In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [28]
“What is your name, child?”
“Kim,” I whispered.
“Sister Kim, God has brought us here together tonight for a very special reason. Do you know what that is?” He let his gaze sweep the room. “Sister Kim walks among you with a gift. Sister Kim, do you know what that gift is?”
I heard the voices behind me: “Yes, Lord!” “Thank you, Jesus!” I thought I heard my mother crying. I shook my head, filled with a growing curiosity as though a stranger were about to read my palm, uncover a family secret. I steadied myself against the weight of his hands.
“You, my daughter, have the gift of healing. You are a healer!” Behind me the praise grew louder. The room felt suddenly hot and I wished for an open door, a window letting in the cool night air. His hands were heavier than my legs could stand and I fell, sweat trickling down my sides.
Sister Lang pounded out chords on the upright. I don’t remember the hymn or what other hands came to bless me. I only remember my knees on the cold wood floor and wondering what my father thought then, what would be expected of me in the days to come. I wondered if Luke had witnessed my anointing. I wondered what part of him I might touch.
The next Sunday I sat at the table of Brother and Sister Baxter. They ran cattle outside of Weippe, an even smaller town than Pierce, twenty miles southwest. There were others there my age, children still wobbly in their manners at the table’s far end, eating silently while the adults pondered the day’s sermon and praised the wife’s fried chicken. If there was a lull in the conversation, if the discussion had turned to the past week’s revival, I don’t recall. I only know I felt a sudden pain, as though a nail were being driven into my ear. I whimpered and my fork clattered to my plate.
I had never had an ear infection, had never felt the kind of pain I now felt, both throbbing and sharp. I remembered the missionary’s words, and with absolute certainty stood up and announced, “Someone here has an earache.”
Looking from one unperceiving face to another, I pressed my hand to the right side of my head.
“Someone’s ear hurts.”
I stood with my neck bent to ease the pressure. At the other end of the table a woman let out a single sob. It was Sister Baxter.
I moved from my child’s place and walked to her chair. She bowed her head, softly crying, and I placed my hand on her right ear. I could feel the heat there, the drumming pain. Others joined me, clasping my shoulders, touching my back.
“Dear Lord, our sister has a need. She needs you, Jesus.” My words were met with a chorus of amens and hallelujahs. I drew a breath. My eleven-year-old awkwardness was gone. The words flowed.
“We ask that you take this pain from her. Heal her, Lord! In God’s name we pray.”
The chorus grew loud and encompassing, until the body I touched and the hands touching me melded. I floated in a swell of sound, a humming of breath and blood.
“You will be healed!” I demanded it, surprised by the volume of my voice. The woman shuddered and groaned. The heat from her ear spread from my fingers into my arm and shoulder—my neck and face flushed with it. I opened my eyes and found myself in that room, the chicken half-eaten, gravy scumming the plates. The woman shivered in my hands.
Later, I played with the other children in the barn. The woman’s one daughter and I hid from the boys in the stubble, giggling with pleasure at their blindness. We rooted tadpoles from the shallows and stabbed them onto rusty hooks. The creek held catfish and we bobbed for them in the manuresilted water. Each one we pulled from the muddy stream seemed a miracle, so different from the blazing trout I caught in the clear runoff of Reeds Creek. I held their sleek black bodies in my hands, smoothing the spiny backs, careful of their poison.
We trapped the big green frogs that huddled