Balm

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

  As time went on, he began to think perhaps it was her freeborn status that made her a neutral audience of one, and he did not stop to think she might have a pain of her own. She had never known what he knew: the denial of everything that made him a man, the single, unmitigated belief that a man was born to work like an animal.

  Madge kept something cooking on the stove for him, knowing he had been in church all morning and would be hungry when he arrived. Olga had Sundays off now, and Sadie stayed in her library most of the day, so it was easy for Madge to sneak food. On Sundays, Hemp ate whatever was on the widow’s menu, and it was the best meal he had all week. They walked out to the carriage house and sat in chairs near the open doorway. She talked while he ate, and when he was finished, he talked while she rinsed their dishes in a tub of water. His constant stories about Annie inserted the pretense of innocence into the visits, but Madge was not fooled. When he didn’t think she was watching, she caught him staring. The man came around for more than a hot meal.

  And he brought her things. He knew that ever since their trip to the prairie, Madge had struggled to replenish her herb supply. Miraculously, Hemp got his hands on things that folks traveling from the South must have brought with them—snakeroot and collard leaves stashed in traveling sacks, seeds tucked into hair.

  They spent those evenings together on the back steps of the widow’s house, or in the carriage house where Richard stabled the horse. When Hemp got steady work at a palace hotel, she was the first person he told. He was hired to clean, but after a few weeks, the management took note of his bulk and he was appointed hostler. The wages changed his heart, but the uniform changed the way he thought of himself. It dignified. In that suit, there was no mistaking the difference between a horse and a man.

  The hostlers were allowed a break to eat, and they sat cross-legged, their lunch in soggy bags, barely enough food to fuel them until their long shifts ended. Every one of them understood the good fortune of their positions, and they did what was asked without question, chewing leaves to stay on their feet, lifting trunks heavy enough to strain a back, carefully keeping their hands moving as they chatted, for the management was known to check on them unannounced.

  Hemp shared all of this with the Tennessee woman.

  “I expect you could say the day I got to Chicago was the day of my birth,” he told her, the thought revealing itself to him as he spoke.

  Eventually, he made his way up each of the back steps into the kitchen until he had seated himself at the table, their voices hushed but strong. Madge’s kitchen was a doorway through which he could reach forward in time, and he did not think of the house as belonging to the widow. He thought of it as belonging to Madge, the room no less than Tennessee itself. That was no small feeling because he knew how hard it was to claim something of your own out of somebody else’s things.

  AS THEY WALKED AROUND the side of the house, Madge felt the widow’s eyes. When she tilted her head up, she spied the woman standing in the second-story library window. Madge could have sworn she saw worry on the woman’s face. The feeling shook her because she could not remember the sisters ever worrying about her. When she looked again, the widow was no longer there.

  Hemp walked closely enough beside her that his jacket brushed her dress. He smelled of cedar, and she wanted to inhale him like a pocket of air. They turned a corner. A park lay on the east block, and the wind cut at her cheek. They crossed a swing bridge into the second district of the city. A tall-mast ship on the river moved silently by, and the moon lit their path.

  “It’s just a piece more.”

  She stumbled. He grabbed her arm to steady her. She slowed, turning an ear up to hear the syrup drip when his lips moved.

  “You like working for that hotel?”

  “Huh?”

  “That hotel?”

  “Guess so. Better than farm work.”

  “Well, I sure am glad to hear you don’t mind it. I sure don’t mind working for the widow. Finding a good house make all the difference in the world,” she said, repeating something Olga had said to her, but Hemp looked puzzled by the statement.

  “Your feet hurt? You need me to wave down a wagon?”

  “You know they don’t call it no wagon up here, Hemp. They call it a carriage.”

  He looked down at her and smiled. “What you know about carriages?”

  “Not much.”

  Just then, a carriage pulled up in front of them, and a liveried colored driver emerged. He opened the door, and Hemp offered her his hand.

  “What’s this?”

  “Since you know so much about carriages . . .”

  She took Hemp’s hand and climbed inside. The driver shut the door behind them. Madge looked out the window at the lake, whitecaps rippling along its dark surface.

  “You sure are something. Where we going?”

  “It’s a nice night for a ride. Feel good, don’t it.”

  “Surely do.”

  Madge squinted. She had never been out with a man before, and the realization quieted her for a few uncomfortable moments.

  He cleared his throat. “So you say you like working for that widow?”

  “She take good care of me, I guess,” she said. “Better than them three women I live with down in Tennessee.”

  “Three women? You mean your aunts? The sisters?”

  “All three. Not mine, though.”

  “It’s something about your hands, ain’t it. Something blessed.”

  “Tell me something. How you give birth to something and then turn your back on it?”

  “I don’t know. I never give birth to nobody.”

  “All I ask for was one good-bye. A be safe. A God keep you. I didn’t get nothing, not even a kiss-my-foot.”

  “What you say to them? You bless them?”

  “I don’t understand family. We supposed to help each other, not tear each other up.”

  “Even a bad family a good one,” he said.

  “I ain’t never done nothing to them women.”

  “Better than no family at all.”

  “Why I got to be born to them? Why I can’t be born to a mama and a daddy?”

  “Sound like you need to make peace with some folks.”

  She turned to him. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m saying this city is a dream, Madge. It ain’t real.”

  “What’s real then?”

  “For you, Tennessee. For me, Kentucky. I had a life before this one even though I couldn’t lay claim to it. Now all I got is this air biting at the back of my neck.”

  “You didn’t have no life, Hemp. Everything you ever done while you was a slave was a wish. I ain’t never known love and neither has you.”

  “You wrong, Miss Madge,” he said quietly. “I known love and I known hate. I known a lot of things.”

  She looked through the window. Her eyes felt tight and small, as if they wanted to swell and shut. Why couldn’t it be easy? Why couldn’t they just lay it down and leave it all behind?

  “I’m sorry. Hey, look at me.” He touched her chin.

  A squall of wind rocked the carriage. She leaned into him to steady herself, and when she looked back up at him, her lips touched his.

  She felt his warm breath on her face as he whispered: “My wife.”

  “That woman is the past.”

  “Not nearly.”

  “Then why we here.”

  The voices of the sisters rose in her ears. Just remember. Ain’t no healing brew between your legs.

  Surely Hemp was different, even if he did have a wife lost somewhere in Kentucky, even if he did do something terrible with a daughter that wasn’t even his own. All Madge’s healing knowledge, all her gifts that seemed so powerful in the forest, failed to tell her what to do with this man. All her life she had been unlovable. He couldn’t be any different. Couldn’t be. Something moved in the street, a twist of leaves shuddering. She turned to look at him, but now it was his turn to stare through the wind
ow on his side. She tucked a loose hair back into her braid, her hand shaking as the carriage glided slowly over the lakefront street.

  THE DAY THE HOTEL MANAGER told Hemp he was no longer needed, she was the first person who came to mind. There had been too little time to relish the bright little buttons of the uniform, the cap that barely fit his head. News of blacks campaigning for office. Talk of legislation that would right the wrongs against his people. He should have remembered. He had drunk too deeply from this newfound freedom, too easily forgetting the cracked pots he’d left behind.

  We are one hostler too many.

  Even in this free world, white men handled his fate as loosely as seeds thrown into a dirt row. He swallowed a desire to plead with the brown-eyed man, even though begging was not beneath him. He turned away, thought of running, turning south again to see if there were any pieces of a life to be salvaged.

  “I got to look for work,” he said to Madge once he had made it past the wilting flowers outside the back door. Madge nodded as she swept the kitchen. It was difficult for either one of them to wrestle with what it meant to be out of work.

  The next day, Hemp went back to the docks, but a fight broke out between the white and colored men and Hemp left. He watched construction workers nail boards together, considered approaching them until he noticed there were no dark men among them. He was not yet desperate enough to go to the reverend, fearing the man would think he had done something unrighteous to lose his job. A sharp point jabbed him in the side, and he heard the hiss of a man demanding his coat. For a moment, he considered resisting, but the image of Annie alone in the world made him hand it over. As his coat walked off, he felt a weight settle into his shoulders, heavier than he’d felt since coming to the city. He smelled meat cooking and followed the scent. He dug in his pants for a coin and sat on a stool to wait for a sausage covered in wet strings. He bit into it, the taste burning his throat. Oil streamed down his hand. He sucked at his wrist bone. Heat warmed the counter, and he regretted eating so quickly. He jammed his hands in his trouser pockets. As men passed, he eyed them, thinking how easy it would be to twist their little necks. Taking another man’s coat would do him no good. He was too large. But a hat might fit. Gloves might stretch. A tall-enough man walked by. The alley beckoned. Just one push and he could take hold of those arms thin as rabbit legs. Go see Tennessee wearing fur-lined boots and clutching a pocket of gifts. Here, woman. Would she ask or would she quietly accept his offerings, believing that the desperation of his circumstance permitted a breach or two?

  His left ear rang as he crossed the bridge. The damp had frozen the stops of his hair. Now he stood in front of the widow’s house again looking up at the windows. He circled around back, saw light shining in the kitchen. He peeped inside, hoping for something, unsure what. Madge stood over the table mixing. She sniffed the contents of a bowl, scooped into a jar. He had never seen her work before, and the sight of her moving about, a thin form of concentrated energy, silenced him. It occurred to him that there were still parts of her he did not know, and he wanted to know them. He tipped up to the back door and rapped. She unlatched the door and hustled him inside.

  “Sit down,” she commanded. Her look was forthright. He could tell that one discordant tone from him would unhinge her. She was different tonight. More of a woman. He rubbed his thighs together as she added wood to the firebox.

  She pulled a jar from a shelf, poured water into a cup. Just the scent of the room lifted his spirits.

  “Can you feel ’em?”

  “Feel what?”

  She pointed downward. “Your feet.”

  He tried to move his stiffened toes. How had she known? Before he could answer she had pulled off his shoes and wrapped his feet in a blanket. She placed a smooth stone on the fire. Moments later, she used tongs to lift it and place it on top of his wrapped feet. She draped a second blanket around his shoulders, stepped back.

  “Mr. Walker was a little man or else I might find you some warm clothes. And what’s wrong with you walking ’round with no coat?”

  “My coat was took.”

  She leaned against the table. “You still ain’t find no work?”

  He shook his head, the heat lulling him into truth. He sipped. The floral-scented tea scalded his tongue. He glanced at the door, fearful that mean German woman would find him in the widow’s kitchen wrapped in her blankets.

  She poured more hot water into his cup. “Drink.”

  He drained his tea, unwrapped his feet, put his boots back on.

  “Take that blanket with you. Bring it back when you able.”

  Not even four men could handle her. She might as well have been wearing pants. He could see this as clear as the moon was white.

  “Who taught you how to heal?”

  “My womenfolks.”

  “The sisters?”

  “The widow my family now.”

  He laughed. “Ain’t no white woman your family, girl.”

  “You done with that cup?”

  He turned to face the door. “Least you know where your’n at.”

  “You the one with all the memories you can’t let go,” she said to his back.

  “Memories all I got,” he said to the air in front of him.

  She faced his back and he faced the door.

  “Not all.”

  Neither of them moved.

  “If you don’t get out that door, I’m gone take my blanket back.”

  Without looking around, he left, pulling the blanket around his shoulders. Only when he was back on the street did he allow himself to think of her. Madge was quiet, always letting him talk and wanting nothing in return. Annie had taken the ugly and stuffed it back down in the dark hole it’d come from. To those two women, he was something fine. And not no Horse neither. His nose an arrow. His lips a comfort. His eyes a pool. Annie had touched his ear with her tongue, washed the crevices of his neck while he leaned his head. Tennessee caused a rumbling in his stomach. Schooled in the root worker tradition, she surely held powers unknown to him. Hemp had heard of women like her, how they held power over the sick and well alike. But he’d never heard of a young pretty one. As he walked home, he tried to exhale his growing feelings.

  He was a married man. Married.

  10

  WHEN RICHARD SHOWED UP AT THE BACK DOOR with the news that Hemp was sick, Madge immediately moved toward her pantry. She called over her shoulder, “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Could be the flux.”

  Madge came out of the pantry with her hands full, a sack wedged in an armpit. “How long he been down?”

  “Near about three days.”

  Madge wrapped her cape around her and pulled a hat over her ears. She followed him outside. He opened the door to the carriage. Shards of snow whipped her face as she climbed inside. Richard turned the horses and they headed south. The carriage tilted, and Madge thought they might slip off the icy road. Two horses pulling a sleigh slid by them, the people bundled in dark coats like lumps of coal. The trip was taking twice as long as it usually did. Madge pulled the beaver skin over her legs. Whenever her mind began to envision the worst, she reeled the thoughts back in.

  They had just crossed the bridge when the carriage stopped. Richard climbed out of his seat, walked around to the side of the carriage, and disappeared out of sight. Madge tapped on the glass.

  “It’s stuck!” he yelled.

  Madge pushed the blanket away and climbed out. “I can walk from here.”

  Richard pointed down the street. “Just go on around that block there. House next to the alley.”

  She knew exactly where Hemp’s house was, but she was grateful for the directions because the snow had whitened everything and it would not do to get lost. Outside Hemp’s house, a gathering of men milled about, stamping to keep warm. Hemp had friends. And they had not assumed her services would be free. One of the men pressed a stack of wood into her arms.

  “Around here, Hemp fix things. He make m
y grandbaby a crib like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Hemp a deacon at the church. A fine man,” said another, giving her two warm potatoes.

  Another handed her a tiny comb with a row of sparkling beads on it. “From my wife.”

  One of them followed her inside where Hemp lay on rumpled bedcovers.

  “How long he been like this you say?”

  “Three days.”

  “Three days? Why ain’t y’all come get me sooner?”

  “He say he fine.”

  “Put the wood on that fire.”

  The man closed the door behind him when he left. On the table, as if someone had fetched Madge in the middle of something, an island of ice floated in water. She put an ear to Hemp’s mouth. His breath was clear. She placed a hand on his cheek. Then she opened her pouch and lifted out a piece of bark. She carried a pot outside and filled it with snow, brought it back in, and put it on the fire to melt. She gently scraped green powder off a crusty loaf.

  The house had two rooms. The smaller room held two beds, a dresser. The living area, where Hemp lay sleeping, was crammed with furniture, a sea of junk. It was clear the men prepared their meals under the room’s only window. She organized the kitchen area, put everything in a logical place. She was surprised to find an old, rusted tub in the corner. She scooted it into the center of the room.

  He lay there watching her, not wanting to alert her just yet that he had awakened. When he walked away from the army camp, every exposed part of him had been bitten as he walked through the Kentucky countryside looking for Annie. Nothing he would ever experience could compare to that hurt. How little he’d known. How small his world had been. Now he knew there were more trains than he could count, more roads, more waters. Maybe if he took a train from city to city all over the country, he could find her. But with what money? He thought of Reverend Martin and his church. Surely they could help. But everyone Hemp knew was looking for someone, and the city’s pile of grief buried his own. Madge turned around and he shut his eyes. He could not do right by this woman. He could not do right by anyone, not in this country. Claiming righteousness was not possible for a colored man, and he wasted his time fighting it. Down with the traitor, up with the star. Those were the words of the song, but who was the traitor and where was the star?