The Healing

Chapter 30





Granada pulled the corncob through her knots and tangles, trying to get her hair smoothed out before preaching started. Already hundreds of slaves had streamed into the big yard, cleaned up and dressed in their Sunday clothing. Most were barefooted, but some carried shoes freshly polished with fireplace ashes, and they stooped to put them on as they neared the yard. This was the first Preaching Sunday the master had held since Polly had arrived and the mistress had departed.

Polly stood at the window, her brows furrowed and eyes squinting, carefully scrutinizing the passing crowd. Granada knew exactly what the woman was doing. She was tasting the people, peeling back their skin and looking underneath. “Remembering them,” as she would say. It still didn’t make much sense to Granada. Remembering things you’ve never even seen. Remembering things that hadn’t even happened yet.

Listening to Polly you’d think time was a sack full of days you could shake up anyway you wanted. Granada sighed. Just more riddles without answers.

She went to the window and stood with Polly. There was nothing that she hadn’t seen before. Many of the women wore colorful head rags. The younger ones had sprigs of flowers and berries in their hair. Some were sashaying proudly in calico dresses awarded by the overseers for good work or plentiful breeding. Even those wearing crude homespun had washed and stiffened their dresses with homemade starch. Some women had even sewn onto their dresses patches of cloth dyed with random splashes of color—red from pokeberry and light browns from walnut and rusty orange from elm. A few wore the master’s or mistress’s broken buttons as broaches.

Awhile back many had tried emulating the mistress and made hoops for their skirts out of grapevines, much to her distress. She interpreted their actions as ridicule and told Master Ben to put an immediate stop to it. But today a few had revisited the practice—having heard of the mistress’s recent misfortune—and their skirts billowed out around them like toadstools. Back when Granada lived in the great house, the servants would point and snicker at all the preposterous getups the swamp slaves fashioned for themselves.

“Used to,” Granada said wistfully, as she tugged on the cob, “Aunt Sylvie greased my hair and combed it out with the prettiest silver comb. And I had me real dresses. Not pretend ones like them out there. And I didn’t have to wear no nandina berries in my hair. Mistress gave me store-bought satin bows. Red ones even.”

“You know what the white folks say,” Polly laughed. “ ‘Dog begs for bread, nigger begs for red.’ That’s what they say anyway. Even my momma said she lost her Freedom for a scrap of fine red cloth. First white man she ever seen waved a hank of red in her face. Said that sure cured her from wanting no more red.” Polly looked down at Granada and asked, “Reckon what it’ll take to cure you?”

Granada ignored Polly’s question and kept her eyes on a woman passing by the window. She was tall and had very light skin, nearly as white as the keys on the mistress’s piano. The woman’s hair was curly yet fine, and her eyes were an emerald green, her nose smallish and sharp. She walked with a kind of aloof dignity, holding her head high and keeping her eyes straight ahead, like she was warding off unwanted attention. Granada had never seen her on their visits out to the settlements and wondered why somebody as pretty as she wasn’t working in the great house.

The thought pricked her memory. That had to be Lizzie’s girl! The one they called Rubina. They said she used to be a house servant, a playmate to Miss Becky, a long time ago before the mistress sent the girl to the swamps. At least she was pretty, Granada thought. At least she had that. Granada wondered how she herself would bear up under such a sentence in the swamps. She caught her breath at the dreadful prospect.

“What you studying her for?” Polly asked, startling Granada.

“Who?” Granada asked. How could Polly tell who she was looking at? There were more than three hundred people out there. Granada glanced up at Polly and saw that her jaw was set and in no mood to play any guessing games.

“Just was,” Granada answered, wondering what she had done wrong now.

“No such thing as ‘just was.’ Tell me what you see. Why did you settle on her?”

“I reckon ’cause she’s pretty,” Granada said.

“Uh-huh. Because she ain’t black like you, I reckon. And her eyes is colored like bottle glass. Her hair ain’t nappy, neither. Remember what I said about pleasing faces. They ain’t what they appear to be. To me, you prettier than she ever be. But you won’t see it ’cause you blind to your own good looks.”

The old woman spit out the window. “Now, this time look at her, not what strikes you as pretty. What you see?”

Granada shrugged and then answered the best she could. “She walks all by her lonesome. Ain’t talking to nobody. Don’t look at nobody. Maybe she think she better than everybody else.”

“That what you see in your head, Granada. What you see in there?” Polly pointed to her chest. “What is your understanding of that woman?”

Granada shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.” She didn’t like being tested. Polly was being a bully, bound and determined to ruin the day before it even got started.

“No such thing as ‘don’t know,’ neither. Study her from here.” She put her hand flat against Granada’s chest. “Remember her. Like you done with her momma, Lizzie, way back.”

But Granada resisted, stepping away from the old woman’s touch. “How I going to remember her if I ain’t never seen her before?”

“Just ’cause you ain’t seen, don’t mean you don’t know. Close your eyes. Bring her inside here,” she said, again placing her hand on Granada’s chest. “Let her melt like butter next to your heart.”

Granada did as she was told. Polly’s hand grew warm, and soon, without willing it, Granada was filled with an overwhelming compassion. Tears welled up in her eyes and she spoke the first thing that came to her. “She’s so sad, Polly. Like she carrying a secret she can’t tell nobody. I think she lost something. Something she loves more than anything.”

“What?” Polly asked.

“I don’t know,” Granada answered. “But she can’t tell nobody about it. Somebody might hurt her.”

Granada suddenly felt foolish, like she had been making up a silly story, but Polly sighed. “Um-hum. Yes, Lord, yes. Your sight getting stronger every day.”

She had got a riddle right! Granada flipped her eyes open, surprised she hadn’t been scolded for lying. “Why can’t she tell nobody, Polly?” she asked, now excited to know how the story ended.

“See there!” Polly fussed. “Now your mouth took over again. What I tell you about a flapping tongue? It done blew out your pitiful little flicker of wisdom.”

Granada scuffed her shoe against the floor.

Polly reached down and put her hand against Granada’s chest once more. “Just keep the woman here, Granada. There is a reason why you studying her. Why your sight searched her out. Like it did with her momma, Lizzie. It’s trying to tell you. Be quiet about it and you get your answer when it’s time. Maybe you dream it. Maybe you hear it through your hair or your skin. All kinds of ways to listen.”

“My hair going to talk to me?” Granada muttered under her breath. “My skin going to tell me a secret?”

The old woman draped a ratty fur around her neck. Today she was without the scarf and wore her braids loose, those immense eagle feathers placed randomly in her hair.

Granada laughed to herself. My skin telling me something right now, she thought. It’s telling me that woman is addled in the head!

• • •

By now the entire dirt yard was carpeted with quilts, blankets, and burlap sacks, anything families could bring from their cabins to sit on during the service and keep their Sunday clothes clean. Across the grounds, up on the gallery of the great house, the master’s guests were also being seated. That’s when Polly announced it was time for her and Granada to step out into the yard.

As they waded into the crowd, Granada kept her eyes fixed on the gallery. There were at least twenty guests up there, more than Granada had ever seen in the days of the mistress. Master Ben stepped out with Little Lord following close behind, dressed in his little-man suit. A wave of longing washed over her as he took the chair next to his father, the one formerly reserved for his mother. That was where Granada used to stand, clad in one of Miss Becky’s frocks.

Polly pushed deeper into the throng, stirring up a new ripple of commotion with every step. As they made their way, folks got to their feet and greeted Polly with joyful and adoring looks, men holding their hats, women reaching for her hand to touch or even bringing it to their lips to kiss, everybody God-blessing her and calling her “Mother Polly.”

Granada had planned on choosing a spot on the outer edges so as to avoid the woman Chester claimed to be her mother. The girl was still convinced that one day, without the mistress to protect her, the woman would reach out and grab Granada and drag her off to the swamps. But Polly didn’t slow. At last she decided on a place to light. While Granada ducked down out of view, two men, both as big as oxen, rose to their feet and offered to help the old woman to the ground, one taking her hand, the other gently supporting her at the elbow. They lowered her as if she were as fragile as a china teacup, and as they did, half a dozen freshly laundered scarves were unfurled from around women’s necks and smoothed out on the ground before Polly’s dress touched her resting place.

With all the attention on Polly, Granada felt invisible enough to venture a glance at the second-floor gallery once more. Standing next to Little Lord, in her old place, was Silas, dressed up in a swallowtail coat, boiled white shirt, and string tie.

What in the world! Granada thought.

His face was set in an angry frown, and he was glaring right at Polly. The old woman must have felt his eyes because she looked up at him and shrugged, like she couldn’t help how the people felt about her. A sheepish half grin spread across her face.

Just then the fat, red-faced bishop who always smelled of rum heaved himself out of his chair and, after a little elegant bow to Master Ben, walked up to the lectern. He wiped his face with a gleaming white handkerchief. “Slaves,” he began, “be submissive to your masters and give satisfaction in every respect; do not talk back …”

The bishop rarely preached on anything that Granada cared about and she began to steal looks into the crowd, furtively searching for Lizzie’s daughter. Granada had almost guessed the woman’s riddle and she wondered if she could bring her back to the “remembering place” and let her melt like butter. As she scoured the heads in front of her, she caught sight of a sad-faced woman in a blue-checked head rag standing on the edge of the yard. She seemed to be looking Granada’s way, searching her face.

Granada dropped her eyes and tucked her chin. The girl dared not look her way again. The stare had been too intense, the wanting eyes too desperate. But even when Granada shut her eyes, she could see the woman distinctly. Her skin was black, so black it shimmered with a purple sheen. She hadn’t even bothered to fix herself up. Her head rag was sweat-stained and her clothes filthy from field work. She held the hand of a dirty-faced little boy as dark-skinned as she. Her face was so very sad.

The more the face burned into Granada’s memory, the more familiar the woman seemed. Yes, the girl reasoned, she had probably seen the woman before, that’s all. Perhaps she had been one of the sick ones? Maybe Granada had seen the woman at one of the settlements. Or maybe she had found her way to the hospital late at night. There was probably a good reason why the woman stared at her. Plenty of good reasons, other than the one that filled her with dread.

After the bishop said his last amen, he toddled over to his chair, fell back, and mopped his face with a handkerchief now limp with perspiration.

Next the master stood up and looked out over the yard. “I hope y’all heard every word the good bishop said,” he boomed. “I want y’all to meditate on it when you go back to your cabins today.”

“Meditate?” someone chuckled.

“It don’t mean a damned thing except to ponder,” someone else replied.

“Sounds like white man’s work,” observed another.

The master cleared his throat and smiled warmly. “Now there is somebody else I want y’all to hear from today. He told me the Lord has called him forward to deliver the Word, so he’s asked me to let him be a preacher right here on the plantation. A lot of y’all already know him. Him and me cleared most of this land together. We made the very first crop.”

Granada peeked up at the gallery. Master Ben was looking over to where Old Silas stood. “Come on over here, Preacher Silas.”

Old Silas began his slow, proud walk to the podium while the master continued. “I know Old Silas is going to be a fine preacher so y’all heed his words.”

Silas, his face radiant and looking elegant in his new clothes, bowed to the master and his guests and finally turned toward the gathering of slaves.

He grinned at the crowd. “Now I know most of y’all,” he said in a quivering voice. “Some of y’all might think you on up there in years, but I suspect nobody is old as I done been blessed to be. So I reckon the master figured since I done trod so far down life’s ways and byways, he hoped maybe a few cockleburs of wisdom might of clinged onto me in passing.”

The laughter he evoked was warm, from white folks and black. From everybody, that is, except Polly.

“Why’s he talking that way?” Granada whispered to the old woman. This was the first time she had heard him speak more like the other slaves instead of like the master.

“I jest here to testify,” he continued, “to what a blessing it been being up under Master Ben and his daddy afore him and his daddy afore him.”

Old Silas turned to the crowd again and then lay both hands on the lectern, his face solemn. “So we blessed to have found us a home with such a Christian man. Lot of slaves don’t get no church. Don’t get no half days on Saturdays and all day Sunday to praise the Lord and spend with they families.”

There was nodding in agreement, and a few affirming moans from the women.

“Old fool,” Polly said under her breath. Polly stiffened her back and her breathing was short and quick.

“And they is a terrible disease on the foot worser than the cholera or the yellow fever or the blacktongue,” Old Silas called out, now beating the air with a clenched fist. “They call it Freedom. They a place called Freedomland and it be chunked full of the half starved and the homeless. Scrounging in the dirt with the dogs for a crumb of bread. No loving shepherd to look out after them. To go looking for them if they was to get theyselves lost.”

He looked over at the master to show him his face beaming with joy.

Master Ben smiled and then dropped his eyes, brushing his nose with the top of his finger.

He wasn’t the only one appreciating Old Silas’s sermon. Granada might not understand what Old Silas was talking about, but she was struck by how he hitched the cadence of his words to the beat of her heart and took her for an exciting turn around the yard. Granada was about to tell Polly how she much preferred Old Silas’s kind of preaching to the bishop’s, but when she turned to the old woman, she saw fire in her eyes. It looked like she wanted to kill Silas where he stood.

“Liar!” she grumbled. “Judas goat!”

A few heads turned in the crowd and nodded approvingly at Polly’s accusations.

Silas’s eyes went upward. “As for me, when I goes to heaven and the good Lord asks if I been a good and faithful servant, I wants to say, ‘Yes sir, Lord!’ ”

Then Old Silas dropped his voice to a violent whisper. “I want to see the smile on the good Lord’s face when He says to me, ‘Old Silas!’ ” Every head in the crowd was leaning forward to catch each emotion-drenched word. “ ‘Welcome into my kingdom thou good and faithful servant.’ ”

Tears glistened on Old Silas’s wrinkled cheeks, and all around him the master’s friends had produced a flurry of snow-white handkerchiefs and were presently dabbing their eyes and blowing their noses. Even Granada got teary. She still didn’t understand what exactly he had said, but she sure liked the way he said it. She could listen to that kind of preaching all day.

But Polly wasn’t crying. After the master dismissed the slaves, she sprang to her feet and looked as threatening as a thundercloud. Without waiting for any assistance, she took off through the crowd at a furious trot, looking like she was about to spit lightning bolts. “Fool talking ’bout how he going to die and go off to Glory with the master,” Polly fussed aloud to herself, weaving this way and that through the crowd. “I guess the master going to need him a nigger to shine his boots and feed his chickens when he gets to heaven.”

Granada had to hurry to keep up with Polly, who continued her march to the hospital, waving her stick at those in the way. “He ain’t no preacher,” she said, almost shouting now. “His biggest job is to keep our people Freedom-stupid.”

Polly had already stepped into the hospital door when Granada heard the voice.

“Yewande!”

The word stopped Granada like a lightning strike to the heart. “Yewande,” she whispered to herself. Saying the word set off a liquid pounding in her throat and sent shivers shooting down her arms.

“Yewande,” she said again and her head swam with the pure music of the word.

She turned. Coming toward her, with the little boy in tow, was the same woman she had spotted earlier in the crowd, the one with the dark, sorrowful eyes. Granada was seized by an uncontrollable trembling.

“Your name is Yewande, ain’t it?” asked the woman.

Now she knew why the woman looked so familiar! She was from the dream about the mistress. She was the one who tried to grab Granada before she could step through the door of the great house.

Polly came out from the cabin. She looked first at the girl and then into the yard. “What’s the matter with you? What you seen?”

Granada couldn’t say a word nor move a muscle. Her ears roared like a rushing river. Sweat had broken through her dress, darkening the gingham that clung wet to her shoulders. As she kept her gaze fixed on Polly, afraid to look anywhere else, Granada became aware of the slow dawning in the old woman’s straining eyes.

Before Polly could say it, and make it true, Granada blurted “No!” and then found her legs. She stumbled off in a panicked run, fleeing from the women who summoned her by two different names.

Across the yard the open kitchen door loomed like a threshold to another world, the last safe place. She tore across the ground so quickly she was hardly aware of the tree root that threw her flat-faced onto the hard, bare soil. Without brushing off her skinned-up knee she scrambled to her feet and took off again, limping.

“I don’t want your gift,” she called aloud. “Take them all away. The dreams. The remembering. That little room next to my heart. I ain’t going to remember nothing no more,” she promised God. “I’m going to forget how she gaped at me and called me Yewande.”

“No!” she shouted again, trying to submerge the memory. She’s dirty and ugly and she wanted to touch me, she told herself. And if I let her, it won’t never come off. That’s all anybody ever going to see on me.