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

busily asked about relatives before the sitting did not make a sound.
    There is a girl standing behind you.
    Hemp turned with the others and saw nothing.
    She wants to tell you something.
    Mama ain’t here . . . The voice wavered. I can’t find her. How come I can’t find her? I looked for you at the farm, but you was gone. I don’t believe Mama made it over here. Do you? She ain’t with you, is she?
    Hemp had not known how much he needed to believe in this widow, how much her testimony would mean to him when it finally came. He fully believed he was hearing Herod’s voice, and what the girl was saying nearly knocked him out of his chair: Herod was dead, but Annie was alive. With little embarrassment that he was in a room full of people, he did what he had not done when he last saw Annie,what he had not done in the camp or while traveling through the countryside. Hemp cried. Annie was alive, and although this was the news he’d hoped for, it somehow made him sadder than not knowing at all.
    T HE WIDOW ’ S HOUSE was surrounded by shrubbery, the foliage beginning to shed with fall’s promise. But it was still a far cry from winter when everything was skinny and brown like her, so Madge did not see him until he was right in front of her. Her first thought was that she could all but smell the soil on him. Before he spoke a single word, she heard the music of his speech, knew how he would slide his letters together. When he announced himself as “Hemp” with a softer “Harrison” to follow, something grabbed her by the throat. He said he was looking for Richard, the widow’s driver, and she remembered. The séance in the back room of that ramshackle church. The grouping of folks looking for relief on the other side. A dozen women at least, several men, and a gray-haired preacher who could not stop talking.
    Madge tightened her squeeze on the plug in her jaw. “He ’round yonder,” she said, and tilted her head.
    She had not known any free men in Tennessee, but in Chicago she sensed a brashness among them. The way this one stood, this Hemp, the shaking in his hands, told her he had not been in the city long.
    â€œWhere you from?” she asked when he did not move. She tried to think of something she could give him from the kitchen.
    â€œKentucky.”
    She held back an urge to spit, but the juice collected and she let it fly. He looked at her strangely. Next time, she would hold it.
    â€œSomething hurting you?”
    â€œHuh?” Hemp recognized her from the séance at church as thewoman holding the widow’s shawl. She had not been a ghost, after all. He watched her taking in his physical measurements.
    â€œYou ain’t got no aches? No pains?”
    â€œNaw,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t hurt much.”
    Richard came out of the carriage house, and Hemp was grateful for the rescue. He had never been so tongue-tied in all his life.
    The two men walked off. Madge watched the stranger from her perch on the step. Even in pants, she could see the high outline of his behind, the cheeks. She spat again, went into the house, and wrapped her hair in a soft cloth.
    There was a knock at the door. She opened it, and he stood there again looking at her. Richard was beside him.
    â€œMiss Madge, he come to see the widow. You think she’ll see him?”
    She shrugged as if she did not care. She looked down at his shoes. “Maybe you had better take those off.”
    He followed her inside and she led him through the kitchen into a small corridor. She parted a thick curtain that blocked off a room in the front of the house, and he recognized the widow from the church. She was seated at a round table covered in black cloth.
    A feeling rushed his head, the sinking dread that was becoming more frequent since freedom. Behind this curtain was another curtain and another, each leading to some new boundary. He looked behind