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

up at him. His eyes were red, and the vein in his forehead was pulsating. But then I saw the anger in his eyes transform into something softer—regret, perhaps. As he turned around and walked into his bedroom, I slowly stood up. All of the pain that had gone away earlier swam to my head. The dizzy floral wallpaper supported my unsteady palms as I waited to hear Ma or Caleb come up to see if I was okay. But no one moved downstairs. Alone, I stumbled to my bedroom and locked the door. If Ma wanted to come and check on me later, she would have to knock.

I reached for the Bible on the nightstand, fingering my name embossed in gold on the worn leather cover. That night’s reading was from Deuteronomy, but I couldn’t make myself open it. I put the Bible back on my nightstand and reached for my prayer journal instead. The early questions of my youth mocked me with their simplicity. Does Jesus prefer Baptists because he was baptized by John the Baptist? Is there a different heaven for Baptists? With the journal perched on my legs, I didn’t even know what I wanted to ask—what were the words to explain the feeling that pulled at the core of my stomach and sent a bitter wave of vomit to my throat? My pen hovered above the page, unable to make contact. I pressed it closer to the sheaf of paper and a blob of ink pooled onto the faint blue lines. Suddenly, a hatch opened as my pen skimmed over one page, then another and another. When I finally finished, I was breathless, gasping over the page as though I had just finished a race.

The kids in our neighborhood who had grown up with myths of Santa Claus and the tooth fairy must have already experienced this emptiness after feeling a hand linger too long under the pillow or upon witnessing their parents placing carefully wrapped presents under the tree. We had been shielded from that—Ma kept our teeth in a little wooden box and we each picked a name to buy a Christmas present for. Papa had told us never to believe in transient things for happiness because our hope was in eternal life. But Papa had carefully cultivated our belief in him. He never said it outright—Believe in me as you believe in God—that would have been obvious blasphemy and idolatry. But he was the all-consuming presence that had filled my entire life, taking up all the space in the house and in revival tents. In its absence was a black hole that seemed bigger than the presence that had inhabited it. Like the gap left behind after losing a tooth—the ragged, sore space in your mouth always felt larger than the tiny bit of enamel that fell out.

The annual Thanksgiving service was always held on the Sunday before the holiday, and this year’s was to be no different. We separated at the front doors: Caleb and Papa walked to the sanctuary while Ma, Hannah, and I went to the multipurpose room to prepare the Thanksgiving meal. Most years, we cooked with Micah and her mom; together, wearing turkey hats and oven mitts, we served members of the church and the neighborhood. This time, when we stepped inside the multipurpose room, I felt the absence of Mrs. Johnson’s ebullient hello and hug that usually squeezed the air out of me. Instead, we were greeted by silence and a crooked banner that read HAPPY THANKSGIVING stuck to the wall behind a crystal bowl full of punch.

Ma and I got to work on the string beans. Her arms jostled mine in the small space as snatches of the sermon came over the loudspeaker.

“We’re popping all these beans, but I don’t know how many people will come this year. I guess it’s always better to have too much than too little.” She laughed.

I shrugged. There was nothing funny about the small congregations and the way they precipitated Papa’s anger. And she had felt it too, which made her laugh even harder to understand.

“What’s with the silent treatment lately, Miriam?”

If she had still been the person I remembered, she would have noticed that I hadn’t been able to laugh with her since the day she sacrificed me to Papa’s rage and left me alone while he hit me in the hallway. We hadn’t had our late-night reading sessions either; the few times she’d knocked, I’d pretended to be asleep. I glanced away from Ma’s desperate face and looked behind me, where Hannah was punching soft balls of dough. Hannah glanced toward us, her mouth opening for a soundless laugh. I joined her as she slapped the dough onto a cutting board, placing my hands on top of hers and adding gentle pressure as we moved the rolling pin over the airy mound, creating a jagged shape. Her hand curled around the glass as we cut perfect circles into the dough, and I dropped each disc onto the greased cookie sheet. When I closed the oven door, Hannah stood next to the rectangular window and watched the heated coils glow red as the dough rose.

Caleb’s hesitant voice through the loudspeaker announced that Papa would give the benediction; I imagined him in the pulpit next to Papa, his clip-on tie askew. I’d asked him to say something to Papa one night when they were in the study together, to tell him how bad his anger was getting at home, that I wasn’t sure how much more we could handle. What do you want me to say? he’d responded to my pleas. Tell him the truth, I’d said. But for all I knew, he hadn’t said anything.

“ ‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace. Amen.’ ”

I poured green beans from the pot into the colander and watched