The Healing

Chapter 37





There was barely room anymore for both Violet and Gran Gran at the kitchen table with all the masks. It was a peculiar thing for Gran Gran to witness. Here they all were at the same table where she had seen them as a girl. Aunt Sylvie, Old Silas, Pomp, Chester, Lizzie. All of them. She reached out to touch Little Lord as she remembered the child. On the mask she had used corn silk for his hair. That had long fallen away. Sweet, sweet boy, she thought.

Gran Gran looked around in the back room and on the porch, but didn’t see the girl. Violet was getting stronger. She hadn’t said a word yet, but she was venturing farther away from Gran Gran’s reach. Yesterday she had found Violet standing by herself on the porch, looking off into the distance toward where the wagon had disappeared with her mother. Gran Gran noticed that she wore the silk scarf around her shoulders, an odd complement to the flour-sack shift the old lady had made for the girl. Violet was still between two worlds, but she was slowly finding her way back.

“Violet! Where you at, girl? It’s time for supper! Come on out, wherever you are!”

After a few anxious moments, Gran Gran heard footsteps coming down the hallway from the big house. The old lady held her breath until Violet emerged at last.

“Violet, that house ain’t safe! You go roaming around in there and you might fall right through the floor!”

Violet didn’t look up at Gran Gran. Her attention was on the mask she held in her hands.

Gran Gran smiled to see it. “So you done decided to take over storytelling, have you? You found somebody you want to hear about? Let’s see who it is.”

The face came at her like the swoop of a hawk. The two pieces of broken glass, wet, brilliant green, unsettling, like mossy pebbles in sparkling creek water, fixed her soul. Years ago, unable to bear the accusing look of this face of clay, she had shoved it into an upstairs closet.

“No, Violet,” the old woman said. “Let’s do another story. Let me tell you about how Polly found me sneaking sugar from her medicine trunk. How that be?”

Violet shook her head. “I want this one, please, ma’am.”

Gran Gran stared, silent. The girl’s words were serious as death. Why would she save her words for now, to ask about this particular face?

“Violet,” Gran Gran said carefully, still distracted by the mask in the girl’s hands, “I’m happy to hear you say some words. And glad to hear you talk so mannerly. But …” The old woman smiled uneasily, shifting her gaze between the girl and the mask. “But …” she said again, unable to find the words. She finally reached out to take the mask from Violet.

“I want her,” Violet said, resisting but then releasing the earthen face to Gran Gran.

“Yes, I know,” Gran Gran said, suddenly worn out, remembering how Violet had come to her to begin with.

Gran Gran looked down into Rubina’s eyes. “I guess she would be the one you’d want to hear about.”

The old woman took Rubina to the rocker and lay the mask in her lap. She began speaking, unsure, as if starting down a path that had become disused over time and had grown unfamiliar, so that each step had to be carefully placed.