The Invention of Wings: A Novel (27 page)

I meant only to wade in the surf. I removed my shoes and placed them beside the portable changing house that had been wheeled out onto the sand. At that moment, the friendly sister, Althea, drew back the canvas and stepped out wearing a red-and-black-striped bathing gown with a peplum flounce and balloon sleeves. I wished Handful could’ve seen it.

“How lovely. Are you finally bathing with us?” she said.

“… Oh, no, I don’t have the attire for it.”

She scrutinized my face, which must’ve radiated unhappiness in every direction, for she announced she’d suddenly lost the desire to bathe and it would please her enormously if I would don her dress and take a plunge. After my conversation with Father, I felt flayed open, all pulp and redness. I wanted to disappear somewhere alone, yet I looked at the rope-line of women jutting into the sea, and then beyond it at the green mountains of water, so limitless and untamed, and I accepted her offer.

She smiled when I emerged from the changing room. She had no cap, and I’d unpinned my hair, which was flaming out in the wind. She said I looked like a mermaid.

I took hold of one of the ropes and followed it into the waves, hand over fist, until I came to where the rest of the ladies stood. The water slapped our thighs, tossing us to and fro, a tiny game of Snap the Whip, and then without knowing what I was about to do, I turned loose and strode away from them. I pushed into the seething water, and when I was some distance, I dropped onto my back and floated. It was a shock to feel the water hold me. To lie in the sea while upstairs my father lay dying.

9 August 1819

Dear Mother,

The Bible assures us that God shall wipe away every tear from our eyes …

I lowered my pen. I didn’t know how to tell her. It seemed strange I should be the one informing her of such news. I’d imagined her gathering us, her children, into the drawing room and saying,
Your father has gone to God
. How was it possible this had fallen to me?

Instead of the distinguished funeral he would’ve had in Charleston—the pomp of St. Philip’s, a stately procession along Meeting Street, his coffin mounted on a flowered carriage and half the city walking behind it—instead of all that, he would be buried anonymously in the overgrown cemetery behind the tiny Methodist church we’d passed on the way here. A farm wagon would pull his casket. I would walk behind it, alone.

But I would tell Mother none of this. Nor would I tell her that at the hour of his death, I was floating free in the ocean, in a solitude I would remember all of my life, the gulls cawing over my head and the white flag flying at the top of the pole.

M
issus’ eyes were swollen shut from crying. It was the middle of the morning and she was in bed with her sleeping clothes on. The mosquito net was drawn round her and the curtains were pulled on the windows, but I could see her lids puffed out. Minta, the new girl, was over in the corner trying to disappear.

When missus tried to speak to me, she broke down crying. I felt for her. I knew what it was to lose a person. What I didn’t know was why she’d called me to her room. All I could do was stand there and wait for her to get hold of herself.

After a few minutes, she yelled at Minta, “Are you or are you not going to bring me a hankie?”

Minta went scrambling through a drawer in the linen press, and missus turned to me. “You should start on my dress immediately. I want black velvet. With beading of some kind. Mrs. Russell had jet beads on hers. I will need a spoon bonnet with a long crepe veil down the back. And black gloves, but make them fingerless mitts because of the heat. Are you remembering this?”

“Yessum.”

“It must be ready in two days. And it must be flawless, Hetty, do you understand? Flawless. Work through the night if you have to.”

Seemed like she’d gotten hold of herself real tight.

She wrote me a pass for the market and sent me in the carriage with Tomfry, who was going out to purchase the mourning cards. Said it would take too much time for me to hobble all that way and back. That’s how I got the first carriage ride of my life. Along the way, Tomfry said, “Wipe the grin off your face, we supposed to be grieving.”

In the market, I was at the high-class stalls looking for the beads missus had to have when I came upon Mr. Vesey’s wife, Susan. I hadn’t seen her since the first of the summer when I’d gone to 20 Bull.

“Look what the field cat dragged up,” she said. I guess she still had her dander up.

I wondered what all she knew. Maybe she’d listened in that day I’d talked to Mr. Vesey. She could know about mauma, the baby, everything.

I didn’t see any sense in keeping the feud going. “I don’t have a bicker with you. I won’t be bothering you anymore.”

That took the nettle from her. Her shoulders dipped and her face turned soft. That’s when I noticed the scarf she was wearing. Red. Edges sewed with a perfect chain stitch. Little oil spots on the side. I said, “That’s my mauma’s head scarf.”

Her lips opened like the stopper had popped from the bottle. I waited, but she stood there, with her mouth empty.

“I know that scarf,” I said.

She set down her basket of cottons and took it off her head. “Go on, take it.”

I ran my finger along the stitched hem, cross the creases where her hair had been. I undid the scarf on my head and tied mauma’s on. Low on my forehead, the way she wore it.

“How’d you get it?” I said.

She shook her head. “I guess you ought to know. The night your mauma disappeared, she showed up at our door. Denmark said the Guard would be looking for a woman with a red scarf, so I took hers and gave her one of mine. A plain brown one that wouldn’t draw notice.”

“You helped her? You helped her get away?”

She didn’t give any kind of answer, she said, “I do what Denmark says do.” Then she sashayed off with her head stripped bare.

I sewed through that day and night and all the next day and night, and the whole time I wore mauma’s scarf. The whole time I thought about her showing up at Mr. Vesey’s that night, how he knew more than he was saying.

Every time I took the dress upstairs for fittings, the house would be in a tizzy getting ready for the mourners. Missus said half the city was coming. Aunt-Sister and Phoebe were baking funeral biscuits and seeing to the tea sets. Binah shrouded the paintings and mirrors with black swags and Eli was put to cleaning. Minta had the worst job, in there getting hankies and taking the brunt.

Tomfry set up master Grimké’s portrait in the drawing room and fixed a table with tokens. Had his beaver top hat and stick pins and the books of law he wrote. Thomas brought over a cloth banner that said,
Gone, But Not Forgotten,
and Tomfry put that on the table, too, with a clock stopped to the hour of his death. Missus didn’t know the time exact. Sarah had written he passed in the late afternoon, so missus said, just make it 4:30.

When she wasn’t crying, she was fuming that Sarah hadn’t had the sense to cut off a lock of master Grimké’s hair and put it in the letter. It left her without anything to go in her gold mourning brooch. Another thing she didn’t like was the notice that came out in the
Mercury.
It said he’d been laid to rest in the North without family or friends and this would surely be a travail to a great son of South Carolina.

I don’t know how I got the dress done in time. It was the finest dress I ever made. I strung hundreds of black glass beads, then sewed the strands into a collar that looked like a spider web. I fitted it round the neck and let it drape to the bust. When missus saw it, she said the one and only kind thing I can’t forget. She said, “Why, Hetty, your mother would be proud.”

I went through the window and over the wall on a Sunday after the callers had quit coming by to give their condolence. It was our day off and the servants were lolling round and missus was shut away in her room. I had a short walk past the front of the house before I could feel safe, and coming round the side of it, I saw Tomfry on the front steps, haggling with the slave boy who huckstered fish. They were bent over what looked like a fifty-pound basket of flounders. I put my head down and kept going.

“Handful! Is that you?”

When I looked up, Tomfry was staring at me from the top step. He was old now, with milk in his eyes, and it crossed my mind to say,
No, I’m somebody else,
but then, he could’ve seen the cane in my hand. You couldn’t misjudge that. I said, “Yeah, it’s me. I’m going to the market.”

“Who said you could go?”

I had Sarah’s pass in my pocket, but seemed like he’d question that—she was still up north, waiting to sail home. I stood on the sidewalk stuck to the spot.

He said, “What you doing out here? Answer me.”

Off in my head, I could hear the treadmill grind.

A shape moved at the front window.
Nina.
Then the front door opened, and she said, “What is it, Tomfry?”

“Handful out here. I’m trying to see what she’s doing.”

“Oh. She’s doing an errand for me, that’s all. Please say nothing to Mother, I don’t want her bothered.” Then she called down to me, “Carry on.”

Tomfry went back to the fish huckster. I couldn’t get my legs to move fast enough. At George Street, I stopped and looked back. Nina was still out there, watching me go. She lifted her hand and gave me a wave.

Close to 20 Bull, there was a little jug band going—three boys blowing on big jars and Gullah Jack, Mr. Vesey’s man, slapping his drum. A crowd of colored folks was gathered, and two of the women started doing what we called stepping. I stopped to watch cause they were Strutting Miss Lucy. Mostly, I kept my eye on Gullah Jack. He had fat side whiskers and was bouncing on his short legs. When he finished the tune, he tucked the drum under his arm and headed down the street to Mr. Vesey’s. Me, following behind.

I could see smoke from the kitchen house, and went back there and knocked. Susan let me in, saying, “Well, I’m surprised it took you this long.” She said I could give her some help, the men were in the front room, meeting.

“Meeting about what?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t wanna know.”

I helped her chop cabbages and carrots for their supper, and when she carried a bottle of Madeira to them, I trailed her. I waited outside the door, while she poured their glasses, but I could see them at the table: Mr. Vesey, Gullah Jack, Peter Poyas, Monday Gell, plus two who belonged to the governor, Rolla Bennett and Ned Bennett. I knew every one of them from church. They were all slaves, except Mr. Vesey. Later on, he’d start calling them his lieutenants.

I slunk back into the hallway and let Susan go back to the kitchen house without me. Then I eased to the door, close as I could without getting seen.

It sounded like Mr. Vesey was divvying up all the slaves in the state. “I’ll take the French Negroes on the Santee, and Jack, you take the slaves on the Sea Islands. The ones that’ll be hard to enlist are the country slaves out on the plantations. Peter, you and Monday know them best. Rolla, I’m giving you the city slaves, and Ned, the ones on the Neck.”

His voice dropped and I crept a little closer. “Keep a list of everybody you draft. And keep that list safe on pain of death. Tell everybody, be patient, the day is coming.”