Chapter One
Belinda Jean always overspent when she went to Big Lots—no matter what she told herself beforehand. This Saturday morning, annoyed with the unopened purchases behind her sofa and the idea of shopping with a list, she lingered in her brick red Beretta.
“I can do it, Mother! I don’t need that stupid piece of plastic.”
Turning in the direction of an angry voice, Belinda saw a light blue station wagon in a parking place several spaces over from her car. The opened back door on the passenger’s side faced her. A teenager, palms pressed down on each side of her, struggled to move her lower body toward a wheel chair. Mother, a woman in her early forties, stood anxiously by, guilt aging her features.
Despite the young girl’s efforts, her hips didn’t budge. She released a torrent of profanity about useless physical therapy and then glared at her mother.
“I’ll do it, Renee. Please let me.” The petite woman placed the slide-board beside her daughter’s body. With practiced ease, she slid the child across the support and into the wheel chair.
Belinda saw the girl’s thin legs hanging like a puppet’s. An unfamiliar compassion welled up within her. Her mind became dreamy and out of focus as if she were between asleep and awake, and her head fell forward. She inhaled a long, slow breath, exhaled it; then energy, the only word she registered to describe it, flowed out of her like wind toward Renee.
Belinda’s head jerked up as she re-awoke to an awareness of her surroundings. She observed the pair—the woman now pushing the wheel chair toward the close-out store.
“Mother, stop!” Renee yelled.
“Baby, what is it?”
“I think I can walk.”
The woman halted. “What are you talking about?”
Renee shoved the brakes into position, and her head snapped in the direction of her waist. “Get this off me.”
The woman leaned over the chair, her hands struggling to restrain her daughter’s. “Baby, please—”
“Forget it, Mother. I’ll do it myself!” Renee yanked at the lap belt and unfastened it. She leaned down and backhanded the foot-rests to the sides. Her fingers gripped the arm pads, sweat pouring as she raised her trembling body. The next instant, a wellspring of new life burst through her waist, hips, legs and down into her feet. Open-mouthed, she stared at her toes as they actually wiggled. She leaped from the chair and ran around her mother. “See, I told you. I can walk. I can walk!”
Renee’s mother gaped at her daughter’s running and skipping. The woman’s body slumped at the knees, and she bent over and let out a peal of laughter.
Renee grasped her mother’s hands. Her mother instantly straightened, as if an infusion of strength had poured into her enfeebled knees. Crying and rejoicing, the two of them danced in a circle.
People in the parking lot stared at them; customers in Big Lots and the nearby Bealls peered through glass windows and came out for a closer look. A raised voice shouted, “Ya’ll need to get out here! That witch on wheels just got up and walked. I swear it ‘fore the wicked devil.”
Belinda’s mind receded farther and farther away from the noise and the gathering crowd. She no longer wanted to shop. She needed the peace of her apartment and an uncharacteristic mid-morning nap. Enveloped in a cocoon of detachment, she drove to the quadraplex where she lived.
The front door of her apartment opened into the living room with its burgundy carpet and fresh coat of off-white paint. Scented candles fragranced the room. The entire place sounded unusually quiet. Or maybe, Belinda thought, this silence is in me.
In her bedroom, she pushed off one sneaker and then the other. She undressed down to her underwear, laid her frame, stocky like her father’s, atop a peach-flowered comforter and slept.
When Belinda awakened hours later, her mind drifted back to the shopping center and to a teenager using more profanity than Belinda had spoken in her entire thirty-two years. She remembered legs dangling, some kind of force flowing out of her body to—Renee, that was it—and how minutes later, the girl had jumped up and run around her mother.
Shock, mingling with genuine amazement, surged through Belinda. She had witnessed a miracle, a real-live-like-in-the-Bible miracle. And she thought, though just daring to do so, she’d had something to do with it.
She got out of bed, picked up her wrinkle-free blouse and elastic-waisted jeans from the carpet and put them back on. In the bathroom, she washed her face, brushed her teeth, and combed through medium-length, dark brown hair, identical to her mother’s.
Shelia was supposed to come down at five, so the two of them could ride together to the home of Belinda’s parents. Belinda figured Shelia wouldn’t arrive until closer to five-thirty. Though her best friend and co-worker lived right above her in one of the two upstairs apartments, she didn’t bother to be on time unless she needed to be. That was okay. Belinda wanted to watch the evening news.
When the five o’clock report began, the anchorwoman asked viewers if they believed in miracles and told them after today they would have little choice but to do so. She stated that tragically, three months ago, fifteen-year-old Renee Brown had fallen from the roof of her parents’ two-story home. Several hours before the accident, her mother, Sandra Brown, grounded Renee. The child rebelled and tried sneaking out her bedroom window to meet friends. The fall had crippled her from the waist down.
Sad music played to family photos and clips from a video showing the teenager in a wheelchair.
“But today,” the anchor continued, her voice the perfect pitch of excitement to match the now dramatic musical accompaniment, “through nothing short of an act of . . . uh . . . mercy, Renee Brown was healed. Our on-the-scene reporter is with the family now.”
The scene changed to the Browns’ home. In their den, Renee sat between her parents. The father hadn’t been present at the shopping plaza, so it was the first time Belinda had seen him. But she couldn’t get over the changes in the mother and daughter. Mrs. Brown’s pain-filled eyes and beaten-down disposition were gone. Renee’s demeanor of disrespect that had caused her to yell and swear at her mother had disappeared also. Both mother and daughter were filled with a brightness, as if not only Renee’s body, but their two spirits overflowed with light.
When asked about it, each stated she had not seen a healer or minister or anyone like that, at the time of the miracle.
As the report continued, Renee described her experience in a voice resonant of a naturally gifted public speaker. “A few minutes after my mother placed me in the wheelchair, I felt a strange heat all over my body. It was over eighty degrees outside, but it wasn’t heat from the sun. Then, when Mother started pushing me toward the store—” Renee paused, brushed away tears. “I knew,” she forced out, “I could walk again.”
Mr. Brown reached over and hugged his daughter to him. “‘Thank God’ is all we can say. We thought she’d never—thank God.”
The scene shifted to the front of the Big Lots on Florida Avenue. A male reporter stood beside a tomboy wearing a baseball cap with bunches of hair sticking out on each side. She sported baggy denims and a paint-splattered muscle shirt over a cotton tee with frayed sleeves.
The reporter asked her to tell viewers what she’d seen.
She pointed to a wrought-iron bench in front of the store. “I was sitting there taking my legal ten-minute break when I saw that girl and her mother headed my way. I thought, Oh, boy, here she comes.” The young adult flung her head toward Big Lots. “We all know her here—even before she was in that chair. And that girl was yelling at her mother like always and pulling at that seat belt like a wild animal. I thought, what the heck is she doing? Then she flipped those foot things aside”—the tomboy back-flapped the air —“and jumped up and started running around. I dropped my cold soda”—with emphasis, she tossed down a phantom drink—“and I jumped up, too. My momma don’t allow no taking the Lord’s name in vain and none of them strong cuss words, but I swear ‘fore the
wicked devil, that wi—I mean, that girl—just got up and ran.”
The doorbell rang, and Belinda pressed the mute button. She opened the door to a thin young woman in her late twenties, with long, sandy-colored hair. “Hey,” Belinda said.
Shelia pulled up the fallen strap of a yellow sundress. “Sorry, if I’m late.”
“You’re okay.” Belinda smiled at her and then glanced at the television. The news segment was over.
“Did you hear about that healing at Big Lots?” Shelia asked excitedly.
“I just saw it on TV.”
Shelia sat on a dark-pink-and-beige-flowered couch. “Wow! To think something like that happened right here in Tampa.” Alarm animated her face. “You don’t think it’s a fake, do you?”
“I don’t think so,” Belinda said. She’d tell her about the whole incident later once she’d thought it through and made sure she hadn’t imagined her own part in it. “If you’re ready to go, we can take my car. Mother said to come as early as possible.”
Belinda Jean Johnson had ended both of her engagements. She worked full-time at the Florida Avenue Home Depot where she and Patrick, a friend of her boss, flirted with each other whenever he came into the store. Lately, at least once a week, now, he called there and specifically asked for her to check the availability of the parts he needed. Belinda was certain he’d eventually ask her out, and she hoped he enjoyed playing thirty-something-year-old games.
Belinda and Shelia met when Shelia started working at the do-it-yourself retail store. Five months earlier, they’d been the first two to move into a house renovated into four apartments and a little more than ten minutes away from their jobs. The landlord hated turnovers and offered them a special deal if they wanted to pay their rent, several months in advance.
Shelia Bryson had pounced on the offer. She worked a lot of overtime and saved her money in constant anticipation of quitting and becoming a mother and housewife. Her fiancé Ryan attended college in Gainesville. Belinda knew there’d be no calling off of that union. Shelia and Ryan had that “already-married” air, and the ceremony would be a formality.
Shelia had relocated to Florida from Michigan. Her mother seldom phoned or wanted to talk when Shelia called her, and she had no contact with her father. But Belinda’s parents didn’t mind being shared and treated their daughter’s twenty-eight-year-old friend like one of their own.
Mr. and Mrs. Johnson lived in an inviting four bedroom, three-bath, single-storied Ranch-styled house in the Wellswood Community. Mrs. Johnson’s home reflected her desire for people never to be self-conscious about spilling food or drinks or staining carpets. Easy-to-clean laminated flooring rivered through the living room, the dining room, into the kitchen and straight back to the den.
Beyond the den, a huge family game-room beckoned like an invitation to an arena. The fully screened-in area had a blend of green and black outdoor carpeting and insulated overhead windows to reveal the sky. Belinda’s father had designed the room to take advantage of the feel of playing games outside, minus the bugs and various furry animals that her mother wouldn’t abide. During inclement weather, heavy shutters, locking out wind, rain, or cold, were pulled down over the porch screens. But the skylight view always invited the outdoors, inside.
Ever lovers of board games, Belinda’s parents had collected certain ones through the years and never let them go. To this day, her father’s favorite was Milton Bradley’s original Operation.
Corrine, her mother, had bought a game she wanted added to the collection and had begged for Belinda’s and Shelia’s support in trying to get her husband to play it.
Corrine had turned fifty-six, two years previous and had accepted an early retirement option from her data-entry position. Belinda’s father, Richard, worked full-time for the transit authority, and in an effort to be close to debt-free when he retired in six years at sixty-five, he did some part-time security work.
But whenever possible, Saturday night was game night at the Johnsons’ house. Sometimes other neighbors and friends joined them, resulting in games going on at several tables. Tonight, there’d only be Shelia, Belinda, and her parents. The introduction of a new game to her father was not an event for outside guests.
During dinner, Richard Johnson complained that the corn on the cob didn’t have enough salt on it and the instant lemonade was too watered-down.
Later, the three women exchanged glances as they watched him enter the family room and walk over to the shelves, with every intention of removing one of his regulars.
Corrine motioned to Belinda and Shelia to have a seat at the table where she had set up Clue. Earlier in the week, the three of them had familiarized themselves with the game.
“Richard,” Corrine said, “the one we’re playing tonight is over here on the table.”
He continued facing his treasured stash. “I don’t see what’s wrong with playing Easy Money. I let you win, don’t I? Or Battleship. We haven’t–”
“Johnson,” she interrupted, “Battleship is for two people, and we are four.”
He turned on the three of them. Belinda’s and Shelia’s eyes wandered, but Corrine pointed toward his chair.
Belinda risked a glance and saw him wave a disgruntled hand in her mother’s direction before he came over and sat down.
They played for several tense hours and five, slow rounds. Corrine chided both Shelia and Belinda for trying to let Richard win. She ignored his repeated complaints about “there’s too much secrecy involved in this thing.”
When Richard finally mastered the game’s strategy and won two rounds, he rubbed his hands together. “All right, then. It can have a place with the others.”
“Thank goodness,” Corrine said, finally able to relax. She stretched her arms and legs and then yawned. “Belinda, will you and Shelia put everything away? I’m going to bed.”
After Belinda returned home and showered, she sat on the couch in powder-blue satin pajamas and tried to make sense of a Saturday morning that now seemed unbelievable. Except, so far, that young girl had been healed. Shelia and Corrine had discussed it, both of them overjoyed and curious as to how it came about. During their conversation, Belinda had remained quiet. She could have told her parents and Shelia about what she thought was her part in what had happened. But she’d felt certain, though they might have humored her, they wouldn’t have really believed her.
The next morning, the idea she was responsible for the healing didn’t feel so concrete anymore. In her mind, she saw the whole incident clearly, but she’d forgotten everything that she’d experienced except that odd sensation of separation from the crowd and the need to take a nap. So maybe yesterday she’d been no more than an unusually exhausted spectator. She wasn’t going to let it worry her. She had no interest in being any kind of a holy person, and in all probability, she wasn’t.
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