Read Online Holy Ghost Girl by Donna M. Johnson - Free Book Online Page A

believers under the tent thought nothing of using the n -word in everyday life, and would not abide mixing with blacks under any other circumstance. Brother Terrell told racist jokes in private and most of us, with the exception of my mother, laughed at them. We saw no contradiction in using our “colored” brothers and sisters in Christ as a punch line while risking life, limb, and tent to worship with them.
    Brother Terrell’s defiance did not go down well in the South. City officials delayed permits, issued noise violation citations for sound checks, and pressured local newspapers and radio stations to deny us advertising. Notes left under the windshield wipers of our cars threatened to cut down the tent and whup our cracker asses. It was clear someone or something was after us, but the adults would not say who or what. When I asked my mother, she hemmed and hawed and said something like, “Oh, honey, the old devil is after us, that’s all.” That’s all? Judging from the fear in her face, I figured the horned one must be close enough to spear our backsides with his pitchfork. When vandals slashed the tent in town after town, I was sure of it. The sheriff or constable or whatever brand of law enforcement that happened to show up walked around the tent saying, “Now, what’d y’all expect?”
    The answer revealed itself that night in Bossier City. After the fist fight, Brother Terrell walked under the tent and up the ladder to the platform. Brother Cotton was in the middle of another song. Instead of continuing the song the way he usually did, Brother Terrell signaled my mother to stop the music. He walked to the podium and sat his Bible on it without opening it up.
    “Let’s move straight to prayer tonight. We ask you, Father, to hide us behind the cross. Cover us with your blood, Jesus. Deliver us from our enemies. Pray with me, people. There’s an evil gathering against us. God is our only defense.”
    Brother Terrell walked away from the pulpit and fell to his knees in the middle of the platform, rocking back and forth. “Oh God. Oh . . . oh God. . . . Throw up a hedge, Lord. Protect us from the powers of the enemy.”
    The ministers on the platform knelt at their seats. My mother knelt beside the organ stool. Across the audience, people slipped from their chairs onto their knees and began to plead with God for protection. Betty Ann told Pam and me to bow our heads and pray, and she, too, began to keen.
    “Oooooooooooooh God . . . Have mercy, Lord. Have mercy. Oooooooooooooh God . . .”
    Brother Terrell paced the platform and exhorted us to call out. People all around us entered into what we called travail, a weeping and mourning that came when the worst had happened or was about to happen. In travail we experienced the emotion of the situation, wrestled with it in prayer, and believed we could change it. It was as if we could sense the onset of some evil, could hear its heartbeat as it approached, but could not see or name it. The woman kneeling next to me prayed aloud and with her eyes open wide. Her lips exposed her teeth in a weird half grin, half grimace. She made a strange highpitched sound.
    “Neh, neh, neh, neh, neh, neh, neh.”
    A collective wail rose from the congregation. We didn’t know what we needed protection from at that point, but when Brother Terrell told us the enemy threatened us, we believed him. The wailing went on for about forty-five minutes, reached a crescendo, softened, and died away. By the time we took our seats again, it was dark outside.
    Brother Terrell flipped open his Bible just as a long line of cars began to turn from the highway onto the tent grounds. Usually when people arrived late, they switched their lights off to avoid creating a distraction, but these cars kept their lights on, and instead of parking, they circled the tent. Betty Ann’s mouth opened and closed like a fish as she watched them. People turned and stared over their shoulders. A black woman