The Healing (42 page)

“Who they meaning, Gran Gran?” Violet asked. “Who’s crazy?”

“Me,” the old woman answered flatly. “They meaning me. I’m the one they calling crazy.”

The blood rushed to Gran Gran’s face and she picked up her pace, not answering any more of the girl’s questions.

“Hush now,” Gran Gran said, no longer understanding Violet’s words. “We got to get back. We been out too long already.”

Maybe she wasn’t crazy, but she had been an old fool. Tricking herself into thinking for a moment that Violet was hers to raise up, to train in the old ways, as Polly had done her. She wasn’t Polly, and Violet wasn’t her apprentice. Polly was dead and gone and Gran Gran would soon follow. All of it would be forgotten. She would be the last.

Ahead Gran Gran gazed at the mansion. The master said it had taken six years, a hundred and fifty slaves, a Philadelphia architect, and a genius of a water-shifter to build it high and dry.

But now it appeared to Gran Gran like one of those monstrous
beasts out of Revelations, lowering itself for its last drink of fetid water. For a century the creek had eaten its way up to the doorstep, long ago swallowing the front gardens and washing out the winding drive where those wealthy planters and their well-bred ladies had stepped from fancy carriages onto the graveled surface.

She knew the creek would never stop searching for its old bed, gnawing its way farther and farther into the rotting mansion, until it finally reclaimed the entire foundation.

Even now, as she neared the house, it seemed to tilt a little more toward the hungry current.

B
ack in the kitchen, Violet sat quietly at the eating table working her clay while Gran Gran watched from her rocker by the stove. She could tell the girl was vigorously pushing her way back into the world. When she had healed, she would leave.

Tired beyond relief, Gran Gran headed out of the house and into the brush, driven in the direction of an old half-standing shack.

She found herself beside the broken chimney, in the same place she had stood so many years ago when she had last glimpsed Polly’s loose-limbed body before it disappeared into the dense, wet growth.

The sun had dropped well behind the tree line and for a moment the curtain of twilight that separated present from past was flung back.

She was a girl again, not much older than Violet. The choice had yet to be made. There was still time to call out, to rush through the door, crash into the bramble on nimble, youthful legs, and catch up to Polly, grabbing hold of her leathery hand, taking in the heat and her strength, feeling again that solitary pulse where their palms embraced.

Yes, there had been that one moment when she stood there watching, her breath locked in her lungs, the muscles in her legs tensed to run. There had still been time, even as the sounds of Polly’s steps and the sweep of her body against the leaves grew fainter.

If Polly had but turned and looked at her. The girl had waited in
that spot, listening, watching, long after Polly disappeared through trees. Then as now there was only the sound of water dripping from clean wet leaves as a slight breeze stirred the branches.

“You said you would remember me. But you forgot like the others. Everybody done forgot. There ain’t no threads stitching us together. You left me here by myself. You should have told me! I would have gone.”

The old woman watched the sky grow dark. Then finally answered Violet’s question. “Yes,” she said barely louder than a breath, “I miss you bad, Polly. I want you to turn your face to me.” She closed her eyes and imagined her words being taken by the breeze.

W
hen Gran Gran at last returned to the kitchen, the room had gone dark. “Violet?” she called, but there was no response. She shouldn’t have left her for so long. “Violet,” she called, her voice panicked, “where are you?”

Gran Gran reached for the lantern next to the door and almost tripped on the suitcase at her feet. It was lying open. Violet must have pulled it out.

The fear notched tighter around her chest. She raised the lantern and saw that the girl was still at the table. Her head was down, resting on the tabletop.

Gran Gran began to breathe again, her heart still racing.

The yellow scarf was hung carefully on the back of a kitchen chair. In front of the girl was a molded face, but nobody Gran Gran recognized. Tomorrow she would show the girl how to do the eyes and shape the features with the flat of a knife and trowel.

Spread about Violet’s head on the table were dozens of photographs. That’s what she had taken from the suitcase, probably looking for faces to copy.

Gran Gran reached for the framed photograph she had already seen, the one taken at Lucy’s wedding. She tried to remember the day Lucy came seeking her help.

She was so beautiful and again Gran Gran noticed the resemblance to Violet. The almond-shaped eyes. The small mouth. If the man in uniform was Violet’s father, it made sense. He was much darker than Lucy. Again, she wondered, who is it Lucy favors? It wouldn’t come to her.

As she looked at the photograph, for the first time she drew her eyes to the background, what appeared to be the front of a church. There was a pulpit behind the couple, and on the wall hung three paintings in elaborate frames. It took a moment, but holding the picture up real close, she recognized the middle one as Jesus praying in Gethsemane.

“They got him painted as a colored man!” Gran Gran gasped. She had never seen such before and began to chuckle to herself, wishing to visit a church like that.

Her eyes strained at the portrait on the left, wondering who else they might have claimed as one of their own. But this man was very dark, and very, very old. A black beardless Moses, maybe?

“Hmm,” she mused. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that looks like Old Silas!” She shook her head. “I reckon I’ve lived long enough to say most of us old folks look pretty much alike.”

Violet yawned and then lifted her head from the table. Rubbing her eyes, she said, “You seen what I done?” Then she pointed to the face. “Want to guess who it is?”

Gran Gran studied the face, but couldn’t say it looked like anyone in particular.

“I’ll tell you. It’s Charity. You didn’t have her up on your wall. I’m making her for you.”

“Charity?” Gran Gran asked. “Charity who?”

“You know! Charity and Barnabas, who went off with Mother Polly.”

“Charity,” Gran Gran said again. “How you know what Charity looks like?”

Violet picked up a tintype from where her head had been resting
earlier. “See?” she said holding it up. It was of an old woman sitting in a chair with a man standing beside her, one hand placed firmly on her shoulder. She was old, yes, but merciful heavens, it very well could be Charity! And the man standing over her, was that Barnabas, the carpenter?

She looked at the unfinished piece of clay but saw no resemblance. The resemblance was in the girl herself.

Gran Gran grew unsteady on her feet, not knowing if she wanted to stay, sit, or run.

She held the lantern over the table and illuminated the photographs. Families gathered in the churchyard at dinners on the ground. A brick bank building. In front were rich-looking colored men wearing suits and high-collar shirts. A photograph of a few dozen youngsters sitting on schoolhouse steps flanked by several prim-looking women—everyone colored. A city hall, and lined up in two rows for the photographer, elegant-looking colored men and women. She had heard of towns like these. Colored towns. Out West.

“But I know these people,” she said. “I see somebody in every face.”

She looked back at the wedding portrait she still held in her hand. When she went to examine the third portrait, on the far right, the old woman’s hand began to shake.

“No,” she gasped. “That can’t be.”

The portrait was partially obscured by the shadow of the couple, but Gran Gran could distinctly make out the round disks that fell from the woman’s wrapped scarf onto her forehead.

“No,” she said again, and shook her head, refusing to believe. “My Lord, Polly, is that really you?”

“Mother Polly,” Violet said. “And Father Silas.”

“These pictures …” Gran Gran stammered. “All these pictures. This town and all these colored—”

“Where my momma come from. I ain’t never been. She showed me the pictures at night and told me the stories. Like you done with the faces.” She laughed. “Y’all tell some of the same stories.”

“Who are you?” Gran Gran asked, dazed now.

“I’m Violet,” the girl answered, suddenly concerned. “You know who I am. Don’t you remember?”

“What game you pulling on me?” Gran Gran now hovered over the girl, her voice frantic. “You taking me for a fool?”

“No, ma’am. I … don’t know.”

Gran Gran held the lantern to the girl’s face. The light flickered in her moistening eyes. “You lying!”

But her eyes weren’t lying. The mournful hazel eyes. Those were Charity’s eyes. The small troubled mouth. It was Charity, and with her name came snatches of memory … Charity, the weaver … never able to have a child … the apple fell green from the tree … until Polly …

“I ain’t lying!” Violet cried. She pulled away from Gran Gran’s panicked anger, and then shielded her hands behind her back. “Why you so mad with me?” she whimpered. “I wanted to surprise you is all!”

Gran Gran struggled to catch her breath. She could see as clear as crystal that day in the hospital. She remembered the words Polly had spoken to Charity. “Your sons and daughters, your blood will lead the people home.” And then Polly asking Granada to put her hand on Charity’s belly. “What lies under your hand is all of us, Granada. It’s where we are going. This child comes from the place where the river is born.”

“You’re Charity’s blood,” the old woman said in barely a whisper.

The kitchen had become as close as a coffin. From the masks and photographs on the table, one face broke through the darkness like a bubble rising in water, glowing in its own light, the disks gleaming, like the first day she had seen her.

“No,” Gran Gran muttered, shaking her head against the thought. It couldn’t be.

Gran Gran stepped back from the host of faces. She eyed the girl again.

“Polly send you?” Gran Gran asked, her voice raspy. “What she want from me?”

The girl looked at the woman. “I don’t know Mother Polly. She’s dead and buried … next to that church.” Violet motioned with her head to the framed photograph the old woman still held.

Gran Gran shut her eyes. “No! This ain’t nothing but lies.”

The old woman was terrifying the girl and she knew it. She had to get away from Violet. She fled to the porch, stumbling, not wanting to see or hear. Tears brimmed behind her lids, and her breath was short, strangled, like a steel band was tightening around her chest.

A vision of Polly’s little town blazed in her inner eye. Neat white cottages with roses and sunflowers and vegetable gardens out back. Neighbors calling to one another over fences. Children in the streets. So much life! In a great sweep of vision she saw them laughing and crying in each other’s arms; and marrying and bearing children and comforting one another and growing old together; grieving and burying one another and then beginning again.

She let go a great shuddering sob. “Why did you leave me?” Gran Gran covered her eyes with a trembling hand.

The chill night wind carried the sounds of her plea over the empty yard and across the quarter, but no one lit their lanterns to see what ancient heart was breaking. Her ragged cry drifted over the graveyards that hugged tight their silent dead and fluttered through a primeval forest, taking the last leaves of the hardwoods and scattering them over the souls that once had been rooted there. It rippled the surface of the yellow-mud creek, below which lay drowned a secret name that had not been called in seventy years.

The old woman at last opened her eyes and dared to look across the darkened yard. Staring back at her were hundreds of faces, women, men, children, and at once she knew each one of them, their names and their fears and their hopes. The night was full of shining eyes, unblinking, looking up at her, wanting.