Jesus Tent

When I was eight, Mom had a tumor the size of a softball just left of her liver. Calling it softball-sized made me smile since playing softball with a tumor would be gross. Seeing Dad crying reminded me not to smile about the tumor again. It was a Monday when she’d found out.

The doctors had said that they wouldn’t know if it was malignant or benign for a couple of days. I didn’t know what those words, malignant—benign, meant until people started whispering malignant like it was something dangerous with ears that would jump out and

get you if you said it too loud.

Cancer. It was two sticky August days until I’d heard the word being nervously passed back and forth between mom and dad when they had thought I was sleeping. Instead I’d sat at the end of the top bunk, perched like a secret bird feeding on their words and not being able to swallow such bitterness that caused so much silence between my parents.

When we went for a McDonald’s ice cream cone the next day after school it tasted metallic like the conversation I heard the night before.

Friday came and went without Mom hearing from the doctors. They’d done the biopsy--sliced, diced, and smeared the slides--but couldn’t give an answer about the softball growing inside Mom. She’d cried when I asked if she was scared. She told me that it was just the nerves and that she wasn’t afraid. We prayed at dinner for the first time that night.

Just after lunch the next day we drove sickeningly curvy roads for three hours into the hills of West Virginia for a chance for Mom to be healed at a big tent revival that looked like a circus tent for Jesus. No one noticed when we were thirty minutes late. They were too busy saying “amen” between the preacher’s shouts which were peppered with praise-Jesus-hallelujahs.

We sat on folding wooden chairs pushed too closely together so that our shoulders touched and it was impossible to cross my legs the way I wanted. The preacher wiped sweat from his bald head with an already soaked handkerchief while repeatedly calling the people “the body of Christ”. On that day, Christ smelled hot and thick like cheap deodorant cut with even cheaper cologne rising up as a sunburnt offering to his father. I dozed off, periodically being elbow-jabbed awake by Dad. My four year old brother was allowed to sleep; purse candy syrup dripping lazily from the left corner of his mouth.

All the while, the sugary sermon frothed from preacher-man’s mouth who was running, pacing, gyrating like god’s jester at the front of the striped revival tent held up with poles, ropes, faith and hope. I won’t lie. I have no clue about the finer details of the man’s message. I only remember the collection plate merry-go-rounding endlessly and being filled when the congregation would be whipped into frenzy by his addictive words which gave life to the promise of eternity and healing.

Near the end of the tow and a half hour service, after the purse candy was gone, and after I’d filled the back of a bank envelope with doodles, but before the last offering was taken up, the preacher called for people to come up for the laying on of hands and the reception of the healing power of Christ. There was a trickle of people who went forward. Mom and Dad whispered an exchange before privately deciding to join the ascension of the ailing body to the front of the tent in order to receive Mom’s share of the healing power of the lord. We walked to the altar as we’d snuck in the back: as a family.

I shuffled quickly, eyes down, feeling the looks and hearing the mumbled requests for Jesus’ favor from furrow-browed parishioners, squinting their eyes in consternation, hoping for an answer. Nearer the front were prayer “partners” who asked the ailments of the stream of people. One assured us that god loves a family that prays together and acknowledges the true followers of Christ. Jesus liked a posse.

The preacher had taken off his jacket before we presented our case to him. His suspenders accented the lines of sweat on the white long-sleeved shirt. The wilting collar of it was yellowed from weeks of summer-spiced salvation.

“Folks, we have a woman with us today that needs a healing!” His voice was getting hoarse.

The congregation hushed to below a whisper. A nearly silent intensity charged the air.

“Wanda? Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Do you know that he defeated death and can defeat any cancer that you may have?”

The crowd was moaning, nearly wailing with praise. I couldn’t see a collection plate but there had to be one making its round again.

Mom was nodding. Dad was trying to stop, unsuccessfully, the tears from streaming, my brother stared at his dusty shoes kicking grass, and I wondered why he called it cancer. He’d been told it was a tumor. Had god told him it was cancer? It wasn’t Mom or Dad.

As people manifested around us to lay hands on Mom, a lady spoke in tongues. Every sentence started the same way that sounded like “Ronda la-she-a”. Only the preacher knew how to translate it to English. It was one of his “fruits of the Sprit”. The preacher talked about our ability to be a conduit of healing and rebuked the devil for his stronghold on Mom’s disease, her body and her family. He shouted for the cancer causing spirit to “go back to Hell” where it had come from and just when we weren’t sure what would happen next, Mom was deemed healed, everyone sang praises and shouted hallelujah, strangers cried, and we went back to our seats.

On Monday a nurse called to tell Mom that her tumor was benign. Her softball was downgraded from dread to an annoying reason to have surgery; a non-metastasizing nuisance that frightened but couldn’t kill.

“I’m glad your tumor is better Mom.” I said.

“God healed you.” Dad said.

Mom cried, joy replacing her salty dread from the week, the day, the hour before, while she praised God for being cancer free. I wanted to ask her when the doctors had said it was cancer, but mom was busy calling Grandma, glad to have found Jesus in a circus tent in backwoods West Virginia.