by Monica West
Muffled words came through the door as I passed. I leaned closer to hear them. “I don’t care what you need to do, but remove him from all positions at the church immediately.”
I’d hoped that he was all bluster last night, that he would have a cooler head when he returned, but he was doubling down.
“Figure it out,” he chimed in again. I assumed he was speaking to Deacon Farrow—the head of the deacon board. Papa would need his support to remove Deacon Johnson from church leadership.
“I don’t want to see him at the church again. End of conversation.”
The phone slammed down on the cradle, and I heard Papa stand up. Before he could reach the study door, I slipped back into the bedroom.
“What’s going on?” Caleb rubbed his eyes and rolled over, blinking me into focus.
“He just fired Deacon Johnson.” As I said it out loud to Caleb, it hit me that firing Deacon Johnson meant that Micah would be gone too. I collapsed onto the edge of my bed and placed my chin in my hands.
“He can’t do that.”
“He can do whatever he wants. I just heard him.”
“Did she tell you?” Caleb rolled over on his back and slid his hands beneath his head.
“Did she tell me what?”
“That she was sick again.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“He felt blindsided by it. Deacon Johnson is his best friend. Was.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“There are no sides, Miriam.” Caleb rolled over onto his forearms and released an exasperated sigh. “You always see a problem when there isn’t one.”
“There’s no problem? Did you hear what happened downstairs last night? How he hit Ma?”
“Wait, what?” He shot up to a seated position. Hannah stretched in bed. We both froze, silent for a few moments until she rolled over and resettled into sleep.
“He hit her, just like he hit that man in Bethel,” I lowered my voice.
“How do you know? Did you see it?”
My stomach fell at his accusation. I hadn’t seen what happened with Ma, but how could I tell him that there were other ways of knowing beyond seeing? “Why are you so blind?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Why do you think that you know him so much better than I do?”
Caleb massaged his temples. “He’s going through a lot right now. You need to be more understanding.”
“But what about what he’s doing to us? To me?” My voice broke at the end, at the thought of never seeing Micah again.
Caleb reclined on the floor. “Give him time, Miriam. You know that these things blow over. In the meantime, we have to give it to God.”
I looked at Caleb, at his eyes, which were farther apart than mine, at the spray of moles over his nose whose pattern I knew by heart, and at the faintest shadow of stubble that clung to his chin and cheeks. As he spoke, his face didn’t indicate even the smallest bit of shock about what I’d just said. He’d already chosen not to believe me about the man in Bethel, but I figured things would be different when he knew that Ma was the recipient of Papa’s violence.
Papa had been drawing lines between us ever since Bethel—but also long before that, as soon as he’d decided that Caleb was old enough to become his apprentice. Recent dinners involved whispered secretive conversations between Papa and Caleb that were too important for me, Ma, or Hannah to hear. I remembered a time when Caleb and I were the keepers of our own secret language; these days I couldn’t even rely on him to stand up to Papa. I stood back up and walked to the door.
“Miriam, don’t do anything stupid. You’re overreacting,” he said.
I opened the bedroom door and stepped into the empty hallway.
“Or you’re not reacting enough,” I said, closing the door behind me.
* * *
Ma tried to pretend that everything was normal, despite the fact that we ate our meals that day off paper plates while Papa worked nonstop in the study upstairs. As we bowed our heads to pray, Ma’s words about gratitude didn’t mesh with my 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 da
y’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 the sparkling linoleum that looked as though it had just been waxed. In its emptiness, the church’s familiar interior felt disorienting. Dawn and I walked past the empty pastoral offices and toward the double doors of the sanctuary. I took a deep breath and pushed the doors open. Rows of orderly pews cast long shadows into the aisle while the lonely organ sat on the edge of the stage. Jesus looked down from behind the altar with mournful eyes that followed us as we found a spot on the carpet in front of the pulpit. I placed Micah’s box down and reached around in my backpack for the bottle of holy oil that I had plucked from Papa’s stash.
“Stand here.” I touched Dawn’s shoulders and adjusted her position. Not directly in the path of the cross but a little to the left of it, exactly where Papa conducted his healings. When she was in place, I took a step back and felt breath enter my lungs as the weight of what I was about to do fell on me.
“Dawn Herron, do you believe that I have the power to heal you?” A noise rattled the windows: the whoosh of tires, followed by the rumble of a shaking load. A semi, not Papa’s car pulling into the parking lot. He’s not here; he’s not here. I repeated it as my hands bobbled the bottle of holy oil.
“Dawn,” I began again. I was standing upright, but it felt like I was collapsing, like I would fall if the slightest thing touched me—a feather, a hand, a gust of wind. I dug my toes in the carpet, hoping to root myself to the ground. Dawn looked up at me with eyes that were simultaneously desperate and pleading, and my gaze danced from the cleft in her chin to the smooth dome of her forehead. I kept my focus on her face even when I wanted to stare at the scar on her chest.
“What ails you, Dawn?” I had to ask the question even though I already knew the answer. It was part of the healing, and I couldn’t deviate from the plan now.
“I have a bad heart.”
I gripped her shoulders; either she was trembling, or I was. She crossed her arms over her chest before I even told her to. She had done this for Papa so many times that she knew the drill by heart.
“Do you believe that I have the power to heal you?”
Papa’s voice had a shape that filled up the space around it as it rose to the rafters and pressed on the eaves; my voice was a whisper in comparison. My watch glinted to the right of my face—ten minutes had passed. Dawn’s eyes were now wide open as they fixated on the ornate chandeliers. And even though some air that came from the nearby vent made the chandelier’s glass orbs dance, Dawn’s pupils weren’t moving.
I closed my eyes and willed the movements to come back to me, but now that Dawn was in front of me, the practiced ritual felt elusive. Was this the moment when I was supposed to trace the cross on her forehead or bow my head and say a prayer? I flipped the cap on the bottle of holy oil and doused my fingers with the warm liquid, watching a few drops escape to the carpet. In the thousands of healings Papa had performed, an errant drop had never slipped out of his holy oil bottle.
“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are healed.” I traced a slick sign of the cross on Dawn’s forehead—top to bottom, left to right—and pressed my palm against the cross to seal the healing. A wave of heat came into my arm as my hand lingered on Dawn’s head for longer than Papa’s generally did; my hand burned as though a fever was seeping out of her body and igniting mine. I yanked it away from her head, but the heat was still there—radiating from my palm to my fingers and from my fingers through my arm and to the rest of my body. I shook my arm, but that only made the fire rage hotter inside. Dawn loomed in front of me; beads of sweat mingled with the glistening remnants of holy oil that dripped into her eyebrows.
Dawn swayed on her heels. I swallowed the pain and hurried behind her, sticking my knee out and straightening my left arm to brace myself for her fall. White heat flared behind my eyes, darkening the room little by little. I took deep breaths in and out, training my eyes on Dawn, even as she started to fade. The room grew darker in stages as Dawn’s swivel slowed and then her body flexed. She was supposed to fall—all of Papa’s people fell into his arms—but Dawn got steadier the longer she stood in front of me. I walked around to face her. Still standing, Dawn’s eyes snapped open, and she looked at the room around her. She didn’t have the glazed-over look of the newly healed.
She took a few slow steps toward the front pew and sat. Fifteen minutes had passed. I eased myself down next to her on the pew, but some kind of electricity flowed through my body along with the heat.
“Dawn?”
“Hmm?” She turned her neck ever so slightly from where her gaze was fixed on the altar—like a breeze had tickled her cheek—but her eyes landed over my head. Her lips were pressed together, as though opening them would require too much effort.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded. I wanted to ask her what she was feeling, but we had to leave—there would be time to talk later. It took more effort than it should have to pick up Micah’s box with my left arm and help Dawn to her feet with my right. She leaned into my quaking body, and we walked toward the sanctuary doors and out into the hallway, where the faint tapping of computer keys resounded in the otherwise empty corridor. Had someone been in there all along? Had they heard us?
I turned to Dawn and placed my finger in front of my lips. With our backs pressed to the wall, we inched down the hallway. Papa’s door was still closed, so it wasn’t him, but if anyone saw us, word would reach him before I got back home. Mrs. Nabors’s door was open at the end of the hall; I could have sworn it had been closed when we arrived. I pointed down the left side of the hallway, and Dawn nodded. This was not the way it was supposed to happen—I’d planned an escape via the sheltered privacy of the back door, not the exposed front door where anyone passing on the street could see us. We didn’t have a choice as we tiptoed past the closed doors of the nursery and Sunday school classrooms. The tapping stopped, and I held my breath, drawing my belly button close to my spine. I wanted to run; instead, I took slow, measured steps toward the main doors and heard Dawn’s ragged breathing behind me. I shoved my shoulder into the door and winced; the rubber squeak of footsteps replaced the faint sounds of typing. Dawn and I ran out the front door and hid behind the bushes by the edge of the building.
A few moments later, Mrs. Nabors came outside and scanned the parking lot, a concerned look on her face. A rogue branch stabbed my cheek before droplets of coppery blood fell into my open mouth. I tried to quiet my breathing, to make everything still so Mrs. Nabors wouldn’t hear me. Dawn trembled next to me, rustling the bush. Mrs. Nabors craned her neck in our direction but must have heard nothing because she receded—a turtle’s head returning to its shell.
Each brick scra
ped my spine as we melted down the side of the building. Dawn didn’t move—she still looked dazed. Then she got up and slowly walked away from me, her arms stiff by her sides.
“Bye, Dawn,” I whispered.
She tossed up a hand without turning around. I watched her get back into the red car and drive away before I peeled myself from the concrete.
Each downstroke of the pedal to Micah’s house sent a fresh wave of pain through my body. By the time I got to her front door, it was almost 1:00 p.m.; Ma was expecting me back any minute now. I stashed my bike by Micah’s garage and forced myself to knock when I usually let myself inside. The lilt of Micah’s voice said that she was coming, and then the door cracked open until all of her was standing in front of me.
“Miriam. Hi.” It wasn’t her normal cheerful greeting, and she didn’t swing the door open to invite me inside. She scanned me from head to toe. “What’s up with your arm?”
I realized that I was holding it against my body at a funny angle. “Nothing. It’s fine.” I tried to lower it, but a shooting pain passed from my elbow to my hand. “How’ve you been?”
“Okay, I guess.” She looked down at the box.
“I wanted to bring you some of your things from school. Your favorite pencil is in here somewhere.” I scrounged around the bottom of the box for the metallic pencil that she used for everything, anything to keep from looking at her.
“You don’t have to do that. I’ll find it. Thanks for bringing my stuff.” She took the box from me and rested it on the floor inside her house.
“I miss you.” I crossed my left arm over my abdomen.
“Yeah, I miss you too. It’s been hard not to talk to you.”
“That’s been the hardest part.” I didn’t tell her all the times since last Friday when I’d lifted the receiver to dial her number and been deterred when Papa picked up the other end.
