The Visitation, by M. Anne Kala’i

In June, Sadie and Lee filed into our home with news and the peach pie it had inspired: Sadie was pregnant. My sister was smiling but wouldn’t look at me. If our parents saw how scared she was, they didn’t let on. She hadn’t been married a month. The couple had said their vows in the same place she and I were born, the same place our mother was born: up the road, at Gran’s.

Over dinner, Mother asked how their new place was suiting them, though it wasn’t new. Sadie had moved into Lee’s efficiency apartment next to the filling station he owned. Maybe, Dad said, they ought to consider moving in with Gran before the baby arrived. I liked the idea, for the place was visible from my bedroom window.

Lee made no comment. Everyone in town chalked up his tight-lipped nature to his time in the service, but he was tight-fisted too; never gave away so much as a taffy until the day he saw how my sister had grown while he’d been overseas, fighting the Germans. After that, me and our kid cousins came away from the station sucking on free candy, but I never swallowed the idea of him as a brother.

At seven o’clock, Sadie scraped the last of the sticky innards from her plate and rushed to the radio in the front room: The Grand Ole Opry was starting. I asked to be excused, not being old or married enough to leave dinner without permission. Lee pushed his plate away too. He folded his napkin, creased it twice, and set it on top.

Mother nodded to me. I slid from my chair and sprawled on the rug in front of the Crosley.

As the whine of a fiddle filled the house, Lee rose. They had to be going, he said. Dad asked if he was sure, but he was. No one pointed out that they had stayed for less than an hour, or that tomorrow was Sunday and the filling station would be closed.

The slender man sauntered into the front room. He nodded towards the door, but Sadie shook her head. Couldn’t he wait? Ernest Tubb would be on before long.

I offered to walk her home after the show, but Lee ignored me. He stood still as leaves before a storm, and dead quiet too. Finally, he licked his lips.

Stay then, he said.

Three steps and he was gone. Before anyone could say a word, a picture fell off the wall not three feet from me. The frame hit a lantern on a side table. I scrambled to catch the lamp as it rolled off the edge, the hot glass pressing into my skin like embers. Dad was on me in an instant, snatching and setting it upright before the coal oil ran wild. Mother pulled me into the kitchen to pour vinegar on my hands. When we returned to the front room, Ernest Tubb was playing.

Sadie was gone.

I ran outside, but she was already out of sight. The sun had slipped behind the horizon, hushing the screaming cicadas, setting off lightning bugs. We hadn’t had much rain and the corn was still low. Down the road, lights glimmered in a big top tent standing in an open field. A cluster of strange men, dirty and damp with heat, had stood it up that morning.

No one was coming after me, so I wandered towards the spectacle. A sign outside proclaimed the gathering a SPIRITUAL REVIVAL. My family weren’t church people, even though Gran was raised Lutheran and Mother was always praying, so they let these revivals come and go like thunderstorms, each one lasting no more than a week. I’d never seen one up close. Strolling towards the entrance, I caught the wide eye of a woman whose skin looked ready to drip off her bones. She waved me in, animated now, and I ducked inside.

At the far end of the tent, a stage rose only a step off the ground. Half-full benches filled the packed dirt floor. Scattered souls drifted towards open seats, most come straight from the field in clothes choked with dust, their red skin creased and marbled. Friends of my parents stopped me to ask if they were coming by. No, ma’am, I said: just me. That amused them, a kid with a mind to spend Friday night with the holy spirit. They invited me to join them but I settled near the edge where a couple Black families were dressed as slick as Sunday morning.

When every seat was full, a squat older man took the stage. His hyde was thick as a hog’s but he squawked loud and long like a crow, predicting that tonight, the spirit would visit each and every soul within this sanctuary: a promise hissed like a warning. Healing would find us, he said, and miracles too. Each sinner would depart transformed. Having delivered this preamble, he introduced the preacher, which I had assumed he was. With a flourish of his hand, the prophesied figure emerged, and she was a woman.

She strode across the stage like the devil was underfoot, surveying the congregation as she went. Her eyes alighted on me, and she froze. I held her gaze like Sadie had failed to hold mine over dinner. As we stared at one another, she needled me without a word. An unruly bun barely restrained her dark, electric hair. I believed she could root out sin like it was a rotten tooth. Sometimes healing strikes like a knife.

Finally her gaze passed on and the sermon began. Sweat beaded on the back of my neck as she warned that the devil could quote scripture like a disciple of Christ. I slapped at mosquitos while my neighbors nodded as though they too had been fooled by the devil, and would be again. They closed their eyes as she finished.

The crow man beckoned us towards the stage. Row by row, the congregation stood and shuffled forward. The preacher laid hands on them, driving pain and loss before her, leaving ecstasy in her wake. Before she burned through her queue of afflicted – before she could call on me – I slipped out of my row, keeping my head down. I didn’t look back, but I was certain she saw me go.

The revival returned in July. This time, Sadie insisted on joining me. I didn’t like the idea that the preacher would have eyes on her, though exactly what I feared, I couldn’t say. Even so, my sister was ten years older, so I couldn’t stop her. Neither could Lee, who was down with a high fever and couldn’t tell day from night. Gran was watching over him, for they had moved in with her.

The crow man had already finished his introduction when we slipped in and folded ourselves into the back row. The preacher stood at the edge of the stage, her eyes closed. Crickets thrummed. The congregation was suspended in silence.

All of a sudden, her brow furrowed. Even from the back, I could see her forehead twist into folds. I had judged her to be close to my mother in age, but now the preacher seemed much older. “Is there a Sadie in our midst?” she asked. “Sadie Shafer?”

The question gripped me like a fist. Benches creaked as onlookers shifted, searching. My heart hammered in my ears. Sadie’s eyes were like dinner plates as she got to her feet. 

“Yes, ma’am. I’m Sadie Shafer – or Hilman, now.”

The preacher opened her eyes. Her gaze flicked to me, then back to my sister. “The Lord sees you. He welcomes you into his house. He knows your sorrows, and he will lift them from your shoulders. The change has already begun. Let us pray.”

She nodded, releasing Sadie, who fell to her seat like she had been dropped. Sweat ran down my back and behind my knees like tears. If the woman had summoned me, I would have run. Sadie took my hand and bowed her head, crying as she thanked God, and doing it all in silence. I was sorrier than ever that she’d come.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Long after midnight, the crickets kept pulsing. When I opened my eyes, a crescent moon spilled pale light across the room. Against the far wall, a round shadow hung, perfectly still.

A black cradle was suspended near the ceiling, so high that I couldn’t have peered inside, even on tiptoes. Moonlight played over the glossy weave. I had never seen a cradle in our house, and I had never seen one that was black.

My throat closed and I slid deeper into my covers. I finally clawed a breath and screamed. My parents came running. I thought the thing would hide from them, but it didn’t. The cradle stayed frightfully still, glinting as though freshly polished. Neither Mother nor Dad looked to see whether an infant lay inside. They pulled me from bed and we fled to the porch.

I wanted to wake my sister, but Mother wouldn’t allow it. She refused to worry Sadie with unspeakable visions, but she prayed as Dad rolled and smoked a string of cigarettes, both of them reaching skyward in their way. I gazed up the street at Gran’s house.

The lights were already on.

The revival returned in the heat of August. Everything felt like a husk, though the corn wasn’t yet out of the ground. I said nothing about the visitors to Sadie. I swore I wouldn’t go even if she begged me, but she didn’t. She was on bedrest after weeks of trouble with the baby. She had bleeding, Gran had told my mother when I was out of the room. None of us saw a doctor much, but he had been coming by the house pretty regular to see my sister. My parents made no mention of the black cradle, which we didn’t see again.

For the first few nights, I listened to the revival from the porch. A chorus rose and fell as music floated down the road like there was a breeze to carry it.

On Friday, I stayed in and listened to the Grand Ole Opry. Sadie didn’t join me anymore, even though Gran didn’t have a radio. As the show entered its second hour, I laid on the rug. Dad had struck a match on the leg of his chair; smoke curled from the cigarette perched on his lip. Smacks of feet hitting the earth drifted through the screen door, then hollow thuds shook the porch. The door whipped open and Lee’s face appeared, drenched.

The house is burning, he yelled. The well, he said, was already dry.

Dad wet a long dishrag and tied it around his face. He and I ran up the street, passing Sadie as she walked as fast as she could to our home. She wasn’t allowed to run anymore, even from a fire.

When we arrived, the old house was already half-devoured. Smoke poured from every window. Gran was carrying a chair out her front door, raising a pile of furniture on the lawn. She said her cats were already out and shut up in the barn. Dad ordered me to stay put, then hauled as much furniture out as he could, extracting heirlooms from the wreck. A few minutes later, Mother appeared at my side. She had spoken to the fire department, she said, but they were too far away. They would never get here in time. Having passed along the news, she returned home to sit with Sadie.

The three of us left watched the place burn. Dad and Gran said little, nor did they cry. They had seen many things, and if this was not the least of them, neither was it the greatest.

Behind us, the lights of the revival glimmered in the distance. By Sunday, the visitors would be gone, and in this, I found relief.

When the fire broke out, Lee and Sadie had been visiting with Gran on the porch. They rushed inside when they smelled smoke, but it was too late. Somehow flames had already spread to every room, as though the house had been painted with gasoline. No one knew how it started.

The next morning, we crowded the salvaged furniture into our house. Dad put Gran in with me in Sadie’s old bed, which I didn’t mind at all. I didn’t sleep through the night anymore, and didn’t mind the company.

Mother and Dad gave up their bed to Sadie and Lee, but over dinner, Lee assured them the arrangement was temporary. He would get his old efficiency unit by the filling station back.

Sadie balked. She wouldn’t live in that shoebox again, she warned. She would stay at home, with her family.

Lee bristled. She would live anywhere he goddamned told her to, he said.

Dad held up his hand and they both fell quiet. Sadie had to live with her husband, he said, but the two of them were welcome to stay as long as they liked. We would make room.

Lee twisted Sadie’s wrist under the table. I was small enough to see. She winced and summoned a terse smile for dad. No more was said over that meal.

I fell asleep to the heavy breathing of my grandma, soothing as rain. When I awoke some hours later, a light flickered outside.

I went to the window. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but a low flame flared up the road, where Gran’s house had stood. The quiet street was dark otherwise.

I crept through the living room where my parents were sleeping, then through the front door and down the steps. I could hardly see a foot in front of me, but I had walked this road since I could remember. I didn’t need light. Nearing the remains of the house, I made out a figure toeing the edge of the burn site, her silhouette illuminated by the small fire at her feet.

Sadie barely registered my appearance, as though we had already agreed I would come. Her face was smooth and calm. She looked older than I had ever seen her. She held Dad’s matches in her hand. The flames were spreading across a nightgown, white but for a wide, dark stain that burned slower than the rest.

I asked if she was alright. She nodded.

What about the baby, I ventured, staring at the gown.

She didn’t answer right away, only rolled a fresh cigarette and sparked a match. Smoke wound towards the clouds overhead. She offered me a drag. The dry paper whispered against my fingertips as I took it. The cigarette burned through before she spoke again.

“Life is full of disappointments.”

I nodded as if I knew such a thing to be true.

Sadie declined my suggestion to wake Mother and call a doctor. She said she would call on Monday, when Lee was at work. Then she walked me home. The fire at our feet was out.

When I climbed back into bed, Gran was snoring softly. For the first time in years, my sister slid the covers over me and murmured a prayer. The door closed behind her without a sound.

In the morning, Lee flew from my parents’ bedroom like he was late for work, though it was Sunday. He blew through each room of the house, doors banging heavy, dishes rattling like they had something to fear.

His wife was gone.

Where was Sadie, he demanded. Dad had been up at five but had seen no sign of her. Mother and Gran knew nothing, they swore.

I stepped onto the porch. Lee’s car was still parked on the side of the house, as was Dad’s. The house up the road was a charred ruin. Of the big top tent, nothing remained.

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M. Anne Kala’i is a graduate of Vassar College’s creative writing program and a member of the Los Angeles chapter of Women Who Submit. Her poetry has been published in the San Pedro River Review and her fiction was shortlisted for the 2024 Cheshire Novel Prize.

© 2024, M. Anne Kala’i