The Invention Of Wings Part 10

We walked in a hurry, outpacing the carriages. Mauma didn't use her wooden cane anymore except special occasions. Those came along when she needed a letup from missus. She'd tell her, "Looks like the cure I prayed for my leg has worn off. I just need to rest up and pray for a few days." Out came the cane.

Mauma's free black man lived at 20 Bull. It was a white frame single house, had black shudders with the paint flecking off and scruffy bushes round the porch. She shook the powder sh.e.l.l from the street off her hemline and said, "If I stand here, he see me and come right out."

"So we're supposed to stand here till he looks out the window?"

"You want me to go up there and knock on the door? If his wife come, you want me to say, 'Tell your husband his girlfriend out here?'"

"How come you're fooling with somebody who has a wife anyway?"

"They not married legal, she his free-wife. He got two more of 'em, too. All mulatto."

As she said the word, mulatto, he stepped from the house and stood on the porch looking at us. A bull of a man. I wanted to say, Well he sure does live on the right street. He was thickset and solid with a big chest and large forehead.

When he came over, mauma said to him, "This my girl, Handful."

He nodded. I could see he was stern, and proud. He said, "I'm Denmark Vesey."

Mauma sidled up to him and said for my benefit, "Denmark is a country next to France, and a real fine one, too." She smiled at him in a way I had to look away from.

He slid his hand up the side of her arm, and I eased off down the street. If they wanted to carry on, all right, but I didn't have to stand there and watch it.

In the coming year, we'd make this visit to 20 Bull more times than I care to tell. The two lovebirds would go in his workshop, and I'd sit outside and wait. After they were done, he'd come out and talk. And he could talk, Lord, could that man talk. Denmark the man never had been to Denmark the country, just the Danish Islands. To hear him tell it, though, he'd been everywhere else. He'd traveled the world with his owner Captain Vesey, who sailed a slave s.h.i.+p. He spoke French, Danish, Creole, Gullah, and the King's English. I heard him speak every one of these tongues. He came from the Land of Barbados and liked to say Charleston didn't trust slaves from there, cause they'd slit your throat. He said Charleston wanted salt.w.a.ter blacks from Africa who knew rice planting.

The worst troubling thing he told me was how his neighbor down the street-a free black named Mr. Robert Smyth-owned three slaves. Now what you supposed to do with something like that? Mr. Vesey had to take me to the man's house to meet the slaves before I allowed any truth to it. I didn't know whether this Mr. Smyth was behaving like white people, or if it just showed something vile about all people.

Denmark Vesey read the Bible up and down. Give him five minutes and he'd tell you the story of Moses leading slaves from Egypt. He'd have the sea parting, frogs falling from the sky, firstborn baby boys stabbed in their beds. He mouthed a Bible verse from Joshua so many times, it still comes to me in full. They utterly destroyed all that were in the city, both man and woman, both young and old. The man was head-smart and reckless. He scared the wits out of me.

The two of us had a clash the first day we met. Like I said, I'd eased off down the street to let them know I didn't have a need to see their urges. The street was busy, everybody from free blacks to the mayor and the governor lived on it, and when a white woman came along, walking in my path, I did the common thing you do-I stepped to the side to let her pa.s.s. It was the law, you were supposed to give way on the street, but here came Denmark Vesey charging down to where I stood with fury blowing from his nostrils, and mauma looking panic right behind him. He yanked me by the arm, yelled, "Is this the sort of person you want to be? The kind that steps aside? The kind that grovels in the street?"

I wanted to say, Get your hand off me, you don't know nothing about me, I bathe in a copper tub, and you're standing here and stink to heaven. The air round my head turned thick and my throat tightened on it. I managed to say, "Let me go."

Behind him, mauma said, a little too sweet for my taste, "Take your hand off her."

He dropped his grip. "Don't let me see that from you again." Then he smiled. And mauma, she smiled, too.

We walked home without a word between us.

Inside the Grimke house, the door to the library was open. The room was empty, so I went in and spun the globe. It made a screech sound. Like a nail on a slate board. Binah said that sound was the devil's toenail. I looked over all the countries on the globe, round the whole earth. Denmark wasn't next to France, it was up by Prussia, but looking at it, I knew why mauma chose him. He'd been places, and he was going places, and he set her alight with the notion she'd go places, too.

Sarah.

Nina came up with the idea that my speech infirmity might be cured by kneading my tongue, a process typically applied to dough. The child was nothing if not pioneering. She'd listened to my tortured sentences throughout the summer and into the fall and came to believe the ornery protuberance in my mouth could be molded in a way that caused words to plump and rise as effortless as yeast. She was six and a half.

Once Nina was seduced by a problem, she wouldn't give up until she'd improvised a solution and acted on it, and these solutions of hers could be outlandish, but also wondrously imaginative. Not wis.h.i.+ng to dampen this fascinating proclivity of hers, I stuck out my tongue and allowed her to grasp it with what I hoped to be a clean drying towel.

This experiment was being performed on the second-floor piazza-me, sitting on the swing, neck craned, mouth open, eyes bulging-the vision of a voracious baby bird awaiting her worm, though to any observer, I'm sure it appeared the worm was being extracted rather than deposited.

An autumn sun was climbing over the harbor, spilling like yolk onto the clouds. From the corner of my watering eye, I could see the sheen of it angling sharply toward Sullivan's Island. Mr. Williams and I had cantered along that island's sh.o.r.eline on horseback in what had turned out to be a sullen affair. Fearing my freshly returned stammer would cause him to abandon the courts.h.i.+p, I'd barely opened my mouth. Nevertheless, he'd continued to call-there'd been five occasions since I'd returned from Belmont last June. I expected each one to be the last. The boundary of feeling between Nina and me was permeable to a fault, and I believe my fear had become Nina's. She seemed uncommonly determined to cure me.

Grasping my tongue, she pressed and pulled. In return, it flailed like the tentacle of an octopus.

She sighed. "Your tongue is being implacable."

Implacable! Where did the little genius get these words? I was teaching her to read, as I'd once taught Handful, but I was sure I'd never introduced the word implacable.

"And you are holding your breath," she added. "Let it out. Try to loosen yourself."

Very bossy she was, too. Already she possessed more authority and self-a.s.surance than I. ". . . I'll try," I said, though perhaps what really happened was an accidental not-trying. I closed my eyes and breathed, and in my mind, I saw the bright water in the harbor and then the image of Handful's bathwater streaming over the side of the piazza like a falling ribbon, and I felt my tongue unknot and grow tranquil beneath Nina's fingers.

I don't know how long she persisted with her efforts. I quite lost myself in the flow of water. Finally she said, "Repeat after me: Wicked w.i.l.l.y Wiggle."

"Wicked w.i.l.l.y Wiggle," I said, without a trace of stutter.

This odd interlude on the piazza brought me not a cure, but the nearest thing to a cure I would ever find, and it had nothing to do with Nina's fanciful tongue kneading. It had somehow to do with breathing and repose and the vision of water.

So it would be from now on-whenever my stints of stammering came, I would close my eyes and breathe and watch Handful's bathwater. I would see it pouring down and down, and opening my eyes, I would often speak with ease, sometimes for hours.

In November my nineteenth birthday came and went without acknowledgement except Mother's reminder at breakfast that I'd reached a prime marriageable age. There were weekly dress fittings in preparation for the winter season, providing practically the only contact I had with Handful. She spent her days sewing in Charlotte's room in the cellar or beneath the oak when the weather was mild. Her forbidden bath all those months ago still hung leaden between us, though Handful didn't seem the least bit shamed by my discovery of it. Rather the opposite, she was like someone who'd risen to her full measure. During the fittings, Handful sang as she pinned me into half-made dresses. Standing on the fitting box, turning slow rotations, I wondered if she sang to avoid conversation. Whatever motivated her, I was relieved.

Then, one day in January, I noticed my father and older brothers huddled in the library with the door agape. The first icing of the winter had come in the night and glazed the city, and Tomfry had set the fireplaces ablaze. From where I stood in the main pa.s.sage, I could see Father rubbing his hands before the flames, while Thomas, John, and Frederick gestured and flitted like moths in the light around his shoulders. Frederick, who'd recently returned from Yale and followed Thomas to the bar, slammed his fist into the palm of his hand. "How dare they, how dare they!"

"We'll mount a defense," Thomas said. "You mustn't worry, Father, we won't be defeated, I promise you that."

Someone had wronged Father? I drew as close to the door as I dared, but I could make little sense of the discussion. They spoke of an outrage, but didn't name it. They vowed a defense, but against what? Through the gap in the door, I watched them move to the desk, where they closed ranks around a doc.u.ment. They pointed at various pa.s.sages, jabbing it with their fingers, debating in low, purposeful tones. The sight of them roused my ravenous old hunger to take my place in the world, too, to have my part matter. How many years had elapsed since I threw away the silver b.u.t.ton?

I moved from the door, suddenly flush with anger. I was sorry for Father. He'd been wronged in some way, but here they all were ready to move heaven and earth to right it, and their wives, their mother, their sisters had no rights, not even to their own children. We couldn't vote or testify in a court, or make a will-of course we couldn't, we owned nothing to leave behind! Why didn't the Grimke men a.s.semble in our defense?

My anger dissipated, but my ignorance went on for another week. During those interminable days, Mother stayed in her chamber with a headache and even Thomas refused my queries, saying it was Father's matter to disclose, not his. As it turned out, I would learn the news at a parlor concert held at one of the plantations northwest of the city.

Mary and I arrived on the plantation as the afternoon turned gray with twilight, our carriage met by a bevy of peac.o.c.ks that strolled about the grounds for no reason other than ornamentation. They created a beautiful blue s.h.i.+mmer in the fading light, but I found them a sad spectacle, the way they made little rushes at the air, going nowhere.

The concert was already under way when I reached the parlor door. Burke slipped from his seat and greeted me with unusual warmth. He looked das.h.i.+ng in his long cerise vest and silk suit. "I was worried you weren't coming," he whispered and led me quickly to the empty chair beside his. As I slipped off the emerald jacket that Handful had so wondrously crafted, he placed a letter upon my lap. I raised my brows to him as if to ask whether I should break the seal and read it while Miss Parodi and the harpsichord vied for the room. "Later," he mouthed.

It was unconventional to pa.s.s a note in this manner, and my mind fretted throughout the program at what it might contain. When Mrs. Drayton, Thomas' mother-in-law, played the final piece on the harp, we adjourned to the dining room where the table was spread with a Charlotte Russe dessert and a selection of French wines, brandy, and Madeira, of which I couldn't partake for all my apprehension. Burke gulped a brandy, then maneuvered me toward the front door.

". . . Where are we going?" I asked, unsure of the propriety.

"Let's take a stroll."

We stepped onto the porch beneath the palladium fanlight and gazed at the sky. It was purple, almost watery-looking. The moon was rising over the tree line. I couldn't, however, think of anything but the letter. I pulled it from my purse and ripped the seal.

My Dearest Darling, I beg the privilege of becoming your most attached and devoted fiance. My heart is yours.

I await your answer.

Burke I read it once, then again, mildly disoriented, as if the letter he'd slipped to me earlier had been swapped for this one that had nothing at all to do with me. He seemed entertained by my confusion. He said, "Your parents will want you to wait and give your answer after you've consulted with them."

"I accept your proposal," I said, smiling at him, overwhelmed with a queer mixture of jubilation and relief. I would be married! I would not end up like Aunt Amelia Jane.

He was right, though, Mother would be horrified I'd answered without her say-so, but I didn't doubt my parents' response. After swallowing their disapproval, they would seize upon the miracle of Burke Williams' proposal like it was the cure for a dread disease.

We walked along the carriage way, my arm looped in his. A little tremor was running rib to rib to rib inside of me. Abruptly, he steered me off the path toward a camellia grove. We disappeared into the shadows that hung in swaths between the huge, flowering bushes, and without preamble, he kissed me full on the mouth. I reared back. ". . . Why . . . why, you surprise me."

"My Love, we're engaged now, such liberties are allowed."

He drew me to him and kissed me again. His fingers moved along the edge of my decolletage, brus.h.i.+ng my skin. I didn't entirely surrender, but I allowed Burke Williams a great amount of freedom during that small peccadillo in the camellia grove. When I mustered myself finally, pulling from his embrace, he said he hoped I didn't hold his ardor against him. I did not. I adjusted my dress. I tucked vagrant pieces of hair back into my upswept coif. Such liberties are allowed now.

As we walked back to the house, I fixed my eyes on the path, how it was riddled with peac.o.c.k excrement and pebbles s.h.i.+ning in the moon's light. This marriage, it would be life-enough, wouldn't it? Surely. Burke was speaking about the necessity of a long engagement. A year, he said.

As we drew near the porch, a horse whinnied, and then a man stepped from the front door and lit his pipe. It was Mr. Drayton, Thomas' father-in-law.

"Sarah?" he said. "Is that you?" His eyes s.h.i.+fted to Burke and back to me. A lock of my hair fluttered guiltily at my shoulder. "Where've you been?" I heard the reproof, the alarm. "Are you all right?"

". . . I am . . . we are engaged." My parents weren't yet informed, and I'd heralded the news to Mr. Drayton, whom I barely knew, hoping it would excuse whatever his mind imagined we were doing out there.

"We took a quick turn in the night air," Burke said, trying, it seemed, to bring some normalcy to the moment.

Mr. Drayton was no fool. He gazed at me, plain Sarah, returning from a "turn in the night" with a startlingly handsome man, looking flushed and slightly unkempt. "Well, then, congratulations. Your happiness must be a welcome respite for your family given this recent trouble of your father's."

Was Father's trouble common knowledge, then?

"Has some misfortune fallen upon Judge Grimke?" Burke asked.

"Sarah hasn't told you?"

". . . I suppose I've been too distressed to speak of it," I said. ". . . But please, sir, inform him on my behalf. It would be a service to me."

Mr. Drayton took a draught from his pipe and blew the spicy smoke into the night. "I regret to say the judge's enemies seek to remove him from the court. Impeachment charges have been brought."

I let my breath out. I couldn't imagine a greater humiliation for our father.

"On what grounds?" Burke asked, properly outraged.

"They say he has grown biased and overly righteous in his judgments." He hesitated. "They charge incompetence. Ah, but it is all politics." He waved his hand dismissively, and I watched the bowl of his pipe flare in the small wind.

Any flicker of gladness I might've hoped for from my family about my engagement, any retribution I might've feared for accepting the proposal without permission, was swallowed by Father's trial. Mother's reaction to my announcement was simply, "Well done, Sarah," as if reviewing one of my embroidery samplers. Father did not respond at all.

Throughout the winter, he sequestered in the library day and night with Thomas, Frederick, and Mr. Daniel Huger, a lawyer friend of Father's who was known for legally eviscerating his opponents. My hearing was almost preternatural, cultivated by years of unsanctioned listening, and I caught sc.r.a.ps of conversation while sitting at the card table in the main pa.s.sage, pretending to read.

John, you've received no money, no favors. You are accused of nothing that rises to the level of high crimes.

Isn't a charge of incompetence bad enough? They accuse me of being biased! The streets and the papers are full of it. I'm ruined, regardless.

Father, you have friends in the legislative chamber!

Don't be a fool, Thomas, what I have are enemies. Scheming b.a.s.t.a.r.ds from the upcountry, seeking the bench for themselves.

They cannot possibly get a two-thirds majority.

Make meat of them, Daniel, do you hear me? Feed them to the dogs.

When the trial was heard that spring in the House of Representatives in Columbia, Mr. Huger a.s.sailed Father's enemies with a vengeance, laying bare their political conniving with such force Father was acquitted in a single day, but the vote was ominously close, and he returned to Charleston, vindicated, but dirtied.

At fifty-nine, Father was suddenly a very old man. His face had turned haggard and his clothes baggy as if he'd wilted inside them. A tremor appeared in his right hand.

As the months pa.s.sed, Burke paid courting calls to me weekly in the withdrawing room, where we were allowed unchaperoned visits. He filled these rendezvous with the same fever and excess we'd shared in the camellia grove, and I complied, drawing lines the best I could. I counted it G.o.d's miracle we weren't discovered, though I'm sure our invisibility was not due to G.o.d, but to the family's distraction. Father continued to shuffle and shrivel and tuck his hand in his pocket to hide its shake. He turned into a recluse of a man. And I, I turned into a Jezebel of a woman.

Handful.

Mauma couldn't sleep. She was up fussing round the cellar room like usual. She didn't know the meaning of the words quiet as a mouse.

I was laying in the straw bed we'd always slept in, wondering what was on her mind this time. I'd stopped sleeping on the floor outside Sarah's room a long time back, just decided it on my own, and n.o.body said a word about it, not even missus. During those years, her meanness was. .h.i.t and miss.

Mauma dragged the chair over to the high-up window so she could crane her neck and see a piece of sky beyond the wall. I watched how she sat there and studied it.

Most of her waking nights, she would light the lamp and sew her story quilt. She'd been working on those quilt squares bits at a time for more than two years. "If there a fire and I ain't here, that's what you get," she'd say. "You save the squares cause they pieces of me same like the meat on my bones."

I pestered her all the time wanting to see the squares she'd finished, but she held firm. Mauma loved a good surprise. She wanted to unveil her quilt like they did marble statues. She had put her history on a quilt like the Fon people, and she meant to show it all at once, not piecemeal.

The day before, she'd told me, "You wait. I'm 'bout ready to roll down the frame and start quilting it all together."

She kept the squares locked in a wood trunk she'd dragged from the storeroom in the bas.e.m.e.nt. The trunk had a bad, musty smell to it. Inside we'd found mold, dead moth-eggs, and a little key. She cleaned the trunk with linseed oil, then locked the squares inside, wrapped in muslin. I guessed she locked our freedom money in there too, cause right after that the bills disappeared from the gunny sack.

Last time I'd counted, she'd saved up four hundred dollars even.

Laying in bed now, I did the numbering in my head-we needed six hundred fifty more dollars to buy the both of us.

I broke the quiet. "Is this how you gonna be all night-sit in the dark and stare up at a hole in the wall?"

"It's something to do. Go on back to sleep."

Go back to sleep-that was a lot of useless.

"Where do you keep the key to the chest?"

"Is that how you gon be? Lay there figurin' how to peek at my quilt? The key hid on the back of nowhere."