Revival Season

by Monica West

  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 of you.”

  By the time he stepped out of her embrace, his shoulders were square, not slumped, and he walked down the hallway with a newfound confidence.

  “We’re going to the Johnsons’ for dinner tomorrow night. A thank-you of sorts. They’ve been praying for Micah’s healing for years, and they want to celebrate with me. With us.” He caught himself, but Ma didn’t seem like she heard the mistake. I stood at the edge of the kitchen as he rummaged in the refrigerator and drank directly from the carton of orange juice.

  “That sounds wonderful, honey.” Ma planted another kiss on his cheek before she playfully elbowed him in the shoulder for brazenly engaging in a habit that she hated.

  * * *

  We stood on the Johnsons’ porch the next evening—I jammed the illuminated doorbell in rapid succession while Ma held a glass container of cornbread aloft next to me.

  “Coming,” Mrs. Johnson called over the familiar chime. I heard her slow, lumbering footsteps and tapped my fingers against the doorjamb to get her to move a little faster. The questions I needed to ask Micah had been buzzing around my head since I saw her on Monday.

  “What’s the hurry, Miriam?” Papa asked behind me. I couldn’t turn around to look at him; I’d barely been able to look at him since he came home the day before and declared Micah healed.

  “Come in, come in!” Mrs. Johnson appeared in the doorway. “I’m so glad you could make it.” She took the dish from Ma, and we followed her inside. Before I could even greet her, I bounded up the thirteen stairs that led to Micah’s closed door.

  “Micah,” I whispered into the raised letters of the mini license plate that bore her name—a souvenir that I brought her from a revival in Oklahoma two summers ago. Hearing nothing, I balled my hand to knock, but that gesture was foreign. Instead, I opened the door slowly into the pink of Micah’s room—the pillows and comforters on her bed, her desk in the corner with the sparkly lamp on it. She knelt beside her comforter, head in hands, a prayer leaking from her lips.

  It felt like I was eavesdropping on something I shouldn’t have been part of, but I knew better than to interrupt when someone was talking to God.

  “Thank You for my healing. Thank You for the hands that healed me. Let me be obedient enough to be worthy of Your favor. Amen.”

  She stood up from the edge of the bed and looked startled, stepping back as though she hadn’t heard me call her name or come inside. “Miriam.”

  Suddenly I didn’t know where to start.

  Micah clearly wasn’t feeling tongue-tied though. “Now can you tell me what you said in the annex?” She whispered annex, as though that word made her aware that only a thin floor separated us from our parents. She stood in front of me, shifting in her pantyhose the way she always did when she was uncomfortable.

  I closed my eyes and felt the heat of the annex again, heard the noise from the fans. “They just slipped out.”

  “What slipped out?” Her voice wavered as she looked down at the sheer fabric that bound her toes.

  I was only confirming what she’d already heard, but my heart raced as though I was confessing something new. I took a deep breath. “The words Papa uses when he heals people. That’s what I said.”

  “That’s what I thought. Do you know what’ll happen if your dad finds out?”

  With one step, I closed the gap between us. “He can’t find out because it’s a sin, and you know it as well as I do.”

  “But I’m healed. And you did it.” Her voice, light and victorious, didn’t match the frantic pace of my words.

  “But you know as well as I do that women don’t have that gift.”

  “Then how do you explain that I didn’t feel anything when your dad healed me, but I felt it when you did?”

  Until now, I’d been pretending that she was mistaken. I hadn’t let myself imagine what it could mean if what she’d said in the hospital was, in fact, true.

  “Micah, Miriam, dinner!” Mrs. Johnson’s voice from downstairs shook the silence in Micah’s room.

  “I don’t know. Just promise that you won’t say anything to anyone.”

  Micah and I stood across the room from each other, still as statues. She stared at me for what felt like an eternity.

  “Please, Micah,” I begged.

  Micah moved away from me and stepped toward the door, and I was frozen as I watched her leave. When I could finally make my legs move, I followed her downstairs and sat in the empty seat between her and Caleb.

  After Papa prayed for the meal, Micah’s body was rigid next to mine as she took small nibbles of her mom’
s chicken and dumplings. On the other side of me, Caleb took loud, indelicate bites, even slurping the broth, before complimenting Mrs. Johnson on the meal. I looked at my spoon in my bowl, unable to say a word to anyone.

  “So I know I’m not supposed to ask this,” Papa began, his mouth full of Ma’s cornbread, “but I figure I can break protocol because I’ve known you since you were a baby. What did it feel like?” Papa’s voice was loud and brash over the dinner table. His question was improper, self-serving. Aggrandizing was the word Papa used when he called out other men for it.

  Micah quickly shot a glance in my direction before turning back to Papa. She seemed to think for a second, and I looked down as she spoke, wincing before the first word came out. “You placed your hand on me in the back of the ambulance, and a tingle passed through my feet,” she began. “Then the rest of my body got warm. When you prayed, said healing words, it was weird. Like I felt the disease leaving me all of a sudden.” She shoved a spoon in her mouth at the end of the sentence. I didn’t realize that I’d been gripping mine so hard until I let it go. I took one bite and then another as I relaxed into the chair, listening as Papa feigned interest in Micah’s story. As he nodded and gave the occasional mmm-hmm, I knew what he was thinking: It feels good to be back.

  “Praise the Lord,” Ma said. She’d been saying it nonstop for three days—ever since we were clustered at the foot of Micah’s hospital bed—and it was losing power with each iteration. Especially since she was saying it about Papa.

  “What a testimony,” Papa finally said. “The Lord is good.” I wondered if the rest of the table noticed the way he said Lord like it was a stand-in for his own name. My attention flickered during parts of the conversation—I felt the healing in my hands the second I left the ambulance. I knew that God would give me the ability to heal Micah, so I’m grateful that my prayers have been answered. My chest started to swell, pressing against my shirt when I wanted to take a small amount of credit for what had happened. But I knew that I couldn’t, and each word from Papa’s mouth made my neck bow over the plate of cheesecake that Mrs. Johnson had brought out for dessert. There was no gratitude to God in my stooped posture—just defeat as Papa spun a story that he and I both knew couldn’t have been true.

  * * *

  In the days right after Micah’s healing, Papa’s voice boomed in ways that it hadn’t since we left Bethel. The more he proclaimed it over the mic on Sunday mornings and paraded Micah onstage next to him, the more he seemed to believe in his renewed power. And even though homeschool was Ma’s domain as our teacher—the one place in our house that Papa steered clear of—he ventured into the basement where we were gathered, interrupting Ma in the middle of a lesson. He ordered all six of us—me, Hannah, Micah, Caleb, and two other elementary kids in the congregation—to gather around him and praise God for Micah’s healing, completely ignoring Micah, who stood beside him.

  Weeks later, buoyed by the healing that he had so desperately needed—a healing whose extra emphasis seemed strange given the fact that he had healed so many people before—the congregation anxiously waited for the announcement about when the stand-alone healing services would start. For someone who felt so much power after healing Micah, it was odd that he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to start them again anytime soon.

  And then finally, on the first Sunday in October, a month after Micah’s healing, Papa announced that the first post–revival season healing service would happen on the following Friday. He seemed nervous in the days after the announcement, never sitting at the dinner table long and changing the subject whenever we brought up the healing service.

  One night, I caught him standing in the backyard after dinner, arms raised in a V above his head, the doubtful slouch from Bethel still in his shoulders as he prayed. I flicked the latch of the patio door and slid it open before crossing the wooden deck planks and descending the steps into the backyard. I stepped closer to the guttural remnants of a prayer.

  “I know that You have not forsaken me, Lord. The power is still there. Continue restoring me in time for the healing service. Use me to do Your will. Amen.”

  Papa must have heard my sharp inhale because he immediately stopped speaking and turned around; his teeth and half his face glowed in the blue moonlight.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked.

  “I just wanted to see what you were praying about.”

  “Prayers are private. You know that.”

  “Are you nervous about the healing service?”

  “Why would I be nervous?”

  “I don’t know. I’d be nervous after this past summer.”

  Papa lowered his arms. I waited for him to take a step toward me the way he did outside the hotel room in Bethel, but he just glared at me.

  “What do you mean you’d be nervous?” I was close to the edge of his patience—the clipped end to the question assured it—and I couldn’t make myself look in his eyes anymore. I wanted to push, to get him to admit that he knew he hadn’t healed Micah. But in the prolonged silence that formed, it became clear that he’d never confess.

  “I just think that healing would be hard. I wouldn’t be able to do it.” The last words got caught in my throat—even putting healing in the same phrase with my name seemed like too much of an admission. But Papa, none the wiser, seemed relieved by what I’d just said.

  “Yes, it is,” he exhaled. “But all I can do is shepherd the power that God has given me. And if Micah is any indication, many will be miraculously healed this year.” He looked up to the sky as he spoke, his hand rubbing the mini–mountain range of razor bumps on the underside of his chin.

  “Pray with me for these upcoming healing services.” He extended his arm across the chasm of grass. I had prayed with him hundreds of times, had listened to him pray even more than that, but now as his hand beckoned me over—his thick fingers curling, his wedding band glinting in the darkness—I was reminded that I’d have to swallow what I’d done so he could believe in himself.

  I walked over and stood next to him, my chest heaving with each breath. His hulking body was inches away from mine, and I could feel his presence even with my eyes closed and head bowed.

  “Kneel,” he commanded. As I knelt, each blade of grass knifed into the tender skin of my knees, and my body listed forward as he spoke.

  “Heavenly Father, thank You for the gift of healing. I pray that You will bring many souls to the church for healing services so that I may reveal the power that You have given me. Use me to make bodies 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 w
as 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.