“You will keep it in the correct order, Libertie,” Mama said. By which she meant the order of her imagination.
How was I to learn her mind? Before I could take over the garden, I would have to make a more diligent study of homeopathy, Mama’s discipline of medicine. “The guiding principle,” Mama had told me, many times as I grew, “is that like cures like.” But it was, as all things Mama insisted were straightforward, more complicated than that.
I was allowed a rest from my regular chores, and Mama had me sit in her examination room with her materia medica, the big black leather-bound book that listed every remedy and the diseases they belonged to.
Yarrow
is for
Anemia and Colic and Bed-Wetting and Hysteria and Nosebleeds and Hemorrhages and Varicose Veins and When Women’s Wombs Lose Children
Bitterwood
is for
Indigestion and Fever and Heartburn
Datura
is for
Drunkards and Stammering and Ecstasy
Belladonna
is for
Nymphomania and Gout and Hemorrhoids and Delirium and Depression
Calendula
is for
Burns and Knife Cuts and Flesh Wounds
Daisies
are for
Acne and Boils and Giddiness and Railway Spine
Milkweed
is for
Syphilis and Leprosy and Swelling of the Hands and Feet
Chamomile
is for
Restlessness and Waspishness and Bleeding Wombs
I had to transcribe what I read into notes, to remember which substance was for which symptom. And then, the next morning, I took my scrap of paper and searched for each plant in its proper place, and recorded if it lived and flourished, or if it had become overgrown or invaded the space of another.
I did not have an eye for recognizing plants on sight, and I spent many frantic minutes comparing the description of a leaf pattern or a petal to what was flowering before me. The only things I could recognize with any ease were pansies. Not very impressive, as pansies grow everywhere and are known even to fools. But when I saw a thatch of them in my mama’s lanes, they cheered me—panting yellows and purples and blues.
Pansies are for Obstinate Skin
In my new life of study, I thought often of Mr. Ben. He lived in the back room of Culver’s now, a place I had never seen, only heard about. Culver himself had found him so waspish that he’d offered to pay Mr. Ben’s way across the river to Manhattan.
“To Mr. Ruggles’s place in Manhattan, on Golden Hill. Ruggles and his friends would help him.” This was Lenore, gossiping with Mama in the mornings while she banked the fire and I sat, head propped in my hands, reading the materia medica.
“And Mr. Ben refused?” Mama said.
Lenore nodded. “He said he’d die if he crossed the water. He said he’ll drown. Said he’s seen it in a dream. Says the water’s full of dead niggers calling his name, and he’d rather stay here, on land.”
“His sister can’t come soon enough,” Mama said.
But she did not come for another month, perhaps two. When I went into town sometimes, to bring a note to Culver or his son, I would see Mr. Ben wandering the crossroads, turning one way or another. He always had a smile for me. Weak, but he gave it. He never called me Libertie, though. Instead, he called me Black Gal.
“Hey there, Black Gal, and good morning to you.”
“What you doing for your mama, Black Gal?”
And it was with a sense of pity, which we both could feel between us, that I would return his greeting, show him what was in my bag, raise my hand back to him.
What I wanted to say each time was, How could you do that to Mama?
What I wanted to say each time was, Mama can be your friend.
What I wanted to say each time was, I wish I could be your friend, but this is too sad a start for friendship.
I was that age when I was not young enough to speak that frankly, yet I was not so old that I could pretend the sadness did not exist. So I raised my hand and smiled at him and then went home, to read the remedies and wonder what it meant to care. I had been so cavalier in my request to Mama, to be inducted into her world of secrets. It was overwhelming enough to care for bodies that had turned against themselves, that had sickened and soured on miasmas and disease, that had collapsed under the burden of fevers and chills.
It was still another thing to care for someone like Mr. Ben, who was of whole body, I knew, but of broken spirit.
But Mama said when the spirit broke like his had, it was not our realm.
I was not so sure.
Sometimes, I tried to talk to her about it. I would venture to her, as we sat side by side in her examination room, “What do you do with someone like a Mr. Ben?”
To which she would say quickly, “I do not know what you mean, Libertie.”
And we would be left in silence again.
Once, bored by the rows of flower names stretched out before me on a long night of study, I went out at night into the garden, to walk along the rows.
I absently rubbed my fingers along a yarrow bush’s leaves. After a few minutes, they began to swell and my tongue thickened. I looked down at my fattened fingertips in the moonlight and looked up and saw Mama through the window, sitting at her desk behind the muslin curtain, working through her ledger. As I watched her, I reached for the yarrow leaves and ripped five of them off the branch, stuffed them into my mouth, and chewed them. It did not take long before my cheeks and mouth began to itch. I ate three more leaves. Two more. And then I ran into the office, and finally Mama looked up from her ledger.
I had the satisfaction of seeing her startled, but she was not scared. She treated me as she would any other of her patients. I could not speak
