Then it was their last night, and still I had not been reborn.
Mother and I shuffled around the shared kitchen making a beef and
potato casserole, which we brought into the room on trays. My father
studied his plate quietly, as if he were alone. Mother made a few
observations about the food, then she laughed nervously and was
silent.
When we’d finished, Dad said he had a gift for me. “It’s why I came,”
he said. “To offer you a priesthood blessing.”
In Mormonism, the priesthood is God’s power to act on earth—to
advise, to counsel, to heal the sick, and to cast out demons. It is given
to men. This was the moment: if I accepted the blessing, he would
cleanse me. He would lay his hands on my head and cast out the evil
thing that had made me say what I had said, that had made me
unwelcome in my own family. All I had to do was yield, and in five
minutes it would be over.
I heard myself say no.
Dad gaped at me in disbelief, then he began to testify—not about
God, but about Mother. The herbs, he said, were a divine calling from
the Lord. Everything that happened to our family, every injury, every
near death, was because we had been chosen, we were special. God had
orchestrated all of it so we could denounce the Medical Establishment
and testify of His power.
“Remember when Luke burned his leg?” Dad said, as if I could
forget. “That was the Lord’s plan. It was a curriculum. For your
mother. So she would be ready for what would happen to me.”
The explosion, the burn. It was the highest of spiritual honors, he
said, to be made a living testament of God’s power. Dad held my hands
in his mangled fingers and told me that his disfiguration had been
foreordained. That it was a tender mercy, that it had brought souls to
God.
Mother added her testimony in low, reverent whispers. She said she
could stop a stroke by adjusting a chakra; that she could halt heart
attacks using only energy; that she could cure cancer if people had
faith. She herself had had breast cancer, she said, and she had cured it.
My head snapped up. “You have cancer?” I said. “You’re sure? You
had it tested?”