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

something wrong with the way that spirit occupied Sadie’s body. She didn’t know what it was, but there was no way that dead man could do the widow any good. She wondered what she could say. The woman would never listen to her. She carried the bowl up to the widow’s room and set it on the table. She scraped the poultice onto a flat wooden handle and mashed it into the skin. When she had covered the boil in a thick green paste, she flattened a square of dry cloth over it and covered it with another dampened cloth.
    â€œJust sit and rest a while.”
    â€œWhere on earth did this thing come from? Is my dress too tight on my shoulders?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Madge picked up her bowl, then paused. “Could I ask you a question, Mrs. Walker?”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œWhat you know about this spirit?”
    â€œWell, I believe in him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    â€œHe say why he choose you?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhat do he want from you?”
    â€œYou ask a lot of questions, don’t you?” Sadie looked up at Madge. She had relaxed under the colored woman’s touch, but then the woman had drawn her hand back as if she’d been burned. What skills did this healing woman possess? She had been putting her hand in fire without getting burned. What else could she do? Sadie’s contact with the spirit had newly opened her to mysteries, but she was still not entirely comfortable with this newfound knowledge. “Well, he came to me about ayear after his death. I suppose my needing him keeps him connected to this side. He wants to help.”
    The widow rushed her words when she talked, and Madge did not always catch everything.
    â€œAin’t no good ever come from raising the dead,” Madge said flatly.
    The widow did not answer, and Madge did not speak further out of fear she would anger the spirit. She looked past the widow’s shoulder, thinking it might be better to get out of this spirit’s way, make her way back to Tennessee while she still had time to beg the sisters’ forgiveness.
    â€œYou plan to tell me why you brung me here?”
    â€œTo be my maid.”
    â€œIs that right.”
    â€œYes.”
    The widow’s voice was high and reedy when she got excited, but in her calmer moments, it was as gentle as a girl’s. Madge suspected it was the kind of voice that would not deepen with age, unlike her own, which had already gained its force. She stared at the widow’s reflection in the mirror. Ringlets framed her face. Sometimes she appeared much younger than Madge, but other times she reminded Madge of someone wise and old.
    â€œSince you asked, I’ll tell you. I saw you putting your hand in that fire and I thought you were a believer.”
    â€œA believer in what?”
    â€œI thought you’d understand me.”
    This the girl side of her , thought Madge. Most days, I don’t even understand my own self, let alone you.
    â€œNow I want to ask you something.”
    Madge held on to the bowl: I done lived among women my whole life, and I still don’t understand nem .
    â€œI want you to help me.”
    Here it was. The truth.
    â€œTake their shawls, that sort of thing. I asked Olga, but she refused.”
    â€œDeliver me.”
    â€œI’m not asking, Madge.”
    â€œYea though I walk.”
    She could hear the lowing, the sound of a cow dragging its feet as it was roped into a death pen, neck pinched. And as sure as she recognized she was that cow, the lowing sound in her own head, she knew she would do it: take capes in winter, store parasols in summer, cover the windows, pull back the portière to reveal a portrait and a table covered in black cloth. She would do it out of fear the widow would turn her out if she didn’t.
    Dead slaves had a tendency to come back hankering after unfinished business. Maybe white spirits were different, but Madge