“Angeline, let the boy speak.” His tone was gruff and firm. “You can’t make it not so by ignoring it.”
My mom sat at the table and covered her face with her hands.
“Um, I slept a lot. And I was really, really hot. Mom gave me some medicine, and it helped, but I was still hot.”
“What about your dreams?”
My eyes widened as excitement crept in. “They were so cool! I dreamed I was flying! I was me but I was a big, huge bird. I flew up, up, and up, then landed in the clouds, and a big golden hawk told me I had important things to do. That I would be responsible for so many people. That I mustprotect the weak, but not the evil.” I said the last in a deep playful voice. “Then I dove out of the clouds. I was going so very fast I thought I was going to crash, but I woke up and I was better. It was so wild, Grandpa!”
“How long did he sleep?” Grandpa asked my mom.
She seemed sad, so I piped in. “I slept all weekend!”
My grandfather looked at my mom. “Three days?”
She nodded as she kept her face covered.
What my grandfather told me after that seemed incredible. My mother silently cried, and I jumped up to put my arm around her. “Mom, it’s okay. I’ll be careful. I listened to what Grandpa said, I promise.”
Her arms wrapped around me as she held me tight. “I just don’t want to lose you.”
“Angeline, I will teach him. He already knows he must control this gift to not be found out. He will grow stronger as he gets older, and it won’t take as much out of him to heal a simple cut. You worry too much. It’s that husband you should be worried about,” my grandfather said with a scowl.
“Dad, stop. He’s a good man. He just can’t handle his alcohol.” Though I was young, I wanted to argue. My dad hadn’t been a good man since he lost his job and had to get a different one.
“Then he shouldn’t drink” was my grandfather’s gruff reply.
“Not in front of Jude. Please,” my mother said. As if I wasn’t already aware. I may’ve only been eight years old, but I could see, and I wasn’t stupid. She always made excuses for his behavior. For the drinking. For the abuse.
“You will come to our home, and I will teach you the ways of our family,” he said.
“I’m not leaving Jasmine,” I insisted with narrowed eyes.
“He has school!” my mother angrily spat at the same time.
“Then we will compromise,” my grandfather said as he looked down his nose and crossed his arms.
“It will be okay, Angeline.” My grandmother got up and wrapped her arms around my mother. “It’s a gift,” she told her.
“It’s a curse,” my mother whispered.
After that visit, Jasmine and I spent weekends and holidays with my grandparents near Cedar Rapids. While Jasmine learned to garden, paint, and sew, I studied under my grandfather. I learned that healing was a gift from the Creator, passed down to the eldest male of each generation for as long as he’d known. It was a great responsibility but could be a burden.
For example, if someone was hurt and there were witnesses, I could do nothing. Absolutely out of the question. If there were possible witnesses, I could only do enough to slow the damage until help arrived. In other words, not enough that people would know.
Then there was the downside that it took a lot of energy to heal someone and the worse the damage, the more it sucked out of me.
“As you get older and your body matures, you will be stronger, and healing will take less out of you. But still you must be careful, because too much damage will leave you exhausted and, depending on where you are, could leave your safety compromised until you recuperate. It should never be overlong, but you’ll definitely feel it,” my grandfather had insisted. I knew he was right because of how exhausted I was after that first time with my mother.
But the most important thing I had to learn was something that would come back to haunt me.