The Healing (32 page)

Polly eyed her carefully but offered nothing and made no effort to come closer.

“But that ain’t true, is it?” Granada asked finally. “I seen her and
you seen her. And my little brother,” she said, her voice cracking with panic. “Silas said he’s dead, too.”

“Your brother,” Polly said.

“My brother. My momma. But I seen them,” she repeated. “And you seen them.”

Polly shook her head carefully. “I seen you, Granada,” she said softly. “I ain’t seen them.”

“You did!” Granada shouted, frantic now. “In the yard. You seen her!”

“No, baby,” Polly said gently. “What I seen was what was in
your
face. I seen how scared you was. Your face told me what you seen.”

“Ghosts?” she cried. “That what you saying? All I seen was ghosts?”

“No, ma’am!” Polly insisted. “You seen your momma and your brother.”

Polly turned her back to Granada and walked with a heavy stride over to the rocker next to the hearth.

Granada had not moved from the doorway, still not wanting to come closer. From across the room she studied the old woman sitting in her rocker, her serene eyes lit softly by the lantern light. When Polly looked upon her, at once Granada’s panic turned to a deathly weariness. Her body went liquid and her legs felt as if they might crumple beneath her.

Just then Polly beckoned Granada with a slight gesture of her hand. The girl crossed over to the woman and then collapsed at her feet. Polly drew the girl’s head to her, resting it against her knee, and gently stroked Granada’s hair.

“Dreams you and me have don’t go away just because the sun comes out. They abide in our hair and skin and in our bones. They get to be part of us.” Polly drew a deep breath and held it in her bosom, as if to underscore her meaning.

Granada turned her head from the light and hid her eyes in the skirt of Polly’s dress. “I want to forget her now. It hurts too bad.”

“No, baby, no,” Polly said softly, “you don’t. Your heart has been
hurting for that woman all your life. You’ve been holding out for her. Waiting on her. Scared to move on without her.” In a whispering voice, Polly said, “And she knows it. She is telling you she ain’t forgot you. She remembers you.”

Now that her mother was no longer, Granada was flooded with needs, never before spoken. She wanted her mother to explain to her this crumbling wall between dreaming and waking. The foreign feelings that arose from a forbidden thought or an unintentional touch. The pulsing and surging of new sensations, so pleasant they scared her. How tenderness could hurt so and how delight could be so terrifying.

She needed to tell her mother how scared she was all the time now. How each new discovery was tinged with a sense of shame and loss. What would happen, she wanted to ask, if she did take that step as a woman? Would she be swallowed up by the gaping darkness she felt inside?

Would becoming a woman mean more shame, even more loss? Who else would she be forced to give up? Granada began to weep into the folds of Polly’s dress. She could not bear to lose anyone else.

“Right this minute,” Polly whispered, “you as close to your momma as knuckle to nail. As blood to bowel. She ain’t lost to you. And you ain’t lost to her.”

Polly leaned over and lifted Granada’s chin with a slender finger. “What you been wanting to tell her, child?” the old woman whispered tenderly. “What you been holding on to for your momma? Let her hear it now.”

I
stand before the darkened forest again. Polly is by my side. I hear a chorus of women’s voices, surging and tugging at me like a river current. But the name they say is not Granada. It is Yewande and it is the word that gives strength to my legs
.

I look up at Polly and say, “I’m a woman now,” and then step alone into the dark
.

I can see nothing and stand in place, not knowing where to go. A hand takes mine, and I am not sure who it is that is leading me forward through the darkness, but I follow without fear
.

We emerge from the dense growth and walk for what seems like a long distance on a floor of cool, soft grass. A gentle breeze carries the sound of rushing water. The air is clean and sharp
.

The guiding presence has departed and I walk alone in the dark toward the sound of the river. I see dimly a mist rising from the water’s surface. The rush of the river is as comforting as a womb and there is no part of me that does not thirst for the water that now flows at my feet
.

From a short distance ahead, Polly calls out. “To know a woman,” she sings, her voice very young, “is to know a thing underwater! Come and remember who you are.”

But the mist is like a curtain. “I can’t see you, Polly.”

“Don’t trust your eyes. Close them and come to me.”

Behind my eyelids, the world is brilliantly lit. I see Polly ahead of me, standing midway across the river. She is a young woman again, as she was the evening she sang her mother’s song. She wears a large turban, a regal coronet, made from many folds of a fabric that is rich with purples and with golds. Her body is draped in the same shimmering cloth and it appears to melt into the water that surrounds her
.

I look down. I, too, am clothed in a garment of delicately woven cloth, shimmering white, embroidered with elaborate patterns. They are the drawings of the moon from the clay pots
.

It is not the sun that glows overhead but many moons. They shine like beaten brass, like the disks that dangled from Polly’s head scarf
.

Everything I see is new, but nothing I see is new. It has been before my eyes all along, unnamed
.

“Come,” Polly says again
.

I step into the warm, rushing water, my internal eye still on Polly. The river is dark, quietly surging with a potent force, but my feet are sure. I reach out and Polly takes my hand. When we touch, I hear the rumbling of thunder. The wind picks up, rustling in the trees onshore, taking their leaves. The current strengthens and I lose my footing
.

Polly grips me tighter and I feel the fierce pulsing of a single heart in my hand. I can’t tell if it is mine or Polly’s or another’s
.

I hear the terrible whoosh of giant wings beating overhead. Tremendous birds are circling, throwing shadows across the water. The creatures finally roost in the now leaf-bare trees on the far bank. Their weeping is unearthly, terrible and sad
.

“You hear them now, don’t you?” Polly asks. “Oh Lord, so many need comforting tonight.”

“Who is it, Polly?”

“The ones who give the people life.”

“Why are they sad? What are they crying for?”

“To be known again. When the Old Ones are forgotten, they cry for their children.”

“What do they want from me?” I ask
.

“These are the ones who sent you the gift. They are calling you to heal.”

And with that, Polly places one hand firmly against my chest and the other on my back. Completely trusting, I allow myself to be lowered gently into the water
.

As the water courses over me, my body, my flesh and bone, seem to dissolve and flow with the current, and I finally understand that there was never a part of me that was unknown. No part unclaimed. The rushing of my blood, the pulsing in my heart, every breath I take is reaching back to long before. I have been thirsty for the water, and the water has thirsted for me
.

I rise up from the river and the water rains down my face and breasts like gentle kisses. Polly takes me by the shoulders and faces me upstream. We are not alone anymore. I am now looking into the glistening eyes of the woman from whom I have been running. Her face glows like a dark sun, her hair woven into intricate plaits. The woman called Ella reaches out to me and puts her hand on my breast
.

“They are touching you and you are touching them,” Polly says. “The water never forgets. It never dies. It rushes and whirls from the very mouth of God. Women are things of the river, creatures poured out onto the earth.”

And then my gaze is drawn to another woman, who has risen from the river upstream from Ella. I know her to be Bessie, my grandmother. And behind her, Yewande, Bessie’s mother, the one out of Africa, whose name I bear
.

“God spoke the Old Ones into this world, and he still must be speaking because we keep coming,” Polly says. “Look!”

Polly points, her arm strong and straight above the water, the silken sleeve draping down to the river surface like the shimmering wing of a bird. “All the way back to Creation, you are being touched.”

When I look up, there are women as far as I can see, standing in the river one behind the other, generations going back to the beginning time, from the very womb of God
.

• • •

When Granada awoke at dawn, there was an unreal shimmer to the light gathering around her bed. The unrelenting heartbeat still
throbbed in her hand. She was still being borne by the river, its current propelled by the abiding pulse of that unseen heart.

She looked up to see the cane-bottomed rocker next to the bedside and in it slumped the old woman, her chin on her chest, holding tightly to Granada’s hand.

T
here was barely room anymore for both Violet and Gran Gran at the kitchen table with all the masks. It was a peculiar thing for Gran Gran to witness. Here they all were at the same table where she had seen them as a girl. Aunt Sylvie, Old Silas, Pomp, Chester, Lizzie. All of them. She reached out to touch Little Lord as she remembered the child. On the mask she had used corn silk for his hair. That had long fallen away. Sweet, sweet boy, she thought.

Gran Gran looked around in the back room and on the porch, but didn’t see the girl. Violet was getting stronger. She hadn’t said a word yet, but she was venturing farther away from Gran Gran’s reach. Yesterday she had found Violet standing by herself on the porch, looking off into the distance toward where the wagon had disappeared with her mother. Gran Gran noticed that she wore the silk scarf around her shoulders, an odd complement to the flour-sack shift the old lady had made for the girl. Violet was still between two worlds, but she was slowly finding her way back.

“Violet! Where you at, girl? It’s time for supper! Come on out, wherever you are!”

After a few anxious moments, Gran Gran heard footsteps coming down the hallway from the big house. The old lady held her breath until Violet emerged at last.

“Violet, that house ain’t safe! You go roaming around in there and you might fall right through the floor!”

Violet didn’t look up at Gran Gran. Her attention was on the mask she held in her hands.

Gran Gran smiled to see it. “So you done decided to take over storytelling, have you? You found somebody you want to hear about? Let’s see who it is.”

The face came at her like the swoop of a hawk. The two pieces of broken glass, wet, brilliant green, unsettling, like mossy pebbles in sparkling creek water, fixed her soul. Years ago, unable to bear the accusing look of this face of clay, she had shoved it into an upstairs closet.

“No, Violet,” the old woman said. “Let’s do another story. Let me tell you about how Polly found me sneaking sugar from her medicine trunk. How that be?”

Violet shook her head. “I want this one, please, ma’am.”

Gran Gran stared, silent. The girl’s words were serious as death. Why would she save her words for now, to ask about this particular face?

“Violet,” Gran Gran said carefully, still distracted by the mask in the girl’s hands, “I’m happy to hear you say some words. And glad to hear you talk so mannerly. But …” The old woman smiled uneasily, shifting her gaze between the girl and the mask. “But …” she said again, unable to find the words. She finally reached out to take the mask from Violet.

“I want her,” Violet said, resisting but then releasing the earthen face to Gran Gran.

“Yes, I know,” Gran Gran said, suddenly worn out, remembering how Violet had come to her to begin with.