Free The Healing by Jonathan Odell Page A

churches. Nobody left to tend no graves.”
    Gran Gran breathed deeply and scanned the wall. Almost to herselfshe said, “I guess I’m the last one left to carry these tales. I used to come in here and study these folks. Even talk to them. But they never said nothing back. So I let them be. Let the dead bury the dead and dust to dust.”
    Violet pointed to the wall.
    Gran Gran smiled. That was almost as good as a word. “Which one, baby? This one?”
    The old woman carefully lifted a mask off the wall and for a moment studied the face with pointed cheekbones and eyes the color of sunlit amber. “This is the one I spent most of my time on. Trying to bring her back, I reckon.”
    Gran Gran had perfectly replicated the head scarf lined with the beaten disks of brass. She held it up to the light so the girl could see how the metal shone like yellow moons. “I used Chester’s old coat buttons to make it.”
    The girl was smiling now, holding her hands out. Gran Gran gave it to Violet to hold.
    “Yes, ma’am. You got good taste in people, Violet. You went straight to the biggest bug of them all. Polly Shine. But to really know her, you need to know how things were before she showed up to turn them all upside down.”

CHAPTER 8

    G ranada was asleep on her thin pallet by the fireplace when Aunt Sylvie nudged the girl with the toe of her brogan. “Get up, now, baby,” she said. “I got to get breakfast ready and you under my feet.”
    This morning Granada was just a regular house girl, only darker than the others. She would go back to performing her usual duties helping in the kitchen and watching over Little Lord for Lizzie. By the dim light of the new day, she donned her plain servant’s dress, the beautiful gown and the pretty shoes and the velvet ribbons of yesterday a faraway dream.
    “Granada,” Aunt Sylvie said, “the best way to unburden the heart is to busy the hand.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Soon Granada was helping with breakfast—stirring pots, tending the fire, and making trips out to the smokehouse, trying her best to get over her great comedown.
    The night before, after the household had gone to bed, she had begged Aunt Sylvie to allow her to wear the dress a little while longer. Granada promised that she would not even sit down and crush the fabric.
    “Anyhow,” she said, “Little Lord ain’t got a good look at me all dressed up.”
    Aunt Sylvie scowled. “I told you to stay away from that boy unlessyou in my sight. He’s only eight but one day he’ll be your master. Not your playfriend.”
    Granada didn’t think that would be such a bad thing, belonging to Little Lord. She liked being around him. And studying him. He was put together in such a curious way. His hair was as soft as Miss Becky’s satins and silks. And his skin, so pale and thin, if she were to back him up to a lantern, the light would probably shine right through.
    “Please, Aunt Sylvie, just a little while.”
    The cook would have none of it. “Scoot yourself out of those clothes,” Sylvie had said. “Don’t you know you tempting the devil wearing the raiments of the dead?”
    When the cook saw the tears in Granada’s eyes, she softened her tone. She drew Granada to her and held the satin-clad girl in her arms. Sylvie didn’t seem to care anymore about wrinkling Miss Becky’s dress.
    “You and me both just too tired to fight no more,” Sylvie whispered into the girl’s ear. “I know it’s hard on you, too. I don’t know what Mistress Amanda expects you to make out of all this. Some days it makes me want to cry with you. And you a poor motherless girl.”
    After a few moments, Sylvie released Granada and said, “Enough of this talk. Let’s get you undressed.”
    As she lifted the dress over Granada’s head, Sylvie muttered, “I thought for sure one day the master would put an end to this silliness. But he didn’t listen to Silas way back when. Brushed him aside like a fly. I reckon as long as the mistress’s