Balm Read Online Free PDF

kill me if she die. Besides, she a good woman. You help her get well, I pluck my eye out and give it to you.”
    â€œThat old eye ain’t no good and you know it.”
    Grayness descended upon the trees. The trunks cut through the mist, standing tall and straight like the dark legs of women. The sisters went back inside the house and closed the door behind them. Outside, rain began to hammer the ground, a pool of water filling the crater in the front yard. After gathering what they needed, they prepared as if they would not return for days. Baby Sister tucked scraps of men’s pants around the windowsills to keep water from seeping inside. Sarah Lou put a bucket in the middle of the floor.
    They walked in a line behind Thea, wide hats shielding their faces. At the farmhouse, they found the white woman lying in a pool of sour. All three sisters recognized her, remembering the time they had visited this very house with their mother some years before. The husband had been bitten by a mule, and they had come to tend a finger that dangled like a rotten tooth.
    â€œI get the fresh bedclothes,” Thea said, disappearing into another room.
    Baby Sister helped the woman into a sitting position so they could pull her gown over her head. Sarah dipped a rag in a bowl of water on the table and cleaned her up. The woman did not resist, her eyes lidded.
    When they had changed her gown and remade the bed, Sarah said, “I got some garlic in my pouch.”
    â€œAin’t enough.”
    â€œWhat about some sage.”
    â€œAin’t got none.”
    â€œWho was supposed to have brung it.”
    â€œHere, ma’am. Eat this bread.”
    â€œYou the one been eating up all the store.”
    â€œJust heat the water for the tea and stop wagging your tongue.”
    â€œWhat we gone put in the tea, dogface.”
    â€œShut up and get that water boiling before I slap the both of you.”
    The two older sisters settled upon a canker root tea to kill whatever was upsetting the woman’s stomach while Baby Sister made her sit up and eat the bread. Despite their fighting, the sisters worked together, one on either side of the sick woman, the third holding the cup to her mouth.
    â€œI can’t hold nothing down,” the woman said.
    â€œJust eat one more bite of bread, ma’am. And drink,” said Berta.
    She drank. Visibly coloring, she avoided the sisters’ eyes, saying only to Thea, “That’s well enough. Pay ’em.”
    The sisters met Thea on the front porch. “Give her that tea every day. Put this leaf in it.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with her?”
    The younger sisters looked at Berta Mae. This part had always been left to their mother, even when the girls were the ones to give theinstructions on when and how to take the medicine. It was their first pronouncement.
    â€œWhat you think? Throw that meat out you give her. Ain’t fit for a dog.”
    The sisters looked uneasily at Berta, frightened her mouth would kill their business before it started.
    â€œI could have made tea,” said Thea.
    â€œYou already done cooked for her and look what happened. Now you heard what the woman said.” Berta stuck a hand out.
    Thea reached into a barrel sitting on the front porch and counted out six potatoes, four ears of corn. Later, Berta would say, “I knowed she was lying ’bout not having nothing to pay.”
    When the woman got better, she spread the word that the girls were their mother’s daughters after all. The people sent for them, calling them into their sick rooms and paying for medicines with food, cloth, shoes. The daughters shed the idleness of the past months, and, before long, they had gained more confidence, Berta leading the way. Without their mother, the sisters stuck to their school of three, talking their way through the woods in order to remember all that the mother had taught them. They refused to marry, sticking by one