Holy Ghost Girl

by Donna M. Johnson

  Our lives were a mess, and when the baby was born everything became even messier. There was less sleep, less space, less money, and more arguments, especially when Brother Terrell insisted on naming his new daughter after my mother. Betty Ann agreed, reluctantly I assume, and then called the child by the nickname Tina instead. The adults all seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown. They displayed tremors in their hands with solemnity and pride.

  “Look at that,” they said, holding their hands out at right angles to their bodies. “My nerves are shot.” Nervousness was a badge of honor; why, I never figured out, but it carried over to us kids. When Pam and I argued with Randall or resisted his schemes in any way, he held his hand out and told us we were turning him into a nervous wreck. He played up the tremble to win our sympathy, but when he held a pencil or spread peanut butter on bread, I could see that his hands really did shake. I faked a quiver in my fingers on occasion, but Randall outed me. My insides were another matter. I felt as though we lived our lives on a tightrope and that at any moment the baby would cry unexpectedly or Gary would wet his pants or Pam or I would argue too loudly and everything, everyone, would fall to the ground. It didn’t take a divine revelation to figure out something had to change.

  We were in revival in some nameless town that was like every other town we passed through. The evening service was long over, and I lay half-asleep under the tent, stretched out across two or three folding chairs, head to toe with Pam. My mother and Betty Ann sat in the row in front of us, talking with a group of believers under the floodlights that hung from one of the center poles. Gary slept on a pallet with Baby Tina beside him. Randall had disappeared as usual, but no one worried about him; he always showed up before it was time to go home. The adults talked endlessly, and I was lulled by the rise and fall of familiar voices discussing topics that should have been harrowing but had become comforting in their familiarity.

  “You know Brother Terrell says communism is about to spread all over Central America and into Mexico.”

  “He had those visions of tanks rolling into the US from Mexico.”

  “If we’re gonna do something for God, we got to do it quick.”

  A hum of voices agreed. “Uh-huh. Yes, we do.”

  Several different conversations split off from the main one: talk of Brother Terrell’s fast, money, faith, the lack of faith. I sought out Mama’s low, reassuring voice. “We’re planning to go to Central America next year.” I was wide-awake.

  “Sister Johnson, my heart goes out to those people.”

  “Brother Terrell says he wants to start a Bible school down there.”

  “I heard an orphanage too.”

  “He cried the whole time he was in Guatemala last time, seein’ those babies wandering the streets hungry, half-naked with no one to take care of them.”

  The voices took on an urgent tone with everyone talking at once, excited about the prospect of starting a school and an orphanage where those poor kids who didn’t have anyone, not a soul, could live and be taken care of.

  I kept my eyes closed and listened again for my mother. “I wouldn’t mind spending my whole life there. I’ve always dreamed of living in a foreign country and doing missionary work.”

  “What about your kids?”

  I waited.

  “They could live . . . at the orphanage . . . while we traveled and preached . . . and helped the people.” Mama spoke slowly as if awed at how perfectly everything would work out. I sat up and looked around. I wanted to ask, “But wouldn’t that make us orphans too?”

  Someone said, “The Lord always makes a way, doesn’t he?” One of the women who sat close to me reached over and smoothed my hair out of my eyes. Mama smiled. Everyone looked sane.

  I didn’t tell Pam or Randall what I had overheard. Somewhere in the corner of my mind was the half-formed belief that if I never repeated what I had heard, it would never happen.

  Some people said Randall brought the situation on himself by giving his daddy one more problem to worry about. He was only eight, but most of the time he did as he pleased. While his daddy railed from the platform against the evils of sin, Randall hung around the tent with boys as old as twelve and thirteen. You could see them leaning against the parked cars. Some people said they smelled cigarette smoke as they passed by, but Randall denied it. From time to time he went missing from the tent grounds and Dockery or some other hand would find him in a nearby pool hall. He was always in trouble, but unless his parents wanted to whip him all the time, there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.

  As much as Brother Terrell disliked and worried about Randall’s behavior at the tent, I think it was the trouble he gave my mother over his schoolwork that sealed his fate. Mama was one of the few in the evangelistic team with a high-school diploma, so the job of homeschooling Randall fell to her. When it was time to study, she dragged him kicking and screaming from clothes hampers, closets, the tops of trees, and on one occasion, the trunk of his daddy’s car. She said it would take an act of God to teach that boy anything. They only had a few hours between the afternoon and evening services to study, and by the time she found Randall and they sat bent over one of the thin homeschool booklets, it was almost time to go back to church. Mama tried to hurry him through his reading lesson, but Randall couldn’t be rushed. It took him what seemed an eternity to sound out the onesyllable words.

  “G-g-g-ga-o-o, go-oh . . . go.” He pulled and twisted a short hank of hair toward his forehead and studied the ceiling before he returned to the page.

  “. . . T-t-tah—o-oh—mmm. Tah-om?” He dug in his nose and rolled the pickings between his fingers.

  “Tom, Randall. It’s Tom.”

  “Oh.” He slid his finger to the third word and chewed his lip.

  Mama sighed and rolled her eyes toward heaven. “It’s the same as the first word.”

  “Ga-oh?”

  So what does the whole sentence say?”

  “G-g-oh, go, Tah-ah-om . . . g-g . . . hmm . . .”

  Mama’s leg jiggled up and down. “The last word is the same as the first word. What is the first word?”

  “Well, um . . . um . . .”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She grabbed the book off Randall’s lap and sailed it across the room.

  “Go, Tom, go. Go, Tom, go.”

  Randall looked up, earnest and perplexed. “I was just about to say that.”

  Brother Terrell and Betty Ann thought second grade would be easier for everyone if Randall went to school in Villa Rica, Georgia, and lived with his aunt Marie and uncle Raymond. Randall didn’t want it to be easy.

  “I won’t try your patience no more. I’ll be good. Please don’t leave me,” he begged.

  Brother Terrell reasoned with him. “Son, the law says you got to go to school.”

  “But Jesus will come soon, and I won’t need no education.”

  “Son, it’s outta my hands.”

  “But Carolyn can teach me.” He rolled his big, baleful eyes toward my mother.

  “Son, you done wore Sister Johnson plumb out. Now stop arguing, before I wear you out.”

  I experienced my family, the Terrells, and the other members of our nomadic tribe as a single unit, a holistic entity incapable of functioning without each individual. The earlier mention of the orphanage and Randall’s impending exile made it clear that some members could be left behind: the kids. Mama could leave Gary and me, and the life we had lived with her would go on without us. The hot, dusty morning services where time stood still, the blur of the afternoon services, the wild singing and shouting at night, the long drives between revivals. Everything would be the same, but we wouldn’t be there.

  The drive to Villa Rica was miserable. Randall rode in the backseat with Mama, Gary, and me, and his unhappiness took up so much room we couldn’t breathe without brushing up against it. Mama tapped her foot and Randall moaned. I cracked my knuckles and he wailed. Gary tried to make him feel better by offering my Etch A Sketch.


  “Git that thang away. I’m too miserable to play.”

  Betty Ann’s standard warning of, “Randall Terrell, you better straighten up,” started a new round of begging and pleading.

  “Please, Daddy. Don’t leave me. I want to go with you. Mama, make him take me with you. Please, y’all. Please take me with you.” He choked on his words. Pam began to weep softly. Brother Terrell glanced up from the road and looked over at Betty Ann, who looked over her shoulder at Randall, then back at her husband. Randall ratcheted up the crying. That was a mistake.

  The longer and louder he cried, the less we felt sorry for him. His daddy warned him. “Son, I need you to stop crying right now. And I mean right now.” Randall had nothing to lose and he had never minded whippings, so on he wailed. The atmosphere in the car went from sad to mad in a couple of miles, but Randall didn’t notice.

  “I just want to goooooooooo with you. Please. Please. Don’t leave meeeeeeeeee.”

  Mama sighed and rolled her eyes. Brother Terrell doubled his tongue between his lips and hunkered over the steering wheel. Gary and I worked on making ourselves smaller. Any minute now, I thought, any minute. Brother Terrell glared at Randall over his shoulder. “Randall, son, I warn you, I’ve had enough.”

  My mother yelled, “David!” and Brother Terrell turned around in time to jerk the Falcon back into the right lane and miss an oncoming car. Mama threw her arm over Gary and me and kept it there until we bumped to a stop by a weedy water-filled ditch that ran along the side of the road. We sat there at an angle, breathing hard, the car leaning toward the ditch and all of us leaning with it. Mama put her arm down, sighed, and said, “If you’re not careful, you’ll kill us all.”

  Brother Terrell gripped the wheel and stared out the windshield. He seemed calm. Close calls on the highway affected him that way. He accelerated and tried to straighten the car a bit before slipping the gearshift into park and turning off the engine. “Son, why do you leave me no alternative but to whip you?” Randall didn’t have an answer.

  Father and son opened the doors and walked to the back of the car. Randall stretched out his arms and put his hands on the trunk as his daddy unthreaded his belt. Pam mumbled, “He’s gonna get it now.” Mama put her hand on my head and turned my face to the front. My shoulders and neck tensed in anticipation of the first whop of the belt. Brother Terrell pleaded with Randall that he didn’t want to whip him, not today, especially not today. His words receded under the blast of a horn from a passing car. As the horn grew fainter, we heard laughter. No one laughed during a whipping. I whirled around and stared through the rear window. Brother Terrell stood pulling his pants up over his boxers while Randall looked over his shoulder at him, one hand still on the back of the car, the other hand slapping at his thigh over and over. Brother Terrell gripped his pants at the waist and tried to swat Randall with the belt, but he couldn’t stop laughing long enough to take aim. The two of them were laughing as hard as I had ever seen.

  I tugged at my mother’s sleeve. “What’s going on, Mama?”

  She arched her eyebrow. “I’d say God just answered Randall’s prayer.”

  In a moment Brother Terrell and Randall collapsed back into the car, bodies shaking, faces crinkled, wiping tears from their eyes with the backs of their hands. Brother Terrell beat the steering wheel and wheezed. Randall rolled from side to side in the backseat, holding his stomach, gasping for air.

  “Oh, Daddy . . . oh, Lordy . . . Daddy done fasted so much, when he, when he . . . took his belt off, his pants . . . his pants just slipped down on the road.”

  Brother Terrell turned to Betty Ann and took up the story. “You should’a seen that carload of people passed by. Five mouths flew open at once.”

  My mother said, “Next thing you know, they’ll have the law on you for exposure.”

  Brother Terrell started the car. “Randall, I don’t want to hear another word about school. Not another word, or I’ll have your uncle beat the tar out of you with his belt when we get there. He ain’t been fasting.”

  Randall sat quiet for the rest of the trip. When he started to tap his foot too hard, Mama or Betty Ann said, “I feel a whipping coming on, better grab your pants,” and we all laughed a little.

  When Brother Terrell finally turned off the Falcon and announced, “We’re here,” Randall opened the car door, shook his uncle Raymond’s hand, and hugged his aunt Marie. Betty Ann joked that someone had stolen her boy and left this well-behaved child in his place.

  Aunt Marie invited us in, but Brother Terrell said we had to get back on the road and couldn’t stay. Randall asked his daddy for the keys and opened the Falcon trunk. He hoisted a little brown suitcase from the trunk with both hands, then dropped it on the ground and buried his face in Brother Terrell’s concave belly.

  “Son, I’m sorry ’bout this, but I got to preach and you got to go to school.”

  “I know, Daddy. I know.”

  We piled in the car with Randall watching, biting his nails. Brother Terrell turned the key and the engine cleared its throat. I waited for Randall to grab the door handle and run screaming behind us, but he stood there, hands in his pockets, and watched us back the car onto the highway and drive away.

  I thought for a long time that some essential part of Randall had broken when we left him behind, and that it was from that damaged place inside him that the blood issued, the blood that would spurt and seep from his body for the rest of his life. It was an explanation that made sense to a four-year-old, and it continued to feel true long after I was old enough to know better. People said all the time that Sister So-and-So had worried herself sick, that Brother What’s-His-Name had died of a broken heart. Separated from his mother and father, forced to go to school, to become just another kid in a town where no one knew or cared who he was or whose he was, Randall fretted and grieved himself sick. Under the tent, he was David Terrell’s son. Away from the tent, he was nobody, and if there was one thing Randall couldn’t stand, it was being a nobody. Pam and I knew this about him. We knew it in the way kids sniff out the tender areas of one another’s psyches, little gardens of feeling to be skirted or trampled upon, depending on the day and the situation.

  Randall lived in Villa Rica only a few months before the bleeding started. There was no warning that first time, none of the symptoms that later signaled the onset of a hemorrhage. One minute he sat at the kitchen table arguing with Aunt Marie about baths or chores and the next minute he was covered with blood. Not the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb. Not the bloody handprint posted on the doors of the Israelites in the Exodus story, a plea for God to spare the firstborn son inside. The thick dark liquid that erupted from Randall’s lips was death itself. It splattered across the table where he had sat with Aunt Marie and Uncle Raymond every day and thanked God for all his blessings. It hit the wall below the window that looked out on another pristine day and ran in rivers toward the pine slats of the floor. Blood. His blood. Everywhere he looked. Please, God. He pushed up from the table as he did every morning and evening, but he didn’t get far. His foot slipped in one of the dark pools, and down he went. He listed there on his side, a pale little ship in a sea that darkened and widened around him, fed by the stream that burbled from his lips. Outside, a cloud the size of a man’s hand drifted past the window.

  We were in a revival in West Virginia when the news came. Brother Terrell said he knew something was wrong when he opened his eyes that morning, that he felt a weight pressing against him. He ended the morning service early and shook the hands of all the preachers as fast as he could. He asked Brother Cotton to preach the afternoon service, and turned to make his way through the next line of people as he moved toward the camper trailer he kept parked behind the tent.

  “Good to see you. Thank y’all for coming. Later, we’ll talk later.”

  Once the door of the trailer clicked shut behind him, he began to move up and down the tiny corridor. He felt as though something inside him had slipped out of place. There was
nothing to do but pray, and as he prayed, his son’s face came before him. Randall was giving Raymond and Marie fits. Several times a week Brother Terrell fed a bag of change into a pay phone and called the neighbor who lived nearest to his sister and brother-in-law. She ran across the pasture to get Randall and Marie or Raymond, and he called back fifteen or twenty minutes later. His sister and brother-in-law kept him up-to-date on all Randall’s shenanigans. He skipped school and picked fights and no one could do anything with him. He had called that morning to check on Randall, but the neighbor had not answered her phone.

  He prayed all afternoon. Usually after a day of prayer, he felt relieved, purged, but not this time. He tried to read scripture to prepare for the evening service. It was of no use. Reading was hard for him. In fact, the only thing he could read was the Bible, but on this day the letters on the page seemed particularly stubborn and refused to arrange themselves into words. He didn’t know what to do about Randall. He opened the door, stepped out of the trailer, and headed into the tent to preach.

  He had taken the first step up the ladder to the platform when he felt the hand on his arm. He turned and looked into a face filled with concern.

  “Brother Terrell? It’s Randall. He’s real sick. He’s in the hospital in Atlanta.”

  At the edge of the tent, Betty Ann clutched the baby and leaned against one of the poles. Her face crumpled with pain. “Oh, my boy, my boy, my boy.”

  Brother Terrell took her arm. “Let’s get in the car. We got to go to Atlanta.” For the first time in a long time they were in agreement.