“Yessum,” he said, and with a glance at Handful, left us.
I bent over and embraced her, looping my arms about her shoulders. After a moment, she raised her arms and patted me on the sides of my ribs.
“Nina said you were coming back. You staying put now?”
“… I might.” I took a seat beside her. “… We’ll see.”
“Well, if I was you, I’d get back on the boat.”
I smiled at her. A strip of dark blue shade draped over us from the eave, darkening as we fell silent. I found myself staring at the distorted way her foot hooked inward, at the soughing rhythm of her hands, at her back curved over her work, and I felt the old guilt.
I plied her with questions: how she’d fared since I left, how Mother had treated her, how the other slaves had held up. I asked if perhaps she had a special friendship with Goodis. She showed me the scar on her forehead, calling it Mother’s handiwork. She said Aunt-Sister’s eyesight was failing and Phoebe did most of the cooking, that Sabe couldn’t hold a candle to Tomfry, and Minta was a good soul who took the brunt of “missus’ nastiness.” At the subject of Goodis, she merely grinned, which gave her away.
“… What do you know about rumors of a slave revolt?” I finally asked.
Her hand grew still for a moment. “Why don’t you tell me what you know about it?”
I repeated what Nina had said about the slave, William Paul, and his claims of an uprising. “… The officials are telling the public they’re untrue,” I added.
She laid the apron down. “They are? They don’t believe it’s true?” Her face was flooded with such relief I got the feeling the revolt was not only real, but that she knew a great deal about it.
“… Even if they believe such a plan exists, they would deny it,” I told her, wanting her to understand the danger. “I doubt they’d acknowledge it publicly. They wouldn’t want to cause a panic. Or tip their hand. If they’ve found the slightest evidence of a plot, believe me, they’ll respond.”
She picked up the needle and thread and the hush fell again, heavier this time. I watched her hand move up and down, making peaks and valleys, then the flash of her thimble, and I remembered us—little girls on the roof, her telling me about the true brass thimble. This same one, I imagined. I could see her lying against the roof tiles, squinting at the blur of sky and clouds, the teacup balanced on her tummy, her dress pocket stuffed with feathers, their ruffled ends poking out. We’d spilled all of our secrets to one another there. It was the closest thing to parity the two of us had ever found. I tried to hold the picture in my mind, to breathe it back to life, but it dissolved.
I didn’t expect her to confide in me anymore. She would keep her secrets now.
Nina and I set out by foot for the tiny Quaker meetinghouse on Sunday, an exceptionally long walk that took us to the other side of the city. We strolled arm in arm as she told me about the letters that had arrived at the house for weeks after my departure, inquiring about my health. I’d forgotten about the consumption story Mother had concocted to explain my absence, and Nina and I laughed about it all the way down Society Street.
A fierce summer rain had swept through overnight and the air was cool and fresh, flooded with the scent of tea olive. Pink bougainvillea petals floated on the rain puddles, and seeing them, having Nina beside me like this on such a glorious day, I felt I might re-find my sense of belonging.
The past ten days had passed in relative quiet. I’d spent the time trying to put the household back in order and having long talks with Nina, who asked endless questions about the North, about the Quakers, about Israel. I’d hoped to avoid all mention of him, but he slipped through the tiny fractures anyway. Handful had avoided me. Gratefully, nothing out of the ordinary had transpired in the city and reports of the slave insurrection had dwindled as folks returned to the business at hand. I’d begun to think I’d overreacted about it.
On this morning I was wearing my “abolition clothes,” as Mother insisted on calling them. As a Quaker, that was all I was permitted to wear, and heaven knows, I was nothing if not earnest. Earlier at breakfast, upon learning of my intention to attend the Quaker Meeting and take Nina with me, Mother had displayed a fit of temper so predictable we’d practically yawned through it. It was just as well she didn’t know we’d decided to walk.
Nearing the market, we began to hear the steady clomp of thunder in the distance, then shouting. As we turned the corner, two slave women broke past us, holding up their skirts and sprinting. Marching toward us were at least a hundred South Carolina militia with their sabers and pistols drawn. They were flanked by the City Guard, who carried muskets instead of their typical truncheons.
It was Market Sunday, a day when the slaves were heavily congregated on the streets. Standing frozen, Nina and I watched them flee in panic as hussars on horseback rushed at them, shouting at them to disperse.
“What’s happening?” Nina said.
I gazed at the pandemonium, oddly stunned. We’d come to a standstill before the Carolina Coffee House, and I thought at first we would duck inside, but it was locked. “We should go back,” I told her.
As we turned to leave, however, a street vendor, a slave girl no more than twelve, bolted toward us, and in her fright and panic, she stumbled, spilling her basket of vegetables across our path. Instinctively, Nina and I bent to help her retrieve the radishes and cabbages and rolling potatoes.
“Step away!” a man yelled. “You!”
Lifting my forehead, I glimpsed an officer trotting toward us on his horse. He was speaking to me and Nina. We straightened, while the girl went on crawling about in the dirt after her bruised wares.
“… We’re doing no harm by assisting her,” I said as he reined to a stop. His attention, though, was not on the turnip in my hand, but on my dress.
“Are you Quaker?”
He had a large, bony face with slightly bulging eyes that made him look more terrorizing perhaps than he truly was, but such logic was lost to me then. Fear and dread rushed up from my throat, and my tongue, feeble creature, lay in my mouth like a slug in its cleft.
“Did you hear me?” he said calmly. “I asked if you’re one of those religious pariahs who agitate against slavery.”
I moved my lips, yet nothing came, only this terrible, silent mouthing. Nina stepped close and interlocked her fingers in mine. I knew she wanted to speak for me, but she refrained, waiting. Closing my eyes, I heard the gulls from the harbor calling to each other. I pictured them gliding on currents of air and resting on swells of water.
“I am a Quaker,” I said, the words arriving without the jerk of hesitation that preceded most of my sentences. I heard Nina release her breath.
Sensing an altercation, two white men stopped to stare. Behind them, I saw the slave girl dashing away with her basket.
“What’s your name?” the officer asked.
“I’m Sarah Grimké. Who, sir, are you?”
He didn’t bother to answer. “You aren’t Judge Grimké’s daughter—surely.”
“He was my father, yes. He has been dead almost three years.”
“Well, it’s a good thing he didn’t live to see you like this.”
“… I beg your pardon? I don’t see that my beliefs are any of your concern.” I had the feeling of floating free from my moorings. What came to me was the memory of being adrift in the sea that day at Long Branch while Father lay ill. Floating far from the rope.
The columns of militia had finally reached us and were passing behind the officer in a wave of noise and swagger. His horse began to bob its head nervously as he raised his voice over the din. “Out of respect for the judge, I won’t detain you.”
Nina broke in. “What right do you have—”
I interrupted, wanting to keep her from wading into waters that were becoming increasingly treacherous. Strangely, I felt no such compunction for myself. “… Detain me?” I said. “On what grounds?”
By now, a horde of people had joined
the two leering men. A man wearing a Sunday morning coat spit in my direction. Nina’s hand tightened on mine.
“Your beliefs, even your appearance, undermine the order I’m trying to keep here,” the officer said. “They disturb the peace of good citizens and give unwanted notions to the slaves. You’re feeding the very kind of insurgency that’s going on right now in our city.”
“… What insurgency?”
“Are you going to pretend you haven’t heard the rumors? There was a plot among the slaves to massacre their owners and escape. That would, I believe, include you and your sister here. It was to take place this night, but I assure you it has been thoroughly outwitted.”
Lifting the reins from the horn of his saddle, he glanced at the passing militia, then turned back to me. “Go home, Miss Grimké. Your presence on the street is unwanted and inflammatory.”
“Go home!” someone in the crowd shouted, and then they all took it up.
I drew myself up, glaring at their angry faces. “… What would you have the slaves do?” I cried. “… If we don’t free them, they will free themselves by whatever means.”
“Sarah!” Nina cried in surprise.
As the crowd began to hurl vicious epithets at me, I took her by the arm and we hurried back the way we’d come, walking quickly. “Don’t look back,” I told her.
“Sarah,” she said, breathless, her voice overflowing with awe. “You’ve become a public mutineer.”
The slave revolt didn’t come that night, or any night. The city fathers had indeed ferreted out the plot through the cruel persuasions of the Work House. During the days that followed, news of the intended revolt ravaged Charleston like an epidemic, leaving it dazed and petrified. Arrests were made, and it was said there would be a great many more. I knew it was the beginning of what would become a monstrous backlash. Residents were already fortifying their fence tops with broken bottles until permanent iron spikes could be installed. The chevaux-de-frise would soon encircle the most elegant homes like ornamental armor.
In the months ahead, a harsh new order would be established. Ordinances would be enacted to control and restrict slaves further, and severer punishments would ensue. A Citadel would be built to protect the white populace. But that first week, we were all still gripped with shock.
My defiance on the street became common knowledge. Mother could barely look at me without blanching, and even Thomas showed up to warn me that the patronage of his firm would be harmed if I persisted in that kind of folly. Only Nina stood by me.
And Handful.
She was cleaning the mahogany staircase late one afternoon in the aftermath of the event when a rock flew through the front window of the drawing room, shattering the pane. Hearing the explosion of glass all the way on the second floor, I hurried down to find Handful with her back pressed against the wall beside the broken window, trying to peer out without being seen. She waved me back. “Watch out, they could toss another one.”
A stone the size of a hen’s egg lay on the rug in a nest of shards. Shouts drifted from the street. Slave lover. Nigger lover. Abolitionist. Northern whore.
We stared at each other as the sounds melted away. The room turned quiet, serene. Light was pouring in, hitting the scattered glass, turning it into pieces of fire on the crimson rug. The sight bereaved me. Not because I was despised, but because of how powerless I felt, because it seemed I could do nothing. I was soon to be thirty, and I’d done nothing.
They say in extreme moments time will slow, returning to its unmoving core, and standing there, it seemed as if everything stopped. Within the stillness, I felt the old, irrepressible ache to know what my point in the world might be. I felt the longing more solemnly than anything I’d ever felt, even more than my old innate loneliness. What came to me was the fleur de lis button in the box and the lost girl who’d put it there, how I’d twice carried it from Charleston to Philadelphia and back, carried it like a sad, decaying hope.
Across the room, Handful strode into the glowing debris on the rug, bent and picked up the stone. I watched as she turned it over in her hands, knowing I would leave this place yet again. I would return north to make what life I could.
Handful
The day of retribution passed without a musket ball getting fired, without a fuse being lit, without any of us getting free, but not one white person would look at us ever again and think we were harmless.
I didn’t know who was arrested and who wasn’t. I didn’t know if Denmark was safe or sorry, or both. Sarah said it was best to stay off the streets, but by Wednesday, I couldn’t wait anymore. I found Nina and told her I needed a pass to get some molasses. She wrote it out and said, “Be careful.”
Denmark was in the bedroom of his house, stuffing clothes and money in a knapsack. Susan led me back there, her eyes bloodshot with crying. I stood in the doorway and breathed the heavy air, and thought, It all came to nothing, but he’s still here.
There was an iron bed against the wall covered with the quilt I’d made to hide the list of names. The black triangles were laid out perfect on the red squares, but they looked sad to me now. Like a bird funeral.
I said to him, “So, where’re you going?”
Susan started to cry, and he said, “Woman, if you’re going to make all that noise, do it somewhere else.”
She pushed past me through the door, sniffling, saying, “Go on to your other wife then.”
I said, “You leaving for another wife?”
The curtain had been yanked closed on the window, leaving a crack on the side where a piece of brightness came in. It pointed at him like a sundial. “It’s a matter of time before they come looking for me here,” he said. “Yesterday they picked up Ned, Rolla, and Peter. The three of them are in the Work House, and I don’t doubt their fortitude, but they’ll be tortured till they name names. If our plans live to see another day, I have to go.”
Dread slid down my back. I said, “What about my name? Will they say my name for stealing the bullet mold?”
He sat down on the bed, on top of the dead blackbird wings, with his arms dangling by his knees. When the recruits used to come to the house, he’d shout, The Lord has spoken to me, and he’d look stern and mighty as the Lord himself, but now he just looked cast down. “Don’t worry,” he said, “they’re after the leader—that’s me. Nobody will say your name.”
I hated to ask him the question, but I needed to know. “What happened to the plans?”
He shook his head. “The thing I worried about was the house slaves who can’t tell where they end and their owners begin. We got betrayed, that’s what happened. One of them betrayed us, and the Guard put spies out there.”
His jaw tightened, and he pushed off the bed. “The day we were set to strike, the troops were built up so heavy our couriers couldn’t get out of the city to spread the call. We couldn’t light the fuses or retrieve the weapons.” He picked up a tin plate with a candle stuck to it and hurled it at the wall. “Goddamn them. Goddamn them to hell. God—” His face twisted.
I didn’t move till his shoulders dropped and I felt the torment leave him. I said, “You did what you could. Nobody will forget that.”
“Yeah, they will. They’ll forget.” He peeled the quilt off the bed and draped it in my arms. “Here, you take this with you and burn the list. Burn it straightaway. I don’t have time.”
“Where will you be?”
“I’m a free black man. I’ll be where I’ll be,” he said, being careful in case Rolla and them said my name after all, and the white men came to torture me.
He picked up the knapsack and headed for the door. It wasn’t the last time I’d see him. But those words, I’ll be where I’ll be, were the last words he ever spoke to me.
I burned the list of names in the stove fire in the kitchen house. Then I waited for what would be.
Denmark was caught four days later in the house of a free mulatto woman. He had a trial with seven judges, and before it was over and done, every perso
n in the city, white and black, knew his name. The hearsay from the trial flooded the streets and alleys and filled up the drawing rooms and the work yards. The slaves said Denmark Vesey was the black Jesus and even if they killed him, he would rise on the third day. The white folks said he was the Frozen Serpent that struck the bosom that sheltered him. They said he was a general who misled his own army, that he never had as many weapons as the slaves thought he did. The Guard found a few pikes and pistols and two bullet molds, but that was all. Maybe Gullah Jack, who managed to stay free till August, made the rest of the arms disappear, but I wondered if Denmark had pulled the truth like taffy the way they said. When I opened the quilt so I could burn the list, I counted two hundred eighty-three names on it, not six thousand like he’d said. Nowadays, I believe he just wanted to strike a flame, thinking if he did that, every able-body would join the fight.
On the day the verdict came, Sabe had me on my hands and knees rolling up carpets and scrubbing floors in the main passageway. The heat was so bad I could’ve washed the soap off the floor with the sweat pouring down my face. I told Sabe floor-scrubbing was winter work and he said, well good, you can do it next winter, too. I swear, I didn’t know what Minta saw in him.
I’d just slipped out to the piazza to catch a breeze when Sarah stepped out there and said, “… I thought you would want to know, Denmark Vesey’s trial is over.”
Course, there wasn’t a way in the world the man was getting free, but still, I reached back for the bannister, weak with hope. She came close to me and laid her hand on my soaked-through dress. “… They found him guilty.”
“What happens to him now?”
“… He’ll be put to death. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t let on anything inside me, the way sorrow was already singing again in the hollow of my bones.
It didn’t cross my mind yet to wonder why Sarah sought me out with the news. She and Nina both knew I left the premises sometimes for reasons of my own, but they didn’t know I went to his house. They didn’t know he called me daughter. They didn’t know he was anything special to me.
The Invention of Wings: A Novel Page 25
