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

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 visited 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