Revival Season - Monica West (10 ebook reader .TXT) 📗

the front still almost empty. Afterward, as we were loading up the car to leave, the head of the usher board brought a Post-it with the written tally out to Papa. Papa took it and didn’t seem to register what it said, but when we got home, doors slammed all around the house, knocking pictures from the wall. We tiptoed around the house for the rest of the day, grabbing fallen pictures and returning them to jutting wall nails.

For each Sunday that more pews were empty, living in the house was like standing on a tightrope—small things, like too much syrup on the pancakes, sent Papa’s whole plate flying off the table. By the end of the month, when the multipurpose room showcased amateur hand turkeys with what we were thankful for, church attendance was a third of what it had been when the congregation had welcomed us back from revival season.

I tried to see Dawn’s absence from the past month’s healing services as a good sign, that maybe she was no longer in need of healing, but as each week passed without information, my uncertainty grew. And then Papa officially canceled Friday healing services—it was more out of formality than anything else. They had been all but dead since the Friday with Micah, and none of Papa’s attempts to resuscitate them had worked.

Somehow, through the tangled grapevine of church news—a congregant to an usher to a deacon, or something like that—Papa found out that Deacon Johnson had started serving on the deacon board of his rival church across town. It was a week before Thanksgiving when the phone call came. Ma made dinner while Papa was sequestered in the study—every few minutes, his angry voice surged downstairs.

“Bring your father up his dinner,” she said to me, fear barely hidden on her face. She held a heavy plate—from the replacement set she had bought—in front of my face, a fillet of grilled fish set on its center. Curlicues of steam tickled my nose as I walked up the stairs and heard Papa’s loud whispering from around the corner.

“Have I done nothing for him for all these years? How dare he? He acts like he doesn’t owe me a bit of loyalty.”

Whoever he was speaking to didn’t have much of a chance to say anything as the rise at the end of one question bled into the first syllable of the next.

“He owes me everything. This place wouldn’t exist without me, and he knows that.” He pounded his fist on the desk at the final word. I bobbled the plate, sending a few asparagus spears into the air before they landed on the carpet. I crouched and picked them up, blowing them off before replacing them on the plate’s edge, not touching the other food—just the way he liked it.

The study door flew open, almost sucking me inside the room on a gust of air. Next to my hands, Papa’s socked size-thirteen feet stretched the thin navy-blue fabric, revealing the mountain range of corns on his scrunched toes.

“Miriam. How long were you out here?”

“I— I just got—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying.” I swallowed the last syllable and dug my hands into the carpet to stand, but my legs threatened to let me fall. A tight grip like a blood pressure cuff constricted my upper arm and yanked me to my feet.

“What did you hear?”

“Nothing, Papa. I promise.”

“What does the Bible say about lying?”

“I’m not lying.”

“Then you need to repent.”

Repentance meant that I was supposed to pray or recite Scripture, loud enough for him to hear. I dropped to my knees near where his dinner plate was sitting; the butter had slid from the top of the mashed potatoes and was congealing under the asparagus. Papa took a step closer—I hadn’t started praying yet.

“Repent.” His breath was hot and stale on my face as he bent over me. Downstairs, Ma and Caleb had stopped talking.

His favorite Scripture for disobedience was Ephesians 6:1–3, which was about honoring your mother and father and your days being long on earth. He took another step closer and then another until he was so close to me that I couldn’t see all of him. I will never hurt you; I will never hurt you. I clung to his words from a lifetime ago, needing to believe them.

I closed my eyes and brought my hands to my face, pressing the pads of my fingers together in front of my nose. Saying the Bible verse out loud would appease him, and I would have to repeat it until my voice was gone or he was satisfied; it was never certain which one would come first. But my tongue felt thick in my dry mouth.

“I’m waiting, Miriam.”

I kept my lips pressed firmly together, even as I heard his knuckles crack behind me. A loud whap on the back of my head thrust me into the hallway wall. My hands flew in front of my face and made contact with the wall first. The plaster and drywall gave a little as my head reverberated from the force of his slap.

“I’m waiting, Miriam.”

His words echoed between my ears as though my head had been hollowed out. He struck me again—right on the space where my ponytail holder gathered my cottony curls at the back of my head. The pain came sharp and fast and radiated to other parts of my head. I squeezed my eyes shut behind prayer hands.

Above me, his breathing became more erratic. We stayed there like two statues as the silence dragged on. I imagined him closing his eyes and taking a long breath to compose himself the same way he did before starting a long sermon, his shoulders rising and falling beneath his T-shirt. The pain began to ebb as I waited for the next hit.

The hallway throbbed with our breathing—mine burning as it filled my lungs, refusing to steady even as I focused on long inhales and exhales. Finally, I twisted my neck and looked