The Healing

Chapter 45





Granada watched hard and silent as Polly packed her tote sack.

The girl was corralling her courage for the moment she would be forced to make her stand.

“We got to travel light,” Polly said as she retrieved a jar from her trunk, “so make sure you got a knife and some twine handy in your pocket. Fetch two small bowls and a few stoppered bottles and pack them in that nice hunting pouch Little Lord give you for going away. Maybe some scraps of burlap would be good to have. Such things as that. And don’t forget your pick and digging spoon. Everything else the road will give us.”

Granada didn’t move. Since the day Polly got that moccasin to bite Little Lord, Granada suspected there were more secrets crawling around than snakes in the yard.

The girl held her sulking stare until Polly at last glanced up at her. Granada set her jaw.

“Granada,” she asked, “why ain’t you doing like I say? Best to leave while we can.” She laughed. “You know how the pharaoh changed his mind that time he let Moses go!”

“I might not want to go.” Her voice did not tremble as much as she had feared.

“What do you mean you don’t want to go? You’re free now. You can go anywhere you please. Nobody can make you stay here.”

Granada crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know the first thing about no Freedomland.”

“I told you Freedom ain’t no place you go to!” Polly said. “You free if you stay. You free if you go. You free to be a slave, if you got a mind to. From now on, Freedom is anywhere you stand.” Polly sighed heavily. “You still mad at me because of what I did to Little Lord?”

“How could you do that?” Granada blurted. “It was you made that snake bite him.”

“You hurting for Little Lord or you mad at me because I didn’t tell you about the snake potion?”

“Everybody knew! I had to figure it out myself, but now I know what you done. Silas come in the kitchen out of the storm with your sack of snakes under his coat, didn’t he? And then he give it to Lizzie. And then Lizzie took it up to Little Lord’s room and put a snake in his bed, didn’t she? That about right?”

“Yes, that’s about right,” Polly admitted.

“You told everybody but me!”

“You might have tried to save Little Lord from getting bit. I didn’t know for sure.”

“Did you know for sure Little Lord wouldn’t die?” Granada asked.

“No, not for sure.”

“But you didn’t care. Like he was just a tangle in your weave?” Granada looked at the floor. “And Rubina’s baby. Was she just a tangle? She was one of the people, weren’t she, Polly? And … me? I reckon you thinking I’m a tangle, too.”

“No, baby.” Polly walked over and stroked her hair. “Them things ain’t got nothing to do with you. This is bigger than you. Bigger than me. Them things is about all of us.”

“You talking about the weave of things,” Granada said, sniffing. “But Sylvie and Chester is in my weave. And Little Lord and the mistress. They all here. And my momma, she’s here. And her momma. This is the place I know. And I can heal folks now. They need me here.”

“Yes, they do.”

“But what if nobody needs me where you going? What if you die? You almost did already. And then there won’t be nobody to look out for me. Whoever owns that Freedomland might up and send me to the fields.” Surely they had fields and swamps in this new land. Maybe worse.

“That why you so scared? Because you thinking you don’t have a say in things? You thinking I’m making you go?”

“Ain’t you?”

“No, ma’am.”

Granada swallowed hard. “You letting me stay?”

“I ain’t letting you do nothing.” Polly laughed, but then her voice turned serious. “Granada, you got so much to learn about Freedom. You got to make up your own mind now. You are a free woman. If you come with me, you got to come as a free woman, not a slave and not a child that’s dragged this place and that, being told what to do. But either way, going with me or staying put, it’s going to be your first step as a free woman. You the one got to take it.” Polly smiled. “I can chew your food but you the one got to swallow.”

“I don’t have to go?” Granada asked.

“Going with me or staying put,” Polly repeated, “neither one right, neither one wrong. It all hangs on the woman what does the choosing. You the one got to make it right. But I’ll warn you now. Getting free is easy. Staying free ain’t.”

Polly nodded once, the way she did when she was through with arguing. The old woman reached into her ginghamed bosom and retrieved the leather pouch that hung around her neck by a string. She carefully removed a folded piece of parchment and held it out to Granada.

“These your Freedom papers. Mail rider brought them in from Jackson this morning. Signed by the white men who claim to have say-so about Freedom and such.”

Granada didn’t reach for the packet at once. Instead she shoved her hands into her apron pockets, still not sure what Polly was up to. A warm November breeze wafted through the trees outside the window. She heard a gentle sprinkling as the wind loosed a thousand droplets of water that had held tight to the leaves since the last downpour. Polly waved the paper in the girl’s face. The draft of air made her blink.

“Go on ahead. They yours.”

Granada refused to touch them, not knowing what touching Freedom even meant, what it bound her to.

Polly unfolded the paper and pointed with her bony finger. “See here? What’s that name say?”

“Granada Satterfield,” the girl read, amazed her name was known in someplace called Jackson, beyond her world of levees and swamps.

“That’s your slave name,” Polly said. “That’s going to be the second thing you do as a free woman. You got a right to call yourself what you want to. Granada, from now on you get to hear what you want to. See what you want to. Think what you want to. And you can stand where you damn well please. It’s not my place or nobody else’s to tell you these things no more.”

Granada took hold of a corner of the document, but Polly didn’t let go at once.

“You can change your mind right now and still go with me … if you want to. After I walk away from here and you can’t see the back of my head no more, you can change your mind and come after me. Just holler my name. That’s the other thing about Freedom. You can change your mind this way and that way until it feels right. You understand?”

Granada nodded, but her head still grappled with the notion. This is not what she expected at all. She thought she would argue awhile with Polly, and then Polly would tell her to shut her mouth and to come on quick.

“Just in case you don’t change your mind, Granada, I got to speak some words to you before I leave this place. I’m going to say them now, but you probably ain’t going to hear them until later. So hold still and look at me when I talk so you don’t forget.”

Granada raised her head and looked up at the old woman’s face, into those amber eyes that could fix you like a stickpin through a beetle. The notion of forgetting anything about Polly Shine seemed unthinkable.

“Just remember,” Polly said carefully, “these pretty words on this scrap of paper ain’t going to make you free. The master can’t give you your Freedom. The Yankees when they come can’t. I can’t. If you think any somebody can, then you always going to be their slave.”

She grinned a tight little smile. “Truth is, ain’t a soul wants you to have it. You wait and see. One fine day, you go to acting like you got Freedom, then watch how they fight you for it. You got to take your Freedom, and then you got to be ready to take it back the next morning and the next morning after that.”

She released her hold on the papers and gently laid her palm against the girl’s cheek. “Bless you, girl,” she said tenderly. “Walk through life listening for your name, the name that remembers you. Until then, go ahead and be Granada if you want to.”

Her face grew feverishly hot under the old woman’s hand.

“You still got the gift,” Polly said. “Tend to your people the best way you know how. You don’t have to love them to claim them, so claim as many as you can. You’ll love them the second you start to take care of them. Don’t seem right, but that’s the way that works. And you right when you say they need you. They do.” Polly removed her hand and straightened up. “And I promise,” she said in a forbidding tone that chilled Granada’s insides, “one day, you going to need them. Never forget that.”

Polly picked up her sack and hung it off her shoulder. She reached for her snake stick where it leaned against the doorframe. Then she looked back and chuckled. “Like I told you, girl, you ain’t never going to be free of Polly Shine.” Polly’s face warmed to deep affection and a slight tremor came to her voice. “Wherever you be, however old and crooked you get, I promise, you will be remembered.”

The girl’s insides trembled and her throat clenched so tight it hurt. Was this Freedom? she wondered. Why did it hurt so bad?

Polly turned and with the familiar water-jointed gait walked through the door. Granada went to the window to watch her departure.

I could still go, she told herself. I get to change my mind. The papers burned her hand. The thought was foreign and frightening. Her legs went weak, like they wanted to make the decision for her. She gripped the windowsill.

Polly shunned the road and headed for the woods, stepping onto a path that probably only she could see. Granada prayed for the old woman to turn, only once, to look back at her. Then Granada would know for sure. If Polly would do that, Granada promised herself she would go.

But Polly never turned and the sky began to dim as the sun found the clouds.

Granada held her breath and watched as the old woman headed out, her stick feeling the way before her. Only when she had vanished into the dense, rain-washed foliage did Granada dare to breathe.

She knew me before anyone, Granada thought.

“I’ll remember you, Polly!” she shouted from the window, but there came no response.

Granada ran out the cabin door and up to the edge of the wood. “I’ll remember about listening to the beasts and the fowls!” she called out. “About digging holes and breaking pots and rooting babies in the world. About those threads that stitch everybody together. Do you hear me, Polly?” She waited, but there came no answer, only the light rustle of leaves in the wind.

“I’m going to listen, Polly,” Granada said softly now, cradling herself with her arms. “I’ll always be listening for you.”