51

“Tracie.” He had called her name, the calling of which sounded like it was blowing on the wings of the wind. Tracie felt her name rising, billowing up from the inside of her. She felt it rather than heard it.

Gone were the Bible and the flaming candles blazing staunchly beside it. For some reason Tracie thought of the flaming sword with the guardian angel the Lord God had put outside the Garden of Eden upon Adam and Eve’s banishment from the garden.

Tracie frowned. Now, where had that come from? And how had she gotten on her knees? She didn’t know, but she was on them.

All around her was a bright blue sky and clouds. Just miles and miles of endless blue sky, and clouds that were fluffy white, like big feathered pillows. It was as though she were kneeling in the middle of the atmosphere. The whole idea of gravity was not a factor in this place. She was like a balloon that was at one with the air.

Up in front of her, someone was walking toward her. Tracie squinted, trying to get a better look at the person who was venturing closer to where she was kneeling. Laura. It was Laura Peyton. Tracie hadn’t seen her since she was a child. What was she doing here? Where was here? Tracie wondered.

Tracie tried to remember. Yes, she had been looking at the Holy Bible and the flaming candles casting dancing shadows on the wall, and then . . . and then she was here.

Laura Peyton looked radiant, serene.

Tracie thought she looked like an angel. The spirit of her had always been so, but her physical demeanor was different. She was Laura, that was for sure. She looked like Laura, and yet there was a totally different quality about her, as though Tracie were seeing a dimension of her she had never noticed before.

Laura stopped in front of Tracie. She reached out a hand to smooth her black, silky locks of hair. “Remember the healing, Tracie?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.” For no reason at all, tears sprang to Tracie’s eyes.

Laura shook her head at Tracie’s tears. “It is a time for joy, child, not sorrow. Real joy. Just remember that the path to most things that are holy is fraught with many stumbling blocks along the way. Only you can know when you’ve reached holiness, Tracie. You know that by your belief.”

Tracie blinked back the tears. And the reservoir that had been stored inside her long ago, the one she had tapped into when she was a child, the reservoir of innocence and childlike faith from which she had received the healing, rose up inside her like a spring day.

Her body suddenly felt light, as if the strain of it were no longer there. As though she had laid her burdens down.

Old Laura Peyton smiled and nodded. She was the same woman who, in life, had imparted faith to Tracie when she had hit her head on the radiator. “Have faith, Tracie, and believe all that you will see here, because there is no untruth in this place. When you return, you will know all that you need to know. But you will win by belief.”

“Win what? Tracie asked.

Laura only smiled serenely at her, which brought Tracie to another question. “Are you dead, Laura?”

Laura made the sign of the cross on Tracie’s forehead, and then she outright laughed at her question. “Child, I have never been so alive.” And with that, Laura was gone.

“Wait!” Tracie screamed out to her. “Someone called my name.”

“I called your name, Tracie.” Again the voice rose as if on the wings of the wind. It was felt more than heard by Tracie. And, now in Laura’s place, there was a book lying in front of her.

She read the cover. “The Ancient Book of Prophecies,” Tracie whispered the title out loud.

As soon as she had the book open, the pages beckoned to her. Come. Tracie reached out a hand, and then she turned to look behind her.

The Holy Bible was directly behind her. The cover had opened, and the pages began to flap rapidly as though a great wind were flipping them. The Bible closed when each page had been turned.

She felt her name again. “I called your name, Tracie.” Tracie had been touched by the Unspoken.

She turned back to the book in front of her, and as her hand touched it, she was pulled through to begin her journey. There she beheld many things, and many things beheld her.

Graced. That’s what she was, purely graced.

Tracie was walking to the beat of a different drummer. It was to a tune no one heard but her. But that was okay, because she was like two going on ninety.

She had always walked as though she knew a secret nobody else did, and now it was true. Her stroll through the streets this time would be much different.

Tracie Burlingame ran in the spirit just as she had run on the streets of Harlem, as though she had a victory to reclaim.

And she did.

Before she left the path, she threw her head back, threw her arms out spread-eagled in the air, and said the two words that left her spiritually on holy ground.

The mere utterance of those two words left her standing in the spirit. “I believe!” she shouted to the Unspoken, “I believe!” With that, it began to rain on Tracie, a baptismal flood. “Thank you, Jesus.”

At the very moment that Tracie Burlingame shouted, “I believe!” the old black preacher, praying in the sackcloth and ashes, said, “Amen,” ending his three days of repentance for Tracie Burlingame. And then he closed his eyes in eternal peace.