The Invention of Wings

Handful

Tomfry said he tried not to put much force in it, but the strike flayed open my skin. Miss Sarah made a poultice with Balm of Gilead buds soaked in master Grimké’s rum, and mauma handed the whole flask to me and said, “Here, go on, drink it, too.” I don’t hardly remember the pain.
The gash healed fast, but Miss Sarah’s hurt got worse and worse. Her voice had gone back to stalling and she pined for her books. That was one wretched girl.

It’d been Lucy who ran tattling to Miss Mary about my lettering under the tree, and Miss Mary had run tattling to missus. I’d judged Lucy to be stupid, but she was only weak-willed and wanting to get in good with Miss Mary. I never did forgive her, and I don’t know if Miss Sarah forgave her sister, cause what came from all that snitching turned the tide on Miss Sarah’s life. Her studying was over and done.

My reading lessons were over, too. I had my hundred words, and I figured out a good many more just using my wits. Now and then, I said my ABCs for mauma and read words to her off the picture pages she’d tacked on her wall.

One day I went to the cellar and mauma was making a baby gown from muslin with lilac bands. She saw my face and said,  “That’s right, another Grimké coming. Sometime this winter. Missus ain’t happy ’bout it. I heard her tell massa, that’s it, this the last one.”

When mauma finished hemming the little gown, she dug in the gunny sack and pulled out a short stack of clean paper, a half full inkwell, and a quill pen, and I knew she’d stole every one of these things. I said, “Why you keep doing this?”

“I need you to write something. Write, ‘Charlotte Grimké has permission for traveling.’ Under that, put the month, leave off the day, and sign Mary Grimké with some curlicue.”
“First off, I don’t know how to write Charlotte. I don’t know the word permission either.” “Then, write, ‘This slave is allowed for travel.’”

“What you gonna do with it?”

She smiled, showing me the gap in her front teeth. “This slave gon travel. But don’t worry, she always coming back.”

“What you gonna do when a white man stops you and asks to see your pass and it looks like some eleven-year-old wrote it?”

“Then you best write it like you ain’t some eleven-year-old.” “How you plan on getting past the wall?”

She looked up at the window near the ceiling. It wasn’t big as a hat box. I didn’t see how she could wriggle through it, but she would grease herself with goose fat if that’s what it took. I wrote her pass cause she was bent on hell to have it.

After that, least one or two afternoons a week, she took off. Stayed gone from middle of the afternoon till past dark. Wouldn’t say where she went. Wouldn’t say how she got in and out of the yard. I worked out her escape path in my head, though. Outside her window, it wasn’t but a couple of feet between the house and the wall, and I figured once she squeezed through the window, she would


press her back against the house and her feet against the wall and shimmy up and over, dropping to the ground on the other side.

Course, she had to find another way back in. My guess was the back gate where the carriage came and went. She never came back till it was good and dark, so she could climb it and nobody see. She always made it before the drums beat for curfew. I didn’t wanna think of her out there hiding from the City Guard.

One afternoon, while me and mauma were finishing up the slave clothes for the year, I laid out my reasoning, how she went out the window in daylight and came back over the gate at dark. She said, “Well, ain’t you smart.”

In the far back of my head, I could see her with the strap tied on her ankle and round her neck, and I filled up and started begging. “Don’t do it no more. Please. All right? You gonna get yourself caught.”

“I tell you what, you can help me—if somebody here find me missing, you sit the pail next to the cistern where I can see it from the back gate. You do that for me.”

This scared me worse. “And if you see it, what you gonna do—run off? Just leave me?” Then I broke down.

She rubbed my shoulders the way she always liked to do. “Handful, child. I would soon die ’fore I leave you. You know that. If that pail sit by the cistern, that just help me know what’s coming, that’s all.”

When their social season was starting off again, and me and mauma couldn’t keep up with all the gowns and frocks, she up and hired herself out without permission. I learned it one day after the supper meal, while we were standing in the middle of the work yard. Miss Sarah had been in one of her despairs all day, and I thought the worst things I had to fret over was how low she got and mauma slipping out the window. But mauma, she pulled a slave badge out from her pocket. If some owner hired his slave out, he had to buy a badge from the city, and I knew master Grimké hadn’t bought any such. Having a fake badge was worse than having missus’ green silk.

I took the badge and studied it. It was a small square of copper with a hole poked through the top so you could pin it to your dress. It was carved with words. I sounded them out till it finally came clear what I was saying. “Dome-stic . . . Do-mes-tic. Ser-vant. Domestic Servant!” I cried. “Number 133. Year 1805. Where’d you get this?”

“Well, I ain’t been out there grogging and lazing round this whole time—I been finding work for myself.”

“But you got more work here than we can see to.”

“And I don’t make nothin’ from it, do I?” She took the badge from me and dropped it back in her pocket.

“One of the Russell slaves name Tom has his own blacksmith shop on East Bay. Missus Russell let him work for hire all day and she don’t take but three-quarter of what he make. He made this badge for me, copied it off a real one.”

I had the mind of an eleven-year-old, but I knew right off this blacksmith wasn’t just some nice man doing her a favor. Why was he putting himself in danger to make a fake badge for her?
She said, “I gon be making bonnets and dresses and quilts for a lady on Queen Street. Missus


Allen. I told her my name was Pearl, and I belong to massa Dupré on the corner of George and East Bay. She say to me, ‘You mean that French tailor?’ I say, ‘Yessum, he can’t fill my time no more with work, so he letting me out for hire.’”

“What if she checks on your story?”

“She an old widow, she ain’t gon check. She just say, ‘Show me your badge.’ Mauma was proud of her badge and proud of herself.

“Missus Allen say she pay me by the garment, and her two daughters need clothes and coverings for they children.”

“How you gonna get all this extra work done?” “I got you. I got all the hours of the night.”

Mauma burned so many candles working in the dark, she took to swiping them from whatever room she happened on. Her eyes grew down to squints and the skin round them wrinkled like drawing a straight stitch. She was tired and frayed but she seemed better off inside.

She brought home money and stuffed it inside the gunny sack, and I helped her sew day and night, anytime I didn’t have duties drawing Miss Sarah’s baths, cleaning her room, keeping up with her clothes and her privy pot. When we got the widow’s orders done, mauma would squirm out the window and carry the parcels to her door where she got more fabric for the next batch. Then she would wait till dark and sneak over the back gate. All this dangerous business got natural as the day was long.

One afternoon during a real warm spell in January, missus sent Cindie to the basement to fetch mauma, something about rosettes falling off her new empire waist dress, and course, mauma was gone over the wall. She didn’t lock the door while she was out cause she knew missus would have Prince saw the door off its hinges if she didn’t answer, and how was she gonna explain an empty room behind a locked door?

News of a missing slave flies like brush fire. When I heard the news, my heart dropped to my knees. Missus used her bell and gathered everybody in the yard, up near the back door. She laid her hands on top of her big pregnant belly and said, “If you know Charlotte’s whereabouts, you are duty bound to tell me.”

Not a peep from anybody. Missus cast her eyes on me. “Hetty? Where is your mother?” I shrugged and acted stumped. “I don’t know, missus. Wish I did know.”

Missus told Tomfry to search the kitchen house, laundry, carriage house, stable, storage shed, privy, and slave rooms. She said comb every nook in the yard, look down the chute where Prince sent hay from the loft to the horses’ trough. If that didn’t turn up mauma, she said Tomfry would go through the house, the piazza, and the ornament garden, top to bottom.

She rang her bell, which meant go back to work. I hurried to mauma’s room to check the gunny sack. All her money was still at the bottom under the stuffing. Then I crept back outside and set the pail next to the cistern. The sun was coming down the sky, turning it the color of apricots.
While Tomfry did his searching high and low, I took up my spot in the front alcove on the second floor to wait. At the first shade of dark, lo-to-behold, I looked down through the window and there was mauma turning the corner. She marched straight to the front door and knocked.
I tore down the stairs and got to the door the same time as Tomfry.

When he opened it, mauma said, “I gon give you half of a dollar if you get me back in there safe. You owe me, Tomfry.”

He stepped out onto the landing, me beside him, and closed the door. I threw my arms round mauma. She said to him, “Quick now, what it gon be?”

“They ain’t nowhere to put you,” he said. “Missus had me search every corner.” “Not the rooftop,” I said.

Tomfry made the coast clear, and I led mauma to the attic and showed her the ladder and the hatch. I said, “When they come, you say it was so warm you came out here to see the harbor and lay down and fell asleep.”

Meantime, Tomfry went and explained to missus how he forgot about the rooftop when he was searching, how he knew for a fact Charlotte had been up there one time before.
Missus waited at the foot of the attic steps with her cane, huffing from climbing the stairs, big as she was. I lurked behind her. I was trembling with nerves.

Mauma came down the ladder, shivering, telling this cockamamie story I’d come up with. Missus said, “I did not think you were as naturally dumb as the rest, Charlotte, but you have proved me wrong. To fall asleep on the roof! You could have rolled off onto the street. The roof! You must know such a place is completely off-limits.”

She raised her cane and brought it down cross the back of mauma’s head. “See yourself to your room, and tomorrow morning after devotions, you are to sew the rosettes back on my new dress. Your sloppiness with the needle has only worsened.”

“Yessum,” mauma said, hurrying to the stairs, waving me in front of her. If missus noticed how mauma didn’t have her cane or her limp, she didn’t say so.

When we reached the cellar, mauma shut the door and threw the lock. I was winded, but mauma’s breath was steady. She rubbed the back of her head. She set her jaw. She said, “I is a ’markable woman, and you is a ’markable girl, and we ain’t never gon bow and scrape to that woman.”


Sarah

The idea of a new sibling didn’t strike me as happy news. Shut away in my room, I absorbed it with grim resignation. When pregnant, Mother’s mood became even fouler, and who among us would welcome that? My real dismay came when I took paper and pen and worked out the arithmetic: Mother had spent ten of the last twenty years pregnant. For pity sake!

Soon to be twelve, I was on the cusp of maidenhood, and I wanted to marry—truly, I did—but such numbers petrified me. Coming, as they did, so soon after my books being taken away, quite soured me on the female life.

Since Father’s dressing-down, I hadn’t left the four walls of my room except for meals, Madame Ruffin’s class three mornings a week, and church on Sunday. Handful kept me company, asking questions to which she didn’t care to know the answer, asking only to animate me. She watched me make feeble attempts at embroidery and write stories about a girl abandoned to an island in the manner of Robinson Crusoe. Mother ordered me to snap from my inwardness and misery, and I did try, but my despair only grew.

Mother summoned our physician, Dr. Geddings, who after much probing decided I suffered from severe melancholy. I listened at the door as he told Mother he’d never witnessed a case in someone so young, that this kind of lunacy occurred in women after childbirth or at the withdrawal of a woman’s menses. He declared me a high-strung, temperamental girl with predilections to hysteria, as evidenced by my speech.

Shortly after Christmas, I passed Thomas’ door and glimpsed his trunk open on the floor. I couldn’t bear his leaving, but it was worse knowing he was going off to New Haven to pursue a dream I myself had, but would never realize. Consumed with envy for his dazzling future, I fled to my room where I sobbed out my grief. It gushed from me in black waves, and as it did, my despondency seemed to reach its extremity, its farther limit, passing over into what I can only now call an anguished hope.
All things pass in the end, even the worst melancholy. I opened my dresser and pulled out the lava box that held my button. My eyes glazed at the sight of it, and this time I felt my spirit rise up to meet my will. I would not give up. I would err on the side of audacity. That was what I’d always done.

My audacious  erring occurred at  Thomas’ farewell  party, which took place in the second-floor withdrawing room on Twelfth Night. During the past week, I’d caught Father smiling at me across the dining table, and I’d interpreted his Christmas gift—a print of Apollo and the Muses—as an offering of love and the end of his censure. Tonight, he conversed with Thomas, Frederick, and John, who was home from Yale, all of them in black woolen topcoats and striped vests of various colors, Father’s flaxen. Seated with Mary at the Pembroke table, I watched them and wished to know what they debated. Anna and Eliza, who’d been allowed at the festivities, sat on the rug before the fire screen, clutching  their  Christmas  dolls,  while  Ben  pitted  his  new  wooden  soldiers  in  battle,  shouting “Charge!” every few seconds.

Mother reclined against the red velvet of her rosewood Récamier, which had been brought up from her bedroom. I’d observed five of Mother’s gestations, and clearly this was her most difficult.

She’d enlarged to mammoth proportions. Even her poor face appeared bloated. Nevertheless, she’d created an elaborate fete. The room blazed with candles and lamplight, which reflected off mirrors and gilt surfaces, and the tables were laid with white linen cloths and gold brocade runners in keeping with the colors of the Epiphany. Tomfry, Snow, and Eli served, wearing their dark green livery, hauling in trays of crab pies, buttered shrimps, veal, fried whiting, and omelet soufflé.

My prodigal appetite had returned, and I occupied myself with eating and listening to the whirr of bass voices across the room. They conversed about the reelection of Mr. Jefferson, whether Mr. Meriwether Lewis and Mr. William Clark had any chance of reaching the Pacific coast, and most tantalizing, what the abolition of slavery in the Northern states, most recently in New Jersey, boded for the South. Abolition by law? I’d never heard of it and craned to get every snippet. Did those in the North, then, believe God to be sided against slavery?

We finished the meal with Thomas’ favorite sweet, macaroons with almond ice, after which Father tapped a spoon against his crystal goblet and silenced the room. He wished Thomas well and presented him with An Abridgement of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding . Mother had allowed Mary and me to each have half a flute of wine, my inaugural taste, and I gazed at the book in Thomas’ hand with a downy feeling between my ears.

“Who will send Thomas off with a tribute?” Father said, scanning the faces of his sons. Firstborn John tugged on the hem of his vest, but it was I, the sixth-born child and second daughter, who leapt to my feet and made a speech.
“. . studies footsteps. . .  . Thomas, dear brother, I shall miss you. . . .”  I  paused and felt  an upwelling of  courage. . . . To become a jurist.”

. I wish you God’s speed with your “One  day I  intend to follow in your

When Father found his tongue, his tone was full of amusement. “Did my ears deceive? Did you say you would follow your brother to the bar?” John twittered, and Fredrick laughed outright. Father looked at them and smiled, continuing, “Are there female jurists now? If so, little one, do enlighten us.”

Their hilarity burst forth, and I saw Thomas, too, was laughing.

I tried to answer, not fully comprehending the depth of their derision, that his question was for the benefit of my brothers alone.
“. . . . . . Would it not be a great accomplishment if I should be the first?” At  that,  Father’s  fun  turned  into  annoyance. “There  will  be  no first, Sarah, and if  such a
preposterous thing did occur, it will be no daughter of mine.”
Still, I went on stupidly, blindly. “. . .

. . . Father, I would make you proud. I would do anything.” “Sarah, stop this nonsense! You shame yourself. You shame us all. Where did you ever get the notion you could study the law?”

I fought to stand there, to hold on to what felt like some last dogged piece of myself. “. . . . . . You said I would be the greatest jurist—”
“I said if you were a boy!”

My eyes flitted to Anna and Eliza, who gazed up at me, and then to Mary, who would not meet them.
I turned to Thomas. “. . . . . . Please. . . . . . do you remember . . . you said I should be the jurist?” “Sarah, I’m sorry, but Father is right.”

His words finished me.

Father made a gesture with his hand, dismissing the matter, and the band of them turned from me and resumed their conversation. I heard Mother say my name in a quiet way. She no longer reclined, but sat upright, her face bearing a commiserate look. “You may go to your room,” she said.
I slinked away like some scraped-out soul. On the floor beside my door, Handful was coiled into


her red squares and black triangles. She said, “I put on your lamp and stoked the fire. You need me to help with your dress?”

“. . . No, stay where you are.” My words sounded flat with hurt. She studied me, uncertain. “What happened, Miss Sarah?”

Unable to answer, I entered my room and closed the door. I sat on the dresser stool. I felt strange and hollow, unable to cry, unable to feel anything but an empty, extinguished place in the pit of my stomach.

The knock at my door moments later was light, and thinking it was Handful, I gathered the last crumbs of my energy and called out, “. . . I have no need of you.”

Mother entered, swaying with her weight. “I took no joy in seeing your hopes quashed,” she said. “Your father and brothers were cruel, but I believe their mockery was in equal portion to their astonishment. A lawyer, Sarah? The idea is so outlandish I feel I have failed you bitterly.”
She placed her palm on the side of her belly and closed her eyes as if warding off the thrust of an elbow or foot. The gentleness in her voice, her very presence in my room revealed how distressed she was for me, and yet she seemed to suggest their unkindness was justified.

“Your  father  believes  you  are  an  anomalous  girl  with  your  craving  for  books  and  your aspirations, but he’s wrong.”

I looked at her with surprise. The hauteur had left her. There was a lament in her I’d never seen before. “Every girl comes into the world with varying degrees of ambition,” she said, “even if it’s only the hope of not belonging body and soul to her husband. I was a girl once, believe it or not.”
She seemed a stranger, a woman without all the wounds and armature the years bring, but then she went on, and it was Mother again. “The truth,” she said, “is that every girl must have ambition knocked out of her for her own good. You are unusual only in your determination to fight what is inevitable. You resisted and so it came to this, to being broken like a horse.”

She bent and put her arms around me. “Sarah darling, you’ve fought harder than I imagined, but you must give yourself over to your duty and your fate and make whatever happiness you can.”
I felt the puffy skin of her cheek, and I wanted both to cling to her and shove her away. I watched her go, noticing she hadn’t closed the door when she’d entered. Handful would’ve heard everything. The thought comforted me. There’s no pain on earth that doesn’t crave a benevolent witness.
As Handful appeared, regarding me with her large, soulful eyes, I took the lava box from my dresser, removed the silver button, and dropped it into the ash bin by the fire, where it disappeared beneath the gray and white soot.

The following day, the withdrawing room was cleared for mother’s lying-in. She’d birthed her last six children there, surrounded by Binah, Aunt-Sister, Dr. Geddings, a hired wet nurse, and two female cousins. It seemed unlikely she would grant me a visit, but a week before her labor began, she allowed me in to see her.

It was a frosty morning in February. The sky was bunched with winter clouds, and the fireplaces throughout the house crackled and hissed. In the withdrawing room, the fire provided the only light. Mother, who was a week from her fortieth birthday, was sprawled on her Récamier, looking perfectly miserable.

“I hope you have no trouble to speak of, for I have no strength to deal with it,” she said through

swollen lips.

“. . . . . . I have a request.”

She raised herself slightly and reached for her cup on the tea table. “Well then, what is it? What is this request that cannot wait?”

I’d come prepared with a speech, feeling resolute, but now my head swam with anxiety. I closed my eyes and wondered how I could make her understand.

“. . . . . . I’m afraid you’ll refuse me without thought.” “For heaven’s sake, why should I do that?”

“. . . . . . Because my wish is out of the ordinary. . . . . . I wish to be godmother to the new baby.”
“Well, you’re correct—it’s out of the ordinary. It’s also out of the question.” I’d expected this. I knelt beside her. “. . . . Mother, if I have to beg, I will . . . I’ve lost everything precious to me. What I thought to be the purpose of my life, my hope for an education, books, Thomas . . . Even Father seems lost to me now . . . Don’t deny me this, please.”
“But Sarah, the baby’s godmother? Of all things. It’s not some frippery. The religious welfare of the child would be in your hands. You’re twelve. What would people say?”
“. . . I’ll make the child the purpose of my life . . . You said I must give up ambition . . . Surely the love and care of a child is something you can sanction . . . Please, if you love me—” Lowering my head to her lap, I cried the tears I’d not been able to cry the night of Thomas’ farewell or since.
Her hand cupped the back of my head, and when I finally composed myself, I saw that her eyes were moist. “All right then. You’ll be the baby’s godmother, but see to it you do not fail him.” I kissed her hand and slipped from the room, feeling, oddly, that I’d reclaimed a lost part of myself.

Handful

I twined red thread round the trunk of the spreading tree till every last bit had come off the spool. Mauma watched. It was all me and my idea to make us a spirit tree like her mauma had made, and I could tell she was just humoring. She clutched her elbows and blew fog with her breath. She said, “You ’bout got it? It’s cold as the blue moon out here.”

It was cold as Charleston could get. Sleet on the windows, blankets on the horses, Sabe and Prince chopping firewood daylight to dark. I gave mauma a look and spread my red-and-black quilt on the ground. It made a bright spot laying under the bare limbs.

I said, “First, we got to kneel on this and give our spirits to the tree. I want us to do it the way you said granny-mauma did.”

She said, “Awright, let’s do it then.”

We dropped on our knees and stared at the tree trunk with our coat sleeves touching. The ground was hard-caked, covered with acorns, and the cold seeped through the squares and triangles. A quietness came down on us, and I closed my eyes. Inside my coat pocket, my fingertips stroked Miss Sarah’s silver button. It felt like a lump of ice. I’d plucked it from the ash can after she cast it off. I felt bad she had to give up her plan, but that didn’t mean you throw out a perfect good button.
Mauma shifted her knees on the quilt. She wanted to make the spirit tree quick, and I wanted to make the minutes last.

I said, “Tell it again how you and granny-mauma did it.”

“Awright. What we did was get down like this on the quilt and she say, ‘Now we putting our spirits in the tree so they safe from harm, so they live with the birds, learning to fly.’ Then we just give our spirits to it.”

“Did you feel it when it happened?”

She pulled her headscarf over her cold ears and tried to bottle up her smile. She said, “Let me see if I can remember. Yeah, I felt my spirit leave from right here.” She touched the bone between her breasts. “It leave like a little draft of wind, and I look up at a branch and I don’t see it, but I know my spirit’s up there watching me.”

She was making all this up. It didn’t matter cause I didn’t see why it couldn’t happen that way
now.


I called out, “I give my spirit to the tree.”

Mauma called out the same way. Then she said, “After your granny-mauma make our spirit tree, she say, ‘If you leave this place, you go get your spirit and take it with you.’ Then she pick up acorns, twigs, and leaves and make pouches for ’em, and we wear ’em round our neck.”
So me and mauma picked up acorns and twigs and yellow crumbles of leaves. The whole time, I thought about the day missus gave me as a present to Miss Sarah, how mauma told me, It gon be hard from here on, Handful.

Since that day a year past, I’d got myself a friend in Miss Sarah and found how to read and write, but it’d been a heartless road like mauma said, and I didn’t know what would come of us. We might stay here the rest of our lives with the sky slammed shut, but mauma had found the part of herself that refused to bow and scrape, and once you find that, you got trouble breathing on your neck.