The Healing, page 25
“Now lay back down and close your eyes,” Polly whispered. “Nobody going to do you bad while you’re in my hospital.”
As the woman lay there, her breathing evened and the muscles of her face relaxed. Again, Polly went to the hearth, which constantly had a pot of water heating, and dipped a gourd full into a tin basin. She reached for a cake of soap and then returned to the woman.
“Granada, come help Rubina out her dress so I can give her a warm soap bath.” Knowing she was not to say a word now, Granada did exactly as she was asked. Nor did the woman resist. The room took on a peculiar sense of inevitability. There would be no more arguing with Polly Shine.
The sun had set and pulled in its last rays. Lantern light flickered across Rubina’s naked body. Polly began speaking to her softly, in a soothing cadence, as she wiped her down with a warm rag.
Next Polly took tallow fat and began applying it to Rubina, massaging it into her skin.
Granada watched things unfold before her like a wondrous vision. There was a magnificence about Polly. Her old hands seemed reborn, lithe and limber, moving gracefully over Rubina’s body. Polly began with the woman’s face, moved down to her neck and shoulders, lifting each arm.
Rubina’s skin glistened and became fluid like the surface of a dark river. Beautiful expanses of rich, silky skin, more beautiful than any of the mistress’s satins, stretching forever in Granada’s mind. In that vast, never-ending river, beneath the shimmering surface, beneath that little mound, was a child. No, Granada thought, not one but multitudes of children. Granada’s own child was there.
Rubina moaned sadly. “What will happen to my baby?”
“I told you. Your baby will be fine. I don’t believe you hurt her.”
“Her?” The woman smiled sadly. Then she shook her head and tears streamed down her cheeks. “Ain’t going to be my baby. Going to be his to sell. Not my baby.”
Granada could not understand the woman’s sadness. Shouldn’t she be happy? Her baby was safe. It wasn’t right. Granada wanted Rubina to be quiet, to stop ruining the magic.
“I can’t,” Rubina cried. “No more. He ain’t going to do it again.”
“Do what, child?”
“I kept hearing the steps, coming to take my baby. God forgive me, I prayed for the last one to die. When I was told to leave the field to go to nurse her, I went to the woods and prayed God to take her. But she wouldn’t die. And I heard them coming. I just couldn’t …”
Rubina was sobbing now. “I give her a name but they was going to give her another. Send her away from me. Going to make her lay up under white men because she’s so fair. Work her until she dies, she never knowing nothing but the name they call her to bed with.” She took Polly’s hand. “Don’t you see? It was a blessing for her to die. It was the only thing I could give her except her chains.” Rubina placed Polly’s hand over her heart. “Kill me, too!” she sobbed.
Polly stroked Rubina’s dampened hair. “You go on to sleep now, Rubina,” the old woman said. “Rest yourself. I understand now.”
For a while Polly continued to work the woman’s body, kneading the fleshy parts of her arms. Then she laid both hands on the woman’s belly, where the baby lay sleeping. She closed her eyes and whispered softly. “In the beginning God created.”
“Polly,” Granada whispered, as not to awaken Rubina. “Want me to go get Lizzie?”
“No,” Polly said. Her countenance had hardened. “Take your blanket and sleep outside on the porch tonight.”
“But Polly,” Granada gasped, not understanding what she had done wrong. “I want to stay. I want to see how you tend to the woman. You said I was ready. You said—”
“I know, Granada. I’m sorry. But I need you outside. If anybody comes up, you call out. You understand?”
Granada glared at her.
“And don’t be coming back in here.”
The scald of anger rushed to Granada’s face. Polly had promised! Granada, you are a woman now and you no longer have to stay outside of women’s things.
Granada yanked the blanket from her bed and stomped outside. She took up the place where she had slept her first night with Polly, many months ago. But on this night Granada lay wide awake, her fists clenched and her thoughts dark.
After all the promises! After all the learning! Nothing had changed. Nothing at all.
CHAPTER 39
Gran Gran stopped her story. She looked over at Violet, and when she saw the rising horror in the girl’s eyes, the old woman noticed the cold terror that had formed in her own chest.
No, she shouldn’t tell the girl any more. It wouldn’t be right to say it aloud. There was no way Violet could be ready. For a while Gran Gran said nothing. There was only the sound of wood knots popping in the stove.
“What happened to Rubina’s baby?” Violet finally asked, breathless.
Gran Gran could not look the girl in the eye now. Since Violet had found her voice, her presence was becoming more real to Gran Gran. The girl wasn’t deaf and dumb. She was understanding exactly, taking the story inside of her and stitching it together with her own thoughts. Those stitches can last forever.
Gran Gran finally found the girl’s eyes. “She had her a beautiful little girl, Violet.”
“But what happened to—”
“It’s time to get you and me both to bed,” Gran Gran said, her tone final. She could not bear to be around the girl now, not with the memory so near. She heaved herself up from her rocker. “I’m wore out and I bet you are, too.”
After she turned the lantern in the girl’s room down low, Gran Gran stood for a moment and studied her through the dim light. Violet smiled at her and again Gran Gran found herself unable to keep her eyes rested on the girl’s. She had lied to Violet. But it wasn’t just to Violet. That one lie shone a light on so many others.
The old lady said good night and pulled the door behind her, only to return to her rocker by the stove.
Gran Gran sat wide awake, her heart still beating fast from the undammed rush of memory. For so long it had been a distant recollection with no more weight than a story heard in passing—a terrible thing, yes, but something that had happened to someone else. Only tonight did Gran Gran feel its pulse again.
There was no shoving it back into the closet to let the lie sleep another century. The memory was alive tonight, demanding that she look it in the face. There was no choice but to let it take her.
CHAPTER 40
The dawn broke with little help from the sun. Clouds hung low over the plantation yard, heavy with the rain the skies had threatened all night. The wagon rumbled up to the hospital, waking Granada from a fitful slumber punctuated by the growl of distant thunder. Through her sleep-bleary eyes, she saw that it was Bridger coming to see about Rubina.
Granada leaped to her feet and scurried into the house to wake the two women, but Polly and Rubina were already sitting at the table as if they had been waiting. Rubina’s head was cast downward. Polly had the woman’s hands in hers.
Bridger entered the room and swaggered up to the table. “You save the child?” he barked.
“Weren’t no child,” Polly said.
“There sure as hell was when I left her here. What did you do?”
“I told you there weren’t no baby. Happens. Woman thinks she got a baby growing inside of her, but her body fools her. Swell up just like she bigged. But Rubina didn’t have no baby growing inside her. I know you seen that before, ain’t you, Mr. Bridger?”
Bridger glared at her, his steel-gray eyes straining in their sockets. He worried the stock of the whip he toted at his hip.
Polly half smiled. “Least now you don’t have to tell Master Ben no hundred-dollar child died under your watch.”
Bridger opened his mouth to speak, but then shut it quickly, scowling in resignation. He stepped back from the doorway and nodded brusquely at Rubina, who got up to leave with him. He snatched her arm, not letting go this time until he had her legs chained to the iron ring on the sideboard of the wagon.
Rubina never spoke a word, but Granada knew. There had been a baby.
After the wagon had pulled away, Granada asked, “What you do with that baby? Did you hide it? Where is she?”
Polly raised her chin and cast her eyes over to the corner. Granada spied the large clay urn with a bloodied rag lying across its mouth. She stepped over to look, but Polly reached for the girl’s arm, pulling her back.
“The baby died?” Granada asked.
Polly was stonily quiet, staring into Granada’s eyes, signaling her the best she could without saying the words. While they stood there frozen in each other’s gaze, a flurry of brittle oak leaves blew into the room on a short gust of wind through the open door. They skittered about them on the floor. The rumbling thunder from the approaching storm was becoming more intense.
It dawned upon the girl what Polly had done. “You killed it!” Granada gasped. She clenched her jaws against the outrage that surged from her belly. She waited for Polly to answer, needing her to deny it all.
Still Polly didn’t speak. She looked haggard, her face ashen, the familiar light having deserted her eyes.
“You’re a liar!” Granada screamed. “You don’t care about the people. That baby was the people. Weren’t it?”
Again there was only Polly’s awful silence.
It was all a lie! Granada had lost everything because of this woman and her evil lies.
She slowly backed away, still watching the old woman’s stooped figure, giving her one last chance to rise up and set things right.
Granada turned away, released at last from Polly’s web. “There ain’t no magic,” she spat. “Never was!”
Granada took off in a fevered run across the yard. Raindrops as big as bullets splattered the dust around her.
CHAPTER 41
The mistress was sitting in a parlor chair, sipping tea from a china cup. She acted as if Granada had not entered the room and was not standing before her on the carpet, trembling and soaked.
The girl had not known she was coming here, only that she had had to run hard and keep running through the driving rain. Without thinking, she had returned to a place where she had once belonged.
But as Granada stood waiting for Mistress Amanda to notice her, the girl felt the old wavering in her legs. She didn’t know whether to step closer, sit, curtsy, leave, or just run. The fine woods and delicate fabrics and gleaming crystal made her feel as uncertain as she had been the day Polly arrived.
A flash of lightning lit up the room, followed by a quick thunderclap that shook the floor, sending a shudder through Granada’s body.
The mistress finally set her teacup on the silver service tray and lifted her gaze. “Why are you here? I didn’t send for you.”
Daniel Webster, perched on the back of her chair, chittered.
“I want to come back,” Granada said, her voice trembling. “I want to be here with you and Little Lord.”
The mistress dabbed the corner of her mouth with a snowy napkin. “You shouldn’t be in here,” she said. “Go back to the old woman.” She rang the little silver bell and Granada knew Pomp would arrive at any moment to drag her away, maybe banish her to the swamps.
Granada blurted, “Polly did a real bad thing, Mistress Amanda. She killed Rubina’s baby.”
At the mention of Rubina’s name, the light seemed to shift in the room and the air vibrated. The mistress’s eyes flared at Granada like blue flames. She saw the woman’s hand grip the rosewood arm of her chair, whitening her knuckles.
“Ah, yes, Rubina,” the mistress said coolly.
Pomp entered through the parlor double doors, swinging them back with a confident flourish. But his face went slack when he saw the girl there. She had slipped into the house right under his eyes. Pomp reached for Granada and began to drag her across the floor, but the mistress spoke evenly. “Pomp, let her go, and wait outside. I need to speak with Granada. And pull the doors to.”
He snapped his head back, his face darkening, but then he quickly recovered his stiff-shouldered posture. “Yes, Mistress Amanda,” he said. He aimed another daggered look at the girl and left the room.
The mistress and Granada were alone once more.
“Go on,” the mistress said, looking directly at the girl. “You were saying?”
Granada was held in place by the mistress’s expectant stare.
“Mistress,” she began, “Mr. Bridger come with Rubina and said she had hurt herself and was scared she was going to lose her baby.”
Granada realized she wasn’t breathing and when she inhaled, it felt as if her heart might explode from her chest.
She gasped a lungful of air and quickly continued. “Then Rubina told Polly she didn’t want that baby. She said you was going to take that baby girl away from her. Like you done her others.”
Granada waited for the mistress to say something, to at least nod in agreement, to acknowledge that this was true. There was nothing forthcoming but the icy half smile.
Granada, less sure of herself, continued without prompting, stumbling over her words. “And then Polly told me to sleep outside and the next morning she say there wasn’t never no baby. But I know there was, Mistress. A baby. There was a baby and they killed it!”
Again Granada waited for the mistress to respond, to show her gratitude for Granada’s loyalty, to take the sting out of the betrayal. But the mistress did not speak, or even move, and for a moment Granada wondered if the mistress thought the entire story a lie.
Finally the woman rose and noiselessly crossed the rich carpet on beaded silk slippers. She offered Granada a piece of fig toast from the china plate before proceeding to the door and turning the gleaming brass handle. She told Pomp to fetch her coachman at once.
Granada remained standing for a long while, holding the uneaten toast in her hand, waiting silently with the mistress, but not sure at all what she was waiting for. The trees beyond the yard swayed hard on the wind, and sudden gusts rattled the windows in their frames. All around them the storm sighed and gasped, like a woman giving birth.
Granada’s head swam with a woozy sunstruck feeling. It had been so much easier than she had ever imagined, like kicking a pebble. But the pebble, once kicked, kept moving, like it had a plan of its own.
Chester rushed into the room wearing his brass-buttoned jacket, the woolen shoulders darkened by the rain. When he saw Granada, he gave a grin and then seemed to remember himself. He solemnly strode up to the mistress and half bowed.
Very sweetly, very politely, she said, “Be so kind as to ride out to Hanging Moss and find a Negro called Rubina. Do you know her?”
“Rubina,” Chester repeated, warily. “Yes, ma’am, I know her. Lizzie’s girl.”
“I have a message I want you to relate. Are you ready?”
Chester answered with a bow, but he seemed somehow off-balance now.
“Tell her I’m so sorry to hear about the loss of her child,” she instructed. “Say those exact words. Do you understand?”
“Her child? Rubina lost—”
“There’s nothing you need to know but the words. To recite them, not interpret them. Now repeat my message.”
Chester’s face darkened. “Mistress is sorry about the loss of your child.”
“No, say ‘daughter’ instead. And tell her this,” the mistress added, her voice tightening, “tell her I promise to let the master know all about it over supper. I’m sure he shall consider it his loss, as well. And not a word more, do you understand?”
After being made to repeat that as well, he walked toward the door, his shoulders heavy. His face was beaded with sweat. Before leaving the room, he looked directly at Granada, his expression confused.
“Mistress,” Granada said in a voice that sounded so small she was not sure it carried. “Can I stay in the kitchen tonight?”
“No,” the woman answered, looking almost surprised to see the girl still standing there. “Not tonight. You are to go back to the old woman and not breathe one word of what you have seen or heard. Do you understand? She’ll find out soon enough. Then we’ll see about moving you back into the kitchen.”
Granada stole away to the spinning house, empty now of workers, and spent the long day there, hugging her knees in the corner behind a loom, listening for any sounds that would incriminate her. The thunder rolled again overhead and Granada watched through the gaps between the shutter boards as the rain curtained the plantation, turning the yard into a lake, raising the creek dangerously close to the tops of the levees. Tomorrow there would be snakes swimming on porches.
When night finally came Granada braved the deluge and ran splashing through darkness and ankle-high water to the hospital. She was soaked through to the skin when she stepped into the cold, dark room. The fireplace was dead and Polly stood at the open window, peering out into the storm. For a moment, Granada remained where she was, shivering, the water puddling on the plank floor around her feet.
The wind blew hard through the window, and water trickled down Polly’s face, drenching her ginghamed chest, but she stood rooted, her arms crossed, unspeaking, peering into the heart of the storm.
She didn’t ask Granada where she had been. Polly had frequently been mean and angry, but even in her punishing silence, she had never for a minute been distant. Polly Shine’s presence always loomed large. But Granada sensed tonight, if she were to lay her hand on Polly, it would pass through her like a specter.
“What you looking at?” Granada asked, shattering the quiet like a rock through glass.
Polly turned toward Granada and studied her, the old eyes straining at the dark. Then she turned back to the window and stared vaguely into the night. “Something is bad wrong, but I can’t see it. Won’t come to me.” She turned back to Granada. “You feel it?”
Granada’s chest seized up. She was unable to speak.
Polly’s gaze returned to the window. “They come and got the hounds awhile back. Master went with them. Out on this kind of night. Something evil is afoot. I know it in my bones, but Lord help me, I can’t see.”
