The Ravine (19 page)

That night, after all the visitors were gone, Mr. Crook opened the casket again, and Joanna and her mom watched while he slipped on the socks and shoes.

“I guess you got to give Dad a pair of shoes after all, honey,” her mom said as they reached their front door. But Joanna already knew that.

By the time Joanna was ready to go to college, she had grown into a beautiful young woman, with the dark coloring of her father, complemented by the soft features and blonde hair of her mother. She had dated a few high school guys but was a very serious student, as were the majority of the boys who also attended Stuyvesant High School. Almost all of the guys were science geeks, but Joanna was focused on literature, history, and the study of religions. Joanna was one of the first young women to be admitted to Stuyvesant, probably the most prestigious high school in New York City. The courses were very demanding, which suited Joanna’s temperament.

Her gift to see things and know things was, at times, unsettling. By now, however, it had become a part of her routine. Sometimes it was very beneficial. When she insisted her mother go to the doctor for a
checkup, Joan followed her direction, because by now she had accepted the fact that Joanna had a sixth sense that was very powerful. The doctor said it was fortunate that she had come in for the checkup, because he caught her cancer early, and her doctors were able to successfully treat her.

When some of her relatives heard the stories about Joanna, they asked her to do things like pick the winning horses at the racetrack or the team that would win the World Series, but she always pretended not to know such things. She knew her gift was special, but it also brought great responsibility.

One day she was walking from the subway to her apartment in Greenpoint, when she was drawn to a young man walking ahead of her on the street. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew he was very angry.
Angry about what?
she thought. Then she heard his mind:
I know she’s cheating on me. I’m going to beat the hell out of her as soon as I get home
.

She immediately threw herself on the ground. “Help, mister. Help me!” she cried. He stopped and turned around, and was tempted to keep going, but instead he came over to her.

“Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not. Could you please help me up? Could you walk me to that bench over there?” She pretended to limp and moaned in great pain.

When they got to the bench, she raised her head and looked him straight in the eye. “Your wife is a good woman. She loves you very much, and she is faithful to you. You shouldn’t hurt her.”

The man blinked at her. “How did you know . . . ? I don’t get it.” But she had succeeded in slowing him down, and he sat next to her on the bench and thought about what she had said.

Joanna was used to this sort of reaction by now, and she knew it was better not to try to explain, but simply to help. “Trust me, sir, I know. You’re lucky to have such a good wife. I know you think she is interested
in the man who lives in the apartment below you, but she isn’t. You should tell him to leave her alone, and he will. He’ll be afraid of you.”

They sat and talked for the next fifteen minutes, and finally he thanked her, and headed home in a completely different state of mind.

This sort of thing happened from time to time with Joanna. In a flash, she could see the two different directions this man might take. If he took the path of kindness, forgiveness, and trust, he would go on to live a fulfilling life of hard work that would allow him and his wife to move to the suburbs, raise several children, and one day be surrounded by a large, loving family. If he chose the path of mistrust, hate, and violence, he would be in jail by nightfall, his wife severely beaten and almost dead. She would divorce him, and, after his release from jail, he would grow into a lonely and bitter old man. It was almost as if two movies ran in her head simultaneously.

On this occasion she had been successful, but it didn’t always turn out that way. There were many times when she would envision someone about to perform a dreadful act, but found herself incapable of intervening and altering the course of events. God gave us free will, she reasoned, but God also permitted evil to exist in the world, and when the enemy was determined, he was a vicious adversary. These times were excruciatingly painful for her, both physically and emotionally. As the years went on, she learned to sense when she was outmatched, and, with rare exceptions, she would step out of the situation.

As a teenager, she had struggled at times. She was proud of her gift, and would forget that it wasn’t something she had earned, that it didn’t make her better than others. At times pride would overtake her. Once, she told a friend about her gift (referring to it as a “power”), and the girl challenged her to prove herself by curing her brother, who had been born with a club foot. Joanna was tempted to do so, and tried, but she drew a blank. Disappointed, her friend accused her of being a fraud.

At dinner that night, she told her mother about the incident, and Joan knew the time had come for a serious discussion.

“Joanna,” she said, “you and I both know that you have been given a very special ability, but it’s only through the grace of God that you have it, and so it’s not to be trifled with. I don’t know why you were given this talent, but it’s clear that God selected you because He knew you would know how to use it properly.
You
can’t heal anyone; you can only petition God to heal someone. I don’t know why He seems to hear you when He doesn’t hear others, or why He allows you to know things that others don’t, but—”

“But, maybe God wants me to heal others like the apostles were able to heal people in His name after Jesus was resurrected!”

“That may be so, Joanna, and if you are so directed, then so it will be. But I can guarantee you that unless you are humble and quiet about this gift, it will be taken away. God knows that you will be tempted by pride and the desire to be admired and loved by others, and I am sure He does not want you to succumb to those temptations. Remember that the Devil is alive and well and does his work through others who may not even know they are being used.”

She knew her mother was right, and there it was, the part that scared her the most. The Enemy.

Joanna felt a direct connection to God, but, despite her upbringing, she couldn’t persuade herself to believe in any particular religion. As she matured into a strong woman, she was offended by the fact that most religions were begun and run by men, and that women were never treated as equals. She studied the Bible, but found that some of the sections, particularly in the Old Testament, treated women in a disrespectful
manner, and she understood how some of those beliefs were used over the years as a justification for subjugating women.

However, in the New Testament, she was touched by the suffering of Jesus’s mother, Mary, and the faith she showed when the angel Gabriel came to her to tell her she was going to have a child. Because Joanna also experienced supernatural occurrences, she could appreciate how lonely Mary must have felt when she was mocked and treated as an outcast. An unmarried pregnant woman is still shunned today, so imagine the criticism Mary had to endure! She also loved Joseph because he embodied the concept of a man who trusted and protected both his wife and child, though in the natural, other men must have considered him a cuckold.

But the woman who really spoke to Joanna was Mary Magdalene, because it was through her that Jesus was able to demonstrate one of the primary lessons of forgiveness. In many ways the story about Mary Magdelene was similar to the one about the woman who was accused of adultery. He drew the line in the sand, and encouraged those who were without sin to cast the first stone. Of course that meant no one could throw a stone. Forgiveness was difficult, and sometimes it seemed impossible, but if everyone in the world practiced it, then there would be much less pain and suffering in the world.

Before Joanna left for college, she decided to confide in a pastor to whom she naturally gravitated, who seemed to be a learned and patient man. She was convinced he would listen to her situation carefully and advise her. Much to her astonishment, he not only listened, but also confided to her that he, too, had a similar ability, and said it had been both a blessing and a curse in his life. He warned her that she would be tempted to use her ability for personal gain, and that it was a dangerous thing to do.

“Joanna,” he admitted, “I know this because I made that mistake, and I suffered for it. I am indeed grateful that I was visited one day by an
angel who led me to see the true meaning of this gift, and that I should be guided by a simple and honest prayer.”

Then he handed her a card with a prayer on it, and told her to memorize it, and to rely on it whenever she needed guidance. She knew the prayer and had recited it many times, but from that point forward, it became the guiding principle of her life:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is error, truth;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And where there is sadness, joy
.

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love
.

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life
.

The “Prayer of Saint Francis” said everything she needed to know as she began her journey toward a life of ministry.

After she graduated from the University of Chicago, Joanna studied at the Chicago Theological Seminary, and spent several years as a visiting assistant pastor at several churches in the Midwest. She returned to
Chicago to open a home for battered women, and decided that would be the focus of her work. She was repulsed at how often men would take advantage of women because they were stronger and larger, and how vulnerable these women and their children were. Joanna, on the other hand, was fearless. She thought nothing of placing herself between a man filled with hate and righteousness and his wife and child, and sometimes—but not always—could tame the wildest of beasts. She had purposely chosen a dangerous profession.

In 1995, she moved to Cleveland to join the ministry of the man she had met and married, who had devoted his life to working with young men who had been abandoned by their fathers, which was his experience. The cycle of violence had to be broken, and so she and Richard grew their ministry in a tiny church they purchased from the city for a dollar on Fifty-fifth Street. They were surrounded by crime and drug dealers, but neither of them feared for their own safety. They were guided.

Richard helped Joanna learn how to balance her gift with her responsibilities as a pastor, mother, and wife, but it concerned him that sometimes she would be taken with a particular problem and wouldn’t let it go, despite the personal toll it would take on her. A lifetime of this work had aged her prematurely, and her hair had turned so light, it was almost luminescent. Perhaps her physical challenges were the price she was to pay for her gift. However, if God chose her to intercede in a particular situation, she knew not to question His wisdom, although it had become more difficult in recent years. And that was her plight on the morning of the Turner family murders.