In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [33]
Brother Lang grasped my shoulders, then gently pivoted me to the congregation. I looked out over the room, into the upturned faces and moving mouths of God’s people. Luke, only a few feet away, met my eyes with such intensity I felt suddenly paralyzed. He was seeing something in me no one else could see, something that threaded through the soles of my feet and into my leg bones like the ancient canes of berries, piercing my bowels and lungs, twining its tendrils around my throat so that I labored to breathe. The intimacy of his vision was not holy. The way his mouth, lips slightly parted, drew me in with all the air in the room made me reel. The hands gripped my shoulders tighter. I felt each finger and thumb press into my flesh—I counted them under my breath, eyes closed.
“Sister Kim,” the voice spoke to the back of my head, “how long have you been burdened with poor sight?”
I opened my eyes slowly, blinking for a moment to force the room into focus. My mother stood with her hands clasped in front of her breasts.
I thought back to that August afternoon, to the birds on the wire. How old had I been? That girl was another lifetime ago. Was I eight?
“At least three years,” I whispered.
“These glasses are a heavy burden. The Lord can heal these eyes, and will,” Brother Lang turned me back to face him, “if you will only have faith.”
I looked into his own eyes, so dark the pupil and iris bled together. Like the eyes of an animal, I thought.
Until that moment, I had seldom considered my vision. The glasses were a part of me, an extension of my body. Because of them I could see my way from one room to another without holding to the walls and shuffling my feet. Now, their presence seemed less a gift than a flaw, a mark of weakness.
I felt a sudden growing shame, the same shame I felt at the new roundness of my breasts, the hair in hidden places. I lowered my head. I remembered my hand cupping Sister Baxter’s fevered ear. The image reviled me. How foolish to believe that I held in my power the gift to discern the infirmity of another: I could not even see the reflection of my own face in the mirror without the grotesque magnification of glass.
“Sister Kim. Do you have faith?”
I nodded slowly.
“Do you believe God can heal your eyes?”
I nodded again. I had never before been afraid of prayer. Many times I had felt the laying-on of hands. Now the preacher’s fingers seemed locked, digging into the soft pockets of flesh between my neck and shoulders.
I did not want to be there, my ears filled with moans and high singing building into the staccato rhythm of tongues. I did not want others to see my disgrace: my pride had blinded me to the blemishes of my own body. In believing that I, a silly, stammering girl, could work miracles, I had drawn attention to myself. My spiritual vision had clouded to match my eyesight. I thought of Luke, the cloistered stairway. Had I really believed God could not see through such blackness?
I waited, eyes closed, for the touch of pungent oil, Brother Lang’s finger sliding twice across my forehead in the shape of a cross. Instead, I felt my glasses lifted from my face. I opened my eyes to see the blur of his hand tucking the dark frames into the pocket of his white shirt.
I lost my balance and grabbed for his arm. He steadied me, then pressed his thumbs against my eyelids. The prayers rose higher, a loud thrum of joined voices, yet each voice distinct and recognizable: Brother Story’s b’s and p’s popped from his lips in little explosions; his wife’s language was a monotone string of m’s, ah’s and long e’s, sustained, it seemed, without her ever having to take a breath. The combined chant surrounded me like the amplified murmurings of bees.
“Hear us now, Jesus. We come to Thee to ask that these eyes be healed. Heal these eyes, Dear Lord, so that our sister might see clearly all you have created.”
He made short, sharp jerks with his hands. I strained