IT MIGHT NOT HAVE OCCURRED to my parents to send me to a faith healer if it hadn’t been for my sister’s accident. Barb had been throwing rocks in the parking lot of the Desert Chapel Foursquare Church with some of the other church kids when Sister Busby’s son, Lester, threw one that accidentally hit Barb in the eye. Blood seeped between her fingers while Lester cringed on the asphalt, taking his mother’s blows without a sound. By the time Dad brought Barb home from the emergency room, her left eye was swaddled in a thick white bandage. Mom spent the next two weeks reminding her not to play with it, not to pull it off, that the doctor said no light in that eye.

We went to a prayer meeting the night before the doctor was scheduled to remove Barb’s bandage. She’d had it on so long it had turned black, the gummy edges curled. At the end of the service, Barb went to the altar with the adults. Brother Morrow knelt in front of her. He dabbed oil on her forehead while our parents and other adults hovered in a ragged arc behind her. They prayed, sometimes in unison, sometimes in turn, sometimes in tongues. People waved their hands in the