The Healing, page 26
Polly heaved a sigh and then closed the shutters to the storm. She wiped her face on her apron and lifted the globe to light the lantern that sat on the table. When she turned the metal knob and the flame flared, Polly’s and Granada’s shadows were cast colossal on opposite walls.
“Granada, come here to me.”
Granada wrapped her arms around her body, trying to stop her shivering, unable to move her legs. Could Polly now, in the lit room, see what she had done? Granada could only stand where she was, afraid even to raise her eyes.
“You need to know something about today,” Polly began.
Granada sucked in her breath and held it. Her teeth clenched.
The old woman crossed over to her. “When I speak of the people,” she said barely above a whisper, her voice all weariness and grief, “I ain’t just talking about the flesh, the blood. It’s their voices. Their yes’s and no’s. That’s what holds muscle to bone. The biggest thing the white man takes from us ain’t our bodies. He takes our voices, too. He swallows up our yes’s and no’s like biscuits. But one day our yes’s and no’s will be so loud and strong they will lodge in his throat. He will have to spit them out to keep from choking. He will starve. There won’t be nothing left of him except the shadows he casts on the deadest night.”
Polly lifted Granada’s chin with her finger.
“Every slave here got to tell the master ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’ just to stay alive. There ain’t no shame in that, as long as we don’t let him kill the voice inside. Sometimes you got to lie on the outside to keep your voice loud on the inside. We don’t owe the master the truth. He owes us. Nothing comes from the master. He is the thief in the night. He steals it all. And every time we have to say ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir,’ he steals some more. But we can survive it, if we stay loud in here,” she said, throwing a fist hard against her breast.
There were tears in Polly’s voice. Granada wanted to hold the old woman in her arms, but knew she had given up the right.
“Baby, I’m telling you all this for a reason,” Polly said, hush-breathed. “Rubina said no. In ever which away she could, she say no! With all her woman’s voice. She weren’t lukewarm about it. As much as a person could, she said no. That’s got to count for something. At lease once, it’s got to count for something. A momma got to say yes to her baby or she ain’t no momma. She ain’t nothing but a field animal.”
A fear as potent as the storm outside swallowed up Granada. She wanted to reach out to Polly and have the old woman hold her and tell her she was just a little girl and couldn’t be blamed for the careless thing she had done. But Granada remained frozen.
Once Silas had talked about how he could straighten out a winding river by pinching off the place where it began to meander and tangle back on itself. You would be left with what he called a false river, a body of water with no inlet or outlet, just sitting off by itself while the old river passed on by in a new bed, more direct to the sea. That’s how it was with Granada now. She no longer belonged to the river of life. She was no longer just downstream from God.
So Granada did not reach out, and her arms hung useless by her sides. The distance was now too great to be bridged by a reach as diminished as hers.
CHAPTER 42
Granada was wrenched from her sleep by a frightful scream, and her first thought was that a panther had got into the yard again. After the second scream, she knew it was human. She didn’t dare move or breathe, not wanting to discover its source, afraid it was Polly.
The rain had slacked some and a weak, watery dawn was breaking. The girl peered through the shadows of the room and saw that Polly’s bed was empty. The next scream was louder still.
Granada bolted from her cot and reached for her dress. While she was bringing the shift over her head, she heard the creak of the door hinge. At the sight of Polly her heart gave a leap. The woman was wet and muddy, but she was safe. She was toting her herb sack and the bottom sagged from whatever it was she had gathered during the night.
Granada’s relief yielded to a sharp stab of loneliness. She knew they would never go gathering in the woods again.
The wailing outside was constant now. Whoever it was was scraping her throat raw, unleashing a torrent of outrage and loss. Polly stepped up to the window that opened to the yard. She unhooked the board shutter and flung it back. After a moment she turned to Granada, her face grim. “Come see.”
Granada walked to Polly’s side and looked out across the muddy expanse. A woman was kneeling in the mud, her arms thrown up to the gray morning sky still heavy with rain. Aunt Sylvie hovered over the woman, trying to pull her up from the mire. Then Granada made out the figure.
“Somebody must told Lizzie about her girl,” Polly said, her tone flat. “Don’t you reckon?”
When Granada didn’t speak, Polly, whose gaze was still fixed on the stricken woman, continued. “Listen good to that voice, Granada. Take it deep down in your belly. That’s how a momma feels when her child been stole away.”
Granada stilled her breathing, praying Polly would stop. She didn’t want to know any more about Rubina.
“Hounds found Rubina after she run off last night,” Polly continued. “Course it weren’t too hard for them dogs to tree that poor girl. Rubina saved them heap of trouble by hanging herself from the low limb of a cottonwood. Today Lizzie lost her girl for the second time over.”
Granada reached out and put a steadying hand on the windowsill. She shut her eyes and began shaking her head, refusing to believe any of it.
Polly whipped her head toward the girl. “Look at me!” she commanded.
Granada saw the old woman’s anger flaring like a torch in the dark room.
“What have you done?”
“You killed her baby,” Granada whimpered, with no conviction to her complaint, but still she continued. “That baby was the people, too. Weren’t it?”
Polly’s jaw clenched. “You think you know all about it because you had some dreams. Well, you don’t know nothing. You and your pretty dresses. Eating scraps from the master’s table.” Polly pointed to the yard. “Was it worth the trade?”
Granada’s cheeks burned hot. She shook her head sharply, trying to deny it.
“You’re lying!” Polly spat. “Ain’t nothin’ inside the yam that the knife don’t know. I know everything there is about you.”
Granada took a step back.
“You some kind of woman, ain’t you?” Polly continued to rage. “Don’t you understand yet? Ain’t you figured it out yet? Where all that come from? That house. The fields. The crops. The gold. The mistress and the white boy you love so? Them fancy clothes you miss so bad. Down to the corn bread and molasses and that damned monkey. They all come from the same place. And it ain’t the white man’s God. It ain’t Him that do the groaning and the heaving and the grieving. It’s all been stole. It’s been stole from the same place. That place I’m talking about ain’t nothing but a bloody slit in this world of His. But everybody wants to rule over it. It ain’t for the white man to rule. Ain’t for any man to rule.”
And then Granada knew.
“Yes ma’am, that’s right. And until you can pay it the honor and respect it deserve, weep for it and pray for it. Until you can do that, you best get out of my sight. Go back to the great house. Go back to them that kill what little remembering you got. Give them your yes’s and no’s to swallow down and get fat on. Give them your own children to feed off of.”
Granada began stepping back toward the door, expecting Polly to jump on her at any minute and strangle her.
“That’s right. Walk out the door. You thinking you got what you wanted. You thinking, ‘I’m free of Polly Shine at last.’ ” Her laugh was vicious. “Free! What you know about free?”
From behind her Granada heard the old woman shouting, “For all your born days, until you get to be a crooked old woman, you ain’t never going to be free of Polly Shine.”
What was once given as a blessing had now been hurled as a curse.
• • •
Granada stumbled through the mud, making a wide panicked sweep through the yard, staying as far away as she could from the place where Aunt Sylvie still struggled to lift Lizzie to her feet.
Granada had no idea where to run. She belonged nowhere now. She looked up at the house, wishing that Little Lord would come out and save her like he had promised. She wished he would scoop her up and take her far away on his father’s stallion.
She began crying again. Polly had been so angry. She had never treated her like this before. But of all the things that Polly had said to her, the cut that sliced deepest was her saying that she knew Granada. That she knew everything about her.
No one, ever, had considered Granada important enough to study, to know inside and out. No one would ever again. She would not let them because she herself had learned what they would find, and it revolted her.
Maybe she could hide in one of the stalls on a pile of dry hay. Chester might even tell her what to do, where to go. But when she turned and looked in the direction of the stables, she stopped, not daring to take another step.
Bridger was driving a mud-spattered wagon into the lot, trailed by a troop of hounds. The beasts were growling low in their throats, leaping, furiously trying to get at whatever was wrapped in the tarp.
Another wail rose up from Lizzie, and Granada saw Aunt Sylvie struggling to keep the woman from taking off toward the stable. That’s when Granada knew what cargo the wagon carried.
Bridger stood by the wagon, cursing the dogs. Master Ben rode up wearing his rain slick and dismounted, motioning to one of Chester’s stableboys to lead the steed away. Master Ben then took off in a fast stride with Bridger following close behind, a rope in his hand.
“No,” Granada gasped, when she understood where they were heading.
They didn’t slow until they got to the hospital and then Master Ben busted the door off its hinges with his boot. The sound of wood splintering cracked across the yard.
He stepped aside and let Bridger enter alone. Granada’s heart beat furiously against her rib cage.
“No!” she cried, louder.
A moment later Bridger backed out the door, pulling a taut rope. He gave it a furious yank and Polly came stumbling out, her wrists bound together. She landed facedown in the muck. She tried to stand, but as she was about to regain her balance, Bridger yanked the rope again, sending her lurching another few feet before collapsing once more on the muddy ground.
A sickening chill gripped Granada’s insides as the two men, their prisoner in tow, made their halting progress back to the stable.
CHAPTER 43
The low black clouds brought night early and the rain was unyielding. Granada didn’t dare go back to the hospital, so she found herself sitting at the big pine table in the kitchen, watching the faces that had once been so familiar. Now she wondered who these people were after all.
Aunt Sylvie sulked about the kitchen grumbling to herself, every once in a while wiping a fugitive tear from her eye. Chester, who had made up clever songs about Polly before, now wore a hangdog look that said he hated himself for every mean rhyme.
Except for Bridger, nobody seemed to take any satisfaction in Polly’s fate. Even the master was foul. When he saw Granada standing in the yard after they had dragged Polly to the stable, he had shouted, “You goddamned better have been a fast learner and picked up some remedies. Five thousand dollars’ worth to be exact.”
The prospect of taking Polly’s place put Granada’s head into such a sickening swim she wasn’t able to offer a response, other than to lean against the big oak and retch into the black mud.
Lizzie had seen her there, walked out of the barn straight from Rubina’s cold body and, when Granada raised up her head to wipe her mouth, slapped Granada’s face. “You killed my girl,” she spat.
Silas hadn’t been seen since he finally abandoned his chair on the porch, where he had been rocking relentlessly for hours, shaking his head, and every now and then muttering Rubina’s name. Eventually he rose up from his chair and walked directly across the muddy yard through the pouring rain and disappeared into the stables where they were keeping Polly. As far as Granada knew, he still hadn’t come out.
When she thought things couldn’t get worse, Granada overheard Pomp saying the master was going to take Polly into Delphi when the court came in session and have her tried for destroying his property and hanged as an example to anyone with similar ideas. Pomp said Granada was going to be hauled to court and be the main witness against Polly.
At that moment in the kitchen, Chester was hunched over in his chair, a far-off expression on his face, his brass buttons tarnished.
Aunt Sylvie was now telling Granada not to get her hopes up for a new fancy dress anytime soon. The mistress had found a better way to geld the master and seemed to be enjoying every minute of it.
Pomp was quiet, keeping his eyes on his untouched coffee, cold in the cup. He never had any particular fondness for Polly, but tonight they all knew it could be any of them out there in the stable, tied up like a veal calf. It didn’t matter how light-skinned you happened to be, tonight there was only one shade of black and one shade of white.
“Wonder who it was that told,” Pomp muttered every so often. No one answered, but Granada could feel the creep of eyes.
But worse than their suspicions was Lizzie’s relentless sobbing from Aunt Sylvie’s room across the kitchen. The mistress had not allowed her near-hysterical maid to return to the stables to tend Rubina’s body, which still lay in one of the stalls where Bridger had pitched her. When it got to be too much for Lizzie, she went off to the kitchen to cry, curse, and mourn. Each outburst was like another condemning slap to Granada’s face.
Chester shifted in his seat and looked toward the room where Lizzie lay. “I heard that cottonwood where Rubina hung herself got struck by lightning,” he said in his lowest voice. “Split that tree through the middle. But didn’t take it down.”
The words had no sooner left Chester’s mouth than the door flung open and the howling wind rushed across the room. Old Silas, his preaching coat buttoned, stood with his back to the gale. The storm sounded like a mighty river roaring toward them.
Then it was quiet. Even the wind seemed to have subsided.
Silas began to speak. “I tell you in that night there shall be two men in one bed; and one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding grain together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but the Father only.”
Aunt Sylvie was the first to move. She poured her man a cup of coffee and sat it down at his eating place closest to the hearth. She closed the door behind him and retrieved a towel from a nail in the doorframe. She held it out to him, but he didn’t take it. She tried to unbutton his wet coat, but he only shrugged her away.
“Silas,” Aunt Sylvie said finally, “you all right? Why you so peculiar? Your dropsy acting up?”
Sylvie’s words seemed to have broken the spell. “Polly needs to be fed,” Silas said, his tone now gruff. “Fix her a plate of something hot.” Then Granada thought she saw the trace of a smile on his lips. “And pour her a cup of port wine.”
Sylvie laughed, but then seemed to realize he might be serious. “The master’s wine? He’ll—”
“To hell with the master,” Silas muttered. “He’s got plenty. Ain’t even his.”
Silas’s words again knocked the breath out of the room.
Only Aunt Sylvie dared move, nodding warily. “I’ll take it to Polly directly,” she said, “but you’re sopping wet—”
“It’s not you she’s wanting to see, Sylvie,” he said. “She’s asking for Granada. Just Granada.”
Every head in the room whipped to where the girl sat, trying her best to disappear, the dread pulling her lower and lower into the chair.
Silas never even addressed her directly. After he had delivered his message, he walked past his wife and up to her bedroom door. He knocked softly. “Lizzie, I got a message for you from Polly.”
When the door opened, there stood Lizzie, her good eye raw from grief, glaring hot at Granada, the white one as dead as her daughter.
“Sylvie, pour a cup for me and Lizzie, while you are at it. We’ll be in here talking.”
With that, the two disappeared into Sylvie’s room.
Granada tried to get to her feet but couldn’t manage it the first time, falling back into the chair. No one moved to help her. No one seemed to notice her at all.
• • •
When Granada entered the barn, there was no light. “Polly, I … I brung you something …” she managed, her throat choking off her words. “Aunt Sylvie sent me … something to eat, Polly.”
“Back here, girl,” the woman answered, her voice barely a whisper. “Best if you don’t light no lantern. Just follow my words.”
Thankful to be spared the sight of Rubina’s body, Granada stepped into the darkness on trembling legs.
“That’s right. Just keep coming. About halfway back. I’m in here. On your right hand.”
By the time Granada had come to the stall where they had tied Polly, the girl’s eyes had begun to adjust, but still Polly was only a shadow among darker shadows.
“I’m afraid you going to have to feed me like a baby, Granada. I ain’t got no hands to work with.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Granada mumbled. She could make out Polly’s head, but there was still too much dark between them to read her face. Granada lifted a wedge of corn bread to where she supposed the mouth to be, but her hand trembled so, she dropped the bread onto the loose straw floor.
“I’m sorry,” Granada stammered, setting the plate and cup down. “I’m sorry,” she said again, now frantically pawing the ground with both hands to retrieve the corn bread from the dark. “I’m sorry, Polly. It’s here … I’m sorry,” she said once more, her voice filling with tears. “Polly, I’m … I didn’t mean … I’m …”
