The Invention of Wings

Sarah

The ship ride was harrowing. We plied up the coast for nearly two weeks, sickened by heaving waves off Virginia, before finally making our way along the Delaware to Penn Landing. Arriving there, I had an impulse to bend down and kiss the solid ground. With Father almost too weak to speak, it was left to me to figure out how to retrieve our trunks and hire a coach.

As we drew close to Society Hill, where the doctor resided, the city turned lovely with its trees and steeples, its brick row houses and mansions. What struck me was how empty the streets were of slaves. The sudden realization caused a tightness inside of me to release, one I was not aware existed until that moment.

I found us lodging in a Quaker boardinghouse near Fourth Street, where Father relinquished himself to me—what he ate, what he wore, all decisions about his care. He even turned over the money pouches and ledgers. Every few days, I navigated us to the doctor’s house by hired carriage, but after three weeks of seemingly futile visits, Father still couldn’t walk more than a stone’s throw without exhaustion and pain. He’d lost more weight. He looked absolutely desiccated.
Seated in the doctor’s parlor one morning, I stared at Dr. Physick’s white hair and aquiline nose, a nose very like Father’s. He said, “Sadly, I can find no cause for Judge Grimké’s tremors or his deterioration.”

Father was not the only one who was frustrated. I, too, was weary of coming here optimistic and leaving dismayed. “. . . Surely, there must be something you can prescribe.”
“Yes, of course. I believe the sea air will do him good.”

“Sea air?”

He smiled.  “You’re skeptical, but it’s quite recognized—it’s known as thalassotherapy. I’ve known it to bring even the gravely ill back to health.”

I could only imagine what Father would say to this. Sea air.

“My prescription,” he said, “is that you take him to Long Branch for the summer. It’s a small, rather isolated place on the New Jersey shore known for its sea cure. I’ll send you with laudanum and paregoric. He should be outside as much as possible. Encourage him to wade in the ocean, if he’s able. By fall, perhaps he’ll be recovered enough to travel home.”

Perhaps I would be home with Nina before September.

The doctor had said Long Branch was small, but he’d exaggerated. It was not small, it was not even miniscule; it was barely existent. There were four farmhouses, one tiny clapboard Methodist church, and a dry goods store. Neither was the place “rather isolated”; it was woefully isolated. We traveled by private coach from Philadelphia for six days, the last one bumping over a foot trail. After stopping for toiletry supplies in the dry goods, we continued a ways further to Fish Tavern, the only hotel. It was perched atop a bluff overlooking the ocean—a large, sea-weathered edifice. When the clerk informed us that prayer meetings were held in the communal dining hall after dinner, I took it as a sign God had guided us.

Father had come willingly, too willingly, it seemed. I’d felt sure he would insist on returning to


South Carolina. I’d expected him to quip, “Do we not have sea-air in Charleston?” but when I’d broken  the  news  to  him  there  in  Dr.  Physick’s  examination  room,  careful  to  use  the  word thalassotherapy, he’d only looked at me for a long, strange moment. A shadow passed over his face, what I took to be disappointment. He said, “Let’s go to New Jersey then. That’s what we’ll do.”
That first afternoon before dusk, I brought cod soup to Father’s room. When he tried to eat it, his hand quivered so violently, spoonfuls splattered onto the bed sheets. He lay back against the bedstead and let me feed him. I chattered about the squalling ocean, about the serpentine steps that led from the hotel down to the shore, almost frantic to divert us from what was happening. His mouth opening and closing like a baby bird’s. Ladling in the colorless broth. The helplessness of it.
While I fed him, the crush of waves filled the room. Through the window, I could see a swatch of water the color of pewter, whipped by the wind into frothing swells. Finally, he put up his hand to let me know he’d had enough of soup and babbling both.

I placed the chamber pot on the floor nearby. “Good night, Father.”

His eyes were already closed, but his hand fumbled for my forearm. “It’s all right, Sarah. We will let it be what it is.”

17 July 1819

Dear Nina,

We are settled at Fish Tavern. Mother would call the place shabby, but it was once elegant and it has character. The rooms are nearly filled with boarders, but I’ve met only two. They are elderly widowed sisters from New York, who come to prayer meetings each evening in the dining room. I like the younger one quite a lot.

Father commands all of my attention. We came for the sea air, but he hasn’t ventured from his room. I open the window, but the squawking gulls annoy him, and he orders the window closed by noon. I’m quite devious—I leave it open a crack and tell him it’s shut. It’s all the more reason I must go to the dining room and pray with the sisters.
At fifteen, you are old enough that I may speak sister to sister. Father’s pain grows worse. He sleeps long, fitful hours from the laudanum, and when I insist he take some exercise around the room, he leans heavily against me. I must feed him most of his meals. Still, Nina, I know there’s hope! If faith moves mountains, God will rally Father soon. Each day, I sit by his bed and pray and read the Bible aloud for hours at a time. Don’t be angry at me for my piety. I am Presbyterian after all. As you know, we’re fond of our gall and wormwood.
I trust you’re not provoking Mother too much. If possible, restrain yourself until my return. I pray Handful is well. Keep your eye out for her. If she needs protecting for any reason, do your best.

I miss your company. Perhaps I’m a bit lonely, but I have God. You may tell Mother all is well.

Your Devoted Sister, Sarah



Every day at specified times, the hotel clerk raised and lowered red and white flags near the steps that led down to the beach. At nine o’clock sharp, the red flag went up, signaling the gentlemen to take possession of the shore. I would observe them thundering into the waves, racing beyond the breakers, and diving. Surfacing, they stood waist-deep, their hands on their hips, and surveyed the horizon. On the beach, they tussled or huddled together and smoked cigars. At eleven, the white flag went up, and the men climbed the stairs back to the hotel with woolen towels draped about their necks.
Then the ladies appeared. Even if I was in the midst of prayer, I would mutter a hasty Amen and fly to the window to watch them descend the stairs in their bathing dresses and oilskin caps. I’d never seen ladies bathing. Back home, women didn’t go into the ocean in fanciful get-ups. There was a floating bathhouse in the harbor off East Battery with a private area for females, but Mother thought it was unseemly. Once, to my astonishment, I spotted the two elderly sisters I’d written about to Nina, moving gingerly down the steps with the others. The younger one, Althea, always took pains to inquire not only about Father, but about me. “How are you, dear? You look pallid. Are you getting outdoors enough?” When I’d glimpsed her among the bathers that day, she’d glanced back, and seeing me at the window, she’d motioned me to join them. I’d shaken my head, but nothing would’ve pleased me more.
The women always entered the water  differently than the men, holding on to heavy ropes anchored to the shore. At times there would be a dozen of them stretched into the water, clinging to a single line, squealing and turning their backs against the spray. If Father was sleeping, I would stay at the window and watch with a lump in my chest until the white flag came down.

On the morning of August eighth, I was there at the windowsill, neglecting my prayers, when Father woke,  crying  my  name. “Sarah!” Reaching his side, I realized he was still asleep. “Sarah!” he shouted again, tossing his head in agitation. I placed my hand on his chest to steady him, and he woke with his breath coming hard and fast.

He gazed at me with the feverish look of someone stumbling back from a nightmare. It saddened me to think I’d been part of it. During these weeks at Long Branch, Father had been kind to me. How are you faring, Sarah? Are you eating enough? You seem weary. Put down the Bible, go for a walk. His tenderness had shocked me. Yet he’d remained aloof, never speaking of deeper things.
I pressed a cool cloth to his forehead. “. . . Father, I know coming here has been a trial for you, and your progress has been . . . it has been slow.”

He smiled without opening his eyes. “It’s time we spoke the truth. There has been no progress at
all.”


“. . . We mustn’t give up hope.”

“Mustn’t we?” The skin on his cheeks was as thin and sheer as a veil. “I came here to die, you must know that.”

“No! I certainly don’t know that.” I felt aghast, even angry. It was as if the bad dream had


cracked his fa?ade, and I suddenly wished for it back. “. . . If you believe you’re dying, then why didn’t you insist we go home?”

“It will be hard for you to understand this, but the last few years at home have been difficult. It seemed a relief to be far away, to be here with you and go quietly. I felt like here I could detach more easily from the things I’ve known and loved my whole life.”

My hand went to my mouth. I felt my eyes film over with tears.

“Sarah. My dear girl. Let’s not indulge vain hopes. I don’t expect to recover, nor do I want to.” His face blazed intensely now. I took his hand and gradually his expression eased, and he drifted
to sleep.

He woke at three in the afternoon. The white flag had just been raised—I could see it framed in the window, snapping against the translucent sky. I held the water glass to his lips and helped him to drink. He said, “We’ve had our quarrels, haven’t we?”

I knew what was coming and I wanted to spare him. To spare me. “It doesn’t matter now.” “You’ve always had a strong, separate mind, perhaps even a radical mind, and I was harsh with
you at times. You must forgive me.”

I couldn’t imagine what it cost him to say these words. “I do,” I said. “And you must forgive
me.”


“Forgive you for what, Sarah? For following your conscience? Do you think I don’t abhor slavery as you do? Do you think I don’t know it was greed that kept me from following my conscience as you have? The plantation, the house, our entire way of life depended on the slaves.” His face contorted and he clutched at his side a moment before going on. “Or should I forgive you for wanting to give natural expression to your intellect? You were smarter than even Thomas or John, but you’re female, another cruelty I was helpless to change.”

“Father, please. I have no resentment of you.” It wasn’t completely true, but I said it. Giggles floated up from the beach below, tangled in the wind. “You should go outside and refresh
your spirit,” he said.

I protested, but he wouldn’t relent. “How will you take care of me, if you don’t take care of yourself? Do this for me. I’ll be fine.”

I meant only to wade in the surf. I removed my shoes and placed them beside the portable changing house that had been wheeled out onto the sand. At that moment, the friendly sister, Althea, drew back the canvas and stepped out wearing a red-and-black-striped bathing gown with a peplum flounce and balloon sleeves. I wished Handful could’ve seen it.

“How lovely. Are you finally bathing with us?” she said. “. . . Oh, no, I don’t have the attire for it.”

She  scrutinized  my  face,  which  must’ve  radiated  unhappiness  in  every  direction,  for  she announced she’d suddenly lost the desire to bathe and it would please her enormously if I would don her dress and take a plunge. After my conversation with Father, I felt flayed open, all pulp and redness. I wanted to disappear somewhere alone, yet I looked at the rope-line of women jutting into the sea, and then beyond it at the green mountains of water, so limitless and untamed, and I accepted her offer.

She smiled when I emerged from the changing room. She had no cap, and I’d unpinned my hair,


which was flaming out in the wind. She said I looked like a mermaid.

I took hold of one of the ropes and followed it into the waves, hand over fist, until I came to where the rest of the ladies stood. The water slapped our thighs, tossing us to and fro, a tiny game of Snap the Whip, and then without knowing what I was about to do, I turned loose and strode away from them. I pushed into the seething water, and when I was some distance, I dropped onto my back and floated. It was a shock to feel the water hold me. To lie in the sea while upstairs my father lay dying.

9 August 1819

Dear Mother,

The Bible assures us that God shall wipe away every tear from our eyes . . .

I lowered my pen. I didn’t know how to tell her. It seemed strange I should be the one informing her of such news. I’d imagined her gathering us, her children, into the drawing room and saying, Your father has gone to God. How was it possible this had fallen to me?

Instead of the distinguished funeral he would’ve had in Charleston—the pomp of St. Philip’s, a stately procession along Meeting Street, his coffin mounted on a flowered carriage and half the city walking behind it—instead of all that, he would be buried anonymously in the overgrown cemetery behind the tiny Methodist church we’d passed on the way here. A farm wagon would pull his casket. I would walk behind it, alone.

But I would tell Mother none of this. Nor would I tell her that at the hour of his death, I was floating free in the ocean, in a solitude I would remember all of my life, the gulls cawing over my head and the white flag flying at the top of the pole.

Handful

Missus’ eyes were swollen shut from crying. It was the middle of the morning and she was in bed with her sleeping clothes on. The mosquito net was drawn round her and the curtains were pulled on the windows, but I could see her lids puffed out. Minta, the new girl, was over in the corner trying to disappear.

When missus tried to speak to me, she broke down crying. I felt for her. I knew what it was to lose a person. What I didn’t know was why she’d called me to her room. All I could do was stand there and wait for her to get hold of herself.

After a few minutes, she yelled at Minta, “Are you or are you not going to bring me a hankie?” Minta went scrambling through a drawer in the linen press, and missus turned to me. “You should
start on my dress immediately. I want black velvet. With beading of some kind. Mrs. Russell had jet beads on hers. I will need a spoon bonnet with a long crepe veil down the back. And black gloves, but make them fingerless mitts because of the heat. Are you remembering this?”

“Yessum.”

“It must be ready in two days. And it must be flawless, Hetty, do you understand? Flawless. Work through the night if you have to.”

Seemed like she’d gotten hold of herself real tight.

She wrote me a pass for the market and sent me in the carriage with Tomfry, who was going out to purchase the mourning cards. Said it would take too much time for me to hobble all that way and back. That’s how I got the first carriage ride of my life. Along the way, Tomfry said, “Wipe the grin off your face, we supposed to be grieving.”

In the market, I was at the high-class stalls looking for the beads missus had to have when I came upon Mr. Vesey’s wife, Susan. I hadn’t seen her since the first of the summer when I’d gone to 20 Bull.

“Look what the field cat dragged up,” she said. I guess she still had her dander up. I wondered what all she knew. Maybe she’d listened in that day I’d talked to Mr. Vesey. She
could know about mauma, the baby, everything.

I didn’t see any sense in keeping the feud going. “I don’t have a bicker with you. I won’t be bothering you anymore.”

That took the nettle from her. Her shoulders dipped and her face turned soft. That’s when I noticed the scarf she was wearing. Red. Edges sewed with a perfect chain stitch. Little oil spots on the side. I said, “That’s my mauma’s head scarf.”

Her lips opened like the stopper had popped from the bottle. I waited, but she stood there, with her mouth empty.

“I know that scarf,” I said.

She set down her basket of cottons and took it off her head. “Go on, take it.” I ran my finger along the stitched hem, cross the creases where her hair had been. I undid the
scarf on my head and tied mauma’s on. Low on my forehead, the way she wore it.
“How’d you get it?” I said.

She shook her head. “I guess you ought to know. The night your mauma disappeared, she showed up at our door. Denmark said the Guard would be looking for a woman with a red scarf, so I took hers and gave her one of mine. A plain brown one that wouldn’t draw notice.”

“You helped her? You helped her get away?”

She didn’t give any kind of answer, she said, “I do what Denmark says do.” Then she sashayed



off with her head stripped bare.

I sewed through that day and night and all the next day and night, and the whole time I wore mauma’s scarf. The whole time I thought about her showing up at Mr. Vesey’s that night, how he knew more than he was saying.

Every time I took the dress upstairs for fittings, the house would be in a tizzy getting ready for the mourners. Missus said half the city was coming. Aunt-Sister and Phoebe were baking funeral biscuits and seeing to the tea sets. Binah shrouded the paintings and mirrors with black swags and Eli was put to cleaning. Minta had the worst job, in there getting hankies and taking the brunt.
Tomfry set up master Grimké’s portrait in the drawing room and fixed a table with tokens. Had his beaver top hat and stick pins and the books of law he wrote. Thomas brought over a cloth banner that said, Gone, But Not Forgotten, and Tomfry put that on the table, too, with a clock stopped to the hour of his death. Missus didn’t  know the time exact. Sarah had written he passed in the late afternoon, so missus said, just make it 4:30.

When she wasn’t crying, she was fuming that Sarah hadn’t had the sense to cut off a lock of master Grimké’s hair and put it in the letter. It left her without anything to go in her gold mourning brooch. Another thing she didn’t like was the notice that came out in the Mercury. It said he’d been laid to rest in the North without family or friends and this would surely be a travail to a great son of South Carolina.

I don’t know how I got the dress done in time. It was the finest dress I ever made. I strung hundreds of black glass beads, then sewed the strands into a collar that looked like a spider web. I fitted it round the neck and let it drape to the bust. When missus saw it, she said the one and only kind thing I can’t forget. She said, “Why, Hetty, your mother would be proud.”

went through the window and over the wall on a Sunday after the callers had quit coming by to give their condolence. It was our day off and the servants were lolling round and missus was shut away in her room. I had a short walk past the front of the house before I could feel safe, and coming round the side of it, I saw Tomfry on the front steps, haggling with the slave boy who huckstered fish. They were bent over what looked like a fifty-pound basket of flounders. I put my head down and kept going.
“Handful! Is that you?”

When I looked up, Tomfry was staring at me from the top step. He was old now, with milk in his eyes, and it crossed my mind to say, No, I’m somebody else, but then, he could’ve seen the cane in my hand. You couldn’t misjudge that. I said, “Yeah, it’s me. I’m going to the market.”
“Who said you could go?”

I had Sarah’s pass in my pocket, but seemed like he’d question that—she was still up north, waiting to sail home. I stood on the sidewalk stuck to the spot.

He said, “What you doing out here? Answer me.” Off in my head, I could hear the treadmill grind.

A shape moved at the front window. Nina. Then the front door opened, and she said, “What is it, Tomfry?”

“Handful out here. I’m trying to see what she’s doing.”

“Oh. She’s doing an errand for me, that’s all. Please say nothing to Mother, I don’t want her bothered.” Then she called down to me, “Carry on.”

Tomfry went back to the fish huckster. I couldn’t get my legs to move fast enough. At George Street, I stopped and looked back. Nina was still out there, watching me go. She lifted her hand and gave me a wave.

Close to 20 Bull, there was a little jug band going—three boys blowing on big jars and Gullah Jack, Mr. Vesey’s man, slapping his drum. A crowd of colored folks was gathered, and two of the women started doing what we called stepping. I stopped to watch cause they were Strutting Miss Lucy. Mostly, I kept my eye on Gullah Jack. He had fat side whiskers and was bouncing on his short legs. When he finished the tune, he tucked the drum under his arm and headed down the street to Mr. Vesey’s. Me, following behind.

I could see smoke from the kitchen house, and went back there and knocked. Susan let me in, saying, “Well, I’m surprised it took you this long.” She said I could give her some help, the men were in the front room, meeting.

“Meeting about what?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t wanna know.”

I helped her chop cabbages and carrots for their supper, and when she carried a bottle of Madeira to them, I trailed her. I waited outside the door, while she poured their glasses, but I could see them at the table: Mr. Vesey, Gullah Jack, Peter Poyas, Monday Gell, plus two who belonged to the governor, Rolla Bennett and Ned Bennett. I knew every one of them from church. They were all slaves, except Mr. Vesey. Later on, he’d start calling them his lieutenants.

I slunk back into the hallway and let Susan go back to the kitchen house without me. Then I eased to the door, close as I could without getting seen.

It sounded like Mr. Vesey was divvying up all the slaves in the state.  “I’ll take the French Negroes on the Santee, and Jack, you take the slaves on the Sea Islands. The ones that’ll be hard to enlist are the country slaves out on the plantations. Peter, you and Monday know them best. Rolla, I’m giving you the city slaves, and Ned, the ones on the Neck.”

His voice dropped and I crept a little closer. “Keep a list of everybody you draft. And keep that list safe on pain of death. Tell everybody, be patient, the day is coming.”

I don’t know where he came from, but Gullah Jack was on top of me before I could turn my head. He grabbed me from behind and threw me into the room, my rabbit cane flying. I bounced off the wall and landed flat.

He stuck his foot on my chest, pressing me to the floor. “Who’re you?” “Take your nasty foot off me!” I spit at him and the spew fell back on my face. He raised a hand like he was ready to strike, and from the edge of my eye, I saw Denmark Vesey
pick him up by the collar and fling him half cross the room. Then he pulled me up. “You all right?”
My arms were trembling so bad I couldn’t hold them still.

“Everything you heard in here, you keep to yourself,” he told me. I nodded again, and he put his arm round me to stop the shaking.

Turning to Gullah Jack and the rest of them, he said, “This is the daughter of my wife and the sister of my child. She’s family, and that means you don’t lay a hand on her.”
He told the men to go on back to his workshop. We waited while they scraped the chairs back and

eased from the room.

So, he counted mauma one of his wives. I’m family. He pulled a chair for me. “Here, sit down. What’re you doing here?” “I came to find out the truth of what happened to mauma. I know you know.” “Some things are better not to know,” he said.

“Well, that’s not what the Bible preaches. It says if you know the truth, it’ll set you free.” He circled the table. “All right, then.” He closed the window so the truth would stay in the room
and not float out for the world to hear.

“The day Charlotte got in trouble with the Guard, she came here. I was in the workshop and when I looked up, there she was. They’d chased her all the way to the rice mill pond, where she hid inside a sack in the millhouse. She had rice hulls all over her dress. I kept her here till dark, then I took her to the Neck, where the policing is light. I took her there to hide.”

The Neck was just north of the city and had lots of tenement houses for free blacks and slaves whose owners let them “live out.” Negro huts, they called them. I tried to picture one, picture mauma in it.

“I knew a free black there who had a room, and he took her in. She said when the Guard stopped searching for her, she’d go back to the Grimkés and throw herself on their mercy.” He’d been pacing, but now he sat down next to me and finished up the truth quick as he could. “One night she went out to the privy in Radcliff Alley and there was a white man there, a slave poacher named Robert Martin. He was waiting for her.”

A noise filled my head, a wailing sound so loud I couldn’t hear. “A poacher, what’s a poacher?” “Somebody that steals slaves. They’re worse than scum. We all knew this man—he had a wagon
trade in these parts. First, regular goods, then he started buying slaves, then he started stealing slaves. He hunted for them in the Neck. He’d keep his ear to the ground and go after the runaways. More than one person saw him take Charlotte.”

“He took her? He sold her off somewhere?”

I was on my feet, screaming over the noise in my skull. “Why didn’t you look for her?” He took me by the shoulders and gave me a shake. His eyes were sparking like flint. He said,
“Gullah Jack and I looked for two days. We looked everywhere, but she was gone.”

Sarah

I made the laborious journey back to Philadelphia, where I found lodging at the same house on Society Hill where Father and I had boarded earlier, expecting to stay only until the ship sailed, but on the appointed morning—my trunk packed and the carriage waiting—something strange and unknown inside of me balked.

Mrs. Todd, who rented the room to me, tapped at my door. “Miss Grimké, the carriage—it’s waiting. May I send the driver to collect the trunk?”

I didn’t answer immediately, but stood at the window and stared out at the leafy vine on the picket fence, at the cobble street lined with sycamore trees, the light falling in quiet, mottled patterns, and beneath my breath I whispered, “No.”

I turned to her, untying my bonnet. It was black with a small ruffle suitable for mourning. I’d purchased it on High Street the day before, maneuvering alone in the shops with no one to please but myself, then come back to this simple room where there were no servants or slaves, no immoderate furniture or filigree or gold leaf, no one summoning me to tea with visitors I didn’t care for, no expectations of any kind, just this little room where I took care of everything myself, even spreading my own bed and seeing to my laundry. I turned to Mrs. Todd. “. . . I would like to keep the room a bit longer, if I may.”

She looked confused. “You’re not leaving as planned?” “No, I would like to stay a while. Only a while.”

I told myself it was because I wanted to grieve in private. Really, was that so implausible? Mrs. Todd was the wife of a struggling law clerk and she clasped my hand. “You’re welcome to
stay as long as you wish.”

I wrote a solicitous letter to Mother, explaining the unexplainable: Father had died and I wasn’t coming home straight away. I need to grieve alone.

Mother’s letter in response arrived in September. Her small, tight scrawl was thick with fury and ink. My behavior was shameful, selfish, cruel. “How could you abandon me in my darkest hour?” she wrote.

I burned her letter in the fireplace, but her words left contusions of guilt. There was truth in what she’d written. I was selfish. I’d abandoned my mother. Nina, as well. I anguished over it, but I didn’t pack my trunk.

I spent my days as a malingerer. I slept whenever I was tired, often in the middle of the day. Mrs. Todd gave up on my presence at appointed meals and reserved my food in the kitchen. I would take it to my room at odd hours, then wash my own dishes. There were few books to read, but I wrote in a little journal I’d bought, mostly about Father’s last days, and I practiced my scripture verses with a set of Bible flash cards. I walked up and down the streets beneath the sycamores as they turned blonde, then bronze, venturing further and further each day—to Washington Square, Philosophical Hall, Old St. Mary’s, and once, quite by accident, The Man Full of Trouble Tavern where I heard shouting and crockery breaking.

One Sunday when the air was crisp and razor-cut with light, I walked ankle-deep in fallen leaves all the way to Arch Street, where I came upon a Quaker meetinghouse of such size I paused to stare. In Charleston, we had one teeny Friends House, something of a dilapidation, to which, it was said, no one came but two cantankerous old men. As I stood there, people began to stream from the central door, the women and girls clad in dismal, excoriated dresses that made us Presbyterians seem almost flamboyant. Even the children wore drab coats and grave little faces. I observed them against the red


bricks, the steeple-less roof, the plain shuttered windows, and I felt repelled. I’d heard they sat in silence, waiting for someone to utter his most inward intimacies with God out loud for everyone to hear. It sounded terrifying to me.

Notwithstanding the Quakers, those days were very much like the moments I’d floated in the ocean at Long Branch beneath the white flag. A vitality inhabited those weeks, almost like a second heart beating in my chest. I’d found I could manage quite well on my own. Had it not been for Father’s death, I might have been happy.

When November arrived, however, I knew I couldn’t remain any longer. Winter was coming. The sea would become treacherous. I packed my trunk.

The ship was a cutter, which gave me hope of reaching Charleston in ten days. I’d booked first-class passage, but my stateroom was dark and cramped with nothing but a wallmere closet and a two-foot berth. As often as possible, I hazarded above deck to feel the cold, bracing winds, huddling with the other passengers on the lee side.

On the third morning, I woke near dawn and dressed quickly, not bothering to braid my hair. The stale, suffocating room felt like a sepulcher, and I surfaced above deck with my carrot hair flying, expecting to be alone, yet there was another already at the rail. Pulling up the hood of my cloak, I sought a spot away from him.

A tiny, white ball of moon was still in the sky, clinging to the last bit of night. Below it a thin line of blue light ran the length of the horizon. I watched it grow.

“How are thee?” a man’s voice said, using the formal  Quaker  greeting I’d often heard in Philadelphia.

As I turned to him, strands of my hair slipped from the hood and whipped wildly about my face. “. . . I’m fine, sir.”

He had a dramatic cleft in his chin and piercing brown eyes over which his brows slanted upward like the slopes of a tiny hill. He wore simple breeches with silver knee buckles, a dark coat, and a three-cornered hat. A lock of hair, dark as coal, tossed on his forehead. I guessed him to be some years older than I, perhaps ten or more. I’d seen him on deck before, and on the first night, in the ship’s dining quarters with his wife and eight children, six boys, two girls. I’d thought then how tired she looked.

“My name is Israel Morris,” he said.

Later, I would wonder if the Fates had placed me there, if they’d been the ones who’d kept me lingering in Philadelphia for three months until this particular ship sailed, though of course, we Presbyterians believed it was God who arranged propitious encounters like these, not mythological women with spindles, threads, and shears.

The mainsails were snapping and wheezing, making a great racket. I told him my name, and then we stood for a moment, gazing at the rising brightness, at the seabirds suddenly making soaring arcs in the sky. He told me his wife, Rebecca, was quarantined in their cabin tending their youngest two, who’d become sick with dysentery. He was a broker, a commission merchant, and though he was modest, I could tell he’d been prosperous at it.

In turn, I told him about the sojourn I’d made with my father and his unexpected death. The words slid fluidly off my tongue, with only an occasional stammer. I could only attribute it to the

sweep and flow of water around us.

“Please, accept my sympathies,” he said. “It must have been difficult, caring for your father alone. Could your husband not travel with you?”

“My husband? Oh, Mr. Morris, I’m not married.” His face flushed.

Wanting to ease the moment, I said, “I assure you, it’s not a matter that concerns me much.” He laughed and asked about my family, about our life in Charleston. When I told him about the
house on East Bay and the plantation in the upcountry, his lively expression died away. “You own slaves then?”

“. . . My family does, yes. But I, myself, don’t condone it.” “Yet you cast your lot with those who do?”

I bristled. “. . . They are my family, sir. What would you have me do?”

He gazed at me with kindness and pity. “To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.”

I turned from him toward the glassy water. What kind of man would speak like this? A Southern gentleman would as soon swallow his tongue.

“Forgive my bluntness,” he said. “I’m a Quaker. We believe slavery to be an abomination. It’s an important part of our faith.”

“. . . I happen to be Presbyterian, and while we don’t have an anti-slavery doctrine like you, it’s an important part of my faith, as well.”

“Of course. My apologies. I’m afraid there’s a zealot in me I’m at a loss to control.” He pulled at the rim of his hat and smiled. “I must see about breakfast for my family. I hope we might speak again, Miss Grimké. Good day.”

I thought of nothing but him for the next two days. He disturbed nearly every waking minute, and even my sleep. I was drawn to him in a deeper way than I’d been to Burke, and that’s what frightened me. I was drawn to his brutal conscience, to his repulsive Quakerism, to the force of his ideas, the force of him. He was married, and for that I was grateful. For that, I was safe.
He approached me in the dining room on the sixth day of the voyage. The ship was scudding before a gale and we’d been banned from above deck. “May I join you?” he asked.
“. . If you like.” Heat flared in my chest. I felt it travel to my cheeks, turning them to crabapples. “. . . Are your children recovered? And your wife? Has she stayed well?”
“The sickness is making its way through all of the children now, but they’re recovering thanks to Rebecca. We couldn’t manage a single day without her. She is—” He broke off, but when I went on gazing at him expectantly, he finished his sentence. “The perfect mother.”

Without  his  hat,  he  looked  younger.  Thatches  and  sprigs  of  black  hair  waved  in  random directions. He had tired smudges beneath his eyes, and I imagined they were from helping his wife nurse the children, but he pulled a worn leather book from his vest, saying he’d stayed up late in the night, reading. “It’s the journal of John Woolman. He’s a great defender of our faith.”
As the conversation turned once again to Quakerism, he opened the book and read fragments to me, attempting to educate me about  their  beliefs.  “Everyone is of  equal  worth,” he said.  “Our ministers are female as well as male.”

“Female?” I asked so many questions about this oddity, he became amused. “Should I assume that female worth, like abolition, is also part of your personal faith?” he said. “. . . I’ve long wished for a vocation of my own.”

“You’re a rare woman.”

“Some would say I’m not so much rare, as radical.”

He smiled and his brows lifted on his forehead, their odd tilt deepening. “Is it possible a Quaker

lurks beneath that Presbyterian skin of yours?”

“Not at all,” I told him. But later, in private, I wasn’t sure. To condemn slavery was one thing— that I could do in my own individual heart—but female ministers!

Throughout the few remaining days on ship, we continued our talks in the wind-pounded world above deck, as well as the dining quarters, where it smelled of boiled rice and cigars. We discussed not only the Quakers, but theology, philosophy, and the politics of emancipation. He was of the mind that  abolition  should  be  gradual.  I  argued  it  should  be  immediate.  He’d  found  an  intellectual companion in me, but I couldn’t completely understand why he’d befriended me.
The last night aboard, Israel asked if I would come and meet his family in the dining room. His wife, Rebecca, held their youngest on her lap, a crying tot no more than three, whose red face bounced like a woodpecker against her shoulder. She was one of those slight, gossamer women, whose body seemed spun from air. Her hair was light as straw, drawn back and middle-parted with wisps falling about her face.

She patted the child’s back. “Israel speaks highly of you. He says you’ve been kind enough to listen as he explained our faith. I hope he didn’t tire you. He can be unrelenting.” She smiled at me in a conspiratorial way.

I didn’t want her to be so pretty and charming. “. . . Well, he was certainly thorough,” I said, and her laughter gurgled up. I looked at Israel. He was beaming at her.

“If you return to the North, you must come and stay with us,” Rebecca said, then she herded the children to their cabin.

Israel lingered a moment longer, pulling out John Woolman’s journal. “Please accept it.” “But it’s your own copy. I couldn’t possibly take it.”

“It would please me greatly—I’ll get another when I return to Philadelphia. I only ask that after you read it, you write to me of your impressions.” He opened the book and showed me a piece of paper on which he’d written his address.

That night, after I blew out the wick, I lay awake, thinking of the book tucked in my trunk and the address secreted inside. After you read it, write to me. The water moved beneath me, rushing toward Charleston into the swaying dark.

Handful

When they plan to sell you, the first thing they say is, go wash your teeth. That’s what Aunt-Sister always told us. She said when the slaves got sold on the streets, the white men checked their teeth before anything else. None of us were thinking about teeth after master Grimké died, though. We thought life would go on in the same old grudgeries.

The lawyer showed up to read the will two days after Sarah got back from the North. We gathered in the dining room, every one of the Grimké children and every slave. Seemed odd to me why missus wanted us slaves here. We stood in a straight line in the back of the room, half-thinking we’re part of the family.

Sarah was on one side of the table and Nina on the other. Sarah would look over at her sister with a sad smile, and Nina would glance away. Those two were in a miff.

Missus had on her nice black mourning dress. I wanted to tell her she needed to take it off and let Mariah launder it cause it had gray armpit rings. Seemed like she’d worn it every day since last August, but you couldn’t tell her a thing. The woman got worse in her ways by the day.
The lawyer, his name was Mr. Huger, stood up with a handful of papers and said it was the last will and testament of John Faucheraud Grimké, drawn up last May. He read the wherefores, to wits, and hithermores. It was worse than the Bible.

Missus didn’t get the house. That went to Henry, who wasn’t past eighteen, but least she could stay in it till she died. “I leave her the household furniture, plate, plated ware, a carriage and two of my horses, the stock of liquors and provisions which shall be on hand at the time of my death.” This went on and on. All the goods and chattels.

Then he read something that made the hairs on my arms raise. “She shall receive any six of my Negroes whom she shall choose, and the rest she will sell or disperse among my children, as she determines.”

Binah was standing next to me. I heard her whisper, “Lord, no.”

I looked down the row of slaves. There was just eleven of us now—Rosetta had passed on in her sleep the year before.

She shall receive any six . . . the rest she will sell or disperse. Five of us were leaving. Minta started to sniffle. Aunt-Sister said, “Hush up,” but even her old eyes darted round, looking
scared. She’d trained Phoebe too good. Tomfry was getting on with age, too, and Eli’s fingers were twisted like tree twigs. Goodis and Sabe were still young, but you don’t need two slaves in the stable for two horses. Prince was strong and worked the yard, but he had glum spells now, sitting and staring and blowing his nose on his shirt. Mariah was a good worker, and I figured she’d stay, but Binah, she moaned under her breath cause she was the nursery mauma and there was no more children to rear.
I said to myself, Missus will need a seamstress, but then I noticed the black dress again. From here on out, all she’d need was a few of those to wear, and she could hire somebody for that.
All of a sudden, Sarah said, “. . . Father couldn’t have meant that!”

Missus shot her a look of venom. “Your father wrote the words himself, and we’ll honor his wishes. We have no choice. Please allow Mr. Huger to continue.”

When he started back reading, Sarah looked at me with the same sorrowful blue eyes she’d had the day she turned eleven years old and I was standing before her with the lavender ribbon round my neck. The world was a bashed-in place and she couldn’t fix it.


In December, everybody was on their last nerve waiting for missus to say who’d go and who’d stay. If I was sold, how would mauma find me if she came back?

Every night I put a hot brick in my bed to keep my feet warm and lay there thinking how mauma was alive. Out there somewhere. I wondered if the man who bought her was kind. I wondered if he’d put her in the fields. Was she doing any sewing? Did she have my little brother or sister with her? Was she still wearing the pouch round her neck? I knew she’d get back here if she could. This was where her spirit was, in the tree. This was where I was.

Don’t let me be the one that has to go.

Missus didn’t have Christmas that year, but she said go ahead and have Jonkonnu if you want to. That was a custom that got started a few years back brought by the Jamaica slaves. Tomfry would dress up in a shirt and pants tattered with strips of bright cloth sewed on, and a stove pipe hat on his head—what we called the Ragman. We’d traipse behind him, singing and banging pots, winding to the back door. He’d knock and missus and everybody would come out and watch him dance. Then missus would hand out little gifts to us. Could be a coin or a new candle. Sometimes a scarf or a cob pipe. This was supposed to keep us happy.

We didn’t expect to feel in the mood this year, but on Jonkonnu day, here came Tomfry in the yard, wearing his shaggy outfit, and we made a lot of clatter and forgot our troubles for a minute.
Missus stepped out from the back door in the black dress with a basket of gifts, Sarah, Nina, Henry, and Charles behind her. They were trying to smile at us. Even Henry, who took after his mauma, looked like a grinning angel.

Tomfry did his jig. Twirled. Bounced. Wagged his arms. The ribbons whirled out, and when he was done, they clapped, and he took off the tall hat and rubbed the crust of gray on his scalp. Reaching in the basket, missus gave the women these nice fans made with painted paper. The men got two coins, not one.

The sky had been cast down all day, but now the sun broke free. Missus leaned on her gold-tip cane and squinted at us. She called out Tomfry’s name. Then Binah. Eli. Prince. Mariah. She said, “I have something extra for you,” and handed each one a jar of gargling oil.

“You’ve served me well,” she told them. “Tomfry, you will go to John’s household. Binah, you will go to Thomas. Eli, I’m sending you to Mary.” Then she turned to Prince and Mariah. “I’m sorry to say you must be sold. It’s not my wish, but it’s necessary.”

Nobody spoke. The quiet sat on us like a stone you couldn’t lift.

Mariah dropped down and walked on her knees to missus, crying for her to change her mind. Missus wiped her eyes. Then she turned and went in the house followed by her sons, but Sarah
and Nina stayed behind, their faces full of pity.

The axe didn’t fall on me. Didn’t my Lord deliver Handful? The axe didn’t fall on Goodis either, and I felt surprise over the relief this caused me. But there was no God in any of it. Nothing but the four of them standing there, and Mariah, still on her knees. I couldn’t bear to look at Tomfry with the hat squashed under his arm. Prince and Eli, studying the ground. Binah, holding her paper fan, staring at Phoebe. A daughter she’d never see again.



Missus doled out their jobs to the ones of us left. Sabe took over for Tomfry as the butler. Goodis had the work yard, the stable, and drove the carriage. Phoebe got the laundry, and Minta and I got Eli’s cleaning duties.

When the first of the year came, missus set me to work on the English chandelier in the drawing room. She said Eli hadn’t shined it proper in ten years. It had twenty-eight arms with crystal shades and teardrops of cut-glass hanging down. Using the ladder and wearing white cotton gloves, I took it apart and laid it out on the table and shined it with ammonia. Then, I couldn’t figure out how to put the thing back together.

I found Sarah in her room, reading a leather book. “We’ll figure it out,” she said. We hadn’t talked much since she got back—she seemed woebegone all the time, always stuck in that same book.
After we finally got the chandelier back on the ceiling in one piece, tears flared up in her eyes. I said, “You sad about your daddy?”

She answered me the strangest way, and I knew what she said was the real hurt she’d brought back with her. “. . . I’m twenty-seven years old, Handful, and this is my life now.” She looked round the room, up at the chandelier, and back at me. “. . . This is my life. Right here for the rest of my days.” Her voice broke and she covered her mouth with her hand.

She was trapped same as me, but she was trapped by her mind, by the minds of the people round her, not by the law. At the African church, Mr. Vesey used to say,  Be careful, you can get enslaved twice, once in your body and once in your mind.

I tried to tell her that. I said, “My body might be a slave, but not my mind. For you, it’s the other way round.”

She blinked at me and the tears came again, shining like cut-glass.

The day Binah left, I heard Phoebe crying all the way from the kitchen house.

Sarah

1 February 1820
Dear Israel,


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.”

When Israel’s letter arrived in return, I was in the warming kitchen, surveying the pantries and writing a list of foods needed at the market. Handful had waylaid it from Sabe when it arrived at the door. She handed it to me, and waited.

I took a butter knife from the drawer and ripped the seal. I read it twice, once to myself, then


aloud to her.

10 September 1820
Dear Miss Grimké,


I was gratified to receive your letter and most especially to learn that you are swayed to the Quakers. God’s way is narrow and the cost is great. I remind you of the scripture: “He that finds his life shall lose it, and he that loses his life shall find it.” Do not fear to lose what needs to be lost.

I regret to say I have grave and sorrowful news to impart. My dear Rebecca passed away last January. She died of a malignant influenza soon after our return to Philadelphia. My sister, Catherine, has come to care for the children. They miss their mother, as do I, but we are comforted that our beloved wife and mother is with God.

Write to me. I am here to encourage you in your path.
Your Friend,

Israel Morris

I sat in my room at midday with my eyes closed and my fingers laced in my lap, listening for the Voice the Quakers seemed so sure was inside of us. I’d been indulging in this dubious activity since receiving Israel’s letter, though I doubted the Quakers would’ve called it an activity. For them, this listening was the ultimate inactivity, a kind of capitulation to the stillness of one’s private heart. I wanted to believe God would eventually show up, murmuring little commands and illuminations. As usual, I heard nothing.

I’d responded to Israel’s letter immediately, my hand shaking so badly the ink lines had appeared rickety on the paper. I’d poured out my sympathy, my prayers, all sorts of pious assurances. Every word seemed trite, like the prattle that went on at my Bible studies. I felt protected behind it.
He’d responded with another letter and our correspondence had finally begun, consisting mostly of earnest inquires on my part and bits of guidance on his. I asked him pointedly what the Inner Voice sounded like. How will I recognize it? “I cannot tell you,” he wrote. “But when you hear it, you will know.”

That day the silence felt unusually dull and heavy, like the weight of water. It clogged my ears and throbbed against my drums. Fidgety thoughts darted through my mind, reminding me of squirrels loose in their trees. Perhaps I was too Anglican, too Presbyterian, too Grimké for this. I lifted my eyes to the fireplace and saw the coals had gone out.

Just  a  few  more  minutes,  I  told  myself,  and  when  my  lids  sank  closed  again,  I  had  no expectations, no hope, no endeavoring—I’d given up on the Voice—and it was then my mind stopped racing and I began to float on some quiet stream.

Go north.

The voice broke into my small oblivion, dropping like a dark, beautiful stone. I caught my breath. It was not like a common thought—it was distinct, shimmering, and dense
with God.

Go north.

I opened my eyes. My heart leapt so wildly I placed a hand across my breast and pressed.

It was unthinkable. Unmarried daughters didn’t go off to live unprotected on their own in a foreign place. They lived at home with their mothers, and when there was no mother, with their sisters, and when there were no sisters, with their brothers. They didn’t break with everything and everyone they knew and loved. They didn’t throw over their lives and their reputations and their family name. They didn’t create scandals.

I rose to my feet and paced before the window, saying to myself it wasn’t possible. Mother would rain down Armageddon. Voice or no Voice, she would put a swift end to it.
Father had left all his properties and the vast share of his wealth to his sons, but he hadn’t forgotten his daughters. He’d left us each ten thousand dollars, and if I were frugal, if I lived on the interest, it would provide for me the rest of my life.

Beyond the window, the sky loomed large, filled with broken light, and I remembered suddenly that day last winter in the drawing room when Handful cleaned the chandelier, the allegation she’d leveled at me: My body might be a slave, but not my mind. For you, it’s the other way round. I’d dismissed the words—what could she know of it? But I saw now how exact they were. My mind had been shackled.

I strode to my dresser and opened the drawer of my Hepplewhite, the one I never opened, the one that held the lava box. Inside it, I found the silver button Handful had returned to me some years ago. It was black with tarnish and long forgotten. I took it in my palm.

How does one know the voice is God’s? I believed the voice bidding me to go north belonged to him, though perhaps what I really heard that day was my own impulse to freedom. Perhaps it was my own voice. Does it matter?