Holy Ghost Girl

by Donna M. Johnson

  Bright light washed across every surface of the kitchen. Shiny enameled stove and round-shouldered fridge, pale no-color countertops, cabinets with peeling white paint, faded linoleum traced with indecipherable patterns. My mother stood on one side of the stove, hand on her hip, stirring a cast-iron fryer full of tomato gravy. The light blurred and softened the strong features of her face and brought out the red and gold in her hair. On the other side of the stove stood Laverne. She flipped one strip of bacon, then another, jumping as the grease popped and splattered, laughing at the brief, sharp pain, so ordinary and expected. Betty Ann faced the counter, cutting into biscuits with a wooden handled knife and spreading butter, then fig preserves into the warm, flaky centers.

  She let go that deep, throaty laugh, then whipped around to Mama and Laverne. “The steak!”

  Mama dropped the long-handled spoon into the gravy and knelt in front of the oven broiler. “Laverne, hand me that hot pad.” She pulled out the pan with smoking meat and placed it on the counter in front of Betty Ann. “A burnt offering.” They laughed, voices mingling in a loose, rough harmony.

  “Hey, can we get some of that food? We got a hungry man over here.” Brother Cotton’s voice drew my attention to the table where Brother Terrell sat, elbows propped on the round white table, a fork in one fist, knife in the other, a shiny white platter in front him. The haggard quality his face had assumed during the fast was softened by an eager, boyish grin. He turned that smile on the women and they giggled and bumped around, placing platters loaded with bacon and sausage, biscuits, eggs, and toast onto the table. Bowls of tomato gravy, cream gravy, and grits oozing with butter followed. The sun streamed through windows and across the table, catching on mason jars filled with honey in the comb, strawberry preserves, and fig preserves, turning them into jewels of light. Pam sat beside her daddy, beaming her big snaggletoothed smile at him. Something bubbled over on the stove and Mama scolded herself. I stood in the doorway, taking it all in: Brother Terrell, the light, all that food.

  “Well, Miss Priss, are you going to stand there all day or do you think you might eat?” Mama held up a plate. I walked over and sat across from Pam.

  Brother Terrell waved the women over. “Let’s bow our heads and pray together.”

  Laverne stood behind Brother Cotton’s chair while Mama and Betty Ann flanked Brother Terrell. Mama bit at her lips and Betty Ann twisted a dish towel. Laverne placed her hands on her husband’s shoulders.

  Brother Terrell dropped his head and prayed. “Father, we thank thee for this food. Bless it to the nourishment of our bodies, and bless the hands that prepared it. Oh Lord, we ask that you would be with us. We ask that you would enable our bodies to accept and use this food, so that we might be strengthened, Lord, to do the work that thou hast given us to do . . .” His voice grew softer as the prayer progressed until I couldn’t hear him at all.

  The clock ticked. The coffee perked. Brother Cotton cleared his throat. No one wanted to disturb Brother Terrell’s prayer, even when he wasn’t saying a word. I opened one eye to see what was going on. Mama’s, Betty Ann’s, and Laverne’s heads were bowed. Pam’s eyes were squeezed shut. Brother Cotton’s head was tucked so low his chin almost rested on his chest. Brother Terrell’s eyes were open and he was chewing a biscuit and licking his lips. My mouth fell open and I looked right at him.

  He winked at me, put the biscuit on his plate, and spoke. “Brother Cotton, when you’re done praying, could you pass the bacon?”

  It was his old joke. Somehow we had forgotten it, or maybe we were glad to play along again. Betty Ann popped him with the dish towel. “David, you’re a mess.”

  He spooned a lake of grits onto his platter, flipped three over-easy eggs on top, and stirred it all together. He shoveled a tablespoon into his mouth and didn’t put the spoon down until he scraped the platter.

  Mama’s brow furrowed. “Maybe you should slow down a bit.”

  “Jesus released me from the fast and told me to eat. Bless God, I’m eating.”

  Mama exhaled a long-suffering sigh. “Maybe Jesus expects you to use wisdom.”

  Betty Ann put one hand on Brother Terrell’s shoulder. “Honey, you ready for this steak?” In her other hand she held a platter on which rested a piece of meat bigger than her face.

  Pam chimed in. “Yeah, Daddy, you want that steak?”

  Betty Ann forked the meat onto his platter and he added bacon, a sausage patty, and two more biscuits covered with Mama’s tomato gravy. He chewed through it all, mouth open, slowing down only to sop the leftover grease, butter, and egg yolk with two more biscuits.

  A whoop came from the doorway. “Daddy, you’re eating!” Randall jogged to the table, belly swaying. “We thought God was gonna take you.” He stood by his dad and draped an arm about his shoulders.

  “I thought he was, too, son. Guess he ain’t done with me yet.” He let go a long, satisfied belch.

  “Y’all got some cream to go in that coffee I smell? I ain’t had coffee in months.”

  “I’ll get it, Daddy.” Pam jumped up and dragged her chair to the counter. She climbed onto the chair, lifted the percolator with both hands, filled the cup, and with slow, measured steps, walked it to her father. Brother Terrell flashed her a smile and took the cup. He scooped spoonful after spoonful of sugar into the coffee and poured in the cream. He lifted the cup to his nose and breathed in the aroma, took a long slurp, and set the mostly empty cup back down.

  His eyes rolled back in his head and he drew a deep breath of satisfaction. “I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  The next instant, Brother Terrell opened his eyes wide and pointed toward the living room. “My God, my God. It’s an angel of the Lord, right here in this house.” His voice was a whisper.

  A small figure stood in a shaft of light that poured through the living-room window.

  It was Gary. Mama and Laverne groaned.

  Brother Terrell slapped his knees and laughed. “I had y’all that time.”

  Gary moved toward us, rubbing his eyes. “What? What?”

  Mama stretched out her arms. “It’s nothing. Come here, honey.”

  He toddled over to her. I cupped my hand over my mouth and leaned toward Randall. “He don’t look like no angel to me.”

  Unsettled by the attention, Gary asked again, “What?”

  Mama glared at me and reached down to pick him up. “It’s okay, honey. Brother Terrell said you were an angel.”

  A big grin spread across my three-year-old brother’s face. “An angel.”

  Mama picked the sleep from Gary’s eyes. “Let’s go wash your face.”

  Mama stepped into the living room with Gary on her hip as Brother Terrell cleared his throat. It was what he always did when he had something important to say. “Listen, I need to tell y’all something. Carolyn, can you come on back in here? In the trailer last night, I had a vision.”

  Mama let Gary slide down her body until his feet touched the floor. Three quick steps and she was back in the kitchen. Betty Ann turned off the water at the sink, dried her hands, and drifted back to the table, pushing her hair out of her eyes. Laverne set the dirty dishes she had gathered on the counter.

  Brother Terrell looked at me, Pam, and Randall. “You kids go on and play now. We need to talk.”

  “But Daddy . . .”

  Betty Ann cut Randall off. “You heard your daddy, Randall. Now get dressed and go outside. All of you.”

  As the four of us left the kitchen, I heard Brother Terrell say, “Jesus stood in my room last night.”

  We shivered in a miserable little huddle on the tiny patch of a front porch. The gray mud of our yard oozed into the lighter brown mud of the dirt road that ran past our house and four other unpainted houses, and dead-ended at a dark, soupy field. Pam looked around. “What in the world are we gonna do?” It was cold and everything was still wet from last night’s rain. There was no dry place to sit or play.

  Randall sighed, and his swollen be
lly strained at the fabric of his thin plaid cotton shirt. “Well, if there’s nothing else to do, I guess we could play husbands and wives again.” His tone was regretful, as if he had exhausted all other possibilities.

  Pam allowed herself one comment. “You are a nasty boy.” She pointed across the street to the last house on the road. “I saw some kids there the other day. We could ask them to play.”

  Randall shook his head no. “Them’s worldly kids.”

  There were many reasons to avoid the unsaved. First of all, they were dangerous. Their picture-show-watching, ball-playing, honkytonking ways might tempt us from the straight and narrow. Second of all, they made us uncomfortable. Everything about outsiders—their clothes, speech, habits—seemed to belittle us, and that put us on the defensive. Mama mimicked the speech of the store clerks and bank tellers we encountered: “Oh mah. What dahling children. So smaht.” There was only one way to be in the world, one right way anyhow, and that was the way we were. Even local churchgoers with their smooth ways were suspect. They might be saved, but they were lukewarm at best, unwilling to make the required sacrifices. It was just a matter of time before God spewed them out of his mouth. These prejudices, spoken and unspoken, gave me, Pam, Randall, and Gary license to treat outsiders however we wanted, though I’m not sure the grown-ups would have seen it that way. If some local kid raised an eyebrow at the goings-on under the tent, we stalked and harassed them for the rest of the revival. Their brains would be splattered on the highway for making fun of God’s anointing. The devil would deep-fry them in a vat of boiling oil. Sores would cover their bodies and they would burn forever. We pronounced their doom in solemn oracular tones, and if they tried to defend themselves, we invited them to step out from under the tent to settle things. I was too scrawny and way too chicken to fight, and Gary was too young. That left the Terrell kids to wage our battles, and they usually won.

  Pam walked to the side of the house and came back with an empty bucket. She scooped mud into the bucket with her hand and stirred it with a stick. She wiped her hands on her dress and looked at me thoughtfully. “Let’s play soda shop. We need some glasses.”

  The back door opened and out came Brother Cotton. “You kids having fun?”

  A chorus of “uh-huh”s affirmed our fun. Randall walked toward him. “Y’all done praying?”

  “No, son. I’m just going over to the tent to cancel the morning and afternoon services, so we can spend the day in prayer with your daddy.”

  Pam looked up at Brother Cotton and smiled. “Would you get some glasses for us?”

  “How many do you want, honey?”

  “Just four.”

  He stepped inside and brought out four of our best glasses, no questions asked. I realized for the umpteenth time how different life would be if I had dimples.

  Pam picked up the bucket. “Come on, Donna. Let’s play like we’re making chocolate milkshakes.”

  We mixed the mud in the pail until it had the right consistency and the right color and poured it into a glass. Pam wiped the sides with the hem of her dress and held it up. “Just like the chocolate malts from the A&W.”

  Randall took the glass. “That gives me an idea. Those kids at the end of the street? Let’s tell ’em these are real milkshakes and see if they’ll drink ’em.”

  Randall dispatched Gary and me to bring the kids to our soda shop. “They’ll trust y’all ’cause you’re about their age.”

  We found them, a boy and girl, sitting on the edge of their porch, hands propped on their knees as if waiting for something to do to come up and grab them by the hand. Gary called hi, but neither of them answered. We walked to the bottom of the steps and looked up at them. I made a megaphone of my hands and called, “My brother said hey. Can’t y’all hear?”

  The girl nodded yes.

  “We got chocolate milkshakes. Wanna come over?”

  They nodded. Neither of them said anything on the walk to our house. I asked the girl if they were idiots and she shook her head no.

  “Well, is your brother a deaf-mute?” Again she shook her head no.

  “If he is, you could bring him to the revival and get him healed. You know about the revival?”

  She nodded yes, but I didn’t believe her. “Do you know you’ll go to hell for lying?” She didn’t have time to answer because by then we were approaching our front stoop. Gary ran and took a seat on the bottom step as Pam stood and held up a glass of chocolate mud.

  “Y’all want a milkshake?”

  The girl didn’t move but her brother nodded eagerly and took the glass. He brought the glass to his face, hesitated, then took a big, greedy drink. Gary and I fell in the mud laughing. Randall laughed so hard he had to lean against the house. The boy began to retch.

  Pam jumped from the porch and bent over him. “I think he’s really sick, y’all.”

  The boy’s sister didn’t flinch. Pam glared at her. “Girl, I said your brother’s sick. Get over here and help him.”

  Randall grabbed a glass and headed for the faucet at the back of the house. He brought back a glass of clear water and held it up to the boy. Pam took the glass and put it to the boy’s lips. He wouldn’t look at her.

  “Rinse your mouth out. It’s not a trick this time. Really.” He sipped just enough water to wash his mouth out. Pam rubbed his back with her free hand. The girl wedged herself between Pam and her brother. She pulled him up by the hand and they walked across the yard. Randall scurried after them. “Hey. We’re sorry. We didn’t mean nothing. Can’t we be friends? Come on, now.”

  They walked down the middle of road and turned into their yard. Pam figured if they were going to tell on us, they would head straight into the house. We were relieved when they sank back down on the porch instead. Randall sloshed water from the pail across the steps and washed the mud away.

  “There’s no telling what some people will do,” he said. “Just no telling.”

  The Brother Terrell who took the platform that night was a scythe, a blade beveled and honed so that all that remained was the thin quick edge of purpose. He was the will of God personified. He took the microphone from Brother Cotton, clipped it around his neck, and the audience went still. He moved to the pulpit and we moved with him. He inhaled and expectation rose in our chests. He exhaled and we hung there, waiting.

  The preachers’ heads turned in unison as he paced. They had arrived early to stake out seats on the stage, eager for their congregants to know they were associated with Brother Terrell. Privately, some said his popularity wouldn’t, couldn’t last long. His lack of education caused him to make wild, improbable claims about the nature of God, the Bible, and the world in general. Besides, rumors of marital infidelities had surfaced. It was only a matter of time. Midway across the platform, Brother Terrell stopped and stared at the preachers, without speaking. After a couple of minutes, they began to cross and uncross their legs. A nervous chuckle passed among them.

  He rubbed his forehead as if trying to banish a particularly troubling thought, then turned to face the audience. “I broke my fast this morning.” The audience and the preachers applauded.

  Brother Terrell did not smile. “Some of you may not be clapping when I finish here tonight. Some of you may be running for cover.

  “I broke my fast because Jesus appeared in my trailer last night. He touched me here, in the palms of my hands.”

  He held up both hands. “Jesus said, ‘If I be lifted up, I’ll draw all men to me.’ He said he was bringing a great revival to the earth, a revival that would not be corrupted . . .”

  He dropped his hands, picked up the microphone around his neck, and turned back to the preachers. “. . . A revival that would not be corrupted by the churches. The Pentecostal revival that began on Azusa Street back in the twenties has lost its fire. People ain’t getting healed like they use to. They ain’t getting delivered like they use to.”

  He kept an even, rhythmic pace, the delivery of his words timed to his steps, his right hand
striking the air for emphasis. “Why? Because you preachers are more interested in buildings and comfort and glory than you are in preaching the truth.”

  He stood in front of them. “Don’t you wag your heads at me. Don’t you cross your arms like it ain’t true.” He walked up to one of the ministers and threw open the man’s crossed arms. “You know it’s true!” He gestured back at the audience. “They know it’s true! And I’m telling you God knows it, too, and he’s tired of it!” The audience rose in sections as he spoke until every person was standing and clapping.

  The preachers sat slack-jawed, arms at their side, legs open at the knees. Some of these men were from the local churches, some from farther afield. They clearly didn’t like what they were hearing. Evangelists often employed a shake-’em-up, wake-’em-up strategy in dealing with organized religion. It was part of their role and everyone expected it. But this unrestrained animosity was something else. Brother Terrell had no mercy and showed no signs of relenting.

  “Jesus told me he’s sending a revival the likes of which the earth has never seen. He showed me a vision of a revival where people speak the Word and missing arms and legs grow back.”

  He stepped off the platform, walked down the prayer ramp, and stood level with the audience. He raised both hands and looked up. Light bathed his face and hands.