The Invention of Wings: A Novel

by Sue Monk Kidd

  Denmark believed nothing would change without blood spilled. Plopped in the rocker now, I thought about Nina, her lecturing to five spoilt white girls, and Sarah being so upset with the way her world was, she had to leave it, and while I felt the goodness in what they did, it seemed their lecturing and leaving didn’t come to much when you had this much cruelty to overcome.

  The retribution was coming and we’d bring it ourselves. Blood was the way. It was the only way, wasn’t it? I was glad now Sarah was far away from danger, and I would have to keep Nina safe. I said to myself, Let not your heart be troubled. Neither let it be afraid.

  Sarah

  I snapped open the crisp white table cloth, unfurling it upward, watching it turn into a small ovoid cloud before it sank onto the pine needles.

  “This isn’t the cloth we use for picnics,” Catherine said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  Her criticisms of me were similar to her prayers—sacred, daily, and unsmiling. I was careful now. I taught the children, but I tried not to appear mothering. I deferred to Catherine in all household matters—if she put salt in the cake, she put salt in the cake. And Israel—I didn’t so much as look at him when she was in the room.

  “… I’m sorry,” I told her. “… I thought you said to get the white cloth.”

  “It will have to be bleached and clear starched. Let’s pray there’s no pine sap on the ground.”

  God, no pine sap. Please.

  It was the first day of April, which also happened to be Becky’s seventh birthday and the first day all year one could actually call warm. After my first winter in the North, I had an entirely new appreciation for heat. I’d never seen snow before arriving here, and when it’d come, the Pennsylvania sky split open like a vast goose down comforter and the entire world turned to feathers. The first time it happened, I slipped outside and wandered about catching flakes in my hands and on my tongue, letting them settle into my hair, which I’d left long and flowing down my back. Returning to the house, I spotted Israel and several of the children watching me from the window, looking quite astonished. My enchantment turned to slush about the same time the snow did. We seemed stuck in a perpetual twilight. Color bled from the world, recasting the landscape into gradations of black and white, and no matter how ruthlessly the fireplaces roared, cold formed on my Charleston bones like hoarfrost.

  The picnic had been my idea. Quakers didn’t celebrate holidays—all days were treated equally, meant to be lived with the same simplicity—but Israel was known to hedge a bit on the children’s birthdays. He was home working that day, shut in his study with invoices and ledgers and bills of exchange. Having enough sense not to go to Catherine with my whim, I’d interrupted him mid-morning.

  “… Spring has come,” I’d said. “Let’s not squander it … A picnic will do us all good, and you should see Becky, she’s so excited to be seven … A little celebration wouldn’t hurt, would it?”

  He set down the account book in his hand and gazed at me with a slow, defenseless smile. It’d been months since he’d touched me. Back in the fall he’d often held my hand or slid his arm about my waist as we walked back up the hill from the pond, but then winter came, and the walks ceased as he retreated, going off inside himself somewhere to hibernate. I didn’t know what had happened until one morning in January when Catherine announced it was the second anniversary of Rebecca’s death. She seemed to take morose joy in explaining how deeply her brother was mourning, even more so this winter than the one before.

  “All right, have the picnic, but no birthday cake,” Israel said.

  “… I wouldn’t dream of anything so decadent as cake,” I replied, beaming, mocking him a little, and he laughed outright.

  “You should come, too,” I added.

  His eyes veered to the locket, lying on his desk, the one with the daffodils and his wife’s name engraved on it.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “I have a great deal of work to do here.”

  “… Well, try and join us. The children would like that.” I left, wishing I weren’t so dismayed by him at times, at how mercurial he could be, embracing one day, stand-offish the next.

  Now, as I gazed down at the white cloth spread on the lawn, it wasn’t even disappointment I felt, it was anger. He hadn’t come.

  Catherine and I laid out the contents of the basket, a dozen boiled eggs, carrots, two loaves of bread, apple butter, and a kind of soft cheese Catherine had made by boiling cream and drying it in a cloth. The children had found a thatch of mint at the woods’ edge and were crushing the leaves between their fingers. The air pulsed with the smell of it.

  “Oh,” I heard Catherine say. She was gazing toward the house, at Israel striding toward us through the brown grass.

  We ate sitting on the ground with our faces turned to the bright crater of sky. When we finished, Catherine pulled gingerbread from the basket and stacked the slices in a pyramid. “The top slice is for you, Becky,” she said.

  It was evident how much Catherine loved the child and all the rest of them, and I felt a sudden remorse for all my ill thoughts of her. The children grabbed the gingerbread and scattered, the boys toward the trees and the two girls off to pluck the wild flowers beginning to poke through the sod, and it was at this moment, as Catherine busied herself clearing things away, that I made a terrible mistake.

  I languished, leaning back on my elbows within an arm’s length of Israel, feeling that he’d returned from his long hibernation and wanting to bask in the thought of it. Catherine’s back was to us, and when I looked at Israel, he had that yearning expression again, the sad, burning smile, and he dared to slide his little finger across the cloth and hook it about mine. It was a small thing, our fingers wrapped like vines, but the intimacy of it flooded me, and I caught my breath.

  The sound made Catherine turn her head and peer at us over her shoulder. Israel snatched his finger from mine. Or did I snatch mine from his?

  She leveled her eyes on him. “So, it is as I suspected.”

  “This is not your business,” he told her. Getting to his feet, he smiled regretfully at me and walked back up the hill.

  She didn’t speak immediately, but when I tried to assist her in packing the basket, she said, “You must move out and find lodging elsewhere. It’s unseemly for you to be here. I will speak to Israel about your leaving, but it would be better if you left on your own without him having to intervene.”

  “… He wouldn’t ask me to leave!”

  “We must do what propriety calls for,” she said, and then surprised me by placing her hand on mine. “I’m sorry, but it’s best this way.”

  The eleven of us sat on a single pew in the Arch Street Meetinghouse—the eight Morris children bookended by Israel on one side and by Catherine and me on the other. I thought it unnecessary that we should all be here for what was called “a meeting for worship with a concern for business.” It was a business meeting, for heaven’s sake, plain and simple. They occurred monthly, but I typically remained at home with the children, while Israel and Catherine attended. This time, she’d insisted we all attend.

  Catherine had wasted little time in approaching Israel after the picnic, and he’d stood his ground—I would stay at Green Hill. If the locket incident had cooled the air between Catherine and me, my refusal to leave and Israel’s refusal to back her had turned it bitter. I only hoped in time she would come around.

  Inside the meeting room, a woman stood to convene the meeting by reading a verse from the Bible. She was the only female minister among us. She looked no more than my own age of twenty-nine, young for such an achievement. The first time I’d heard her speak in Meeting, it had been with a kind of awe. I thought of it now with a pang of jealousy. I’d made the essence of the Quaker faith my own, but so far I’d refrained from making a single utterance in Meeting.

  As business began, the members brought forth a series of mind-dulling matters. Two of Israel’s sons were quietly shoving at one another, and the youngest had
fallen asleep. How senseless of Catherine to drag us here, I thought.

  She rose, arranging her shawl about her small, brittle shoulders. “I’m compelled by the Spirit to bring forth a matter of concern.”

  I jerked my head upward, gazing at the set edge of her chin, and then at Israel on the opposite end of the row, who appeared as surprised as I was.

  “I ask that we come to unity on the necessity of finding a new home for our beloved probationer, Sarah Grimké,” Catherine said. “Miss Grimké is an outstanding teacher to Israel’s children and a help to me with housely duties, and she is, of course, a Christian of the highest order, and it’s important that no one inside or outside of our community be able to question the decorum of an unmarried woman living in the home of a widower. It pains us at Green Hill to see her leave, but it’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make for the greater good. We ask that you assist us in her relocation.”

  I stared at the unvarnished wood floor and the hem of her dress, unable almost to draw a breath.

  I recall only a portion of what the members said in the aftermath of her insidious speech. I remember being hailed for my scruples and my sacrifice. I remember words like honorable, selfless, praiseworthy, imperative.

  When the whir of voices finally faded, an elderly man said, “Are we in unity on the matter? If you stand in opposition, please acknowledge yourself.”

  I stand in opposition. I, Sarah Grimké. The words strained against my ribs and became lost. I wanted to refute what Catherine had said, but I didn’t know where to begin. She’d ingeniously transformed me into an exemplar of goodness and self-denial. Any rebuttal I made would seem to contradict that and perhaps end my chances of being accepted into the Quaker fold. The thought of that pained me. Despite their austerity, their hair splitting, they’d put forth the first anti-slavery document in history. They’d showed me a God of love and light and a faith centered on individual conscience. I didn’t want to lose them, nor did I want to lose Israel, which I would surely do, if my probation failed.

  I couldn’t move, not the tiniest muscle in my tongue.

  Israel slid up on the pew as if he might stand and speak on my behalf, but he lingered there, balling his fist and pressing it into the palm of his hand. Catherine had put him in the same untenable position as me—he wanted to give no one a reason to question what went on in his house, especially the good people of Arch Street who were at the center of his life, who’d known and cherished Rebecca. I could understand this. Yet watching him hesitate now on the edge of his seat, I had the feeling his reluctance to speak out publicly for me stemmed from something even deeper, from some submerged, almost sovereign need to protect his love for his wife. I knew suddenly it was the same reason he hadn’t declared his feelings for me privately. He cast a tortuous look at me and eased back on the bench.

  At the front of the room, the female minister sat on the “Facing bench” along with the other ministers, scrutinizing me, noticing the glimmers of distress I couldn’t hide. Gazing back at her, I imagined she saw down to the things in my heart, things I was just coming to know myself. He might never claim me.

  She nodded at me suddenly and stood. “I’m in opposition. I see no reason for Miss Grimké to move out. It would be a great disruption for her and a hardship for all involved. Her conduct is not in question. We should not be so concerned with outward appearances.”

  Taking her seat, she smiled at me, and I thought I might cry at the sight of it.

  She was the only one to offer a dissent to Catherine. The Quakers decided I would depart Green Hill within the month and duly recorded it in the Minute Book.

  After the meeting, Israel left quickly to bring the carriage around, but I went on sitting on the pew, trying to gather myself. I couldn’t think where I would go. Would I still teach the children? As Catherine steered them toward the door, Becky looked back at me, twisting against Catherine’s hands, which were fastened like a harness on her small back.

  “Sarah? May I call you Sarah?” It was my defender.

  I nodded. “… Thank you for speaking as you did … I’m grateful.”

  She thrust a folded piece of paper at me. “Here’s my address. You are welcome to stay with me and my husband.” She started to go, then turned back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself, did I? My name is Lucretia Mott.”

  Handful

  In the workshop at Denmark’s house, the lieutenants were standing round the work table. They were always by Denmark’s side. He told them he’d set the date, two months from now, said there were six thousand names in the Book.

  I was back in the corner, listening, crouched on a footstool, my usual spot. Nobody much noticed me there unless they needed something to drink. Handful, bring the hooch water, Handful, bring the ginger beer.

  It was April and half the heat from hell had already showed up in Charleston. The men were dripping with it. “These last weeks, you need to play the part of the good slave better than ever,” Denmark said. “Tell everybody to grit their teeth and obey their owners. If somebody was to tell the white folks a slave revolt is coming, we need them to laugh and say, ‘Not our slaves, they’re like family. They’re the happiest people on earth.’”

  While they talked, mauma came to my mind, and the picture I had of her was washed-out like the red on a quilt after it’s boiled too many times. It’d got sometimes where I couldn’t remember how her face looked, where the ridges had been on her fingers from working the needle, or what she smelled like at the end of the day. Whenever this happened, I’d go out to the spirit tree. That’s where I felt mauma the sharpest, in the leaves and bark and dropping acorns.

  Sitting there, I shut my eyes and tried to get her back, worried she was leaving me for good. Aunt-Sister would’ve said, “Let her go, it’s past the time,” but I wanted the pain of mauma’s face and hands more than the peace of being without them.

  I thought for a minute I’d slip out and go back to the spirit tree—take my chance going over the gate before dark, but Missus had caught me slipping over it last month and put a gash on my head that was just scabbing over. She’d told Sabe, “If Handful gets out again without permission, I’ll have you whipped along with her.” Now he had bug eyes in the back of his head.

  I tried to set my mind on what the men were saying.

  “What we need is a bullet mold,” Denmark said. “We got muskets, but we don’t have musket balls.”

  They went down the list of weapons. I’d known there’d be blood, but I didn’t know it’d run down the streets. They had clubs, axes, and knives. They had stolen swords. They had kegs of gunpowder and slow fuses hid under the docks they meant to set off round the city and burn it to the ground.

  They said a blacksmith slave named Tom was making five hundred pikes. I figured he had to be the same Tom the Blacksmith who made mauma’s fake slave badge back when she’d started hiring herself out. I remembered the day she’d showed it to me. That small copper square with a pinhole at the top, said Domestic Servant, Number 133, Year 1805. I could see all that, but I couldn’t get mauma’s face to come clear.

  I had a tiny jay feather down in my pocket I’d picked up on the way over here, and I pulled it out and twirled it between my fingers, just something to do, and next thing I was thinking about was the time mauma saw a bird funeral. When she was a girl, she and my granny-mauma came on a dead crow lying under their spirit tree. They went to get a scoop to bury it, and when they came back, seven crows were on the ground circling round the dead bird, carrying on, not caw caw, but zeep zeep, a high-pitch cry like a mourning chant. My granny-mauma told her, “See, that’s what birds do, they stop flying and hunting food and swoop down to tend their dead. They march round it and cry. They do this so everything know: once this bird lived and now it’s gone.”

  That story brought the bright red of mauma back to me. Her picture came perfect in my mind. I saw the yellow-parch of her skin, the calluses on her knuckles, the gold-lit eyes, and the gap in her teeth, the exa
ct wideness of it.

  “There’s a bullet mold at the City Arsenal on Meeting Street,” Gullah Jack said. “But getting in there—well, I don’t know.”

  “How many guards they got?” Rolla asked.

  Gullah Jack rubbed his whiskers. “Two, sometimes three. The place has the whole stockpile of weapons for the Guard, but they’re not letting one of us stroll in there.”

  “Getting in would mean a fight,” Denmark said, “and that’s one thing we can’t afford. Like I said, the main thing now is not to rouse suspicion.”

  “What about me?” I said.

  They turned and looked at me like they’d forgotten I was in the room.

  “What about you?” said Denmark.

  “I could get in there. Nobody looks twice at a slave woman who’s lame in one leg.”

  Sarah

  As dusk hovered, I sat at the desk in my room and slit open a letter from Nina. I’d been at Green Hill almost a year, and I’d written her every month without fail, small dispatches about my life and inquiries about hers, but she’d never replied to any of them, not one, and now here was an envelope with her large calligraphy and I could only imagine the worst.

  14 March 1822

  Dear Sister,

  I’ve been a poor correspondent and a poorer sister. I didn’t agree with your decision to go north, and I haven’t changed my mind about it, but I have behaved badly, and I hope you will forgive me.

  I’m at my wit’s end about our mother. She grows more difficult and violent each day. She rants that we’ve been left without sufficient means to live and she blames Thomas, John, and Frederick for failing to take care of her. Needless to say, they come infrequently, and Mary never comes, only Eliza. Since your departure, Mother spends most of her day shut in her room, and when she emerges, it’s only to rage against the slaves. She swings her cane at them over the least thing. She recently hit Aunt-Sister for nothing more than burned loaves of bread. Last evening, she struck Handful when she spotted her climbing over the back gate. I should add that Handful was climbing into the work yard, not out of it, and when Mother asked for an explanation, Handful said she’d seen a wounded pup in the alley and gone over the gate to help the creature. She insisted she was returning from that momentary mission of mercy, but I don’t think Mother believed her. I certainly didn’t. Mother broke the skin over Handful’s brow, which I bandaged the best I could.