The Healing

Chapter 20





For the rest of that day, Violet let go of Gran Gran’s apron strings for as much as an hour at a time, doing nothing but studying the masks. Already on the table were Sylvie and Silas; Chester, Pomp, and Lizzie; Mistress and Master Satterfield and Little Lord; and Ella, Gran Gran’s mother. Violet would carefully lift each up with both hands and move them around, arranging and rearranging them.

Gran Gran guessed maybe the girl was acting out a story, the way children do with dolls and spools and just about anything else you set in front of them. But she couldn’t say for sure. She only knew that it was a relief to see those anxious eyes calm some, and even fire up a bit with what Gran Gran judged as curiosity. Or maybe it was nothing but that age-old game called “play-like.” If so, that was fine with Gran Gran. A child’s pretending was a much better pastime than remembering all the real-life, grown-up mess this girl had seen. Too much to learn, too quick.

When Gran Gran had been a girl and the time had come for her to leave Sylvie and the kitchen, the only world she had ever known, suddenly nothing made sense. No one had ever told her about the ingredients of life, only of biscuits. No one had readied her for the new things she saw. Birthing and mothering and living and dying. The kitchen had been a pretend place, where life never intruded in its typically messy fashion. Now, remembering, the old woman wished someone had prepared her better.

“Violet?” Gran Gran asked, looking at the girl as she placed Polly’s mask between Aunt Sylvie’s and Silas’s. “I don’t know if you old enough for this story or not, but something tells me you are. I know when I was about your age, I sure wish somebody had let me in on the big secret. I reckon Aunt Sylvie and Chester and the grown-up folks who raised me didn’t think it was good for my ears.”

Gran Gran shook her head and laughed. “Lord were they wrong about that! It was the best news I ever heard!”