Deliverance
- Aug 18, 2021
- 3 min read
by Lorette C. Luzajic
Head bowed for prayer, eyes on the floor. In worn calf-hide bluchers, the reverend’s slim feet as elegant as a girl’s. As he petitions the Most High for mercy, he slides them oh so slightly side to side, and this subtle samba unravels something strange and restless inside of you. He is all sinew and bones inside tailored trousers. You want to touch test, see if they are merino wool. Amen murmurs through the aisles and you look up, startled, expecting his eyes fixed back on you. No. He is raising long hands up high, saying something about glory. His brown palms are pretty, and his splayed fingers seem somehow vaguely obscene.
You soak up the sound of his voice as the music swells behind him. Wonder if he’s old enough to helm a congregation. He has a habit of biting his lower lip. It gives punctuation to the notes and the words of his testimony.
You’re not sure how you got here. You don’t know the words or the Pentecostal rituals. You often heard singing inside the odd round of bricks, and on tonight’s evening walk, turned impulsively onto the path to the front doors of the church. The spirit called you tonight, Pastor João will explain to you later. And maybe he’ll be right.
Everyone’s faces are radiant and sweaty. You’re glowing, too, and you can feel something ancient beating beneath. It has been years since you felt anything at all, and now you are being resuscitated, one hallelujah at a time. When the small choir puts down their tambourines and lutes, you have an uncanny sense of spilling open. As if there is something inside struggling for light, for life.
Reverend João is on the move now, and you all slip from pews to follow him into the centre. Some boys in black bring a small table to circle and you assume it is the mass, but it is a cauldron of olive oil. Close your eyes, Joao commands gently, and you obey. You are aware of commotion and emotion around you and sway in wait of the unknown.
When it is your turn, your eyes stay shut and all that’s there in the room is the timbre of his alto and what it’s doing to you. You feel his hot tongue as if it is inside of your ear canal. I enter you with my spirit of fire, he whispers. Oh, is that what they call it? you wonder irreverently. Do not fear as I drive out your darkness.I will deliver you! You feel a slippery sensation at your nape, his long fingers trailing softly across your skin. You are anointed, for the first time.
There are a few dozen faithful, so it is some time before the ritual is finished, but time has turned elastic. You are lost in the floorboards, then in the seams where the wooden edges of the church are sewn together. When all have had their blessing, you stand again and the others begin to chant.
We are delivered! The Lord has vanquished our foe! We rise over our oppressions, addiction, repression, obsession, compulsion, poverty, vanity, despair. We confess our demons to God! Libertacao! Oh God, my God, oh God!
There’s a first time for everything, you think, much later, leaving.
Walking home alone, still tangled in the arms of a preacher half your age, the city feels warm and wild and magic. You are pregnant with possibility, and the night feels like a prayer.
Lorette C. Luzajic is editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a journal she founded in 2015 that is devoted to literature inspired by visual art. She has a journalism degree from Ryerson University, but went on to pursue a more creative path. Her prose poetry and small fictions have been published widely, including Cabinet of Heed, Litro, New Flash Fiction Review, Unbroken, Cleaver Magazine, Fatal Flaw, JMWW, and many more. She has been nominated for several Best of Net and Pushcart prizes. Her flash story recently won first place in a contest at Macqueen’s Quinterly. Recent books of many are Pretty Time Machine: ekphrastic prose poems (Mixed Up Media Books, 2020) and a greatest hits collection, Salt (Cyberwit Books, 2021, India). Lorette is also an award-winning visual artist with collectors in at least 25 countries from Estonia to Peru. She lives in Toronto, Canada. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.
