Jonathan Santlofer - Anatomy of Fear

“Headache,” my grandmother translated.

How did she know?

She recommended tea made from rosemary, plucked a statue off the Mesa Blanca, Saint Jude, patron of the hopeless, waved him over my head, and said, “For the dolor de cabeza. ” It seemed ridiculous, but seconds later my headache disappeared. I touched my head, trying to locate the pain that had been there a moment ago.

“Muy bien,” she said, and was right. I was much better.

But how was it possible?

She closed her eyes and said, “Dios está en la atmósfera.”

“God is in the air,” said my grandmother.

I looked around the shop, at the beads and candles, dusty shelves crowded with herbal remedies and statuary, my rational brain still protesting. There isn’t room for God among this mess.

Maria Guerrero said, “This is no bilongo.”

“Witchcraft,” said my grandmother and frowned at me.

Then the espiritista said it was time, and my grandmother handed her a wad of bills. I didn’t know how much, but the bill on the outside was a twenty and the wad was thick; it could have been a couple of hundred. I was appalled, but my grandmother gave me a look and I didn’t say anything.

Maria Guerrero led us into the back room. It was stark and simple, in contrast to the packed storefront-white walls dotted with a few pictures of saints and a Mesa Blanca, the focal point, with plastic saints, glasses of water, a wooden crucifix wrapped with beads, angel figurines, books, and candles waiting to be lit.

I was trying hard to be open-minded- was it really any different from a church, a synagogue, a Buddhist temple? -but a part of me was still resisting, having trouble giving myself over, believing.

“Is importante to believe.” Maria Guerrera touched my head, then my heart.

It was as if she’d just read my mind. She smiled, then excused herself.

When she was out of the room I turned to my grandmother. “You gave her money.”

“ Por supuesto. She is working. It is the derecho, and expected.”

“This is crazy, ulea. ”

My grandmother put a finger to my lips and told me to be “tranquilo,” that Maria Guerrero would hear me. Then she took my hand and held it firmly. “There are things we do not understand, Nato. Things that are not easy to explain because they come from another place, el más alto, from the espiritus. But when we see them we start to believe. You must believe.” She looked into my eyes. “Sometimes it is necessary to believe in something to get out of something else, entiendes ?”

I didn’t know if I understood or not. I had spent a lifetime of not believing. Could I start believing now? I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to relax. My grandmother squeezed my hand, sending support and love while trying to telegraph her entire belief system into my being. I could see it in her face, every muscle constricted with concentration.

Maria Guerrero returned wearing a white smock. In her right hand she was holding a knife.

I took a step backward.

“The cuchilla, ” she said softly. “Used to cut through problems.” She laid it on the Mesa Blanca and picked up one of the books. “Colección de Oraciones escogidas,” she said, and my abuela translated, “Prayer book.”

She crushed some powdered incense into a small iron pot and lit it, whisked the smoke into the air, handed me a box of wooden matches, and asked me to light two white candles on the table.

My hands were shaking, but I did.

She recited a prayer from the book, turned off the lights, and the room took on a warm glow. She touched my hands and they stopped shaking; tapped my forehead and my thoughts stopped racing; drew her fingers across my chest and my breathing and heartbeat slowed. Then she said she was going to perform a limpia, a ritual cleansing. She sent my grandmother into the front of the bótanica. She came back with an aerosol dispenser decorated with a bird and a Native American in full feather headdress, the words CAST OFF EVIL printed on the label. She gave it to Maria Guerrero, who sprayed it toward the ceiling, the altar, and finally on me. It didn’t have any detectable scent and it seemed like nothing but bottled air with a fancy label.

But I felt something, a sense of being physically lighter, as if I’d lost weight or someone had lifted something off my chest.

Then she started lighting the other candles, and explained they were for “protección,” brown to ward off ill will, the black to help me against my enemies. I tried hard to believe her. I wanted it to be true.

She closed her eyes. “I see a man and he means to do you harm. And I see a corona. ”

“He’s wearing a crown?” I asked.

“No.” She shook her head, eyes still closed. “Not on the man. The corona is… está dentro del circulo. ”

The crown symbol in The White Man’s Bible that had appeared in my grandmother’s vision and in the crime scene drawing.

There were things to be done, she said, and sprinkled me with powders and pungent herbs and spoke of Eleggua, who would either open or close the roads for me, and I thought: Please open them. She told me to stop eating red meat and potato chips-and how she knew I lived on burgers and chips I didn’t know, but she was making a believer out of me. She said I had to change my life patterns, start eating well and exercising, stop drinking beer and engaging in premarital sex. That last one got to me, but I nodded. She slipped a beaded necklace around my neck. “Un collar,” she said. As she did, the muscles in my neck eased in a way they had not in weeks.

She asked me to take off my shirt, and when I hesitated my grandmother started tugging it out of my waistband like I was a kid, so I took it off and stood before the two women feeling vulnerable and naked.

Maria Guerrero broke an egg into a pitcher of water and poured it over my neck. It oozed down my back and chest. I shivered, a kind of electric energy coursing through my body. Maybe it was nerves, but I didn’t think so. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before, anything I had ever experienced.

Then she snapped blossoms off gladiolas, crushed them in her hands and rubbed them onto my chest. There was a slight burning sensation, not unpleasant, but it sent more shivers rippling through my body, and my gut churned.

“Somos parte de la naturaleza,” said Maria Guerrero, talking about plants versus people, and how human beings were consumed with vanity and how I had to give up my ego or I would be in trouble.

My desire to believe was battling with my doubt and cynicism, and standing there covered in slimy water, crushed flowers over my heart, the room began to spin, pictures of saints coming in and out of focus, and I thought I might faint. The women took hold of my arms. My grandmother hummed an old lullaby she’d sing to me when I was a boy and Maria Guerrero mumbled some Spanish incantation, and I started to feel better, the dizziness abating, my mind clearing, stomach settling.

Maria Guerrero cleaned the egg off my chest with my white shirt. She rolled it into a ball and told me I had to dump it into a trash bin as soon as I left the store, that the shirt had absorbed the evil spirits, and I must now cast them off. Then she prepared a jar of water with crushed herbs and colored it with a blue dye and told me that over the next week I was to pour portions of it over my hands and it would keep me safe and pure.

When she was quiet I asked a question. “This man who you saw, the one who wants to do me harm, how do I find him?”