The Invention of Wings: A Novel (30 page)

How often I have thought of our conversations on board ship! I read the book you entrusted to me and my spirit was deeply kindled. There are so many things I wish to ask you! How I wish we were together again—

3 February 1820

Dear Mr. Morris,

After being away from the evils of slavery for six months, my mind burst with new horror at seeing it again on my return to Charleston. It was made all the worse upon reading the book you gave me. I have nowhere to turn but you—

10 February 1820

Dear Mr. Morris,

I trust you are well. How is your dear wife, Rebecca—

11 February 1820

Thank you, sir, for the book. I find a bewildering beauty in your Quaker beliefs—the notion there is a seed of light inside of us, a mysterious Inner Voice. Would you kindly advise me how this Voice—

I wrote to him over and over, letters I couldn’t finish. Invariably, I would stop mid-sentence. I would lay down the quill, fold the letter, and conceal it with the rest at the back of my desk drawer.

It was the middle of the afternoon, the winter gloom hovering as I pulled out the thick bundle, untied the black satin ribbon, and added the letter of February 11 to the heap. Mailing the letters would only bring anguish. I was too drawn to him. Every letter he answered would incite my feelings more. And it would do no good to have him encouraging me toward Quakerdom. The Quakers were a despised sect here, regarded as anomalous, plain-dressed, and strange, a tiny cluster of jarringly eccentric people who drew stares on the street. Surely, I didn’t need to invite that kind of ridicule and shun. And Mother—she would never allow it.

Hearing her cane on the pine floor outside, I snatched up the letters and yanked open the drawer, my hands fumbling with panic. The stationery cascaded into my lap and onto the rug. As I stooped to collect it, the door swung open without a knock and she stood framed in the opening, her eyes moving across my hidden cache.

I looked up at her with the black ribbon furling from my fingers.

“You’re needed in the library,” she said. I couldn’t detect the slightest curiosity in her about the contents I’d spilled. “Sabe is packing your father’s books—I need you to oversee that he does it properly.”

“Packing?”

“They will be divided between Thomas and John,” she said, and turning, left me.

I gathered up the letters, tied them with the ribbon, and slipped them back into the drawer. Why I kept them, I didn’t know—it was foolish.

When I arrived in the library, Sabe wasn’t there. He’d emptied most of the shelves, stacking the books in several large trunks, which sat open on the floor, the same floor where I’d knelt all those years ago when Father forbade me the books. I didn’t want to think of it, of that terrible time, of the room stripped now, the books lost to me, always lost.

I sank into Father’s chair. The clock in the main passage clicked, magnifying, and I felt the shadows gathering inside of me again, worse this time. Since returning, I’d slipped further into melancholy each day. It was the same trough of darkness I’d fallen into when I was twelve and the life had gone out of everything. Mother had summoned Dr. Geddings back then, and I feared she might do so again. Every day, I forced myself to come down for tea. I endured the visitations from her friends. I kept up my attendance at church, at Bible study, at alms meetings. I sat with Mother in the mornings, hoops of embroidery on our laps, willing the needle through the cloth. She’d given me the task of household records, and each week I sorted through the supplies, writing inventories and procurement lists. The house, the slaves, Charleston, Mother, the Presbyterians—they were the woof and warp of everything.

Nina had pulled away. She was angry at me for remaining in Philadelphia after Father died. “You don’t know what it was like alone here,” she’d cried. “Mother instructed me constantly in the error of my ways, everything from church to slavery to my rebellious nature. It was horrible!”

I’d been the buffer between her and Mother, and my remaining away for so long had left her exposed. “I’m sorry,” I told her.

“You only wrote to me once!” Her beautiful face was contorted with hurt and resentment.
“Once
.
”

It was true. I’d been so enamored with my freedom up there, I hadn’t bothered. “I’m sorry,” I said again.

I knew in time she would forgive the selfish months I’d abandoned her, but I sensed the estrangement came from more than that. At fifteen, she needed to break away, to come out from my shadow, to understand who she was separate from me. My retreat to Philadelphia was only the excuse she needed to declare her independence.

As she fled to her room the day of our confrontation, she shouted, “Mother was right, I have no mind of my own. Only yours!”

We passed now like strangers. I let her be, but it added to my despair.

I stared at the trunks of books on the library floor, remembering the pangs I’d once had for a profession, for some purpose. The world had been such a beckoning place once.

Sabe still had not returned. I got up from my chair and rummaged nostalgically among the books, coming upon
The Sacred Biography of Jeanne d’Arc of France.
I couldn’t say how many times I’d read that wondrous little volume of Saint Joan’s bravery before Father had banned me from his library. Opening it now, I gazed at a sketch of her coat of arms—two
fleurs de lis.
I’d forgotten it was there, and it made sudden sense to me why I’d latched onto the
fleur de lis
button when I was eleven. I slipped the book beneath my shawl.

That night, unable to sleep, I heard the clock downstairs bong two, then three. The rain began soon after, beating without mercy against the piazza and the windows. I climbed from the covers and lit the lantern. I would write to Israel. I would tell him how melancholy swallowed me at times, how I almost felt the grave would be a refuge. I would write yet another letter I wouldn’t mail. Perhaps it would relieve me.

I pulled open the desk drawer and watched the light tumble inside it. There, as I’d left it, was my Bible and my Blackstone commentary, my stationery, ink, pen, ruler, and sealing wax, yet I didn’t see the bundle of letters. I drew the lamp closer and reached my hand into the empty corners. The black ribbon was there, curled like a malicious afterthought. My letters to Israel were gone.

I wanted to scream at her. The need took hold of me with blinding violence, and I flung open my door and rushed down the stairs, clinging to the rail as my feet seemed to sweep out from under me.

I battered her door with my fist, then rattled the knob. It was locked. “… How dare you take them!” I shrieked. “How dare you. Open the door. Open it!”

I couldn’t imagine what she’d thought on reading my intimate implorings to a stranger in the North. A Quaker. A man with a wife. Did she think I’d remained in Philadelphia for him?

Behind the door, I heard her call to Minta, who slept on the floor near her bed. I pounded again. “… Open it! You had no right!”

She didn’t respond, but Nina’s scared voice came from the stair landing. “Sister?”

Looking up, I saw her white gown glowing in the dark, Henry and Charles beside her, the three of them like wraiths.

“… Go to bed,” I said.

Their bare feet slapped the floor and I heard the doors to their rooms bang shut one by one. Turning back, I lifted my fist again, but my rage had begun to recede, flowing back into the terrible place it’d come from. Limp and exhausted, I leaned my head against the door sill, hating myself.

The next morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. I tried very hard, but it was as if something in me had dropped anchor. I rolled my face into the pillow. I no longer cared.

During the days that followed, Handful brought me trays of food, which I barely touched. I had no hunger for anything except sleep, and it eluded me. Some nights I wandered onto the piazza and stared over the rail at the garden, imagining myself falling.

Handful placed a gunny sack beside me on the bed one day. “Open it up,” she said. When I did, the smell of char wafted out. Inside, I found my letters, singed and blackened. She’d found Minta tossing them into the fire in the kitchen house, as Mother had ordered. Handful had rescued them with a poker.

When spring came and my state of mind didn’t improve, Dr. Geddings arrived. Mother seemed genuinely afraid for me. She visited my room with handfuls of drooping jonquils and spoke sweetly, saying I should come for a stroll with her on Gadsden Green, or that she’d asked Aunt-Sister to bake me a rice pudding. She brought me notes of concern from members of my church, who were under the impression I had pleurisy. I would gaze at her blankly, then look away toward the window.

Nina visited, too. “Was it me?” she asked. “Did I cause you to feel like this?”

“Oh, Nina,” I said. “… You must never think that … I can’t explain what’s wrong with me, but it’s not you.”

Then one day in May, Thomas appeared. He insisted we sit on the porch where the air was warm and weighed with the scent of lilacs. I listened as he went on heatedly about a recent compromise in Congress that had undone the ban on slavery in Missouri. “That damnable Henry Clay!” he said. “The Great Pacificator. He has started the cancer spreading again.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. To my surprise, though, I felt curious. Later, I would realize that was Thomas’ intention—creating a little pulley to try and tow me back.

“He’s a fool—he believes letting slavery into Missouri will placate the firebrands down here, but it’s only splitting the country further.” He reached for the newspaper he’d brought and spread it out for me. “Look at this.”

A letter had been printed on the front page of the
Mercury,
which called Clay’s compromise
a fire bell in the night
.

It has awakened and filled me with terror. I consider it the knell of the Union …
The letter was signed,
Thomas Jefferson
.

It’d been so long since I’d cared what was happening out there. Some old wrath sparked in me. Hostility toward slavery must be finding some bold new footing! Why, it sounded as if my brother himself was hostile to it.

“… You are sided with the North?” I asked.

“I only know we can’t go on blind to the sin of putting people in chains. It must come to an end.”

“… Are you freeing your slaves, then, Thomas?” Asking it was vindictive. I knew he had no such intention.

“While you were away, I founded an American colonization chapter here in Charleston. We’re raising money.”

“… Please tell me you’re not still hoping to buy up all the slaves and send them back to Africa?” I hadn’t felt such fervor since my discussions with Israel during the voyage. My cheeks burned with it. “…
That
is your answer to the spreading cancer?”

“It may be a poor answer, Sarah, but I can imagine no other.”

“… Must our imaginations be so feeble as that, Thomas? If the Union dies, as our old president says, it will be from lack of imagination … It will be from Southern hubris, and our love of wealth, and the brutality of our hearts!”

He stood and looked down at me. He smiled. “There she is,” he said. “There’s my sister.”

I cannot say I became my old self after that, but the melancholy gradually lifted, replaced with the jittery feeling of emerging, like a creature without a skin or a shell. I began to eat the rice puddings. I sipped tea steeped in St. John’s Wort, and sat in the sun, and reread the Quaker book. I thought often of the fire bell in the night.

At midsummer, without any forethought, I took out a sheet of stationery.

19 July 1820

Dear Mr. Morris,

Forgive my long delay in writing to you. The book you gave me last November aboard ship has been my faithful companion for all this time. The Quaker beliefs beckon to me, but I do not know if I have the courage to follow them. There would be a great and dreadful cost, of that I’m certain. I ask nothing, except your counsel.

Yours Most Truly,

Sarah Grimké

I gave the letter to Handful. “Guard it carefully,” I told her. “Post it yourself in the afternoon mail.”