“Actually, I have to do most of my praying on my own time,” I said. “You go ahead. I’ll see her when you’re finished.”
She turned back from closing the door and eyed me skeptically. “You don’t want to pray with us?” Her question was filled with accusation and disdain.
“Well, I-”
“Listen,” she interrupted. “Your mother’s under the attack of Satan. She needs prayer warriors now more than ever. She has become a precious saint and this whole thing is just Satan trying to snatch her life.”
I nodded as she spoke, but I didn’t say anything.
“What?” she asked angrily. “You don’t agree? I can’t get an amen from a supposed-to-be preacher?”
“Actually,” I said. “Her condition is the direct result of her actions. Not the work of the devil. As unpleasant as it is, in truth, she’s reaping what she’s sown, and I believe that it is to her benefit to deal with the reality of what she’s done and what she’s experiencing because of it. She needs our compassion, but love doesn’t involve lying to her or supporting her in denying her responsibility.”
She shook her head, her face scrunching again, this time as if she smelled a bad odor. “My God,” she said. “No wonder we’re in the shape we’re in, when preachers are so deceived. Do you know anything about spiritual warfare?”
“Lady, I’m a recovering alcoholic,” I said. “I know all about spiritual warfare.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Do you know how to bind and loose the enemy? Do you have the Gifts of the Spirit?”
“I-”
“I bet you don’t even speak in tongues,” she said and turned and waddled down the hallway to my mother’s sickroom.
I went to the kitchen to wait. While I was there, I noticed how dirty it was. Dishes were piled in the sink, plates of discarded food lined the counter, and the kitchen table was covered with letters and bills.
I began to clean.
Sister Bertha prayed long enough for me to clean nearly the entire kitchen. Her prayers were loud and demanding, formal and austere. She addressed God, the Devil, demons, and even cancer, though my mom’s condition was cirrhosis of the liver. She also prayed against her “blind and deceived family” and rebuked us for being a hindrance to her healing. When she was finished, she paraded out of the house without saying a word to me.
I continued to clean the kitchen long after Bertha had left. She disturbed me, and her irresponsible, judgmental religion left me angry and embarrassed. I was certain that her pseudo-spiritual, superstitious cocktail was eating away at Mother’s soul. When my anger had subsided, I walked down the long hall that awaits every son, to the room where my mother faced her mortality like the single raised finger of a Ferris wheel operator signaling that only one rotation remained on the ride of her life.
I quietly entered the room where I found her sleeping, and sank into the chair beside her bed. I studied her face as if seeing it for the first time. The gravitational pull of desperation in her eyes was held in by her heavy lids, and I could examine what was normally too painful. It was the guilt and pain she felt when she looked at me that hurt me most.
Her stress-creased face radiated a calm glow, and the corners of her mouth were turned up in a small pleasant smile. She looked peaceful. She looked only vaguely familiar. Perhaps I had been wrong about Sister Bertha. Perhaps I had been guilty of judging her for judging me. She must have been doing some good-she must have wanted the same thing I did.
My head fell into my hands and I began to pray… for Mom, and for her son, who needed forgiveness once again. After a while, I sensed she was looking at me, and I looked up to see the wide-eyed, adoring face of a mother-one I didn’t recognize as my own-gazing at me lovingly. I looked away for a moment. I was used to the glazed, out-of-focus gaze, the bobbing-head, confused leer, but not the compassion only a mother was capable of.
When I looked back, she asked, “Were you praying for me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “And for me.”
“For you?” she asked. “Why?”
“Because I’m quick to judge and slow to learn.”
“No, you’re not,” she said, and I got the impression she thought I was talking about her. “Why didn’t you pray out loud?”
“I didn’t want to wake you,” I said. “But I probably will before I go, if you will allow me to.”
“Allow you to?” she said, shaking her head. “Allow you to? I’m your mother, John. Don’t be so bashful. You don’t have to ask me if you can pray for me. You act as if I’m a stranger.”
I could tell by the quick flash of pain in her eyes that she had read my thoughts. “In a lot of ways we are strangers, Mom, and you know it. We really don’t know the people we’ve become.”
“Well, you’ve become a man of God,” she said.
I shook my head.
“Don’t,” she said and reached for my head. “I mean it. You’ve got to get more bold about your faith, that’s all… like Bertha. I want you to lay your hands on me and cast out this foul demon of sickness.”
“Mom,” I said slowly, my mouth suddenly dry, my tongue thick. “I don’t think it is a demon.”
“You don’t?” she asked, her face narrowing into a concerned question. “Not the attack of the enemy?”
I shook my head.
Her face clouded over, but I could tell she was still focusing, contemplating.
“It’s like sobriety,” I said. “We’re all responsible for our own. No one else can be. Or my divorce. Do you know how much I would like to say that Susan had a demon.” I laughed. “Or how I would like to blame her or someone or something else. No. I’ve got to take responsibility for me, for my part, for my actions.”
She began to cry.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Are you trying to hurt me?” she asked in a soft, wounded voice. “To pay me back?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I need you to go right now,” she said. Her voice was firm, but not mean.
“Can I pray for you?”
She shook her head.
I nodded, and slowly walked out of the room. I was three steps down the hall when I realized what I needed to do. But it was ten steps before I was able to do it. I stopped, turned, and went back to her bedroom.
“Would you like for me to call Sister Bertha for you, Mom?”
CHAPTER 33
“Bobby Earl’s in serious financial trouble,” Dad said. “At least he was until Nicole was killed.”
I had stopped by Dad’s on my way home from work, and as usual, found him in the corral behind his house feeding his cows. In addition to being a sheriff, Dad had, as of late, become a cowboy, transforming his five-acre lot into a small farm and having more fun than he had had in years.
“He had a life insurance policy of a million dollars on her,” he added.
I shook my head, anger spiking anew inside me.
“So far there doesn’t seem to be any mob connection, but he’s got money problems of the magnitude that make a person impetuous.”
“His TV show doesn’t bring in-”
“That’s just it,” he said, “it brings in shiploads. So it’s going somewhere. Either it’s being grossly mismanaged or he’s got an addiction or he is laundering it for the mob.”
Where’s all the money going? I wondered.
“And get this,” he said. “He’s hired a high-powered attorney to file a wrongful death suit against the State of Florida for a few more million.”
