Something She Can Feel by Grace Octavia Read Free Book Online

ushers were lining up and organizing the maze of rows like the officers had done to the cars outside. From where I was sitting, the House looked like it was preparing a crowd for the kickoff at a championship football game. While I’d known or brushed shoulders with most of the people inside, in the rows in front of me, their faces bled into a crowd of expectant onlookers. Worshippers who came to see something happen.
    â€œHallelujah,” I heard my father’s voice boom through the sound system before he walked onto the altar. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
    While I’d heard that voice and even those same words a million times before, I smiled at the familiarity and like everyone else, I stood up as my mother and father walked into the sanctuary, flanked by the assistant pastor Jack Newsome, a random circle of deacons, and the church secretaries.
    Just as they did every Sunday, the band struck up the tune and the choir began to sing the words my father had just uttered. The praise dancers, girls and boys with happy, brown faces dressed in angel costumes, glided down the aisles, carrying colorful streamers, waving them on beat to our singing. The place came alive with people singing and holding their hands up and out in joy for the moment.
    My mother turned beet red when she saw me. Breaking ranks with the procession, she dashed toward me with her arms extended.
    â€œYes, Lord,” she cried, pulling me into her center. She added a drawl at the end of all of her words. And her sweet voice was decidedly and unapologetically Southern. “Thought you’d moved to Mexico.”
    â€œNo, Mama,” I said.
    â€œWell, I called you last night, at 12 a.m. on the nose. Had to wish my only baby girl a happy birthday.”
    â€œI saw, but I was sleeping,” I tried, shouting over the voices around us.
    â€œNo time for your mama? Not even on the day I gave birth to you.” She grinned and hugged my brother Jethro Jr, who was standing beside me.
    Jr was only five years older than me, but he assumed all of the righteous dignity of a Buddhist monk—even when he wasn’t being righteous or dignified. He was a good-looking man with skin lighter than mine—almost like the insides of my hands—and serious, thick eyebrows. But like my father, what was most striking about my big brother was his size. At 6 feet 7 inches and 275 pounds, he and my father almost had to be leaders, because everyone had to look up to them. Jr, of course, ran with this. He’d served as the church’s ministerial director since his senior year of college, and fought endlessly with Jack Newsome over who’d take my father’s place when and if he ever retired.
    While Jr looked like my father, my mother looked like someone had taken a video recording of me and pressed fast forward. She had skin the color of mozzarella cheese and eyes that were amber in the shade of my grandmother’s front porch, but then lit up like fiery embers when the sun hit them. She was lovely to look at, pretty in the kind of way that reminded people in the South of how ironic it was that something so beautiful could come from the ugly things that happened during what they now called with an intentional drawl, “a long time ago.”
    â€œLittle Journey made it to the Lord’s house,” my father said, making his way up to me from behind my mother. “And now a father can rest.”
    We hugged and people around us beamed at the sight. It was the family’s tradition to hug in front of the congregation and sit together. It proved that our family was still close and leading the church. Even when we were all mad at each other and ready to draw blood, we did this because it was what was best for the church.
    â€œHey, Daddy,” I said, nestling my head into his massive chest. While I was three, maybe four times the size I was when I had my first memories of