In the silence, I peeked over at the clock—11:54. Time stood still, interminable, dragging out every gesture into an excruciating saga. A line of watery blood mixed with saliva escaped from Hannah’s mouth as her jaw clenched and her head thrashed on her pillow. A particularly powerful jolt shot her inches above the bed; her flexed body was a straight line above the sheets, and her limp neck flopped at an awkward angle as she collapsed back to the mattress. Her limbs went slack, and her bucking slowed. Then her eyes rolled to the front of their sockets and she fixed them on us. As the haze cleared, she must have seen the three of us—Papa’s closed eyes and dipped chin, Ma’s kneading hands, my eyes darting from the clock back to her back to the clock.
“It’s over,” I pronounced the definitive words.
“It wasn’t such a bad one,” Ma said.
“Praise God,” Papa’s reply.
When Hannah’s movements had finally stopped and her breathing had returned to normal, Ma sat in a nearby chair, pulling Hannah’s limp body off the bed and into her chest. Hannah was finally still, except for Ma’s rocking. My feet didn’t want to move from where they were planted on the carpet, but I took one step toward them, and then another. Soon I was crouched next to Ma, one hand on Hannah’s back. With my faded pajama sleeve, I wiped away the viscous saliva mixture: first from Hannah’s mouth and then from Ma’s collarbone. Ma blinked her thanks.
With Hannah in Ma’s arms, Papa moved quickly, snatching the urine-soaked sheets from Hannah’s bed and balling them in a messy pile. In the silence that rose when he left the room, I looked over at Ma, her body slowing its rocking motions as Hannah drifted into sleep. Ma shrugged the way she always did after one of Hannah’s seizures, the only gesture that acknowledged our collective impotence. She hadn’t done that all those years ago when Papa had tried to heal Hannah; she had trembled instead. She only shrugged when I was around, when Papa couldn’t misinterpret her speculation about the nature of sickness as a question about his abilities.
Papa bumbled back into the room, his face hidden behind a pile of laundry, and Ma and I snapped our necks toward the door in unison. But we were safe—he hadn’t seen us as he entered. His lithe hands and nimble fingers that removed disease were clumsy as they pulled a daisy-print fitted sheet over the mattress edges and rammed the fabric in the narrow space between the mattress and the rail. He grunted as the edges slipped off moments after he put them on, so I got up to fix them.
When the corners were tight and tucked and Hannah was in clean pajamas, Ma hefted Hannah to him as an offering. Hannah’s weight slumped against the delicate fabric of Papa’s robe, and he whispered something to her before wiping the sweat-matted tendrils of hair from her forehead—a gesture so much like the healing he had tried years ago. He held her there for a moment before kissing her forehead and gently placing her in the freshly made bed.
“Night, honey.” Ma and Papa went back to their room. The door shut behind Papa. I lay there staring at perhaps the same spot that Hannah had been looking at earlier. I pulled out my battered prayer journal from the nightstand and formed the question that had been percolating forever but had never made it to the lined pages.
Why does God let His children suffer?
THREE
We rode the wave of Papa’s success all the way through that revival week. By Friday night, the crowds had spilled onto the mottled lawn. They were there to see Papa make someone else walk, but it was not to be.
The next morning, we were packed and ready to leave before sunrise. Standing in front of the open trunk, I fiddled with the zipper on my duffel in the heavy heat as sweat droplets fell from my forehead. Reverend and Mrs. Davenport walked across the lawn toward us; Mrs. Davenport held a travel mug of coffee for Ma while Reverend Davenport had a thick manila envelope tucked under his arm for Papa. Since it was vulgar to mingle money and souls, the payments for these revivals were supposed to be private. I inched into the shadow of the trunk as Papa followed Reverend Davenport to the edge of the property.
They turned their backs to the house as the manila envelope passed from Reverend Davenport’s hands to Papa’s. I thought about all those baskets coming down the rows—hands placing singles, fives, tens, and occasional twenties on top of the heaping mounds that only got bigger in the days after Papa healed the boy. Then there were the secretive envelopes that I imagined held checks with lots of zeroes made out to Papa: love offerings to the revival pastor. Reverend Davenport would’ve used some of the cash to keep the church afloat, but the bulk of the offering went to Papa. One week on the revival circuit often brought in more than we made in a month of offerings at the church at home, I’d once heard Ma say.
Money had taken down neighborhood pastors—They forgot who their master was, Papa had said when their new cars were towed away and they lost their expensive houses. But as their churches went under, Papa had started the building fund and moved our church from the modest chapel where I officially accepted Christ to a new sanctuary so cavernous that you couldn’t hear someone speaking on the other side of it. Some families left the flock, saying that Papa was losing his way, but
