“. . . . . . Was it . . . hurt?”
“Naw, just left behind is all. Its mauma’s a barn owl. Took up in a crow’s nest in the shed, but she left. I’m ’fraid something got her. I been feeding the baby scraps.”
My only liaisons with Charlotte had been dress fittings, but I’d always detected a keenness in her. Of all the slaves Father owned, she struck me as the most intelligent, and perhaps the most dangerous, which would turn out to be true enough.
“. . . . . . I’ll be kind to Hetty,” I said abruptly. The words—remorseful and lordly—came out as if some pustule of guilt had disgorged.
Her eyes flashed open, then narrowed into small burrs. They were honey colored, the same as Hetty’s.
“. . . . . . I never meant to own her . . . I tried to free her, but . . . I wasn’t allowed.” I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
Charlotte slid her hand into her apron pocket, and silence welled unbearably. She’d seen my guilt and she used it with cunning. “That’s awright,” she said. “Cause I know you gon make that up to her one these days.”
The letter M clamped on to my tongue with its little jaws. “. . . . . . . . . M-m-make it up?”
“I mean, I know you gon hep her any way you can to get free.”
“. . . . . . Yes, I’ll try,” I said.
“What I need is you swearing to it.”
I nodded, hardly understanding that I’d been deftly guided into a covenant.
“You keep your word,” she said. “I know you will.”
Remembering why I’d approached her in the first place, I said, “. . . I’ve been unable to find—”
“Handful gon be at your door ’fore you know it.”
Walking back to the house, I felt the noose of that strange and intimate exchange pull into a knot.
Hetty appeared in my room ten minutes later, her eyes dominating her small face, fierce as the little owl’s. Seated at my desk, I’d only just opened a book I’d borrowed from Father’s library, The Adventures of Telemachus. Telemachus, the son of Penelope and Odysseus, was setting out to Troy to find his father. Without questioning her earlier whereabouts, I began to read aloud. Hetty plopped onto the bed-steps that led to the mattress, rested her chin in the cup of her hands, and listened through the morning as Telemachus took on the hostilities of the ancient world.
Wily Charlotte. As March passed, I thought obsessively about the promise she’d wrung from me. Why hadn’t I told her Hetty’s freedom was impossible? That the most I could ever offer her was kindness?
When it came time to sew my Easter dress, I cringed to think of seeing her again, petrified she would bring up our conversation by the woodpile. I would rather have impaled myself with a needle than endured more of her scrutiny.
“I don’t need a new dress this Easter,” I told Mother.
A week later, I stood on the fitting box, wearing a half-sewn satin dress. On entering my room, Charlotte had hastened Hetty off on some contrived mission before I could think of a way to override her. The dress was a light shade of cinnamon, remarkably similar to the tone of Charlotte’s skin, a likeness I noted as she stood before me with three straight pins wedged between her lips. When she spoke, I smelled coffee beans, and knew she’d been chewing them. Her words squeezed out around the pins in twisted curls of sounds. “You gon keep that word you gave me?”
To my disgrace, I used my impediment to my advantage, struggling more than necessary to answer her, pretending the words fell back into the dark chute of my throat and disappeared.
Handful
On the first good Saturday, when it looked like spring was staying put this time, missus took Miss Sarah, Miss Mary, and Miss Anna off in the carriage with the lanterns on it. Aunt-Sister said they were going to White Point to promenade, said all the women and girls would be out with their parasols.
When Snow drove the carriage out the back gate, Miss Sarah waved, and Sabe, who was dandied up in a green frock coat and livery vest, was hanging off the back, grinning.
Aunt-Sister said to us, “What yawl looking at? Get to work cleaning, a full spit and shine on their rooms. Make hay while the mice away.”
Up in Miss Sarah’s room, I spread the bed and scrubbed the gloom on the looking glass that wouldn’t come off with any kind of ash-water. I swept up dead moths fat from gnawing on the curtains, wiped down the privy pot, and threw in a pinch of soda. I scrubbed the floors with lime soap from the demijohn.
Wore out from all that, I did what we call shilly-shally. Poking round up to no good. First, I looked to see was any slave in the passage way—some of them would as soon tell on you as blink. I shut the door and opened Miss Sarah’s books. I sat at her desk and turned one page after another, staring at what looked like bits and pieces of black lace laid cross the paper. The marks had a beauty to them, but I didn’t see how they could do anything but confuddle a person.
I pulled out the desk drawer and rooted all through her things. I found a piece of unfinished cross stitch with clumsy stitches, looked like a three-year-old had done it. There was some fine, glossy threads in the drawer wrapped on wood spools. Sealing wax. Tan paper. Little drawings with ink smudges. A long brass key with a tassel on it.
I went through the wardrobe, touching the frocks mauma’d made. I nosed through the dressing table drawer, pulling out jewelry, hair ribbons, paper fans, bottles and brushes, and finally, a little box. It glistened dark like my skin when it was wet. I pushed up the latch. Inside was a big silver button. I touched it, then closed the lid the same slow way I’d closed her wardrobe, her drawers, and her books—with my chest filling up. There was so much in the world to be had and not had.
I went back and opened up the desk drawer one more time and stared at the threads. What I did next was wrong, but I didn’t much care. I took the plump spool of scarlet thread and dropped it in my dress pocket.
The Saturday before Easter we all got sent to the dining room. Tomfry said things had gone missing in the house. I went in there thinking, Lord, help me.
There wasn’t nothing worse for us than some little old piece of nonsense disappearing. One dent-up tin cup in the pantry or a toast crumb off missus’ plate and the feathers flew. But this time it wasn’t a piece of nonsense, and it wasn’t scarlet thread. It was missus’ brand new bolt of green silk cloth.
There we were, fourteen of us, lined up while missus carried on about it. She said the silk was special, how it traveled from the other side of the world, how these worms in China had spun the threads. Back then, I’d never heard such craziness in my life.
Every one of us was sweating and twitching, running our hands in our britches pockets or up under our aprons. I could smell the odors off our bodies, which was nothing but fear.
Mauma knew everything happening out there over the wall—missus gave her passes to travel to the market by herself. She tried to keep the bad parts from me, but I knew about the torture house on Magazine Street. The white folks called it the Work House. Like the slaves were in there sewing clothes and making bricks and hammering horseshoes. I knew about it before I was eight, the dark hole they put you in and left you by yourself for weeks. I knew about the whippings. Twenty lashes was the limit you could get. A white man could buy a bout of floggings for half a dollar and use them whenever he needed to put some slave in the right frame of mind.
Far as I knew, not one Grimké slave had gone to the Work House, but that morning, every one of us in the dining room was wondering is this the day.
“One of you is guilty of thieving. If you return the bolt of cloth, which is what God would have you do, then I will be forgiving.”
Uh huh.
Missus didn’t think we had a grain of sense.
What were any of us gonna do with emerald silk?
The night after the cloth vanished, I slipped out. Walked straight out the door. I had to pass by Cindie outside missus??
? door—she was no friend to mauma, and I had to be wary round her, but she was snoring away. I slid into bed next to mauma, only she wasn’t in bed this time, she was standing in the corner with her arms folded over her chest. She said, “What you think you doing?”
I never had heard that tone to her voice.
“Get up, we going back to the house right now. This the last time you sneaking out, the last time. This ain’t no game, Handful. There be misery to pay on this.”
She didn’t wait for me to move, but snatched me up like I was a stray piece of batting. Grabbed me under one arm, marched me down the carriage house steps, cross the work yard. My feet didn’t hardly touch the ground. She dragged me inside through the warming kitchen, the door nobody locked. Her finger rested against her lips, warning me to stay quiet, then she tugged me to the staircase and nodded her head toward the top. Go on now.
Those stair steps made a racket. I didn’t get ten steps when I heard a door open down below, and the air suck from mauma’s throat.
Master’s voice came out of the dark, saying, “Who is it? Who is there?”
Lamplight shot cross the walls. Mauma didn’t move.
“Charlotte?” he said, calm as could be. “What are you doing in here?”
Behind her back, mauma made a sign with her hand, waving at the floor, and I knew she meant me to crouch low on the steps. “Nothing, massa Grimké. Nothing, sir.”
“There must be some reason for your presence in the house at this hour. You should explain yourself now to avoid any trouble.” It was almost kind the way he said it.
Mauma stood there without a word. Master Grimké always did that to her. Say something. If it was missus standing there, mauma could’ve spit out three, four things already. Say Handful is sick and you’re going to see about her. Say Aunt-Sister sent you in here to get some remedy for Snow. Say you can’t sleep for worrying about their Easter clothes, how they gonna fit in the morning. Say you’re walking in your sleep. Just say something.
Mauma waited too long, cause here came missus out from her room. Peering over the step, I could see she had her sleeping cap on crooked.
I have knots in my years that I can’t undo, and this is one of the worst—the night I did wrong and mauma got caught.
I could’ve showed myself. I could’ve given the rightful account, said it was me, but what I did was ball up silent on the stair steps.
Missus said, “Are you the pilferer, Charlotte? Have you come back for more? Is this how you do it, slipping in at night?”
Missus roused Cindie and told her to fetch Aunt-Sister and light two lamps, they were going to search mauma’s room.
“Yessum, yessum,” said Cindie. Pleased as a planter punch.
Master Grimké groaned like he’d stepped in a dog pile, all this nasty business with women and slaves. He took his light and went back to bed.
I followed after mauma and them from a distance, saying words a ten-year-old shouldn’t know, but I’d learned plenty of cuss at the stables listening to Sabe sing to the horses. God damney, god damney, day and night. God damney, god damney, all them whites. I was working myself up to tell missus what’d happened. I left my place beside Miss Sarah’s door and sneaked out to my old room. Mauma brought me back to the house.
When I peered round the door jam into our room, I saw the blankets torn off the bed, the wash basin turned over, and our flannel gunny sack dumped upside down, quilt-fillings everywhere. Aunt-Sister was working the pulley to lower the quilt frame. It had a quilt-top on it with raw edges, bright little threads fluttering.
Nobody looked at me standing in the doorway, just mauma whose eyes always went to me. Her lids sank shut and she didn’t open them back.
The wheels on the pulley sang and the frame floated down to that squeaky music. There on top of the unfinished quilt was a bolt of bright green cloth.
I looked at the cloth and thought how pretty. Lamplight catching on every wrinkle. Me, Aunt-Sister, and missus stared at it like it was something we’d dreamed.
Missus gave us an earful then about how hard it was for her to visit discipline on a slave she’d trusted, but what choice did she have?
She told mauma, “I will delay your punishment until Monday—tomorrow is Easter and I do not want it marred by this. I will not send you off for punishment, and you should be grateful for that, but I assure you your penalty will match your crime.”
She hadn’t said Work House, she’d said off, but we knew what off meant. Least mauma wasn’t going there.
When missus finally turned to me, she didn’t ask what was I doing out here or send me back to Miss Sarah’s floorboards. She said, “You may stay with your mother until her punishment on Monday. I wish her to have some consolation until then. I am not an unfeeling woman.”
Long into that night, I slobbered out my sorrow and guilt to mauma. She rubbed my shoulders and told me she wasn’t mad. She said I never should’ve snuck out of the house, but she wasn’t mad.
I was about asleep when she said, “I should’ve sewed that green silk inside a quilt and she never would’ve found it. I ain’t sorry for stealing it, just for getting caught.”
“How come you took it?”
“Cause,” she said. “Cause I could.”
Those words stuck with me. Mauma didn’t want that cloth, she just wanted to make some trouble. She couldn’t get free and she couldn’t pop missus on the back of her head with a cane, but she could take her silk. You do your rebellions any way you can.
Sarah
On Easter, we Grimkés rode to St. Philip’s Episcopal Church beneath the Pride of India trees that lined both sides of Meeting Street. I’d asked for a spot in the open-air Sulky with Father, but Thomas and Frederick snared the privilege, while I was stuck in the carriage with Mother and the heat. The air oozed through slits that passed for windows, blowing in thinly peeled wisps. I pressed my face against the opening and watched the splendor of Charleston sweep by: bright single houses with their capacious verandas, flower boxes bulging on row houses, clipped jungles of tropical foliage—oleander, hibiscus, bougainvillea.
“Sarah, I trust you’re prepared to give your first lesson,” Mother said. I’d recently become a new teacher in the Colored Sunday School, a class taught by girls, thirteen years and older, but Mother had prodded Reverend Hall to make an exception, and for once her overbearing nature had yielded something that wasn’t altogether repugnant.
I turned to her, feeling the burn of privet in my nostrils. “. . . Yes . . . I studied v-very hard.”
Mary mocked me, protruding her eyes in a grotesque way, mouthing, “. . . V-v-very hard,” which caused Ben to snicker.
She was a menace, my sister. Lately, the pauses in my speech had diminished and I refused to let her faze me. I was about to do something useful for a change, and even if I hemmed and hawed my way through the entire class, so be it. At the moment, I was more concerned I had to teach it paired with Mary.
As the carriage neared the market, the noise mounted and the sidewalks began to overflow with Negroes and mulattoes. Sunday was the slaves’ only day off, and they thronged the thoroughfares—most were walking to their masters’ churches, required to show up and sit in the balconies—but even on regular days, the slaves dominated the streets, doing their owners’ bidding, shopping the market, delivering messages and invitations for teas and dinner parties. Some were hired out and trekked back and forth to work. Naturally, they nicked a little time to fraternize. You could see them gathered at street corners, wharves, and grog shops. The Charleston Mercury railed against the “unsupervised swarms” and called for regulations, but as Father said, as long as a slave possessed a pass or a work badge, his presence was perfectly legitimate.
Snow had been apprehended once. Instead of waiting by the carriage while we were in church, he’d driven it about the city with no one inside—a kind of pleasure ride. He’d
been taken to the Guard House near St. Michael’s. Father was furious, not at Snow, but at the City Guard. He stormed down to the mayor’s court and paid the fine, keeping Snow from the Work House.
A glut of carriages on Cumberland Street prevented us from drawing closer to the church. The onslaught of people who attended services only on Eastertide incensed Mother, who saw to it the Grimkés were in their pew every dull, common Sunday of the year. Snow’s gravelly voice filtered to us from the driver’s seat. “Missus, yawls has to walk from here,” and Sabe swung open the door and lifted us down, one by one.
Our father was already striding ahead, not a tall man, but he looked imposing in his gray coat, top hat, and cravat of silk surah. He had an angular face with a long nose and profuse brows that curled about the ledge of his forehead, but what made him handsome in my mind was his hair, a wild concoction of dark, auburn waves. Thomas had inherited the rich brown-red color, as had Anna and little Charles, but it had come to me in the feeble shade of persimmons and my brows and lashes were so pale they seemed to have been skipped over altogether.
The seating arrangement inside St. Philip’s was a veritable blueprint of Charleston status, the elite vying to rent pews down front, the less affluent in the back, while the pointblank poor clustered on free benches along the sides. Our pew, which Father rented for three hundred dollars a year, was a mere three rows from the altar.
I sat beside Father, cradling his hat upside down on my lap, catching a waft of the lemon oil he used to domesticate his locks. Overhead, in the upper galleries, the slaves began their babble and laughter. It was a perennial problem, this noise. They found boldness in the balcony the way they found it on the streets, from their numbers. Recently, their racket had escalated to such a degree that monitors had been placed in the balconies as deterrents. Despite them, the rumblings grew. Then, thwack. A cry. Parishioners swung about, glaring upward.
By the time Reverend Hall mounted the pulpit, a full-scale hubbub had broken out at the rafters. A shoe sailed over the balcony and plummeted down. A heavy boot. It landed on a lady midway back, toppling her hat and concussing her head.