can walk across the yard without near passing out, I’ll get a torch and cut off
another tank.”
The next morning when I came out for breakfast, there was a crowd of
women gathered around my father. They listened with hushed voices and
glistening eyes as Dad told of the heavenly visitations he’d received while
hovering between life and death. He had been ministered to by angels, he
said, like the prophets of old. There was something in the way the women
looked at him. Something like adoration.
I watched the women throughout the morning and became aware of the
change my father’s miracle had wrought in them. Before, the women who
worked for my mother had always approached her casually, with matter-of-
fact questions about their work. Now their speech was soft, admiring. Dramas
broke out between them as they vied for my mother’s esteem, and for my
father’s. The change could be summed up simply: before, they had been
employees; now they were followers.
The story of Dad’s burn had become something of a founding myth: it was
told over and over, to newcomers but also to the old. In fact, it was rare to
spend an afternoon in the house without hearing some kind of recitation of
the miracle, and occasionally these recitations were less than accurate. I heard
Mother tell a room of devoted faces that sixty-five percent of Dad’s upper
body had been burned to the third degree. That was not what I remembered.
In my memory the bulk of the damage had been skin-deep—his arms, back
and shoulders had hardly been burned at all. It was only his lower face and
hands that had been third-degree. But I kept this to myself.
For the first time, my parents seemed to be of one mind. Mother no longer
moderated Dad’s statements after he left the room, no longer quietly gave her
own opinion. She had been transformed by the miracle—transformed into
him. I remembered her as a young midwife, so cautious, so meek about the
lives over which she had such power. There was little of that meekness in her
now. The Lord Himself guided her hands, and no misfortune would occur
except by the will of God.
A few weeks after Christmas, the University of Cambridge wrote to Dr.
Kerry, rejecting my application. “The competition was very steep,” Dr. Kerry
told me when I visited his office.
I thanked him and stood to go.