I’m stuck at the traffic light on Yale and Colorado and I’m thinking about the size of the nail, the nail the Romans hammered through Jesus’ feet. Growing up Catholic, we entertained various versions; one nail through both feet—left over right, maybe right over left; the feet possibly side-by side, a nail through each one. Nails through both hands, too. If not the palm, then a nine-inch nail through the wrist. And no, his wrists weren’t roped in place; this was a sacrilege usually offered by one of my “pagan” friends.
So, I’m waiting, one foot on the break, one on the clutch, trying to embrace, appreciate that amount of pain, Roman nails through four extremities. And I try to tell myself my pain is…insignificant. A minor, selfish cross I surely can bear in comparison to what Jesus endured. This mental game of Catholic guilt and spiritual comparison provides only temporary relief. The previous night was agonizing pain and poor sleep. Another night of tossing, keeping my wife awake, bargaining with the pain gods: I’ll go back to church, I’ll quit…drinking; I’ll be nicer… I’ll do…anything for some relief.
But my feet continue to hurt. Not “I walked too long” or “I need new shoes” kinds of hurt. I have debilitating, all-consuming pain. Karmic, I-musta’-done-something-really bad-to-someone in my previous life pain. My choices? Feet on fire; Broken glass in my shoes and between my toes; Constricting steel bands starting at the ankles then choking each toe. And then the “cement shoes.” Numb feet, I can’t feel anything which makes walking an adventure, stairs a potential disaster. Sometimes all the pains hit at once like a channel selector gone chaotic.
The pain started about two years ago; no one knows why. I’ve been to a dozen doctors, therapists, specialists, wholistic practitioners. I’ve tried remedies from relatives, googled therapies, sat with psychics, emailed foreign “healers,” watched every YouTube that starts with F or P. I’ve soaked, wrapped, elevated, applied powders, mud, and Macbethian soupy concoctions with questionable animal parts. All I know is that each foot has 26 bones, more than 200,000 nerve endings, and each one is causing me misery.
And now I’m stopped at a traffic light at Colorado and Yale. It’s just after five— rush hour. I’m late for my appointment with an acupuncturist as I try to find a treatment, some relief. It’s hard to explain to others what the pain feels like. Most folks try to be supportive, but unless they’ve experienced the same pain, they give one of those polite, sympathy looks and say something like, “Good luck” or “My aunt had to have her feet amputated.” There’s not much luck involved with the pain which is like a migraine—only in my feet.
If I were to suddenly ascend and draw a giant circle around my 60-year-old self, the center would be where my car now idles, and the rest of my life would fall within a three-mile radius of this Passat.
I grew up in St. Francis Parish, a few miles down the road, where I played three sports, swished the winning free throws in sixth grade against our dreaded rivals, Most Precious Blood. I landed my first job in ninth grade (lied about my age) delivering sandwiches downtown, graduated from Central Catholic, couldn’t make it out of the state for college—found a girl, dragged her back to my neighborhood church and married her in an overly formal Catholic wedding that my overly formal Catholic Grandmother loved—then rented a cheap basement apartment within the lower right quadrant of my “life circle.”
Besides having two boys, the next 35 years rolled out remarkably unremarkable. If Baskin Robbins were to create a 32nd flavor with me as inspiration, it would be a smidge less than vanilla, a notch up from sawdust. No, I have not been adventurous, exciting, sexy… but I have been diligent, loyal, and patient. According to a bookmark my aunt gave me when I was ten, my name means “faithful steward.” But daily, my patience erodes as the pain in my feet worsens, forcing me on this relief mission.
The light seems interminable. I’ve waited for one song, now into the second. Two songs? No light should be two songs. I push down on the clutch, make sure I can feel my foot, force more pressure.
Yes, there’s the pain. The sting of bees, a response to the pressure back up the leg. Julie, a teacher I work with, has recommended this acupuncturist I’m going to visit.
“She’s a miracle worker,” Julie said, writing down the phone number on a scrap of paper during lunch break. My life is fairly absent of “miracle workers” so I’m intrigued.
“She studied in India, China, New Jersey too, I think,” she said, handing me the number. “I had all these stomach pains, Merinda…” She made a circling motion around her stomach to illustrate. I wasn’t sure if Merinda was the acupuncturist’s name, or a stomach ailment. Merinda? Meranda? Melinda? Julie spoke very fast.
Julie’s all of twenty-five, a marathon runner, perfect bone structure; she drives a new Audi. She teaches, not because she has to: “I just love kids. I always wanted to be an elementary teacher. I used to line up my Barbies…” and so on.
We don’t have much in common except a love of teaching and chronic pain. And apparently she’s discovered a solution.
So now I’m in my car on my way to see Merinda. I put pressure on my foot again. I press on the gas to check the right foot. The engine growls (Turbo! Just twenty dollars more each month, my middle-aged caveman convinced me) and the car lurches.
A woman with her arms full of groceries, passing in front of me, stops, turns to frown. She mouths some frustration. What the F…you prick…. She sets down a bag, points at my hood, flips me off. I offer the apologetic wave, “Sorry, sorry. I won’t hit you, my feet, can’t quite control them…” Now, both bags are down, she gestures—I need to back up? Apparently my car is in the crosswalk. She motions, something’s going…up my…? The man in the SUV to my right stares. I give him the “I don’t know” shrug, mime toward my feet, say aloud, “I can’t really control them…don’t want the clutch to slip…. He shakes his head, mouths either buy some dice, or, back up, dick.
* * * * * *
Finally, the light changes, the woman gathers her bags. I pop the clutch, roar ahead, tires squealing. I haven’t squealed my tires since…ever. I drove a Pinto in high school.
I’m flying down Evans, 40 in a 30, 50, pushing 60. My foot feels like it’s been dipped in lead. I see the cop, just in my peripheral vision, waiting under the off ramp. SHIT! I struggle to lift my foot, too slow—later I’ll realize I shouldn’t be driving—in the moment I’m thinking of the 200-dollar speeding ticket.
My speed decreases—45—in a 30…8 points? Glancing in my rearview mirror I see his lights come on. I pump my breaks, 40, 35—here he comes. Is my license current? Did I renew last summer? All I can remember about my license is that I lied about my weight—significantly—thirty pounds. (More effective than any diet.) Where’s my insurance card? Whatever pain was in my feet is now in my stomach.
He’s catching me, lights flashing, sirens wailing, I look for a spot to pull over. Then suddenly, he makes a quick right, down Dahlia Street, and he’s gone. Bigger fish to fry. The anxiety and pain in my stomach dissolves and sinks back into my legs and feet.
Within ten minutes, I pull into the shopping center, find the acupuncturist’s store front and park. The sign, rendered in “60s” stylized “I’m-a-little-buzzed” letters reads: Teas and Remedies.
The store is deserted except for a young man, spiked hair, sitting at a small display case, hunched over, reading a sci-fi paperback. The place resembles a small grocery store, aisles filled with little palm-sized aspirin bottles, gallon tubs of powder and supplements stacked in pyramids at the end of each aisle. The air swirls with the aroma of teas and unguents, mint, spice, and wet earth. Hand-painted signs in English identify each aisle, then below each, symbols that I surmise are Chinese. Vitamins. Supplements. Teas.
“Hi, I’m looking for Melinda?”
The young man looks up, annoyed, shakes his head, makes a face like I’m speaking a foreign language.
“Merinda, maybe?” I pull the scrap of paper from my pocket. “She’s an acupuncturist?”
He smiles, more of a smirk. “Back there.” His thumb jerks toward the back of the store. “Past that curtain. Muranda.” He exaggerates the “anda” with a flourish of his wrist and I think Abracadabra!
I walk to the back, stand before the curtain. I can smell cinnamon, licorice, and something burning. I knock on the doorframe,
“Come in.”
I pull back the curtain and step into a small space that looks like it used to be a storage closet, or a bathroom. The embrocation stings my nose. Muranda’s sitting on a stool behind a small desk, cluttered with papers. I realize that this isn’t Muranda’s store; she rents this space, which is a cot, a bookcase, a stack of hand-towels and a dozen bottles in a spice rack. Behind her head on the wall, a diploma, official enough: couple of scribbled signatures, picture of a campus, a golden seal.
Muranda’s in her thirties; she wears a giant flowered moo-moo; her shoulder length brown hair hangs like a dust mop—sandals, a gaudy turquoise necklace and a skull pinky ring. She smells like a foreign country and she doesn’t smile.
During our intake interview, 20 minutes, she takes pulses from my wrist, neck, ankles, and writes copious notes and numbers in her notebook. I notice she holds her pencil awkwardly between her middle finger and pointer—which reminds me of my dysgraphic students. Writing didn’t come easily to her.
Between listening to pulses and writing, she recites a monologue about her schooling, her parents (both University professors; Philosophy and Gender Studies) and her take on modern medicine; it’s a sham, a fraud, expensive…it’s so Western. She pauses long enough to ask me about my diagnosis.
I begin with the tingling, the numbness, talk about the initial doctor visit, my GP sending me to a specialist, who sent me to another specialist who sent me to get nerve tests, the spiral of referrals, the prescriptions for nerve medicine that didn’t help my feet, but did extinguish any sexual drive and left me weeping at stoplights.
It suddenly exhausts me, this weight of trying to track the history, the physiology, the cause, trying to find the right words each time I need to describe the pain: “So, a buzz? A tingling? What kind of pain? Sharp, dull?” It’s fucking hurt pain, incessant, that doesn’t let you sleep, that makes you walk funny, distracts you from the moment—the kind that makes you dread picturing yourself in ten years, the limping, the immobility.
I suddenly feel like I’m at a wedding explaining my divorce to one of the bridesmaids who could care less and just wants to find a dance partner. I cut my medical narrative short and say, as Muranda squeezes a pulse point in my elbow, “They tell me it’s a bilateral idiopathic neuropathy.” Muranda looks up, deadpan. Makes a “Hmmp” kind of laugh. “They don’t know, in other words.”
“Apparently not,” I say.
“And they say I’m the quack.”
I smile. I’ve seen the best neurologist Kaiser offered on my insurance plan, and a dozen other “specialists.” I’m not sure who the “quacks” are.
The next thing I know, she has a couple dozen needles in both legs, and she has what looks like an incense cone, resting on my left hand, on the web between my thumb and forefinger. According to Muranda, my nerve damage is mirrored from my legs through my arms, into my hands.
“The body works together, all the nerves are connected—” and she delivers a tangent about spider webs and triangles and it all sounds plausible.
I suddenly need to use the bathroom and ask where it is and she points to a curtain, which leads to the alley, and I’m reminded again that this is a fledgling operation with a “Doctor” who probably has a learning issue and who’s very angry at the Western world, men, and from what else I can gather, any kind of white food: bread, sugar, flour, milk…and I suspect, divinity.
“Can you hold it?” She points to the needles in both legs. I shrug, recline on her cot, balancing the incense cone. I suppose so I decide, not having been asked that question since fifth grade. She stands, lights the cone. I wait for directions. None. She moves to the other side of the cot, jiggles a couple of the needles. The numbness of my legs is working to my advantage because I have the sensation of movement but not feeling.
The burning cone emits a slight sulfur scent, white smoke curling toward the roof. Muranda is writing in her journal, then she suddenly stands and leaves as if summoned by a voice only she can hear.
Needles in my leg, cone on my hand, I stare up at the ceiling, which a is a tie-dyed sheet. I can see the waterwork of pipes it’s covering.
Two minutes, five, I can feel the heat from the cone on my hand. Closer, closer…I glance over; it’s burned down to a thin layer of black, like one of those Fourth of July worms you light and watch as the ash writhes around.
“Uh, hello?” I call toward the curtain. Suddenly the burning is on my hand, my skin. My “I’m a patient” mind says, everything’s under control, she’s a doctor, but my skin is suddenly on fire. I snap my hand, sit up violently. Goddamn! I can feel a blister forming on my skin, can smell the flesh. Muranda throws back the curtain, grabs my hand, tries to push me back onto the cot.
“My hand’s burning—”
“It’s fine,” she blows on it, turns it toward me. “See?” There’s a red patch the size of a quarter. “It’s awakening the nerve.” I can see the pulsing under the skin. She says something else, but I’m not tracking. My hand stings, I want these needles out of my legs, and I want to go home.
Five minutes later I’m walking out the door carrying a bag of Chinese teas, two bottles of supplements, and a brochure on diet and white flour tucked under my armpit. I bought the ten-visit package. Muranda is saying something, she doesn’t work weekends, “Ice that hand” and “Thank Julie for the referral.”
I start my car, mark my mental list. I’ve seen my regular doctor, the specialist, the diet specialist, the massage therapist, the neurologist, the psychic, the European internist; I’ve taken the supplements, prescription nerve meds, been checked for diabetes; had the special $1,800 blood test that identifies the “one in a million” nerve dysfunction by the Mexican doctor who hated Americans, but agreed to test me and added Do you know how many vaccinations that could provide in Oaxaca?
I glance at my hand, at the half moon blister, hear Muranda’s voice imploring me to remind Julie to take her tea…winterberry, whiteberry? I collect myself. Why am I delivering the message to Julie? Why would Muranda expect me…then the fatigue overtakes me. Julie’s issues are her own, as are Muranda’s, as are…mine. I add Muranda, and Julie, sweet Julie, to my “check” list.
Two years—no relief. My next step is the spiritual world. One of my boyhood friends, now a Deacon, has been suggesting a “Healing Service.” Susan thought it sounded like a good idea too after I had kept her up all night—again. I haven’t been to church in years. I start the car, stomp on the gas, feel a needle poking my shin.
* * * * * *
The dream returns. I’m in my old high school, St Francis. Darkness gathers in the center of the hall; the sun’s going down, though no windows are visible. The halls have emptied, the rooms, too…I have to get to class. The urgency starts in a panic in my throat, burns down my chest, hits my legs. My feet are stuck, leaden. Move, move, the darkness settles. I push with my arms but my feet don’t respond. I bend and reach to grab them, force them forward. One, two, I start to wiggle, step, jog, now I’m running stiff legged—as if both legs are braced—down the hall, but I’m crippled.
Wood splinters, followed by a burst of heat, bright orange. A demon suddenly rises out of the oaken floor. Fear precedes him, I’m wondering—a real devil? This is a dream, I hear myself telling myself. Still, the demon pops out, a flurry of smoke and heat and anger. Smaller demons are descending the walls, like red and orange putti from the pages of a medieval architectural book. They home in on me; I realize, doing the math, the speed with which they’re approaching, the distance my stiff legs are carrying me—I won’t make it to the door.
One of the winged, pint-sized demons flies toward my face; I swat at him like he’s a giant fly, feel my legs collapse…and I wake.
My wife rolls away from me, pats my leg. The blankets are knotted and swirled between my legs, my feet throbbing. I glance at the alarm clock; it’s four in the morning. I kick free the blankets, roll to the side of the bed, my feet cramping. I place them on the cool, wood floor, struggle to move my toes. The cramping curls both feet, arches rising in an inverted U. I lift my heels, force the toes into the floor, hoping for pain, sensation. In the dark, they look like crooked pinky sausages.
I flex my toes again and again, like a ballerina, my calf muscles tightening and rising. I took two Advil when I lay down, two more now? I reach down for the electric massager, flick the switch. It’s like a belt sander, a big rectangular rubber pad. It takes two hands to maneuver. I bring my left foot up over my right knee, place the pad on the bottom of my foot. I hear my wife groan over the electric hum; she pulls her pillow over her head. “You need to go to the healing service.”
How long before I need a separate room for sleeping?
* * * * * *
And so, I agree with Paul and my wife and I drive to Saint Vincent’s, to the “rich” parish for the “Healing Service.” We lived in St. Francis Parish, a couple of miles away, right on the corner of Sherman and Alameda, the dividing line between the lower middle class and the other side of the tracks. St. Vincent’s was a pay-grade up, nicer cars, better lawn; when we played them in football, all their jerseys matched, and they had the new helmets, the ones with the single, vertical face guard that protected the nose, a helmet like the newest running back for the Kansas City Chiefs. Some of our third-stringers at St. Francis still had single, horizontal face masks.
Though we prayed to the same god, St. Vincent’s always seemed to win. I’m back now, trying to cash in on that spiritual favoritism.
I can feel the saints staring down from their assigned perches, from the stained-glass windows as I stand at the back of the church. Mary’s nestled on the side altar, Joseph on the left. A giant cross (not to be confused with a crucifix; the cross is body less) splits the side altars and hangs above the main altar. It’s jumbo-sized, 15 feet by 10 feet, a wooden advertisement for carpentry and Resurrection. It’s the kind of cross I pictured a giant would wear when I used to stare up at it as a visiting altar boy, 50 years ago.
Scattered along the side walls are reliefs and stations of the various lesser saints; St. Francis, bird in hand, St. Theresa of Avila, “Doctor” of the Church. St. Sebastian made a pin-cushion by arrows, the picture from second grade emblazoned in my head.
And somewhere is Mary Magdalene, assumed to be a prostitute. The one Jesus loved the most. In my mind, I see her in Jerusalem, or Jericho, or one of those hot-J places, washing and oiling Jesus’ feet.
I’m sure his feet hurt, too. The story is, she washed his feet with her tears, dried them with her hair. Prostitutes have a way the nuns could never quite explain.
It’s the panoply of saints, a holy deck of spiritual trading cards. They seem to have shrunk, these saints, just like my grandparents, my parents, just like me hitting 60. It’s a warm, late fall Saturday afternoon. The church is packed. Folks stuffed into the pews, aisles filled and snaking back all the way out the door, down the stairs. It’s like a giant sale at Wal-Mart, or a “Free Lunch” day downtown at the homeless shelter.
At the altar stand Father Murray and my buddy, Deacon Paul, in cassock and surplice, on his right. Paul and I grew up together at St. Francis. Did one-to-ten in Catholic schools, went to different colleges, then married within a year of each other. Same as me, he stayed in the circle of the neighborhood.
He also stayed with the church, joined the deaconate; I fell away. We’re bound by our history, our football team, by the proximity of our teen years and the stories we stitched together. We now have different gods; his feet don’t hurt. He’s a recovering alcoholic.
On Father’s left is a younger deacon, boyish face, full head of reddish hair. He looks like optimism and Glory Be’s. Father’s not wearing the regular garb; he’s in a gold trimmed surplice. The afternoon heat still lingers, and with the crowd, the body heat emanates and puddles and stews. The odor of ointments and body-rubs, the taint of old age and disappointment, bursts of cheap perfume swirl in the stagnant air. In the back where I stand, it smells like the last row of a Greyhound bus at the end of the line getting hosed-out with disinfectant.
On the altar, Father Murray leans into an old woman and whispers something. She nods, then he puts his right hand on her head, lifts his chin, closes his eyes. His lips move. She starts to quiver, as if an electric cord has been hooked into her knees. Then her arms flop up and she falls backward. My buddy Paul and the other deacon move just in time to catch her, let her sink to the carpeted floor.
Without missing a beat, Father turns to the old man to his right, repeats the routine; the old man shimmers, shakes, falls like a spindly sapling, axed. The next man steps over him and waits his turn as Father turns to his left. “Hands-on-Healing” is new to the church, especially one as old and established as St. Vincent’s. Miracles are ancient; speaking in tongues something Pentecostals do. Flopping in the Spirit would fall in the forbidden category of married priests, gay marriage, just a slippery slope or two away from abortion. Catholics like their miracles old, mysterious, and just above the frantic reach of the masses
I can smell the disease, see the suffering, feel the pain in those around me. The woman in front of me has a growth protruding from the back of her neck, the size of an infant’s head. I realize that I am an amateur in the pain arena and I suddenly feel embarrassed, even ashamed about my feet, my pain.
There’s a blind woman holding onto her daughter’s arm, head wrapped in a blue shawl. Behind me, a baby wails, the mother, who couldn’t be more than 16, flips her dark black hair over her shoulder, stuffs a pacifier into the baby’s mouth. The baby spits it out, shrieks. She snatches at the pacifier nipple, misses as her hand traces behind it as it falls to the ground. It feels like a scene that’s been repeating incessantly. She faces the altar, looks past me. Whatever teenage years she has left have been sucked dry by her baby.
A dozen wheelchairs are parked in different aisles, no rhyme or reason or ADA procedure. Young boys on crutches, old men with canes; there are splints and casts, shrunken old bodies moving in discarded clothes, clouds of perfume, urine, street stench. The “flock” is looking a little haggard.
I do the math—a habit when I have to wait—almost a minute for each person; there are about 30 in front of me, another 30 across the aisle. Easily 90 minutes before I’m at the altar. The bodies continue to drop, the pool of the fallen spreading out in snow angel patterns. Miraculously, no one falls on anyone else. Healing is a courteous event.
After a minute or two, each fallen “angel” sits up, then is escorted away wobbling like an affable drunk.
Darkness falls outside, the heat collects in the center of the church, hangs like a cloud of odors. As the light fades, so does the color from the stained-glass windows. Dusk leaks through the church. The line creeps forward, body by body, a blessing at a time.
Finally, it’s my turn. My buddy, Paul, smiles at. He’s enraptured by the events, the healing hand of God, his role as the right hand to the Healer. I look into Father Murray’s face; 70ish, smells of old wine and cheesy body odor, his vestment saturated. He looks at me without seeing me, eyes tired, the voice clicked to rote, like a movie star signing another autograph, or a bestselling author signing a book. He leans in, puts his right hand on my shoulder, whispers,
“What’s your name.”
“Ed” I say, quickly, as if I were on a game show.
“Ok, Ned what’s—”
“Ed” I correct, quickly.
“Ed?” I can hear the Irish in his accent. There’s some irony here, but I’m too nervous to pin it down.
“What’s the problem?”
I pause…there are lots of problems—I’m not sure what to say. He senses my unease.
“What ails you—”
The pains spring to my tongue, gathered over the last two years of frustrating doctor visits. I sound like a second-year medical student.
“I have an idiopathic neuropathy. Both feet. It started in my left, numbness in my foot—”
“You’re going to feel…” Father interrupts, clearly not wanting to hear my diagnosis. We are standing at the intersection of science, religion, and a good night’s sleep. A quick resolution wins out. He wants to go home.
“…a warmth, starting in your head, then down to your feet. Close your eyes.” He puts both of his hands on my head, then mumbles a prayer. I can’t tell if it’s Latin or a grocery list. As commanded, I close my eyes. I wait for the heat—want the heat. I try and relax, open up my…soul, wherever it is.
The prayer ends, his hands come off my head. I open one eye, slowly, then the other. Father Murray and the Deacons are waiting for me to drop, staring like three scientists who’ve just mixed two unknown chemicals. For a split second, I toy with the idea of dropping to the ground, just to be polite. I close my eyes, visualize my head; no heat. My chest, no heat; my feet; no heat, just the numbing sensation, then a stabbing that tingles, a dozen bees caught in each pant leg.
One minute, two? The time moves from expectation to uneasiness to awkwardness to…what do we do now? Finally Father whispers, “Go wait over there.” His head jerks to the side altar. My buddy smiles like this is normal, expected, even though I’m the only one who hasn’t hit the deck in a paroxysm of healing.
I’ve just been sent to “Spiritual Time Out.” Banished to the side altar where two old ladies wait, kneeling at the side rail, the burden of the Catholic Church knotted up in their rosary beads. They stare like two buzzards draped in black veils, Sunday dresses, 140 years of devotion and loyalty to Our Blessed Mother, the Pope, and the simple joys squeezed from forgiving heathens like me.
I sit in a chair with my feet up on another chair, a foot away from the ladies, not sure what to do. So, I close my eyes, say a Hail Mary, an Our Father. One of the women’s rosary beads clacks the pew. I open my eyes, look at her ivory rosary; decades of beads, a Hail Mary for each one, then an Our Father at each break, then what was it? The Glorious Mysteries, the Sorrowful Mysteries… Jesus in the Garden, Jesus gets a hangnail? What were the others?—how did I ever make it through the rosary?
Just then, one of young acolytes taps my shoulder, leans in nervously: “We need the chairs…”“Oh, of course,” I let my feet drop, stand up. He smiles, takes a chair in either hand. Banished from Spiritual Time Out, I think to myself. Now what? How do I make a graceful exit? I turn, realize no one’s really watching me. Each person is involved with their own miracle, their own pain. I start down the side aisle, one step at a time. My feet are buzzing, and the pain is my own.
