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

my knees together. The glass of grape juice sloshed, and I held it aloft to keep it safe. When I finally looked at him, he was staring down at me with his cheeks stretched into an almost-smile. My neck snapped back into place.

As Jason shuffled to the pew behind me with now empty hands, I remembered when Micah and I had gone to the playground last year and seen a pair of unsaved kids with their limbs intertwined beneath the trees. I’d wondered what it would feel like when my husband touched me like that one day, but I’d never thought about it during church. If Papa knew what I was feeling, he would call me a harlot before making me recite Bible verses about the evils of lust.

“The body and blood of Christ,” Papa said over the microphone. In the pulpit, Papa’s laser vision was directed at me, his eyes singeing my skin. I’d always wanted him to notice me from the stage, but not like this. His eyes bounced back to Jason and then to me. “Confess your sins to the Lord and you shall be forgiven. Do not eat and drink damnation unto yourself.” He was supposed to scan the congregation, but his neck stayed fixed in one direction, his eyes igniting my flesh. Had he really seen the lust in my eyes from that far away?

Forgive me of my lust, I confessed in my heart after an eternal low buzz on the microphone. The feeling that had just blanketed my body was snatched away, leaving behind a chill as Jason exited the sanctuary. Papa had drilled into us that lust was a gateway for other sin, that sin in the mind corroded everything it touched. But as we waited for Papa to announce the healing part of service, I desperately wanted the feeling back.

“I know that many of you are waiting for healing, but this summer the Lord has told me to change the way I do things here. I will not heal on Sundays anymore. We will have separate healing services starting in a few weeks. All rise for the benediction.”

A stunned silence settled over the congregation, many of whom had probably been waiting for months to be healed. Even Micah couldn’t hide her wide-eyed disbelief as she stood in slow motion. It would’ve surprised me before Bethel, but nothing where Papa was concerned shocked me anymore. As I recited the benediction, Micah looked over at me, her eyes begging for an explanation. But all I could do was feign surprise as the congregation dispersed.

Quietly, we started the routine of first Sundays, of collecting the communion dishes and washing them, of folding the tablecloth and storing it for next month. I followed Micah outside and into the annex, where the deacons had left behind a messy pile of communion trays and half-filled glasses of grape juice. Hannah clacked behind us with her crumpled picture in tow. When we got inside, I settled her in a chair with a new, clean piece of paper.

The whir of the ceiling fan made background noise for our work—Micah sealed the remaining crackers in plastic bags while I dunked each communion tray in soapy water.

“Why didn’t he heal today?” Micah asked the question rhetorically, and I wished I could tell her the truth. “Did something happen?”

I froze and watched the sponge in my hands making sudsy circles on the gilded plates. “What do you mean?”

The ceiling fan’s swift oscillations answered me. I turned my head to look at Micah at the very moment when she pitched forward on the sink. Before I could catch her, she fell in a heap on the ground, her arms raised above her head in some odd position of submission. The faint red glow of the exit sign illuminated a damp line of sweat that had collected on her top lip like a mustache.

“Micah!” The plastic bag in her hands had fallen to the floor, scattering cracker crumbs on the ground. I crouched by her side, noticing the pale sheen on her normally deep-brown skin as I slipped two fingers below her chin—the same spot where I checked Hannah’s pulse after seizures racked her body and left her lifeless on the ground. A steady heartbeat thrummed under the pads of my fingers as her chest rose and fell beneath her dress. On her left wrist, the thick links of a silver bracelet were attached to a rectangular panel with stencils: TYPE 1 DIABETES. During homeschool, we made short trips from my basement to the bathroom; I watched as she pricked her fingers, swiping blooms of blood that swelled from her fingertips onto test strips and inserting them in the machine that she kept with her at all times, but I had never seen her faint.

“Help!” My voice reverberated back to me from the closed door and the stained-glass windows. Behind me, Hannah’s folding chair had tipped over, and she was crawling toward us. Over Hannah’s earsplitting wails, I placed my cheek next to Micah’s open mouth and felt the puff of her shallow respirations. Her face was clammy as I slapped it to get her to wake up, but it only made her head flop one way and then the other. I jumped up and ran to the door, forcing it open.

“Help! In the annex.” The second scream drained my lungs. Then the doors to the multipurpose room pushed open and Mrs. Nesbitt, the Sunday school director, looked around.

“What happened?” she called.

“It’s Micah. She passed out. Call an ambulance.”

Mrs. Nesbitt nodded before disappearing through the closing door. I rushed back to Micah’s side. Hannah had made her way over too and was tugging on Micah’s ankle.

“You’re going to be okay.” Singing the sentences to Micah the way Hannah liked, I lifted Micah’s limp body onto my lap to rock her. The room was still and mostly silent as Hannah’s wailing had now become barely audible moaning. My hands needed something to do to displace the