Page 18 of It's Me They Follow
“Leave me alone. Stop. Leave me. No,”the somebodybellowed in deep-bellied outbursts. I couldn’t move enough to make outthe somebody.Meanwhile, others were standing up on their pews, pointing and chanting in unison, “The blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus,” with the guest preacher roaring into the mic, “Loose ya, loose ya, Satan,” tothe somebody.Thefour church deacons fought unsuccessfully to pickthe somebodyup while the church mothers worked to coverthe somebody’sunmentionables as their body flung itself about.
I crawled under the seats, all the way to the back of the church, through a maze of legs and feet. Followed the guest preacher’s gibberish to a spot in the middle aisle close to his fancy crocodile boots. He was stomping and pointing and praying, his entire body zigzagging with waves of electric current. I got close enough to see through the deacons and the church mothers and the sheets and the sheep who were wailing thatthe somebodywas a little girl. Not much youngerthan me. But she was cursing and spitting and scratching like a grown woman. The church smelled like used stockings and cheap sweat. “God, please help this little demon girl,” and then I caught eyes with her through the church mothers’ sheets, and maybe she smiled and gave me a wink, and then I realized the wailingsomebody, the demon girl, was my sister, hell-bound and foaming at the mouth. I wanted to run to her, but my legs melted into the fiery floor, half scared for her, half scared of her, and half wondering whether she was acting out a scene from one of our Brothers Grimm fairy tales.
A deacon took the mic from the guest preacher. Quieted everyone with a hush. Laid his hands on my sister’s forehead and pushed her around by the head until she passed out. Church ended early that night.
The Shopkeeper reflected on the black-and-blue bruises all over her sister’s body when they got home and how everyone in their family agreed it was a small price to pay not to be “demon possessed.” She wondered whether the root of her touch phobia was a fear of evil. She remembered thinking at nine years old that she’d never want anyone to lay hands on her and that she’d never ever wear crocodile boots. Both things seemed wrong.
“You bring us to an interesting teachable moment.” The Good Doctor went to the board and began to doodle. “Many faiths believe that the laying on of hands allows you to transfer what is in you to another person.” She drew a cartoon of a stick figure laying hands on the forehead ofanother stick figure. “There is great mystery in how this works, but many have reported miracles simply from the laying on of hands. Healing of the sick, raising of the dead, invoking or exorcising spirits.”
“Is that real?” The Shopkeeper asked, chewing her apple to its core.
“Is what real?”
“Can touch heal people and raise people from the dead? Or is that folklore, fairy tales, and magic tricks?”
“It depends who you ask.”
“I’m asking you,” The Shopkeeper insisted.
“I’ve seen things. Yes. Was it a placebo? Maybe. Was it oxytocin? Maybe. A higher power? To some. It’s really up to you to decide what you want to believe. Whatever suits you is the right answer. Everything is everything.”
The Shopkeeper sat back in her chair, confused by what had happened in church that night and her professor believing that it could have helped her sister, not harmed her. But most of all, The Shopkeeper hated ambiguous answers. She hated them the way she hated clichés. She loathed them. Overused pieces of language that had no meaning and wasted space on the page. Meaningless.Like this doctor, she thought.
“What about you all?” The Shopkeeper asked the group. “Do you believe touch can heal people and raise them from the dead?”
The group was split evenly between yes and no.More meaninglessness, she thought.
“Okay, activity time,” The Good Doctor said, clapping her hands to bring everyone to attention. “Today’s activity takes us outside.”
The Good Doctor looked over at The Shopkeeper, who, as she’d suspected, was shaking her head NO.
As she moved closer to The Shopkeeper, she looked her deep in the eyes and nodded her head YES.
The Shopkeeper wanted to trust The Good Doctor, but she also wondered if The Good Doctor was just another quack with silly exercises and corny sayings, another mother to walk in and out of her life, and perhaps she’d never be able to get over her phobia—especially not in one month—and it would be ridiculous to try.
“Thank goodness for global warming,” Ray said, putting on his coat. “Ten years ago, we could’ve never gone outside with an orange at night in the middle of January and lived to tell about it.”
“We are going to City Hall,” The Good Doctor continued, putting on her black coat and black scarf. “How does this make folks feel on a scale from one to ten, with one being absolutely horrified and ten being absolutely overjoyed?” She went around the room to mixed responses, with most people at the table being around three or four, Ray being the only ten and The Shopkeeper being the only one.
The motley crew of adults traipsed up Broad Street in a straight line. Still unsure what their professor had in mind, they marched in silence to the rhythm of the city’s horns and sirens.
“Some say City Hall is the heart of Philadelphia,” The Good Doctor greeted her students, who semicircled around her while the bustle of hundreds of passersby continued around them. When they reached the compass in the center of Philadelphia’s City Hall, she said, “Today this is the center of the universe.” She pointed at the ground. The Shopkeeper admired the stone edifice—especially the thirty-seven-foot tall statue of William Penn that stood atop the building. As can be imagined, The Shopkeeper did not enjoy the crowds, which she avoided by standing in front of Ray’s big, burly belly and beside Rose, who kept watch for anyone who came too close.
“We got your back, sugar pie,” Rose whispered. “And your sides.”
“We won’t let the monsters get you, Mamacita.” Ray winked in agreement.
“The point of this exercise is to practice overcoming fear,” The Good Doctor said, placing the orange crate upside down on the center of the compass and standing on top of it to address her group. Of course, passersby looked over. Some stopped. Others stared. The Good Doctor seemed to love the attention.
“Nice ass,” some faceless voice called out from the crowd.
The Good Doctor rubbed her behind, smiled, and continued. “No one will be coerced into doing this, but everyone needs to be part of it. Cheer one another on. Be there for one another. Even if you cannot imagine yourself doing it, see if you can allow for even the remote possibility that you might do it anyway.”
The Shopkeeper knew there was no remote possibility that she might do it anyway. The thought of standing up in front of thousands of people, telling them she was afraid to be touched, made her angry. It was like asking for it. Someone would undoubtedly want to test her fear and reach out a grubby paw to touch her. She yawned while her professor continued. She was bored by this whole thing.
“For this exercise, which we call street speaking, you will stand up here on top of this orange crate in the center of the world and declare with urgency why you must face your deepest fear. Your classmates will cheer you on by saying, ‘Oh, what the heck, do whatever it takes,’ as you walk from the audience to the crate. Let’s practice the chant,” she said.
The group started, “Oh, what the heck, do whatever it takes. Oh, what the heck, do whatever it takes.” The Shopkeeper thought the exercise was silly. She had a touch phobia. Not a fear of public speaking.This won’t help me, she noted to herself.
