The Invention of Wings: A Novel (29 page)

“Should I assume that female worth, like abolition, is also part of your personal faith?” he said.

“… I’ve long wished for a vocation of my own.”

“You’re a rare woman.”

“Some would say I’m not so much rare, as radical.”

He smiled and his brows lifted on his forehead, their odd tilt deepening. “Is it possible a Quaker lurks beneath that Presbyterian skin of yours?”

“Not at all,” I told him. But later, in private, I wasn’t sure. To condemn slavery was one thing—that I could do in my own individual heart—but female ministers!

Throughout the few remaining days on ship, we continued our talks in the wind-pounded world above deck, as well as the dining quarters, where it smelled of boiled rice and cigars. We discussed not only the Quakers, but theology, philosophy, and the politics of emancipation. He was of the mind that abolition should be gradual. I argued it should be immediate. He’d found an intellectual companion in me, but I couldn’t completely understand why he’d befriended me.

The last night aboard, Israel asked if I would come and meet his family in the dining room. His wife, Rebecca, held their youngest on her lap, a crying tot no more than three, whose red face bounced like a woodpecker against her shoulder. She was one of those slight, gossamer women, whose body seemed spun from air. Her hair was light as straw, drawn back and middle-parted with wisps falling about her face.

She patted the child’s back. “Israel speaks highly of you. He says you’ve been kind enough to listen as he explained our faith. I hope he didn’t tire you. He can be unrelenting.” She smiled at me in a conspiratorial way.

I didn’t want her to be so pretty and charming. “… Well, he was certainly thorough,” I said, and her laughter gurgled up. I looked at Israel. He was beaming at her.

“If you return to the North, you must come and stay with us,” Rebecca said, then she herded the children to their cabin.

Israel lingered a moment longer, pulling out John Woolman’s journal. “Please accept it.”

“But it’s your own copy. I couldn’t possibly take it.”

“It would please me greatly—I’ll get another when I return to Philadelphia. I only ask that after you read it, you write to me of your impressions.” He opened the book and showed me a piece of paper on which he’d written his address.

That night, after I blew out the wick, I lay awake, thinking of the book tucked in my trunk and the address secreted inside.
After you read it, write to me.
The water moved beneath me, rushing toward Charleston into the swaying dark.

W
hen they plan to sell you, the first thing they say is, go wash your teeth. That’s what Aunt-Sister always told us. She said when the slaves got sold on the streets, the white men checked their teeth before anything else. None of us were thinking about teeth after master Grimké died, though. We thought life would go on in the same old grudgeries.

The lawyer showed up to read the will two days after Sarah got back from the North. We gathered in the dining room, every one of the Grimké children and every slave. Seemed odd to me why missus wanted us slaves here. We stood in a straight line in the back of the room, half-thinking we’re part of the family.

Sarah was on one side of the table and Nina on the other. Sarah would look over at her sister with a sad smile, and Nina would glance away. Those two were in a miff.

Missus had on her nice black mourning dress. I wanted to tell her she needed to take it off and let Mariah launder it cause it had gray armpit rings. Seemed like she’d worn it every day since last August, but you couldn’t tell her a thing. The woman got worse in her ways by the day.

The lawyer, his name was Mr. Huger, stood up with a handful of papers and said it was the last will and testament of John Faucheraud Grimké, drawn up last May. He read the wherefores, to wits, and hithermores. It was worse than the Bible.

Missus didn’t get the house. That went to Henry, who wasn’t past eighteen, but least she could stay in it till she died. “I leave her the household furniture, plate, plated ware, a carriage and two of my horses, the stock of liquors and provisions which shall be on hand at the time of my death.” This went on and on. All the goods and chattels.

Then he read something that made the hairs on my arms raise. “She shall receive any six of my Negroes whom she shall choose, and the rest she will sell or disperse among my children, as she determines.”

Binah was standing next to me. I heard her whisper, “Lord, no.”

I looked down the row of slaves. There was just eleven of us now—Rosetta had passed on in her sleep the year before.

She shall receive any six … the rest she will sell or disperse.
Five of us were leaving.

Minta started to sniffle. Aunt-Sister said, “Hush up,” but even her old eyes darted round, looking scared. She’d trained Phoebe too good. Tomfry was getting on with age, too, and Eli’s fingers were twisted like tree twigs. Goodis and Sabe were still young, but you don’t need two slaves in the stable for two horses. Prince was strong and worked the yard, but he had glum spells now, sitting and staring and blowing his nose on his shirt. Mariah was a good worker, and I figured she’d stay, but Binah, she moaned under her breath cause she was the nursery mauma and there was no more children to rear.

I said to myself,
Missus will need a seamstress,
but then I noticed the black dress again. From here on out, all she’d need was a few of those to wear, and she could hire somebody for that.

All of a sudden, Sarah said, “… Father couldn’t have meant that!”

Missus shot her a look of venom. “Your father wrote the words himself, and we’ll honor his wishes. We have no choice. Please allow Mr. Huger to continue.”

When he started back reading, Sarah looked at me with the same sorrowful blue eyes she’d had the day she turned eleven years old and I was standing before her with the lavender ribbon round my neck. The world was a bashed-in place and she couldn’t fix it.

In December, everybody was on their last nerve waiting for missus to say who’d go and who’d stay. If I was sold, how would mauma find me if she came back?

Every night I put a hot brick in my bed to keep my feet warm and lay there thinking how mauma was alive. Out there somewhere. I wondered if the man who bought her was kind. I wondered if he’d put her in the fields. Was she doing any sewing? Did she have my little brother or sister with her? Was she still wearing the pouch round her neck? I knew she’d get back here if she could. This was where her spirit was, in the tree. This was where I was.

Don’t let me be the one that has to go.

Missus didn’t have Christmas that year, but she said go ahead and have Jonkonnu if you want to. That was a custom that got started a few years back brought by the Jamaica slaves. Tomfry would dress up in a shirt and pants tattered with strips of bright cloth sewed on, and a stove pipe hat on his head—what we called the Ragman. We’d traipse behind him, singing and banging pots, winding to the back door. He’d knock and missus and everybody would come out and watch him dance. Then missus would hand out little gifts to us. Could be a coin or a new candle. Sometimes a scarf or a cob pipe. This was supposed to keep us happy.

We didn’t expect to feel in the mood this year, but on Jonkonnu day, here came Tomfry in the yard, wearing his shaggy outfit, and we made a lot of clatter and forgot our troubles for a minute.

Missus stepped out from the back door in the black dress with a basket of gifts, Sarah, Nina, Henry, and Charles behind her. They were trying to smile at us. Even Henry, who took after his mauma, looked like a grinning angel.

Tomfry did his jig. Twirled. Bounced. Wagged his arms. The ribbons whirled out, and when he was done, they clapped, and he took off the tall hat and rubbed the crust of gray on his scalp. Reaching in the basket, missus gave the women these nice fans made with painted paper. The men got two coins, not one.

The sky had been cast down all day, but now the sun broke free. Missus leaned on her gold-tip cane and squinted at us. She called out Tomfry’s name. Then Binah. Eli. Prince. Mariah. She said, “I have something extra for you,” and handed each one a jar of gargling oil.

“You’ve served me well,” she told them. “Tomfry, you will go to John’s household. Binah, you will go to Thomas. Eli, I’m sending you to Mary.” Then she turned to Prince and Mariah. “I’m sorry to say you must be sold. It’s not my wish, but it’s necessary.”

Nobody spoke. The quiet sat on us like a stone you couldn’t lift.

Mariah dropped down and walked on her knees to missus, crying for her to change her mind.

Missus wiped her eyes. Then she turned and went in the house followed by her sons, but Sarah and Nina stayed behind, their faces full of pity.

The axe didn’t fall on me.
Didn’t my Lord deliver Handful?
The axe didn’t fall on Goodis either, and I felt surprise over the relief this caused me. But there was no God in any of it. Nothing but the four of them standing there, and Mariah, still on her knees. I couldn’t bear to look at Tomfry with the hat squashed under his arm. Prince and Eli, studying the ground. Binah, holding her paper fan, staring at Phoebe. A daughter she’d never see again.

Missus doled out their jobs to the ones of us left. Sabe took over for Tomfry as the butler. Goodis had the work yard, the stable, and drove the carriage. Phoebe got the laundry, and Minta and I got Eli’s cleaning duties.

When the first of the year came, missus set me to work on the English chandelier in the drawing room. She said Eli hadn’t shined it proper in ten years. It had twenty-eight arms with crystal shades and teardrops of cut-glass hanging down. Using the ladder and wearing white cotton gloves, I took it apart and laid it out on the table and shined it with ammonia. Then, I couldn’t figure out how to put the thing back together.

I found Sarah in her room, reading a leather book. “We’ll figure it out,” she said. We hadn’t talked much since she got back—she seemed woebegone all the time, always stuck in that same book.

After we finally got the chandelier back on the ceiling in one piece, tears flared up in her eyes. I said, “You sad about your daddy?”

She answered me the strangest way, and I knew what she said was the real hurt she’d brought back with her. “… I’m twenty-seven years old, Handful, and this is my life now.” She looked round the room, up at the chandelier, and back at me. “…
This
is my life. Right here for the rest of my days.” Her voice broke and she covered her mouth with her hand.

She was trapped same as me, but she was trapped by her mind, by the minds of the people round her, not by the law. At the African church, Mr. Vesey used to say,
Be careful, you can get enslaved twice, once in your body and once in your mind
.

I tried to tell her that. I said, “My body might be a slave, but not my mind. For you, it’s the other way round.”

She blinked at me and the tears came again, shining like cut-glass.

The day Binah left, I heard Phoebe crying all the way from the kitchen house.

1 February 1820

Dear Israel,