by Gina Linko
“I like this.”
“What do you like?” I said. “Embarrassing me at every opportunity?”
“I like hanging with you. You really being here.”
“I like it too,” I told her. “Like old times.” I finished my beignet, licked my fingers.
“It’s like you’re coming alive again along with the people you’re saving, Corrine.”
She grabbed my hand and held it between hers for just a beat, such a very un-Mia-Joy-like action, it made my eyes tear up.
“Mia-Joy, are you feeling okay?”
She waved my question away with her hand. “Corrine, you playing the violin these days?”
“Yeah,” I said, but I realized that, curiously, no, I wasn’t. Just that one time.
Raised voices wafted up from the restaurant below. You couldn’t tell what was being said, but one voice was definitely Mrs. Rawlings’s booming tone.
“He looks at you, ya know,” Mia-Joy said.
“Rennick?” I asked. She nodded. “How?”
“It’s like you’re the only person in the room. No, that’s not it. It’s like you’re the only person anywhere. In the whole freaking galaxy. The only one who matters.”
I smiled, felt the blush rise in my neck. “He does?”
“You deserve that, Corrine.”
I smiled. “Thank you, Mia-Joy.”
“Seriously, you deserve it. I wish I had that. I think every girl does.”
“How can you say that? Half the guys at Liberty look at you that way!”
“No,” Mia-Joy said, suddenly so serious. “They ogle. That is different. Rennick looks at you differently.”
“Mia-Joy!” Mrs. Rawlings’s voice bellowed up the stairs.
“I’m coming!” Mia-Joy yelped. And I let it go. I didn’t ask her any more about her health. For better or worse, I let it go.
I quickly followed her down the stairs. But when we emerged into the back section of the kitchen, Casey, one of the bakers, did not look up at us, and I could tell by the way she hid behind the wall of her blond bangs that it was on purpose. Something was up.
And then we could hear them. Many voices. People were here. They had to be looking for me. Mia-Joy had my arm, tried to pull me back, but I yanked it away. I appeared behind the counter, and the whole place went quiet. The patrons were all looking up from their Saturday-morning coffees; the knot of people around Mom and Mrs. Rawlings turned, and I saw then what was going on. There was an older gentleman with silver hair, and with him were a younger man and woman, and then there was this young thing. This tiny girl, her legs in braces, her arms leaning on a walker, her limbs awkward and underdeveloped, the victim of some kind of disease. Maybe multiple sclerosis? I didn’t know. But her eyes found me. And they were bright and shiny, her smile radiant. “You don’t have to,” she said into the silence. “I’m okay with it, but Papa wants you to try.”
I took a big breath. I was going to help her, of course, but what to do about Mrs. Rawlings and Mom, I didn’t know. So I just ignored them. And I didn’t know if it was that they expected some kind of warning, some kind of preliminary setup or what, but they didn’t have a chance to intervene. Or maybe, maybe it was just that they knew, deep down, that this was bigger than me. Bigger than their worries about keeping a little slice of normal life for me.
I walked toward the little girl. “What is your name?”
“Amelia.” And in a moment, I had a whole narrative in my mind of Amelia’s life, the things she struggled to do like a normal child, how she wanted so badly to learn ballet, how second grade had been a tough year when so many kids ridiculed her condition. She loved farm animals, drew them on everything.
I didn’t know if any of this was true, probably not. But it made me see her in a deeper manner. It made the pilot light of my power switch on, fan and flame. I took some deep breaths, and before I knew it she had slid her hand in mine. I gripped it and let the current grow and shift until it became enormous, so powerful I could feel my body shaking, and then it plateaued. And I let it go. It surged out of me. I opened my eyes to see the restaurant flooded with the strange indigo light.
Little Amelia smiled through the entire exchange, although I shuddered with the power of it all. And when it had run its course, when I knew I had given all I could to her, I let go. And I sat down, my body feeling spent but more than that, fiery hot.
“Thank you,” Amelia said, and she brushed a strand of hair from my face. I laughed this little laugh. And then she turned toward her papa, her parents, and she very purposefully kicked off her leg braces, set her walker to the side, and took one, two, three unsteady steps.
The place buzzed and hummed in disbelief as her family enveloped Amelia in tears and hugs. But quickly, the crowd grew boisterous. People had their cell phones out, they were calling others, snapping pictures of Amelia and me.
And then Phillip Bullhouse, a kid at Liberty, came right up to me. “My father, he just had a stroke. He’s only fifty-three years old. Can I bring him here?”
I heard Mom’s voice behind me, but I nodded, and Phillip was off.
I stayed at the Shack the rest of the morning. Word spread quickly. Mrs. Rawlings sold more crawfish jambalaya than probably any other day of the year. Mom eventually settled into a quiet, somber watchfulness. Mia-Joy started passing around a wicker basket for donations, which I made her announce would go to the DayBreak Center in the French Quarter, helping the homeless and the needy. I didn’t want money for this.
In short, I healed thirteen people at the Shack that day. It made me ashamed about the kind of person I used to be, back in Chicago before Sophie, so oblivious to people’s suffering. Because didn’t we all suffer? In one way or another?
Several of the people had cancer, one of the pancreas, one with no voice—esophageal cancer. Some of them, I didn’t even know their exact ailments. One woman had such gnarled, arthritic limbs, I could hardly believe my eyes when her hands just straightened out, her joints moving backward in time in front of my eyes. One man was so thin he reminded me of pictures from the Holocaust in history class. He had cirrhosis of the liver, his skin a jaundiced yellow, but when he left he looked as healthy as anyone else.
And there were two more children. The Florida man with the son who had muscular dystrophy. He had found me in less than a day. “The power of the Internet and GPS,” the dad kept saying. His son, his body so atrophied from the disease, didn’t want to be here. The son scowled at me, crabbed about the whole ordeal, but in the end he let me grab his hand. I doubted my ability to help him, because the disease had so emaciated him, but he walked out of the Shack. On his own two legs, his eyes wide with disbelief.
It was after him—he was maybe the eighth person—that I began to feel the throbbing ache around my rib cage, and I knew that I should stop. But I couldn’t. I didn’t even really consider it.
There were so many intricate and horrifying ways for a person to suffer, and I was only able to help the physical. What I was doing seemed small, too small. How could I stop?
And they brought me things, odd little things. Heirloom jewelry. Pictures of what they looked like before they got sick. Pictures of loved ones who had passed on. Prayers written on napkins. They each wanted me to know their story. And it broke my heart in so many ways, like they had come armed with all of these things to show that they were worthy, loved, and I should choose them to be healed.
As if I could turn them away.
The kids brought drawings and thank-you cards. Stuffed animals. Their favorite Legos. And not just sick kids, but kids who had sick parents or sick relatives. These kids looked the worst. Worn out with worry. Lost little shells of the children I usually saw popping crawdads into their mouths during the lunch rush at the Shack.
People tried to give me money. Loads of it. Checks, coins, their credit cards. I pushed them off to Mia-Joy, who made bug eyes at the amounts these people dropped into our donation basket.
By two o’clock, I thought I s
pied Rennick’s face in the far reaches of the crowd, but I couldn’t focus on him. I needed water. I couldn’t wait any longer. So while the fourteenth person, a ninety-two-year-old man who had been blind since the ’40s, waited patiently for me to take a little break, I went into the back to get a drink. I felt a little woozy now too, along with this brittle, hollow feeling in my ribs, a deep muscle soreness around my midsection.
Mia-Joy went about scrambling some eggs for me. I was exhausted physically. Spent but invigorated too. My limbs, my hands, seemed to vibrate even as I shoveled the scrambled eggs into my mouth. And I drank glass after glass of water.
“What did you put in these? They are so good,” I said, talking around another bite of eggs. They tasted so hearty.
“Nothing, not even salt.” Mia-Joy filled my glass again from the tap. “Aren’t you a little bit freaked? I mean, come on. Aren’t you sort of all what-in-the-hell-am-I?”
I shook my head, then tilted it back to drink the water in one big gulp. The swinging door to the kitchen flew open and I spilled the water all over myself. It was Rennick. A crazy-looking, hair-in-all directions, wild-eyed Rennick.
“We had a deal. I’ve been watching.” He crossed the space between us in a few long steps, and then he was kneeling in front of me. “You promised me. You promised you wouldn’t use yourself up.”
My eyes shot over to Mia-Joy, and she looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Can you give us a minute?” I asked her.
“Nope. No way,” she snapped. “I want to hear this.”
I shook my head, didn’t like the idea of them ganging up on me. Knowing they would easily get Mom on their side too. “Rennick thinks I can use up my power, give it all away, and then give away my spark too … or whatever.”
“I don’t think anything, Corrine. I know.” He gave me a look, and I lowered my eyes. I knew he was right in a way. But I didn’t feel … close to being used up. Did I? I didn’t want to think about that.
“Is this still about Sophie?” Rennick said, placing his hand on mine.
I shook my head. Was it?
He placed a hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up, Corrine.”
Mom came into the kitchen then, and I stood up. “I’m coming,” I said quickly, before we could have this conversation with her.
“Let’s make this the last one today,” she said.
I nodded.
“I don’t even think she should do that,” Rennick added. I waited, but neither he nor Mia-Joy explained the used-up problem to her.
“Last one,” I said. I made this crazy cross-your-heart motion, and then I shoved my hands into my pockets so they wouldn’t see them shaking.
Mr. Vickers waited patiently at the small bistro table in the front, his cane leaning against the table, his dark glasses over his eyes. I asked him quietly if he would take the glasses off. He did, and then I saw the damage there. He was not only blind but truly ravaged.
“I was hit with a mortar shell in the Second World War.”
My mind flashed to the horrors of war, the things I couldn’t even really comprehend. But it was enough for the spark to ignite. It was enough to feel it come alive.
I held on to his wizened and pale hand, sandwiched it between my own. His skin was coarse and wrinkled, his hand cool and still.
The heat inside my ribs churned and rose but died. Again and again. I couldn’t get it going. I concentrated, tried to put myself into the heart of the pain of this man. I imagined living inside his loss, never seeing a Monet painting, never seeing the worry line between Rennick’s eyes, the overlap of his front teeth.
The depth of this man’s loss registered, and the spark returned, grew quickly, exponentially, and my body was racked with the force of the current moving from my hands to his.
After a long moment, I pulled my hands from his, hopeful but curious. It had moved differently. Faster, more violent.
Mr. Vickers only sighed, gave me a small smile. “It’s not what we don’t have that defines us, young lady,” he whispered, “but how we use what we do have.”
He opened his scarred eyelids for the first time, and I saw the milky and violent remains of his eyes.
He wasn’t seeing me out of those eyes. I placed my hands on his again. We both waited.
“I’m sorry,” I told him, thinking about what he lived without. What he would probably live without forever.
I reminded myself that Ruth Twopenny couldn’t fix everyone. I reminded myself that I was prepared for this outcome. I reminded myself, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t help him. He was the cricket. Too far gone.
“Thank you for trying, young lady.” His smile wasn’t sad or regretful. It was only kind.
“I’m sorry too,” I said, and when he stood up he put his glasses on. He picked up his cane, and the crowd in the Shack let out an audible sigh. At a respectful distance while it was going on, they now milled closer to me, started murmuring words of supposed comfort to me. Again with the cell phone pictures.
I stood up and turned, Rennick and Mom right behind me. I nearly smacked into them. I pushed through them and went into the kitchen, the swinging door making a big slap as I hit it with my still-vibrating palm. I walked to the sink, splashed some water on my overheated face, and then began drinking from the tap.
“You’ll get more familiar with the limitations, I’m sure,” Mom’s soothing voice said from behind me.
“Too much in one day,” Rennick added.
I didn’t know why, but I wanted to yell at them. Both of them. Everyone.
“Honey, I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe we just have to do this more in moderation.” Mom was trying to sound even-keeled. I knew this tone in her voice.
“Leave me alone,” I whispered, and plopped into Granny Lucy’s old rocker near the screen door.
Mia-Joy bustled in. “Here,” she said, handing me my cell phone.
“Why do I want this?” I asked.
“You told me to get it for you,” Mia-Joy said incredulously. She blinked at me. “Right after the blind guy.”
“No I didn’t.” I had no memory of this.
I watched Rennick and Mom give each other a look. “You asked Mia-Joy to get it just a few minutes ago,” Mom said.
I looked at them, confused. I had no idea who I wanted to call. I stared down at the blank screen so I didn’t have to meet anyone’s eyes.
“Corrine, are you okay?” Rennick asked.
I leaned my head back on the cool wood of the rocker and closed my eyes. “There are a few still waiting out there.”
“You can’t be serious,” he said. I tried to nod. But no, no, I wasn’t okay.
I got home somehow, because I woke up in my room, in the thick of the night, the crickets working their way into a frenzy, my window cracked open and that singular New Orleans breeze wafting into my room. My lacy white curtains responded to the breeze. And I heard their voices downstairs, the singular timbre of strained, angry voices trying to stay under the radar.
When I reached the kitchen, I saw Mom and Dad, still fully clothed, an empty pot of coffee between them, Dad’s favorite crackers and a tin of sardines smelling up the whole kitchen. Only Dad ate these things, and only when he was stressed. I could remember the funny way Mom used to tease him about it, before Sophie died, before we knew what real stress was, when he would have a big project on deadline. “Paul, you need me to pick you up some sardines?” she’d joke in that cutesy way she had with him when he was spending too much time in his home office on a Saturday, or if he’d been glued to his cell phone. I’d roll my eyes at Sophie, and Dad would answer, “Only if the girls will eat ’em with me.”
There were no cutesy looks, no jokes when I sat down at the table with them now. I tried not to wince as the muscles in my rib cage spasmed.
Dad spoke first. “We have to control this, babe.”
Mom’s eyes and nose were raw and red from crying. “I think it’s already beyond that, honey. I think we just go back to
Chicago for a while. Let this cool off. Return when people have forgotten.”
“No!” I objected.
“Just hear us out,” Dad countered. “Not leaving forever. Just a break from the craziness. Then we can come back, if we choose, and then you can do this … healing quietly. It is imperative that we work harder to keep it quiet.”
“Why?” I said, and I hadn’t meant to sound so snarky, but there it was.
“You’re not thinking clearly,” Mom said.
“Right,” I snapped. “I want to help people. Of course that’s not thinking clearly.”
Mom brought her fist down on the table hard. I don’t know who jumped more, me or my father. But she pointed at me, and she hissed, “Rennick told us both what happened to his mother, what happened to this Dell he knew. What do you have to say about that, Corrine Marie?” My eyes dropped to the table. They had me there. “What are you doing to prevent that? Can’t we go in the shallow end, Corrine? Or do we have to just jump right in, let this thing swallow you whole? I’m not going to let that happen.”
I answered with silence, and Dad reached over and put his hand on Mom’s arm. She was crying now, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. She whispered, “Not you too, Corrine. I can’t lose you too.”
“Corrine, your mother and I are going to think this over. And you have a right to know that. But if we decide it’s best to leave, we’re all leaving.”
I thought of Mia-Joy, of Mrs. Rawlings, but mostly of Rennick. I didn’t want to leave. Because of them. But it was more than that. I didn’t want to go back to a life of silence and inaction. A life of all the things that could’ve been for Sophie. I needed a different focus, and the touch gave me that. I didn’t know exactly how these things were so tightly and intricately wound up inside of me, but I knew, I knew, that if we went back to Chicago, I would suffer, my power would suffer.
I quietly pushed my chair back and worked my way up to my room. What in the world could I do?
I lay awake on my bed, feeling too warm, relishing the open-window breeze, thinking about my options. I was nearly eighteen. I would only have to be in Chicago for a year. Even if they never decided to come back, I could come back.
