Free The Healing by Jonathan Odell

tale.
    “Since I’m going to have to do the talking for both of us, let me see what’s something a little girl might ask.” She studied Violet, making out like she could read the girl.
    “Now, if I was you, I might ask, ‘Where all them silly faces come from?’ And I would say back to the girl what asked, ‘I made them every one with my own two hands. Dug the clay and fired them in that very fireplace in that very kitchen.’ ”
    Gran Gran paused, waiting for the girl’s reaction. Her head tilted upward at the old woman, as if intent on hearing every word.
    “And then you might ask, ‘Are them real folks?’ And I would say, ‘Yes, they real people. Knew ever soul.’ ” Gran Gran smiled. “I’m nearly ninety years old. That’s why I needed me a whole wall.”
    The girl nodded, almost imperceptibly.
    Gran Gran continued. “You see, a long time ago I was thinking it might help cut down on my forgetting. I figured if I could get all their faces in one place, I could remember them better.” Gran Gran shook her head at the silliness of the idea. “Like I said, mostly foolishness.” She looked carefully at Violet. “Forgetting got its place, I reckon.”
    Gran Gran held the lantern over the table, illuminating a face sporting a wide grin and a set of perfect white teeth. “Now like this one. The one that scared you. This is Chester. He was the driver for Mistress Amanda. When I was a girl like you. Chester, now he loved to tell riddles. When he weren’t telling riddles, he was polishing the brass buttons on his coachman’s coat. He was proud of them buttons. Chester!” Gran Gran said, addressing the mask. “Like you to meet my friend Violet.” Gran Gran nodded at the mask and waited, as if for a response. She turned to the girl. “Violet, Chester say he glad to make your acquaintance and to forgive him for putting a fright in you.”
    There it was! Gran Gran definitely discerned a smile on the girl’s face. And the shivering had ceased.
    Gran Gran carried the lantern over to the wall. “Now this giantof a man with a nose as big as a housecat, he called Big Dante.” Gran Gran laughed at the memory of him. “Big Dante could pick six hundred pounds of cotton a day. Had fingers tough as hawks’ feet. Most gentle man with children I ever seen.
    “Next to him we got Aunt Sylvie. The cook.” The face was plump and stern. “She helped lay the bricks for her own fireplace when this wasn’t nothing but swamp. The very same one in the kitchen today. And she cooked up a storm back there. Nobody never made biscuits like Aunt Sylvie.”
    Gran Gran sniffed the air and then laughed in wonderment. “I could swear I smell them biscuits right this minute. Lord, ain’t it strange how the memory can play tricks on you!”
    The expression on Violet’s face was rapt, even hungry. But for what? For her words? For the tales of folks long dead? Polly used to say that it was the people’s story that kept them bound one to another. Everybody holds their own thread.
    “Stories!” Gran Gran laughed. “It’s the stories you needing, ain’t it? Well, you come to the right place. All these faces got a tale. Like this one!” She moved on to a mask that appeared to have a fresh coat of whitewash. “That be Mistress Amanda herself,” Gran Gran said shaking her head. “She up there in the Satterfield burying ground. ‘Long with her babies.” Gran Gran chuckled. “Now she was a mess. She even got a vault for her monkey. He’s buried right next to her. Her precious daughter on one side and that monkey on the other and her boy at her feet.
    “Now if I was you, I wouldn’t believe a word I just said. But I ain’t lying!” Gran Gran exclaimed.
    “Satterfield family burying ground is what you call exclusive. It just for white folks and monkeys.” She laughed again. “Slaves, they buried by themselves. Neither one nothing but bramble now. Satterfields all dead and after Freedom, colored started burying at their