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

the tent in Bethel when I had to see him with different eyes. How hard it had been to reconcile what I had seen with what I had always known.

“How can you say that? There’s no excuse.”

“It won’t always be like this.”

Caleb’s hand snaked inside of mine as he hugged Ma from the other side. She stopped chopping onions as her neck bent.

Later that night, Ma whistled a tuneless song from far back in memory as she made four plates of burned meat loaf for dinner and brought them to the table. The leftovers stayed in pots on the cooktop. We ate dinner without him at the head of the table, and I stuffed myself with the charred meat even though I wasn’t hungry. Afterward, Hannah, Caleb, and I curled under Ma’s outstretched arms on the couch as night fell. Her hardened belly protruded into my ribs, and I leaned close enough to it to feel the occasional kick. We pretended to be excited about the impromptu slumber party, shivering in unison whenever there was a loud noise upstairs.

I woke up in the middle of the night with Hannah’s arm below my back. I sat up on the couch and tried to readjust myself under Ma’s armpit, but the space where Ma had been sleeping was empty. Caleb and Hannah’s necks were at odd angles as their snores competed with each other for airtime. Pushing myself off the couch with a stiff arm, I walked through the empty hallway. There was no sign of her.

Upstairs was the faint noise of a zipper—a sound that always reminded me of revival season—followed by a rustle. I stayed by the landing as Ma crept downstairs in the dark with a suitcase by her side. When she was halfway down the staircase, I came into full view. Ma froze in midstep like a caught child; she shifted the suitcase by her side, as though she could somehow hide it. Even in the darkness, her face was wet, her eyes glassy.

“What are you doing?” I asked, as soon as I could find my voice.

She set her suitcase down on the step before her body crumpled next to it, her shoulders raising into a shrug. A car approached the house and slowed down before killing the lights. Ma lurched to her feet with the suitcase swaying by her side and slid past me on the staircase, tossing the front door open like she was expecting company.

“Who is that?”

She turned her head from me to the glinting car on the other side of the screen door, then back to me. Her hand gripped the door’s handle.

“I have to do this. I’m sorry.” Pain creased her voice, folding it into hundreds of tiny pieces like the origami birds I used to make with Micah, the ones that crashed into the carpet whenever Micah and I tried to make them fly. The door opened, and Ma straddled the threshold—one foot outside with the suitcase while the other foot was planted inside a square of ceramic tile.

She peeked over the back of the couch at Caleb’s drooped head—for a moment, we both listened to his snore, which sounded like a car whose engine wouldn’t start. I glanced over Ma’s shoulder into the driveway where a woman I’d never seen before sat behind the wheel. Her face looked just like Ma’s.

She took another step outside, toward where her sister—one of the aunts we’d never been allowed to meet—waited for her. I wanted to move toward them, but my feet had grown roots. Time unspooled itself—first moving quickly and then shifting to slow motion—as she opened the back door and threw her bag inside. As she moved to the passenger door and opened it, her hand glided over the door’s steel curve, then down the straight edge. She looked back at the house—at me inside the front door—weighing the life that she had with us with whatever was on the other side with her sister.

She lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers slowly—a wave that I was unable to return. But instead of stooping into the car and disappearing into the passenger seat, she stayed upright, her dress floating away from her body on the breeze, her gaze still fixed on the house.

Prickles traveled up my stationary legs as I stared at her, willing her to move one inch closer to the house. A low voice from the car chided her as Ma took a longing glance at the woman in the driver’s seat and then back at the house. With a jerking motion, Ma closed the door. Behind the sloped windshield, her sister pressed her head against the steering wheel as Ma opened the back door and retrieved her bag. Ma’s sister shook her head and then started the car. As silently as she came, she pulled onto the street and left Ma and her suitcase in the middle of the driveway. I released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and propped the door open for her as she came back inside. She paused on the threshold as though considering her decision, her left hand on the doorjamb, her right arm crooked against the small of her back as she fell forward into the screen.

“Are you okay?” I didn’t know which version of the question she would answer.

“I don’t know what’s going on anymore.” She hadn’t closed the door yet and looked back out to the street, where the car was retreating. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t go with her, but I can’t stay here like this either.”

The foundation that she had so carefully applied before dinner had melted away from her face while we slept, revealing blue puffiness and a left eye that was almost swollen shut in a wink. She had borne the brunt of all he had to offer, her soft body a convenient receptacle for his rage.

The car was still on the street, its hazards lighting the night in flickering yellow.