The Healing

Chapter 53





A winter’s twilight found them skirting the puddles and then stepping carefully down a disused path that cut into the overgrowth beyond the house. Picking their way through briars and creeper vines, they passed the falling-down chimney of the old hospital, destroyed at the turn of the century by fire during a lightning storm, and from there proceeded deep into a dark skirt of woods.

It was a path seldom used because it led only to the old slave cemetery, forgotten by most and unrecognized by anyone else who happened to stumble upon it. It was sheltered by hardwoods and carpeted by bramble, underneath which lay the old rotting wooden crosses, rough-hewn stones with scrawl long faded, toppled by the relentless spread of roots.

By the time they arrived, the old woman’s breathing was labored and her step halting. She stood silent for a moment among the graves to catch her breath. In one hand she gripped her cane, in the other she held a lantern, as yet unlit. Over her shoulder hung the leather hunting pouch given to her by a pretty, blue-eyed boy, never grown, and now long dead, buried with his mother over the rise. While Gran Gran waited for her strength to return, she listened to the graves, as if they might remember her. The girl, who toted the cross, listened, too.

But all the graves were silent. Gran Gran heard only the rush of her own breath. It was coming easier now, calmed by the soothing night sounds of the forest. “You and me gone have to get out here one day and clean this mess up. First warm day in spring maybe.”

The girl nodded. “They’s a lot of them.”

“It’s a sight,” Gran Gran said, “but we got time.”

It would have to be later. Today Gran Gran and Violet had other business in the cemetery.

The old woman and the girl found their way to the far side of the ridge to a muddy gash of earth that had not had time to heal over. Gran Gran searched the bramble for signs of another grave, dug before Freedom. Somewhere under the creeping vines was a rusted cast-iron plowshare that Lizzie had cradled through the woods and placed where Rubina’s head rested, disobeying the master’s decree to leave her grave unmarked. It must have been the last thing she did before taking off through the woods to catch up with Polly and Silas.

Gran Gran set the lantern by the more recent grave and then nodded to Violet, who positioned the cross at the head of her mother’s grave. As the girl steadied the cross, Gran Gran pounded it into the ground with a hammer retrieved from her pouch.

The two stood silent over Lucy’s newly marked grave mound for quite a while, Gran Gran remembering the woman as best she could.

“Polly said a soul needed to be grieved out of the world proper to make sure they joined the Old Ones,” Gran Gran said. “If you don’t give them their respect, they might wander until the Second Coming. That means a string of generous words, a grave song, and some praying.”

She had told all this earlier to Violet as they planned the ceremony, but it bore repeating.

Gran Gran spoke serious and slow. “Lucy, me and your girl here, Violet, are standing for you today. We are here to give you a marker for your grave, so you can be remembered. And we come to do what we can to grieve you into heaven.”

She paused for a moment as the chirring sounds of dusk rose around her and then looked down at the girl, who stared pensively at the grave. “Any words you want to say to your momma?”

Violet breathed in deep and then said what she had rehearsed. “Momma, I’m sorry I didn’t hold your hand when you was dying. I love you. I hope you are happy in heaven with Jesus.”

Gran Gran nodded. “Those are some fine words,” she said.

Speaking to the grave once more, the old woman said, “I ain’t much for singing these days, but I’ll sure give you what I got left.”

In a weak voice, quaking with age, she sang what she could remember of the words she had overheard Polly sing so long ago over Rubina’s grave:

In the beginning is the home where I come from.

In the beginning is the home where I’m going.

In the beginning, oh Lord, You created Your children

And told them to come home by and by.


She sang low and gentle, swaying to the rhythm.

The girl held the woman’s arm, steadying her as she knelt down to the grave. Gran Gran opened her pouch and placed some of Lucy’s personal possessions on the grave dirt. A tube of lipstick, a compact mirror, a sewing needle and thread, a necklace of glass beads, a butterfly broach of rhinestones, all things Violet had chosen.

Next she took the bottle from which the woman had drunk the potion, placed it on the grave, and shattered it with the hammer. She buried the pieces in the dirt.

She sang again, her voice stronger this time:

In the beginning is the home we all are coming from.

In the beginning is the home we all are going to.

Oh, Lord, take this child by the hand,

Yes, Lord, see Your children home by and by.


The last word rose toward the bare branches and seemed to hover for a moment in the chill air, before finally fading away into a darkening sky.

Gran Gran dropped her head and prayed. “Lord, we all done left this poor girl alone and I’m sorry for it. She was Your precious daughter and she must have been about as alone as a person can be to do what she done. I don’t know why she done it. But I reckon only You and her know the business of it. Please forgive her if she’s needing forgiveness and let her join You in Glory.”

With Violet’s help, Gran Gran raised herself to her feet and brushed the dirt off her hands. She looked down upon the grave.

“And Lucy,” she continued, “I want you to forgive me for any way I let you down. For not seeing what I should have seen. And this girl Violet sure loves you and she’s going do right by you in the world and ain’t never going to forget you. You going to be remembered, I promise you that. We both going to see to it.”

Violet was weeping now. She held the lantern while the old woman lifted the globe and lit it. The girl placed the lantern on the head of her mother’s grave, so that the shadow of the crossed boards loomed large over the mound.

“Now, by the light of our remembering,” Gran Gran pronounced, “find your way home, Lucy.”

The old woman began singing the grave song again, and now the words were infused with the wistful gladness of crossing over rather than the grief of dying.

Gran Gran reached down and opened her hand. The girl laid hers across the old leathery palm. Gran Gran could feel the warming pulse in the place where they touched, the single beat of a heart.

The woods were dark and the path disappeared beyond the light cast by the lantern. But Gran Gran knew the way home. With her memory and the girl’s sight, they would do fine.

They departed the grave, both of them singing. The lantern still burned, throwing its light in their path. With Gran Gran stabbing the ground before them with her cane, they led each other out of the woods.