The Healing (36 page)

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.

T
he 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 …”