The Healing (2 page)

It was only much later, when she heard her mother calling out to her, that she wrestled herself from beneath the covers.

Violet struggled into her dress. When she entered the kitchen, lit now by a weak light, she saw that her mother was no longer on the cot. The front door was ajar, and through the crack she heard her mother’s voice again, sounding farther away. With her legs woozy beneath her, Violet trudged toward the dim light that bled through the doorway.

From the porch she saw small clusters of people gathered in the road across the field. She tried to find her mother’s face among them. Then she saw what the others watched. Up the track, veiled by the morning mist, a pair of mules strained to draw a wagon through the mud. Two identical black-clad figures sat upon the buckboard, one snapping the reins and the other straight-backed, facing ahead. In the bed of the buckboard was something the size of a large trunk, draped by the same quilt she’d seen the night before. Violet, even in her fogginess, understood. Her mother was leaving without her.

She meant to scream out, but the only sound she made was a thick, strangled cry not audible to the people standing in the road, yet almost as one, they turned to see the girl in a bloodstained dress. They watched as her legs collapsed beneath her and she fell into the arms of the old woman.

• • •

Gran Gran struggled mightily to get Violet back to the cot, gripping her tightly under her arms, dragging her through the kitchen and into the pantry where she finally hoisted the limp body onto the striped tick. After she buried the girl once more in quilts, she went back to
the open door. People were returning to their homes now, still casting glances in the direction of the house.

“Go ahead and get an eyeful,” she scolded in a tired voice. “No telling what you can make out of it by supper if you get right to it.”

She shut the door on them and returned to the pantry, finding the girl sleeping, her breathing labored. The woman slumped into her rocker by the side of the bed.

The girl didn’t belong here. Gran Gran was too old to be taking in swap-dog kin. Anyway, an orphan appearing out of nowhere would stir up trouble she was too worn out to handle. She was done with fighting trouble.

And what if she died?

A colored prostitute was bad enough. It was only luck that the Choctaw twins who kept Gran Gran stocked with provisions had seen her lantern hanging out on the porch. They came as soon as they saw her signal for trouble, in time to get the dead woman up to the burying ground with no questions asked.

But if a child were to die in Gran Gran’s hands? That would surely get these self-respecting colored folks up in arms. They’d put her under the jail for sure.

The old woman’s hands trembled with fatigue.

With strained eyes she watched the girl for signs, hoping she would give up anything that would tell her what to do, to unfix this mess she didn’t ask for, until weariness finally overwhelmed her. She dropped her chin to her chest and fell into a dark, dreamless sleep, the only kind she had known for years.

• • •

Midmorning found the girl tossing restless in the bed, her loud muttering waking the old woman with a start. She tried to decipher the sounds.

“Listen to this now,” she said to nobody. “Can’t make heads or tails out of what she saying.”

Gran Gran fogged her glasses with her breath and then wiped
them on her apron. Leaning over the girl, she carefully considered Violet’s changing expressions, the muscles in her face, how they tensed, grimaced, relaxed, and then contorted again. How the head shook off each expression.

“How am I going to fix her,” the old woman asked aloud, “when I don’t even know what her misery is?”

She pulled back from Violet and drew in a deep breath. Then the old woman closed her eyes, trying to summon the thing that ailed the girl. But the shadows would not yield their names. She lingered within the girl’s darkness, seeing no face nor hearing any voice.

“I can’t see, little girl,” she said at last. “Used to could. I could look into a person’s eyes and divine their spirit. Now when I look into somebody’s eyes, it’s just the ancient dead looking back at me.” She shook her head grimly. “And they ain’t speaking.”

The girl called out in her delirium, her panicked voice now loud enough to carry through the windows.

Gran Gran had to get the girl quiet.

A mixture of sweet-gum bark fortified with a strong dose of whiskey eventually settled her down, but even after Violet had calmed, Gran Gran became aware of a peculiar thing, the movement of the girl’s head. It was only a slight rhythmic gesture, a steady pulse. But upon noticing it, she remembered that it was that same repetitive motion the girl brought with her.

Gran Gran began to keep exact time with the patting of her foot, trying to enter the rhythm. Was it the throb of a heartbeat she was sounding out? Was she measuring in-breaths and out-breaths? When Gran Gran tried to decipher the sign, she could not get past the darkness that clung to the girl like a shroud.

The old woman rose up straining from her chair. She drew back the tattered red-checked curtain to let what little light the watery sky would allow into the room. The sun had been stingy with its rays all day, the gray expanse broken only by the white furls of smoke from cookstoves down in the quarter.

For a long while she gazed out upon the only stretch of earth she
had known her entire life. This was all that was left of her childhood days, the great house in ruin, the foundation being eaten away by the creek, and across the field, the double row of slave cabins, fixed up now by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of house slaves, the ones who had stayed on after Freedom. They acted as white as the God they worshipped. That’s what they were, all right. They were all soul sick.

A weak shaft of sunlight broke through the heavy, blanketed sky and dimly lit the room. Gran Gran turned from the window. A ray illuminated Violet’s face.

“And what you going to think when you remember tonight?” she asked the sleeping girl. “Turn on me like the rest of them done, I reckon.”

She leaned over and placed her mouth near the child’s ear. “I want you to know, girl, I listened to your momma’s cries. She was hurting real bad inside. I listened to the deepest parts of her. I believed I understood. I surely did. But I swear to you, I didn’t know what she’d end up doing.”

The sleeping girl was unmoved by Gran Gran’s defense.

“Sometimes, when you look at a person, all you see is the tangle and you miss the weave.”

Gran Gran breathed a heavy sigh and then straightened back up. “Never you mind,” she said. “No matter what I tell you, I figure it’ll be a long time before you ever see nothing but the tangle in all this mess.”

Gran Gran took a rag from the pan of water and wrung it out, to cool Violet’s forehead. She knew that a person needed to make sense out of calamity, no matter how old they were. If not, the soul, frustrated at abiding within a vessel of shattered mirrors, takes flight.

“I hope what happened to my mistress ain’t happening to you, girl. Her body healed, but her spirit roamed homeless through the world. Creation is filled with soul-sick folks, colored and white, never knowing where they belong. They tangle everybody else up in their grief.”

The old woman began to suspect that this was the battle the girl
was fighting. If that were so, she was beyond the reach of any medicine Gran Gran knew of. She had spent her life tending to the flesh and to the bone, leaving the rest to the preachers and superstition.

“But that’s what it is all right,” the woman muttered. “She’s knitting and a’patching. Patching and a’knitting. This girl is piecing together a tale. Trying to put some sense behind what all she seen.” Gran Gran laid her hand on the girl’s face. “And God only knows what tale she’s going to tell on me.”

Violet’s skin burned to the touch. She stammered more syllables, fervent but jumbled, and then shook off the old woman’s hand with a fierce toss of her head.

Gran Gran smiled grimly. “But that’s all right, little girl. I lost my momma, too. Don’t remember it to this day. And all they gave me was bits and pieces, here and there. But I done the best I could. Sometimes it takes a whole lifetime to get the story right. I’m still working on it.” She laughed. “Some memories don’t come store-bought and readymade.”

Gran Gran stood and walked over to the window. “They told me I wasn’t born in this house. I was born over there across the yard in Shinetown. Course it wasn’t called that then. Back then it was called the slave quarters.” Her sigh was heavy, as if weighted by a century of memory. “That’s what they told me anyway. When you quilting up a life, you sometimes got to start with any piece you can get your hands on.”

As she spoke, the sleeping girl calmed a bit, as if the words themselves were smoothing out the rough weather inside.

Gran Gran walked over to her. “That what you telling me, Violet? You need to be talked to for a while? Now, if that’s the case, I can sure do that. I can always give you a heavy dose of words.”

The old woman sat back in her chair and laced her fingers in her lap. “What was I saying?”

After a moment she remembered.

“They tell me my momma’s name was Ella,” she began.

1847

E
lla was awake when she heard the first timid knock at the cabin door. Her husband, who lay beside her on the corn-shuck mattress, snored undisturbed. She kept still as well, not wanting to wake the newborn that slept in the crook of her arm. The baby had cried most of the night and had only just settled into a fitful sleep. Ella couldn’t blame the girl for being miserable. The room was intolerably hot.

Like everybody else in the quarter, Ella believed the cholera was carried by foul nocturnal vapors arising from the surrounding swamp, so she and Thomas kept their shutters and doors closed tight against the night air, doing their best to protect their daughter from the killing disease that had already taken so many.

The rapping on the door became more insistent. Ella pushed against Thomas with her foot. On the second shove he awoke with a snort.

“Thomas! See to the door,” she whispered, “and mind Yewande.”

Wearing only a pair of cotton trousers, Thomas eased himself from the bed and crossed the room. He lifted the bar and pulled open the door, but his broad, muscled back blocked the visitors’ faces. From the flickering glare cast around her husband, Ella could tell one of the callers held a lantern.

“Thomas,” came the familiar voice, “get Ella up.”

Ella started at the words. It was Sylvie, the master’s cook. The woman lived all the way up at the mansion and would have no good reason to be out this time of night unless it was something bad.

“Now?” Thomas whispered. “She’s sleeping.”

“She needs to carry her baby up to the master’s house,” Sylvie said. “Ella got to make haste on it. Mistress Amanda is waiting on her.”

“What she wanting with my woman and child in the dead of night?” Ella heard the alarm rising in her husband’s voice.

“Thomas, you know it ain’t neither night nor day for Mistress Amanda. She ain’t slept a wink since the funeral. And she’s grieving particular bad tonight. Her medicine don’t calm her down no more. She ain’t in no mood to be trifled with.”

“Old Silas,” Thomas pled to another unseen caller, “you tell the mistress that Ella will come by tomorrow, early in the morning.” Then he dropped his voice to a hush. “You know the mistress ain’t right in her head.”

Old Silas had more pull than anybody with the master, but from the lack of response, Ella imagined Silas’s gray head, weathered skin stretched tight over his skull, shaking solemnly.

Thomas let go a deep breath and then turned back to his wife. Behind him, Ella could hear the talk as it continued between the couple outside.

“You know good and well she didn’t say to fetch Ella,” Old Silas whispered harshly to his wife. “Just the baby, she said. What’s in your head?”

“Shush!” Aunt Sylvie fussed. “You didn’t see what I seen. I know what I’m doing.”

Ella met them at the door holding the swaddled infant. Not yet fourteen, Ella wore a ripped cotton shift cut low for nursing, and even in the heat of the cabin, she trembled. The yellow light lit the faces of the cook and her husband.

“What she want with Yewande?” Ella whimpered. “What she going to do to my baby?”

“Ella, she ain’t going to hurt your baby,” Sylvie assured. “Mistress wouldn’t do that for the world.”

“But why—”

Old Silas reached out and laid a gentle hand on Ella’s shoulder. “I expect she wants to name your girl, is all.” His voice was firm but comforting. He spoke more like the master than any slave. “That right, Sylvie?”

“Of course!” Sylvie said, as if hearing the explanation for the first time. “I expect that’s all it is. Mistress Amanda wants to name your girl.”

“But Master Ben names the children,” Ella argued.

“You heard what the master said,” Sylvie fussed. “Things got to change. We all got to mind her wishes until she comes through this thing. No use fighting it.”