No Givebacks

"Miriam, please! Miriam, sit DOWN!"   Mrs. Steadmeyer looked ready to pull her hair, to cry, to gouge her eyes right out of her head with a number two pencil. But Miriam would not stop, or sit down. Miriam stood on the teacher's desk at the front of the class, her arms raised, transfixing her classmates with her high, light voice raised to the roof, to the clouds, to the stars above:   "...if we believe, brothers and sisters, if we believe, if we BELIEVE! The Lord will deliver us from the timeless scourge upon our kind!"   "WE BELIEVE!" Thirty voices chorused, resounding off the primary colors on the cinderblock walls of the classroom.   "Children! Settle down! Children, please--"   But Miriam, who had always been rather full of beans, closed her eyes in reverent delirium, reaching out to her congregation.   "WHO among us needs to feel the HEALING POWER of the LORD?"   The crowd parted around a scruffy little boy named Orville. He seemed embarrassed by the attention. He did not look like a boy who received much attention, except for the occasional thwap on the back of the head from the giggling popular girls who sat behind him.   “ORVILLE! Come FORWARD!”   Orville came forward. Slowly, he came, tears pouring down his face, his head down and his arms out toward salvation. Miriam clutched his hands as he approached the desk and pulled him up to stand next to her.   “Orville,” she lowered put her mouth next to his ear and lowered her voice, “Do you believe?”   Orville nodded and mumbled that he did, indeed, believe.   “ORVILLE! DO YOU BELIEVE?”   “I BELIEVE, MIRIAM, I BELIEVE!”   “OH LORD, ORVILLE IS A BELIEVER! BEHOLD, WE ARE ALL BELIEVERS! AND WE PRAY THAT YOU DELIVER ORVILLE FROM THE PLAGUE WITH WHICH HE HAS BEEN AFFLICTED—LORD, WE PRAY, WE BEG, WE BELIEVE—OH, LORD, SMITE ORVILLE’S COOTIES!”   And she brought her hands down sharply on Orville’s shoulders: “AMEN!” and she gave him a mighty smack, channeling all the power it was her privilege to summon, into Orville’s poor, wracked frame.   And lo, the cooties were banished from Orville’s life, and the recess bell rang, and Orville played with the rest of the believers upon the monkey bars.