The Healing

Chapter 22





Sarie’s man proudly offered his arm to Polly and helped her down the porch steps. Her cloth sack hung from her shoulder, and the clay pot was cradled carefully in the crook of her arm.

Granada followed them into the yard and not until she joined Polly in the track did it dawn upon her that they were going to have to walk the entire distance back to the plantation yard. The overseer and his wagon were nowhere to be seen.

As if reading Granada’s thoughts, Polly turned to the girl. “I know you think you too tired to walk, child. But you just think of Sarie in there. After all she done tonight, tomorrow she going to be put back to the fields. Tonight God made Sarie a mother one more time. Tomorrow, white man turn her back into a mule. Remember that anytime your foots get tired, you hear?”

Polly raised her eyes to the night sky. “Least it’ll be easy walking,” she said in a frail voice that betrayed her exhaustion. “The woman is sitting tonight.”

Granada followed Polly’s gaze into the cloudless night sky. The moon was full and heavy, a “sitting woman,” as Polly called it. “Means she found her home and is full of joy,” she had told Granada once. “She knows where she belongs tonight.”

Polly was right. Tonight the woman above was brilliant enough to illuminate the road before them.

A group of chattering women and sleepy-eyed children, still captivated by Polly’s performance, accompanied the old woman and the girl down the track to the last cabin, beyond which swamp slaves were not allowed to pass. From there the women bid them farewell with extravagant waves and a chorus of “Blessed be” and “ ’Night, Mother Polly” that continued long after the settlement had disappeared from view.

Granada followed at a short distance behind Polly, who trudged on ahead in a world of her own. There were a million questions Granada wanted to ask about the birth, but she could tell from the way the old woman forged her way through the night, her frail body hunched over and both arms around the clay crock, she was in no mood for talk. The sense of magic that Granada felt back in the quarter faded with the voices of the women behind her.

They continued along the narrow road, walled in by a dense canebrake from which emerged the too-real screeching and chirring of the night. Still Polly did not speak nor even glance back to see if Granada was still behind her.

For more than a month now, Polly had forced Granada to stand close by and watch every grisly, bile-raising sight under the sun, but when something that could be fun came along, like watching a woman have a real, live baby, she got the door slammed in her face.

Her thoughts became hot as pokers. “You the meanest, ugliest thing I ever seen,” Granada grumbled to herself, not thinking Polly could hear.

“Beauty don’t lay on the skin,” Polly laughed wearily. “It’s the pleasing face you have to look out for, not the ugly one. A pleasing face ain’t hardly ever what it appears to be.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Granada answered, wondering how in the world Polly had heard her from way ahead.

“All right, tell me. What you riled about?” Polly asked, not looking back.

“You never going to learn me nothing about hoodoo or babies or nothing good. You always keep me away.”

“Once ain’t always. Twice ain’t forever,” Polly answered. “Coming a time real soon, Granada, when I won’t leave you outside no more. Then you can know it all.”

“I can get to see the baby being born?” Granada asked. She ran to catch up with Polly. “When soon?”

“When you a woman,” Polly said.

“Oh.” Granada was disappointed. To Granada that sure sounded like forever.

“Won’t be long before you see your flowers.” Polly looked down on Granada, squinting the way she did when she studied sick folks. “Most any day now, I figure.”

“What do you mean? Is I sick?” Granada asked. “What flowers you talking about?”

Polly exhaled hard. “Didn’t those people teach you nothing about being a woman? I’m speaking of blood, the flow of life. It will stream out of you like red blossoms.”

“Where’s it come out of me?” Granada gasped.

“From betwixt your legs,” Polly answered.

“No!” Granada gasped and then swallowed hard.

That was the secret all the women in the yard had been carrying! She had seen those red spots that mysteriously appeared on their dresses. And heard the riddling way they talked about bleeding times, special teas they drank when they were visited by “the wound of Eve,” the rags that needed to be washed out secretly. This is what it meant to be a woman?

She reached for Polly’s hand and squeezed it. “Can’t you stop it, Polly? I don’t want to be no woman if I have to bleed to death! You got to make me well.”

“Pooh!” Polly said. “Ain’t nothing to be scared about. Your eyes will see blood, but it ain’t just blood. It’s life itself. God flows through a woman like a living river. My momma said that’s how the moon gets washed new again, from the woman’s river of blood.”

“God put a river in me?” Granada asked skeptically.

“In the beginning God created,” Polly said. “Them words don’t mean nothing without the woman. When you bleed, you’ll feel the tug of life from as far away as the moon. From ‘In the beginning’ time. God ain’t got no beginning without the woman. Woman is the way God says yes in this here world. He put the promise on us. The woman carries ‘In the beginning’ in her body. And every month God will use your blood to wash the moon so the beginning time can begin again. When you get to be a woman you got to carry the promise with respect, and honor all the mothers who passed it down to us.”

“Then I get to see the babies born?”

“When the flow comes. Then you can help me with the other women. You won’t be a child no more, Granada, and you won’t have to stand outside the circle of woman things.”

“I can have me some babies, too?” Granada squeezed Polly’s hand again, and she noticed how warm it had become. It occurred to the girl that she had never willingly reached out for the old woman before, and this sudden intimacy struck her as curious, but she made no move to break the hold.

“Maybe so,” Polly said. “Soon your body will blossom like a fruit tree. And after it blossoms, you’ll have the authority to bear life. When that happens, you tell me, you hear?”

“Yes ma’am, I sure will. When I see my flowers. When my blood washes the moon.”

This was surely a hoodoo miracle if she had ever heard one. And it was going to happen inside of her! Down there!

As she walked at Polly’s side, holding on to her hand, Granada knew that what the old woman spoke of must be the biggest riddle of all. One that Chester or Silas or any man could never guess.

“Polly, when—”

“Stop,” Polly commanded, like she had heard something.

Granada froze, with one foot still raised, sure she was about to step on a snake that only Polly could see.

“Wait here,” Polly said, breaking their handhold. She stepped off the road and disappeared into the pitch-black forest.

The girl waited, figuring Polly had to relieve herself, but after she hadn’t come back for quite some time, Granada decided the woman was surely up to something. Determined not to be left out of things again, she slipped into the woods to find Polly.

After tripping over roots and tangling herself in unseen vines, Granada finally entered an open place in the woods where the moonlight filtered through a loosely woven roof of twisted vines and boughs, suffusing everything around her with an otherworldly luminescence. The sight gave Granada the shivers. Though she couldn’t name it, she knew something unnatural was happening.

She heard a rustling in the brush and then Granada saw the old woman’s silhouette. She had dropped to her knees at the base of a sweet-gum sapling, and with her hands was clearing the leaf mold from a patch of ground. Once she had uncovered the spot she reached into her sack and retrieved a large wooden spoon.

Granada inched up to see.

Polly dug a shallow hole then upended the clay crock, pouring its contents into the ground with a thick, sloshing sound. Then her body began to sway, her head lolling from side to side, moaning low and gentle. Without breaking the rhythm, she took a handful of dirt and held it above her head. Granada heard a cadenced sound being born in her throat and finally an upsurge of words that seemed to be spoken to the sky:

In the beginning God birthed these watchful stars and a quickening moon,

In the beginning God laid open this earth like a mother’s womb,

In the beginning God gave his breath to the baby’s borning cry.

In the beginning God gave his breath to the old one’s last gasping sigh.


Polly lowered her hand and sprinkled the dirt lightly over the hole, then spoke softly to her handiwork:

In the beginning is the home we are coming from,

In the beginning is the home we are going to.


After she uttered those words, everything went dead quiet, even the night sounds of the insects had been silenced. It was like the forest was holding its breath.

What was she waiting for? Granada wondered. Who was she expecting? Ghosts or witches or maybe the devil himself?

The woods slowly brightened, as if the filtering canopy had parted and the stars and the moon had lowered themselves by invisible threads. Polly’s handiwork was now clearly illuminated. There in the hole was a bloody mass flecked with dirt. It was veined and raw, shimmering in the moonlight. Granada didn’t know how loudly she had gasped and quickly clapped a hand over her mouth. With her other hand she found a tree to help steady her wobbly legs.

Polly bent over and filled the hole with more earth, then broke the pot with a rock and spread the pieces about the little mound. When she had arranged it all to suit her, she rose with great effort and began to make her way back to the road, passing by the tree where Granada stood trembling. She said nothing when Granada fell in behind her on unsteady legs and followed her out of the woods.

They continued their progress down the track, with Granada gradually slackening her pace. When she figured she was at a safe asking distance, she gathered all her courage into the base of her throat and blurted, “What was it you took from them people?” Her voice was all trembles. “What did you put in that pot? Did you hurt that momma and her baby?”

Polly’s jagged laugh cracked like ice in the chilled night air. Then the old woman said over her shoulder, “Don’t go into no tantrums. I didn’t hurt nobody.”

Though Polly said no more, Granada found herself believing her, and the girl’s heartbeat began to calm. She started walking again but still kept a safe distance.

“But what was it you buried in that hole?” she called, but Polly didn’t answer. “Maybe I’ll just come back and dig it up and see for myself,” Granada said, brave enough now to sass. Then she wondered if she could find her way back to the tree and locate the little grave, even in daylight.

“I’d be proud if you did,” Polly answered, and again she laughed. “I’d whop your tail for it, but I’d be proud you were finally seeking some wisdom for your own self.”

Polly lapsed into another deep silence, as if distracted by a matter of great weight. In front of them over the tree line was the faint glow from the mansion’s observatory where the master would sit late into the night writing in his journals.

Polly stopped walking, allowing Granada to catch up. “Granada, just ’cause you have a woman’s body don’t mean you have a woman’s heart. You like the new moon. There’s a heap left to learn.”

Granada didn’t like the doubtful tone that underlay Polly’s estimation of her. “Like what? Just tell me,” she said confidently. “I’ll learn it.”

“God wants more from you than having babies. You got to know your place in the weave of things,” she said. “You got to remember where you come from to know where you stand. And you got to know where you stand before you know how to help.”

“I know where I stand, Polly.” She laughed. “I stand wherever my feet stop walking.” And to demonstrate the point, she planted her hands on her hips and came to a dead halt.

But Polly didn’t stop. “That’s what I mean,” the old woman said and walked a little farther before turning around. “See?” she said looking at Granada through the dark. “You’re standing by yourself. If you stand by yourself, then you can’t do nobody no good.”

They stared at each other through the dark, neither taking a step.

The girl panicked. Now Polly was mad again. Why couldn’t Granada keep her mouth shut and listen, like Polly told her to? One thing Granada did know for sure, better than her own name, she wanted to see babies being birthed. That was the magic she wanted more than anything. Standing right there, she made a promise to God. She would never say another word if Polly wouldn’t give up on her.

Through the dark, as she took a step toward Polly, Granada saw the old woman already had an arm reaching out to her.