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

the while, my skin prickled under Micah’s gaze, even as she was being smothered by her parents.

“You healed me,” she mouthed at me in slow motion. With each word, her eyes widened with wonder, as though she hadn’t believed them until she had just said them and made everything real.

After Ma and I left Papa at the hospital to make his weekly rounds, I sat next to Ma in the passenger seat, trying to silence Micah’s words that played on a loop. When Ma turned up the radio on her favorite hymn, Micah’s words morphed into the throaty alto’s lyrics, her refrain of you healed me playing over the plaintive chorus of this woman’s love song to God.

“You seem restless,” Ma said. She eased the car to a stop in front of the house. I followed her eyes to my fidgety right leg, and as I pressed it down with my palm, something else was rising in me. A memory from years ago came back like it was yesterday, like someone had opened the door of a long-closed vault and let the air and light in. It was an image of Papa laying hands on Hannah as an infant. It had been early in the morning, hours before I was supposed to be awake, when the door to the bedroom I shared with Hannah opened. I pretended to be asleep as Ma and Papa tiptoed over to Hannah’s crib and whispered inaudible prayers through the wooden slats.

Papa lifted a floppy Hannah in the air and cradled her—her legs swung like a rag doll’s over his forearm and her neck lolled to the side. Ma passed him a bottle of holy oil as he readjusted Hannah to support her head. He emptied the entire bottle on her forehead and lifted her, glistening, toward the moonlight. She stirred and started to cry, but her limbs never stiffened, and she didn’t lift her head. Ma and Papa stayed there, motionless, for what seemed like hours, even as Hannah fell asleep in Papa’s arms. They placed her into the crib and left the room; Ma’s head was downcast as Papa put his arm around her shoulders.

In the days after the healing attempt, Ma and Papa seemed to watch Hannah carefully, waiting for Papa’s words to take hold, even though the mere practice of waiting meant that it hadn’t worked. Nonetheless, she continued to miss milestone after milestone. And though they smiled and said that Hannah was “taking her time” learning to roll over or crawl as other babies her age were babbling and toddling around the sanctuary, their visits at night became more frequent. Even as their prayers grew more fervent, they never took her to the front of the church or to the doctor. It was only when the seizures started that they took her to a specialist. They should have been relieved that they would finally get a diagnosis; instead, each time Papa strapped her in the car seat and drove her four cities over, he looked defeated. In public, Papa started preaching about the nature of suffering and the mystery of God’s ways, while in private, he announced that no one in the family could come to the altar for a healing.

As Hannah grew, Papa inched away from her—at first emotionally and then physically. Now that she was eight, all of her tasks had been delegated to me and Ma. Papa was only around when she celebrated big achievements, clapping in the corner of the room when she took her first steps with orthotics and crutches, but then receding into the house when the celebration ended. For Papa, looking at Hannah must have been like staring failure in the face, realizing that the dark shape that he always feared had eyes and teeth, was more human than spirit.

As the unearthed memory of Hannah merged with the pregnant girl last summer and the blind man in Bethel, I looked over at Ma, who was still watching my jumpy leg. She placed her hand over mine, and I let her steady pressure subdue me.

“This should be a good day, Miriam. Your father just healed your best friend. But you look like you’re carrying the weight of the world.”

The love song to God on the radio ended, and Ma turned up the volume on an updated version of “Amazing Grace.” She sang with lightness that I envied all while tapping a slow beat on my knee.

“I’m okay,” I said as the song ended. “And it is a good day.”

The next night, Papa arrived home from the hospital with buoyancy in his steps. Ma rushed to greet him and took his briefcase before he could close the door.

“Hortons! Come downstairs for some good news.”

There was thunder on the steps as Caleb came down. Hannah trundled in from the living room, and I stayed inches away from the front door.

“Micah has been released from the hospital with no sign of diabetes on any of her tests. The doctors couldn’t believe it, but the Lord has used me to fully heal her! It’s a miracle.” His words were definitive: a proclamation.

I stared at him as he spoke, waiting to see a twitch in his right eyelid or a quiver in his lip—any tell that would betray his words. But his face was stony. He had been the last one to place his hands on her, long after she had opened her eyes in my lap. He must have known that the feeling that passed through his hands as he touched her was different from the other times he’d actually healed someone. He wouldn’t have felt the same electric sensation that I did when I’d touched her only minutes before.

“I knew there was going to be a miracle on Sunday,” he was saying to Ma. “I just had no idea that it would be Micah.”

“Oh, honey,” Ma said as she tossed her arms around his neck and buried her face in his collar. “I’m so proud