"There's this old man. He lives in the Sierra's. My friend told me he's seen him cure cancer. He's in Tijuana. There's a humongous line to see him, but my friend said he can get you and your brother in to see him."
"No," I shook my head.
"But he doesn't charge. He doesn't ask for anything. You don't even have to drink any medicine."
I shot him a skeptical look.
"He just looks at you and tells you whether or not he can help you. If he can, he uses some plants or some such shit. My friend told me he told a guy to hunt a deer and then bring it to an altar and offer it as a sacrifice to God. Three days later, he was all better."
"No," I repeated.
"Come on. If there's even a remote possibility that he'll make you even a little bit better... It's worth a shot. This guy is a fucking wizard. Deeply religious. Claims that God helps him. My friend says he's seen him do some crazy shit. What do you have to lose?"
I looked at him. Mostly his eyes. There was hint of desperation and sadness in them. The kind you get when you feel helpless. You watch your son's struggle everyday with basic tasks. Breathing, eating, getting around. I can't imagine going through that as a father. It must be a horrible feeling. Feeling as though there's something wrong with you or that you did something wrong. In many ways, I think, he hurts more than me.
* * *
One of my earliest memories is of my dad holding me up, helping me walk. We would have living room soccer matches between us and my baby brother. He literally held me up for half an hour helping me kick the ball around. It was like a life-size version of foosball.
He took it the hardest in my family when I was diagnosed. After that, he often came home drunk from work. Never angry. He was a calm drunk. Even as a kid I knew he was trying to numb some part of himself. Maybe if he drank enough he wouldn't hurt anymore. This didn't sit right with my mom. She yelled at him a lot. There were shouting matches, mostly one-sided. "LOOK AT YOUR FATHER!" she'd say in between sobs. "LOOK AT HIM, HE'S DRUNK!" I'd look at him to confirm that he was, indeed, drunk. I knew because of his glazed over eyes. I never responded in these situations. I didn't want to take sides.
They started taking me to doctor after doctor, always wanting a second opinion. We drove to LA from San Diego to see the leading MD specialists. "Nothing I can do," he said. They eventually gave up on finding a cure via western medicine and looked towards more alternative, shadier methods.
There was a guy in Mexico City who claimed he could cure me with magnets. Something about my positive and negative energy. He laid me on a table in my tighty-whities and covered me in magnets. When I didn't get up, my parents yelled at him and carried me away, but they did pay him.
Another guy claimed he could cure me by injecting me with sheep cells. My dad took me by himself this time. It was in a seedy little town in Mexico across the border from Yuma, AZ. I remember the pain from the injection was horrible. "Don't be such a baby," the doctor told me. My dad thanked him and we drove home.
A Chinese guy in the Tijuana ghetto. He was recommended by the mom of this kid with Duchenne's I went to school with. "We're seeing results," she told my mom. I laid on a table while he stretched my limbs as far as they could go. I screamed and cried and pleaded with my mom to make him stop. She didn't. "It'll make you better," she insisted. The guy then put candles all over my body, lit them and then extinguished them by putting an empty Gerber bottle over them, creating a vacuum over my skin. When he was done my skin was covered in red circles and my whole body ached. He gave me this brown ball that looked like processed feces and made me eat it. It was foulest thing I ever tasted. "I'm sorry, baby. I promise we won't come back."
The list goes on and on. It's filled with malicious people looking to prey on people like my parents. It's fucking disgusting. Fuck these people. They deserve to burn in hell.
Eventually my parents divorced. They never told me, but I suspect the strain of our disabilities had a large part in it.
* * *
"Okay" I sighed.
His face lit up and he started telling me all the things his friend had seen this guy do.
At least this guy was only crazy and had good intentions, I rationalized, against my better judgement. Mostly, I think it would've hurt him more if I had said no. And, although I'll never admit it, I still have that faint glimmer of hope that, just maybe, one of these times, it'll work.
Nothing ever came of it. We never went to see the guy and he only brought it up once or twice more. I think the guy must have refused to see me or said he couldn't help me. Still, I'm pretty sure he'll find another wack-job claiming he can cure me by talking to God. For a small fee, of course.
Posted by HotWheelz at 8:09 AM