The Healing

Chapter 5





Granada knew that the first of the guests were in sight when she heard the distant sound of carriage wheels slicing into the carefully graded drive of crushed shells.

While the master was giving last-minute instructions to the servants, Granada ran out onto the gallery off the upstairs parlor to watch the guests arrive. The driver of the fancy brougham coach was elegant and fine-boned, outfitted in a black greatcoat and opera hat. He was expertly managing two high-stepping bays up the drive of gleaming white shells that had been hauled all the way from New Orleans and were replenished each year after the winter floods washed them away.

Granada tried to imagine the mansion as the passengers were seeing it—majestically columned and galleried on three sides, upstairs and down, and surmounted with a copper-domed observatory from which they would soon be invited to survey the master’s swamp kingdom.

When Granada saw Chester, his buttons gleaming, march onto the drive to meet the carriage, she raced back inside the parlor and proudly claimed her place by the chair where the mistress sat. For it was here, by the mistress’s side, more than any other place in all the master’s glimmering universe, that Granada desired to be.

The mistress, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be aware of where she was at the moment. The woman had doubled up on her laudanum in preparation for her guests, nearly sixty drops according to Granada’s count. It took both Granada and Lizzie to lead the mistress down the hall to her chair in the parlor, each gripping an elbow.

Except for the embarrassed looks from the master, nobody ever seemed to mind. That was because Master Ben carefully managed his visitors’ impressions so that little attention ever fell upon his unpredictable wife. The guests, even longtime callers, were so awed by the workings of the place that the mistress’s condition could be easily overlooked.

Even now Granada could hear them chattering, throwing out words like “stunning” and “breathtaking” as they took in the floors laid with marble, the crystal chandeliers, the floating double staircase with the polished mahogany banisters.

Granada stiffened and mentally rehearsed her first curtsy. Above the gleam and glitter of the mansion, the thing she wanted them all to remember from the day was her.

In strode Pomp, the butler, grandly dressed in one of his master’s splendid old claw-hammer coats with its narrow tails down past his knees. To complement the polished banisters, the master made sure that Pomp’s yellow skin glistened and gleamed by insisting he rub his face amply with tallow. As Pomp solemnly led the party into the room, Granada immediately recognized the two planters and their elegantly dressed wives. They had come all the way from the town of Delphi up in the bluffs.

• • •

Benjamin Satterfield, looking tall and lean and very much in charge, heartily greeted his visitors as they crossed the threshold. His fair skin seemed to pink up with enthusiasm.

The mistress remained seated in her massive chair with brocade the color of dried blood. Daniel Webster crouched a few inches to the left of her bonneted head, perched on the back of the chair.

But as Granada had hoped, it was her all eyes found first. She stood beaming at the mistress’s side, bedecked in the elegant blue satin gown and creamy patent-leather shoes, her hair greased, combed, and ribboned. The intoxicating scents of Miss Becky’s powders and perfumes rose off her skin.

Mistress Amanda acknowledged her guests with a single nod and a vacant smile, while Granada competed by showing off her curtsy. To make sure no one doubted her abilities, she bowed with exaggerated flourish, thrusting her right foot forward and drawing back the left, at the same time dramatically plucking her skirt upward on either side like turkey wings. Her spare fingers stuck out stiff and straight.

While she held the pose for the speechless guests, the monkey chittered frantically, scampering across the back of the chair, as if he were jealous of the attention. Granada remained outstretched in mid-curtsy, while the manic monkey leaped off the chair onto the girl’s back, causing her to totter. She struggled desperately, staggering about, flapping her arms to regain her balance.

With mayhem erupting about her, Mistress Amanda sat rigidly erect, her eyes staring blankly before her, like a queen bored with her court jesters. Her only movement was a quick jerk of her head when she caught herself listing too far in one direction.

Granada valiantly attempted to hold her curtsy, even with Daniel Webster bounding up and down on her shoulder, tugging on one of her plaits, and causing her to tilt considerably to one side. The girl peeked to note the reactions of the guests.

The women had dropped their eyes to the floor, looking red-faced, as if they had been slapped in church, and the bald-headed man with a high stomach and eyebrows like furry caterpillars hid his mouth behind his hand and coughed loudly. Granada thought he might be strangling, but then she noticed his eyes. They danced with a wicked merriment. When she looked at the master, she saw that his cheeks were ablaze, and he was now talking rapidly to his guests, shunting them as best he could toward the pastries on the sideboard.

Granada didn’t mind. They could be as mean and as jealous as they cared to, just like Aunt Sylvie. The girl was used to it. All Granada knew was that the immense gold-framed mirror on the wall before her proved a kindlier presence. It did not avert its gaze nor did it scorn her. It did not exclude Granada because her skin was darker than all the rest. In spite of the creature on her shoulder, the reflection showed Granada to be as beautiful as anybody in the room, and the mistress loved her best for it.

Pomp broke the tension by lifting a tray of goblets from the sideboard and moving among the guests. “Drink, Master? Drink, Mistress?” he asked all around, proffering the silver tray.

As the guests chitchatted, and Daniel Webster quit Granada’s shoulder for a higher perch on the marble mantel below Miss Becky’s smiling portrait, the girl knew that she had become invisible again. She took the opportunity to shift her weight from one foot to the other. The dead girl’s feet were too small and the shoes pinched Granada’s toes. When she first saw them earlier that morning, they had gleamed so, her heart nearly stopped. But now she would much prefer to have on the soft silvery slippers studded with tiny glass beads that she wore when Senator Davis came calling.

Granada knew she was supposed to avert her eyes, but she couldn’t help stealing glances as more white folks entered the room and then stood about with their company manners, all stiff and formal, performing half bows, with their stifled laughs that sounded like coughs.

More interesting than their words were the spaces they left between, the gaps of silence separating the speakers. They talked the way they danced at their fancy balls, holding each other at considerable distance. Nobody ever crowded in on top of another. They reminded Granada of cold pots in the fireplace. Not like Chester or Aunt Sylvie and Pomp when they got to carrying on in the kitchen. They came to full boil, sloshed over the sides, and didn’t care who noticed.

“It’s a grand day for preaching to the nigras, isn’t it, Bishop?” the bald-headed man called out, removing a toddy from Pomp’s tray.

“Now leave the good bishop alone, Charles,” his wife teased.

The fat bishop smiled, as if pleased to be noticed. “The day was made for it, Mr. Stogner,” he said, “as is every Sabbath, rain or shine.”

Their words were ponderous but dead, and Granada imagined them falling at her feet like wet leaves after a winter rain. Aunt Sylvie fussed that white folks only talked about four things: “Slaves and cotton and cotton and slaves.” Then she would add: “And they don’t know a damn thing about none of them.”

It was then Granada heard someone whisper her name.

The girl cut her eyes to the doorway where stood a child several years younger than she with corn-silk hair.

“Hey, Granada!” he called again.

It was Little Lord, the master’s son, peering at her from around the doorframe. The boy smiled at her in pure delight and then waved. He was about to say something else before milky-eyed Lizzie came up behind him and grabbed his arm, hauling him back to his room.

The boy’s reaction was all Granada needed to reaffirm her earlier estimation of herself. Little Lord had probably never seen a white girl looking this splendid. Including that dead sister of his.

“What’s your game, Bishop Kerry?” the bald man was saying. “You trying to get a job preaching to all our nigras?”

“I just sow the seeds, Mr. Stogner. They fall where they may and take root where they can.” He drained his goblet and nodded his head with a little quiver of chins to Pomp for another drink. “I sow liberally,” he chirped. “The rest is up to God.”

“Bishop, you can sow until you’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the fact of the matter.”

Granada noticed that the bald-headed man was becoming animated, those caterpillar eyebrows rising higher and higher like they were trying to crawl up his slick-as-an-egg noggin. “Admit it, Bishop,” he said, “everybody knows that the nigra doesn’t have a soul.”

Granada shifted about uncomfortably in her shoes and then stifled a yawn, wishing Little Lord would sneak away again. Which Negroes was he talking about not having souls? she wondered.

“Charles, please,” the man’s pretty wife said, not at all unpleasantly. “We know what you’re going to say before you say it. How will Amanda ever forgive us for spoiling this fine gathering?”

Perhaps hearing her name, or maybe sensing a twinge of tension among her guests, Mistress Amanda smiled instinctively, doing the minimum of what was required of her as a hostess. But just as quickly her face fell back to cloudy dullness.

The bishop bowed politely. “I don’t mind the jousting. Not in the least.” Then he turned to the bald man. “All I tell them is what the Scripture tells them. Obedience here on earth is a qualification for life eternal.”

“You talking about nigras in heaven?” the man scoffed, glancing over at Granada and scrunching his eyebrows together so that the two caterpillars merged to become one enormous bug. “Ha! Only if God raises cotton!”

Granada’s cheeks burned with fury. She raised her foot to stomp, but then thought better of it. What she wanted to do was kick this bald-headed man in the shins. Of course she was going to heaven. The mistress would make sure of it, writing Granada a pass if she needed one. Anyway, he was probably talking about those Negroes who lived out in the far-flung settlements. “Swamp slaves” was what Aunt Sylvie called them. They probably didn’t have a white person to recommend them to heaven like Granada did.

As the guests resumed talking in their mechanical fashion, Granada detected the growing sound of chatter in the plantation yard. The slave families from out in the swamps were arriving! Now there were loud calls of recognition followed by outbursts of hooting and sturdy laughter. Soon it would be time for the preaching.

She checked her reflection in the mirror and touched Miss Becky’s pearl necklace. Her stomach tingled, anticipating all the admiring looks that would be cast her way when the preaching commenced.

The bishop had begun to weave a little on his feet. “All I’m saying is religion, sensibly dispensed, only bolsters the proper order of things. That’s what the planter desires above all things, isn’t it? Order?”

“Well, you can preach to Satterfield’s nigras as much as you want. But leave mine alone,” the man said, now sounding like a bully. “I never knew a slave with religion to fetch one dollar more on the block than one without.” He turned to Master Ben. “But of course the slave market doesn’t concern you, does it, Ben? You neither buy nor sell off your place. Breed your own and keep them close. That’s your motto.”

“Why buy trouble?” another guest said. “Isn’t that what you say, Ben?”

“I know when I’m being played the fool,” Master Ben said, his cheeks blazing. “But you’ve got to admit the logic of it. It’s not like the old days of the saltwater Negro, when you could ship your cargo straight from Africa uninfected with the abolitionist’s poison. No, now the domestic market is full up with other planters’ troublesome slaves. Our only salvation is to scientifically breed a stable order of docile Negro. I’ve come up with three tenets: Isolation. Religion. Family.

“First of all,” he began what sounded like the start of a long speech, “keep your stock quarantined from dangerous notions. This Mississippi Delta wilderness is ideal. Most of my young ones have never heard of a free black, much less seen one.”

The men nodded.

“And there are ways to employ both family and religious instincts to instill loyalty. I’ve done experiments on my own stock.”

Granada was becoming impatient. She wondered how long the master was going to lecture his guests. He was typically excited about some new “experiment” he was running and would often produce one of the elegantly bound journals he was always writing in. Sylvie said he had begun a book on every slave, all three hundred of them, keeping track of what they ate, what they weighed, how well they bred, and how much cotton they picked. Sylvie said that after his wife began acting so daft, Master Ben started one on her, too. Last Preaching Sunday the master had read to his guests about how feeding the girls milk from an early age would get them to menstruating two to three years early. He figured he had increased his stock ten percent by that method alone. Granada had asked Sylvie what menstruating was, but all she would say was, “When it happens, let me know. I’ll tell you then.”

“You’ve done more experiments than the mad scientist,” said the bald-headed man. “What’s his name? You remember. The one that woman writes about.”

“Frankenstein!” someone called out and laughed.

But the laughter only made Master Ben even more shrill. “If Lincoln wins this election and tries to free my slaves, not a one of them will take to the road. They are with me, in slavery or emancipation.” He then said with particular emphasis, “One day soon, mark my words, the slaves are going to have their freedom. The best strategy for us planters is to make sure when they get it, they have no use for it.”

The bald-headed man glanced over at Granada again, catching her in the act of surveying the guests. He smiled and the glint in his eye made her quiver with dread. Then he raised his eyebrows, smirking. “No, I expect you would have to chase off some of your slaves with a stick to get them to leave.”

She quickly dropped her eyes. Daniel Webster reached down from the mantel and pulled at the ribbon in her hair, but the weight of the man’s gaze kept her chin pushed into her chest.

He laughed. “If you ask me, it’s the gators, cottonmouths, and a million acres of swamp that keep your slaves from running off.”

Then he took a drink and his face darkened. “I’ll make you a wager, Ben,” he said, solemn now. “I predict that before this scourge of the blacktongue is through decimating your stock, you’ll be rushing to the market with the rest of us. I buried a dozen of mine already.”

The man’s talk of blacktongue sent a shiver down Granada’s spine. All the servants had been abuzz with rumors about the disfiguring disease. It made your tongue swell up and your fingers and toes fall off. It was said those out in the swamps had been dropping like flies. Again Granada comforted herself with the fact that so far it was only felling the swamp Negroes. The house and yard slaves seemed to be immune.

“Charles, you are disrespecting our host,” his wife admonished again. “This is Benjamin’s home. As long as we are accepting his gracious hospitality, we should respect his customs.”

The man seemed ready to argue, but then reconsidered. “My wife’s right, as always,” he said and then performed a slight bow to his host. “Sorry, Ben. I know you’ve got your Kentucky ways, and I wouldn’t ever want to place my welcome in jeopardy. The major benefit of these peculiar gatherings is always yours and Amanda’s company. Not to mention Aunt Sylvie’s cooking.”

Master Ben responded with a stiff bow of his own. “Thank you, Charles.”

“I guess we should be thankful this epidemic is playing out like the cholera,” the man added, “another nigra disease.” He raised his empty cup in a toast. “Nigras, or Negroes, as Benjamin calls them, can be replaced. Good friends can’t. Again, please forgive me my boorishness.”

Mistress Amanda stirred in her chair and looked around the room with an expression of puzzled concern.

“You honor us,” the master said coldly, cutting his eyes toward his wife. “Isn’t that so, Amanda?”

Mistress Amanda did not speak right away and seemed vaguely surprised that she had been addressed directly by her husband. When the guests looked to her anxiously for a response, they saw that her eyes, once dry and vacant, seemed to tear up.

As she always did when the mistress was troubled and her countenance softened, Granada ached to soothe her, to burrow deep inside the woman’s grief in hopes of locating a home for herself somewhere close to her mistress’s heart. But she had been warned never to address the mistress directly, and as much as she wanted to comfort the mistress, Granada feared disobeying her more. She held her tongue.

“A Negro disease,” Mistress Amanda muttered, her tone unaccountably sad. Then she sighed heavily and with such anguish that Granada thought the mistress was about to cry out in agony. She reached for Granada’s hand, startling the girl, and gripped it tightly.

Everyone saw the gesture, but no one said a word. From out in the yard, the sound of three hundred congregating field slaves thundered loud against the silence in the room, but louder still was the throbbing of Granada’s heart.

The mistress had reached out for her in front of these white people! Granada stood there with her hand in the mistress’s, holding her breath lest that physical bond be broken. Then she dared to return the mistress’s grip. They held to each other tight, the moment so welcome, yet so foreign, that tears welled up in the girl’s eyes as well.

The guests did not notice. Their gaze was still upon the two clutched hands, the girl’s dark one and the nearly translucent blue-veined one.

Granada was proud that they were seeing it! She would not have released the mistress’s hand now if an entire army of white people had shaken their heads in disgust. This moment belonged to her, not them.

“Amanda!” Master Ben said sternly, but his wife’s eyes did not go to him. She had the look of a person in a dream, witnessing events beyond these four walls.

“I tell you what,” the bald man chirped, drawing attention to himself and ending the awkward moment, “if it will get Aunt Sylvie and her roast lamb into heaven, I’ll attend all the preaching the good bishop can serve up and pray mightily for her ascension! Negro or no Negro!”

“Now you’re being sacrilegious, Charles,” his wife said, but her tone was gentle. She took the goblet from his hand. “This is your last drink before the service. You better watch him, Bishop Kerry. He’s likely to jostle you aside mid-sermon and deliver his own heretical theology.”

They all laughed uncomfortably, and then to everyone’s relief another guest was ushered into the parlor. The men gravitated toward the newly arrived banker, eagerly distancing themselves from Master Ben’s wife and the awkward scene she was presently making. The women, though, hovered around Amanda, discreetly concealing her with their voluminous petticoats and close attention.

“Amanda, my poor dear,” the bald-headed man’s wife said tenderly. As she spoke she reached up to separate Amanda’s hand from Granada’s, artfully replacing the girl’s with her own gloved one. She did not glance at Granada when she broke that link.

Yet that’s all it took to make Granada once more invisible, aching for the touch of the mistress again.

“They spoke of death,” Amanda said in great agitation. “Has anyone died? Please tell me,” she demanded. “Who is it that’s died?”

“No one, dear Amanda,” said an old woman with a ruby on her finger. “No one has died.”

“Slaves,” said the woman who now held the mistress’s hand, “only slaves,” and this seemed to calm her.

When the last of the guests arrived, Master Ben led them all out onto the grand gallery and bade them sit in the chairs that Pomp had arranged earlier. Bishop Kerry strode up to the polished oak lectern, one that Barnabas, the plantation carpenter, had built especially for these services. The red-faced bishop scanned his audience of black faces down below and then began to speak his big, puzzling words to the population of Satterfield Plantation—the only world that Granada knew existed.

Once she had heard the master say that he could look out from this gallery toward forever, and without lying claim he owned everything and everybody as far as a keen-sighted person could see—more than three hundred slaves housed in three separate settlements and four thousand acres spreading across the western half of Hopalachie County. It took him three days to ride his land. To Granada that had to be the whole world, plus some.

She looked across the sea of black bodies sitting in a yard enclosed by the stable, several barns, the smokehouse, the dairy, the ginhouse, the sawmill, Silas’s cabin, and farther down the cabins for the dozens of family servants. Every plank and board on the place was whitewashed and gleaming in the sun. Beyond them were countless miles of levees and ditches and high ridges, alligator swamps and deep Delta forests.

It was indeed an immense world, a world in which she often felt alien. Like when the house servants laughed at her dark skin or taunted her for wearing a dead white girl’s clothes. Or when Mistress Amanda let weeks pass without sending for Granada to sit with her in the darkened bedroom.

But this moment was different. Granada was as happy as she could ever hope to be. For in this moment she knew where she belonged. Hadn’t the touch from the mistress’s hand told her once and for all? She could still almost feel the warmth of it.

Sylvie had warned Granada what a fickle thing belonging was. Perhaps down below in the yard, among all the black faces, looking up at her with emerald-green eyes was a light-skinned woman with fine curly hair, who in another moment, one long ago, most likely stood where Granada stood today.

But Granada could not think of that. Nor could she think about what would happen when the last of Becky’s dresses was drawn from the mahogany wardrobe. Instead Granada told herself: I belong in this dress, wearing these beautiful shoes, standing next to my mistress, warmed by the gentle sunshine of an early-spring afternoon. Why, she wondered, couldn’t one perfect moment such as this be woven into a warm blanket against any chill winds that might come? Perhaps it would last, after all.

It was an immense world, and right now Granada felt that she stood at the very heart of it, and she told herself again: This is where I belong.