The Healing (30 page)

“I don’t want to go to no Freedomland,” the girl muttered. “I want to go back to the kitchen. I want to eat what they eat—”

Polly reached out and gripped Granada’s arm, tight as a vise.

“Ow!” she fussed. “Why you grappling at me?”

“Because I ain’t done explaining yet and you already telling me what your greedy self wants,” she said. “You always asking what remembering is.” She lifted the girl’s arm higher.

“Well, see this? Freedom mean remembering a time when
this
arm and
this
body didn’t belong to no white man, to punish nor to pamper. It means remembering your people, even if you ain’t never seen them before. Like a river never forgets its old bed. You got to
remember
Freedom before you can grab at it.”

Then Polly narrowed her eyes and said in a hushed, fearsome voice, “And don’t you think I ain’t figured why you want to go back to the kitchen and hide. I know who you running from.”

Granada dropped her head, ready to push the old woman out of her mind. She wouldn’t listen to this.

“You know who I mean.”

Granada shook her head. “No.”

“God touched you through that woman. And through her momma, all the way back to ‘In the beginning’ time. One day you’ll have to follow that thread to save your selfish soul.
That’s
how you get to heaven. Ain’t no
white
woman going to get you there. You turn your back on her, you won’t never be free.”

Polly lifted the girl’s chin and gazed into her face. “I told you once. You got a passel of things to fight in this world but I ain’t one of them.” A deep sadness now filled the woman’s eyes, as scary to Granada as the rage. There was so much sorrow there.

“I ain’t got much longer here, Granada. Soon, it’s all going to be on you. One day the people will be needing so much from you. But …” Polly reached over and stroked Granada gently on the head.

“Listen to me. I’ll tell you what Freedom is,” she said. “All Freedom is two words: ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ Two words a slave ain’t got no right to ’cause the white man done took them away. The only way the white
man can keep them is to make sure we forget where we come from. Granada, the white man didn’t birth us.”

Granada sniffled and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, but said nothing. Polly took her apron and wiped the tears from Granada’s eyes and the crumbs from her face.

Polly smiled sadly and touched Granada gently on her head. “Girl, I know the remembering is coming on you fast. You got to stop splashing and flailing around, trying to make things suit yourself. Just stand firm and let the river flow to you. Let it take you where you need to be.”

Granada looked blank-faced at Polly, her arm still smarting.

Polly shook her head, and trudged over to her chair. She seemed overcome with both tiredness and sadness.

Granada knew Polly was done with her, at least for now.

“So much to do,” Polly sighed. “Y’all are all Freedom-stupid, and that snake I been dreaming about say he’s on his way.”

She rested her head back against her rocker and closed her eyes. “Don’t seem you all know how to fight nothing but the devil and the skeeters,” she said, and then laughed, “and me.”

She shifted the wad of tobacco to the other side of her mouth. “Up the country, the mommas bury their babies with little canoes and a paddle so they can get back to Africa. They minds stayed on Freedom. I knowed of folks who walked off into the sea, trying to get back home, drowned themselves traveling to Freedom. But y’all? Look like here it been bred out of folks. You all soul sick as can be. Ain’t got no history. Ain’t got no memory to lift you up. No threads to weave you all together. Lord, how these people going to even know Freedom when it gets here?”

Polly’s eyes flipped open. “That’s the nub of it,” she said, nodding to herself. “They ain’t going to know how to
be
one until they
see
one.”

Then, staring off at one of her tightly woven baskets she had brought with her from up the country, she smiled an all-knowing smile, as if she had hit upon the exact remedy for every slave on the plantation.

O
ver the next few months, Granada had plenty of occasions to remember that mysterious smile and wonder what Polly had set in motion. The season was filled with unsettling dreams, and not just Granada’s. Signs prophesying endings and beginnings appeared across the plantation.

While the cotton bloomed pink and yellow in May, the men came to Polly disturbed by fevered visions and stirring passions, whispering about Freedom. Even the biggest of them shook when they uttered the word. The women began to notice their days of blood coinciding with one another, and there was a great increase in fertility. Barren women, and those thought too old, found themselves with child.

In August the fields turned snowy white with cotton, signifying a good crop for the master, who would get on his horse and disappear for days at a time. Everyone whispered that with the absence of his wife, he could most always be found in the fine cabin he had furnished for himself and Rubina.

In September the first of the crop—picked, ginned, baled, hauled to Port Gayoso on wagons, and loaded on barges—made its way down the river to New Orleans, where Granada knew the mistress was kept, being prayed over by nuns and treated by European doctors.

Each Sunday morning, Granada watched Silas, dressed in his
preaching suit and toting a black leather Bible, climb up on his mule and head out to one of the master’s settlements to honor God and curse Polly.

As for Polly, each month during that succession of nights she called the dead moon, the old woman had visions of the snake. She said it had grown in her dreams into a monstrous double-headed creature without a tail, but with gaping jaws at either end, devouring slave and master alike.

“It’s going bite us either way,” Polly would call out mournfully in her sleep, “coming and going, going and coming,” until she woke herself. Then she would rise in the dark and go out to the snaky places, where she sat under a moonless sky, listening to what the no-legged beasts had to say.

Though Granada’s seeing was still tentative, like the uncertain light cast by a flickering candle, Polly promised that with time it would blaze up like hickory logs burning on the hearth and show Granada things that she could never imagine.

Throughout this season of signs, Granada learned to watch and to listen. She waited for the sight to burn bright, to light the way for her, to reveal her place in that river of souls.

I
t was a late afternoon in October when Polly and Granada sat down to a feast of sweet potatoes, corn bread, turnip greens, pork chops, and fried chicken—all leftovers from the master’s Sunday dinner, compliments of Aunt Sylvie.

The cook was struck with a bad case of bloody flux the previous week and, without Silas knowing about it, sneaked down to Polly for a healing. Granada had taken her usual place, standing beside Polly’s rocker to watch and learn. Before she even got started, Polly pushed herself up from her chair.

“Nature calling me,” she said, “and I might be a spell. Granada, sit here and see what’s ailing Sylvie.”

Sylvie’s eyes grew big and she made the motion of getting off her stool. Polly laid her palm on the woman’s shoulder and pushed her back down.

“You in good hands, Sylvie. This is something Granada knows better than anybody.”

Granada’s cheeks burned hot as she waited for Polly to bust out laughing at her cruel joke, but Polly didn’t crack a smile. She winked at Granada and then walked straight out the door.

“So,” Aunt Sylvie stammered. “You seen this before? You sure you know what you doing, Granada? Why don’t we wait for Polly to get back? I ain’t in no big hurry.”

Granada remembered well how Aunt Sylvie told Chester that Granada was a basket with a busted bottom that couldn’t hold any learning.

“You want to get healed or not?” she asked.

“Well, of course I do, but I—”

“Then stop talking and show me your tongue.”

Though Granada knew what the remedy was right off, she put Sylvie through the entire routine of poking and prodding—and then some. She finally presented the cook with an infusion of green persimmon and red oak.

The next day Aunt Sylvie could be heard singing Granada’s praises to anyone who would listen, telling them that she always knew Granada was something special and bragging that she herself had wet-nursed the girl. “Granada’s got Dr. Jesus on her side,” she said more than once. From then on, Aunt Sylvie made sure that Granada got the choicest bits from the kitchen.

“How you enjoying your doctoring fee, Granada?” Polly laughed, reaching for a pork chop. “Folks think you a big bug now, I reckon. Start asking for you by name. I guess I’ve had my day!”

Granada beamed. Throughout the summer Polly had taken her to gather medicinal plants and taught her what soils they favored, the right season in which they should be taken, what their uses were, and with what other herbs they worked best. Granada learned quickly, and sometimes Polly even let her work alone.

There was a single piece of chicken remaining, but Granada was full as a tick. She slid the platter across the table to Polly, who reached for the buttermilk-crusted drumstick, then froze, her head tilted.

Granada stopped chewing. When Polly had that look, something was about to happen.

Polly lifted herself up from the table and stepped over to the doorway. Only then did Granada detect the sound of a man running, his footsteps growing louder.

“It’s Barnabas,” Polly said. “Must be Charity’s time.”

For months everybody had been studying Charity with worried looks as she grew bigger, sure that she was doomed. But as Polly had promised, this apple held fast and now it was ripe, ready to drop to the ground. Lately everyone was calling this the miracle baby, blessed by Polly Shine.

The old woman and Granada left the hospital and hurried down the hill to the servants’ quarters.

It was still light out, and the lane was filled with people awaiting them. The crowd wordlessly parted, allowing Polly to cross the yard to the cabin and climb the two porch steps. Granada followed close behind, stopping, as always, at the door.

That’s when she felt it—the warm dampness between her legs. It was happening! She was going to see her flowers! Even though there was a cramping like a hot knife twisting in her gut, Granada told herself not to be afraid. Polly had told her what was going to happen, and she claimed it was a glorious thing, a miracle. But the girl couldn’t calm herself. It was as if her body now had a mind of its own. “It will be your body remembering, Granada,” Polly had said. “Remembering God’s ‘In the beginning’ promise.”

Shaking, the girl set the crock on the bench and fled the cabin on unsteady legs.

Back at the hospital, she removed the bloodstained dress and retrieved the twine-and-rag contrivance Polly had created for Granada when her time came. She then lay on her bed waiting for Polly.

After tonight she would no longer be left out of women’s things. Her body, her new body, was the private doorway she had been waiting for. It would admit her into that circle of women where she would know and be known. She would at long last belong. There was no dread, only longing in the thought.

It’s the river, Granada thought. The river never forgets its old bed, Polly had said. It was true. Part of Granada had not forgotten.

As Granada lay there listening for the old woman’s footsteps, she rehearsed how she would tell Polly that it had finally happened.

But when she believed she had the words right, she was swept up in an immense sadness. “Why am I going on so?” she asked herself. “Being silly is all. Polly probably already knows.”

That’s when Granada understood why she was crying. It wasn’t Polly whom Granada wanted to tell. Granada needed to whisper it to her mother first.