Miriam's Well Read online

  In English, Mrs. Loomis gave back our poetry worksheets, and she called us up in our poetry pairs to get them. I fiddled with a book and pencil that kept rolling off my desk so Adam could get his paper first. Finally, he picked both papers up and dropped mine on my desk without a word. From the back side of his worksheet I saw lots of Mrs. Loomis’s red scribbles, and a big red B+ at the top of the paper.

  Mr. Bergen said we’d go to court before Christmas, and we’d been working on the details of my case a little each day. Meanwhile, I went to school and to church. I sang with the choir and taught the prekindergarten babies.

  Mama and I had long talks while we put up cranberry sauce for the church Feast of Thanksgiving. The skins of the cranberries popped in the boiling sweet juices; tiny explosions of purple splattered the sides of the pans.

  “Baby, do you ever think it’s awkward living with the men like we do?”

  “I sometimes wish we could have a place of our own.”

  “Well, but they need us. They need having us to take care of.”

  “Did either one of them ever think about getting married?”

  “Uncle Vernon. Maybe fifteen years ago he went with a girl, a college girl, in fact. We all thought she was a fine young Christian woman.”

  “So what happened? Did Uncle Vernon get scared?”

  “I think she did. She came home for Sunday dinner two, three times, and after a while she saw what it would be like, living not just with Vern, but with Benjamin and me and you, too.”

  “They could have gotten a place of their own, couldn’t they?”

  “And split up those two brothers? No, the girl went back to Tulsa and finished up at Oral Roberts University. She married a truck driver. Or was it a pipe fitter? I expect she’s happy. Honey, turn the flame down on your kettle, or we’ll have purple walls.”

  “And Uncle Benjamin?”

  “Well,” Mama said, rhythmically stirring in small circles, “he was never a ladies’ man. Always hides his soft side.”

  “I never thought of him as having a soft side.”

  “Oh, honey, sure he has. When our mama and daddy died in that car crash on the way to the State Fair in Hutch, it was Uncle Benjamin who let me cry on his shoulder until I was hollowed out inside. I was twelve, and he wasn’t but seventeen or eighteen, a year or two younger than Vern, but he kept me with him day and night till I was over it. Slept on the floor beside my bed all winter long. Vernon went about his business looking after finances and such, practical things, but Benjamin was my comfort. He’d a made somebody a good husband.”

  “What about my father?”

  Mama stopped stirring.

  “Did he make ‘somebody’ a good husband?”

  “Well, he might have,” Mama said abruptly. “But he wasn’t in the church, and that’s that.”

  I can’t imagine how he and Mama ever got together, except she was a pretty secretary in the cold storage business where he was junior loading foreman, and love isn’t always logical. I was born a month before their first anniversary. Uncle Vernon gave my father an ultimatum: either he was to convert and witness to his faith in front of the whole church when I was baptized, or he was to get out. No one asked Mama what she wanted. My father got out.

  “I forget, Mama. Was it Uncle Vernon or Uncle Benjamin who came upon Brother James?”

  “Vernon, at first.” Mama took up her stirring again, scraping the crystalized sugar from the crown of the pan. “Brother James was about half the age you are now, and already preaching the Word of God. The Sword and the Spirit Church came to him whole, in a glorious vision, and he got a few of his father’s friends together, including your uncles, and built the church from the cement foundation clear up to the rafters.

  “Oh, my word, I do remember the first time Vern and Benjamin took me, and you in my arms, into that church where all the oak pews had been sanded by hand, smooth as Popsicle sticks. That day, with the sun streaming in through the small stained glass window, all pink and gold and blue, it seemed like that splendid church wasn’t too much to give up your father for.” Mama gazed out the kitchen window. “Smooth as Popsicle sticks. Anyway, your uncles gave us all as a gift to the church, on the very first day it was dedicated. You don’t ever take back gifts, honey.” Her voice was shaky: “’Spose those cranberries are done?”

  As the days passed, I felt myself growing stronger. Each fresh day I put myself in God’s hands. I did my homework, my chores. I read poems, tasted them syllable by syllable, swallowed them whole; I thought about Adam barely a dozen times a day. And I waited for when Brother James would call me up in church. Finally, it came. It was a brisk day, the Sunday before the Feast of Thanksgiving: coat weather, despite the brittle sunshine. The weatherman was threatening snow by Wednesday, just in time to back things up at Mid-Continent Airport.

  At breakfast, Uncle Benjamin asked, “Well, are you ready for today? Got your words all thought out?”

  “I’m trusting that the Lord will help me say what I have to say.”

  Mama slipped a steaming waffle on my plate. “Eat up quickly, men. Brother James is especially keen to see Miriam before the service this morning, so we’ll go on over early.”

  Uncle Vernon, his mouth full of waffle, said, “I expect there will be a lot of people in church, maybe some outsiders.”

  “Oh, Vern, come on.”

  “Louise, I’m telling you, word gets around. Even TV people. But don’t let them get you nervous, girl. Just speak from your heart.”

  Mama leaned back against the chair, dreamily waving a piece of waffle on her fork. “Oh, we’ll just be so proud to see you up there speaking out about the powers of the Almighty. Your uncles will bust their buttons, and I suspect I’ll just sit there dabbing at my eyes.”

  Brother James had an office across from the sanctuary. It was not fine, with smooth Popsicle-stick oak; it was barely big enough for a small, overstuffed bookcase, his desk and a swivel chair, and an extra folding chair which I sat in that morning.

  He wore his navy blue Sunday suit and looked broad and handsome. There were rumors that the young widow, Marylou Wadkins, who had two babies, had her eye on Brother James, and that maybe this woman, at last, was strong enough for him. I think he was nearly thirty, and they say a young, vital man needs a wife.

  His chair was on casters, and he rolled over beside me. “Your simple testimony will waft up and be heard in heaven, Miriam, and it will bring comfort to others ailing in our midst. Now, tell me what you plan to say.”

  I stammered out a few words. I actually hadn’t prepared much, because I knew that the Lord would put the right words in my mouth.

  “Truly, the Lord will give you the words, Miriam, but you must be ready to let them flow through you. Let’s think it through. You’ll start with what?”

  “Um, how I felt this pain gradually coming on?” He nodded. “And how it got worse and worse?”

  “Why?”

  “Because my faith was faltering. Because I’d let Satan seep into the dark cavities of my soul.”

  Brother James’s chair squeaked as he crossed a shiny boot over his knee. “And then you called upon Jesus with all your heart—”

  “—with all my soul and with all my might—”

  “—to cast out unclean spirits. Remember Matthew 10:1: ‘… to cast them out and to heal all manner of sickness and disease.’”

  “And Matthew 8:16,” I added. “‘He healed all that were sick,’ including me.”

  “Praise the Lord.” Brother James got up and pulled me gently to my feet. “You will do just fine, Miriam. Bless you.”

  “What shall I keep in mind as I’m waiting to speak, Brother James?”

  “Well, I’d say these words from First Corinthians: ‘I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the mind also.’ It is meant to tell you, child, that a healthy body, mind, and spirit are one, and you are living, breathing proof of this fact.”
/>   He led me out of his office, and the heels of his black Sunday cowboy boots echoed in the empty hall. When he opened the door to the left of the altar, I nearly fainted. The meeting room was jammed with people stuffed maybe twenty to a pew, people lining the aisles, standing in the back, even sitting on the steps of the altar. Some had cameras hanging around their necks. There was even a TV news camera aimed at Brother James as he took his place behind the lectern. I sat in the front row, where Mama had saved me a place, and immediately I felt the TV lights turn toward me.

  “My friends,” Brother James began, “in the name of the Lord, I welcome each and every one of you here to the kingdom of Christ. Those of you who are guests at the Sword and the Spirit Church, please take your cameras from around your necks and lay them on the floor in front of you. We will have the floodlights off and the video cameras off immediately. I remind you that this is a spiritual meeting in the service of the Lord; it is not a circus, and it is not a media event.” He motioned for the cameraman to fold up his tripod and be gone, which he was in no time.

  My heart began to beat faster as we neared my time to speak. I sang with the choir, with my spirit and my mind, and never had the hymns sounded so sweet, so full of poetry. At last, it was time. I stepped around the people seated on the altar steps and faced the congregation, waiting for the words to come. Brother James urged me over to the lectern. He lowered the microphone for me, and, in a shaky voice, I began.

  “As you can see, I walked up here on my own.”

  “Praise the Lord,” some brothers and sisters murmured.

  “A month ago, I felt a stabbing pain in my lower back, and I could not have managed these few steps without holding on to a handrail. Three weeks ago, doctors told me I had a disease that had invaded my body and that might even take my life. I saw the pictures myself, I saw a black knot in one of my bones, something ugly and foreign that did not belong there. People told me, even people I dearly respect, that I should put myself in the hands of the doctors.”

  “Oh, Lord help us,” someone cried out.

  “People told me, even people I dearly respect, that nothing could cure me but the medicines and machines of the doctors. I admit, I was scared, and I started to believe them. I’m only seventeen, and I’m praying that God’s not ready to take me to the next world, because I haven’t had enough of this one yet. So I started to believe those people, though my mama tried to save me from them.”

  I looked at Mama, her face glistening with tears.

  “And I’ll admit, my faith was weak when the pain overcame me. I didn’t always believe that I would be healed without the doctors and their medicines. Brother James stood by me and counseled me and reminded me that if the Lord meant for me to go on in this world, He would heal me. He reminded me of the place in Matthew 19:26 when Jesus says, ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “Brothers and sisters, I am here to tell you that the power of the Lord is awesome.”

  “Amen.”

  “And that I am not hurting anymore.”

  “Amen, that’s right.”

  “And that I am healed.”

  “Amen! Praise the Lord.”

  The choir broke into “Amazing Grace,” which Brother James planned because he knew it was my favorite hymn. My face was flushed and radiant, I could feel it, and tears of joy were streaming down my cheeks as the choir sang “was blind, but now I see.” I looked out over these good people who had been my family for all the life I could remember. I smiled at my uncles, at Mama’s friends, at my Sunday School teachers, at my little nursery children who had been brought to the service to hear me speak in thanksgiving.

  And then I saw him, sitting beside his father, and the two of them were the only ones not singing.

  “A-a-a-may-zee-eee-eeeng grace, how sweet the sound,” the choir sang, and I felt like a bride, like a queen, like Mary herself must have felt when she first held the Child that was promised to her.

  And Adam did not lift his eyes from my face.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Told by Adam

  I knew the words to “Amazing Grace” because my mother was always playing an old Judy Collins record that it was on, but I never knew it was a church song until that day. Then I couldn’t sing it, just like I couldn’t say the Jesus parts of the service, and like I never could sing “Silent Night” in school Christmas programs. I’d always thought it was because when I was a kid, I was sort of embarrassed to sing about a round young virgin, but finally I figured out that there were certain things that were common in the Christian world that Jews could not do comfortably. Singing in a church full of zealous believers was one, and believing in Miriam’s miraculous healing by Jesus was another.

  But watching her face, I felt 100 percent sure that she believed, and if she believed it strongly enough, she could probably do it. Look, my parents weren’t heavily into God things, but they always told me that if I believed in myself, I could accomplish almost anything. So, in order to put Miriam’s faith into terms that I could live with, I assumed that she thought that she was trusting God, or what she believed to be the son of God, to heal her, but actually she was doing it herself. Mind over matter again.

  Well, we drifted with the crowd into the fellowship hall, which doubled as a church library. Books lined one whole wall, and on another wall was a poster that said “A GOOD BOOK/THE GOOD BOOK.” Underneath the poster was the punch and cookies table.

  My dad and I must have stuck out like whiskers in a wart. “Good salt-of-the-earth religious types,” my father muttered. “Not a suit that fits right.”

  I figured we were probably the only two sinners in the crowd.

  An enormous lady in a flowery dress came up to us. “You’re new, aren’t you?” she said, as if she’d said, “You’re lepers.”

  “I’m the lawyer,” my father replied.

  “Ooh, bless you. Edwin,” she said, tugging at the coat of a man hanging over the punch bowl, “this is the child’s lawyer.” Edwin smiled broadly, with a mouth full of brown cookies.

  My father said, “And this is the lawyer’s son.”

  Edwin shook on it, his hand still wet from punch. Mine felt sticky, but I had nowhere to wipe it, except maybe down the back of Edwin’s green polyester suit. Edwin said, “Say, I want you to meet Dr. Ogilvie. He’s an optometrist.” Dr. O. had Coke-bottle glasses and looked at you and away at the same time. At least I was glad to see that the church let people wear glasses. I wondered what they did about dentists. Were dentists instruments of the devil, like doctors? Like Miriam thought I was? Or were they just the sadists the rest of the world knew they were?

  Then a hush fell over the room. Miriam came in with Brother James. Everyone swarmed them, and Dad and I were on the fringe of the mad crowd. Miriam worked her way through it like a politician on the campaign trail, until she got to us.

  “Well, Mr. Bergen?” she said, triumphantly.

  “Well, Miriam. You knocked them dead.”

  “It was so nice of you to come, Adam.” Frosty, as if she were saying, “It was nice of you to order my execution.”

  But it wasn’t nice of me, it was imperative. I hadn’t been able to get her out of my mind since that day on Diana’s porch. “Can I talk to you alone?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said, and I felt awful that I’d caused the first frown on her day of glory. But not awful enough, I guess, because I hung right in there.

  “I’ll come over to your place later.”

  “No, Adam.”

  My father patted my arm, signaling me that it was time to give it up. Brother James came up to us, holding a little kid in each arm. “It’s a pleasure to have you visit our humble church,” he said. One of the babies pulled at his beard, and he kept yanking his face back. The other kid squirmed to the floor, with her dress stuck up over her head.

  A good-looking blonde, nearly six feet tall, came over to claim th
e kid. She grabbed the brat with one arm and put her other hand out to Dad. She looked down at him. “How do you do, I’m Marylou Wadkins.”

  “Marylou, meet Samuel Bergen, Miriam’s lawyer.”

  “Oh, I know who you are.”

  “And his son, Adam.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you both.” Her handshake was like a man’s. “Mr. Bergen, we all appreciate what you’re doing for us.” She had a warm smile, like a first grade teacher, and a way of talking that said she wasn’t from Kansas.

  The rug rat tugged at Marylou Wadkins wine-colored dress—I guess they could wear wine, even if they couldn’t drink it—and smeared wet cookie crumbs up and down her mother’s curvy left flank. “Oops, we’re a mess. Excuse us!” She whisked the kid off, the smaller one trailing behind like a wagon. Brother James’s eyes followed them out of the social hall.

  “Well, it’s been quite a day,” my father said, with an arm around Miriam. Miriam shifted from foot to foot.

  Brother James said, “A glorious day. Did you feel the power, Mr. Bergen?”

  “Clearly,” replied my father, and I caught the sarcasm in his voice.

  “Brother James,” I said, surprising myself that I could call him by this ridiculous name. “Could you talk to Miriam for me?”

  “Adam!” cried Miriam.

  “About what, son?”

  “Well, we sort of had a fight, and I wanted to get it cleared up today while she’s feeling on top of the world. Don’t you guys say ‘turn the other cheek’?”

  “We do,” Brother James assured me.

  “Well, I want another chance.” I saw Miriam turn to Brother James and wait for his advice. I thought she really wanted to talk to me but wasn’t sure she should.

  “If you have some unfinished business, you take care of it,” he said, “and be done with it.” I knew he meant I was to talk to Miriam, clear it all up, and clear out of her life.