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

the upcoming revival season. And finally, without much ceremony, the day had arrived. While Ma and Papa finished packing, Caleb, Hannah, and I spent the last few minutes in the front yard. Caleb fake chased Hannah on the grass, exaggerating the slow-motion speed of his arms and legs. Hannah squealed and sidled away from him, looking back over her shoulder to see if he was still on her trail. When he finally grabbed her waist, she looked happy to be caught. Click. I froze the moment in time when Caleb’s hands were on Hannah’s waist, her head leaning into his chest. Click. I froze Hannah in Caleb’s sure arms, clapping in delight.

Mrs. Cade’s car pulled up and stopped at the end of the driveway, leaving some space behind where Papa was loading boxes into the trunk. She always came to say goodbye to us before we left for revival season. As soon as I saw her, I rushed to her car, almost dropping the box in my arms.

“Mrs. Cade!” I fell into her embrace. My nose pressed into the crepe skin of her chest as her hug squeezed me too tightly to speak.

“I wish everyone greeted me like that,” she said into my scalp. She walked over and tousled Caleb’s hair before kneeling down to hug Hannah. When she walked back into the driveway, her eyes searched my face. She scowled as though she had seen something in the way my cheeks puffed with air or my eyebrows were raised.

“Take a walk with me.” She grabbed my wrist, leading me into the humid late-spring air that had already pulled my hair out of the careful curls that Ma had made that morning. We walked past where Papa was standing in the driveway.

“Can I borrow her for a moment, Pastor? I promise I’ll bring her right back.”

Papa waved his hand in assent. I slowed my steps at the corner to match Mrs. Cade’s lumbering gait, her shoes’ thick soles clomping on the sidewalk squares. She threaded her arm in mine.

“Something’s weighing on you. I can see it.”

My head dropped to see my feet straddling a sidewalk crack.

“You can tell me anything.”

We stopped four houses away; over my shoulder, Papa was hefting one box and then another into the trunk. At the edge of the street, electricity poles towered above us and swooping power lines crackled in the silence; I was one of those wires, with so much surging inside that I didn’t know how to keep it all contained.

“I’m going to heal Hannah,” I whispered.

She closed her eyes and nodded as though I was telling her something that she already knew. A sound ricocheted from down the street, and our necks snapped in unison to see Papa wrestling with a box that had fallen on the driveway.

“Does he know?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“He wouldn’t believe me even if I did.”

She inhaled and closed her eyes again, tilting her head as though summoning wisdom from the breeze. “I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but this is bigger than you.”

“I thought you believed in me. You were the first one. The only one for a while. You saw what I did for Hope.” I took a step back as though the widening expanse of concrete between us would take away the sting of her words.

“Just because you may be able to heal Hannah doesn’t mean that you should.”

“May be able to heal? I can heal her like I healed Ma. Besides, I thought you were on my side.” My voice was rising.

“I am on your side, Miriam. But this isn’t a game. You’re treading in serious water.” Her voice dropped as her tone turned grave. With a shuffle of her feet, she collapsed the distance between us. I tried to get away, but she grabbed my elbow and pulled me into her. I kept my arm slack by my side.

“Just think and pray more about whether what you’re doing is in God’s plan.” Her lips buzzed right beside my ear. “If it is, then do it. That’s all I’m saying. I know you’ll do the right thing.”

She squeezed me once more and then started to walk back to her car. Papa eyed her as she approached the driveway, but his forehead was flat, placid—he hadn’t heard anything. He kept his eyes on her as she pulled down the driveway, waving out of her window as she drove away.

I walked back inside and surveyed the partially empty living room. I had been waiting for this moment for weeks, but as it got closer, Mrs. Cade’s words filled the room’s emptiness. She was right—God still hadn’t spoken to me, hadn’t confirmed that this healing was in His plan. The excited jitters I’d felt the first few days after Easter seemed more like nausea every time I thought about what I was going to do.

I walked over to the dwindling stack of boxes by the door, bent down to pick one up, and brought it out to the driveway. Papa stood a few feet away from the trunk, surveying his handiwork. I stepped closer to him, one unsteady foot in front of the other.

“Papa,” I began. He turned to look at me with one arm resting on the open trunk; barely veiled disdain scored his forehead and his bottom lip hung open as though he’d eaten something putrid. Through his glasses, I saw the outline of my face, my slumped shoulders, the quaking box between us. From his side of the lenses, what did he see? He had already told me I wasn’t a healer, but there had to be more than that—more than annoyance and shame when he saw me. He must have also remembered all the other times—the times when he carried me to bed, his biceps sturdy beneath me, my head against his clavicle. Or when he led me by the hand into his study and lifted me into his tufted leather chair as my feet dangled. He