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reputation grow and his ministry expand, but they still lived like poor people. All of the money that came in went to the ministry. There was no home, no stability, no reliable income. Loud and angry voices sometimes filtered through the walls of the Terrells’ bedroom all night long. Brother Terrell emerged the next morning looking beaten. My mother would sit and drink coffee with him and “try to encourage him.” Afterward, she counseled Betty Ann on how a minister’s wife had to support him, especially in hard times.
    One night in Huntsville, Alabama, as Brother Terrell stood in front of the prayer ramp, offering buckets in hand, the Woman Who Used To Be Big walked up and snatched the microphone from him. She had joined the tribes that followed us as we moved in the vicinity of their hometowns. Dockery, the toughest of the tent men, started toward the front to lead her back to her seat, but Brother Terrell waved him off. The woman held a ten-dollar bill by a corner and waved it over her head.
    “I’m giving my last ten dollars to Brother Terrell. God healed me of a tumor a few months back. Oh hondalie condalie.”
    Sufis twirl, Hindus chant, Buddhists sit in silence. Holy Rollers and charismatic Christians babble like fools or speak the language of the angels, depending on who describes the experience. Believers lapsed into speaking in “tongues” or glossolalia when their euphoria stretched beyond the bounds of ordinary language.
    The Woman Who Used To Be Big closed her eyes and began to jerk. Brother Terrell ducked a thrown elbow. When the jerking slowed, he thanked her and reached for the microphone. She backed him off with one hand.
    “When the doctor checked me out, he said what did the preacher do with the tumor? I said I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just know I was sick and now I’m well. Hondalie condalie. A mighty wind swept down from the top of the tent, and I was healed.”
    Brother Terrell reached again for the microphone, but she turned away from him.
    “I’m not done yet, Brother. You’ll know when I’m done.”
    He dropped the buckets and started laughing. She waved her ten-dollar bill again.
    “This ten dollars is to prove God for my son. He’s an alcoholic, but if God can bust a tumor, he can heal a drunk. This man is giving us everything he’s got. Y’all help me support him.”
    As she spoke, the black woman who sat next to Pam and me rose to her feet and waved a bill in the air. The words poured out of her mouth, soft and incessant. “Tell it. Amen. Go on now. Yes. Yes.” A soft alto counterpoint to the solo performance of the Woman Who Used To Be Big.
    Purses snapped open across the tent and wallets were fished out of pockets. Soon everyone waved bills in the air.
    The Woman Who Used To Be Big laid the microphone on the prayer ramp. She gripped Brother Terrell by the shoulder with one hand and with the other she motioned for people to come up to the front. Brother Terrell buried his face in his hands and cried as people walked down the aisles and dropped their money in the buckets that stood at his feet.
    We didn’t have to worry about money again during that revival. Brother Terrell paid the bills and had some money left over to give to my mother and other members of his team on the payroll, as well as the families who traveled with the tent.
    When the people ran out of money to give, they brought bags of clothes and quilts and grocery sacks filled with vegetables from their gardens: tomatoes, peaches, okra, greens, and squash, bushels and bushels of squash. I hated squash. God, I thought, must possess a spiteful sense of humor.

Chapter Four
    THE REVIVAL IN HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA, ENDED AT ABOUT MIDNIGHT. IN the hours that followed, Mama, Betty Ann, Pam, Gary, and I exhausted ourselves with waiting for Brother Terrell. He made the rounds among the tent crew, giving last-minute instructions, digging in his pockets, and passing out money. He was close now, just a few feet away,