The Restorer

Seventeen

I swam up through a pounding headache.

It was only with a great deal of effort that I managed to open my eyes. Blurry faces peered down at me.

“She’s coming to,” someone said. I thought it was Rhapsody.

I tried to get up, but instead sank deeper into whatever softness had cushioned my fall.

“Are you sure she’s seen her, Granny?”

“She see huh all right.”

I recognized Essie’s voice and strangely, I could now understand her just fine. Whether she’d altered her manner of speaking or I was becoming accustomed to her Gullah-influenced words, I didn’t know.

“Can you cure her?”

“No, chile. No root can fix dis gal. She ent hexed. She ben on tuddah side. She crossed t’rue dat veil and back, and now her spirit don’ know weh it b’long.”

“Is that why she can see Shani?”

“I reckon it is.”

There was a long silence during which I had the impression of movement, like someone waving a hand back and forth in front of my face. I smelled something sweet, something acrid, then nothing at all.

“What’s wrong, Granny. What do you see?”

Another pause. Another strange scent.

“Somebody uh-comin’ for dis gal. Somebody with a soul black as midnight. Somebody dat walk with the dead.”

I tried to ask her what she meant by that, but I couldn’t speak. My tongue felt too thick and I couldn’t make my lips work.

My eyes closed and the voices faded.

When I roused the second time, I was fully alert, with only the faint throb of a headache to remind me that I’d been unwell.

I knew instantly where I was—in Essie’s house, lying on a bed in a room that had once been Mariama’s.

Propping myself on elbows, I glanced around.

The space was cramped with only a mahogany wardrobe in one corner, the iron bedstead in another. I lay atop a handmade quilt in a pattern that had probably been handed down from the Underground Railroad years.

I could see daylight outside the single window, but the sun that shone through the glass had the soft-focus filter of late afternoon. I got up, found my boots and carried them with me through the quiet house.

Essie was on the front porch piecing quilt blocks while Rhapsody played kick ball with some kids in the road. She was smaller and younger than the others, but I had a feeling she could more than hold her own.

Essie glanced up and gave me a once-over before going back to her work.

“Bettuh?”

“Yes, thank you. I don’t know what happened.”

“Sun hot down yuh for town gals.”

“No, it wasn’t that. I work out in the heat all the time. What was in that tea?”

“Nutt’n’ bad in dat tea. I mek it muhself.”

I wasn’t sure that was much comfort.

“Somethin’ else be drainin’ you,” she said with a knowing look.

I thought instantly of Devlin.

“Essie, can we talk about Shani now?”

Her hands were steady as she pulled the needle through the fabric. “Dat baby can’t git no rest.”

“Why not?”

“She dont want tuh leave huh daddy. She can’t pass on ’til he let huh go.”

I felt a pang deep inside as I gazed down at her.

I remembered the first time I’d seen Devlin’s ghosts—the way Shani had barely left his side.

“I don’t think he knows she’s here,” I said softly.

“He know.” Essie’s gray head lifted as she placed a hand over her heart. “In yuh, he know.”

I closed my eyes. “What does she want from me?”

“Fo’ you tuh tell him.”

“I can’t do that.”

Essie’s troubled gaze met mine. “Mebbe not yet you can’t, but dat day uh-comin’. Din he haffuh mek his choice.”

“What choice?”

“’Tween the livin’ and the dead.”

I turned and stared out over the yard, where Rhapsody and her friends were still playing ball. It was a remarkably normal sight.

Essie rose from her chair and taking both my hands in hers, pressed something into my palm.

I stared down at the tiny cloth pouch tied with a blue ribbon. “What is it?”

“Put it underneet yo’ pillow at night. Keep dem bad spirits away.” She pulled a packet of what looked to be dried herbs from her apron pocket and placed it in my other hand. “Life Everlastin’. Cures wut ails you.”

“Thank you.”

She made a shooing motion with her hand. “Now go. Somebody at home be worryin’.”

There was no one to worry, but I didn’t argue. I sat down on the top step and pulled on my boots. When I stood, Essie cast a worried glance at the sky.

“Mek haste, gal. Sundown uh-comin’.”