How to Visit a Healer

Jeanette Brown

     He hands you a list of forbiddens, a full page of print so small, you fumble in your
purse for reading glasses. “Let’s go over this together,” he croons. “No nicotine.”
     “No problem.”
     “No alcohol.”
     “Not even a glass of cabernet with dinner?” You don’t mean to sound argumentative,
but really.
     “No alcohol. And no caffeine.”
     Counteroffer. “Decaf?”
     “Caffeinated is six percent. Decaf is three percent.”
     Realize you can get jazzed on two cups of decaf instead of one regular.
     “I can tell from your body type that you’re an adrenaline addict. You use caffeine to
stay high all day and alcohol to come down at night. Give up caffeine, you’ll be serene.”
     He prescribes in rhyme. Smile noncommittally.
     “No meat, no dairy, no fish,” he continues.
     “No shrimp?”
     “Nothing with eyes.”
     “Guess that leaves out potatoes.”
     He does not laugh. Remind yourself that fanatics are usually humorless. It must be
something they don’t eat.
     “What’s left to eat?”
     “Plenty. There’s barley, tofu, collards, elderberries, guava, casabas, limes, olives, figs,
almonds, kelp, canola, flax, carnations, and chrysanthemums. I’ll give you a booklet with recipes.”
     Regret not going to a GP for antibiotics, then remember the disinterested five seconds
per visit your doctor lavishes on you after your two-hour wait in his sterile lobby. Your cough
is not an exotic disease that would fascinate him anyway, more like a tiny pebble in his shoe, a
minor irritation.
     Give the healer a steely examination: he’s maybe 5’ 11” with excellent posture.
Judging by his slightly receding hairline, you put him in his early fifties. Note that his olive
skin is smooth as a baby’s butt, his black curly ponytail contains no gray. The whites of his
eyes are absolutely white and the blues are the color of cornflowers. His body is lean inside
his clingy shirt and skinny jeans. His hands are wide, with thick, stubby fingers. His bare feet
do not have edges where they meet the floor.
     Study the forbiddens as if you are serious. Become aware that you are sitting like a
four-year-old, with the soles of your feet together, knees apart. Cross your legs at the ankles
and sit up straight.
     “There are no two ways about it," he says. “Genesis 2:29 tells us what to eat.”
     You’ve found yourself a Christian healer. As a child, you and your grandparents
watched Oral Roberts on television as he gripped the heads of the lame, praying, braying,
until they threw away their crutches. Anticipate a laying-on of hands. Think of excuses to
leave.

     Leaning toward you from his rocker, he becomes scientific, approaching your right
eye with a tiny flashlight. “The eye tells the condition of the body.” He zigzags the light
from eye to eye. “Your lungs look good, your heart is fine, but there’s brownish clutter
around your iris. You need more trace minerals.”
     Confess your ignorance. Anticipate the recommendation of a cauliflower or seaweed
diet.
     “Take a teaspoon of colloidal silver every day.”
     “Trace minerals aren’t found in food?”
     “American farms are no longer farmed by farmers. They are operated, operated by
international corporations who don’t care about nutritional value. They’re only concerned
with profits, which they pump up by adding hormones and insecticides and other poisons to
our food. Grow your own or buy certified organic.”
     He invites you to the table, to lie on your back. Now comes the laying-on of hands.
Congratulate yourself for wearing the shirt and slacks instead of the sundress. Covering the
table is a sheet, dark green and thick. You think maybe a 200 thread-count, domestic cotton,
but you are reluctant to put your head on the pillow. It’s early afternoon and you probably
aren’t his first patient, although that doesn’t seem to accurately describe someone who visits a
healer. Maybe you’re the healee. The wounded. The sufferer. In your case, you are merely
the cougher. Realize that you haven’t coughed since you got here.
     He notices your hesitation. “Don’t worry about germs; they’re everywhere. There
are good germs and bad germs and it’s best just to let them sort it out.” That Vaseline voice
could make you believe anything. He picks up your left foot and studies your toes as if they
are prize gemstones and he’s trying to guess their carat count. He begins massaging your
little toe. “Your whole body can be read in your feet.”
     “I thought it was in the eyes.”
     “It is. There are three maps to the body’s condition: the eyes, the feet, and the
hands.”
     “You mean palm readers really can?”
     He laughs silent, breathy little exhalations of mirth, possibly condescending. “Of
course.” He gently places your foot back onto the table. “Almost any medical book has a
diagram showing the lifeline of a psychopath.” He draws an imaginary line that starts under
his left index finger and dives straight down, into the middle of his wrist.

     Check your palm. Your line runs east-west; you are not a psychopath.
     He begins massaging your foot again. His touch is sensual and relaxing. It may
justify the whole visit. But when he presses into your arch, your back arcs in pain. You yelp in
anger.
     “Colon blockage,” he says quietly. “Too many minerals.”
     “You just said I didn’t have enough minerals.”
     “I said you didn’t have enough trace minerals. They’re different from minerals.” He
disappears between your feet and pops back up, brandishing a pen and a legal pad. “Two
teaspoons of brown vinegar in a cup of water twice a day. I’ll give you some information on
enemas and fasts: they’ll help your body detox. Just one fast a month and you’ll soon drop
those extra pounds.”
     Try to remember if that was the second or third insult so far.
     “I’m writing all this down for you because you won’t remember. Your memory will
improve if you take ginkgo-biloba three times a day. Not the capsules; get the pills made
from the leaf. Think you can remember that?” He laughs silently, his body twitching with
hilarity.
     Regret ever wishing for a witty fanatic.
     He’s back to the foot massage. Relax. Notice that when he presses just under the ball
of your foot, your stomach lurches. When he rubs just under your little toe, there’s a twinge
in your armpit. Think of your body as a human pinball machine.
     “Drink Peruvian Bark tea. That will keep you from being so scattered.”
     He thinks you’re ditzy. Try to remember what you did or said to cause him to come
to that conclusion. Give up. Ask.
     “I can tell by your skin color. You’re reddish.”
     It isn’t often you find a man who’s as interested in you as you are. A man who looks
deeply into your eyes, your lungs, your psyche. Ask for more.
     “I can tell a lot by types. You’re the roadrunner, a busy, fidgety type. You read when
you eat alone. And you shower instead of bathe.”
     He’s nailed you. You’re the queen of the three-minute shower, unless it’s a hair day.
You are astonished by his absolute self-assurance and his simple plan for your perfection.
You are reminded of a man with a similar plan in your Baptist youth. Reverend Wilson’s list
of edicts was extensive: no swimming with boys, no dancing, no smoking, no rock’n’roll,
daily Bible reading, just to name a few of the ones you couldn’t follow. Still, you were
comforted by the idea of an orderly world because it confirmed your suspicion that certain
people knew the secrets of the universe.
     He seems to sense that you are wandering, and he brings you back by telling about
himself in that slow, warm-April-evening voice. He says he named himself Amen when he
turned thirty. He says it like a sigh, Ah-men, like the end of a Presbyterian prayer.
     He describes his studies with shamens, sufis, yogis, sages, Maharanis, dervishes, lamas,
and mystics in China, Tibet, India, Sri Lanka, and Arizona. He gravitates, levitates, and
meditates.
     He tells you to turn over onto your stomach. Rest your head on your crossed arms,
providing a little protective space between you and the pillow. As he closes the curtains, the
room darkens. He switches on a nearby floor lamp, which is shaded by a rose-colored scarf.
He lights a cone of incense; you smell rosemary mixed with sage. The faint, pink light and
the smoke from the incense fuzz the edges of the room. Close your eyes.
     He applies his hands to your shoulders, kneading, enfolding your muscles. His hands
have the strength to pull joints from sockets, but his touch is gentle.
     His warm hands begin melting a knotted muscle under your left shoulder blade. You
relax into the table, drift into a fantasy involving warm sun on warm sand by a warm ocean.
His voice snaps you back to Albuquerque.
     “Do twenty-five jumping-jacks a day to massage your lymph system.”
     Tell him you hate to sweat.
     He adds a note to your list and says, “Here‘s an affirmation for you. Say to yourself,
twenty-five times a day, ‘I enjoy exercising my wonderful body.’”
     Uncross your arms and rest your cheek on the pillow. It smells faintly of garlic.
Instead of being repulsed, you inhale garlic roasted potatoes, buttery garlic bread, linguini in
garlic and butter. Protest that, if you do all these affirmations and exercises each day, you
won’t have time for a life.
     “Another affirmation for you. ‘I have all the time I need.’ Drink the Peruvian Bark
tea first thing in the morning, then do your most important tasks of the day. That will leave
you plenty of time for the little things.”
     He makes it sound so effortless, like a leaf floating down a mountain stream. Picture
yourself serenely greeting each day, accomplishing projects at work and at home. Becoming
healthier, happier, more pleasant to your loved ones. Thinner.
     Float into the realm of the miraculous. The Virgin Birth. Water into wine. Heart
transplants. Anti-wrinkle cream. Wonderbras.
     And now this: the miracle of finding a pharmacist, herbalist, masseuse, mineralogist,
reflexologist, personal trainer, and time management expert all in one man. A man who can
heal your body, heal your life.
     His sinewy hands are rubbing and patting your back, your hips and thighs, smoothing
and soothing your tumultuous cells. You feel like a towel, fresh from the dryer, folded, patted,
petted.
     His magic hands coil along your spine, snake out across your ribs. You are so languid
you can’t move. Breathing is optional. So, this is bliss. This is enlightenment. You are
Buddha. You don’t need food or trace minerals or a lymph system. You will feed off the air
coming in through your pores, avoiding the use of your esophagus, which seems to be
blocked.

     He drifts down into his rocker and looks at you kindly. “If you like ancient magic
words, we can chant the Sanskrit names for this therapy, but I would rather hear what you
have to say.”
     Cough again. “Excuse me. What I have to say is that I don’t believe that any of this
works. I don’t know what I’m doing here." Slide down off the table and straighten your
clothes.
     He rocks rhythmically. “You are seeking, that’s why you are here. You have come to
experience this five-thousand-year-old-system of healing. It works, although so subtly and
slowly that Westerners often overlook its results.” His voice is low and humming, in cadence
with the rocking. “It works best if you believe it works.”
     Oh, sure. Now it’s your fault that nothing happened.
     Become aware of a tiny flutter moving upward, behind your sternum. A little bubble-
shaped flutter, perhaps the start of a dainty burp, the upward fart of your cucumber salad
lunch. Lift your head to give it a straight shot. As your mouth opens, something white flutters
out. A feather? A butterfly? A cloud? “Did you see that?”
     “See what?”
     “That thing. Something just flew out of my throat.”
     He rises and comes toward you, reaching out his right hand to pat your back briskly,
as if to burp the baby. “I didn’t see. Are you okay? Take a deep breath and exhale slowly.”
     “I can’t believe you didn’t see that. Maybe it was a piece of lung or something, but it
evaporated.” Turn away from him so you get more direct pats. Consider going to the
emergency room.
     He’s patting up and down your spine. “Why don’t you cough or clear your throat.
See what happens.”
     “I can’t. There’s nothing there.”
     He stops patting, turns you toward him, and holds your hands. “I declare your cough
to be cured. That will be fifty dollars.” He smiles a beatific smile.
     You are stunned. Cured? Just like that? “Don’t I need one or two more sessions.”
You hate to sound like you’re begging.
     He’s shaking his head. “No, you’ll be fine.” He gets his pen and your list and begins
writing. “Also, twenty-five times a day, say aloud, “I honor both wisdom and intuition.”
     So, he’s kissed you off. Serves you right for expecting miracles and not believing in
them. Shuffle through the contents of your purse. Pull out your wallet and find two twenties,
a ten, and two fives. Try to figure out which of these will make fifty. Give up and let it all fall
onto the bench, hoping he won’t be offended by a tip.

Copyright 2002 by Jeanette Brown. This story appeared in The Bellevue Literary Review, Vol, 2, No. 2 (Fall), p. 80, 2002. Reproduced with the permission of Jeanette Brown and The Bellevue Literary Review.