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

anger toward a God who was letting this happen to us, but I said amen anyway. No one brought up the previous night.

For the rest of the day, we found ways to busy ourselves on the first level of the house—I made paper dolls and did puzzles with Hannah while Ma folded endless stacks of laundry. As each minute passed, it got harder not to pick up the phone and call Micah, but it was too risky. Plus, Papa was on the phone all day with deacons and members. We went to bed late, and I must not have been the only one who lay awake under the covers dreading Sunday’s arrival.

At church, I waited for Micah in our usual place in the foyer even after service officially started. But soon I couldn’t wait any longer, couldn’t watch Mrs. Cade and the rest of the ushers holding piles of bulletins that they normally distributed to parishioners who hadn’t come. I pushed the foyer doors open into a half-full sanctuary. Ma was by herself in the front row—I started to walk toward her, but instead opted for my normal position with Micah in the back of the sanctuary. It would be an easy place for her to find me when she arrived. But Micah never came, and maybe it was good that she and her family didn’t get to see Papa, broken, as he tried to string together an incoherent ten-minute sermon from notes that had spilled on the floor. Then he claimed that he wasn’t feeling like himself and left in the middle of his sermon.

From Sunday until Wednesday, I went over the motions for Dawn’s healing until they became muscle memory. I had studied Papa during so many healing services that I knew how high he lifted his hands when he prayed—about six inches from the forehead—or how he traced signs of the cross from top to bottom, left to right. There were so many slight gestures to remember, and missing one of them could invalidate the entire healing. I imagined how I’d catch Dawn before she hit the ground, how the holy oil would feel warm and viscous on my fingers before I applied it to her forehead.

Thoughts of healing Dawn helped distract from Micah’s absence in the basement, from her stack of books that still sat on the table, her work that was posted around the room. Someone had left a cardboard box on the chair where Micah was supposed to be, and in between teaching kids on the primary side how to blend syllables, Ma ripped papers from the walls and placed them inside the box. She didn’t even make eye contact as she made the memories of Micah disappear the same way Papa had done with the photos of Ma’s sisters.

“I’ll do it,” I said on Ma’s third trip over. I couldn’t continue to watch her drop Micah’s things into the box with such indifference. I grabbed Micah’s binder from Ma and placed it on my lap instead.

“Your father wants me to drop it off at the Johnsons’ tonight.”

“You don’t have to. I’ll take it to her on Wednesday.” I hadn’t thought about it before, but it would be the perfect excuse to leave the house and get to Dawn when Papa was out for his weekly hospital visits.

“Fine,” Ma relented. “Take a break from the lesson and do it now. Please.”

I sifted through the pages of Micah’s notebooks, letting my finger trace the loops of her j’s and y’s before dropping them into the box. When the box was finally full, I pushed it deep into the shadows under the desk. For the rest of the afternoon, I nudged it with my feet to make it seem like she was still there as I plodded through my lessons alone.

On Wednesday morning, Hannah stirred on the other side of the bedroom—it had been a good few nights for her, with no seizures or nightmares. A positive sign. And even though Christians weren’t supposed to look for signs, something had to get me through the day. I willed my knees to bend for morning prayer—it had been harder to pray ever since the healing service, but I went through the motions each morning in the hopes that my belief would catch up to my words.

“Dear Lord,” I started. I waited for the words to come as they always did, even though today’s task was different than any other day’s. I didn’t know what to ask. For the strength to heal Dawn? For God’s will to be done? For forgiveness in advance of the sin I was about to commit?

“Lord,” I began again. “I pray that You anoint my hands today and use them to do Your will. And forgive me for my sins.” I waited for the feeling that God had noticed me—to be underneath the warmth of His gaze—but my room still had a morning chill coming from the open window.

“Amen.”

The clock started when I left the house at noon—the box was clumsy on the handlebars of my bike, making it hard to steer to church. Soon, the steeple inched closer above the trees and I arrived in the parking lot, threading my bike between the few cars there. The door to a red hatchback opened and a foot stepped onto the pavement. I shot around to see Dawn’s legs, then her torso and face.

“Hey.” She sounded scared, a far cry from the bolder version of Dawn who had asked me to heal her.

“Hey.” I didn’t know what else to say, but her wide, terrified eyes matched how I felt. For a moment, I was grateful that a box separated us. “You ready?”

She nodded.

I was still out of breath when we got to the side of the church where the lock on the outside door leading to Papa’s office was broken. He had been telling Ma that he was going to get it fixed, but he hadn’t yet. Inside, our footsteps echoed on