That’s when Mama said, “You wouldn’t want Daisy, if she were here, to know you like this, though, would you? If she were able to see you. Are you the man she’d wish you to be in freedom?”
Ben Daisy lowered himself back into the chair. “So, what are you proposing?”
Mama stood up and told me to fetch the solution. She measured some out, very carefully, into a smaller vial and handed it to him.
“You take this,” she said. “One swallow, and one swallow only each night. It’s night, isn’t it, that the pain’s the worst?”
Ben Daisy sighed. “Night is when it all catches up with me,” he said.
Mama instructed him to return the following afternoon, and for every afternoon after that for five days. “You see how you feel,” she told him. “And if it seems to help, tell your friends down at Culver’s. It may help them, too.”
When he’d left, she sat and began to dictate to me again.
“We have in our midst,” she said, “a group of men, and a few women, who, upon discovering our community and life here in freedom, find their souls still oppressed. Their bodies are here with us in emancipation, but their minds are not free. Their spirits have not recovered from the degradation of enslavement, despite the many hardships and privations they have suffered to come here.
“Indeed, I argue that it is precisely because of these hardships and privations that when they arrive here, with us, some part of them does not return. When they arrive, I can treat the physical effects of their enslavement—the yaws in their limbs, and the scars on their backs and heads, and the bones that broke and were never set. But I have, up until now, not been able to treat what would be called the mental effects, the spiritual effects, which do not respond to prayer or clean living or even the embrace of friends.
“I believe the root cause for this is an intense solitude and loneliness, even in their freedom. At least, that is how some of them have described it to me. We have seen this illness before,” she said. “In the cases of those we love, like Mr. Ruggles and Miss Sojourner Truth. They were afflicted by this deep and abiding loneliness even in freedom and took to drink, and then the water cure, lying in bathtubs and wrapped in cold, wet sheets to try and soak it out. And it has not done much for them. If all these good and kind warriors are felled by this disease of feeling, what hope is there for any of us?
“And what is at the root cause of loneliness? It is a lack of love. I believe if we can treat this deficit of affection, we can begin to see an improvement in those new to freedom. We can make them whole in both body and in spirit and see a real change in their condition. They will ingest this substance, which is made of the solitude and longing for love of the ocean, and it will rebalance what has been made unsteady inside them. Take Mr. Ben, who is lost in amorousness, who is able to do nothing but pine. We will realign his affections, so that he no longer loves what is dead but loves us here, the living. He will be filled with agape. He will love his fellow man. It is what I attempt to test, in my proving. He will be my first patient.”
Then she raised her hand again, her sign that we were done for the day. She gathered the pages I had written, so that she could read what I’d taken from her own voice and correct it.
Ben Daisy took the solution faithfully. During that time, he did not appear any different—he still walked with one shoulder up high, and the other men still walked a little bit ahead so that they did not have to be in conversation with him. No one else from Culver’s came to Mama’s door. Either Ben Daisy didn’t tell them to come or they were unimpressed with his progress.
The only time we saw his sister was at church on Sundays. Miss Hannah sat in the back pews, near the door, and her brother never came with her. We sat in the pews in the front, because Mama’s father had been one of the men to build that church. When Mama was a girl, she and her brothers and sisters took up two whole pews. But now, of the old family, it was just me and her left sitting up front—the rest of the seats given away to friends. When we passed Miss Hannah on the way to our pew every Sunday, she would stiffly nod in Mama’s direction, but she didn’t smile. If Culver had read the apology aloud to her, it had not impressed her at all.
When Ben Daisy came back to our house two weeks later, it was in the last bit of light. His shirt was wet from work, and when we let him in, he sat sideways in his chair and we could smell the drink on him.
“I can’t give it to you if you’ve been to Culver’s already,” Mama said. “Tell me the truth.”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “This is from one of the other men. They knocked a ladleful of cider on me, and that’s why I smell like this. I’m as sober as a judge.” Ben Daisy gave her a glassy smile.
Mama looked at him, and she came to some sort of decision.
“Libertie, my record book,” she said, and I went and fetched it for her.
She took the book and looked at the columns of numbers. Then she licked her thumb, very carefully, and smudged out one. She dipped her pen in ink and wrote something else over it. Then she sprinkled some sand to let the ink dry.
As she rubbed the grains from her fingers, she said, very steadily, “A dose and a half today for Ben Daisy, I think.”
Lenore sucked her teeth.
“Yes,” Mama said.
Lenore took the little steel file she used, and measured a few more grains onto the slip of paper she’d set on the scale.
By the time the dose was prepared, Ben Daisy’s head had begun to loll, and Mama had to hold his chin steady as she placed it in his mouth.
The other times he’d taken it, Ben Daisy had only grimaced at the taste—“Golly, Doctor, you can’t cut this with nothing?” This time, he truly gagged. His knees rose up to his chest and he coughed, and Mama stepped back, surprised, then called for water.
She poured it in a slow trickle in his mouth until he was swallowing good and steady, and then she let him go. He slumped back in the chair, breathing heavily. Another cough. A third. He swallowed. And then he vomited something green and awful-smelling, all down the front of his shirt.
I jumped forward, Lenore cursed—“Oh damn”—and Mama stepped back again.
“Get it off,” she said to Lenore. She grabbed one sleeve. “We’ve got to get it off.”
Between the two of them, they managed to get the shirt over his head.
Ben Daisy lay in the chair bare-chested, his belly soft in his breeches, his eyes still closed, his breath in shuffles. Then his eyes flickered open, and he slowly sat up straight.
“You all right?” Lenore asked.
He put his hands on his knees, shook his head gently.
“Sit still, sit still,” Lenore insisted. But Ben Daisy stood up, creaking, and made his way toward the door. By now it was dark; the sun was gone, and the fireflies of Kings County were out.
At the door, he looked out over the fields and watched the lights scatter across the long grass, as if everything was new to him. Then he gave a deep sigh, like the sound the water makes when the ocean turns over. And he lurched out into the night, still bare-chested.
“Well,” Mama said. “Well,” she half laughed. She was nervous.
“Should I run after him?” Lenore asked.
“No,” Mama said. “I am sure he will be fine.” But she did not look certain.
The next evening, just as Lenore was to leave for the day, the office door swung open and Ben Daisy stood in the frame.
“What did you give me?” he said.
“Why?” Mama asked. She snapped her fingers for my attention, and then pointed to the ledger book. I reached for a pen to transcribe their conversation.
“All day long,” he said. “All day long, it’s felt like this.”
“Like what?”
“I hear it lapping at my ear, you know. I hear it crashing.”
“Sit down,” Mama said, guiding him to the leather chair. “Tell me what you mean.”
“I hear it, in my ear. Lapping, lapping. It’s been lapping all damn day, Doctor.�
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“Were you able to work?”
“I had to stop a turn and box my own ears, I did. Nothing came out.”
“Lie back,” Mama said. “Let me see.”
She snapped her fingers again, and I put down the record book, took one of the slim white candles she used for close examination, and lit its wick in the fire. I placed it in the small glass lantern and came and stood at Mama’s side.
“Steady, there, Libertie,” she said as she lifted my arm herself, so I could get the angle of the light right.
She settled down into the little chair and leaned forward. She took his ear in her hand, as gently as a lover, and stretched the lobe very carefully, so that she could see inside.
“And it’s so damn cold!” Ben Daisy said suddenly, rising up.
Mama sat back.
“So cold all the time. And my mouth, I tell you, it tastes like salt. Ever since yesterday. It just tastes like salt in my mouth. And Hannah, she says my breath stinks like the wharves. What do I care,” he said. “That sister of mine finds every way to tell me I’m wrong. But the foreman said it, too, this morning.”
He sat back down. As he spoke, indeed, a deeply salty smell filled the room. It was not necessarily unpleasant. Just very strong.
“I feel,” he said. “I feel …” He slumped back down. “I feel like I’m falling underwater.”
Mama lifted her chin. “Note that down, Libertie.” She was trying, very hard, to conceal her excitement.
“Well,” she said after a moment, “there is not much I can do for the smell of the breath. But chew these, twice a day.” She handed him a bundle of mint leaves. “And come back again next week—”
“Like hell I will,” Ben Daisy said.
“Just to talk,” Mama said quickly, and Ben Daisy grumbled and then moved toward the door.
Mama watched him go and then turned to me.
“Is he cured?” I asked. I was excited.
“We shall see,” she said. She was not going to play her hand.
All week long, I asked Mama if she thought Ben Daisy would come back to us, and she said, “It’s not for me to decide, Libertie. It’s up to him.” But I could see by Saturday she was as nervous as I was, even though she would not say it.
Sunday morning, we headed to church and walked past the stony-faced Miss Hannah to our pew, as always.
Reverend Harland began the sermon—about Belshazzar’s feast and the disembodied hand that had appeared to him and had begun to write on the wall the thoughts of God. Reverend Harland was talking about rulers dishonoring God and the calamity that would follow, but while he talked, I tried to think of that hand, floating in the air. Were its fingers long or stubby? Its palms jaundiced? What color was its skin—deep black or warm brown or the same pink as Mama’s cheeks? Did that hand also float above a pyramid, or in a distant desert, shimmering in the heat? And did Belshazzar, who saw the wonder, ever think in the moment of astonishment to keep the marvel to himself, to keep a secret, to not reveal it, to revel in the mystery of words untranslatable?
The sermon ended, and so did my speculations. The singing was about to begin. The choir assembled, and then, as they were about to start, we heard a loud, off-tune voice, too straw-like to be called a tenor, rise from the back of the church.
Oh Lord,
Oh Lord,
Oh Lord,
I’m saved again.
We all turned to see who it could be, and it was Ben Daisy, his shirt now cleaned and pressed, his hat back on his head, singing as loud as he could while his sister stood beside him, crying tears of joy and sharp embarrassment.
After that, Mama was revered. Everyone could see Ben Daisy was cured. He was the first man down the road at dawn, heading to the fields. He helped out the reverend at church. He stopped drinking altogether. He only went to Culver’s to pay the few cents he could, to settle his debt for all the corn whiskey he’d drunk in the past.
The others came out of Culver’s back room and began to take the cure with Mama, too—Otto Green Leaf and Birdie Delilah, and even Pete Back Back, whose shirt was still wet from his never-closing wounds.
Ben Daisy was truly a new man, anyone could see, and Reverend Harland dedicated a special sermon to it that next week.
“The psalms tell us that the Lord heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds,” Reverend Harland said. “He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit. The psalms tell us to sing to the Lord, as Ben Daisy has done, with grateful praise and make music to our God. For the Lord delights in those who fear him and who put their hope in his unfailing love. And he sends his word to melt the snow; he stirs up the breezes, and the waters flow.”
Afterward, when everyone had surrounded Mama to congratulate her, Ben Daisy pushed through the scrum of people, and hooked his little finger into Mama’s and shook it—a queer offer of thanks, I remember thinking.
“You done it,” he said with a wink. And then he sighed, “I can’t wait to tell Daisy all about this.”
Mama looked taken aback, but then she smiled and said, “I’m happy for you.” She did not ask me to note that exchange in her little book, not yet.
Ben Daisy was cured right before Pinkster. Pinkster was what the old ones celebrated, the ones who had been alive for slave days here in Kings County—so ancient they seemed to me then, as old as the hills all around us. They all spoke in that strange singsong accent of old New York. They had celebrated Pinkster when they were young, and their hips still moved, and it was a queer kind of pleasure we all took, to make sure they could still celebrate it in their old age.
Every Pentecost, we young ones were instructed to make the old ones gingerbread and gather bunches of azaleas. In Sunday school, we worked to make the paper crowns that would sit on top of their graying heads. A few men Mama’s age practiced the old songs on the drums, but they did not teach them to us children. They were the rhythms of the past, and only the old ones remembered them for sure, lifting their walking sticks to pound in time, sucking their teeth in disapproval when the beat was off.
At Pinkster, we crowned a King Charles, who was in charge of the festivities. We built him a grass hut, and he teased the children and paraded for the old. Usually, it was one of the church ushers, who would dance and twirl around town. But that year, because of his miraculous recovery, it was unanimously decided that Ben Daisy should lead the celebrations.
On Pinkster morning, I and the other girls in Sunday school woke up early, when the day was still cold. All week, we had been gathering rushes from the fields, setting them out to dry, and pounding them flat. We had been weaving the strands into thick walls, the green of the grass fading to a fragile brown. And now, we pieced them together, finishing the huts we were to celebrate in.
When we were done with the largest hut, the girls sent me to find Ben Daisy and lead him to it. He was standing in the crowd with the others, our neighbors and friends, waiting for the celebration to begin. I took his warm hand in mine and brought him into the enclosure.
The day was one of those sharply cold sunny ones, where you panted in the light but any bit of shade chilled you. It was even cooler in the largest hut, under all the grass. Ben Daisy stood peering out onto the churchyard. The old ones, already gathered in the hut, sat in a corner, skeptical of a newcomer having the place of honor.
The drums pounded, and everyone started dancing. I ran out of the hut as soon as I could, to spin in a circle with the other girls, their hands soft and slipping through mine as we tried to hold close, and to run up and down the yard. Pinkster was the only holiday when everyone tried a little cider—every other celebration we kept temperate. But on Pinkster, because the old ones celebrated it, a beer or two was allowed. Which is to say that someone may or may not have slipped Ben Daisy a sip of something that afternoon.
At the height of the day, when all our bodies were still humming from the dance, Ben Daisy stood in the do
orway of the hut, paper crown pushed back on his head.
“A yup, a yup!” he called. He was getting into the spirit of it. Some others began to clap, a syncopated rhythm, to his name.
Ben
Day
Zee
Ben
Day
Zee
“That’s me,” he called over the din. “That there’s my name. And soon you will meet my Daisy, too.”
One of the children laughed. “Truly?” the child said.
“Truly,” he said. “Daisy came to me just the other day. I wish y’all could have seen her. She’s here right now, in fact. But she’s shy.”
Some people laughed louder, thinking he was playing.
“I tell you, she looks marvelous now. She’s got long curly hair all the way down her back, and she’s got a pink silk gown.”
“Oh really? Where’d she get that from?”
“She’s got a silk gown,” Ben Daisy continued. “It’s pink and white, like nothing you’ve ever seen. And on her finger, one diamond ring so bright. Oh, I can’t wait for y’all to see her.”
“So where is she now?” someone else called, giggling.
“She’s on her way. She came to visit me just last week, but she couldn’t stay. But she’s coming back, to live with me and mine. You hear that, Hannah?” Ben Daisy called. “You gonna have to make room for my Daisy.”
I turned to look for Miss Hannah in the crowd. She was listening, her face stricken.
“To Daisy,” he cried, holding up his hand in benediction, and the children chanted it back to him. I myself joined in, chanting and laughing till my voice was hoarse, even though I knew I should be scared.
So I made sure to whirl myself harder, dance faster, the rest of the night.
As night came, the old ones remembered Pinksters past: who was known for the freshest oysters and the sweetest bread, who could be counted on to stay awake the longest, who was the best dancer. They did not, of course, mention that they had celebrated all these feats while enslaved, that the whites had banished Pinkster and stopped observing it with them once they gained their freedom. The old ones spoke of it as its own day of release, as if it existed outside of time, and none of them mentioned how it used to end—with the men and women and children tearing down the grass huts and returning to their masters, saying goodbye to their loved ones owned by other men, with sometimes nothing but a blade of grass tucked away to remember them by, until they met again the following year, if they were lucky.
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