Grandmother Eliza

My grandmother Eliza was the family surgeon. Her scalpel made from a pocketknife she kept in a couple of pinches of snoose. She saved my life by puncturing my festering neck twice with her knife. She saved my brother’s life twice when his arm turned bad. The second time she saved him was when his shoulder turned bad. She always made sure she didn’t cut an artery. She would feel around for days finding the right spot to cut. When a doctor found out she saved my brother’s life he warned her, “You know you could go to jail for this?” Her intern, my Auntie Anny, saved my life when I cut a vessel on my toe. While my blood was squirting out she went out into the night and cut and chewed the bark of plants she knew. She  put the granules of chewed up bark on my toe before the eyes of the folks who came to console my mother because I was bleeding to death. Grandma’s other intern, Auntie Jennie, saved our uncle’s life when his son shot him through the leg by accident. A doctor warned her, too, when he saw how she cured. Her relative cured herself of diabetes. Now, the doctors keep on asking, “How did you cure yourself?”