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

“Did he wait for you?”

“Some things about your father have changed.” She laughed. “But some things haven’t. He never liked to wait. Even back then. So, I told my boss I was taking my break and left. Your father took my hand and led me to the parking lot. I remembered the way he opened the car door like a gentleman—he seemed like a real adult, not like the boys I was used to.”

“Where did he take you?” I tried to picture my parents as people close to my age—as people at all. As she spoke, silhouettes of their pasts sharpened into clear pictures. I imagined Ma in a powder-blue waitress uniform with her name on the lapel, the slow way that she reached behind her back and untied her apron—folding it in thirds the way she now folded our laundry—before leaving it next to the cash register. I imagined her taking Papa’s hand, callused from all those years of boxing, and sinking into his car.

Ma kneaded her hands against her thighs while she spoke. Then she sprang upward like a latch snapped closed inside her. She tucked her skirt between her parted legs and tented her knees before patting the small piece of cement in front of her. I climbed into the cove left by her skirt, sliding my shoulders between the peaks of her raised knees. The protrusion from her growing stomach pressed into my back as her fingers parted my hair in the center and whizzed across my scalp. My head lolled in her deft hands as she tugged and braided. She hummed as she leaned close to my scalp, her lips buzzing by my ear. I was too old for her French braids and would unravel them tonight, but right now, I loved the feeling of her hands in my hair.

“We went to a nearby lake. He didn’t even know if I would go with him, but he had packed a picnic basket in the back seat with a blanket next to it. When we got to the lake, he asked if he could do something. He led me to the water and stepped inside. I stayed on the bank and told him that I didn’t want to swim. He said that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, but in order to do that, he would have to baptize me first.”

“He baptized you on your date?” She’d never told me that detail before.

“It sounds ridiculous now, but it was romantic then. I knew I was in love as soon as he dropped my head back into the water. He proposed to me on that blanket.” She spun her gold band on her ring finger as her voice faded. “We got married six weeks later, on my eighteenth birthday.”

Hannah inched closer to the edge of the pool, ready to come out. I yanked her from the water and placed her on the towel.

“What did he do?” Ma asked, her voice suddenly deeper. Nearby lawnmowers buzzed a soft soundtrack to Ma’s barely audible voice. I leaned closer while rubbing Hannah dry. Caleb was a few feet away, his feet crossed on the chair where he was reclined, his hand above his eyes providing shade from the sun.

I paused. Part of me wanted to protect her from what I knew. But lying—especially to Ma—was a sin. “He beat the guy up, Ma. Then he stomped him into the ground and told the deacons to take him away.” The shock in my face was reflected in her sunglasses.

“I’ve never seen him like that. It was terrifying. It was almost like it wasn’t him,” I continued.

“Mmm.” It was a knowing moan—one that conveyed no surprise.

“Have you seen him do that before?”

Ma exhaled—a stream of pressure being released from a balloon. I reached forward and pulled her sunglasses from her face. Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying before we even got to the pool.

“Your father is a man like other men. It’s important to remember that. God has chosen your father for a special calling, but he is also human.” She reached for her sunglasses and clumsily placed them back on her face. Suddenly, she stood up behind my unfinished braids; her dress unrolled like a curtain closing.

“I’m getting hungry. Let’s get lunch.”

Gas stations and supermarkets dotted both sides of the wide street that led away from the motel. Even though Ma said she was hungry, we passed the diner where we’d eaten the night before and kept driving without slowing down. Ma seemed like she knew where she was going, so I rolled down the back window and leaned outside. A truck barreled by us in the right lane; I shielded my eyes against the flecks of debris that it stirred into the air.

Ma slowed the car to a crawl at a stop sign. She looked both ways and squinted, seemingly deciding the best way to turn to get lunch. In that moment, a familiar voice came through the open window.

“Ma. Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” She angled her ear toward my open window behind her. A siren blared nearby, obscuring the voice.

“Wait a second.”

A car honked and then sped around us with a screech. Ma and Caleb rolled down their windows. The voice came back—still faint.

“I don’t hear anything.”

Ma passed through the stop sign below the speed limit, and the words got louder as we crept closer to their source.

“I hear it,” Caleb said. “It sounds like Papa.”

Ma gripped the wheel tighter as the voice was soon unmistakable. My eyes bounced from trees to brick facades to concrete slabs of sidewalk before they found a suited figure half a block away on the left side of the street. There was no way that could be Papa, even though he wore one of Papa’s suits and sounded like him. Ma pulled over and turned on the hazards. I could hear him clearly now; he was reciting verses from Revelation