by Monica West
“How long?”
“Didn’t you hear me in the car? The past several months, since Bethel.” Each word took more wind out, and I paused for a few breaths.
“I’m not talking about your father anymore. I’m talking about you. This wasn’t your first healing. How long have you been doing it?”
Mrs. Cade slid from my side and crouched in front of me, her hands, still warm from the mug of tea, pressed against the sides of my face the way they always did on Sunday mornings. I tried to look away, knowing that whatever I said now couldn’t be unsaid. And even though Mrs. Cade was on my side, had always been, Papa had ways of finding anything out.
“Not long enough.” The flecks of tea in the bottom of the mug rearranged themselves into shapes—a tree, a cloud, a star—that I stared at to keep the tears at bay.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Why couldn’t I do it last time?”
“Last time when?”
“With Isaiah.”
At the mention of his name, my hand shot to my mouth. We were forbidden from saying it at home, as though not saying it meant that we would forget about him. Mrs. Cade reached out a hand.
“Let me take you home. But we’re going to talk on the way back.”
In the car, I told her about Micah, Dawn, Nadia, and Suzette. She kept her eyes on the road the entire time as the words flowed out of me. Words that she promised not to repeat to anyone. The blinker flickered in the darkness as we drifted off the highway and decelerated; my words vanished the closer we got to the house, and the car filled with silence.
“Do you mind if we take a detour?” Mrs. Cade asked.
Before I could answer, she made a left in the darkness when we should have made a right toward the house. She drove the car onto an unlit street, and we crawled beneath a wrought-iron sign overhead that read EDGEWOOD MEMORIAL GARDENS—where Isaiah was buried. We drove up the hill into the company of stone angels, their shadows dancing even in the darkness, morphing into obscure shapes that looked nothing like wings or praying hands. Mrs. Cade stopped the car, got out, and made her way down the path to Isaiah’s grave. She walked directly to it, like she had memorized the route to his small granite grave marker pressed into the earth.
I knew what it said: Isaiah Samuel Horton—Children are a gift from God. There were no dates to display to the world how long he lived, and the grave marker was bigger than he had been. Mrs. Cade dropped to her knees and dug her hands in the manicured grass. I got out of the car and fell beside her, fingering the roughly etched letters that made up Isaiah’s name in the smooth granite. Tears raged out of my eyes, plinking on the grave marker before soaking into the surrounding grass.
“There was no way to heal him, Miriam,” she said as she sat next to me. “There are some things that we aren’t meant to do, some people who God doesn’t intend to heal.”
I fell into her chest, heard her words echo into my ear as she repeated them, her hand carving designs into my scalp.
“I’m so sorry,” I said over and over again, my words falling in the direction where Isaiah lay. She rocked me back and forth until her dress was wet and my sobs quieted. It was hard to tell exactly how long we had been there. She pulled away from my embrace.
“When you’re ready, I’ll be in the car.” Her footsteps plodded away. My hand lingered on the granite for a few more minutes, even as Mrs. Cade’s headlights washed away the darkness. I unrolled my legs from underneath me and walked to the car.
TWELVE
The Sunday after Isaac’s birth, Papa and Caleb, both red-eyed with exhaustion, left at 6:00 a.m. for Sunday service. A bit later, I walked a wailing Isaac in circles on the kitchen tile to quiet him down. While stroking his damp curls, I stared into his almond-shaped brown eyes and breathed his baby-skin smell of lotion and shampoo. Every day he looked more like Papa than Ma, especially as his skin darkened. Papa had tasked me with taking care of him while Ma recovered from the delivery; I reveled in each gurgle and cry that entered our house. When I traced the cleft in his chin that led to his tiny pink lips, he opened his mouth as though to cry. I shushed him, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.
There was a knock on the door—too early to be Papa and Caleb, since they had just left a couple of hours ago. I could hear Hannah stirring upstairs, her bellowing making its way to the first floor. I peered through the peephole at a magnified version of Mrs. Cade, her bag by her side. She liked to brag that she hadn’t missed a Sunday service for ten years—the longest streak in our church—and yet here she was. I cracked the door, and only when I smelled the fresh air outside—the scent of yesterday’s rain—did I realize how close and stale it was in the house. Except for my trip with Mrs. Cade, I hadn’t been out in the two days since Isaac’s birth.
“Morning, Miriam. Let me see that baby.”
I passed her Isaac, whose whimpers had graduated into a full-fledged wail. And though I loved the sounds of his cries, any noise jangled Ma’s nerves lately. She seemed to be constantly on edge, so I did everything I could to quiet him—even in the middle of the night.
As Mrs. Cade stepped into the hallway, she must have seen the stack of pizza boxes piled by the trash can and the tower of dishes next to the sink. When Isaac was safely in her arms, I ran upstairs to get Hannah. At the top of the stairs, I looked to the left at Ma’s closed bedroom door. I knocked once, then twice, but there were no signs of life. Hannah bellowed again down the hall and I rushed to her side, releasing the rail at the edge of her bed and placing my face close to hers.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m here.” I rested my hand on her forehead and traced my fingers through her hair the way she liked. With the sleeve of my nightgown, I wiped the sticky puddle of saliva from her lips and chin before raising her upright in bed and sliding her braces and crutches on. As we moved past Ma’s door, I pressed my finger to my lips and Hannah mimicked me. Downstairs, water ran into the sink on full blast as plates clanked together.
“So this little guy looks perfectly healthy. How’s your mom?”
“She’s upstairs recovering.”
“Can I go see her too?”
I nodded—Papa didn’t want anyone to come inside, much less go upstairs, but I didn’t need to keep the secrets of this house from Mrs. Cade anymore. She finished the dishes with one hand while snuggling Isaac in the other; then she dried her hands on the dingy dish towel. Resting Isaac on her shoulder, she walked up the stairs.
She was up there for at least fifteen minutes—long enough for me to make Hannah breakfast. “How does she look?” I asked when she came back downstairs.
“Physically she’s okay. She just needs more time to rest. And the bruises are healing—there are no new ones either. She should be fine.” As she said the final sentence, she looked around at the kitchen instead of at me. I looked around at the kitchen too, at the dishes that Mrs. Cade had washed, at how quickly my house had descended into entropy.
“It seems like my work here is done.” She paused between each word, still scanning the kitchen, figuring out what else she could do to help. She must have seen a pang of regret on my face—she stopped on her path to the door and waded deeper into the kitchen instead. She set down her hat and white gloves near where Hannah had made a mess of her oatmeal; then she scooped a heap of dark grounds onto a paper filter in the coffee maker. A few moments after she pressed a button, black rivers of liquid fell steadily into the glass pot below.
“Can I pour you a cup?”
I shook my head. “Ma doesn’t let me drink it.”
She looked up at the ceiling where Ma’s bed was and winked. “It will be our secret.”
She poured two mugs and brought them to the kitchen table. She set one on the table in front of her and pushed the other in my direction. As I stared into the still, black pool, the wisps of bitter steam tickled my nose. One acrid sip swirled around in my mouth before I forced it down. I grimaced just as Mrs. Cade looked up and smiled.
“I vis
ited the baby in the hospital yesterday. Her name is Hope. They’re going to release her tomorrow. You can add her to your list.”
Hope. I’d been wondering what happened to her but had been too afraid to ask.
“You certainly have the gift, young lady.”
Her words mixed with the strong smell of coffee as the front lock clicked—I closed my eyes to steel myself as Caleb and Papa barged into the kitchen. Mrs. Cade drank the rest of her coffee quickly and finished the mug that I’d shoved back in front of her.
“We missed you in church today, Gladys.” Papa’s words toed the line between concern and a reprimand.
“It was the only time I could check on your wife and son.” She matched his tone of barely veiled anger. “And since you’re so concerned, Isaac is doing well. And Joanne is—”
“Thanks for coming by, Gladys,” he cut her off.
She got up, washed her mug, and placed it on the drying rack. I walked her to the door and received her kiss on the forehead.
“Take care of her.” Her lips vibrated against my hairline. “And keep doing what you’re doing.”
* * *
When winter break ended in January, Ma still hadn’t gotten out of bed. At nights, with Ma and Papa shut behind their bedroom door, I heard him grow increasingly frustrated with her. He’d been gentle immediately after Isaac’s birth—whether due to the birth itself or his guilt at what had happened the night before—but I could tell his patience was wearing thin.
“Take care of Isaac while your mother gets back on her feet,” Papa said to me, his voice unconcerned.
“What’s wrong with her? Why hasn’t she gotten out of bed?”
He didn’t answer my questions. He and I both knew she hadn’t even been like this when Isaiah had died; instead, she had worked silently and methodically, scrubbing the house and sewing for days.
I watched from the front door as Caleb and Hannah walked to Mrs. Nesbitt’s house every morning to attend homeschool with the other students who’d been displaced from our basement. With each step of freedom that they took away from the house, my tethers tightened. Each afternoon when Caleb came home, he brought me snippets of the outside world like bread crumbs that I pretended not to want, that I resented him for getting instead of me. But I still listened to the ways that kids in homeschool speculated about what had happened to me and Ma—I hated that they were talking about her without me being there to defend her.
The closest I got to going outside after Isaac’s birth were the times I’d open the door to some of the bolder church members who showed up without asking, ringing the doorbell and trying to peek through the locked screen door. Papa told me and Caleb to tell them that Ma was under the weather and that she would call when she was feeling better. Then we were supposed to accept their gifts and close the door politely without letting them in. But I watched their eyes as they scanned behind us—at the kitchen table piled high with dishes, the laundry heaping out of overstuffed hampers, spilling excess pajamas, socks, and underwear onto the hallway tile. I tried to hurry them through their questions, answering yes abruptly so that the door could finish its arc into the jamb.
“Look, Ma,” I said when I had festooned her bedroom with the gifted bouquets of lavender and coral and fuchsia. I expected her to lift her head from the pillow, to open her eyes and take in the vivid colors. But she was asleep, her breathing heavy, her hair plastered to her forehead. I tucked the dampened strands behind her ears and let my arms fall to her shoulders.
“Get up, Ma.” My voice was angrier than it had been the previous times. Her body was heavy under my nudging, her limbs limp at her sides. The sheet moved in tandem with her body, pulling taut on her stomach. Her snore grew deep and heavy, her eyelids still.
“Open your eyes!” I lifted the paper-thin skin of her eyelids and raised them toward her brow bone. Beneath her lids, veiny eyeballs focused on me without a whisper of recognition.
“It’s me!” I yelled again before dropping her lids. Even though they stayed closed, there was a stirring behind them, as though she wanted to open them and look at me. But after a few minutes, they stilled as she sank back into sleep.
* * *
Second Sunday—Baptism Sunday—used to be a cause for celebration, but Papa had decided that the second Sunday in January would be Isaac’s dedication back to the Lord. The date, one month after Isaac’s birth and circled on the calendar in red, felt menacing. Ma had never missed a baptism service, and for weeks I’d been praying that her sadness would break, like clouds dissipating after a storm, but by the time second Sunday arrived, I knew that her mood was more than just sadness. Papa must have known it too because his answers about her were getting more clipped. But there was no way Papa would call a doctor for help—I knew that like I knew the sun would rise in the morning. Sickness in the mind is a manifestation of weak faith, Papa always said. To get better, you have to pray and ask to be healed. We were praying. We were asking.
I pulled one of my white dresses from the closet and shimmied into it. Its hem stopped just below my knees, and the seams—tiny, orderly rows of silken white thread—ran down the sides in perfect darts. Ma had made us matching dresses from a beautiful piece of fabric that she had found on the revival circuit this past summer. I imagined the hours that Ma spent with the pattern at the sewing machine, her hands pushing the fabric through the dipping needle. It hung loose around the waist, and I felt her arms gripping my shoulders and spinning me around—admiring her handiwork and saying I looked beautiful.
“Miriam,” Papa called from downstairs.
I walked down the hallway and paused by Ma’s closed door. My hand lingered on the doorknob, and I twisted it a bit before releasing it. I didn’t know what I would say to her, but I wanted her to spring out of bed, to stand beside Papa as Isaac was given back to the Lord. To participate in the ceremony that Isaiah had been denied. I rapped once, then twice, but there was no response from the other side.
“Miriam,” Papa called again, his voice louder.
When we arrived at the lake, six minutes late, a few regulars were already there, but attendance at baptism services, like all other services, had been declining. People were clustered in the shade of the few trees that dotted the brown grass. All eyes were on us as we arrived with Isaac in tow for his first church outing. As we brought him down the hill, the bolder people murmured their loud speculations about where Ma could be. Maybe she needed a break. It hasn’t been easy on her since the other baby died. It’s no wonder she’s having a hard time. I bit my bottom lip until the skin split and I tasted coppery blood.
The chords of the baptismal hymn plinked out of the speakers that were staked in the dirt. Papa hurried into the shallow part of the lake to baptize the people who had been waiting for him. The youngest children were the first in line—elementary school students who gave their lives to the Lord—followed by older people. Papa baptized them in the same water because he said all souls were identical to God.
Even though I’d gone to baptisms for years, there had always been new things to notice, from the way Papa’s robe floated on the surface of the water like a cloud to how his voice echoed back to shore, asking the congregation to support people in their newly reborn lives. I used to hold my breath as he dipped people underwater, knowing that they would be brand-new creatures when he lifted their sodden bodies from the lake. And when they stood under their own power, I was already on my feet, cheering them into the kingdom. This time, however, my body felt empty, and I could barely lift my hands to clap when it was time.
After the baptisms were complete, Papa stepped back onto dry land for Isaac’s dedication. He changed out of his wet robe and beckoned Caleb, Hannah, and me to join him by the edge of the lake. Papa held Isaac in front of the congregation in his long white gown that caught the breeze; all who were gathered at the lake repeated the oath promising to keep Isaac on the path of righteousness. The words that used to feel like fire in my mouth were now just a string of meaning
less sounds as I said them about my own brother.
* * *
When we got home, Papa went upstairs, but instead of holing himself up in the study, he turned left toward the bedroom. The door slammed, and we all froze on the main floor in the unsettling quiet that followed. After a few moments of silence, I left Caleb and Hannah on the first floor and walked up the stairs.
The bedroom door was open a crack, not quite wide enough for me to see through as Papa’s voice barely reached outside. I squeezed my nose into the space and almost gagged from the nauseating stench of Ma’s unshowered body combined with Papa’s overpowering musk. He was standing at the side of the bed facing where Ma lay, his back to the door. His arms gesticulated wildly overhead before they came to rest on her arm. A minute passed, and Papa hung his head low and raised his arms again. His voice was louder this time, the words echoing in the stagnant air before reaching the door.
“In the name of the Father…”
It wouldn’t work—he and I both knew it—and I couldn’t watch him fail with her. I wanted to back away and leave them be, but my feet wouldn’t budge. He leaned closer. When he rose again, she was still an unmoving form wrapped in sheets. He collapsed to his knees. This was supposed to be the time when he would recite a prayer asking God to heal her, but a guttural sob escaped from his open mouth instead. He held Ma as her limp limbs dragged on the bed, rocking her back and forth. He’d pretended with so many people; why wasn’t he trying harder with her?
The sobs swelled, reaching a crescendo not unlike in his sermons, and just at the point when I thought his voice would break the way it did when he talked about the trials of Job or 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.
