Revival Season Read online

  The murmuring of people behind me interrupted Papa’s prayer. I turned my neck in the slightest, fearing I’d see the unicorn T-shirt again or the light of a cell phone camera on him like last summer, but all their heads were down, and the only sound was from lips vibrating against each other as they recited their own prayers. Maybe it was all going to be fine. I caught back up to Papa as his voice waned.

  “In the precious name of Jesus, our Savior and our Lord, I pray, Amen.”

  “Amen,” came the choral reply. With each confident step back to his chair—one, two, three, four—my body tensed as the rest of us waited on a razor’s edge. Then he eased his weight back like he knew the seat would be there to catch him.

  A row of black-clad people rose in unison from the front row and marched to the stage in front of Papa. All of a sudden, a keyboard melody punctuated by a drumbeat filled the tent, followed by words about deliverance and salvation. Some people in the congregation jumped to their feet and raised their hands. A woman in the front row held a tambourine whose metallic rattle matched the beat of the song. Next to me, Ma was still seated, her eyes glued to where Papa was sitting. I pulled her up to standing—Papa needed us to be like the others—and she raised a reluctant arm into the sky. On my left side, Hannah stirred, clearly disturbed by all the noise and motion, and I wrapped my arm around her, bringing her closer to my chest and stilling her movements. The crowd settled and turned its attention back to the pulpit. I said a mini prayer of my own as the rest of the congregation stood.

  “Brothers and sisters, are you ready for the word of the Lord?”

  “Yes,” the voices around me said.

  “Yes,” I responded a beat too late. People reached in purses for their Bibles. It was time.

  “Open your Bibles to Matthew 7:13,” Papa commanded.

  “In Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14, the Scripture says, ‘Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.’ This is the word of the Lord. May the Lord bless the reading, hearing, and doing of His word.”

  Papa rested his Bible on the podium and slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose. He inhaled—sniffing out sin in the congregation—and people’s backs straightened where they stood. What they didn’t know was that sniffing was one of Papa’s tricks for figuring out if people were guilty of sin or not—it made the guilty immediately want to repent. The congregation froze, not even wanting to shift in uncomfortable high heels. Any slight motion could catch the attention of Papa’s roving eyes. The electric buzz from the overhead strands of lights thundered in the silence.

  “You may be seated. My message this evening is entitled: ‘The Gates of Hell.’ ” The silence seemed to deepen. Hell was something we all believed in, had been terrified of since we first learned about it in Sunday school. It was a message that would scare people, and, for Papa, fear was as useful a tactic as any to bring people to Christ. Ma had let go of my hand and her skirt, and my heart thrummed at a normal pace for the first time that day. Just a couple more hours to go.

  “Gates have very specific uses in this world. One use is for keeping things out. Some communities are surrounded by high wrought-iron gates designed to prevent strangers from entering. People live behind those gates, lured by the promise of safety that they provide. Other gates are used for keeping things in. Prisons are surrounded by miles of chain-link fencing, gates, and barbed wire precisely for keeping inmates sequestered. The rest of us rely on those gates so that we can walk our dogs or take our children to school without worrying about those walls being breached. The third type of gate is for regulating flow. When you visit a baseball game, you step through a gate one at a time so that there’s no stampede. Gates allow for a controlled entry.” His voice was as soft as it would get during the sermon. He took a long pause for emphasis—he had planned several of these during the message. In the seconds of silence, he scanned the crowd. By now he had already estimated its size and scoped out the fact that at least a hundred people were huddled in the back, craning their necks toward the pulpit.

  Some heads nodded while other soft amens floated up from the back of the congregation. He took a deep breath, and the fabric of his dress shirt stretched around his barrel chest before he exhaled. I exhaled with him. You can do this, Papa.

  “So, it’s not a coincidence that the entryway to heaven is a gate.” His voice had gotten louder, and he was starting to drag his vowel sounds. “And this heavenly gate is designed to let only certain people in. Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14, describes the type of gate that leads to heaven. Matthew uses the words small, narrow, and few to show Christians that not everyone gets into the gates of heaven. Small sins, the ones we overlook every day, are enough to keep us from getting through the narrow gates. Take a moment to think about all the small sins that you committed today.”

  He got quiet again and looked around. I was writing down every word in my journal; his long pause allowed me to catch up and scribble his final sentence. But when his silence extended a few extra seconds, his words seeped into my skin. He wasn’t just talking to everyone else about the sins they committed: he was talking to me about my doubt. About the fact that I kept seeing the pregnant girl’s face. I spoke to God in the quiet of my heart and repented.

  “I won’t ask for a show of hands, but did some of you think about the lie that you told your boss to leave work early to come here? You comforted yourselves by calling it a white lie, but while you left early, someone else had to cover your shift. Did others of you think of the unkind word you said about your neighbor whose barking dog woke up your child in the middle of the night? Or about the woman who came into revival wearing a dress that was too short? I could go on all day, but I won’t. You overlooked those sins because they weren’t murder or adultery, but God doesn’t overlook them. In His eyes, sin is sin. Sin leads you to hell: the wide gate that many will walk through. Satan wants people to enter that gate, because hell is eternal separation from God. I’m going to repeat that phrase for those of you who didn’t hear it. Eternal. Separation. From. God. Darkness and hellfire.” He pounded his fist against the podium on the final few words before reaching for the hand towel that Caleb had positioned on the front right corner. He wiped it across his brow, which was shimmering under the overhead lights.

  “Eternal life is possible if you accept the Lord as your personal savior. You must ask Jesus to come into your heart and give your life to Him. That is the only way.” His promise of salvation boomed as soft keyboard chords grew louder with each word. Amens rose from the back of the tent and increased in volume.

  “Can everyone please rise?” Grateful to get back on my feet, I sprang up and seized the opportunity to stretch.

  “There may be some of you under the sound of my voice who have not yet accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Accept the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart and start living a life that will get you through the narrow gate. The doors of the church are open.”

  A rustle from the nearby aisles meant that unsaved people were coming down to the front. One person got up, then another. Soon, footsteps filled the aisles surrounding us. A whoop rose from the congregation as forty or fifty people lined up in front of the stage. “Praise the Lord, saints. Praise the Lord!”

  And we, the saints, shouted, hallelujahed, and played the tambourine, thanking God for deliverance. Papa stepped away from the microphone and walked down to the ground where the people were. The keyboard played the soft melody of “Come to Jesus” as Papa moved down the line and clasped his arm around each person’s shoulders.

  “People of God,” he addressed the congregation when he had gone down the line of new believers. “Welcome these beautiful people into the kingdom.”

  After the sermon ended, we waited for the event that most of the people had come for: the healing. Even though the sermon had been better than I imagined it could be
, my expanding chest got tight beneath my dress when Papa made the announcement.

  While they came, about eighty of them, Papa wiped the sweat that had beaded on his brow. There were the typical people who came for healing—older people meandering to the front, young families whose ailments were invisible to the naked eye. My gaze drifted to a woman who slowly led a little boy down the aisle runner. Silver rings like thick bangles kept his forearms in place while his small hands gripped the handles of his crutches. His legs, even thinner than his arms, had rigid plastic braces on them, and his knees were bent as he slid his legs, one in front of the other, toward the raised altar.

  Hannah’s right eye fixed on him, slowly followed by her roving left eye that had been blind since birth. Her rocking stilled, and throaty grunting sounds came from the recesses of her body. I placed my arm around her shoulders where her bones jutted out from underneath her shirt’s thin jersey material. Then Papa saw them. He dried his hands against his pants, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. I sucked in a breath.

  Papa sprinkled holy oil in his hands and made the sign of the cross on each forehead that he passed. These were the healings that we couldn’t see. Since we’d be in another city in a week, there was no way we’d be able to know if the old woman was cured of her hypertension or if the mechanic’s tumor shrank. But if this boy could walk, everything that had happened last year would vanish like vapor.

  Finally, at the end of the line of people, he came to the small boy. He slipped his hand underneath the boy’s armpit and guided him toward the stairs. The boy’s mother stayed on the ground as his crutches hit the wood of the makeshift steps—her hands worried the fabric of her long skirt as her son and Papa slowly ascended to the altar, right beneath the cross.

  “Son, are you ready to walk?” Papa asked.

  It was a rhetorical question, but the little boy nodded anyway.

  “Congregation, are we ready for a miracle?”

  A hum rose from the crowd. First soft, then louder before it floated into the tent’s peaked roof. As Papa got down on one knee in his fancy suit pants, I imagined the prickly feel of the turf beneath the thin fabric as though I had slipped on his skin for a moment. He was now inches away from the boy’s face—aware that any errant motion would compromise this healing that he needed. That we needed. His heart, like mine, must have been beating faster than the snare drum keeping time in the corner of the room.

  He said something to the little boy that no one could hear. The boy laughed, and Papa tousled his close-cropped Afro. In his right fist, Papa still had the small bottle of holy oil, and he splashed some into his hand, more than he used for regular healings. He tilted the boy’s head back, and the boy stumbled on his crutches. Papa applied the holy oil in a slow sign of the cross in the middle of the boy’s forehead: in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

  “Amen,” I whispered.

  Papa placed his entire palm, fingertips stretched and quivering, on the boy’s head. Papa often talked about how his whole body would quake with the power of the Holy Spirit when Jesus worked through him. He said that the feeling was like getting electrocuted. The boy trembled like Papa’s hand, his thin arms moving around in the crutches like hula hoops. Papa kept praying, pressing his hand on the boy’s head. What he was saying was between him, God, and the boy.

  When Papa finally stood up, he backed away from the boy. “Drop your crutches and walk, son.”

  My fingernails had bent back against the metal chair by the time Ma’s warm grip landed on my hand. I reached out my other hand and grabbed Hannah’s as the boy shifted his thick shoes ever so slightly. Even though Papa wasn’t touching him anymore, the boy was still shaking. Then a crutch fell, and he dropped to his knees. His mother ran up to the stage in her dingy cotton dress.

  “Wait,” Papa said, extending his arm to still her. “Have faith. God is still working.” The woman took a step back, but she was clearly torn between Papa’s belief in his own power and her son, who was on his knees at the altar.

  “Get up,” I whispered as the boy rocked on his knees, no closer to standing even as my words chided him. I prayed that the boy’s slowness wouldn’t spark the same anger that had inhabited Papa last summer. Papa took one step closer to the boy, and Ma’s hand became a vise on mine, squeezing out all the feeling until it was numb.

  “C’mon, son,” Papa said with a sweet voice that would have made anyone get up. “Rise up and walk.”

  Sweat rained from Papa’s forehead to the turf. The hundreds of pairs of eyes in the tent were fixed on him, their expressions ranging from hope to frustration to blankness.

  “Rise up and walk.” Papa extended his arms again, but this time he raised them like a puppeteer whose invisible marionette strings connected to the boy’s legs. In slow motion, the boy put his hands on the ground and straightened his legs. His knees knocked together in the plastic braces.

  “Rise up and walk,” Papa said again, his words salve to loosen the boy’s stiff joints. The boy stayed on all fours as his legs inched closer to his hands. He moved ever so slightly. Then he was on his feet, shaking, but on his feet. And I was on mine too, shouting amen. A sharp tug yanked the hem of my skirt, sending me right back to the seat. But I started something, because then everyone was cheering as the boy took one wobbly step and then another.

  Papa flopped on the altar, seemingly exhausted even though he wasn’t the one who’d just walked. The boy’s mother rushed onto the stage, and her son collapsed into her embrace. Papa raised his arms to lead the congregation in a benediction. We all rose under the spell of his puppeteer hands as the lights from above cast an iridescent glimmer on his sweat.

  Only when revival was officially over did Ma let my hand go, yet I still felt the warmth and pressure of her fingers as I flexed mine. As Ma exhaled her relief, the boy’s mother shouted above the booming applause, her voice reaching all parts of the tent from the mic pinned to Papa’s suit jacket.

  “Glory to God and to His shepherd on earth. Thank you, Reverend Horton. Thank you.”

  I nudged Ma with my elbow to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at me. Her smooth forehead had already erased the doubt of just a few minutes before as she applauded for him. I joined in, even as crowds with ravenous eyes surged the stage and swarmed Papa, their hands eager for a touch of his garment. I wanted to join them but knew that it wouldn’t be proper. So my hands clapped themselves raw from the fourth row until the residue of last summer’s memories was wiped clean.

  * * *

  Later that night, in the darkness of the bedroom, a loud groan came from Hannah’s bed—a strained sound like someone was pressing on her chest and forcing air out of her lungs. Then the mattress squeaked, and I rushed to the side of her bed. Her limbs stiffened, her back arched, and her body bucked on the mattress. The blanket that had once been wrapped around her so tightly was now loose.

  “Ma! Papa!” As I yelled into the darkness of the unfamiliar room, I peered at the fluorescent-green numbers on the wall clock—11:51. The thump of my heart ricocheted in my chest and ears as I knelt next to her writhing body. I willed myself to keep my eyes open rather than closing them to mutter the first words of a prayer. Praying during seizures had become a ritual of sorts since Hannah was a baby, even though my prayers had morphed from asking God to heal her to asking Him to lessen her pain instead.

  Froth bubbled around her lips and the back of her throat emitted a gurgling sound. When the gurgle receded, she opened her mouth wide and gasped like she was drowning. Her eyes fluttered open and the pupils fixated on one spot of the ceiling. Her arms flopped against the cartoon character sheets. Still 11:51.

  The lights flooded on, and Ma was next to me; her body made a barrier to keep Hannah from falling off the bed. Papa rushed to Hannah’s headboard, his arms and chest exposed in a scoop-neck tank top that I probably wasn’t supposed to see. The gold herringbone chain, a birthday gift from Ma a few years ago, was tangled in a thicket of chest hai
r. I averted my eyes as he cinched his robe.

  “There there, Hannah,” Ma’s voice soothed as Hannah bucked in the sheets. I stood silent vigil, afraid even to disturb the air. No one would say it out loud, but we were superstitious when it came to Hannah’s seizures. During a seizure, Ma kneaded her hands as though to shorten the duration of each violent movement while I held my breath until my lungs burned. Papa stood by the head of her bed and extended his hands above her—a different healing motion than he had used during that night’s revival. Since we weren’t allowed to touch her, he moved his arms in intersecting circles above her body, almost like he was massaging the air. He lowered his head, and Ma and I lowered ours reflexively. But he didn’t pray, at least not out loud.

  In the silence, I peeked over at the clock—11:54. Time stood still, interminable, dragging out every gesture into an excruciating saga. A line of watery blood mixed with saliva escaped from Hannah’s mouth as her jaw clenched and her head thrashed on her pillow. A particularly powerful jolt shot her inches above the bed; her flexed body was a straight line above the sheets, and her limp neck flopped at an awkward angle as she collapsed back to the mattress. Her limbs went slack, and her bucking slowed. Then her eyes rolled to the front of their sockets and she fixed them on us. As the haze cleared, she must have seen the three of us—Papa’s closed eyes and dipped chin, Ma’s kneading hands, my eyes darting from the clock back to her back to the clock.

  “It’s over,” I pronounced the definitive words.

  “It wasn’t such a bad one,” Ma said.

  “Praise God,” Papa’s reply.

  When Hannah’s movements had finally stopped and her breathing had returned to normal, Ma sat in a nearby chair, pulling Hannah’s limp body off the bed and into her chest. Hannah was finally still, except for Ma’s rocking. My feet didn’t want to move from where they were planted on the carpet, but I took one step toward them, and then another. Soon I was crouched next to Ma, one hand on Hannah’s back. With my faded pajama sleeve, I wiped away the viscous saliva mixture: first from Hannah’s mouth and then from Ma’s collarbone. Ma blinked her thanks.