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

how Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego escaped King Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace, there was nothing. No sobs, just a dry-heaving noise. Ma was lifeless on the bed, and now Papa was prone beside her, his arms stretched over her.

Every inch of the house ached with Ma’s absence. A presence was easy to feel, but an absence was much more acute: the empty chair at the kitchen table, silence greeting you instead of the voice that you were so used to hearing. The house also felt more dangerous with her gone: there were fewer places to hide. I stood up straighter when I heard Papa behind me in the kitchen. When he yelled Ma’s name through the house, I shivered because I was the one to answer him. His hands wouldn’t stay quiet long—especially since I overheard him telling the deacons that offerings weren’t enough to pay the church’s mortgage anymore. Caleb and Hannah would be safe, but someone had to replace Ma in the house.

Even though Hannah couldn’t say it aloud, I knew she felt the absence the way Caleb and I did. She crawled up the steps in the direction of Ma’s room, only to be snatched up by older arms before she could reach the door. Sometimes she let herself be comforted, but more often than not, she would wail inconsolably.

“Ma will be back soon,” I told her in a steady voice. And as I repeated it, I started to believe it myself.

Isaac was fussy as January marched on. He enjoyed playing with a dingy zebra that had been Hannah’s favorite toy at his age. At night, when I brought Ma plates of food that she barely ate, I told her about each milestone and rested Isaac against her chest, but she didn’t move to hold him.

A few days later, right after Isaac smiled at me for the first time, there was a knock on my bedroom door.

“Please get her dressed,” Papa barked.

I knew better than to ask questions. He was gone when I walked down the hallway to Ma’s bedroom door. The wadded sheets didn’t look like anyone was there, but then the slightest movement came from the middle of the bed. I stepped over the nursing pads and clean diapers on the floor and made my way to her. I slid my body behind Ma’s, wrapping myself around her solidness and folding my arms around the loose flesh where her pregnant belly used to be. She didn’t even move—didn’t nestle into me—the only sign of life was her chest rising and falling at regular intervals. I pressed my nose into her hair, which smelled dank and had no hints of the coconut oil that she loved. I sank into the warmth of the sheets, trying to get as close to her as possible.

“Hi, Ma,” I said, snuggling closer. With my index finger, I separated some of the matted tendrils and smoothed them into something that resembled a style. Ma’s heavy head didn’t move from the pillow. I lifted myself on an elbow and looked at her face, expecting to find her eyes closed. But when I glanced over the curve of her jaw and found the arc of her chin, tracing it up to the contour of her cheekbone, her eyes were wide open. I shook her shoulder, but she didn’t blink.

“Ma!” I shouted into her ear. Still no response. I yanked back the covers. She was wearing an old gray nightgown that used to be white. Large oblong stains darkened the part of her nightgown that covered her breasts. The familiar sour-sweet scent of milk that used to come from her body was long gone; since she hadn’t nursed Isaac in a month, her milk had dried up weeks ago.

I crept out of the bed and into the bathroom. The washcloth that rested over the basin was stiff with soap, but it wasn’t from touching Ma’s skin. I wrung it out in a stream of warm water and brought it back to the bed.

“I’m going to wash you off now, okay?” I asked in the same voice I usually used with Hannah. My hands trembled—I’d only really seen Ma’s body when she gave birth. Her flaccid breasts flopped to each side of her body as I lifted her left arm carefully over her head and rested it against the pillow like a bird’s wing. I half expected her to swat the washcloth out of my hands and tell me that she could wash herself, but she just lay there in her sour-smelling nightgown.

I peeled up Ma’s nightgown, inch by inch, slowing down when I got to her stomach. My eye caught some faded blue stains that seeped into her skin—old bruises. A knot of rage rose in the back of my throat when I palpated the evidence of the hollow thumps that Caleb and I’d heard last month. I swallowed it and moved the washcloth, my strokes gentle on the loose skin of her stomach—the rivulets of water sliding over her body and onto the fitted sheet like tears.

The washcloth moved to white rings—like the ones that dated trees—that lined her middle. Caleb’s lines were the faintest; the slightest press of my fingertips moved inward to mine, then Hannah’s and Isaiah’s. The new ones from Isaac were stark white against her darker skin, and my finger lingered there a little while longer before rolling the nightgown up to her breasts. My eyes stayed on the sheets around her as the washcloth traveled over her swollen nipples. Pulling the filthy nightgown over her head, I cast it into the growing pile of dirty laundry in the corner of the room. I slid her underwear from beneath her body, exposing a triangular thatch of hair where her legs were pressed together. A clean pair of underwear was folded in her drawer—one of the last vestiges of her careful housekeeping—and I shimmied it up her legs. In her closet, a long gray dress that used to be snug