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

whole. In Your holy name, I pray. Amen.” He looked down at me when he finished, his expectant eyes blinking hard as they waited for an amen.

“I’m going to bed, Papa. I’m tired.”

“Miriam.” I knew he wanted me to say amen, but I couldn’t utter those words for a prayer that I didn’t believe in. Anger that I couldn’t hold back much longer swelled inside me. I stood up to walk away, letting his words pelt my back until I stepped safely inside and closed the screen door on his entreaties. Away from his gaze, I wiped at a tear that had fallen down my cheek.

On Thursday afternoon, the day before the first healing service, the facade that I had attempted to keep up for the past couple of weeks was falling away. I tried to focus on the Bible verse inches away from my face, but the words kept shifting on the page. Even Ma seemed off: during homeschool, she got distracted in the middle of her primary lesson about Noah’s ark, forgetting part of the story that she knew by heart.

Micah looked over at me as Ma messed up the Noah’s ark story for the third time, and a chuckle forced its way out of my mouth. Micah laughed too, before biting her lips like she was embarrassed of her reaction, like she was as uncomfortable around me as I’d been around her lately. Even though the basement walls around us had evidence of our former friendship—yellowed crayon drawings with our stick-figure bodies tossing too-long limbs around each other’s necks—things hadn’t felt normal since the dinner at Micah’s house. Our timing was off—we interrupted each other now, often cutting off the end of each other’s sentences and apologizing in unison. But she hadn’t shared my secret, and I was grateful for that.

Ma talked about the elephants coming onto the ark two by two. Next to me, Micah swayed a bit in her seat.

“Mrs. Horton, can I be excused?” she asked. By the time Ma looked over, Micah was already standing, her face the pale grayish-brown of a fish belly as she slung her backpack over her shoulder and walked upstairs. There was a steady, slow cadence to her steps before she stopped—it sounded like she’d paused halfway up the flight. A minute or so later, she started walking again. We used to have a signal when her blood sugar was low—a nod of her head and I’d be by her side, getting snacks or a glass of juice—but she hadn’t looked at me as she asked to be excused.

Micah’s footsteps overhead took her to the bathroom. And then minutes stretched where there was no sound at all. Normally she would check her blood sugar in the basement. I bolted from my chair and ran upstairs to grab a candy bar from the pantry before pushing the bathroom door open without knocking. Micah was crouched on the closed toilet lid, her knees spread apart, the glucose meter balanced on one thigh. She looked over her shoulder at me as the meter spit out the number fifty. We both knew this was a dangerously low level, and I slipped the wrapper from the candy bar, broke off a tiny brown square, and presented it to her. Her shaky hands gripped her knees as I took another step closer.

“Take it,” I implored. Her hands stayed in her lap as the shaking intensified.

Tears welled behind her eyes. It was hard to tell if she was incapacitated by low blood sugar or the fact that the healing hadn’t worked. A shock of disappointment passed through me at this realization too, but I quickly pushed it away. Micah needed me now. Her whole body quaked as I knelt in front of her and squeezed the hinge of her jaw, forcing her mouth open. She shook her head vigorously as I pressed the chocolate through the tiny gap between her rows of teeth.

She blinked slowly. Once and then twice. Her eyes took in the room, the towels on the rack, and me standing next to her. Removing my hand from her mouth, I stepped away from her and pressed my back against the wall, sliding to the floor. My raised knees were the only thing separating us as she inhabited her skin again. She looked at the open pouch of testing paraphernalia on her legs like she’d forgotten what had just happened.

“I was healed for a bit, wasn’t I?” Her thin voice brimmed with desperation.

Part of it had been real, hadn’t it? There could be no denying that I had felt something that day in the annex and so had she. And for the past five weeks, she had been healed. But now, the thing that she feared so much, that I didn’t realize I was afraid of until now, had happened. Had Micah even been healed at all? Would it have been a healing if Jesus put mud on the blind man’s eyes only for his blindness to return? Or if the leper’s newly smooth skin erupted back into scabs and scarred flesh? Did Papa also harbor these fears—that behind every healing was the possibility of a tumor metastasizing, abnormal cells splitting during a pregnancy, a relapse?

My impotent hands hugged my knees as I waited for a feeling of relief to settle in. I had never meant to heal Micah, was never supposed to have the ability to heal her, so this should have been good news. It meant that everything could go back to normal. But even as I’d told myself that it hadn’t worked, that women like me weren’t allowed to heal, I’d wanted to be wrong.

“Wasn’t I healed?” she asked again. My eyes traced her pigeon toes before moving up over her bent knees and to her chin that was resting against her folded arms.

“I think so.”

“It felt so good to not have to prick my finger.” Her voice floated away as she spoke. “I guess I always knew it