She was wearing her customary red scarf and seemed barely changed. Her eyes were still large as bowls, the golden color darkened somewhat, and she was tiny as ever. Not frail or insubstantial, but distilled, concentrated.
There was a cane propped between us with a fanciful carving of a rabbit on the handle. Moving it to the side, she said, “You didn’t come to try and stop us, did you?”
“It’s dangerous, Handful . . . I’m afraid for you.”
“Well, that may be, but I’m more scared of bowing and scraping to your mauma and your sister the rest of my days.”
Speaking barely above a whisper, I told her about my plan to try and convince Mother to sell the two of them to me.
She laughed a bitter sound. “Uh huh.”
I hadn’t expected that. I looked past her, scanning the harbor, noticing the steamer in the distance rinsed clean by the rain.
She shifted herself on the cushion and I heard the breath leave her. “I just don’t see missus doing one thing favorable for me, that’s all. But here you are, all this way—nobody else would’ve done that for me—so it’s worth a try, and if she’s willing to sell us, I’ll pay you back everything I got, four hundred dollars.”
“There would be no need—”
“Well, I ain’t doing it any other way.”
We stopped talking as Hector, the butler Mary had installed, came up the stairs with my trunk, his gaze lingering longer than was comfortable. I stood. “I should get settled.”
“You go on and talk to her then,” Handful whispered. “But don’t be waiting too long.”
I waited four days. It seemed imprudent to make the request before that—I wanted Mother to believe I’d returned solely to see her.
I broached the matter on Tuesday afternoon while we sat in the drawing room, Mother, Mary, and I, swishing our fans at the vaporous heat. A languid silence had fallen that none of us seemed willing to break. We’d exhausted all the harmless subjects: the rainy weather, the spectacular wonder of the railroad that ran from Charleston to Savannah, an expurgated version of Nina’s wedding, news of my siblings, the nieces and nephews I’d never met. If I had any chance at securing freedom for Handful and Sky, we couldn’t speak of my scandalous adventures, which had been in all the papers. Nor of abolition, slavery, the North, the South, religion, politics, or the fact I’d been outlawed in the city the previous summer.
“People are talking, Sarah,” Mary said, breaking the lull. She exchanged a look with Mother, and I glimpsed how in step they were with one another, how alike. An echo of loneliness reverberated from my girlhood, and I felt again like the odd-child-out. Even now. I heard Binah’s voice somewhere in my memory, Poor Miss Sarah. These irrational childish feelings, where had they come from suddenly?
“Rumors are running rampant that you’ve returned,” Mary was saying. “It’s only a matter of time before the sheriff arrives to inquire about it, and if you’re here, I’m not sure what you expect us to say. We can hardly hide you like a fugitive.”
I turned to Mother, watching her eyes veer away toward the piazza. The windows were open and the chocolaty smell of the oleander streamed in, sickeningly thick.
“You wish me to leave?”
“It’s not a matter of what we wish,” Mother said. “If the authorities come, I wouldn’t give you over to them, of course not. You’re my daughter. You’re still a Grimké. We only suggest it would be easier all around if you cut your visit short.”
To my surprise, her eyes filled. She was plump now with thinned white hair and one of those ancient faces that’s deeply cobblestoned. She peered at me as the tears started to spill, and I left my chair and went to her. Bending down awkwardly, I put my arms about her.
She clung to me an instant, then straightened. Instead of returning to my seat, I paced toward the window and back, gathering my bravery.
“I won’t put you at risk, I’ll leave on the next steamer, but before I go, I have a request. I would like to purchase Hetty and her sister, Sky.”
“Purchase them?” Mary said. “But why? You hardly barter in slaves.”
“Mary, for heaven’s sake, she means to free them,” Mother said.
“I’ll offer you any amount.” I walked to Mother’s side. “Please. I would consider it a great kindness to me.”
Mary rose and came to the other side of Mother’s chair. “We can’t possibly do without Hetty,” she said. “There are few seamstresses in Charleston to match her. She’s irreplaceable. The other one is expendable, but not Hetty.”
Mother stared at her hands. Her shoulders moved up and down with her breath, and I began to feel a prick of hope.
“There are laws that make it difficult,” she said. “Emancipating them would require a special act of the legislature.”
“Difficult, but it could be done,” I responded.
Something inside of her seemed to bend, to arch toward me. Mary sensed it, too. She placed her hand on our mother’s, linking the two of them. She said, “We can’t do without Hetty. And we must think of her, as well. Where will she go? Who will take care of her? She has a home here.”
“This is not her home, it’s her prison,” I said.
Mary stiffened. “We don’t need you to come here and lecture us about slavery. I won’t stand here and defend it to you. It’s our way of life.”
Her words infuriated me. I wondered for a moment if holding my tongue would help my cause with Mother. Was it ever right to sacrifice one’s truth for expedience? Mother would do what she would do, wouldn’t she? I wondered how it was possible I’d found my words out there in the world, but could lose them in the house where I was born.
It gave way inside of me—years of being here, co-existing with the untenable. “Your way of life! What does that justify? Slavery is a hell-concocted system, it cannot be defended!”
Small red wafers splotched along Mary’s neck. “God has ordained that we take care of them,” she said, flustered now, spluttering.
I took a step toward her, my outrage breaking open. “You speak as if God was white and Southern! As if we somehow owned his image. You speak like a fool. The Negro is not some other kind of creature than we are. Whiteness is not sacred, Mary! It can’t go on defining everything.”
I doubt anyone had ever spoken to her in such a manner, and she turned away from me, taken aback.
I couldn’t explain that rising up, this coming fully to myself, the audacity and authority my life had found. It took me aback, as well, and I closed my eyes, and I blessed it. It was like arriving finally in the place I’d left, and I felt then I would never be an exile again.
Mother lifted her hand. “This has tired me,” she said and struggled to her feet with her old gold-tip cane. She walked to the door, then turned back, leveling her eyes on mine. “I won’t sell Hetty or Sky to you, Sarah. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I will compromise.”
In the darkness of the cellar, the sound of my knocking seemed lost and swallowed up. It was past midnight. I’d waited until now to find Handful, slipping down here when the house was asleep, still wearing my sleeping clothes. The lantern swayed in my hand, swiveling the shadows, as I rapped again on Handful’s door. Come on, Handful, wake up.
“Who’s out there?” Her voice sounded alarmed and muffled behind the door.
“It’s all right. It’s me, it’s Sarah.”
She made a slit in the door, then let me inside. She held a candle that flickered beneath her chin. Her eyes appeared almost luminous.
“I’m sorry to wake you, but we must talk.”
Across the room, Sky was sitting up in her bed, her hair splayed out like a great dark fan. I sat the lantern down and nodded at her. Soon after my arrival, I’d seen her in the ornamental garden, down on her knees, digging with a trowel. The garden had been turned into a kind of wonderland, a cloister of colorful blooms, groomed
shrubberies, and winding paths, and I’d gone out there as if to take a stroll. Sky hadn’t waited for me to approach her, but pushed to her feet and strode over to me, smelling of fresh dirt and green plants. She didn’t look like Handful, or Charlotte either for that matter. She was strapping. She looked feral and cunning to me. She said, “You Sarah?” When I said I was, she grinned. “Handful said you the best of the Grimkés.”
“I’m not sure that’s saying a great deal,” I answered, smiling at her.
“Maybe not,” she said, and I liked her instantly.
I glanced about the cellar room, a little more crowded now with two beds. They’d shoved them together side by side beneath the window.
“What is it?” Handful said, but before I could speak, I saw it dawn on her. “Your mauma won’t sell us, will she?”
“No, I’m sorry. She refused. But—”
“But what?”
“She did agree to free both of you upon her death. She said she would have the paper drawn up and added to her will.”
Handful stood with the light puddling around her and stared at me. It was not what any of us wanted, but it was something.
“She’s seventy-four,” I said.
“She’ll outlive the last cockroach,” Handful said. She looked at Sky. “We’ll be leaving here day after tomorrow.”
I was relieved and terrified in the same moment. I studied the compact defiance that made up so much of who she was. I said, “Tell me how I can help.”
Handful
The night before we were to take our leave, me and Sky scurried in the dark, collecting everything together. We stole out to the stable to get mauma’s quilt from the horse blankets, trekking cross the work yard with the stars pouring down. We climbed up to Sarah’s room from the cellar to the second floor, three trips, carrying quilts, black dresses, hats, veils, gloves, and hankies. Up and down, me and my lame foot, passing right by missus’ and little missus’ doors. We went in stocking feet, taking soft steps like the floor might sink.
On the last trip, Sarah locked the door behind us, and I had a tarnish memory of her screening the keyhole while she taught me to read, how we whispered by the lamplight like we were doing now. I hung our dresses in her wardrobe. They fit us tailor-made. The veils were pressed perfect, and I’d sprinkled the velvet and crepe with missus’ lavender water so they had a white lady scent. I’d sewed pockets on the inside of the dresses to hold our money, along with Sarah’s booklet, mauma’s red scarf, and the address in Philadelphia where we hoped to end up.
Sky said the rabbit was outfoxing the fox.
Sarah opened her steamer trunk and I rested mauma’s story quilt on the satin lining at the bottom. I’d brought the quilt with red squares and black triangles, hoping to pack it, too—the first blackbird wings I ever sewed—but now that I saw how little the trunk was, I felt bad for taking up the precious space. I said, “I can leave this behind.”
Sarah took it from me and laid it in the trunk. “I would rather leave my dresses—they’re not worth much.”
I knew the perils of what she was doing same as she did. I read the papers. Twenty years in prison for circulating publications of a seditious nature. Twenty years for assisting a slave to escape.
I watched her fold her few belongings on top of the quilts and thought, This ain’t the same Sarah who left here. She had a firm look in her eye and her voice didn’t dither and hesitate like it used to. She’d been boiled down to a good, strong broth.
Her hair was loose, dangling along the sides of her neck like silk vines, like the red threads I used to tie round the spirit tree, and I saw it then, the strange thing between us. Not love, is it? What is it? It was always there, a roundness in my chest, a pin cushion. It pricked and fastened. Those girls on the roof with the tea gone cold in the cup.
She brought the lid down on the trunk.
I told Sky, go on down to the cellar and rest and I’ll be there in a while—I had one task left to do by myself. Then I eased down the stairs, out the back door, and loped off with my cane to the spirit tree.
Under the branches, the moonlight splatted on me from the leaves. I felt the owls blink and the wind draw a breath. When I looked back at the house, there was mauma in the upstairs window looking down, waiting to throw me a taffy. She was standing out in the ruts of the carriageway with her leg hitched up behind her and the strap round her neck. She sat quiet against the tree trunk with sewing in her lap.
I bent down and gathered up a handful of clippings from the tree—acorns, twigs, a tired, dog-eared leaf—and stuffed them inside my neck pouch. Then I took my spirit.
Next morning, we acted same as always. Sky went to the vegetable garden with the picking basket and plucked the ripe tomatoes and lettuce tops. Missus had me rubbing her ivory fans with sandpaper to scrub off the yellow tint. I worked in the alcove with the scrape of the paper, eyeing the steamship. The water on the harbor was ruffling like dress flounces.
Sarah was down the hallway in the withdrawing room with missus having her last goodbye. She wouldn’t see her mauma again. She knew that, and missus knew that. The air in the house sounded like a long note on the harpsichord. Downstairs, Sarah’s trunk was locked and ready by the front door, everything inside—mauma’s story, the flock of blackbirds.
The chiming clock sang out, and I counted the notes, nine of them, and Sarah came out of the withdrawing room with her eyes stinging bright. I set down the ivory fans and followed her to her room, leaving the rabbit cane behind, leaning against the window.
Sarah was wearing a pale gray dress with a big silver button at the collar, that same button from when she was a girl, pinning all her hopes on it. Stepping out through the jib door to the piazza, she peered over the rail at Sky in the ornament garden and gave her a wave. That meant, Leave your plants and flowers and come inside. Pass by the house slaves. If little missus stops you, say, Sarah summoned me.
When Sky tapped on the door, I was already in my dress, my face patted with white flour gum. She smiled. She said, “You look like a haint.”
“Was anyone about?” Sarah asked.
“Nobody but Hector. He say to tell you Goodis gon bring the carriage now.”
I did up the back of Sky’s dress and helped her paint her face, and nobody spoke a word. Sarah’s brow was furrowed tight. She walked to and fro cross the room, a drawstring purse swinging on her arm.
We tugged on our gloves. We fixed on our hats. We drew the veils down to our waists. The tiny bottles of oleander juice, we tucked inside our sleeves—Sarah didn’t need to know about that.
From behind the veil, the room looked faint like the haze before daybreak.
I heard the horse clop along the side of the house, coming from the work yard, and my stomach tipped. I’d tried not to set my heart too high, tried not to think about the free black women up north wanting to take us in, the attic in their house with the chimney running through it, but I couldn’t hold back anymore. We could help them with their school and with making their hats. I could sew quilts to sell. Sky could make a garden.
Sarah handed me her mauma’s gold-tip cane. Then she looked us over and said, “I wouldn’t know you on the street.”
We went swift down the staircase. If little missus happened by, then she happened by. Keep going was all. Don’t stop for nobody. Reaching the bottom rung, I saw the empty place where the steamer trunk sat earlier, and then Hector by the door, boring two holes in us with his eyes.
Sarah spoke to him. “Mother asked me to provide her visitors with a ride to their home. You may go. Goodis will assist us from here.”
Hector eased off down the passageway. That way he looked at us—did he know? Little missus was nowhere to be seen.
We stepped through the front door and the world rushed up. I looked back at Sky and saw a trace of whiteness float behind her veil.
When Goodis drew the
carriage up to the Steamboat Company sign, the heat had gathered thick under our veils. Sweat rivered down our necks. Sky lifted the gullies of her skirt for some air and the smell of lavender and body stench drifted out.
Helping me from the carriage, Goodis whispered, “Lord, Handful, what you doing?”
We hadn’t fooled him, and for what I knew, Hector might’ve figured it out, too. I peered back to see if he was charging down East Bay in the Sulky with little missus.
I said, “Goodis, I’m sorry, but we’re leaving. Don’t give us away.”
He pressed his lips together and I felt the places on me they’d touched. He was the best man I knew. Without meaning for it, my heart had got tangled with his.
He squeezed my hand, his face dim through the dark curtain. He said, “You take care yourself, girl.”
We waited for the tickets, waited to board the ship, waited for somebody to say, Who’re you?
When we walked cross the gangplank, the breeze lifted and the boat rocked. I thought about missus and her devotions. We’d been through the Bible and back with that woman. Now we were Jesus walking on water.
We climbed past the trunks, barrels, bales, and crates, past the boiler to the second deck, and sat down on a bench in the salon to wait for the Guard to pass through. The room was painted white with tables alongside the windows, all of them nailed to the floor. People stood in twos and threes, in their best clothes, in clouds of pipe smoke, and now and then they glanced our way, curious about the black grief we wore. Sarah sat a short space apart from us and kept her head tucked low inside her bonnet.
When the two guards lumbered in, I heard Sky’s breath pick up. One guard patrolled the left side, one the right. They nodded at folks, making talk here and there. Looking down, I saw the toes of Sky’s slave shoes sticking out from under her fine dress. The scrabble brown shoes, the scraped-up sadness of them.
He stopped before us. He said, “Where’re you traveling to?” Talking to me.