Balm (16 page)

A
S THE TRAIN ROLLED SOUTH
, M
ADGE COULD
not help but miss her closet in the widow's house. Being in that kitchen closet was like being with the spirits. Buckeye. Jimsonweed. Hollyhock. She planned to teach the sisters new words for old things, like wild arsenic weed for rat's vein. She would sound out the new words until even Baby Sister, who spoke with a whistle, would get it. She would tell them how the prairie was drawn in shades of purple and yellow and orange. She would tell them how, beneath the tall grasses in the moist earth, she had discovered nubs of goodness rich enough to cure the soul.

First, Madge would have to assure them she had not given their secrets away. The practice of herb doctoring had sustained five generations of women, freed three of them. She would have to remind them she remembered those unshackled feet. Madge imagined how their faces would look when she returned. Would they be pleased? Would
there still be a place for her? She prayed they had survived the final ugly days of the war.

The widow had bought her a first-class fare all the way to Tennessee, but the journey was long enough to make it trickier than that. At Sadie's suggestion, Madge traveled in widow's garb. When changing trains, she hung back and observed long enough to decide which car to board. Between Centralia and Cairo, a conductor ordered her out of the ladies' car into the men's-only smoking car, and she was so humiliated that she actually looked forward to boarding a steamboat.

She made her way south, junction after junction, avoiding food counters, eating from her well-stocked pouch. She traveled with a trunk packed lightly enough to manage, dragging it onto the boat at Cairo after she tried unsuccessfully to tip a porter. When she reached Tennessee, the hem of her dress had fallen and she was covered in a film of dust. She stepped off the boat where the Hatchie joined the Mississippi, just above the towhead, and met a flurry of activity: men offering rides on rickety carts, women selling bread and fruit. She waved down a colored man attaching a mule to his cart. Scars ran down his arms, the skin keloided and lumpy. He pointed to the seat.

“I ain't going far,” she said, speaking through her veil. “But I can't move this here trunk another lick.”

“Climb on up.”

He took the whip in his left hand, flicked it.

Her head lolled, as if all the blood had collected there. She could still feel the rocking of the ship.

“I got a paper underneath that there box. I reckon it's pretty old by now. But I was hoping you could . . .”

“Not likely.”

“Thought you might could,” he said, glancing at her dress.

He wanted the news. She could not read black lines on paper, but she had ears. She tried to think of what she had overheard. How some
things had changed and some hadn't. Families still searching for one another. A new president. Colored folks running for office. She did not know how much this man knew, and she did not want to insult him.

She told him where to go, and he took off. Groves of cypress trees edged the forest on the other side of the river. A catbird mewled from the roadside brush. She wanted to take it all in, this land of her birth, but what she really needed was sleep.

“Scat!”

The wagon jerked to a stop. She woke and saw a dog lying in the middle of the road, its head against the ground.

The man stepped down to look. He stretched the dog's leg, pulling the bend out of it. It rolled onto its back. Madge lost sight as the man stooped over. He rose, cradling the dog in his arms. A ladder of pink nipples poked out of its belly.

“What happened to it?” Madge asked as he placed the mongrel in the back of the wagon.

“Cut wide open. Likely hit by the wheel of something.”

He picked up the reins and tapped the buttock of the mule with his whip. She wanted to know about the man, but he had not even offered his name. She wanted to ask what happened to the slaves she'd known her whole life, if he knew any of them. As she neared home, the path to the house etched into sight, years of wear making it inhospitable to grass. She lifted up so the breeze could dry the back of her damp dress, ducking as the low-hanging branches of a tree grazed the top of her head. They rounded the last bend. She turned her face, catching sight of the listless dog on the back of the cart.

No one can save it
, she thought grimly.
No one can save none one of us
.

The house squatted, sinking into the ground, its logs pitted with age. She'd once been so proud of it, but after living in Chicago she couldn't help but think it was not much of a house—the windows
needed repair, the porch sank on one side, the eaves were full of nests. But it was theirs. The sisters did not possess beauty or husbands. All they had was this house deeded them by a grateful white man. As Madge looked upon the place of her birth, her love for Chicago began to disappear from memory.

S
HE SEARCHED FOR SIGNS OF LIFE
. All was quiet, but the house did not look abandoned. Three chairs on the porch. A broom. Everything in its place, just as it had been in the dream. He pulled the cart up in front of a post and stepped down.

“There a creek nearby? It's hot as the devil's den out here.” He stroked the head of his mule.

Madge pointed to the back of the house. “You want me to sew her up?”

“Naw. If'n you got a needle, I can do it. Won't be the first time I done stitched.”

“Sure, I get it for you. Thank you, hear?”

He tipped his hat.

She turned toward the house:
Howdy. Yall feeling all right? Afternoon, Berta Mae, Sarah Louise. That you, Baby Sister?

She stepped over fallen fruit in the yard, looked up at the tree. It had dropped all of its peaches, and they lay scattered throughout the yard. Madge could not remember the last time the tree had shed so early. On the porch, she scraped the bottom of her shoes and patted her face. She crossed a soldierly trail of ants carrying specks of white to a hill wedged between porch planks. The door opened before she could finish inspecting. The oldest, Berta Mae, took her in as she glanced around at the cart, a dull expression on her face.

“Your husband brung you?”

“No, ma'am. He just drive me.”

“Who died?”

“Nobody. It's just a dress.”

Berta made a sound in her throat, looked accusingly at Madge's stomach.

“You here for good?” She paused as if the niece's answer to this question would determine the measure of her welcome.

“Yes, ma'am.”

Berta looked around the yard again before turning and going back inside. She left the door open, and Madge knew this was the best welcome the oldest would give her.

From the outside, the house appeared the same. Inside was another story. The sofa had been torn and sewn closed. The quilt was gone. The women had always lived simply, but there had been a few nice things. A dented copper pan Berta Mae had shined up. A handful of dried flowers. A possum skin. It was all gone now, leaving the room with a hollowed-out feeling. Curtains fluttered at the open windows, blocking out the sunlight. The house was too hot for anything walking on two legs, and it smelled of gutted fish.

Baby Sister cleared her throat. It was so dark, Madge had not seen her sitting in the chair.

“That you, Baby Sister?”

“Who else would it be.”

“Ain't you a sight.”

“Huh.” A tooth glinted.

Madge untied her veil. She heard a deep “Ea-sy” spoken outside.

“Where Say-ruh?”

Baby Sister pointed at the bedroom. A few feet away, Berta noisily moved dishes around, clearly upset she would have to set a table for four again. Madge lay the veil on a chair before going in to see her mother. Inside the bedroom, it was cooler.

“Say-ruh? You sleep?” That was what Madge asked, but what she
almost said was,
You dead?
She had not expected her mother to be lying down, a hump beneath covers in daylight hours.

“Course not. Come on over here and let me look at you.”

Madge stepped closer, glancing at the unlit candle on the table. She moved around to the other side of the bed. Her mother's eyes were wide.

“What's wrong with your eyes?”

“What's wrong with your'n?”

Sarah's hands reached, and she pulled Madge closer before sitting up. She placed a hand on each of Madge's hips, pressed thumbs into her frontside. Madge closed her eyes and tried to let go, but her mind flew back to the memory of Hemp. His hands had found their way beneath her dress, and he had grabbed her hips as firmly as her mother was grabbing her now. She had leaned into his touch like a hungry dog as he made his way up her body, rubbing her arms before rising again to finger each button on the back of her dress until he got to the bones of her collar. Now her mother's rough hands touched her face, brushed her eyelashes. They smelled of fish. The scent had settled on everything in the house.

“I see you eating good.”

Voices passed through the window.

“You new round here?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“You look a little weak. Could be your blood thin.”

“You reckon?”

“Here. Take this here. Drink it 'fore you lay down at night.”

“I ain't sick. Got a dog on back of my cart with a nasty cut, though. Could use a needle.”

“And you? Take this.”

“It's bleeding mighty heavy.”

“A dog?”

“Madge?” Sarah's hands rested on her belly. “Where you been? Why you come back?”

“Had a dream.”

“They come and took our stuff.”

“Who?”

“Ain't no Yankees make 'em do what they done.”

Madge pulled the covers up to her mother's chin. That was why she'd had the dream. Somebody had paid the house a visit.

“They hurt you?”

Her mother's shining eyes rolled toward the ceiling.

“Sister put a trick on 'em. My guess they six feet under by now.”

“Y'all don't do tricks.”

“Don't ain't can't.”

“You rest, Say-ruh. When you wake up, I show you what I brung.”

Sarah did not protest, and Madge left the room, unable to stand the sight of her mother's eyes staring up at the ceiling.

M
ADGE WOKE TO THE SOUND
of the sisters murmuring in the other room and knew they had gone through her trunk. She had forgotten the lack of privacy in a house of women. She rubbed sleep from her eyes.

“What that smell like?”

“Ain't sassafras.”

“This one here ain't no good. Smell dead.”

“Probably picked too late.”

“Give it here, no it ain't.”

Madge joined them, sitting in the empty chair left at the table. She had not brought anything they knew about. The herbs lay in the middle of the table. Without the whole story, the dealings with the apothecarist would mean nothing, so she started from the beginning and kept
talking until she got to the part about how street after street in Chicago filled with throngs of people, swinging bridges stopped traffic allowing ships to pass, buildings crowded upon one another, smoke curled over freighters, grain elevators as tall as mountains painted the sky. She told how she made her way into a rich white woman's house as a maid, only to build up a secret store of plants and a crop of paying customers.

They stared at her, stupefied.

Berta Mae wore a frown, so Madge removed a sack of coins from inside her dress and placed it on the table. Berta's face did not change as she closed a hand over it.

Madge pointed. “This here is called quinine. It help with the digestion.”

“Kwi what? Di what?”

“Quinine. You use it in the place of dogwood. And this here”—she revealed the jar of paste sewn into the inside of her dress—“is my new healing balm I made.”

Berta Mae turned her face.

“One more thing. The white woman I work for talk to the dead.”

“Chiiiillld
—
”

“That's how I come up with it. This help people get over they grief. I'm telling you, I hear 'em talking and people need miracles. This balm is they miracle.”

The sisters did not move, and neither did Madge. She had been so busy talking, she had overlooked the heat of their anger.

Berta Mae spoke through her teeth. “We don't traffic in no lie, and we don't sell no false hope.”

The sisters were a single block of wood, a wall pushing against her. In the face of it, she was less than air, and she always would be. Their demand for respect would never allow her to grow tall. And even when her wisdom outstretched theirs, there would be no recognition. The old ways, even the flawed old ways, would come
first. In those rare moments when one of them appeared to be taking her side, the alliance ended the moment another sister entered the room. Madge knew the teaming was built on convenience, but it did not matter. First came the Lord King—forget about Adam—and then came Eve. Then came the woman who birthed the woman who birthed the woman who birthed and birthed and birthed until the sisters were delivered. Last in that line was Madge—the girl child.

She tried to speak confidently, like she did when she was demanding someone pay her for teas. But she couldn't. They still unnerved her. With a quivering lip, she told them of the apothecarist, even though she knew all they heard was
white man
. She told how she had started her own business, but all they heard was
white women
. She bolstered the impossibilities with more descriptions of the city: a lake that did not stop, people wearing the coats of animals. After a while she could tell she was repeating herself, so she stopped talking.

“Madge,” her mother said, “what you tell that white woman?”

“I ain't tell her nothing.”

“You got a mouth, don't you?” Berta Mae added.