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

with tags attached. Nothing was strewn inside or packed in a hurry—the bag had been packed for a while.

Ma crouched in front of the suitcase and sorted through the clothes with jerky movements, as though with every bend of her joints she was reminding her limbs how to move. She sifted through the orderly piles—holding each garment to her nose and breathing it in. In the middle of the clothing was a photo of me and Caleb kneeling on either side of Hannah’s wheelchair with our arms tossed around one another’s shoulders. She had opted for that photo of the three of us instead of the many others that had Papa in them.

“Were you really going to do it?”

She sorted through clothes and objects, running her fingers around the circular edges of buttons; I thought she didn’t hear me and was about to ask my question again when she looked up at me and nodded.

“I am so sorry.”

“What about us? About me? You were going to leave me here?”

“I know that makes me the worst mother in the world, but I couldn’t take it anymore. It was selfish, I know that, and I should have taken you with me. You and Hannah. But all I could think was that I had to get out.”

“And I made you stay.”

Instead of an answer, she turned her attention to refolding the clothes and placing them back in the suitcase.

“Can I leave it in here?” she asked.

“Sure. You know where it is in case—”

She pressed her index finger against my lips, silencing the rest of my answer. “If there is a next time, I’ll take you with me. I promise. I’ll never leave you behind…”

As her voice trailed, I thought about what it would feel like to get in the back seat of her sister’s car and leave this house behind. Ma was motionless beside me, a pile of unfolded clothes on her lap. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing.

Papa called to us from downstairs that breakfast was ready. His voice jolted us, and Ma lost her balance as she tried to stand up too quickly. Clothes spilled off her lap as she reached down to steady herself, and I grabbed her hand that was planted on the carpet.

“What are you going to tell him? About the healing.” I’d never thought I could say it so freely to her, but now I had something on her too.

“I can’t tell him anything.”

“You can’t tell him that I healed you?”

“Honey.” She cupped my face, and I let it go heavy in her hand. She was still the same Ma, albeit a little weaker, with sunken cheeks and dark bags underneath sadder eyes. “You know I can’t.”

“You can do whatever you want.”

“I know you think that I can, Miriam, but I can’t. That’s not what you want to hear, that your mom is a disappointment, but it’s the truth.” She exhaled a deep sigh that made her cough.

“You’re not a disappointment, Ma. I promise.” But she was right. I hoped she couldn’t see the way her heavy words were collapsing my shoulders. But that thought was followed by the memory of the bruises I saw when I washed her: the price she had already paid for standing up to him.

“I knew you’d understand,” she said, kissing my cheek. “Now let’s get to breakfast.”

She was so quick to shift—to become the woman Papa needed her to be rather than the mother I so desperately craved. For once I wanted her to choose my needs over his.

“I’ll get Hannah up and meet you downstairs,” I said. As she walked to the door, I hefted the suitcase back onto the shelf. When the closet was finally closed, hiding any evidence that she’d ever tried to leave, I woke up Hannah and carried her downstairs.

“Look who’s awake!” Papa gestured in my direction with a spatula when Hannah and I rounded the corner into the kitchen. He was wearing Ma’s apron, the one that she always let me wear when I helped with dinner.

I dug my nails into the underside of the table until they bent as Papa delivered the breakfast of scrambled eggs, wavy strips of crisp bacon, and miniature stacks of pancakes on two outstretched arms. Papa served himself last and took a seat at the head of the table.

“Let us pray,” he announced.

With red arcs forming in my nail beds, I reached for Hannah’s smooth fist.

“Lord, I want to thank You for delivering Your child Joanne from demons and darkness. Let her continue to grow in strength in the coming days and weeks. Thank You for Your faithfulness to this family. Thank You for the healing powers that You continue to renew within me. Let me remain an instrument of Your holy will. Amen.”

He had been pretending for so long that he had convinced himself he had actually done it. Or maybe he thought her healing had restored something he had lost long ago. He had to know that it wasn’t him. It hadn’t been him for a long time. Saying the thing I’d wanted to tell him since Bethel meant that I would betray Ma, and I couldn’t sacrifice her like that. I couldn’t bear to know that the hollow thumps on her body later would be my fault. But wasn’t the fact that she was sitting with us, letting him think that he healed her, betraying me?

“Amen,” I grumbled.

My stomach was an aching maw, yet I couldn’t bring myself to eat. As I watched him from across the table, his posture already taller, I didn’t know if I could keep the lie anymore, even though I had just promised Ma that I would. I didn’t want to break her trust, but wasn’t she the one who always said that secrets were only heavy until you released them? Maybe she could forgive me when it was all said and done. When she could see how different life could be when he knew the truth. I