The Cure for the Healer

Prologue

(Liam)

I always knew this day would come. In so many ways, today is a day that I planned for, anticipated, but most of all, dreaded. Burying my mother today was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. My mom was a beauty, inside and out. She had long, beautiful, red hair and blue eyes. Liam, my father, had dark brown hair, brown eyes and easily cleared six feet. I inherited his name, size, and hair, but my eyes and my smile were all from my mom. She was everything to me.

My earliest memory of my mother was of her on her hands and knees, crying and screaming at my father to stay home with us. It was the first time I remember seeing him hit my mother. She threatened to leave him. He just smirked and continued getting ready for his date. She told him she would take me with her. That’s when he turned and rushed to grab her by the throat. He lifted her and slammed her into the floor-length mirror, breaking the glass in their walk-in closet. “Bitch, I will hunt you down and kill you if you so much as think about taking my fucking son anywhere.”

Then, he calmly dropped her on the floor and stepped over her. He chose one of his many women over his family that night and would continue to choose them over me for my entire childhood. My mother, on the other hand, chose herself. One might assume that the choice caused a rift between my mother and me, but it didn’t. It was my first lesson in strength and self-preservation. I was five.

The next thirteen years of my life, my father hired nannies to care for me while he continued to do whatever it was that he did. They were all women of color. He treated them horribly, but paid them well. Liam verbally abused them and would go out of his way to let them know he thought they were beneath him. He mocked their cultures and encouraged me to do the same, but even as a young child, it felt wrong. One of the first things my mother taught me was to be respectful and show kindness. “An ounce of kindness goes a long way, Lee,”

she would always say. When I refused to belittle my nannies, he called me weak, stupid, and any other name he could think of. I think my nannies took pity on me and stayed longer than they should have.

There was Delilah. She was Jamaican, kind, and smart. Delilah would take me to the park and pretend that she didn’t see my mother when my mom would sneak to spend time with me. She would sing to me to calm me when we had to leave my mom; she had the voice of an angel. Delilah left me after she finished her degree in child psychology. Then, there was Anna. She was Mexican and fun to be around, but she was afraid of my father. The first time she spotted my mother in the park, she threatened to tell my father. Liam had told Anna he would have his friends come and take her sick abuela back to Mexico. But my mom knew my father well, so she would give Anna extra money and help her get medical care for her grandmother. Anna left me not long after her abuela passed away; I was ten. Then, there was Ms. Cassie, the second most important woman in my life.

Ms. Cassie was, for all practical purposes, my grandmother. My mother’s mother disowned her when she married Liam because my paternal grandfather had financially ruined my maternal grandfather. Liam’s mother disappeared when he was a teenager, so I never met my biological grandmothers. Ms. Cassie was a Black woman, older than my other nannies. She was born and raised in Mississippi but moved to California with her husband to raise their children in a more liberal environment. I guess Liam’s attitude towards Black people was a bitter taste of home for her. Ms. Cassie was different from the others. She didn’t respond the same way to my father’s threats and demeaning attitude. I once asked her how she could stand the names he called her. She said, “Chile, I’ve been called everything by white folks but a child of God. I stay because when I look in your eyes, I see your heart. If I can help keep your heart kind, then tolerating Mr. Sinclair’s nonsense is worth it.”

That’s when I asked her to walk with me to the park.

At eleven, I was more than capable of walking to the park on my own in our affluent, costal neighborhood of Palos Verdes Estates in southern California. Ms. Cassie asked me, “Why do you always go to the park? You have this huge mansion with sprawling lawns, a pool, a tennis court, and a basketball court. Your father even let you put in that ridiculous half pipe ramp thing for you to ride your skateboard. What does that park have that you don’t have here?”

My answer was simple, “Come with me and find out.”

That was the day Ms. Cassie met my mother. Unlike my nannies before her, she fully embraced my mother and wanted to get to know her. She affectionally called my mom Jessie, short for Jessica. It was the start of a beautiful relationship. Ms. Cassie didn’t just look after me, she also became a stand-in mother for my mother. My mother cried just as much as Ms. Cassie’s own children at her funeral. We buried her twenty years ago right after I turned twenty-one. Ms. Cassie died from flu complications. Something that could have been prevented, but no one listened to her. I was studying abroad at Oxford that semester. I would have fought harder for her if I had been there. It was my mother who encouraged me to turn my frustrations into action by studying infectious diseases. Now, they are both gone. Hopefully, this journey home will help clear my head. My trek back from civilization will take about three days if I don’t run into any trouble. Wow, I really am a coward. All that talk about social justice, but all I’ve done is hide out on my mountain for the past three years.

After I finished my B.S. in business, I worked part-time at my family’s finance company. Liam was upset I chose not to pursue my MBA. Instead, I earned an MS in molecular pharmacology and toxicology from the University of Southern California. I stayed local so I could check in on the firm. Then I earned a PhD in biological sciences in public health from Harvard. After graduation, I was already published and had several job offers, but I did something no one really expected, least of all Liam. I went to work full-time at the firm. What people didn’t understand was that I knew what was coming. I could see the trends in the medical field and the shift in power in the social constructs of our country. And so, the first pandemic wave and the uprising against white power were not surprising to me.

Ms. Cassie would say, “Don’t fear your dreams. It is the universe’s way of preparing you for what’s coming.”

I started having dreams about the shift in power eight years before it happened. Once Liam passed away of a heart attack, I became owner and CFO of the company. Not only did I branch out and start diversifying, I began investing in my friends’ businesses. I also made a few medical breakthroughs and sold the patents. Money was more abundant than ever before. That’s when I started anonymously hiring contractors to build small parts of my large compound in the mountains. I figured the area I selected was remote enough that no one would ever come looking. Shit really got real when I went to pitch the cure that I found for a blood disorder that disproportionately affects Black children. Not even two hours after that pitch meeting, they tried to have me executed. I took two bullets to the chest.

I called Christopher Ito, one of my best friends, really a brother, from undergrad. He joined the military and eventually became a SEAL. When he was discharged, he opened a security company. Chris provided me with a security detail, but more importantly, he trained me in weaponry and hand-to-hand combat.

I’ve done a lot of construction and hunting over the last five years, so I realize how threatening I must look at 6’2”

and 225 pounds of pure muscle. I guess I’m not the nerdy weakling my father always told me I was. Well, I’ll always be a nerd. Okay, okay, I need to get my head ready. I’m about a mile outside of the last checkpoint before I’m able to head into the forest and up the mountain.

The checkpoint is just outside of the small port town of Port Jaron, right on the border of California and Oregon. It’s used as a trading post and a port where they separate people of color from whites, but this time it’s the whites getting the short end of the stick. People of color board buses and boats to take them somewhere nice while whites are shipped off to some shitty destination if they don’t have a trade that is useful around the port. I guess some people become the same monsters they hate when they get tired of having a boot on their necks, literally and figuratively. At least we finally have people from all walks of life in D.C. working together to make America truly a place where all are accepted. Hopefully, their efforts will reach everywhere soon, and these pockets of guerrilla warfare will end.

I purchased a huge piece of land here that leads into the forest. Some of my favorite memories are of the annual camping trips I would take up here with my environmental studies club in high school. It always meant peace, and time away from Liam. I built a luxury resort on the land. When the tables turned, I signed the land and the resort over to one of my other closest friends, Thaddeus Masters. Thaddeus is Black and shorter than me, 5’10”, average build with just a little extra around the middle these days. His dark skin and perfect teeth always kept the ladies around. It also helped that he is super cool with a relaxed vibe. Thaddeus is versatile and can blend in with royalty or hang with the fellas on the Shaw. He once took me to meet his family in Windsor Hills and then to hang out on Crenshaw. I stuck out like a sore thumb, but once people got to know me, they saw I was cool. Thad has always had my back. Let’s hope my drop-in doesn’t cause any problems for either of us.