The Healing

Chapter 17





Gran Gran eased up from her rocker and took hold of the poker to stoke the smoldering embers in the stove. For once, Violet’s eyes were not on the old lady. The girl sat in her straight-backed chair, pulled up close to the rocker, looking down in her lap at the snapping eyes of Polly Shine.

“Well,” Gran Gran said, turning her backside to a revived fire, “I can’t tell how much you understanding of what I’m telling you, but you sure didn’t shout for me to hush up! Or run away with your hands over your ears. So I reckon it’s fine by you.”

Gran Gran laughed. “You know, Violet, the saddest thing about being the only one left to tell a story is everybody who cares to listen is gone. Don’t know why God gives some folks longer candles to burn than others, throwing out light when everybody else has gone to sleep. Anyway, when you tell me to shut my mouth, I’ll know you well enough to tell your own tale. And I promise, I’ll listen as good to you as you done to me.”

Indeed Gran Gran could tell Violet was taking in the stories, like a body takes to the right potion. The only time during the tale Violet wasn’t gazing at Gran Gran with hungry eyes and mouth agape was when she was looking down at the clay mask, tracing the cool lines of the somber face with an index finger.

• • •

The storytelling became regular now and when Gran Gran wasn’t telling the stories, she was forming the next one. Strands of memory that had long slipped from her grasp, she found again, picking them up like familiar paths through a forest that had grown over. Once she had a stepping-off place, memory cleared the way.

“I guess what Polly said about remembering was about the truest words that ever left her mouth,” Gran Gran said one morning as she scooped a spoonful of grits onto Violet’s plate. “She said a person has to remember who they are. Ain’t that a strange thing to say? Now who would have thought that a person could forget who they were?”

Violet said nothing, but she watched the old woman intently.

“Took me the longest time to understand that, myself.” Gran Gran laughed. “Used to make Polly so mad with me. She said trying to teach me anything was like trying to show red to a blind mule!”