The Healing

Chapter 31





Granada stumbled breathless up the steps to find the kitchen swarming with servants stirring pots, loading steaming mounds of food onto silver platters, scurrying through the passageway to the great house. Aunt Sylvie was in the middle of it all, sniffing, tasting, and shouting orders, a great sweat draining off her.

The cook glanced up from her work to where Granada stood at the door. She instinctively took hold of her apron and began flapping it like the girl might be a chicken that had got loose in the kitchen.

Sylvie’s frown melted when Granada’s trembling turned to tears. “Girl, what’s done put the fright in you so?”

Granada refused to answer.

“You shaking like a kitten,” Sylvie soothed. “It’s all right now. Nothing going to get you here in my kitchen.”

The cook’s kindness made Granada cry even harder. Sylvie stowed Granada in the little bedroom off the kitchen and told her she could stay as long as she wanted. Before sending her off hours later, Sylvie poked her finger into two cold biscuits and filled them with molasses.

• • •

Granada eased through the door of the hospital, hoping to escape the old woman’s notice. Polly was nowhere to be seen, but before she could take comfort, the sound of hushed voices drifted in from the next room.

“You swear you ain’t going tell nobody I come to see you,” someone pleaded.

“Nobody else’s business,” she heard Polly say.

“Old Silas been telling it around that every child you touch will carry the mark of Satan,” the voice whispered.

Polly laughed. “Most preachers I come across appear to know the devil’s business better than God’s.”

The visitor giggled.

“My momma was a weaver just like you, girl,” Polly said. “You got to keep your eye on the thread, not on the devilment all around you.”

Granada heard the shuffle of the women rising from their chairs, and she quickly plopped down at the table with her two biscuits, pretending she hadn’t been eavesdropping. Granada glanced up when they came into the room and she saw that it was Charity, Barnabas’s wife.

Ignoring Granada, Polly went to the shelf where she kept her bottles and reached for one Granada recognized to be an extract of black-haw-root bark. Then the old woman dipped her hand into a gourd suspended by twine from the rafters and pulled out a fistful of sassafras root, which she placed on a scrap of burlap, folded it over twice, and tied it off at the neck with a length of broom straw.

“Now you brew you some sugared sassafras and mix it with a teaspoon of this here root bark to make it go down good,” she said. “Take a dose every evening, starting two nights after the moon has stood up again.”

Charity took the packet, her eyes misting over. “God bless you, Mother Polly.”

Polly reached out and laid the flat of her hand on Charity’s belly. “This one going to make it, you hear?”

Granada swung her gaze toward the women, forgetting she was pretending not to care. Was Charity asking Polly to give her a baby? Could Polly do that?

“Now you be sure to come tell me when you begin to feel the quickening,” Polly was saying. “Then we start getting you ready for birthing.”

That had to be it! Charity was childless and everybody knew she wanted a baby more than anything, but she kept losing them. Aunt Sylvie said in Charity’s case “the apple kept falling green from the tree.”

“This leopard cub going to stay safe in her cave for nine months.”

“Her? My baby going to be a girl?” Charity asked.

Polly grinned. “She will grow to be a strong, healthy woman, proud like a leopard cat. Though your baby is still but a stone in the river,” she whispered, as if she were reciting a heartfelt prayer, “she’s already a blessing to our people.”

“Who’s our people?” Charity asked curtly. “Satterfield slaves, you mean?”

Polly laid her palm gently against Charity’s reddening cheek. “I mean the people who always was,” Polly said. “The people who will be forever. Your child and her children and her children’s children. The remembered and the remembering. Keep your eye on the thread.”

Charity looked at Polly, amazed at her words. “Our people,” Charity whispered, trying hard to fathom the sense of it. “My baby will be a blessing to our people.”

“Your sons and daughters, your blood will lead the people home.”

“Home,” Granada repeated to herself, scowling. Home was wherever the master said it was. Was Polly talking about stealing folks away from Satterfield Plantation to live with some other master?

“Granada,” Polly called out. “Come here and put your hand on Charity’s belly.”

Granada’s mood instantly lightened and she jumped up from the table.

“Lay it right here,” Polly instructed.

Granada did as she was told. “I don’t feel nothing.”

“No, not yet. I’m asking you to remember this baby under your hand, Granada. This is why I ask you to learn everything else. What lies under your hand is all of us, Granada. It’s where we are going. This child comes from the place where the river is born.”

Granada dropped her hand from Charity’s belly, still thinking about this home Polly had mentioned.

“Now go sit down, girl. I need to say something to Charity.”

Granada did as she was told, but she studied them over her shoulder.

“You got to protect this child,” Polly said. “She’s going to be a blessing to all of us.”

“I will.”

“Don’t go eating nothing you ain’t made with your own hand. You mighty light-skinned and some folks don’t think slaves ought to be getting any lighter, especially living this close to white folks. You understand?”

Charity thought for a moment and then her mouth dropped. “You mean Aunt Sylvie …?

“She only does what she’s told. When they bring you food from the kitchen, you just say, ‘Thank you kindly,’ and then go feed it to the hounds. Throw it over the fence when nobody’s looking. We don’t need no more of them rascals multiplying!” Polly laughed. “Besides, them dogs will love you for it. Best friend a slave can make on a plantation is with a bloodhound.”

The old woman laid her cheek against Charity’s and whispered into her ear. This time Granada heard the words clearly: “In the beginning God created.”

Charity’s hands quivered so, Granada thought the woman was going to drop her parcel. Polly put her arm around Charity and led her through the back room to the door at the rear of the hospital. Charity’s astonished gaze never left Polly’s face.