The Invention of Wings (12 page)

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.

“… … Thomas, dear brother, I shall miss you … … I wish you God’s speed with your studies …” I paused and felt an upwelling of courage. “One day I intend to follow in your footsteps … … To become a jurist.”

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.

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.