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. . . . . 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.”
“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.”
Omg
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—”
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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.
Earlier I’d rubbed my face with salt and lemon-vinegar, which was Mother’s formula for removing ink spots. It had lightened my freckles, but not erased them, and I reached for the powder muff to finish them off.
Charleston had flung open and female life could begin in earnest. In other words, I could take up the business of procuring a husband. How highborn and moneyed this husband turned out to be would depend entirely on the allure of my face, the delicacy of my physique, the skill of my seamstress, and the charisma of my tête-à-tête.
I thought how odd it was that no one ever spoke of them, how the word slavery was not suitable in polite company, but referred to as the peculiar institution.
“May I call on you?” he asked. “You want to call on me?” He reached for my hand and pulled it to his lips.
“He come into some money and bought his own freedom. He cost a fortune, but his massa have a gamble debt, so he only pay five hundred dollars for hisself. And he still have money after that to buy a house at 20 Bull Street. It sit three blocks from where the governor live.” “How’d he get all this money?” “Won it in the East Bay Street lottery.” I laughed out loud. “That’s what he told you? Well, I reckon this is the luckiest slave that ever lived.” “It happen ten years ago, everybody know ’bout it. He buy a ticket, and his number come up. It happen.”
all that sneaking out she’d done for the better part of a year had put white hair on my head. I used to pull it out and show it to her. I’d say, “Look what you’re doing to me.” She’d say, “Here I is, saving up to buy us freedom and you worrying ’bout hair.”
Oh, the adroitness of this man! I twisted in my chair the better to see him. In the guise of a compliment, he’d let it be known he was not the only one in the room descended from the merchant class.
I’d spent the night in the infirmary in order to care for a fifteen-year-old with childbirth fever,
It went for thirty-six pages. Silk this and ivory that. Gold this, silver that. But no Hetty and no Charlotte Grimké. Then I turned the last page and there were all us slaves, right after the water trough, the wheelbarrow, the claw hammer, and the bushel of flint corn.
Charlotte, 36 yrs. Seamstress. . . 550.
Hetty, 16 yrs. Lady’s Maid, Seamstress . . . 500.
After a while, I went down to the cellar. When mauma saw my raw eyes, she said, “Ain’t nobody can write down in a book what you worth.”
“I know you’re angry, Sarah, but I didn’t see any harm with me being in the tub, same as you.” Not Miss Sarah, but Sarah. I would never again hear her put Miss before my name.
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 saltwater blacks from Africa who knew rice planting.
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.
Weird?
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 Grimké men assemble in our defense?
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.
When the trial was heard that spring in the House of Representatives in Columbia, Mr. Huger assailed 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.
Random addition to this story?
He turned into a recluse of a man. And I, I turned into a Jezebel of a woman.
You made a rebel of a careless mans careful daughter
When the stars stopped falling and the sky went still, I saw her hands rub the little mound of her belly. And I knew then what it was she wasn’t too old for.
“I remind you, Sarah, there is no divorce law in our state,” he was saying. “Once you are married, the contract is indissoluble. You are aware of this?”
Burke Williams has misrepresented himself to you. It has come to my attention that he has other female acquaintances.” Without considering the hidden entendre, I said, “Surely, that’s not a crime.” “Sarah, these acquaintances—they’re also his fiancées.” I knew suddenly what he said was true. So many things made sense now. The delay in naming a marriage date. The incessant trips he made to visit family or conduct business. The curious fact that someone so full of looks and charm had settled on me.
There’s no reason for you to see him again. I’ve broken the engagement on your behalf.” How could you? He’d usurped any chance I had for personal retribution. In that moment, I felt more enraged by Thomas’ babyish protection than by Burke’s cruelty.
One of them would be forced to turn around and retrace her steps all the way back to where the brick wall began, or else yield way by stepping off into the muddy roadway. Face-offs of this sort played out on the streets so regularly a city ordinance had been passed requiring slaves to give deference.
her stomach. The guardsman sat atop her. The driver snapped the reins, the horses jerked, and I could only stand there spattered with the pudding from the street.
Could you?
for not once throughout the harrowing weeks that followed Burke’s betrayal was I uncertain which event was tragic and which was merely unfortunate.
The reverend’s eyes found me—I can’t explain it. Nor did he look away as he spoke. “Are you not sick of the frivolous being you have become? Are you not mortified at your own folly, weary of the ballroom and its gilded toys? Will you not give up the vanities and gaieties of this life for the sake of your soul?” I felt utterly spoken to, and in the most direct and supernatural way. How could he know what lay inside me? How did he know what I was only that moment able to see myself? “God calls you,” he bellowed. “God, your beloved, begs you to answer.” The words ravished me. They seemed to break
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Ew?
colonization. From what I could gather, the term had little to do with the British occupation of the last century and everything to do with the slaves. “. . . What’s this concept?” I asked, and they turned to me as if a housefly had pried through a slat in the shutters and was buzzing wantonly about. “It’s a new and advanced idea,” Thomas answered. “Despite what any of you believe, it will soon expand into a national movement. Mark my words.” “But what is it?” I said. “It proposes we free the slaves and send them back to Africa.” Nothing had prepared me for so radical a scheme. “. . . Why,
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“Yes, I am against colonization,” I began. There was no falter now in my throat. I forced myself to keep on. “I’m against it, but not for the reason you think. We should free the slaves, but they should remain here. As equals.”
Last square was a man, a bull of a man with a carpenter apron on—Mr. Denmark Vesey—and next to him she’d stitched four numbers big as he was: 1884. I didn’t have a notion what that meant.
My scalp pricked. I said, “What’s the man’s name?” Jesse said, “Denmark Vesey.” For years, I’d refused to think of Mr. Vesey, how mauma had sewed him on the last square on her story quilt. I didn’t like the man being on it, didn’t like the man period. I’d never thought he knew anything about what happened to her, why would he, but standing there, a bell rang in my head and told me it was worth a try. Maybe then I could put mauma to rest. That’s when I decided to get religion.
Not again
tried to prevent Nina’s display at church that day, she would’ve pointed out that I, too, had spurned the Anglicans. Well, I had, but I’d done so to embrace the Presbyterians, whereas Nina would’ve spurned the Presbyterians, too, given half a chance. She hated them for what she called their “gall and wormwood.” If there was a wedge between my sister and me, it was religion.
Then dont
Daniel’s lion’s den, and God had left us to it. I said, “Where’s all that delivering God’s supposed to do?” He snorted. “You’re right, the only deliverance is the one we get for ourselves. The Lord doesn’t have any hands and feet but ours.”
“I’m pleased you feel that way. You’ll be the one to accompany him.” I leapt to me feet. “Me? Surely you can’t mean I’m to take Father to Philadelphia by myself. What about Thomas or John?” “Be reasonable, Sarah. They cannot leave their professions and families so easily.” “And I can?” “Do I need to point out you have no profession or family to care for? You live under your father’s roof. Your duty is to him.”
True
“I’m here,” a voice said. He stood propped in the doorway behind her with his arms folded on his chest like he’s God watching the world go by. He told his wife to find something to do, and her eyes trimmed down to little slits. “Take that iron with you,” he said. “It’s smoking up the room.” She left with it, while he eyed me.
Sounds lovely. Why did she wait so long to talk to him
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.
Pathetic or actually sick?
Missus said half the city was coming.
Isnt he already buried
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.”
excoriated
?
sepulcher,
? Shes only received limited education . What are these words
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.
Girl no
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.
Immediately No
gossamer
?
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.”
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.
Depressed
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.
