howled in pain as her hand jerked away from the scorching iron.
Without thinking, I rushed over to her and thrust her small hand into my cup of iced tea. The only doctor out here was that veterinarian. Unless—? Atavistic memories clamored to be heard.
“Where’s Aunt Sister?” I screamed at Isabel over Lashanda’s screams. The girl’s hand writhed against mine as I held it under the icy liquid.
Isabel pointed back up the slope toward the tents and I scooped the child up in my arms.
“Find her daddy,” I told Cyl as I raced up the slope.
Lashanda was frantic in her pain, yet I couldn’t run and keep her hand in ice at the same time and every second counted.
People hurried toward us, but I pushed through them. “Aunt Sister! Where’s Aunt Sister?”
They pointed to the serving tent and there was my elderly aunt, Daddy’s white-haired baby sister, fixing herself a plate of barbecue. She turned to see what all the commotion was about and as soon as I cried, “Burns. She burned her hand,” Aunt Sister sat right down on the ground and held out her arms.
“It’s okay, Lashanda,” I crooned as I knelt to put her in Aunt Sister’s lap. “She’ll make the fire go away. It won’t hurt much longer. Shh-shh, honey, it’s all right.”
Aunt Sister took the child’s wounded hand between her own gnarled hands and bent her head over them till her lips almost touched her parted thumbs. Her eyes closed and I could see her wrinkled lips moving, but I quit trying years ago to hear what words she whispered into her hands when she cupped them around a burn.
“It’s okay, honey,” I said. “She’ll take away all the fire.”
Lashanda’s terrified screams dropped to a whimper. Her brother came running and hovered protectively if helplessly while I continued to pat her thin bare shoulders and murmur encouragement.
“Feel the hot going out of your hand?”
She nodded, her fearful wide eyes intently focussed on Aunt Sister.
“Soon it’ll be all gone. I promise you.”
All around us, people watched with held breaths as Aunt Sister’s lips kept moving.
Reverend Freeman burst through the ring, Cyl just behind him. “Baby—?”
He knelt beside us and put his arm around his daughter and she leaned against his chest with a little moan, but didn’t pull her injured hand away. “She’s making it better, Daddy.”
At last Aunt Sister raised her head and pushed back a strand of white hair that had escaped from her bun. Old and faded blue eyes looked deeply into young brown ones.
“All the fire is gone,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
Lashanda looked at her hand and flexed her small fingers. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her palm and fingertips were smooth and unmarked. No blisters, faint redness.
A collective sigh erupted from the crowd and so many people started talking then that I was probably the only one who heard when Lashanda smiled up at her father and said, “Mommy’s wrong, Daddy. There white people are nice.”
I stood up, feeling suddenly drained and weary. A whole lifetime of knowing, yet I’m surprised every time I get reminded that racism isn’t a whites-only monopoly.
Someone handed me a welcome cup of iced lemonade. One of the newcomers, Allison Lazarus.
“Remarkable said,” Dr. Gevirtz in a clipped New York accent. “I’ve heard of fire-talkers, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen it done.”
“The colorful natives performing their ritual ceremonies?” I snapped. “Too bad you didn’t have a camera.”
“Was I sounding like a tourist?” he asked mildly. “Sorry.”
Abashed, I apologized for my bad manners. “I’d be curious and skeptical, too, if I hadn’t seen Aunt Sister do it enough times.”
“But surely it was putting her hand in cold liquid so quickly?” protested Ms. Lazarus.
“No, no,” he said. “It’s a true type of sympathetic healing. The practitioner believes so strongly that those around her—especially the patient—also believe and that in turn causes—”
I excused myself and left them to it. I know all the intellectual arguments: the burn wasn’t that bad, the prompt application of ice kept the tissue from blistering, the power of positive thinking, psychosomatic syndromes, et cetera, et cetera. As with old Mr. Randall, who dosed my well, or Miss Kitty Perkins, who talked seven warts off my hands when I was fourteen, I no longer questioned how such things worked. It was enough to know that they did work, that there were people like Aunt Sister who had the gift and used it freely when called upon.
I was walking away from the tent when Ralph Freeman called to me, “Judge Knott? Deborah?”
“Yes?”
“I hope you didn’t misunderstand back there.”
“I don’t think I did,” I said evenly.
His eyes met mine and he nodded. “No, I reckon you didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. We can’t be responsible for everybody else’s gut feelings. Your wife probably has better reasons than some of my relatives.”
He gave a wry smile and we fell in step together.
