Balm

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

  She put the potatoes in the embers to keep them warm, then perched on the bed beside him and placed a hand on his cheek. A little warm, but not too much. She listened as she pressed his chest, moving her hand down to massage the meat of his hip. When he turned again, she rubbed the other side. Even dead things wake up to loving hands, Sarah Lou used to say. She grazed his nose with the side of her thumb. She was too watchful not to notice the change in his breathing, but at first she did not say anything.

  Finally, she whispered, “You up?”

  “Hungry,” he said. He needed to get out of bed and go look for work. He wanted to ask her to mix up a tea or something that would bring him around, but his swollen tongue refused to move. A sour gas erupted in his throat. “How you come here?”

  “Richard brung me.” She pulled the cover up to his chin.

  “What you ate today?” she asked, but he did not answer. She felt his stomach, and he began to shake.

  “Hemp? Hemp.”

  He dropped into another slumber, and she went outside to relieve herself, staying close to the wall of the house. At night, her fascination with the city turned to fear, and she did not venture to the flap of door over the privy. She lifted her dress and relieved herself against the wall in the shadows of the alley.

  Inside, she poked the fire to kick it up. She was afraid to look at him. Once the water boiled, she poured it into a cup over the strip of bark. At first, the bark floated, then it sank, leaving flakes on the surface. She strained the liquid through a piece of cloth. She sat beside him, cupping his head with the palm of her hand as she lifted him. He opened red-streaked eyes.

  “Drink,” she said.

  Tennessee’s speech was slow and sure. Annie was frugal with words, and when she did speak, she spoke in short phrases. Bring me that. Co’mere. Be rain soon. Annie’s voice was a well-worn doorknob. And when she smiled, it was with her voice rather than her face. This one was completely different. When he had finished drinking, she put the cup on the floor beside the bed.

  “How long I been down?”

  “Three days.”

  “Three days?”

  She nodded.

  “Somebody need to run tell the hotel.”

  “The wha—? Listen. Don’t worry about none of that.”

  “I done lost her, ain’t I?”

  “Ain’t your body what ails you, is it.”

  “What kind of life I got?”

  A life, she wanted to say. “Maybe you just needs to start over.”

  “I start over every morning.”

  “And today a new day.”

  “How?”

  “That ain’t the question. You know how. The question is why. ’Cause ain’t no other choice. Unlessen you ready to die,” she said.

  The force of her words surprised her. She could not believe they were coming out of her mouth. She should have been hushing him, urging him to rest.

  He turned toward the wall. The cup hit the floor. He heard the liquid seep through the floorboard and drip onto the ground below.

  “Annie heal me.”

  “Time for you to heal your own wounds,” she said, mopping up the mess. “Can’t nobody else fix you.”

  “God give up on me.”

  “You give up on yourself.”

  “What you come here for?”

  He heard her prod the fire. The corners of the room rounded, and the face was Annie’s. Her thick shoulder, the flap of dog-bitten ear, the glistening eyes. Arms wrapped around him. He trembled.

  “Hemp? Hemp.”

  A whistle in his ear. The high whine of an insect. At first, it was just a ticklish feeling. Then it rose, until the note of it was like steel grinding against steel. The sound of a train. Annie was coming. As soon as the train stopped, she would get off and he would be waiting.

  “Hemp?”

  Darkness.

  HE TRIED TO LIFT HIMSELF UP. He peered down at his feet, the end of the coverlet resting just below his knee. He did not recognize the socks. Beside him a bug traced the rim of a bowl of uneaten soup. He knew he had lain in the same covers too long, and he did not care. A pot rubbed against him. He fingered his penis, tilted the pot up, and relieved himself into it.

  The door to the house opened.

  “You alive.”

  She had put pot after pot of snow on the fire until it melted. Then she’d poured the hot water into the tub. The water barely filled the tub halfway, but it would have to do.

  “You strong enough to get in this tub?” She began to unbutton his shirt.

  He placed a hand over hers. “I’m a man. Can’t you see that?”

  She shook his hand from hers. “You smell like one, too.” She turned, and while he removed his clothes, she judged the distance to the tub. Might be easier to drag the tub than to move him.

  “I can make it,” he said.

  He tried to hide his embarrassment by thinking of her as an old healing woman. Annie had worked him with her hands, but this girl’s touch was different. Annie—with her missing tooth and graying hair and firm touch; Madge—pretty with hands as soft as cotton. He slipped out of his clothes and walked over to the tub, easing into the water.

  She busied herself changing the bedclothes. His knees pushed twin hills out of the water’s surface. She rolled up his dirty shirt, placed it beneath his neck. Just as she thought it would, the water calmed him. He closed his eyes. She picked up a rag, wrung it, and placed it against his cheek. Then she cleared the crust from his lashes, stretching an ear to wipe behind it, running the rag around his neck. Oil puddled on the surface of the water. After she had cleaned him, she lay the rag on his chest.

  She woke him and told him it was time to get out. When he was back in the bed, she stretched the cover up to his neck. The embers ticked. She had used all of the wood melting snow for the bath. His breathing was even, not as steady as sleeping, but not quite awake. She thought again of what he had told her about Annie’s daughter. What had really happened that night? Had he done something dishonorable? More than dishonorable? As much as they had talked, sometimes she suspected there was a part of him she did not know. He said he was trying to respect his marriage vows. Madge wanted to believe that. If it was true, she was the temptation that stood between him and honor, not that Herod girl.

  Slowly, she climbed into bed beside him, rested her arm across his mountain of chest. If anyone entered the door, Madge would be hard-pressed for an explanation. No doctoring required her to lay with him, but his heat warmed her and the room had cooled.

  Hemp cracked open an eye. “Annie?”

  She kissed him, and he did not move. She pushed her body onto his.

  The sisters stood at the end of the bed watching. Madge had never been one of them, had always known they shared a bond she could not sever. Three was a good, solid number. Disputes settled with one vote. A fourth created dangerous alliances, one in which ties were possible. And what if mother and daughter sided against the others? Where was the peace in that?

  “Annie?” he whispered, groaning. His hands were sore where he’d gripped the hackle. In his younger days, he could thrash much more. Annie took his hands in hers and rubbed the hurt out of them. He felt a finger on his lips, and he reached out to her, pulling her to him. She mounted him, and he crushed his face into her neck. She smelled of the hyacinth that grew in the yard. Annie Annie Annie.

  He thought she was his wife, and she did not care. This was her chance, the first one that would really cut her ties with the sisters. He could be hers if he would just let that wife go. There was no cure for his body. This illness was in his mind. She had never deceived anyone, yet when the time came she made the choice easily.

  In that briefest of moments, she decided to give herself to him because, at least with Hemp and Annie, she was part of the three.

  Part Two

  11

  BOTH SADIE AND MICHAEL WERE TRYING TO FIGURE out how it all started, what took them from acquaintances to companions to a marriage prop
osal. She recalled his second visit to her house, when he’d interrupted a call from her late husband’s lawyer just a few months after she’d begun delivering séances in her home.

  “Some women mediums,” the lawyer had claimed, “have been subjected to authenticity tests.”

  “Authenticity tests?”

  “And there is talk.”

  “What kind of talk?”

  “Please forgive me if this sounds impertinent, but there are some who would like for you to cease your séances.”

  She waved her hand dismissively.

  “Mrs. Walker, have you received many proposals? Surely there is a suitor. I believe it would be best—”

  A knock interrupted just as Sadie was pushing her chin into her chest to tamp down her anger.

  Madge announced a doctor. The lawyer bowed, looking pointedly at the other man as he left.

  “Mrs. Walker, please forgive the intrusion.”

  “It is quite all right, although I don’t believe I called for a doctor. The voice—I—”

  She was smaller than he remembered, and though she was not wearing the veil she had become known for, he detected a guardedness, an odd sense that something still obscured her face. He did not know if he believed, but he was open to the possibility. If she truly possessed a gift, he would soon be speaking with his brother. He raised a hand. “I am not here to cure you of that remarkable voice.”

  “I don’t think I’m following you.”

  He rested against the back of an armchair. He tried to form his words, but he was stricken by thoughts of what it would be like if his brother’s voice were to overtake the widow’s, if the movements of her body morphed until she took on the crooked way James had held his mouth, the nervous foot tap. Michael looked through the window at the black iron gate. He tried to speak again. The only way he could explain his behavior was to admit that his lack of courage was some kind of defect. He had no doubt. He was in need of saving.

  “Mrs. Walker, I am here to engage your services. You see, my brother died in the war, and I . . . I’m wondering if you might help him speak to me.”

  She smoothed out the skirts of her dress, looked toward the other parlor. She started to say, Now I remember you. I thought you didn’t believe. But a noise rushed her ears like waves. Faraway, her father sat down to dinner each evening in a quiet house. Beneath him, the bookbindery was closed, long emptied of its tools. Once, they’d worked together in that little room.

  Michael nervously began to fill the silence, telling her about his brother, how he’d died in the war. Finally, she appeared to understand. She led him to a room across the hall. A round table covered in black cloth sat between two chairs. He could smell the remains of a meal, and it calmed him to know she ate, that she was human. He looked up at a large painting of a man with a thick face and trim mustache. The man’s eyes penetrated. Bloodred wallpaper, a wooden cabinet in the corner as tall as a coffin, a pair of porcelain urns on the mantel. He pictured the widow projecting a voice, casting spectral shadows with a lantern.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Please sit.”

  He lowered himself into the chair opposite her. Minutes passed as she gave him time to collect himself.

  “You lost your brother in the war?”

  “Yes.”

  “So many lost.” She closed her eyes. “I make no promises, Doctor.”

  She placed her palms on the table. He did not know what else to do, so he followed her lead. She closed her eyes. He watched her, afraid that if he, too, closed his eyes, he would miss James, and he wanted to see everything. He had heard a woman recount at a party how her deceased husband rapped messages on a table. He wanted more than a rap, but he would take even that.

  He waited. There was no clap of thunder, no darkening of the room as clouds hovered above the house, only the soft sound of the two of them breathing. Her body shrank, and he feared she might slip out of her chair. She was so slight. The lips moved, and though it was her voice—the same girlish vocal—there was something else.

  He waited, strung between his need to know and the scientific skepticism of his training. On either side, two lights summoned. He smelled something, detected an odor coming from his clothes. It was the same scent that had been with him the day he read the letter from his brother, the day he entered the enlistment office and paid money in exchange for his freedom. He opened his mouth and the scent slipped inside, moved over his tongue, passed a flap of skin into his nasal passage.

  A light shook on its string, its flame weak, but steady. He reached for it.

  JUST AS THE SPIRIT OVERTOOK HER, her own thoughts nothing more than a background whisper, she remembered the doctor’s name: Heil.

  I figured you’d make your way back to me.

  The widow’s eyes were empty, and Michael knew he was speaking to the spirit. His doubts slipped down a chute. He cleared his throat. Was he supposed to speak back?

  “I beg your pardon?” he uttered softly.

  No one has told you my name? You don’t know who I am?

  Michael shook his head. Laughter erupted from the widow’s mouth and Michael went cold. The sound was as familiar to him as any he’d ever heard. It pitched into high notes, went on for longer than natural. He focused on it, trying to fathom what his brain could not imagine. The laughter trickled into silence.

  Then, a whisper: I have missed you, Michael.

  Michael leaped up from the table, almost knocking it over. He reached over and shook the widow’s shoulders. She lay limp in his hands, her cheeks jiggling as he arrested her. “Wake up!”

  Her lips moved. Please sit down, brother. Control yourself before you hurt her.

  Michael released her and sat down. Though it was still the widow’s face, he could not look at her. The room went out of focus.

  “James . . . ?” he asked, but he did not need proof. Suddenly there was no need to verify.

  I know why you came.

  Michael still did not look up. “You do?”

  You want to hear how it was. Well, not actually. It is not war you want to know about, but the things that go along with war. Where did we go? How did we carry on? You want to know about the mettle of a soldier. You want to know how we rose from the smoke of battle, not how we fell. You, of all people, know how one falls—the tearing of muscle and tissue. You want to know why one soldier banged his head on a tree until it bloodied. Why another talked to himself. The reasons behind the empty eyes in a soldier’s photograph. The nostalgia, not just for home, but for a more innocent time. After war, a man walks and talks differently. You want to know why. You want to know everything.

  We joined out of duty. We owed it to this land that had embraced our fathers and our fathers’ fathers. We owed a debt. Our country was ripped apart and we needed to set things right. These were the things we told ourselves before battles, in those hopeful spaces when we imagined we would survive it. And to survive it, we did everything we could. We set up tables and threw cards. We danced, caroused, and then prayed for forgiveness the next morning. We dressed each other’s wounds when there were none around to help. If provisions did not reach our camps, we ate grass and emptied long strings of it in the woods. We dreamed of women and spilled seed onto barren ground. We sang patriotic songs through bleeding, cracked lips, slept packed together on cold nights, gummed rotten hardtack. We walked until we could not pick up our knees. We gambled. We cursed. We cried. We prayed. We left precious little pieces of ourselves behind on each battlefield.

  His brother plunged right into Michael’s heartsickness with little warning and it went on for hours. As James talked, Michael absorbed it all. He pictured the sixteen-gun concentrations. Picket detachments. Mistaken siege tactics. When his brother discussed the first time he was shot, Michael touched the spot on his own back where the bullet would have entered. And the same leap of imagination he used to hear the voice that came from Sadie’s mouth was the same leap that allowed him to inhabit James’s body. Gone was the paunchy
middle. Gone was the straight hair. When the woolen uniforms did not arrive in time for winter’s first frost and the provisions of camp had run out, Michael shivered on the forest floor. Michael who poured powder into the barrel. Michael who thrust the bayonet. Michael who heard the chilling yell of rebel soldiers as they charged.

  When Sadie awakened him, he looked at her strangely. He had just returned from battle, had witnessed flesh burned from a man’s face, and, for a moment, he did not know who she was. She looked as exhausted as he felt. The darkened light in the room told of an entire day passed in her parlor.

  “It’s over,” she said, as solemnly as if she were telling him the war had ended.

  He nodded stiffly.

  “Would you like to stay and rest a while?”

  “No, I couldn’t. I mean, yes, I could. But I should go.” He needed sleep, time to mull over what had just happened. But he was afraid he would never meet his brother again. There was still so much to say.

  She touched his shoulder and he felt a spark pass between them. Both jumped from the jolt. She looked down at her hand as if it were the offender.

  “He is the spirit. He is the one who speaks through me. He will be here when you return.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your brother is the spirit who is my intermediary to the other side. I’m sorry that I didn’t connect your name to his before.”