stood in silence for ten minutes, a human chain.
When I think of that afternoon, what I remember first is the
awkwardness of it: Mother said she could feel the hot energy moving
through our bodies, but I felt nothing. Mother and Richard stood still,
eyes shut, breath shallow. They could feel the energy and were
transported by it. I fidgeted. I tried to focus, then worried that I was
ruining things for Susan, that I was a break in the chain, that Mother
and Richard’s healing power would never reach her because I was
failing to conduct it. When the ten minutes were up, Susan gave
Mother twenty dollars and the next customer came in.
If I was skeptical, my skepticism was not entirely my fault. It was the
result of my not being able to decide which of my mothers to trust. A
year before the accident, when Mother had first heard of muscle
testing and energy work, she’d dismissed both as wishful thinking.
“People want a miracle,” she’d told me. “They’ll swallow anything if it
brings them hope, if it lets them believe they’re getting better. But
there’s no such thing as magic. Nutrition, exercise and a careful study
of herbal properties, that’s all there is. But when they’re suffering,
people can’t accept that.”
Now Mother said that healing was spiritual and limitless. Muscle
testing, she explained to me, was a kind of prayer, a divine
supplication. An act of faith in which God spoke through her fingers. In
some moments I believed her, this wise woman with an answer to
every question; but I could never quite forget the words of that other
woman, that other mother, who was also wise. There’s no such thing as
magic.
One day Mother announced that she had reached a new skill level. “I
no longer need to say the question aloud,” she said. “I can just think
it.”
That’s when I began to notice Mother moving around the house, her
hand resting lightly on various objects as she muttered to herself, her
fingers flexing in a steady rhythm. If she was making bread and wasn’t
sure how much flour she’d added. Click click click. If she was mixing
oils and couldn’t remember whether she’d added frankincense. Click
click click. She’d sit down to read her scriptures for thirty minutes,
forget what time she’d started, then muscle-test how long it had been.
Click click click.