The Healing (37 page)

Something inside gave loose. The girl threw her arms around Polly and wept, pressing her face against the cold iron collar that ringed the woman’s neck.

Polly said nothing, and when Granada at last pulled away, wiping her face with the back of her hand, her head light from crying so completely, Polly asked, and not harshly, “Granada, what is it you sorry for? Tell me.”

“I … Polly, I was bad to you. All you done for me and I hurt you.”

“Say it, Granada, what you done.”

“I told the mistress on you. I told about Rubina.”

“Was it the truth?”

The girl was silent for a moment. She knew what Polly was going to say, but Granada could not bear to hear it. “Yes, Polly, but—”

“Then I can live with that, Granada,” the old woman said. “Can you?”

“Polly, no!” the girl cried out. “It’s all my fault. I’m the one to blame!”

Polly took a rasping breath. From somewhere in the stable, the master’s stallion whinnied. Pigeons fluttered in the rafters.

“Granada, remember I told you my momma was a weaver?”

The girl nodded, sniffling. “Yes, ma’am. In Africa.”

“That’s right. All her people, the women, were weavers. The finest anywhere.” Polly paused for a moment to catch her breath. She was weaker than Granada had thought.

When Polly began again, her words were too low to be heard. Granada leaned in closer.

“She told me the secret … what made them so fine, mother after daughter after granddaughter, all the way down the line.”

“What was it, Polly?”

“She say, the difference in weavers is, some see the tangle and
others see the weave. The ones that can’t take their eyes off the tangle, they never rise above it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Granada said, knowing this was important, trying to understand.

“Granada, this here … what happened to me, to you, to Rubina … ain’t nothing but a tangle. It’s the
weave
you got to remember, Granada. It’s bigger than you and me. It went on before you and me got here. It’ll go on after you and me leave this place and go to wherever it is Rubina is waiting. Just a tangle, Granada.”

Her whisper became so small, the girl had to put an ear to Polly’s mouth. Granada felt the parched lips brush against skin.

“Yewande, lift your eyes and see!”

G
ranada had gone to sleep thinking about the weave of things. Trying to recall all Polly had said about the threads that stitch folks together. About a heaven of stars being like the people. About daughters and mothers and mothers’ mothers touching through time. She tried to find the room next to her heart where the sight for things outside herself was first born. But when she slept, her dreams were black and sightless.

Granada woke to the blunted toe of a shoe nudging her back.

“Polly!” she called out from her pallet.

A familiar voice splintered the darkness. “Get up, quick! Satan is treating Creation like his own tonight.”

Finally able to focus, Granada made out the short, wide silhouette of the cook hovering over her. Aunt Sylvie poked the girl in the leg, harder.

“What happened?” Granada cried, bounding to her feet. “Somebody do something to Polly? She ain’t … is she …?”

Aunt Sylvie grabbed the girl’s hand and began dragging her barefoot across the kitchen.

Granada wore only her shimmy. “Wait,” she protested, reaching for the rain-soaked calico shift that hung over the chair.

“Ain’t got time to dress,” Aunt Sylvie said, gasping for breath. “Got to hurry. Might be too late now.”

When Sylvie headed for the door that led to the great house instead of the one opening into the yard, Granada’s heart gave a leap. Maybe this wasn’t about Polly after all!

They raced through the darkened dining room and to the foot of the winding double staircase. From there Granada could see the lamplit upstairs. Shadows flitted about on the landing.

Aunt Sylvie pulled Granada, stumbling, up the stairs and didn’t let go of her hand until the cook had deposited the girl in Little Lord’s room.

“About time!” Master Ben bellowed.

Panicky, Granada took in the room with a quick glance. Master Ben, in stocking feet and wearing a nightshirt tucked into his riding trousers, stood glaring at her on one side of Little Lord’s tester bed. Glaring at her husband from the other side of the bed was Mistress Amanda in her sleeping cap, arms crossed over her dressing gown in a kind of protest. Granada assumed Little Lord was in the bed, but the footboard obstructed her view. Over in the corner, her face beyond the light of the lamp, stood Lizzie’s darkened figure, cringing like she was about to be hit.

Then Lizzie turned her face to Granada. “Ain’t my fault! He was ailing when I come up to see about him,” the maid whined pathetically.

Granada now saw the red print of a hand on the maid’s face. The mistress had already struck.

“Maybe it was something he ate,” Lizzie whimpered.

Aunt Sylvie stiffened. “Weren’t nothing I fed him,” she declared too forcefully. She quickly changed her tone and added, “But now that Granada’s here, Little Lord will be healed in no time.”

“What are you waiting for, fool!” Master Ben commanded. “Get over here.”

Granada at last found her legs and moved through the fog of her stunned stupidity toward the bed. She couldn’t remember a longer walk, not even the slog to the creek bank to heal Daniel Webster.

Her little friend’s eyes were closed, his pillowcase darkened with
sweat. On the floor, she saw a chamber pot. He had been vomiting. Maybe Lizzie was right. He could have been poisoned.

With her thumb, she lifted his eyelid and saw that the pupil was barely a dot in the field of pale blue. The pulse in his neck was so faint it took a moment for Granada to find it.

“Well, what is it?” the master snapped. “What’s wrong with my son?”

Granada bit into her lip to stem her growing panic. The idea of her trying to doctor somebody was madness. And Little Lord himself!

She bit deeper into her lip, seeking the pain, for all her other senses were shutting down. There was no sound but the loud roar of her blood in her ears and her vision was dimming to a quivering dark.

But then she smelled it, and the noxious odor brought her back. It was like rotten fish. Her eyes followed the smell, searching for the source of such a stench. That’s when she saw the thing lowering its stubbed nose from under Little Lord’s bedding toward the carpet. The unhinged mouth was as white and shiny-slick as a fish’s belly. And now it was in striking distance of Granada’s leg.

She sprang back and yelped. “Snake!”

Master Ben had also seen it. He was already gripping the poker from the fireplace and was on the moccasin like a flash of powder. After several fierce blows, he had mashed the creature’s head into a red pulp. The snake continued to undulate, coiling and uncoiling on the carpet until the master raised it up from its middle with his weapon, carried it through the open door to the gallery, and flung it over the railing into the mud for the dogs.

“He been snakebit,” Aunt Sylvie said in a low, hushed voice. She quickly lifted her skirt and scoured the floor. “That the only one?”

The shock served to clear Granada’s head. She took hold of the coverlet and yanked it off Little Lord.

And there it was. Little Lord’s thin, pale legs were lying in a mushrooming puddle of blood. One leg had ballooned beyond recognition.
A few inches above the ankle it was wine-colored and raw, looking more like meat to be hung in the smokehouse than a little boy’s leg.

Granada spied a pair of purpling puncture marks. At least one fang had found an artery, and blood still pumped to the rhythm of the slowing heartbeat.

“How did a snake get up here?” Master Ben stammered. “In his bed? How could it have happened?”

The mistress exploded. “It happened because we live in hell!” she shouted. “How many children do you need to kill before you finally cede that point?”

The master fell back like he had taken a blow. He seemed unable to respond in any way other than stunned silence.

However, Granada now knew exactly what needed to be done and shouted above the fray. “Get Polly! She’s got a remedy.”

“Polly!” Master Ben cried. “She’s half dead. Last I looked she wasn’t even conscious. She’s no use to anybody.”

The words cut like jagged steel. Granada tried to imagine he was talking about somebody else being half dead. “No,” she finally managed, “you got to get Polly.”

“Don’t you dare bring that witch near my boy,” the mistress hissed. “She’d kill Little Lord just to spite me. Besides, you’re bound to know the remedy.”

“Amanda’s right,” the master chimed in. “You’ve got to. I can’t let Polly around the boy, her knowing she’s going to be hung anyhow.”

Granada agreed with the master. She
should
know the remedy. But it was the only one Polly had kept quiet about. When she asked Polly how she had healed Daniel Webster, Polly had gone hush-mouthed. All she would say was that Daniel Webster had healed himself. Perhaps Polly didn’t have a cure after all. But still …

“Little Lord’s going to die for sure if you don’t get Polly. He might die if you do. Might sounds better than will to my ears.” She pressed her fingers to the boy’s impossibly pale throat. “I can’t hardly find his heartbeat now.”

Master Ben heaved out a furious breath and then took to the stairs, still in his stocking feet.

While they waited, Granada put pressure on the vein below the oozing wound to keep Little Lord from losing any more blood.

To keep from falling apart, Granada focused on a riddle. The one the master had posed. How had the snake got into Little Lord’s bed? The levee above the house had breached during the storm and brought snakes into the yard, and she knew from experience snakes could find their way up trees. But up the stairs to the gallery, across the hallway, up the staircase, into Little Lord’s room, finally nestling in his sheets?

She lifted her finger from the vein and there was only a slight seepage now. What did it matter how he got bit? He was almost gone.

Mistress Amanda perched on the bed next to her son. She leaned over him and tousled his hair. Granada noticed how wooden and tentative the mistress’s gesture was, sadly absent something essential. Granada remembered holding the mistress’s hand and tried to recall her touch. Had it been so empty after all?

Several minutes later, Master Ben strode back into the room, sopping wet, his feet encased in mud. He was followed closely by Chester, who carried the dying woman in his arms like precious cargo.

“What took you so long!” cried the mistress from the bedside. “My God, this is just like Becky … the waiting on you … if you …”

“No!” Master Ben snapped. “It’s not just like Becky. I had to throw a bucket of water on Polly to bring her to. Then she had to go to the hospital. But she’s got the potion, all right. I seen it.”

Chester gently set Polly down next to Little Lord’s bed. She stood for a moment, but then her legs crumpled beneath her. The coachman caught Polly under her arms before her head bashed against the floor.

When he lifted her, Granada gasped. From the light of the lamp by Little Lord’s bed, the rope burns around Polly’s wrists were clearly visible, bloody and raw. The iron collar had bitten so hard into her neck that the skin around her throat was an open wound. Her face was bruised, her lip bloodied.

The mistress stood up from the bed and took a step back, putting her hand to her throat. “My God, Benjamin, is she still breathing?”

Granada feared the same, but then she heard her name spoken in a barely audible voice.

“Granada, you come hold me up.”

The girl rushed to Polly and carefully took her from Chester. Granada had a hand around the tiny waist and draped a skeletal arm over her shoulder. Polly’s legs were bent at the knees. Her muscles had to be cramping from all her time kneeling in the stall.

Polly tried to laugh. “I guess I’m needing more than a walking stick today, Granada. Now step me close to the boy’s wound.” Polly craned her neck a bit, but even that movement seemed to exhaust her. Her weight fell back on Granada.

“Yes, snakebit,” she said wearily. “That’s the sad truth of it.”

“What can you do, Polly?” It was the master. His tone had softened like a man who knew his dictates went only so far.

“He’s nearly dead now,” Polly said, shaking her head. “The poison already squeezed most the life out your boy.”

“You got that remedy!” Master Ben cried. “Aren’t you even going to try it?”

Polly again shook her head. “No, Master, I’m sorry. Your poor boy can’t be saved.”

“You can’t just let him die!” Master Ben was frantic now.

“For God’s sake, Benjamin,” the mistress snapped, “don’t stand there arguing with a slave. Cut out her tongue if she won’t obey.”

Polly grew heavier on Granada’s arm by the minute. The old head fell against the girl’s chest. The breathing was shallower, raspy.

“She’s hurting bad, Master Ben,” Granada cried. “Let me tend to her, please, Master.” Both Polly and Little Lord were slipping away from her, and she could do nothing!