Daddy said sometimes Satan had fakes working for him, posing as men of God. He said they’d stage healings, put a well man in a wheelchair, so’s he’d jump right up after the laying on of hands, and claim he got healed.
“Oh, healings can happen real sudden in a service,” Daddy said, “and we’ve seen it with our own eyes, but they always happen in Satan’s services.”
“Why?”
“They fake it so’s they get a following. Word of mouth goes like a rabbit through a forest with his fur on fire. Pretty soon it’s spread for miles and miles and Satan’s man is said to have The Power. Folks will say, ‘I saw him do it. I saw a lame man walk, he did it.’ That’s all you need.”
Even though I’d been saved, I’d never really felt The Power, never got slain in the spirit, either.
There was something, though, I never talked about or told anyone, and that was my dream. I’d had the dream half a dozen times since I was little, always the same.
In it I was watching a speck, just a speck. Then in a light I could hardly look at, it was so bright, the speck would be coming into focus and getting bigger. I’d be trying to keep my eyes open against the terrible glare, to see what the speck was turning into. It’d grow and take a human form, and just before I had to shut my eyes against the brilliance of the light, I’d see myself, bigger than I was, as clear as though it was an enormous me inside a mirror. That was all. I’d wake up. I’d feel real, real good. I’d try to remember more. What was I wearing? Was I smiling? Was there something behind me? It’d all go, fall away, every detail, just when I’d almost see more. I’d lie there in the glow. There was only the glow for a while, and then the glow would go.
Who was I going to tell that to, anyway?
But that dream was mine, like a special secret I had, and if it had to do with the Lord, or the spirit, I didn’t know.
I could feel the church starting to fill once I got into my seat. I got Mrs. Bunch on her walker up toward the front with me, and then I settled back. I shut my eyes awhile. I never liked to look around and try to gauge the crowd, because I hurt to see what was back there, the lame and blind, some sick in their minds so it showed in their eyes, those bent with afflictions, all of it.
I opened my eyes in time to see V. Chicken headed past my row to sit ahead of me two rows.
That was my first glimpse of him.
Once, in the cafeteria at Central High, six or seven of you come to where I was eating my peanut-butter sandwich and plunked yourselves down at the table.
There’s not a one of you knows the way something sinks inside you when you’re about to be picked on. The blood in your veins starts pulsing and you think they could see your heart jumping under your clothes like something small and alive caught under your sweater.
“Opal,” one of you started in, “I hear down at your church you do something called talking in tongues.”
I never said nothing back.
“Can you talk in tongues, Opal?”
“Let’s hear it, Opal.”
“Is it like this, Opal? Cook a look a book a dook a duck.”
“No, it’s more like blocket tockety tookety truck.”
All getting into the act, laughing, speaking gibberish—do you remember that day?
Daddy told me that night, “They was just curious, Opal. Next time tell them calmly how we believe when certain people receive the Holy Spirit they find a mysterious language, described in I Corinthians XII tell ’em, the heavenly language of angels.”
“That’d go over real big,” said Bobby John. “Just keep your mouth shut, Opal. That’s all you can do.”
“Shush. Hush”—Mum. “They don’t know anything down to that high school. Just tell them once your own mum thought the whole idea of tongues was funny as a chicken with its head off until the day she seen the light.”
“Praise the Lord,” said Daddy, who’d rather hear Mum do tongues than anyone at The Hand.
Even I got chills sometimes hearing her, after all this time.
“What neither of you understand,” said Bobby John, “is that them high-school kids aren’t interested in tongues, they’re out to get you!”
“Then get them back!” Daddy shouted. “Don’t come bellyaching to this supper table with your mum’s best meat loaf spread before you, and all the blessings of the Lord your birthright! Don’t come complaining of the tares when the Lord Jesus said wheat and tares will grow together, the good and the bad both at the same time! Get your eyes on wheat, not tares!”
“Okay, amen,” said Bobby John. “I’m sorry, Mum.”
“Daddy’s had a hard day, too,” she said.
I muttered, “I’d like to know how to get them back.”
“Speak up, Opal!”—Daddy.
“She said she’d like to know how to get them back,” said Bobby John.
“A girl with a wasting disease, in a leg brace, came to me today for no other reason than a simple blessing,” said Daddy. “And you think you got troubles.”
He could always top me.
Now about what I thought when I first laid eyes on him.
At first I thought it was him. Bud.
I thought it was Bud back, looked so much like him.
I wanted to die of shame seeing him see me there in The Hand with all the sick.
I wanted to kill V. Chicken.
I remembered the sentence again, this time the words sinking like lead in the center
