by Monica West
The bulbs in the tent made an electric crackle overhead that was only matched by the low din of people’s voices as they filtered inside. I could barely sit still as people filed into the tent, whispering polite hellos to one another, asking about children, and fanning themselves with programs before finding their seats. The humid air breathed sweltering puffs into the spaces where the revival tent didn’t close.
The lights dimmed and people shuffled into their seats. The choir began with “Amazing Grace,” one of Papa’s favorites, as they marched into the tent in a single-file line. Papa, wearing a new gray suit he’d bought the week before, walked up: his slow, sure steps lingered several paces behind the black-clad choir as they swayed down the aisle. He lifted his hand to greet people, smiling as flashes from the congregation’s cameras and cell phones flickered. He walked up to the stage and took his seat. From high up, he must have noticed that this was the biggest crowd of the season so far.
When Papa stood up to begin the sermon, he looked confident. He loosened his tie and asked the congregation to turn with him to Matthew 24. My tongue went limp in the bottom of my dry mouth as I flipped to the chapter about the end of days. This was a brand-new sermon that he hadn’t preached in the past two cities, and he never deviated from the sermon order during revivals. This must have been what he’d been so busy coming up with since I’d told him I healed Ma.
“The message for today is about the end of days—the signs that God has given us to show that the end is near. The Scripture talks about wars, famines, and earthquakes. These are all things that will precede His triumphant return. But He also warns us about something more insidious—a threat from within the church.”
Papa paused and drummed his fingers on the podium as the congregation gasped—the reaction that he must have been waiting for. People nodded as he lifted a water bottle and placed it to his lips, earlier in the sermon than he normally did. Why is he doing this tonight? What does he know? My heartbeat got louder, drowning out his echoing words. Maybe this was a sign that I should abandon my plan. It wasn’t too late to call it off. No one would have to know. But I shook the thought away as quickly as it entered. I had to do this. Papa was a consummate performer—he didn’t know anything at all. I dried my sweaty palms on my skirt and inhaled as he continued preaching.
“Another sign of the end of days is that false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you not to accept the false prophecy of infidels who claim to have gifts of the Holy Spirit. Don’t believe them! They are not sent from God.” His eyes searched the congregation and zeroed in on me in the fourth row.
My cheeks bristled under his gaze as cheers and applause trickled through the tent. I pressed my hands on my legs to stop them from moving. Would the same cheers come for me when I healed Hannah before their eyes? I leaned into Hannah’s warmth as Papa walked from one side of the stage to the other, his voice rising and falling as he preached about staying firm in the word of the Lord during the end times. Hannah swung her legs in the chair like she was propelling herself in a swing, and my eyes traveled down to the braces that must have pinched her exposed skin. Ma looked over—Hannah’s moving chair had started to become a distraction. I placed my hand on Hannah’s kneecap; as she turned her face to me, her legs calmed.
Papa was on the ground among the audience—a sign that the sermon was winding down. My pulse quickened at the thought of what would happen in just a couple of moments. I leaned toward Hannah, and she inched closer to me.
“I’m going to heal you,” I whispered for the first time since the day months earlier in the tub. Back then, it had seemed like the time would never come, but as Papa brought his sermon to a close, we were minutes away.
“The end of days is coming, brothers and sisters. We are in the midst of wars and famines, of natural disasters and people turning their backs on the Lord in record numbers. Get right with the Lord. The first way to do that is to give your life to Him—a God whose back is never turned to us.”
Amen.
“A God who is with us during every trial. A God who is standing next to you when you bury a spouse or a child. A God who is with you during unemployment, during unimaginable heartbreak.”
Amen.
“He will never leave you or forsake you, even in the midst of your test. That God is faithful and just to cleanse you of sin and forgive you of all unrighteousness. Be strong in your faith, brothers and sisters.”
While the congregation whooped and stood, I closed my eyes and wrapped myself in the promise of those words. I had been taught to believe each verse in the Bible—Ma and Papa liked to joke that the first words out of my mouth had been Scripture. I remembered sitting at the kitchen table when I was eight, the typeface and glossy images of my children’s illustrated Bible swimming in my brain as I had tried to commit Joshua 1:5 to memory. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. As the last words had escaped my lips in the empty room, a prickly sensation shot down my spine. I turned around, prepared to yell at Caleb for trying to scare me, but no one was standing behind me. Looking to distract myself from the fear, I repeated the verse, and, as the words left my lips, my fear seemed to leave with them. God’s presence filled the space around me—it was the paradox of faith that Papa talked about—we go through this world alone, but God is always with us. Suddenly, I knew that the same God who had been with me when I was eight and every day afterward was looking down on me in the tent right now.
“Can everyone please rise? Christ is the door to eternal life, brothers and sisters. He is standing at the door to your heart, knocking. Let Him in and allow Him to change your life. The doors of the church are open.”
For several moments, no one moved. I wanted this section to speed up, for Papa to move on to the healing so that it could be my turn. Maybe no one was going to come forward today for deliverance, but that was unlikely. A moment later, one woman from the back of the church—her arms folded over large breasts—walked slowly to the front. Then more people stood up, and soon, around thirty people followed her up to the front of the tent to give their lives to God. After Papa welcomed them into the kingdom, it was time for healing.
“Brothers and sisters, are you ready to be healed?” Before he finished the sentence, lines of men and women gathered in the aisle. Papa moved through the line, his confidence building with each healing. I patted my pocket with the holy oil in it before closing my eyes and whispering a prayer. “Lord, let me be an instrument of Your will. Amen.”
Forty-five minutes after the healing part of service had started, the line had dwindled to two people—a man who towered over Papa, and a woman Ma’s age who cradled a wailing infant. After Papa’s healing words, the tall man sank to the ground like a felled tree in an exaggerated flourish. Papa got to the end of the line and traced a tiny cross on the baby’s forehead.
“People of God, all have been healed.” He walked back up the steps to the makeshift pulpit. The keyboardist started the closing anthem. The crowd stood and cheered for the people whose ailments, visible and invisible, they thought Papa had cured. I stood too, but not to cheer.
It was time.
Ma’s eyes were closed, her chin tilted toward the ceiling with Isaac asleep in her lap. I stepped into the aisle and reached my hands out to Hannah. She grabbed hold, and I pulled her to a standing position. When she was on her feet, she braced her body. She knew something was wrong—no one was walking down the aisle now. Ma opened her eyes and lunged for us in the aisle, but she was too late: her closing fist clutched air.
“C’mon, Hannah,” I chided. “It’s time.” People around us cheered as Hannah and I took slow steps toward the front. With my arm around her back, I supported most of her weight. She kept her eyes on me, pleading for an explanation. I looked away from her and toward the pulpit where Papa’s eyes narrowed behind the thin barrier of his glasses. He sucked air into his cheeks as his chest heaved. The keyboardist stopped mi
d-chord, and the cheering that had just been deafening faded into silence.
Without music, my feet shuffled down the aisle in time with Hannah’s. Neither of us had ever been this close during one of his services; the whole production looked so large from where we were standing. The speakers onstage, now silent, seemed to pulse—maybe it was the remnants of percussion or maybe it was the rushing of blood between my ears as Papa made his way over to us.
I had rehearsed this moment over and over—I had to grab the microphone and tell the congregation that I was going to heal Hannah. A moment of silence hung in the air. Papa’s eyes tried to read my intentions while Hannah stood between us, her legs becoming less steady with every second. I reached for the microphone from Papa’s hand, and it hit the ground as I grabbed it. All the excitement and strength that I felt back in the audience was fading, like a star exploding—bright against the dark sky at first and then diminishing to nothing. Fumbling in my dress pocket for the elusive bottle of holy oil, my fingers finally landed on the rounded plastic. It tumbled out of my hand in slow motion, hurtling through the air, and the top came off as it landed. A pool of viscous vegetable oil leaked from the open spout and glistened on the grass, inching ever closer to Papa’s shiny shoe.
Papa fumbled in the grass for the microphone. Time lengthened as he stayed crouched; when he rose, he massaged both clean-shaven cheeks with a trembling left hand. But it wasn’t just his hands that were shaking: everything on him shook as he exhaled heavy, amplified breaths into the tent.
“Brethren, it appears that we have a special healing this evening. My daughter Hannah.” Papa cleared his throat. He took one step closer to Hannah. “How many of you are ready for one more miracle?”
The congregation erupted in thunderous applause.
“When Hannah was born, the doctors told us that she was stricken with cerebral palsy and would never walk without crutches.”
Though I knew this about Hannah, no one had ever said it out loud, much less over a booming microphone to a group of strangers. I pulled her closer to me, and she resisted.
“But, saints of God, do we believe that report?” Papa continued.
“No,” the congregation asserted in unison.
“Saints of God, do we believe that report?” Papa asked again.
“No.” The congregation was much louder this time, their voices threatening to send the roof of the tent careening into the sky.
Papa dropped to his knees next to Hannah, encircling her arched back with his arm. Hannah relaxed her neck onto his shoulder, and he pressed his lips against her forehead. Then he whispered something into her ear that I couldn’t hear. Maybe he told her that he loved her, or that he was sorry that he couldn’t heal her when she was a baby. Or a mixture of the two.
Papa carried Hannah onto the stage like she was a rag doll. No heavier than a sack of sugar, Ma always said whenever she lifted Hannah. I watched from the ground below as, like magic, a bottle of holy oil appeared in his hand.
“Hannah, I believe that the Lord can heal your body. Do you believe?”
Hannah’s body grew rigid in Papa’s arms as she nodded in response to his question. With her head cocked back, Papa traced a sign of the cross on her forehead. He laid her on the ground with her weight resting on her forearms. She looked around, confused, at the people in the congregation who were staring at her. Her right eye probably saw them in crisp colors and shapes while her left eye saw them in grades of shadow and light. Then she turned to me on the ground below, powerless to rescue her.
“Rise up and walk, my child.” Everyone was Papa’s child when he did a healing, but his words felt more tender now, like this was the first time he meant them. Hannah balanced herself on her forearms and pulled herself forward, the way she did when she played with Tiger. She had moved about an inch, but a Red Sea of turf separated her from Papa. She should have been on her feet by now, or at least trying to get there. Her scissoring legs cut the fake plastic grass, but she didn’t rise.
“Rise up and walk, my child.” Sweat dropped from Papa’s forehead as he leaned closer to her, as if the words themselves would be sufficient to bring her to her feet. Hannah continued her slow crawl, closer and closer to him.
“Congregation, I need your help. The devil is working here. I need you to pray.”
Moans and wails rose from behind us as people stretched out their hands to Papa. The keyboardist plinked the opening chords to another song. Papa flailed his arms like he was losing his balance even though he was on solid ground. It startled Hannah, and she started to cry, burying her face into the ground.
I sprang to the stage, crouching by Hannah’s side. It was against the rules for women to be in the 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 stand.
Lord, make Hannah walk so they can witness Your power. Please. It was more of a plea than a prayer, but I didn’t care. The voice inside my head was fearful, even though I knew that fear was the enemy of faith. The miracle definitely wouldn’t work if I was afraid of failing.