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Show Moon - 228 How did one go about healing? Was she supposed to lay on hands, or maybe lift one arm, invoking the power? Was she supposed to cry out, "Arise!"? She didn't feel she could do this with someone else listening; it would be embarrassing. She'd have to ask the others to leave the room. Would this be allowed? Would her mother regain consciousness and laugh to find her daughter babbling over her like a madwoman? For perhaps she'd find herself speaking in tongues, whatever that meant. Tongues, Alice had explained once, was the language of God that sometimes poured out of people when the Holy Spirit came into them. Would this resemble the inarticulate cries of orgasm? Or were tongues the true language before time, the tongues of angels, the songs of the river? How glorious it would be to find such a voice! Joy got off the train and was embraced by her brother Lee, whose face was shadowed with exhaustion. He fixed her with his wonderful hazel eyes and said, "Mom's already dead." Joy moved as if she were wading in a river, unable to feel anything except the cold water and the stones under her feet. There was too much adjusting to do, too much to absorb, and her merciful mind simply stopped. She climbed awkwardly into Lee's car, rode in silence. At the cottage, she hugged Caleb and James and Alice as if she were asleep, then walked into the room where she'd last seen her mother. The tubes on the twin bed were mercifully gone. The sheets had been stripped and the blanket was neatly folded at the foot. Joy lifted a corner of the blanket to her face. It was unthinkable that a person could disappear so completely. After a while, she went back into the living room, where Alice and James and the boys sat as people cast in a spell. "Where is she?" |
