The Healing

Chapter 32





Polly closed the door and finally joined Granada in the front room. For a long while she stood there with her arms crossed over her chest and watched the girl as she sat at the table. Granada did her best to avoid those searching eyes, having no doubt she was being opened up and read like a book.

“They turn you away at the great house again?” Polly said at last.

Granada didn’t deny it. “Told me I had to come back here.”

Polly walked over to Granada where she sat on the stool. “Maybe you ain’t begging hard enough,” she said, snatching up the girl’s dress, revealing her scraped legs. “You get down on your knees this time?” Her stare was hard. “Was your pride worth them two biscuits?”

Granada shielded her prize with both hands. “They’re mine,” she said. “Don’t matter how I got them.”

“You ain’t no better off than that Silas fool. Traded his pride for a biscuit, too, I reckon.”

Granada took a careful bite from her biscuit, catching the crumbs with the other hand, determined to make them last.

“You know,” Polly said, her tone turning casual, “you ain’t the only one been having dreams. I been having me some fearsome dreams, too.”

Granada swung her gaze to Polly. “You?” she exclaimed. Was it possible that the old woman could be scared as well? “What you been dreaming?” she asked.

“Me, I been dreaming about a snake.”

“Snakes!” Granada gasped. “I’ve been dreaming about snakes, too.”

“No, not snakes. Snake. One particular snake. The very one that bit that monkey. Rascal been coming to worry me ever night.”

“What’s it mean?” Granada asked in a low, hushed voice, excited to be working on someone else’s riddle for a change.

“I’m still pondering it,” Polly answered, “but maybe he’s telling me y’all Satterfield slaves won’t see Freedom if it comes up on you like a snake. That’s what I’m thinking. Freedom will bite y’all bigger than a moccasin.” She shook her head sadly and looked at Granada. “Don’t any of y’all got no self-respecting notions about Freedom?”

Granada shrugged. All she knew was she got two biscuits and they tasted good. Freedom couldn’t be any better than that. She heard folks talk about Freedom, but nobody ever explained it to her. Nobody ever laid it out on a map and said, “Here, follow this road and you get to Freedomland.”

“Where this Freedom place you always talking about anyway?” she asked.

Polly gazed at her in disbelief. “What you mean where?”

Granada told Polly she figured Freedom must be some other plantation. Maybe one with more to eat and softer beds.

“Freedom ain’t no plantation!” Polly said, amazed. “And it sure ain’t no place the white man holds the deed to.”

“Then what is it?” Granada asked, retrieving the crumbs from her palm with little flicks of her tongue.

That stirred Polly up again. “Granada, Freedom means not having any white man laying claim to your body. Putting you to work in his fields. Stealing your labor and sticking the money in his own pocket. Making you hand your babies over to him like melons. And telling you to feel blessed because he takes the notion to feed you.”

“They ain’t never made me work in the fields like the others,” Granada said.

“Humph,” Polly snorted as she watched Granada take a nibble off her second biscuit.

“I don’t want to go to no Freedomland,” the girl muttered. “I want to go back to the kitchen. I want to eat what they eat—”

Polly reached out and gripped Granada’s arm, tight as a vise.

“Ow!” she fussed. “Why you grappling at me?”

“Because I ain’t done explaining yet and you already telling me what your greedy self wants,” she said. “You always asking what remembering is.” She lifted the girl’s arm higher.

“Well, see this? Freedom mean remembering a time when this arm and this body didn’t belong to no white man, to punish nor to pamper. It means remembering your people, even if you ain’t never seen them before. Like a river never forgets its old bed. You got to remember Freedom before you can grab at it.”

Then Polly narrowed her eyes and said in a hushed, fearsome voice, “And don’t you think I ain’t figured why you want to go back to the kitchen and hide. I know who you running from.”

Granada dropped her head, ready to push the old woman out of her mind. She wouldn’t listen to this.

“You know who I mean.”

Granada shook her head. “No.”

“God touched you through that woman. And through her momma, all the way back to ‘In the beginning’ time. One day you’ll have to follow that thread to save your selfish soul. That’s how you get to heaven. Ain’t no white woman going to get you there. You turn your back on her, you won’t never be free.”

Polly lifted the girl’s chin and gazed into her face. “I told you once. You got a passel of things to fight in this world but I ain’t one of them.” A deep sadness now filled the woman’s eyes, as scary to Granada as the rage. There was so much sorrow there.

“I ain’t got much longer here, Granada. Soon, it’s all going to be on you. One day the people will be needing so much from you. But …” Polly reached over and stroked Granada gently on the head.

“Listen to me. I’ll tell you what Freedom is,” she said. “All Freedom is two words: ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ Two words a slave ain’t got no right to ’cause the white man done took them away. The only way the white man can keep them is to make sure we forget where we come from. Granada, the white man didn’t birth us.”

Granada sniffled and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, but said nothing. Polly took her apron and wiped the tears from Granada’s eyes and the crumbs from her face.

Polly smiled sadly and touched Granada gently on her head. “Girl, I know the remembering is coming on you fast. You got to stop splashing and flailing around, trying to make things suit yourself. Just stand firm and let the river flow to you. Let it take you where you need to be.”

Granada looked blank-faced at Polly, her arm still smarting.

Polly shook her head, and trudged over to her chair. She seemed overcome with both tiredness and sadness.

Granada knew Polly was done with her, at least for now.

“So much to do,” Polly sighed. “Y’all are all Freedom-stupid, and that snake I been dreaming about say he’s on his way.”

She rested her head back against her rocker and closed her eyes. “Don’t seem you all know how to fight nothing but the devil and the skeeters,” she said, and then laughed, “and me.”

She shifted the wad of tobacco to the other side of her mouth. “Up the country, the mommas bury their babies with little canoes and a paddle so they can get back to Africa. They minds stayed on Freedom. I knowed of folks who walked off into the sea, trying to get back home, drowned themselves traveling to Freedom. But y’all? Look like here it been bred out of folks. You all soul sick as can be. Ain’t got no history. Ain’t got no memory to lift you up. No threads to weave you all together. Lord, how these people going to even know Freedom when it gets here?”

Polly’s eyes flipped open. “That’s the nub of it,” she said, nodding to herself. “They ain’t going to know how to be one until they see one.”

Then, staring off at one of her tightly woven baskets she had brought with her from up the country, she smiled an all-knowing smile, as if she had hit upon the exact remedy for every slave on the plantation.