The Laying of Hands

She brings me to church tonight for the holy water sprinkled from a bottle no bigger than the length between my grandfather’s wrinkled knuckle and nail. The preacher hold his black book over my head, its letters lit like foil in the florescent lights. He takes my head between his hands and whispers “Be not afraid.” Then pulls his long sleeves to his elbow, crouches over me, and begins to pray. Cracked crevasses in the paneling like streaks down a window after rain, frame old women who rise from their pews to press their wet palms against my heaving chest. Their hosed thighs rub against me, as they strip me bare to only a white T-shirt. In a sea of quivering palms, an intonation of tongues rise and fall with psalms. They lay their hands on me, and speak in languages unknown. I loose my mother’s hand and for a moment I am lost to them, until my mother pulls me out to press her damp cheek to my face. My body quivers with the weight of their holiness.