Revival Season - Monica West (recommended ebook reader TXT) 📗

He’s going to want another one.” Her sobbing stopped like the break in a storm—or the calm before another one—and her clear voice came through. “I didn’t want this one and look what happened.” She gestured toward the hole in front of us where Isaiah lay. She was talking loudly, as though Papa wasn’t feet away, as though she had forgotten that I was her daughter.

Back at the kitchen table where he’d just made the announcement, Papa’s hands hadn’t moved from Ma’s shoulders, but he wasn’t massaging them anymore; it looked like he was holding her in place. A few minutes later, when she still hadn’t said anything and the congratulations had faded, Caleb excused himself to bed and took Hannah with him. I hoped Papa would leave us alone and let Ma tell me what she was really feeling about this baby, but he didn’t seem eager to let that happen.

“What a blessing.” Her tinny repeated words seemed to be aimed at the table rather than at Papa.

“It is a blessing indeed. The Lord has answered our prayers.”

“It’s getting late, Miriam,” he said, turning to me. “You should get to bed.”

“I’ll tuck you in like old times,” Ma offered.

Once we reached the doorway of the bedroom, I pulled her toward me. “Say something, Ma,” I whispered inches from her face, my eyes pleading with hers. “Do you want this? After Isaiah, you said—”

She pushed me into the bedroom, closing the door part of the way behind her. “He’ll hear you.” She was breathless when she got to the other side of the door, and her eyes darted back to the stairs. With her hands light on my shoulders, she guided me into bed. Fully clothed, I nestled beneath the sheets and let her pull them taut around me. Ma stared into the space above my headboard as her hands patted me too hard beneath the sheets.

“I know what I said, Miriam. It’s just complicated. Your dad really wanted another baby. And what I wanted—what I want—well, that doesn’t really matter. I mean, it matters, but it’s hard to explain.” Her voice was heavy with sadness.

I opened my mouth to respond when there was a creak on the stairs. Papa. He reached the landing and approached the breach in the door; the visible portion of him glowed in the hallway light. Ma’s back was to him, and though she didn’t turn around, I could tell from the way she straightened that she must have sensed his presence.

“A baby is always a gift. We are so blessed.” Her eyes found their way from the wall back to me; she leaned over and snuck a quick kiss on my forehead. “Now go to sleep, honey. It’s getting late.” She hopped off the bed and let herself out of the room. When the door was open fully, Papa put his arm around her waist; he pulled her close to him for their walk toward the bedroom.

A torrential downpour pounded Bethel the next day, stopping a few minutes before revival began. Fat raindrops still clung to the tent’s roof and slid down intermittently, exploding into the grass like small bombs. Papa stood in front of a revival tent packed to capacity with standing-room-only in the back—his hands were raised above his head to announce the healing portion of the night’s service.

“Saints of God, are you ready for a healing?”

Applause churned around us as people crowded into the aisles—they must have been waiting for those words the whole night because they were on their feet before he finished the question. In a couple of minutes, the line in the middle aisle was so long that it almost went outside. A few drunks with their telltale sunglasses covering half their faces were scattered in with the people whose bodies needed to be healed. In East Mansfield, Papa complained about healing the same drunks every week only to see them the following week with the same sour breath, asking to be healed again. His face didn’t show his disgust as he stood in front of this line, dispatching the first dozen people and rendering their diseases a thing of the past.

At the end of the healing service, he arrived at the final drunk—a middle-aged man with black stubble and craterlike pockmarks denting his cheeks, whose sunglasses kept slipping down his nose. The man toddled down the line closer to Papa until Papa’s hands were on his shoulders, and he swayed on unsteady legs as Papa’s lips grazed his ear to ask what ailed him.

Papa brought his forehead close to the man’s and removed his sunglasses. He whispered to him for a few minutes, probably about the evils of drinking and how the Lord could deliver him from his addiction. Then he pressed his right hand over the man’s eyes instead of on his forehead, all while tilting his head back. Papa only touched the eyes of people who were blind or losing their sight. A blind man could be just as good for Papa as making a man walk—maybe better. I rubbed my hands in anticipation—this was what we’d been waiting for since Americus.

Papa pressed harder on the man’s eyes until the man fell into the deacons’ arms, his mouth contorting in a wavy line of agony. As the deacons released his body to the grass, Papa let go in a flourish. The man’s cloudy pupils roamed around the ceiling, maybe seeing the fans slicing through the air for the first time, maybe landing on the miniature lights that glowed like phosphorescent teardrops. He was on his back for a few seconds before the deacons helped him to his feet. Once the man was standing, his startled eyes flitted in their sockets as he faced the congregation, never landing on anyone—they just searched as though unable to find what they were looking for. The deacons must have noticed this and abruptly spun the man around to face the pulpit. One deacon clumsily slid the man’s sunglasses