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

pulpit—I knew that—but I wasn’t asking for permission anymore. I placed my hand on Hannah’s back and rubbed it in circular motions to calm her down. This is where I had wanted to be all along, with my hands on Hannah, healing her. Hannah’s body heaved, curling in on itself and then straightening again like the beginning of a seizure. I rubbed my hands on her legs, kneading the slack muscles below her braces, the places where her legs felt too wiry, unable to hold her weight. A few moments later, Papa, spent, rested his hands on his knees. He hadn’t healed Hannah. Again.

“There are some people whom God does not heal, whom it’s not in His will to heal. These are tests that God sends to each of us. Children we can’t heal, wives who miscarry, stillbirths…” His frantic sentences rose at the end as he rushed to the ground and tried to reassure the crowd who had just watched him fail. Over the microphone he told them that they were witnessing a mystery of faith.

Hannah rolled over onto her back and looked up at me. She writhed on the scratchy turf, desperate for rescue, her hands reaching toward me to help her. I was the one who had put her in this position and made a spectacle of her in front of the whole tent. Tears budded in the corners of my eyes as I pulled her body toward me. I wanted to snatch her from the ground and take her far away from here. But I knew I had to carry this through. I wanted to tell her that it would all be worth it.

She had started to howl, her voice chasing the keyboard’s loud chords into the tent’s eaves. I stared into her eyes, and it seemed like even the left one focused on me. It was just me and Hannah—there was no stage, no congregation. I slipped my legs from underneath her prone body, my knees wobbly like hers. In the long shadow of the cross, I helped Hannah to her feet. My lungs burned as heat rose through my legs. When the tingling started and my body pulsated like a beating heart, it was time.

The back of the crowd was dim and shadowy, but the rows closer up came into focus. Ma was standing, frozen on the balls of her feet as though she wanted to run up to the stage but couldn’t. Her body was shaking so violently that it looked like Isaac would fall out of her cradled arms. Caleb was standing on the ground near Papa, blinking as though he couldn’t believe what was happening only feet away, as though the brief darkness each time he shut his eyes would reveal a new picture to him that didn’t involve his sisters on the stage in a revival tent. Papa’s hands were raised to the congregation—his words running together in some incoherent mash of syllables about God and trial—when he turned back to see me. He thrashed his head from side to side as he hurtled toward us in what seemed like slow motion.

“Hannah Faith Horton. Do you trust that I can heal you?” I spoke in a normal tone—shouting would scare her. I pretended like it was just the two of us on the altar. She moved her hands at her sides in what I needed to believe was the sign for yes. There was no more oil, but I didn’t need any. The power wasn’t in the oil but in the Spirit, and I could suddenly feel the Spirit rushing through me. I raised my left arm above Hannah’s head before bringing it down slowly, inching ever closer to her face.

“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are healed.”

My fingertips landed on her forehead. A flash of heat entered my hand and coursed through my arm and the rest of my body. I kept my hand on her head to seal the healing, but the spot of skin had become a scalding burner. I opened my mouth wide and exhaled as an escape valve for the pain, but the hot breath that came out of me didn’t make the rest of the heat dissipate.

The room drained itself of color—the walls became gray and the turf melted away beneath my feet. Silence descended. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. Soon, words to a prayer to heal Hannah were stones in my mouth—with my hands pressed against her, I asked God to take away her pain. I tried to remove my arm from the small of her back, but her legs still felt limp. I eased my hand away from her a little bit at a time, but her legs started to buckle as I squatted close to the ground and eased her onto it. She fell into a heap by my feet—all I could do was stare at her on the ground, my eyelids scorching each time I blinked. She writhed in front of me, but I couldn’t move to help her.

“Hannah Faith Horton, rise up and walk.” I squeezed the methodical words out of a throat that was closing. Weights were attached to the ends of my arms, but I raised them in a V the way I had practiced. A kaleidoscope of Nadia’s face morphing into Suzette’s and Micah’s and Hope’s turned in my brain—I shook them away and stared at Hannah, still lying at my feet. She curled herself into a ball—the position that she always assumed before she tried to get to her feet. It was working, slowly, but it was working.

I kept my arms raised, afraid to move and disrupt the miracle even though every muscle raged. Hannah scooted her butt into the air, her forehead against the turf like she was praying. She inched her knees ever closer to her hands, until her knees and her hands were finally touching. All she had to do was get her balance and