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

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