The Healing

Chapter 48





The master had his own interpretation of Freedom. Now that Granada was free of him, he claimed he was free of her as well. If she wanted food to eat and clothes to wear and a roof over her head, she would have to hoe Polly’s piece of the field, doing everything she had been brought to the plantation to do.

So at thirteen years old, and with great doubt and trepidation, Granada became the doctoress for Satterfield Plantation. But that wasn’t the only change.

After Polly left, the fabric of Granada’s life began to unravel. Just like Polly said, the two-headed snake of Freedom was threatening from the North. Little Lord was hastily packed up and sent off to a military school in Charleston. Not long after, the mistress went to live in New Orleans while the master rode off on his stallion to fight the Yankees.

“I’ll be back as soon as we whip the Yankees,” he shouted across the yard on the drizzly morning he left, “so keep my supper warm, Sylvie!” Sitting ramrod straight in his saddle, he flourished his preposterous-looking hat with the ostrich feather, already frizzling in the rain.

Granada could tell he was only putting on a show for those slaves thinking that now would be a good time to run. When he gave Bridger final instructions on how to run the plantation, he wore the worried look of a man going to his own funeral.

Life went on, knitting itself in a new way, without the master and his family. Granada dutifully attended to the sick and dying at all hours of the day and night. On occasion she traveled by mule out to the settlements, Little Lord’s leather hunting pouch slung around her shoulder and packed with everything she had seen Polly put in her tote sack.

Polly always seemed to be present, watching and listening. While Granada worked at setting a broken leg or diagnosing an ugly rash, she felt Polly’s hands guiding hers. In times of crisis, Granada came to depend on that old cocksure voice in her head, lecturing and laying out an uncompromising set of instructions.

Polly’s presence was especially strong on the days Granada spent studying the brass-hinged Bible in which the old woman had recorded her cures and practices in the margins beside pertinent verses. Granada would often look up from the book, expecting to see Polly across the room in the cane-bottom rocker, muttering to herself. Sometimes Granada would close her eyes, trying to catch the words.

Yet there was one thing Polly had not taught her, and it was the thing she wanted to know the most. Sooner or later, she was going to have to come face-to-face with the birthing bed. It was the thing she feared the most, and the thing she loved the best.

But for months, no one bothered to alert her when a woman went into labor, and Granada figured they probably had as many doubts about her ability as she did herself.

When the call finally came on a cold night in February, she had been sitting by the fire in the hospital studying Polly’s crimped handwriting. One of Bridger’s overseers summoned her out to the porch.

“Gal at Burnt Creek about ready to drop,” he announced from astride his mare. “Must be some trouble, because the women down there are shouting up a storm for you to hasten to them.”

“They calling for me?” Granada gasped. There had to be a mistake. The terror cut through her stomach like a razor.

“You best get your things,” he answered over his shoulder, riding his horse to the stable. “Going to take you best part of two hours to get there.”

Stunned by fear, she staggered about the cabin as if in a dream, mechanically filling her bag.

She rode alone in the moonless night, trusting the mule to find the way along the rutted track. The wind was bitter and stung her face and hands, but Granada didn’t want the journey to end. Or perhaps it could last long enough for the trouble to pass.

When she arrived at Burnt Tree, a woman in a ragged shawl pulled tight to her throat met Granada before she had dismounted the mule. The girl could feel the eyes of the quarter watching warily through the chilled dark. Could they see how unsure she was? How she was bound to fail them?

Granada’s steps were leaden as she walked toward the cabin. Again, she remembered the day when she had fallen into the creek from the canoe and waded through the sluggish water. She could see Little Lord waiting on the bank holding his dying pet in his arms, watching Granada with pleading eyes. He had believed in her and she had let him down. But this was no boy and his pet. This was a mother and child. And there was no Polly to save the day.

The night was freezing, but when Granada entered the cabin, she was hit by a wall of sweating heat from the fire in the hearth. The flames lit up the room and in a flash of terror, she saw everything at once. Four women crowded around a cot where the mother lay naked and glistening with tallow and sweat. She had completely soaked the quilt on which she lay.

All eyes were on Granada now. Her face burned with shame and her arms hung useless by her sides, her hands so empty. At least with Polly she had been allowed to carry the little crock to the birthings.

Granada’s lip began to quiver. She had forgotten the clay pot! She wanted to tell them how sorry she was, that Polly had never let her enter the birthing room before. That she was not ready for this.

But then, as she was about to speak, she noticed the women’s expressions. They were not at all like Little Lord’s had been, desperate and expectant. In the faces that looked upon her, there was a serenity that calmed the pounding in Granada’s chest. Even in the haggard face of the mother, Granada saw a composed acceptance. It was clear that these women didn’t want anything from her. Nor was there any “trouble” she was supposed to save them from. On the contrary, she got the strange feeling they were there to save her.

The oldest woman, as gnarly as a hundred-year oak, beckoned Granada with stiffened fingers to a place next to her in the circle. Granada now recognized her. Too old to be useful in the fields, she was one who minded the children while their mothers worked.

Granada went to the far side of the bed where she had been summoned. The old childminder beamed her toothless smile and took Granada’s hands. She placed them on the mother’s stomach and revealed to Granada the feel of an unborn child.

Granada had never touched anything that thrilled her so, not even the finest satins and silks. At once she knew that her hands belonged on this woman. They belonged to this woman. And like a wandering soul who catches sight of home, Granada’s heart began to beat with anticipation and delight.

For the next few minutes ancient hands guided Granada’s, showing her how to knead the loins and abdomen, how to decipher the position of the baby, how to raise up the contractions of the mother.

Granada looked into the mother’s face. The velvety dark skin was soaked with the sweat of birthing. The eyes were closed, the hurting visible in her wrinkled brow and clenched jaw. She groaned loudly, throwing her head from side to side. All at once she bucked violently against the pain.

Startled, Granada quickly withdrew her hands and stepped back, afraid she was hurting the woman, but the others stayed with the mother, urging her in calm voices not to bear down too hard, counseling her to breathe instead.

“Let it roll with God,” they soothed.

A bottle was placed in Granada’s hand and she was shown how to hold it to the mother’s mouth.

Someone murmured, “Hassle, Celia. You doing real good, girl. Just pant your breath in that bottle.” And Celia did as she was told, blowing rapid puffs of air into the mouth of the bottle until the seizure passed.

During the next contraction, not five minutes later, the mother grew even more irate, now fervently cursing those around her. Remembering Rubina, Granada began to fear for the baby. Was the mother refusing her child? Did she want her baby dead?

Granada looked to the circle of women once more and was struck to see how graciously they received the outburst. The mother wasn’t angry with the women, or with her baby, or with God for putting her in this fix. It wasn’t anger at all.

This was the woman’s way of saying yes. It was life stretching beyond itself, forcing its way into a cold, unwelcoming winter. This mother, in all her fury, was boldly claiming a place for her child, demanding its due. It wasn’t anger. It was a fierce love.

Soon Celia was flailing again. The women managed to get her up on her feet to walk off some of the pain, and for a while she squatted on the floor, stretching her aching muscles. Finally she was helped to her feet and guided once more to the bed, where the shouting and the thrashing began anew.

Everything Granada had understood about birthing was wrong. This was no sentimental wish uttered on a plaintive whimper, some softhearted hope. This was a mother’s readiness to weep or to fight or maybe just to endure and outlast, no matter what it took. Perhaps this was how a mother scratched out a place in the cold, hard ground for a child to take root.

Now the chorus of women was calling for Celia to push. It was time for the baby to come. She spread her legs wide, groaning. Again the old childminder took Granada’s hands and this time guided them between the woman’s thighs.

At first Granada resisted, but then her uneasiness gave way to elation. “I’m touching the baby!” she exclaimed, as her fingers found its crowning head. The women’s laughter was warm.

Together, Granada and the old woman guided the baby from the birth canal, the head and then the shoulders. At first the baby faced downward, but as it steadily emerged its body began to turn and soon Granada was looking upon its face. Next came the buttocks and finally two legs freed themselves from the womb.

Granada had come so close to giving up on magic completely. But there she was, standing at the mother’s bedside, cradling a newborn baby boy. Granada could not speak. She was spellbound by this miracle that could fit in her own two hands, this entity last touched by God.

The slick coating on the child’s skin glistened in the firelight. Even as Granada held him, he was threaded to his mother by the thick, veined rope, still pulsing with her heartbeat. Moments passed as Granada breathlessly waited for the baby to cry out, to declare the beginning of both their lives.

But the child did not move, nor did his eyes open. The baby lay lifeless in her hands. She looked up in terror searching for the old woman’s face.

“I want my baby,” the mother called out. “Let me hold my baby.” She heaved herself forward, reaching out for her child, but the women held her back.

All eyes were on the unmoving child in Granada’s hands. She felt her legs wanting to give beneath her. The old childminder reached out and took the boy from Granada.

The old woman slapped the baby sharply on his buttocks but there was no response. She laid him down on the bed. With her finger she cleared his mouth and nose, but the baby still did not breathe. She looked up at Granada.

“You do it” was all she said.

“What?” Granada gasped.

The old woman said simply, “Give the child your breath.”

Trembling, Granada bent down and put her mouth over the baby’s. She exhaled, like the woman told her, filling his lungs with quick puffs of air.

Granada’s feet nearly left the floor when the baby sneezed, and then sneezed again. When he cried out at last, it was with Granada’s very own breath.

The cord was tied off and cut. Granada carefully lifted the child and handed him to his mother and watched as she nuzzled her baby close, the two forming one. Neither could ever be lost from the other, she thought. One breath, Polly had said. We all breathe with one breath.

She ached to run to Polly, to tell her that she understood now.

At that moment Granada noticed that the old childminder was holding out some object, offering it to Granada. The girl couldn’t make out what it was through the glistening blur of her tears, yet she reached for it anyway. Upon first touch, she knew what it was she held, and she clutched it close to her breast, as if she had been handed her own child.

It was one of Polly’s clay pots. Polly had known Granada would be here. It had been waiting for her all along.