Holy Ghost Girl (34 page)

Family members clustered outside the church doors, arranging themselves in two long wobbly lines. My sisters stood near the front of the line, an ordinary and astonishing sight
.
A remnant of scripture came to mind: “. . . and the last shall be first.” Unsure of whether to join the family or take a seat inside, I positioned myself to the side of the line. Was I family? Friend? Foe? Pam walked over, took my arm, and settled the question. I filed into church that morning with all of the women and children who had lived separate and sometimes secret lives with Brother Terrell. Legitimate and illegitimate, adopted and semiadopted, steps, halves, and blood relatives, mistresses and wives paraded down the aisle, two by two. The existence of my sisters and other children born outside the sanctity of marriage had become known fifteen years earlier, but the funeral marked our first and only appearance as a family. We numbered around seventy as we filed into the center section of the church. My husband and I took seats behind my three sisters. The secrets Brother Terrell had gone to such lengths to conceal had names and faces and sat shoulder to shoulder in his church, and yet it was a day like any other. The Earth didn’t shift on its axis. The sun didn’t fall from the sky. One less person drew breath, one less person sat among us, but the world creaked on and on.

Most of Brother Terrell’s longtime followers and supporters had left him by the time Randall died. After his release from prison in 1987 he put up tents that seated twenty-five hundred, small tents by his old standards, and was lucky to draw two hundred people. Some believers had drifted away years earlier when news of his relationships with my mother and the preacher woman became known. Others left when he divorced the preacher woman and married a woman young enough to be his daughter. On the day of the funeral, many found their way back. The Bangs church, built to seat about twenty-five hundred, was full. Old friends flew toward one another, often meeting in front of the casket, laughing and talking in subdued voices while Randall slept on, hands folded on his chest. The family sat quiet and subdued.

A minister who was a friend to Randall and a colleague of Brother Terrell’s opened the service with a prayer. He spoke of Randall as a man of faith, a preacher. This image of Randall did not fit with my memory of the boy who could not sit through a tent service, the boy who was always angling for a chance to play husbands and wives. The minister looked down at the casket.

“Brother Randall fasted, prayed, and believed the Word, just like his daddy. He taught me so much about faith. I know many of y’all came to hear him preach over the years and heard the story of how time and time again God raised him up from his deathbed.”

The family shifted from side to side. We studied our fingernails. I noticed a long scuff across the toe of my right boot.

“I know there are others out there who have stories of how Brother Randall’s testimony blessed and changed your lives. I invite you to come on up.”

Pam’s husband walked up the prayer ramp and took the microphone. “Randall taught me a lot, and some of it was about what not to do. I remember the time he convinced me we could make extra money by charging people who came to the tent twenty-five cents to park. The money was nothing compared to the whipping Brother Terrell gave us. Randall also taught me the rules of fasting; if you can get it through a straw, it ain’t cheatin’.”

Only the family laughed. We were not here to testify for Brother Randall. We were here to say good-bye, or hello, depending on how things went, to the boy Randall. My sisters approached the front of the church next. There were those who thought it wrong that these girls, women now, never publicly acknowledged by Brother Terrell, should speak in his church, but this was not their day. Without rehashing or explaining anything, my sister Carol said Randall was the first to welcome them into the family and had treated them as sisters from the beginning. Lisa spoke of how Randall loved to fish and how he had taken them fishing with his daughter. Laura recounted the time Randall took them to their first circus.

When the family remembrances were finished, someone introduced Brother Terrell. The door at the back of the platform opened, and a small, silver-haired man with hunched shoulders stepped forward. He looked like an old man, not the fiery prophet I remembered. He wandered aimlessly about, crying into the microphone. He walked down the prayer ramp and peered into the casket. Family members cast worried looks at one another. He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his suit jacket and wiped at his eyes. He tried to speak and sobbed instead. At another funeral someone would have led the grieving father away. But this was Brother Terrell, and no one was going to lead him anywhere. After a few minutes, he pulled himself together and began to speak. His speech was slow and halting as he recalled the many times death had tried to take Randall from him. He said no matter where he was in the world, he had always sensed when his son was sick. He talked about the times he had called Randall and urged him to fight the most recent death sentence the doctors had given him. He talked about calling his son from Haiti, India, and Africa and praying for him, and how Randall always got better. He paused in front of the open casket where his son lay.

The crowd called out encouragement. “Help him, Jesus. Strengthen him, Lord.”

He drew strength from their responses and was gradually transformed from grieving father to who he really was, who he had always been. He was the healer and prophet plucked by the hand of God from the Alabama countryside and given a worldwide ministry of faith and deliverance. He was a son of God, a voice crying out in the wilderness. Oh, hallelujah, he knew who he was, and the devil couldn’t take that away from him. His shoulders straightened and his voice grew stronger. The eulogy turned into preaching and the preaching wandered across a broad expanse of subjects. The 9/11 attack had come to him in a vision where he saw the towers fall. When he prophesied, you better believe it came to pass. The intermittent response of the crowd lengthened into a steady buzz of “amen, uh-huh, hallelujah, that’s right” running underneath and alongside every sound that issued from his mouth until his words and theirs formed one single affirmation.

He began to pace and then to dance up and down the platform. His words came faster until he was shouting into the microphone. “There’s comin’ a revival, a dead-raising revival!”

Family members, tense and silent, shifted in their seats.

“It’s a revival that will restore everything the devil has stolen, a revival that will return everything that’s been lost . . . everything that’s been corrupted, everything you’ve lived without.”

They jumped to their feet, waved their hands, and danced and danced. They understood that life takes it all, your last dime, your last hope, your last breath. They understood, and they laughed and shouted and careened about the church, drunk on faith. My husband, one of the most reserved and cerebral men I have known, had his hands in the air. My sister’s husband shouted “amen” until his face turned red. The funeral had turned into a revival meeting for everyone except Brother Terrell’s children, who sat red-eyed and rigid in the middle of the church facing the coffin.

With the congregation in his thrall, Brother Terrell abruptly stopped preaching and handed the microphone to one of his associates. As the amens and hallelujahs softened, the associate minister waved forward a group of preachers. One of them carried a bottle of olive oil. They walked down the ramp to the casket. The church went silent. My sisters glanced over their shoulders, eyes wide. One of Pam’s younger sisters buried her face in her hands. The minister who had been Randall’s friend took the bottle of oil and tilted it onto a white handkerchief. He put the cloth on Randall’s forehead and spoke while the others laid hands on the corpse.

“Brother Randall, in the name of Jesus, if you want to come back, then go ahead and come on. In the name of Jesus. We’d be glad to have you.”

After what must have been one of the shortest prayers in Holy Roller history, the preachers stepped away from the body. Shoulders relaxed in the family section. Randall would remain dead and his body would stay in the coffin. The organ music swelled and Brother Terrell moved to the side of the coffin. The audience lined up to shake his hand as they had years earlier. As they filed by, they gripped his arm, pulled him close, and offered their condolences.

“So sorry for your loss.”

“We’re praying for you every day.”

“Don’t give up. God’s gonna see you through.”

After everything they knew about Brother Terrell, after all the affairs and lies and moneygrubbing, these people had only soft words for him. I brought my hand to my face. It was wet. Only then did I realize I had cried silently and steadily throughout the funeral. Not over Randall or the loss, so much loss; not the visions of family or redemption laid to waste. It was something else, something alien and familiar as my prodigal heart. I watched an elderly couple make their way through the line. I saw the concern in their faces as they approached Brother Terrell and grabbed his hands, eager to convey all they carried in their hearts for him. He inclined his head as he listened and nodded.

“Okay. Okay. We ’preciate that. Bless you, now.” A flash of a smile that moved from shy to showtime in an instant, his eyes sliding off to the next in line. The couple walked past me, hands clasped, each leaning on the other, faces shining. They looked . . . blessed. Yes, that was the word. By a con man? A prophet? A performer?

I had spent a lifetime deciding, and each time I thought I knew, the answer proved too small to encompass my experience. Or was it the question? Maybe it wasn’t about Brother Terrell, but two worlds: one under the tent and the other outside. Each time I turned toward one, I turned away from some part of myself. I watched the people move through the line. Women with their arms folded across their chests, hugging their elbows. The men with their straight-ahead stares. Kids tugging at their parents. I recognized no one and yet, I knew them. I had always known them. There was no separation, no division, no choice to be made. They had been with me all along, and without knowing it, I had been with them. After all this time. It wasn’t belief or unbelief. It was love. It could not have been otherwise.

I walked to the front of the church and took my place in line. When it was my turn, I took his hand and told him I loved him. His expression, practiced and perfect, showed no recognition. “Thank you. ’Preciate that.”

I looked into his face. “Brother Terrell, it’s me, Donna.”

He stammered and I fell toward him. He pulled me close. After a few seconds we pushed away from each other, shy and embarrassed. He patted my arm. There was nothing to do but move on. As I made my way back to my seat, I saw the old man and woman framed in the doorway of the church; beyond them stretched the beginning of the West Texas sky, and the world, the big, wide world. I’d be there again soon enough.

I am grateful to the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference for its recognition of an early chapter and the impetus to finish this book; the Ragdale Foundation for the gift of time, space, and amazing food that sustained spirit and body (thank you, Linda); the Writers’ League of Texas, especially Cyndi Hughes and Jan Baumer for ongoing support; and to the Austin Bat Cave and S. Kirk Walsh for workshops that inspired and encouraged me to believe in my story.

Many thanks to Theresa May, editor in chief at the University of Texas Press, for her cheerleading and “safety net,” and to writers P. J. Pierce, Mary Day Long, Elena Eidelberg, and Christine Wicker for reading the pages and listening. Special thanks to the women of the Secret Sports Club (you know who you are) for beating back the demons. My sister Carol Terrell Lamb and my mother, Carolyn Richardson, provided background materials that breathed life into the past and for which I am truly grateful.

The persistence and patience of agent extraordinaire Dan Conaway turned a prologue into a book and my editor, Lauren Marino, at Gotham kept the faith through missed deadlines.

A number of texts provided context and inspiration for this book: First and foremost,
Can Somebody Shout Amen! Inside the Tents and Tabernacles of American Revivalists
, by Patsy Sims;
Salvation on Sand Mountain
, by Dennis Covington;
The Gospel Singer: A Novel
, by Harry Crews;
All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America
, by David Edwin Harrell Jr.;
Border Radio
(page 318), by Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford;
Journey to Dharavi: The Life and Ministry of David Terrell
, by Earl W. Green; and
Beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death
, by David Randall Terrell.

Thanks to William Martin, senior fellow for Religion and Public Policy, Baker Institute at Rice University, for sharing his notes and observations of David Terrell and other revivalists.

Finally, I owe everything to Kirk Wilson, my husband and partner, for his tireless support and unshakable faith.