Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez Read Free Book Online Page A

woman. She was a doctress, a healer. To relieve people of their pain was the greatest gift. What the widow did not understand was that this life reigned over the next. Madge had no need for a spirit guide to grant her authority. The Great Spirit itself anointed her with the knowledge tucked inside her head, bestowed upon her by the sisters. It lay in the hands that soaked crushed berries in alcohol, steeped veiny leaves in hot milk, wrapped a boil in a leaf, flushed out worms with purple bergamot tea. Even when the illness was feigned, Madge could pronounce. Malaria, dysentery, miasmatic or otherwise, she could pronounce.
    But what she especially loved were the teas. The hunt in the woods for just the right leaf. Bark. Root. Scent of the brew. Shallow slurp of the sick. Knobby hands cradling the cup like a sacrament. Drying leaves, crumpling, mashing in a mortar. Roasting, grinding, stirring seeds into lard. The forest was a natural wonderland of spirit-growths.
    She lined up her jars in the widow’s kitchen, stacked bark, hung sacks of dried leaves from hooks, watered newborn stems in cups along the windowsill. She needed more herbs before she could start selling. A trip out to the Illinois country was in order, but Madge hadn’t the faintest idea how to get there. It had to be far away because Chicago was too packed. One thing closed in on another, leaving little room for breath. She did not believe that anything with power could grow in such a place. She loved the city, but she loved it as one loves something that is so far removed from oneself as to stand outside all understanding. It was nothing less than the wonderment of it that besot her, the question of the divine’s intent on those crowded, noisy streets. Surelythe forest could not be far. She had been in Chicago for months, and she needed to go soon. The sisters had foraged year-round, picking through leaves, stabbing frozen ground, brushing back the occasional thin bed of flakes. Here, endless sheets of snow daunted Madge. She’d once been lost in a storm, only to find she was on the widow’s street all along, just three doors down, had blindly walked the block twice in the implacable white haze.
    A few days after Olga told the widow Madge knew how to doctor, the widow called the servant upstairs. Madge was not surprised by the summons. She had learned early on that they always wanted something—a hand to mix, two arms to lift, a fingertip pressed against a pulsing temple. To survive, she would just have to figure out what the widow wanted.
    Seated in front of the mirror, the widow pulled down a sleeve, exposing a bony shoulder. The skin had puckered into a lump, red in the center and ringed white at the edges. Madge touched it, and the widow winced. Madge pressed a hand into Sadie’s neck and thought of all she’d been taught. There was clearly a boil, yes. But what else was there? To be a healer was to see the invisible. The sisters had, in their own admission, not been as good at it as their mother. The sisters had not allowed Madge to pronounce, had never acknowledged how Madge could feel things with her hands. Pronouncing was reserved for the eldest. But Madge could feel, and sometimes hear, things the sisters could not. Like now. The soft wheeze of breath that signaled the beginnings of infection in the chest. A knot of gas in the stomach from last night’s dinner. She pressed more deeply into the widow’s neck. If she was going to be called on to heal the widow, she would need to feel it all. Something sparked and she drew back her hand.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    â€œThat spirit.”
    â€œWhat did you bring to put on my boil?”
    â€œThat spirit man that talk to you. He hurt you?”
    â€œAre you going to talk it away or are you going to put something on it?”
    Back in the kitchen, Madge’s hands shook as she ground a palmful of thimbleweed root with oil until it was paste. There was