The Healing (23 page)

I feel confused until I look down and see that I’m wearing the rotting rags of those children out in the settlements. The clothes smell like death
.

“Stop it!” I scream
.

The mistress pulls back her veil, but it’s not her at all. It is Polly, cackling louder than the others
.

“Watch out for pleasing faces!” Polly taunts
.

“Where’s my mistress?” I shout. “What you done with my mistress!”

Polly draws a bloodied knife from behind her black satin dress. In the other hand dangles the thing she buried in the woods, purple and veined. “The cord been cut betwixt you and her!” she says. “Her time has passed.”

I turn to flee, but barring my way outside the kitchen is a small woman with skin so dark it gives off a purple cast, dressed identically to me. She begins to speak
.

Granada forced herself awake.

Her chest was clinched in terror and the bed wet to her back. She lay trembling, waiting for the dream shapes to fade with the daylight streaming through the windows.

But something was wrong. The images seemed to be sharpening, becoming more potent in her mind’s eye, as if she had borne some vital element from her sleep into her waking life.

“You been dreaming,” she heard a voice say. She twisted toward the sound and was startled to see Polly sitting in a chair by the bed, turned full to Granada. The woman was without expression, her eyes deep in their sockets. Her face could have been carved from cypress.

Granada bolted upright. “What have you done to the mistress?”

Polly cocked her head to the side. “Done?”

“Something happened to the mistress and it’s your doing. You hoodooed her. I saw it!”

A shadow of recognition crossed Polly’s face and she nodded. “Your dreaming is beginning to show you things. That’s good.”

Nothing about this was good. “I’ve got to find the mistress. She needs me.”

The girl scrambled out of the bed, but Polly snatched her arm and said firmly, “No, first tell me what you seen in the dream.”

Granada struggled to free herself, but the woman’s clutch was tight and her fingers were bruising her arm.

“You was in it,” Granada said, panicky. “You had a knife and you was dressed up like you was the mistress. You made me wear dirty rags.”

“What else?” Polly asked.

“I saw Lizzie’s white eye, boiling in a pot. Aunt Sylvie was cooking it. It looked right at me.”

“Lizzie’s eye?” Polly asked and then exclaimed, “Yes, ma’am! Lizzie’s eye!” as if she should have known it all the time. “Go on. Tell it all.”

“I tried to run to the mistress, but somebody was standing in my way. She wanted to tell me something.”

“Who?” Polly pressed. “Who was it standing in your way?”

“A dirty swamp nigger!” she spat. Granada could stand no more of this. They were wasting time. “The mistress needs me!” she cried. “I got to go to her.”

“What you got to do is heed the dream, Granada. Your remembering has begun. Who was the woman? You know her.”

Granada struggled against Polly’s clutch.

“You can’t see because you still got that white woman in your eyes. The mistress ain’t the one who needs you. It’s the people calling you. That’s the meaning in the dream!”

“Let me go!” Granada screamed.

“Go, then! Go to her,” Polly said with contempt. “Go see how she needs you
now
.”

The statement seized the girl’s heart. “Why you say that? You
have
done something!”

Polly’s eyes smoldered. Her voice was barely audible and came from down low in her throat. “The water you despise will be the water that drowns you.”

“What?”

“Choose for the people, Granada, and God will be on your side. Choose for yourself and you’ll be walking alone.”

The words had the sound of a curse. The girl fought harder to get free.

“See for yourself then.” Polly released Granada’s arm.

The girl fled from the hospital in her shimmy and bare feet. She ran straight to the cookhouse, charged up the steps and through the door. Old Silas sat alone at the table, his cup of coffee before him.

“Where’s the mistress at?” she cried, sick with urgency.

Silas didn’t look up at once. He sloshed some coffee from his tin cup into a chipped saucer, brought it up to his lips with trembling hands, and cooled it with his breath. He sipped noisily as the girl waited with a choking impatience. Only after he had set the saucer down did he glance up at Granada, calmly. For a moment, she didn’t think he had heard.

“Polly send you?” he finally asked.

“No,” she wheezed.

He nodded. “Sylvie just now left to take Mistress her breakfast. But you can’t just—”

Granada wheeled around. She took off through the door and raced down the covered walkway that led from the kitchen to the great house. Long swords of sunlight sliced through the loosely slatted roof.

Nearly halfway down the walk, she stopped short, her legs refusing to take her another step. Blocking the door at the other end of the boardwalk stood the sad-faced woman with her arms outstretched. Granada squeezed her eyelids shut and then flipped them open again. The dream woman had vanished.

What kind of spell had Polly put on Granada?

Swearing aloud to knock the woman down if she got in her way again, Granada flung back the door that led into the cooling darkness of the great house and shot up the grand stairway to the mistress’s bedroom.

Aunt Sylvie was rapping lightly at the door, a silver tray balanced flat on her other hand. Granada watched unseen from the top of the stairs.

When Aunt Sylvie got no response, she called out the mistress’s name. Still nothing. Granada saw the cook push the door open, peek inside, and disappear into the room.

Granada hurried after Sylvie. The cook was standing before the bed, still turned down for the evening. Sylvie called out for the mistress, then turned toward the door where she spied Granada.

“What are you doing up here?” Sylvie stammered. “You want to get us both sent to the fields?”

“Aunt Sylvie! Where’s the mistress at?”

“Lord if I know! She done found her legs and run off like a swamp slave,” she said. “But I better track her down before the master comes home from riding the fields and lets loose on me.” She looked at Granada. “Best you get out of here, before—”

That’s when they both heard it—a child’s hysterical screaming.

Sylvie dropped the tray onto the mistress’s teakwood console, the silver coffee pot crashing to the floor and pitching an arc of black liquid across the carpet.

“Let’s you and me go see what hell has broke loose this morning.” Sylvie’s voice was shaking as she ran for the door. She clearly needed Granada’s help now.

They followed the screams to Miss Becky’s bedroom. Granada could smell the smoke before she made it to the door.

Sylvie turned the brass knob but found it locked. “Little Lord!” she shouted. “Open this door!” Then she muttered to herself, “My merciful God, help that poor child!”

“Get me out, Aunt Sylvie! Get me out!” The boy was hysterical. Next came the shrieking wails of Daniel Webster.

Sylvie turned to Granada. “I got the key hid in the kitchen. You stay right here and … Lord, I don’t know what. Just stay here.” Aunt Sylvie took off down the stairs.

“Mistress Amanda!” Granada called. “You in there, too?”

More panicked screams emerged from child and beast. By the time Granada thought of going out to the gallery and trying a window, Aunt Sylvie came puffing down the hallway with the key and two house servants in tow.

Smoke was now funneling into the hallway from under the door. Sylvie frantically fumbled with the key until the lock finally clicked.

The room was thick with smoke, but Granada could make out Little Lord on the floor cringing under the dressing table, crying out between bouts of strangled coughing.

First out of the room was Daniel Webster, who scurried past them.

“Run, Little Lord,” Sylvie shouted as she raced across the room to throw open the window, but the boy stayed put.

When the smoke cleared a bit, Granada saw its source. Mistress stood in the middle of the room, her long graying hair hanging down to her waist. A powder-blue nightgown was tied close to her neck, and folds of the cotton fabric cascaded to the floor, puddling at her feet. On her face was the most desolate expression Granada had ever seen on the woman. She gazed sadly, almost longingly, into the advancing flames, as if she would welcome an end to her grief.

On the floor between her and the tester bed stood a knee-high mountain of Miss Becky’s dresses topped by a row of Becky’s dolls laid on their backs, their arms reaching toward heaven. The items fueled a good-size blaze.

Aunt Sylvie’s shouting brought Granada back to her senses. “Good Lord, Mistress!” the cook cried. “You trying to set the house afire?”

The mistress turned her sorrowful gaze to Sylvie. “No matter, Aunt Sylvie. Only bits and pieces.” She coughed and then slowly nodded her head, as if to underscore the insignificance of it all.

When Little Lord’s sobs rose again from under the dresser, Aunt Sylvie moved into action. “Lizzie, get the boy out of here.”

The maid ran across the room and roughly grabbed Little Lord’s arm. She dragged him coughing and crying into the hallway.

“My good Lord in heaven,” Pomp exclaimed, still huffing from his run up the stairs. “What happened?”

“Pomp, fetch that pitcher of water on the mistress’s washstand,” Aunt Sylvie commanded. “And Granada, you give me a hand over here!”

Sylvie and Granada hurried to the other side of the bed. With all their might, they jerked down a panel of heavy damask drapery,
ripping the brass hardware from the wall. Sylvie used the material to blanket the fire, smothering most of the flames. All this time the mistress looked on amiably. She could have been hosting an afternoon tea.

When Pomp returned with the Haviland pitcher, Granada looked down to see the flames nipping at the hem of the mistress’s gown.

“Throw it, Pomp!” the girl yelled as the blaze shot up the folds of soft cotton.

Pomp flung the water on the mistress but not before the flames had blossomed upward, licking at her oily ropes of hair. They lit like fuses.

Lizzie arrived with a leaded vase filled with quince-tree blooms but stopped short when she saw the mistress’s hair aflame.

“Throw it, fool!” Sylvie screamed.

Little Lord let go a gurgled shout from the doorway. “Throw the water on momma’s head, Lizzie!”

Her son’s plea seemed to jolt the mistress awake. She shrieked out in pain and began stumbling around, slapping at her head with the flats of her hands. The stench of burning hair filled the room.

But Lizzie remained stone-still, seemingly paralyzed with fear, until Granada looked into her face and caught the faint remnant of a satisfied grin. Then Granada remembered. The woman on fire was the same woman who had sent Lizzie’s daughter to the swamps.

Granada grabbed the vase from Lizzie’s grip and hurled the contents, both water and flowers, into her mistress’s fire-scorched face.

T
wo days later Granada and Polly stood on the hospital porch watching the drama unfold at the great house. Moments before the master’s carriage had pulled up to the back stairs and halted. Trunks and bags were lashed to the roof. Now Master Ben stood stiffly in the drive, holding open the carriage door.

Slowly the mistress emerged from the house, two housemaids flanking her as they descended the steps. She was wearing a heavy black dress and her face was dark behind a veil.

Granada shuddered.

“You seen all this before, ain’t you?” Polly asked.

Granada nodded weakly. “The dream,” she answered.

“You know more than you saying,” Polly accused.

Yes, Granada could have said more. But why should she? If she spilled all her secrets, then Polly and Silas would both have her hide. And it wouldn’t get Mistress Amanda back.

After the fire, the mistress couldn’t be calmed. She paced the room screaming in pain, crying out to both the living and the dead. Aunt Sylvie raced back to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of laudanum, Old Silas following a few steps behind.

Lizzie and Granada held Mistress Amanda down while Aunt Sylvie spooned the medicine carefully past the woman’s blistered lips. After a few minutes, she calmed enough for Sylvie to treat her tender
spots with a thick coating of lard. It seemed to Granada that the only place on Mistress Amanda’s body that had not gotten a blistering were the bottoms of her feet and her backside. But it was her head that gave Granada a fright.

When Sylvie was done, she told the maids to drape all the upstairs mirrors, saving the mistress the additional pain of catching the grisly sight of her frizzled head and swollen, oozing eyes.

All the while they helped tend the mistress, Granada felt Silas’s eyes on her. When she stepped away from the bed, he spoke, low enough so that only she could hear, “You knew.”

“I dreamed—” But she stopped, not knowing how to explain. She looked down at her feet.