Free The Turning by Davis Bunn Page B

pause, then Celeste said, “Who is this I’m talking with?”
    “I mean it, Celeste.” As soon as she said it, she felt the lifting of a weight she hadn’t even realized she carried. And with it also came the realization. “You need to bring the regular choir together with those kids. Tonight.”
    “Now I must be dreaming.”
    “You know I’m right. I’ve never even met your children. But how long have you sung with our people?”
    “Since two days after Terry and I arrived in Baltimore.”
    “There you go. So you get the choir together and you train them with the children. If anybody asks, you tell them I said this was how it has to be.”
    “What about the Kennedy Center gala?”
    “What about it?”
    “You mean … you want me …”
    “Girl, how can I lead fifty kids I don’t know and who don’t know me?”
    “But you’ll be back in two days. There’s still time for you to rehearse them yourself.”
    “Maybe I’ll be back,” Alisha corrected.
    “Sister, what is going on up there?”
    “I told you. A miracle.”
    “Wait, now. I’ve got to sit down. All right. You mean it, what you’re saying?”
    “You think I’d talk like this if I didn’t?”
    “Terry’s been going on for two weeks now, saying God was going to make all this right. And I’ve done nothing but show him the sharp end of my tongue. Now I’ve got to go in there and tell him he was right all along.”
    Alisha saw her smile flash in the window’s reflection. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”
    “Girl, it’s just awful.”
    “I have to go.”
    “Alisha, wait. You’ll still be singing with us, won’t you?”
    “That’s in God’s hands.”
    Alisha returned to the table and waited for the others to start in on all that fine food left by the Syrian and those Arab pastors. But nobody made any move. She started to say something, when the famous lady seated next to her said, “Let’s bless this food and this moment.”
    Amen, Alisha wanted to say. But something kept her silent. Which was as strange as how she didn’t feel all that hungry. She hadn’t eaten breakfast, nothing but a coffee, not even a roll. First time since the church had fasted before the last revival she’d skipped her morning meal. She was hungry, and she wasn’t. She wanted to talk, and she wanted to stay silent. She was conflicted, plain and simple. And she was burdened.
    She took a plate from Ruth Barrett’s own hand, and let the lady spoon her out some of this and that. She’d eaten most of those things before. Mediterranean food, like what they ate in the Holy Land. She’d always wanted to go there, and had tried the food a number of times. The flavors were different and beautiful. Only today, as she put the first bite in her mouth, she didn’t taste a thing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such fine food set in front of her, and she couldn’t eat. Alisha set her plate down on the trolley behind her chair.
    Ruth asked, “You’re not hungry, dear?”
    “No, and I don’t understand it either.”
    She handed Alisha her own plate. “Put mine over there with yours, please.”
    “Maybe it’s everything we’ve been through here.”
    “Perhaps. But I feel …”
    Alisha nodded. She felt it too. Something she could not put her finger on. But it was there just the same. “Burdened.”
    “I should be celebrating,” Ruth said. “I’ve just witnessed a miracle.”
    Alisha looked at her. The woman was beautiful in a way that wasn’t touched by years. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here, talking with you like I was somebody.”
    “Dear, I’m just another sinner, who’s learned where other sinners can find bread.”
    Alisha was going to respond but was interrupted by another astonishment. Yussuf, the Syrian doctor, had remained standing after the waiter and his pastor friends left. He waved and beckoned, then embraced a slender, smiling man. And the day became just a bit more astonishing, for the slender young man was