the street. As I looked over the menu, I pulled out my pendulum. I thought I would use it to decide what to have for dinner. I asked, “Should I have the turkey combo or the spaghetti?”
Pop started laughing. “I’m just having eggs and toast.”
Suddenly I got embarrassed that someone in the restaurant might see me with the pendulum, so I put it back in my pocket. “I guess I’ll have the same.”
“Thank you for coming with me tonight. It was nice to have you there. What’d you think?”
“It went well. Everyone seemed really interested in what you had to say except for the doctor. He really went a little nuts.”
“Well, what do you expect? The man’s wife is dying, which he doesn’t want to admit, and he doesn’t know quite how to deal with the fact that his medical knowledge has failed. Sadly, for certain people, what I do is very threatening. It’s really a shame. If they had come to me earlier, I could have helped that woman and saved everybody a lot of pain. I don’t know why people can’t see that by opening their minds they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
“Well,
I think you handled him really well. I wonder why he bothered to come if he doesn’t believe in this stuff?”
“I think spirit sent him. In his mind, he decided to come to the lecture to try to debunk me. But I believe that spirit wanted him to hear what I had to say so that he could make amends to his wife before she died. Who knows, maybe his experience tonight will open his mind to new possibilities.”
Just then the lights blinked three times in rapid succession.
“Oh, Arthur’s calling. I wonder what he wants?”
Kiddingly, I said, “He probably wants to give his critique of your lecture.”
With that, my father took out a pen and began to write down Arthur’s words. I kept eating my eggs. So much for dinner with just the two of us.
“Arthur tells me that you are applying for colleges,” my father said. “I’m sorry to say that you’re not going to get into any of the schools you want. Arthur says he’ll give me a list of where you’ll get in.”
“Yeah, Mom wants me to go to school in the Northeast. She says the universities in Florida are terrible. Maya is going to the University of Florida. The problem is that my grades are very bad, and I don’t think I’m going to do very well on the SATs unless I use my pendulum. So I guess you’d better get that list from Arthur of the schools I should apply to.”
“Well, why don’t you stay and go to school here in Miami?”
“No, I think it’s better that I go away. I’ll have some new experiences.”
fourteen
The Goddess Debuts
The cold metal pressed hard against my forehead.
My eyes felt as if they were bulging out of my head. Even though it was approaching midnight, the kitchen seemed to suddenly brighten with a harsh, brilliant light I had never seen before. Everything appeared in stark, high relief. I felt as if I was seeing out of every pore in my body.
Bob was crying as he pushed the gun harder into my head. “You’re going to die. You deserve it.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“And then I’m going to die.”
As he said that, he closed his eyes and started to cry. He was leaning heavily on the gun pressed against my head to support himself. To my surprise, I had enough of my wits about me to quickly step backward. As Bob fell forward, I grabbed the gun and threw it right through the window, shattering the glass. The noise startled him. As his eyes opened, he seemed unsure of where he was or what had just happened.
Because Bob had probably been spending time with his two close friends—vodka and Valium—he offered no resistance as I shoved him hard against the wall and ran for my life down three flights of stairs and into the street.
Certainly I had been eager to leave home and be on my own. But this was more than I had bargained for. This was my first year at a liberal arts college in a small New England town. I had settled into a top-floor apartment of an old wooden house off campus and at the age of eighteen endured my first winter without Cuban tostones or fresh sugarcane juice. It wasn’t easy—cold weather and steam heat didn’t come naturally to this tropical native.
Having volunteered as photographer for the school paper, I attended all the lectures, seminars, and cultural events at the college. One day the official school photographer, Bob, started kidding me about being his “competition.” I just wanted to take the pictures and get out of there. Bob, who must have been in his early forties, told me that his wife worked as a bank teller and would not be home until around five. He invited me over to their house for a drink. I was new at school and hadn’t really made any friends. “Wow,” I thought, “the school photographer is inviting me over to his house for a drink.” I was honored and also too young or stupid to know that married men with kids could also be gay. Our interactions consisted of drinks and darkroom sex and lasted all of a few weeks until he broke into my apartment to try to kill me.
After I left the apartment, I ran three long blocks to the college dean’s house. I banged on his front door until I woke him up. Out of breath, I told him what had just occurred. Through triple-thick glasses that magnified his eyes, he stared back at me in shock. He had known Bob and his family for fifteen years. Here was a sordid accusation of attempted murder and homosexuality that was impossible for him to digest.
I knew immediately from the way he looked at me that either he didn’t believe me or, if he did, it was all my fault, and I needed to be gotten rid of.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“I guess call the police and put Bob in jail.”
“No, I’m not ready to do that.”
“I can’t go back to my apartment. He knows where I live. He’ll come back and kill me.”
The dean thought for a moment. His enlarged eyes twitched behind his glasses. “It’s late. I’ll put you somewhere safe for the night. Then we’ll see what we are going to do in the morning.” I followed the dean across the street to the girls’ dorm. There was a maid’s room in the basement where I would sleep. I was insulted that I was being put in the girls’ dorm. It seemed to be more of a judgment on his part rather than a safety strategy.
At six the next morning, two local cops—overweight lugs—woke me up. I assumed that they would be comforting and concerned. Instead they were accusatory and hostile. They told me what had happened the night before without asking for any information. “Why did you make all this up? To get Mr. Malina in trouble? You wanted his job, didn’t you? Get him fired, and they’ll hire you to be the school photographer. We’ve never had anything like this happen until you showed up. Wait till the judge hears your story. He will not be pleased. If I were you, I’d pack up now before he gets wind of this. If you stay, we have no choice—you’re not too young to go to jail.”
I got the message. Briefly, I wondered what my father would want me to do. However, I was too ashamed to call him or my mother for advice. I didn’t know how they would deal with my situation with Bob and the police. I had made a huge mistake getting involved with Bob and was now paying the price. With great apprehension, I went back to my apartment, packed a knapsack with a pair of jeans, my checkbook, passport, and toothbrush, and left everything else behind. Summer vacation was just a few weeks away. At this point in the semester, it didn’t matter whether or not I attended any more classes. I knew I had to leave and get away.
Not knowing exactly where to go, I went downtown and caught the first Greyhound bus to New York City. I thought perhaps I would simply move there and never return to school. On the way down to the city, I decided that my best plan was to fly to Miami and then figure out what I needed to do. Once in New York, I took the next bus to Kennedy Airport. At the time, Braniff had a midnight special. At one minute past midnight, you could book a seat on one of its planes flying to South America with a stop in Miami. If you got off in Miami, the fare was $49. When I landed in familiar surroundings, I looked for any airline counter open that late. I lucked out: Ecuatoriana was open for business.
“Where do you fly to?”
“Tonight we are flying to Quito. Tomorrow, Lima.”
“Where’s Quito?”
The woman in the soft navy blue uniform that was intended to make her look like an admiral in the Royal Navy looked at me with some annoyance. “Ecuador.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?” She was irritated by this skinny kid in blue jeans with no luggage wasting her time.
“I’ll go.”
“When would be your date of travel?”
“Now. Do you take a check?”
“Do you have identification?”
“U.S. passport.”
“Fine.” She typed for a few minutes and then wrote out a ticket by hand, giving me the red carbon copy. “We leave in two hours.”
“Okay.” I was relieved and, for the first time in days, felt safe. Finally I was going to disappear.
For the next three months, I traveled by myself through the mountains of Ecuador and the deserts of Peru. There I swam in extinct volcanoes, hitched a r
ide to the Galápagos Islands on a cargo boat, saw Machu Picchu, fended off armed banditos and the policia looking for money from the gringo, sat with shamans, and listened to the monkeys of the Amazon. I had no contact with my father, my mother, the police, or the college dean. I lived on raw foods in the mountains, soups from the marketplace, and whatever simple meals I could find for pennies. For the first time, I felt that I didn’t need my father’s psychic antimissile shield. My travels took me into many dangerous situations, and I always emerged without having said a special prayer or asking the spirits for assistance. The trip allowed me to finally access much of the inner strength that I never knew I had or needed to use because of my reliance on my father. With my confidence restored, I felt that I was finally ready to go back home.
After the blue and white Ecuatoriana jet landed in Miami, I took a cab over to my father’s office. We hadn’t spoken in months. I thought I would surprise him. I knew he would be pleased with my adventures. When I walked in, he had a colored pencil in one hand and the pendulum in the other. I assumed he had been interrupted in the middle of designing an interior scheme with an urgent spirit message. Pop looked up at me and said, “Well, welcome back. I didn’t expect you until this evening. Your plane got in early.” He dropped everything and gave me a big hug. “You’re safe now; that guy won’t hurt you again. I’m sorry, but things happen in life. You handled it well. Use it, learn from it; it will only make you stronger. I left you alone, just as you wished.”
