The Healing, page 23
Granada shook her head. “What riddle you talking about?”
“This,” Polly said, her yellow eyes gathering up all the light in the room. “Once you been healed by a nigger, you can’t be a slave no more.”
• • •
Stepping up to Silas’s open door, Granada heard the quick, jagged gasps of strangled breathing.
“Old Silas!” Granada called out.
She hurried into the cabin, and in the night shadows saw Silas lying on his bed with his forearm resting over his eyes. He still wore his preaching suit and though no lamp had been lit, the fabric glowed white from a day’s worth of road dust. He hadn’t even taken time to brush himself off.
Granada stood at the side of his bed. “Old Silas, you taken sick?”
The old man shifted his arm from his eyes and looked up at her. “Granada,” he said, more to himself than to her.
He carefully dropped his legs over the side of the bed and then raised himself to a sitting position, his bare feet flat on the floor. His chin was down and his eyes closed as he labored to get his breath.
“Old Silas—” Granada said.
“I’ll be fine,” he said in a thin, dry voice. “Just need to get up on my feet. Need to walk a bit. Helps me to get my breath.”
Granada put the bottle on the table and took Silas’s arm at the elbow. And indeed once he was upright, his breathing became easier, but she could tell his feet were bothering him terribly. He balanced himself against the table, leaning on it with both hands.
“What’s that?” Silas asked, spying the bottle on his tabletop.
“For your dropsy,” Granada said. “Polly mixed it for you.”
He reached for the bottle with an unsteady hand, removed the stopper and waved it once under his nose. “Smells like whiskey.”
“She says it will soothe your heart better than mullein. It’s stronger. Take half tonight and half in the morning.”
“You try some of it?” he asked, squinting at her through the dim light.
She shook her head.
“No, I reckon not.” He smelled it again. “Soothe my heart, she say. Stop it stone-dead cold more likely.”
He set it on the table and then weaved a bit on his feet. Granada stepped closer, ready to catch him.
“Old Silas,” she ventured, “maybe you ought to try you some.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I hear you a regular hoodoo woman yourself now.”
“No, I ain’t,” she said flatly. “Polly and me don’t work hoodoo. She says hoodoo is taking over from God. She says healing is helping God do what He trying to do anyhow. Like mending a bone or curing a fever or … or …” She dropped her eyes again.
Silas cocked his head. “Or what?”
“You know,” she said, scuffing the floor with the toe of her shoe.
“Humph. Birthing babies,” he guessed. “Might of known you still stuck on that.” He waited until she looked up again and said, “But she don’t let you, does she?”
“Soon,” Granada said.
“You better off not getting into that mess. Let me tell you, there’s nothing special ’bout dropping babies,” Silas said emphatically. “Just go out to the sheds and barns and you can see critters being pushed out all day long. Sheep and cows and horses and hounds.” He drew up his face into a disgusted scowl. “Cats and rats. Folks aren’t any different.”
“That ain’t the way it is,” she said.
“I’ve seen it and it’s not pretty to watch. You don’t want any of that, do you? Hauling a dishpan full of blood and guts and burying it in the woods? Dirty work.”
“It ain’t dirty!” she blurted, unable to hold her tongue any longer. “And it ain’t blood and guts. It’s named a placenta. And you bury it so you can root the baby in the world.”
His lips tightened. “She got you spouting nonsense.”
“You got to bury it so his soul don’t go off wandering,” she insisted.
Gripping both arms of his rocker, Silas lowered himself into the chair. He looked up at her and even in the dim light, Granada could see the disappointment that lay heavy on his face, deepening the lines in his brow.
He let out a heavy breath. “Seem to me like you’ve forgotten all about your mistress. Taking sides against her.”
“No, I ain’t forgot her,” she said, looking down at her feet. “You lied to me, Silas. You said you was going to …” Granada decided not to finish. It didn’t matter anymore. She no longer wanted to be back in the great house.
“I didn’t lie to you,” Silas snapped. “She’s coming back. I’m in good with the master and soon I can still get you in good with her.”
For weeks now Granada could summon no feelings for the mistress at all. Granada recalled well enough Mistress Amanda’s touch that magical Sunday in the parlor. She remembered the beautiful dresses, the times she sat by the mistress’s bed, watching her sleep. How when no one was looking, she reached over and gently stroked the long, dark hair that draped the pillows and covered her milky-white shoulders. Granada had once been able to cry at even the mere mention of Mistress Amanda’s name, but lately she couldn’t squeeze out a single tear.
Polly Shine had dangled another life before her eyes, one that promised healings and birthings and her own babies, and all that was left for Granada to do was to find Ella and say the words.
Silas was still watching her. His brows were raised, the concern still in his face.
“You haven’t forgotten about what the mistress did for you?” he asked, shaking his head sadly. “Taking you out of the quarters and putting you up in the great house. Mistress saved you from being a swamp nigger, Granada. You owe her plenty. You even owe her your name.”
A darkness crossed over Granada’s mind like a shadow over water. “Mistress was the one who named me?”
“That’s the gospel truth,” he said solemnly. “I was there the night she gave it to you.”
Granada became quiet, and after a long pause, asked carefully, “What’s my other name?” Her breath began to quicken.
“What do you mean?” he asked, squinting his eye at her.
“The first one. The one my mother give me.”
Silas drew back in his chair. “I don’t recollect,” he said, his manner short, like he was ready for her to leave. “That was a long time ago.”
Granada’s forehead beaded with sweat. She was getting closer and closer to her mother, only a few steps farther. “Was it Yewande?”
It was the first time she had said the name since the day she had heard it.
Silas opened his mouth to speak, but his lips seemed to stall. It was like he was offering Granada a chance to pretend she hadn’t asked the question. Then everything could be right between them once more.
Her heart throbbed as fast and hard as the hoofbeats of the master’s horse in full gallop.
“That the name my momma give me?” she asked.
Silas cleared his throat. “Could of been Yewande,” he said. “Sylvie tell you that?”
“No, Old Silas. Somebody else,” she said. “My momma told me.”
“Ella?” He looked up at her now, his expression confused.
She nodded. “Where did she get that name?”
“Named you after her grandmother,” he said, his words terse. “Old Bessie’s mother.”
“Yewande,” Granada said again.
“She was a saltwater slave. Brought over on the boat. Yewande was the heathen name she came with.” Silas then angled his head suspiciously. “When did you say you talked to Ella?”
“Preaching Sunday,” she answered. “Last time.”
Silas shook his head. “No, can’t be.”
“I did,” Granada argued. “My mother came after me, calling me ‘Yewande.’ ”
“Weren’t Ella. Not that day,” he said confidently. “Ella was the first to be took by the blacktongue. Along with her boy. The both of them been up in the burying ground since last winter. You were still in the kitchen.”
“Dead?” she said. “No, she ain’t dead. I seen her. My brother, too!”
“What’s this?” Silas asked, suddenly angry. “You and Polly playing some kind of trick on me? That it? Trying to make me believe she can raise up ghosts from the dead?”
Granada’s legs began to go wobbly and her head spun. Outside, gin wagons were still rumbling into the yard. The drivers yelled their howdys to one another as they drove the mules into the lot. Down in the quarter mothers were calling their children in for supper. It all bled together into a terrible deafening roar that threatened to sweep her up on a mighty wave if she did not leave this place at once.
Granada turned quickly, thinking of running, but she could only stumble on shaky legs out the door and into the yard. When she got to the hospital, she bolted up the steps, but went no farther than the dark of the open doorway. She stood there breathless and finally gasped the only words she could manage: “Silas said she dead!”
Polly stood next to the table with the lantern, her shadow looming large on the wall behind her.
Granada searched the old woman’s face for a trace of understanding, hoping she wouldn’t be forced to say more, because that was all she understood.
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.”
CHAPTER 36
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.
