Balm (21 page)

M
ADGE WORE THE SAME TRAVELING
dress she'd worn going home. When it grew too hot, she pulled the veil back, but as soon as the car cooled, she pulled it forward again. The widow had been right. The costume granted her privacy, but any perception of respectability for a colored woman was still tenuous. Each time the railway worker walked through the car, she clutched her travel satchel, her nerves frayed. This constant vigilance during the trip exhausted her.

She napped for a short time, but soon she gave up trying to rest. The wind rattled the train car. She remembered the long walk up from Tennessee, the first time she'd laid eyes on this vast grassland, the mystifying sight of it. She'd listened to the brush, thinking: how knowledgeable the sisters were among the Tennessee hardwoods, how there wasn't a plant or a tree or a bush or a fruit they could not put to work, how their pickaxes probed like Moses's magical rod and fished
plants into coarse bags tied to their waists. This prairie, with its lack of trees and waves of willowy flowers, spoke of something beyond Tennessee, beyond her life, perhaps even beyond God. She had never even heard the word
prairie
before coming here. Even the word sounded like the name of a flower. She had a hard time pronouncing it.
Pair-ree
, she said.
The Pair-ree State
.

She touched her fingers to the window. She tried to recall her first enchantment with the North. Although she had never set foot in such a place, she'd known from the very beginning that she would, at least, try to rise and meet it. Everything was so much faster—the people talked and walked and drove their carriages more quickly than any she'd ever seen. Each day she bore witness to something new. The range of her choices was not as boundless as this land, but surely there was room to hope.

First, she had to find a place to brew and store. She could not continue to work out of the widow's kitchen. This healing balm was already working on her ambitions, propelling her to think of the future.
I can do it
, she told herself, rallying her courage. She caught a piece of scrambling paper beneath her foot, picked it up, peering at its indecipherable markings. The edge was ragged, torn from a booklet of some kind. In order to cross this valley, she would have to cross this barrier of deciphering letters, too. She let the paper go, watching as it flew through the car.

She wiped the window with the sleeve of her dress. The prairie glowed with the subtler hues of late summer. She was grateful for the empty car and tried to relax. The conductor walked through and announced the last stop before Chicago. She gathered her things. The train slowed, and she looked longingly at the ugly city, thought of her drafty little room in the widow's house. She could taste the first nip of fall. She had lived in the city long enough to guess how many more days she could go without a shawl. She waited until the platform cleared.

There was no one there to meet her. She had asked a literate woman to write the note, copy the widow's address down. But she did not trust the postal system, and she did not believe they had ever gotten it. If Richard had known, he would have been there to meet her. A kindly man.

A hack driver slowed. She asked for Ontario Street as he loaded her trunk. She settled into the ride, looking onto the city.
Hemp.
Now he was a man. Not some transient stopping through town long enough to flirt with an innocent healing girl. Madge had not known such pain until she'd left him behind, ostensibly for good. She had not been able to bring herself to tell her mother about him, though she'd wanted to. There was no future, no chance for anything serious. She'd always wondered about the stories she'd heard about love, the way it shook the sense out of a woman. Perhaps this new freedom had something to do with abandon, a reckless notion to follow a scent in the wind. Back home in Tennessee, such feelings were dangerous. When each step spelled potential peril, there was no place for such nonsense. A woman's passion had to be measured by the teaspoon.

What on earth could she do with this tender tree of a man anyway? She wished her hands were larger, wished she could wrap her palms and fingers around his entire body, feel out all his insides. This love needed room to grow and roam, but with that other woman's ghost haunting him, there was little space left.

Madge did not know what she would say when she saw him. All she knew was that she could not leave things as they'd been.

When she opened her eyes, they were crossing the bridge into the northern district of the city.

S
HE ENTERED THE HOUSE
through the kitchen. Olga was sitting at the table peeling potatoes. She barely looked up.

“Thought you were gone for good.”

“Thought I was, too.”

“She expecting you?”

“Don't know.”

“Well, she hasn't hired anyone else, so I suppose you better get out of those traveling clothes and get back to work.”

Madge picked up the trunk and carried it to the bottom of the back stairwell. She stopped. She could not help herself. She peeked into her herb cupboard. The cook had been filling it with jars and foodstuffs. It did not smell the same.

Upstairs, she scooted the trunk into a corner and began to undress. When she had changed into a suitable dress, she went looking for the widow. She heard a man's cough coming from the drawing room. The widow's father must have arrived while she was gone.

She climbed the stairs, knocked softly on the widow's bedroom. No answer. She found the widow napping in the library.

“Mrs. Walker, you need anything?”

Sadie's eyes flew open and she sat up. “Madge. You're back.”

“That old dream about the house in Tennessee wasn't much of nothing.”

“When I saw you standing there, I thought I was dreaming.”

“I brought you some tea back.”

“My father had a fall. He can't make it up the stairs, so he's sleeping in the drawing room for now.”

“Want me to bring it up?”

“You said the dream didn't mean anything. How was your mother?”

Madge took a breath, then allowed the flap inside her to open. “My mother lost her eyes, but she's making it.”

“The war left its mark on everyone.”

“Yes, ma'am. But if it wasn't for the war, I wouldn't be standing here.”

“Please sit, Madge.”

“What for?”

“My father says he is returning to York. He doesn't approve of my speaking with spirits.”

“I don't blame him,” Madge said, then softened her tone. “But that decision is yours. Long as you feel you helping people.”

“I can talk to the dead without him, you know.”

“Without who?”

“James.”

“Ain't that something. Never knew your own strength.”

“And what about your strength? What will you do with those hands? Surely you can do more than mix up plants in my kitchen.”

“I can make that tea for you and your daddy if you like.”

“Thank you, Madge. That would be nice.”

Madge turned to leave.

“And Madge? I'm sorry for what I said about Hemp.”

“We all got our regrets, Mrs. Walker.”

W
HEN
M
ADGE RETURNED TO THE KITCHEN
, Richard was sitting at the table drinking a bowl of soup.

“What's new, old man?” She smiled at him.

“Didn't know you were getting back today. I would have met you at the station.”

“No need.”

“Hemp been around here looking for you.”

She froze. “Where is he?”

“Don't know. You could try the church.”

She could not help herself. “Did the doctor find Annie?”

“I reckon that's a conversation you need to have with him.”

She didn't dare hope. “I got to work right now. Can you take me over there in a little while?”

“I can walk you.”

“That'll do. I'll holler when I'm ready.”

A couple of hours later, the two of them stopped in front of the church.

“Is he all right?”

“He fine, he fine. But I think the two of you got business to settle,” said Richard, opening the door for her. “I see you back at the house.”

Inside, Madge saw a man she assumed was the reverend sitting in the front pew staring up at the ceiling. She looked up. She could see the outline of where a large hole had been patched. He spoke without turning around.

“It took us quite a while to patch up that hole. Seem like every time we patched it up, the snow and ice made it fall in again. Finally, we got it good and fixed and not a single ray of sun has peeped through.”

“Mighty fine work, Reverend.”

He turned. “Forgive my manners. I didn't know I was in the presence of a lady. Come on in. What can I do for you today?”

“I'm looking for Deacon Hemp. Any chance he around here?”

“Haven't seen him today. If it's important, I can—”

“Yes, I need to see him.”

“All right then, take a seat and I'll send a boy to fetch him. I believe he driving for a doctor man on the west side. The stable ain't too far from here.”

“I really appreciate it. I hate to trouble you.”

“No trouble at all.”

She sat in a front pew, and the reverend disappeared through a door in the back of the church. She remembered the last time she had come inside this church. She had been with the widow, and they had gone into that back room where a small group of anxious people awaited them. But she could not remember the last time she'd gone into a church to worship. She looked at the small seating area for the choir, the minister's
lectern. There was a beautifully embroidered cloth draped across it, the most colorful thing in the room. Her brand of religion didn't include the kinds of things that went on inside churches, but it did not mean she didn't respect the healing that went on here. She recognized healing in all its forms, and when people jumped and danced as they sang and prayed, she could almost see the mending stitches run up their bodies. She ran her hand back and forth over the back of the pew in front of her. It was smoothly planed, and she thought of all the care men like the deacons must have put into maintaining the modest little building. She knew Hemp was one of those men.

The reverend came back a few minutes later. He sat a few feet over from her on the same pew. He returned to staring up at the ceiling. His breathing was labored.

“You know Deacon Hemp from Kentucky?”

She winced, wondering if the man thought she was Annie. The woman's shadow would haunt her forever. She wished she could contact the spirit world like Sadie could, talk to the woman herself.
Let go of him
, she would say.
Let the man move on in peace. A ghost love ain't real as mines.

“No, I met him here. I'm from Tennessee.”

“Oh, is that right?”

She wondered how much Hemp had told his reverend of her, if anything at all. She wanted to feel as if she were important enough to make him confide in this elder. But when she looked at the reverend's face, he did not reveal any knowledge of her. The man's face was unreadable.

But she could read something other than his face. The shallow breath. The tightened chest.

“Reverend?” She scooted closer. “Forgive my asking, but you been feeling all right?”

He looked over at her, and she could see that he would not give her
a straight answer. He said exactly what she thought he would: “The Lord is good. I can't complain.”

She tried to figure out how she would touch him. If he let her put her hands on him, she would be able to see what was going on. She guessed there was something in his chest; something needing to be cleared. The eyes also appeared a bit yellow, and she knew a good tea for that as well.

“Give me your hands, Reverend.”

“What?” His eyes clouded, then cleared. “You that root woman, ain't you? Work for the widow? We got one of those in the church. She made me a tea once, and all it did was put me to sleep.”

So Hemp had told him about her. Or maybe Richard had. Surely he did not remember her from that one brief séance. She tried to shake off her vanity.

“Please,” she said. “Give me your hands.”

He looked around the room, as if someone were watching them. Then he calmly placed both hands in her upturned palms.

She closed her eyes. For a moment, there was nothing but light behind her eyelids. They darkened until she saw red. Just as she'd guessed. The chest was full of something nasty. There was a problem next to his stomach, too, on the right side of his body. Something there wasn't functioning properly, and she'd seen it before. It was causing his eyes to yellow. Yes, she knew a couple of things she could make up for him. She released his hands and opened her eyes.

“What did you just do?”

“I can send something over to you by Richard. Something to help.” She barely recognized herself. She wasn't healing this man out of the goodness of her heart. She was healing him because he was close to Hemp, and by helping him, she was inching closer to Hemp.
I'm terrible
, she thought.

“Did God speak to you just now?” he whispered, more than a hint of fear in his voice.

The door to the church opened, and the orange hue of sunset flooded the church. Before she looked back, she knew she would see the dark silhouette of Hemp filling the doorway.

She stood up, the reverend forgotten.

“Is that you?” Hemp said.

“In the flesh,” she answered just before the reverend repeated,
What did you just do?

H
EMP STEPPED INTO THE CHURCH SO HE
could see her better. A brown-faced girl with cottony hair tucked into two rows of braids. Dressed finer than expected. Chin higher than was custom. When she looked up at him, he saw the face of Tennessee. He moved toward her, afraid that if he did not lay hands on her, she would disappear. When he reached her, he gripped both of her arms harder than he'd intended. Her face did not register surprise, as if it were normal for him to grab her so roughly.

“When you get here?” he said, though he wanted to say,
Why you take so long to fetch me?

“Today.”

“Richard told me you was coming back. I thought you was gone for good.” He let go of her.

“I suppose ain't nothing permanent but death.”

The reverend cleared his throat. “I'll go on back yonder. Nice meeting you . . .”

Her eyes did not move from Hemp's face. She touched a pin at her neck, and he saw that the tips of her fingers were scabbed over from cuts.

“Your hands all right?”

Neither of them heard the door click softly behind the reverend.

“We go picking through the woods down there,” she said, nodding.

Now that she was here with him, his tongue was tied. She brought him back to boyhood, to a time when he had been unable to calm himself: a game of bogeyman, the promise of new shoes, a newly slaughtered hog, a fresh cup of milk. He trembled as he looked at her, and he could no longer deny it. She made him want to start over, move forward. She was the reason he'd buried a wooden cross with flowers carved into it. Without her, he would not have done it. Not yet. But he felt something for this woman that refused to go away. He did not know how far Tennessee was from Chicago, but there was weariness on her face, etched around her eyes, and he wanted to make it disappear. He wanted to erase those lines on her hands. He did not want her to ever be tired again. He wanted to be the healer for a change.

“You hungry?” he said suddenly.

“No. You?”

“Just ate.”

“I got the widow's credit.”

“Woman, would you let me be a man?” He looked awkwardly down at her.

She sat down and motioned for him to sit beside her. “I better sit. It's been a long day. I was on that train for twenty years, seem like.”

He placed his palms on his knees and slowly sat. The pew creaked beneath his weight. He sank the tips of his fingers into his hair.

She wanted to ask if the doctor had found Annie. She needed to know that before she said anything else. Maybe he was here to tell her
that he was back with his wife, but he did not want to upset her. He looked so anxious. Maybe he was just nervous about the news he was about to deliver. She met his eyes. She had something to say, and she would not rest until she said it. There was no way to get past this hump other than to admit her terrible mistake. A growing space inside her, emptied of pride, prepared to admit her wrongdoing. She would say the words that would allow him to settle back with his wife without fearing that Madge would disrupt their matrimony.

She needed to sleep in a bed. Days of travel had worn her down. She sat up straight, thinking of how to form the right words. As large as Chicago was, it was too small to avoid him. As soon as she said what she had to say, they would be free of each other.

“Hemp, I am so sorry how—”

He touched her arm to silence her. Lips that puckered like a flower when she spoke. Ears tucked in close to her head. The woman was a stroke from God's quill, her looks enough to make a grown man trip over his feet. Her personality, on the other hand, was another story. He detected a mystery in the healer that stretched beyond his ken, but he wanted her so badly, he was ready to throw out his caution. A life with her would be more than a life. It would be as thrilling as a man hunting for gold. This constant puzzling out of her thoughts flushed him with pleasure.

“You ain't got to say nothing.”

“I want to ask for your forgiveness if you allow it.”

He wanted to laugh. She was asking
him
to forgive
her
when he was the one who mistook her for Annie that night in his grief. He was the one who pushed her up those stairs to her room. Whoever started it, the sin was enough to stain them both. The only way to overcome it was to make an honest couple out of the two of them.

She started to cry.

“Oh no, Madge. Now don't cry.” She was probably remembering
the words he'd thrown at her that last night. He wished he could take them back, but he couldn't. He tried to open his mouth and say
I forgive . . .
but nothing came. He was not able to protect Annie when the trader came. He had stood silently by as if his hands did not make fists, watched her go while he mourned like a baby, walked back into the field like the draft horse they thought he was. His search for her in Kentucky was too brief: a feeble rifling through the camp and some abandoned farms, a ride too easily accepted from a white missionary, clothes from a preacher, a shared room at a lodging house, a clipping in a paper, a futile gesture from a doctor. These were the thoughts he had to live with. Madge was right. He was the one who had to forgive, close up his wounds, and move on. It was all that was left to do. The coloreds praying. The whites mourning. The trains whistling. The space between him and his old life widening. The healer crying right there in front of him. Everyone, everywhere, doing the only thing left for them to do.

“Marry me,” he whispered, the words tumbling out in a rasp. He wished he could speak with his hands, mold his life like a block of wood. He could better show her how he felt with a piece of tree and some tools.

But it was time for him to speak up like a man. His voice strengthened, “Miss Madge. Marry me,” he said, gaining volume with each utterance.

“Marry me . . . marry me.”

T
HEY MARRIED IN THE MIDDLE
of a winter storm. The reverend blessed the couple in front of nearly every member of the small but growing church. In the back pew, the widow sat next to Michael. A deacon played a march on the piano. Hemp wore a borrowed uniform from a friend who had sneaked it out of the Tremont House. He
stood as straight as a soldier while the reverend performed the rites. The wind whipped the small building, rattling it. But the deacons had worked long and hard to secure a strong and steady roof, and no one feared the building's demise.

In the months since he'd proposed to Madge, Hemp had been renewed, and, as he had always done, he looked beyond himself to find the glory. And he was thinking of trees, how they aged. He did not know as much as Madge about God's creations—the woman had brought back a sack of dirty bark!—but he knew something about the heart of a tree. When it dried, it did not bend and warp as the outer, wetter wood might. And he knew what things a tree could provide: a house to keep them warm, a broom handle to clean it, furniture to rest upon, a barn to shelter a cow, a fork to manage the hay, a spinning wheel to make cloth, a box to keep cheese, a canoe to cross a lake. There was no problem a strong piece of wood could not solve.

He could not remember his daddy's face, but if he closed his eyes, those hands appeared before him, whittling. The man had been the first to put a knife in his young son's hands, and from the beginning, Hemp loved the feel of wood beneath his fingers, the run of grain like a stream's current. He had been too young to use the knife, but he gleefully picked stones from the river, and long nights passed with the elder sitting outside the cabin sharpening his knife against the stone, the soft scraping sound sending the boy into a restful sleep.

As he stood before Madge, he vaguely recalled the night his daddy died. He had been just four years old, and the grown-ups had made him leave the cabin when the man began to show signs of his final moments. A woman with five children had gathered him in with her brood, and he ate a bowl of hot meal before falling off to sleep on a crowded pallet. The following week he had been sold off to another farm, to a Mr. Harrison, twenty miles away.

Hemp could smell the flowers Mrs. Walker had sent, and he was
grateful they were not hyacinth. Madge smiled, holding fast to his hand as if the wind would whisk into the church and steal him if she let go. It was cold, and her lip quivered. He reached to still it with his finger. The minister took his time, embellishing the lines with as much formality as the scripture allowed. In his pocket, Hemp carried the marriage certificate, the official record of their union. Though they did not have a place to call their own yet—Madge would continue to live at the widow's house and Hemp still lived with the men—their lives were their own, their futures alight. His days no longer ended with exhaustion, as they had during slavery, but with succor. The satisfaction of a mind at rest, the memory of where he had been enough to make him hold on to her a little tighter.

With a start, he recalled the name his daddy had gone by: Thomas.
My daddy's name was Thomas and so was mines.
When he left that farm soon after his father's death, he had left behind his name. He held back a baby's whimper, the hurt threatening to overcome him.

“Do you have some token of your love, Deacon Harrison?”

“Thomas,” he whispered.

“What's that?”

“My name is Thomas.”

“All right then, Deacon Thomas.” The reverend nodded, cleared his throat. “Do you have a token?”

“Yas, sir.” He dug in his pocket. He'd measured her finger with a piece of string while she slept and carved a ring out of wood. He held her hand in his. It was the first ring he had ever given a woman.

“You are now, in the eyes of the Lord, and in the eyes of the
law
, husband and wife.”

Bone of my bones
, he thought, kissing her on the lips.

As Madge looked up at the face of her new husband, she was thinking of what the sisters had taught her about how to store healing plants,
what would keep for a time, and what would rot. How this one needed the heat of the open field and that one the cool of the shade, this one the moist dirt after a spring shower, that one the well-drained soil of a sandy loam. Everything on the earth had its instructions. A careless boot step might kill one plant while another leaped right back up in defiance. The truth of it, they said, was that the body did not belong to the name of the person attached to it, any more than the tree on a man's property belonged to him. The body belonged to the earth, its return inevitable, the healer's role nothing beyond a kind of safekeeping.

He turned his face down to hers, and she sensed fragility in that cheek, knew, suddenly, that despite his size, this man was not as sturdy as a tree, but as fragile as a flower. He would need a moist soil to plant himself, and she would have to be gentle with her touch. He would need the sunlight of her love, the warmth of her compassion.

“You two coming? I hear it's a celebration round back,” said the reverend.

“Can you give us a minute?” Madge asked.

She had never joined a church, never reached out to anyone. The sisters had preached self-reliance, but the real thing was community. Now she had gained both a husband and a church. She was not much for churchgoing, but in the next room the congregation waited for them, a hot meal spread out on a wooden table. She could not help but feel love for them in return.

“I want to give you something.” She pulled out the locket.

“What's this?” he said.

“Something from my ma. It belong to you now.”

He opened it and looked at the image for a long time.

“Now listen. I got something to say, and I don't want you interrupting. I'm giving you this here chain to represent our new life.”

“New life.”

“That wife is long gone and we belongs to one another now.”

“You my wife now. And the devil himself couldn't tear me away from you.”

“We can't wipe out the past like it didn't happen. And we sure can't change it. But we can lay some things to rest.”

“Yas, suh. We sure can.”

Then she stood on her toes, put her lips to his ear, and whispered his name.