“What?” His eyes clouded, then cleared. “You that root woman, ain’t you? Work for the widow? We got one of those in the church. She made me a tea once, and all it did was put me to sleep.”
So Hemp had told him about her. Or maybe Richard had. Surely he did not remember her from that one brief séance. She tried to shake off her vanity.
“Please,” she said. “Give me your hands.”
He looked around the room, as if someone were watching them. Then he calmly placed both hands in her upturned palms.
She closed her eyes. For a moment, there was nothing but light behind her eyelids. They darkened until she saw red. Just as she’d guessed. The chest was full of something nasty. There was a problem next to his stomach, too, on the right side of his body. Something there wasn’t functioning properly, and she’d seen it before. It was causing his eyes to yellow. Yes, she knew a couple of things she could make up for him. She released his hands and opened her eyes.
“What did you just do?”
“I can send something over to you by Richard. Something to help.” She barely recognized herself. She wasn’t healing this man out of the goodness of her heart. She was healing him because he was close to Hemp, and by helping him, she was inching closer to Hemp. I’m terrible, she thought.
“Did God speak to you just now?” he whispered, more than a hint of fear in his voice.
The door to the church opened, and the orange hue of sunset flooded the church. Before she looked back, she knew she would see the dark silhouette of Hemp filling the doorway.
She stood up, the reverend forgotten.
“Is that you?” Hemp said.
“In the flesh,” she answered just before the reverend repeated, What did you just do?
30
HEMP STEPPED INTO THE CHURCH SO HE could see her better. A brown-faced girl with cottony hair tucked into two rows of braids. Dressed finer than expected. Chin higher than was custom. When she looked up at him, he saw the face of Tennessee. He moved toward her, afraid that if he did not lay hands on her, she would disappear. When he reached her, he gripped both of her arms harder than he’d intended. Her face did not register surprise, as if it were normal for him to grab her so roughly.
“When you get here?” he said, though he wanted to say, Why you take so long to fetch me?
“Today.”
“Richard told me you was coming back. I thought you was gone for good.” He let go of her.
“I suppose ain’t nothing permanent but death.”
The reverend cleared his throat. “I’ll go on back yonder. Nice meeting you . . .”
Her eyes did not move from Hemp’s face. She touched a pin at her neck, and he saw that the tips of her fingers were scabbed over from cuts.
“Your hands all right?”
Neither of them heard the door click softly behind the reverend.
“We go picking through the woods down there,” she said, nodding.
Now that she was here with him, his tongue was tied. She brought him back to boyhood, to a time when he had been unable to calm himself: a game of bogeyman, the promise of new shoes, a newly slaughtered hog, a fresh cup of milk. He trembled as he looked at her, and he could no longer deny it. She made him want to start over, move forward. She was the reason he’d buried a wooden cross with flowers carved into it. Without her, he would not have done it. Not yet. But he felt something for this woman that refused to go away. He did not know how far Tennessee was from Chicago, but there was weariness on her face, etched around her eyes, and he wanted to make it disappear. He wanted to erase those lines on her hands. He did not want her to ever be tired again. He wanted to be the healer for a change.
“You hungry?” he said suddenly.
“No. You?”
“Just ate.”
“I got the widow’s credit.”
“Woman, would you let me be a man?” He looked awkwardly down at her.
She sat down and motioned for him to sit beside her. “I better sit. It’s been a long day. I was on that train for twenty years, seem like.”
He placed his palms on his knees and slowly sat. The pew creaked beneath his weight. He sank the tips of his fingers into his hair.
She wanted to ask if the doctor had found Annie. She needed to know that before she said anything else. Maybe he was here to tell her that he was back with his wife, but he did not want to upset her. He looked so anxious. Maybe he was just nervous about the news he was about to deliver. She met his eyes. She had something to say, and she would not rest until she said it. There was no way to get past this hump other than to admit her terrible mistake. A growing space inside her, emptied of pride, prepared to admit her wrongdoing. She would say the words that would allow him to settle back with his wife without fearing that Madge would disrupt their matrimony.
She needed to sleep in a bed. Days of travel had worn her down. She sat up straight, thinking of how to form the right words. As large as Chicago was, it was too small to avoid him. As soon as she said what she had to say, they would be free of each other.
“Hemp, I am so sorry how—”
He touched her arm to silence her. Lips that puckered like a flower when she spoke. Ears tucked in close to her head. The woman was a stroke from God’s quill, her looks enough to make a grown man trip over his feet. Her personality, on the other hand, was another story. He detected a mystery in the healer that stretched beyond his ken, but he wanted her so badly, he was ready to throw out his caution. A life with her would be more than a life. It would be as thrilling as a man hunting for gold. This constant puzzling out of her thoughts flushed him with pleasure.
“You ain’t got to say nothing.”
“I want to ask for your forgiveness if you allow it.”
He wanted to laugh. She was asking him to forgive her when he was the one who mistook her for Annie that night in his grief. He was the one who pushed her up those stairs to her room. Whoever started it, the sin was enough to stain them both. The only way to overcome it was to make an honest couple out of the two of them.
She started to cry.
“Oh no, Madge. Now don’t cry.” She was probably remembering the words he’d thrown at her that last night. He wished he could take them back, but he couldn’t. He tried to open his mouth and say I forgive . . . but nothing came. He was not able to protect Annie when the trader came. He had stood silently by as if his hands did not make fists, watched her go while he mourned like a baby, walked back into the field like the draft horse they thought he was. His search for her in Kentucky was too brief: a feeble rifling through the camp and some abandoned farms, a ride too easily accepted from a white missionary, clothes from a preacher, a shared room at a lodging house, a clipping in a paper, a futile gesture from a doctor. These were the thoughts he had to live with. Madge was right. He was the one who had to forgive, close up his wounds, and move on. It was all that was left to do. The coloreds praying. The whites mourning. The trains whistling. The space between him and his old life widening. The healer crying right there in front of him. Everyone, everywhere, doing the only thing left for them to do.
“Marry me,” he whispered, the words tumbling out in a rasp. He wished he could speak with his hands, mold his life like a block of wood. He could better show her how he felt with a piece of tree and some tools.
But it was time for him to speak up like a man. His voice strengthened, “Miss Madge. Marry me,” he said, gaining volume with each utterance.
“Marry me . . . marry me.”
THEY MARRIED IN THE MIDDLE of a winter storm. The reverend blessed the couple in front of nearly every member of the small but growing church. In the back pew, the widow sat next to Michael. A deacon played a march on the piano. Hemp wore a borrowed uniform from a friend who had sneaked it out of the Tremont House. He stood as straight as a soldier while the reverend performed the rites. The wind whipped the small building, rattling it. But the deacons had worked long and hard to secure a strong and steady roof, and no one feared the
building’s demise.
In the months since he’d proposed to Madge, Hemp had been renewed, and, as he had always done, he looked beyond himself to find the glory. And he was thinking of trees, how they aged. He did not know as much as Madge about God’s creations—the woman had brought back a sack of dirty bark!—but he knew something about the heart of a tree. When it dried, it did not bend and warp as the outer, wetter wood might. And he knew what things a tree could provide: a house to keep them warm, a broom handle to clean it, furniture to rest upon, a barn to shelter a cow, a fork to manage the hay, a spinning wheel to make cloth, a box to keep cheese, a canoe to cross a lake. There was no problem a strong piece of wood could not solve.
He could not remember his daddy’s face, but if he closed his eyes, those hands appeared before him, whittling. The man had been the first to put a knife in his young son’s hands, and from the beginning, Hemp loved the feel of wood beneath his fingers, the run of grain like a stream’s current. He had been too young to use the knife, but he gleefully picked stones from the river, and long nights passed with the elder sitting outside the cabin sharpening his knife against the stone, the soft scraping sound sending the boy into a restful sleep.
As he stood before Madge, he vaguely recalled the night his daddy died. He had been just four years old, and the grown-ups had made him leave the cabin when the man began to show signs of his final moments. A woman with five children had gathered him in with her brood, and he ate a bowl of hot meal before falling off to sleep on a crowded pallet. The following week he had been sold off to another farm, to a Mr. Harrison, twenty miles away.
Hemp could smell the flowers Mrs. Walker had sent, and he was grateful they were not hyacinth. Madge smiled, holding fast to his hand as if the wind would whisk into the church and steal him if she let go. It was cold, and her lip quivered. He reached to still it with his finger. The minister took his time, embellishing the lines with as much formality as the scripture allowed. In his pocket, Hemp carried the marriage certificate, the official record of their union. Though they did not have a place to call their own yet—Madge would continue to live at the widow’s house and Hemp still lived with the men—their lives were their own, their futures alight. His days no longer ended with exhaustion, as they had during slavery, but with succor. The satisfaction of a mind at rest, the memory of where he had been enough to make him hold on to her a little tighter.
With a start, he recalled the name his daddy had gone by: Thomas. My daddy’s name was Thomas and so was mines. When he left that farm soon after his father’s death, he had left behind his name. He held back a baby’s whimper, the hurt threatening to overcome him.
“Do you have some token of your love, Deacon Harrison?”
“Thomas,” he whispered.
“What’s that?”
“My name is Thomas.”
“All right then, Deacon Thomas.” The reverend nodded, cleared his throat. “Do you have a token?”
“Yas, sir.” He dug in his pocket. He’d measured her finger with a piece of string while she slept and carved a ring out of wood. He held her hand in his. It was the first ring he had ever given a woman.
“You are now, in the eyes of the Lord, and in the eyes of the law, husband and wife.”
Bone of my bones, he thought, kissing her on the lips.
As Madge looked up at the face of her new husband, she was thinking of what the sisters had taught her about how to store healing plants, what would keep for a time, and what would rot. How this one needed the heat of the open field and that one the cool of the shade, this one the moist dirt after a spring shower, that one the well-drained soil of a sandy loam. Everything on the earth had its instructions. A careless boot step might kill one plant while another leaped right back up in defiance. The truth of it, they said, was that the body did not belong to the name of the person attached to it, any more than the tree on a man’s property belonged to him. The body belonged to the earth, its return inevitable, the healer’s role nothing beyond a kind of safekeeping.
He turned his face down to hers, and she sensed fragility in that cheek, knew, suddenly, that despite his size, this man was not as sturdy as a tree, but as fragile as a flower. He would need a moist soil to plant himself, and she would have to be gentle with her touch. He would need the sunlight of her love, the warmth of her compassion.
“You two coming? I hear it’s a celebration round back,” said the reverend.
“Can you give us a minute?” Madge asked.
She had never joined a church, never reached out to anyone. The sisters had preached self-reliance, but the real thing was community. Now she had gained both a husband and a church. She was not much for churchgoing, but in the next room the congregation waited for them, a hot meal spread out on a wooden table. She could not help but feel love for them in return.
“I want to give you something.” She pulled out the locket.
“What’s this?” he said.
“Something from my ma. It belong to you now.”
He opened it and looked at the image for a long time.
“Now listen. I got something to say, and I don’t want you interrupting. I’m giving you this here chain to represent our new life.”
“New life.”
“That wife is long gone and we belongs to one another now.”
“You my wife now. And the devil himself couldn’t tear me away from you.”
“We can’t wipe out the past like it didn’t happen. And we sure can’t change it. But we can lay some things to rest.”
“Yas, suh. We sure can.”
Then she stood on her toes, put her lips to his ear, and whispered his name.
31
THE REVEREND REPORTED THAT THEY WERE LINED up to see her, each person holding some token they would exchange for a touch, a pronouncement. Madge told him to report that she did not have her balm with her. He responded that they knew that—all they wanted was relief. Why the devil did this toe hurt? Why can’t I move my bowels? Later, she promised she would bring a healing balm. But for now, the reverend reported that all they wanted were her hands. She had already decided she would not accept payment. Not now. These were her people, many of them newly arrived from their nightmarish pasts, many still suffering the hurts of slavery. She had already glimpsed them. Some were missing fingers, ears. Others bore scars across their faces. Their hair was knotted, their scalps bumped with infection, fingers gnarled from long-ago traumas. These were not just the humbled people brought to their knees while tilling American land. These were her kinfolk, and she loved them too much to not give freely of her gift.
A couple of nights before, she’d had a dream. A snowstorm in the winter of 1864. She’d been out on some forgotten errand when the light snowfall turned violent, white flakes as big as walnuts dumping out of the sky. As she turned to go back home, a white man stopped her.
“Where are your papers?” the man demanded.
She looked about her in fright, realizing she had become so accustomed to being in the new city, she had taken to leaving her free papers behind in the rooming house. The man wore neither uniform nor insignia, but his tone was authoritative.
“I don’t got none. I mean—”
“No papers?”
“I mean, I didn’t bring ’em.”
“Well, have you paid your bond? Even if you are free, you cannot remain in the city without paying a bond.”
“A what?” Her voice was lost in the wind.
“Come on,” he said, yanking her. He led her down a street, and she thought of the orange sash tucked inside her waistband. The man cared nothing about her story, and she was struck with a fear that she would be sent into slavery for the first time in her life. She searched for a friendly face, but the people averted their eyes, emerging out of the snow and disappearing right back into it.
“Hurry it up,” he growled.
He led her through an alley that led to Wells Street. A team of runaway horses charged out of the whiteness, pulling
a bed of lumber behind them. The man twisted her arm to pull the two of them out of the way, but Madge wrenched free, running through an alley as fast as she could. She did not look back, her heels sinking into the rising snow. She was running for her life, running the way the sisters had taught her to do should someone come after her. She kept going, not pausing for a breath until she was safely in the colored district, her dress soaked, hair stuck to her face, fingers numb with cold. In Tennessee, the sisters’ knowledge had protected them, but Madge’s close brush with danger taught her that in Chicago, she would have to fight to survive. The city was no safe place for any colored person, let alone a single woman without family.
The dream had awakened her and she could not get back to sleep. That was when she’d decided to accept the reverend’s invitation. Now she was wondering if she’d made the right decision.
Hemp patted her shoulder and stepped back to let her work. The reverend led the first to her, a woman bent over in pain. Madge knew this was a back problem that she would not be able to fix. Only a warming oil rubbed on her back by a loved one would give her some temporary relief. The woman was so young. Too young for such troubles. When Madge laid hands on her, she saw the women attempt to visibly straighten, so fervently did she want to believe.
“They think I can work miracles,” Madge whispered to the reverend after the woman left. “You got to tell them that I can’t do that.”
“That’s why they’re here, Miss Madge. These people need to believe. You giving that to them.”
“Yeah, but Reverend, you of all people ought to know it ain’t right to play God.”
“You not playing God, but you got to admit your hands are special. What if you can help somebody?”
“I can’t lay hands on them and heal them. I didn’t bring no herbs with me, and besides, that woman can’t be helped with no teas. Her back is near about broke.”
“That’s all right. Can’t you see? If medicine can’t help her, maybe her faith is all she got.”
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