Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

behind her.

9
    A FTER THEIR TRIP TO THE PRAIRIE, HE VISITED her on Sundays after church, talking more than he had ever talked to any woman. The words tumbled out, and even though he felt it was unmanly to talk so much, he could not stop. He talked mostly of himself, of Annie and life on the Harrison farm. He spoke of the camp where thousands of colored men and women sought sanctuary. In return, the Tennessee woman lent him a precious gift: the most patient ear he had ever known. He learned the relief that comes from unleashed secrets, and he was grateful. He knew what drew him to her, but he was not sure at all of what she saw in him. They were as different as two people could be. She was untouched by slavery, and he had been a slave all of his life. The woman was a mystery.
    As time went on, he began to think perhaps it was her freeborn status that made her a neutral audience of one, and he did not stop to think she might have a pain of her own. She had never known what he knew:the denial of everything that made him a man, the single, unmitigated belief that a man was born to work like an animal.
    Madge kept something cooking on the stove for him, knowing he had been in church all morning and would be hungry when he arrived. Olga had Sundays off now, and Sadie stayed in her library most of the day, so it was easy for Madge to sneak food. On Sundays, Hemp ate whatever was on the widow’s menu, and it was the best meal he had all week. They walked out to the carriage house and sat in chairs near the open doorway. She talked while he ate, and when he was finished, he talked while she rinsed their dishes in a tub of water. His constant stories about Annie inserted the pretense of innocence into the visits, but Madge was not fooled. When he didn’t think she was watching, she caught him staring. The man came around for more than a hot meal.
    And he brought her things. He knew that ever since their trip to the prairie, Madge had struggled to replenish her herb supply. Miraculously, Hemp got his hands on things that folks traveling from the South must have brought with them—snakeroot and collard leaves stashed in traveling sacks, seeds tucked into hair.
    They spent those evenings together on the back steps of the widow’s house, or in the carriage house where Richard stabled the horse. When Hemp got steady work at a palace hotel, she was the first person he told. He was hired to clean, but after a few weeks, the management took note of his bulk and he was appointed hostler. The wages changed his heart, but the uniform changed the way he thought of himself. It dignified. In that suit, there was no mistaking the difference between a horse and a man.
    The hostlers were allowed a break to eat, and they sat cross-legged, their lunch in soggy bags, barely enough food to fuel them until their long shifts ended. Every one of them understood the good fortune of their positions, and they did what was asked without question, chewing leaves to stay on their feet, lifting trunks heavy enough to straina back, carefully keeping their hands moving as they chatted, for the management was known to check on them unannounced.
    Hemp shared all of this with the Tennessee woman.
    â€œI expect you could say the day I got to Chicago was the day of my birth,” he told her, the thought revealing itself to him as he spoke.
    Eventually, he made his way up each of the back steps into the kitchen until he had seated himself at the table, their voices hushed but strong. Madge’s kitchen was a doorway through which he could reach forward in time, and he did not think of the house as belonging to the widow. He thought of it as belonging to Madge, the room no less than Tennessee itself. That was no small feeling because he knew how hard it was to claim something of your own out of somebody else’s things.
    A S THEY WALKED AROUND the side of the house, Madge felt the widow’s eyes. When she tilted her head up, she spied the woman