The Invention of Wings (41 page)

“… I trust you like it?”

I think she expected me to be apologetic. She rolled up her pale white lips, bringing to mind the fluted edges of a calla lily. “Well, it certainly matches this new personality of yours. You’ve been very outspoken in Meetings lately.”

“… I only try to speak as God would prompt me,” I said, which was far more pious than true.

“It
is
curious, though, that God prompts you to speak against slavery so much of the time. I hope you’ll receive what I’m about to say for your own edification, but to many of us it appears you’ve become overly absorbed by the cause.”

Undaunted even by Lucretia, who took a step closer to my side, Mrs. Bettleman continued. “There are those of us who believe the time for action has not yet come.”

Anger seared through me. “… You, who know nothing of slavery … nothing at all,
you
presume to say the time has not come?”

My voice sailed across the vestibule, causing the women to cease their conversations and turn in our direction. Mrs. Bettleman caught her breath—but I wasn’t finished. “If you were a slave toiling in the fields in Carolina … I suspect you would think the time had
fully
come.”

She turned on her heel and strode away, leaving Lucretia and me the object of shocked, silent stares.

“I need to find some air,” I said calmly, and we walked from the meetinghouse onto the street. We kept walking past the simple brick houses and charcoal vendors and fruit peddlers, all the way to Camden Ferry Slip. We strolled past the ferry house onto the quay, which brimmed with passengers arriving from New Jersey. At the far end of the dock, a flock of white gulls stood on the weathered planks, facing the wind. We stopped short of them and stared at the Delaware River, holding on to our bonnets.

Looking down, I saw that my hands were shaking. Lucretia saw it, too. She said, “You won’t look over your shoulder, will you?” She was referring to the altercation, to the terrible inclination we women sometimes had to scurry back to safety.

“No,” I told her. “I won’t look back.”

16 February 1828

Dear Beloved Sister,

You are the first and only to know: I’ve lost my heart to Reverend William McDowell of Third Presbyterian Church. He’s referred to in Charleston as the “young, handsome, minister from New Jersey.” He’s barely past thirty, and his face is like that of Apollo in the little painting that used to hang in your room. He came here from Morristown when his health forced him to seek a milder climate. Oh, Sister, he has the strongest reservations about slavery!

Last summer, he enlisted me to teach the children in Sabbath School, a job I happily do each week. I once remarked on the evil of slavery during class and received a cautionary visit from Dr. McIntire, the Superintendent, and you should’ve seen the way William came to my defense. Afterward, he advised me that when it comes to slavery, we must pray and wait. I’m no good at either.

He calls on me weekly, during which we have discussions about theology and church and the state of the world. He never departs without taking my hand and praying. I open my eyes and watch as he creases his brow and makes his eloquent pleas. If God has the slightest notion of how it feels to be enamored, he’ll forgive me.

I don’t yet know William’s intentions toward me, but I believe he reciprocates my own. Be happy for me
.

Yours
,

Nina

When Nina’s letter arrived, I carried it to the bench beneath a red elm in the Motts’ tiny backyard. It was a warm day for March. The crocuses were breaking through the winter crust and the grasshoppers and birds were out making a rapturous commotion.

After tucking a small quilt over my knees, I arranged my new spectacles onto the end of my nose. Lately, words had begun to transform themselves into blurred squiggles. I thought I’d ruined my eyes from excessive reading—I’d been unrelenting in my studies for the ministry over the past year—but the physician I’d consulted ascribed the problem to middle age. I slit the letter, thinking,
Nina, if you could see me now with my old-lady lap throw and my spectacles, you would think me seventy instead of half that.

I read about her Reverend McDowell with what I imagined to be a mother’s satisfaction and worries. I wondered if he was worthy of her. I wondered what Mother thought of him, and if I would return to Charleston for the wedding. I wondered what kind of clergy wife Nina would make and if the Reverend had any idea what sort of Pandora’s box he was about to open.

It will always be a quirk of fate that Israel arrived at this particular moment. I was folding the letter into my pocket when I looked up and saw him coming toward me without his coat or hat. It was the middle of the afternoon.

He’d never mentioned the episode with Jane Bettleman. He undoubtedly knew of it. Everyone at Arch Street knew of it. It had divided the members into those who thought I was haughty and brazen and those who thought I merely impassioned and precipitate. I assumed he was among the latter.

As he took a seat beside me, his knee pressed against my leg and a tiny heat moved across my chest. He still had his beard. It was well-clipped, but longer with more silver. I hadn’t seen him in weeks except at Meeting. There’d been no explanation for his absence. I’d told myself it was the inevitable way of things.

I removed my glasses. “… Israel … this is unexpected.”

There was an exigency about him. I felt it like a disturbance in the air.

“I’ve wanted to speak to you for some time, but I’ve resisted. I worried how you might receive what I have to say.”

Surely this wasn’t about the hubbub with Mrs. Bettleman. That had been months ago.

“… Is there some difficult news?” I asked.

“I imagine this will seem abrupt, Sarah, but I’ve come determined to speak and let things fall or stand as they will. For five years now, I’ve struggled with my feelings concerning you.”

I felt my breath suddenly leave me. He looked off toward the bare-bone trees at the perimeter of the yard. “I’ve grieved Rebecca, perhaps too long. It became a habit, grieving her. I’ve been enthralled to her memory to the exclusion of too many things.”

He bowed his head. I wanted to reassure him it was all right, but it had never been all right, and I remained quiet.

“I’ve come to say I’m sorry,” he said. “It seemed unfair to ask you to be my wife when I felt so tied to her.”

It was an apology then, not a proposal. “… You don’t need to apologize.”

He went on as if I’d said nothing. “Some weeks ago, I dreamed of her. She came to me, holding the locket, the one Becky insisted you wear that time. She placed it in my hand. When I woke, it felt as if she’d released me.”

I’d been staring miserably at my hands, but I gazed up at him, aware of how palpable the word
released
had been in his voice, how the moment was rearranging itself.

“You must know I care deeply for you,” he said. “A man is not meant to be alone. The children are growing, but the younger ones still need a mother, and Green Hill is in need of a mistress. Catherine has expressed a wish to move back to her house in town. I’m saying it poorly. I’m asking—I’m hoping you’ll be my wife.”

I’d imagined this moment: I would feel an outpouring of joy. I would close my eyes and know that my life had truly begun. I would say,
Dearest Israel, yes.
Everything in the world would be
yes
.

It was not like that. What I felt was quiet and strange. It was happiness defiled by fear. For an imperishable minute I couldn’t speak.

My silence distressed him. “Sarah?” he said.

“… I want to say yes … and yet, as you know, I’ve set my course for a vocation. The ministry … What I mean to say is … could I be your wife
and
a minister?”

His eyes widened. “I hadn’t imagined you would want to continue with your ambition after we married. Would you really want that?”

“I would. With all my heart.”

His face furrowed. “Forgive me, I only thought you chose it because you’d given up on me.”

He thought my ambition was a consolation? Reflexively, I stood and took a few steps.

I thought of the knowing that had come to me about my mission on the night I wrote to Handful. It was pure as the voice that had brought me north. When I’d sewed the button on my dress, I knew it couldn’t be undone.

I turned back to him and saw he was on his feet, waiting. “I can’t be Rebecca, Israel. Her whole life was for you and the children, and I would love you no less than she did, but I’m not like her. There are things I must do. Please, Israel, don’t make me choose.”

He took my hands and kissed them, first one, then the other, and it came to me that I’d spoken of love, but he had not. He’d spoken of caring, of need—his, the children’s, Green Hill’s.

“Wouldn’t I, wouldn’t we be enough for you?” he said. “You would be a wonderful wife and the best of mothers. We would see to it that you never missed your ambition.”

It was his way of telling me. I could not have him and myself both.

I
spread a pallet under the tree and set my sewing basket on it. Missus had decided she needed new curtains and covers for the drawing room, which was the last thing she needed, but it gave me a reason to come out here and sew with mauma.

She sat under the tree every day, working her story onto the quilt. Even if it drizzled, I couldn’t budge her—she was like God mending the world. When she came to bed at night, she brought the tree with her. The smell of bark and white mushrooms. Crumbs from the earth all over the mattress.

Winter had packed and gone. The leaves had wriggled out on the tree branches and the gold tassels were falling from the limbs like shedding fur. Settling on the pallet next to mauma, I wondered about Sarah up north, if her pale face ever saw the sun. She’d written me a while back, first letter I ever got. I carried it in my pocket most of the time.

Thomas’ wife had given missus a brass bird that fastened cloth in its beak, what they called a sew bird. I stuck one end of the curtain panel in its mouth while I measured and cut. Mauma was cutting out the appliqué of a man holding a branding iron in the fire.

“Who’s the man?” I said.

“That’s massa Wilcox,” she said. “He brand me the first time we run off. Sky was ’bout seven then—I had to wait on her to get old enough to travel.”

“Sky said yawl ran four times.”

“We run the next year when she’s eight, and then when she’s nine, and that time they whip her, too, so I stop trying.”

“How come you tried this last time then?”

“When I first get there, before Sky was born, massa Wilcox come down to see me. Everybody know what he want, too. When he put his hand on me, I take a scoop of red coals off the fire and toss ’em. Burn the man’s arm clean through his shirt. I got my first whipping, but it’s the last time he try that with me. When Sky turn thirteen last year, here he come back, sniffing round her. I tell her, we leaving, and this time we gon die trying.”

I couldn’t measure words against any of that. I said, “Well, you made it. You’re here now.”

Our needles started back. Over in the garden, Sky was singing.
Ef oona ent kno weh oona da gwuine, oona should kno weh oona dum from
.

Sky had never set foot past the Grimké walls since she got here. Missus didn’t have owner papers on her and Nina said it was dangerous business out there. Since Denmark, the codes had got stricter and the
buckrahs
had got meaner, but the next market day, I told Nina, “Write Sky a pass, just do it for me. I’ll watch after her.”

I tied a fresh scarf on Sky’s head and wrapped a pressed apron round her waist. I said, “Now, don’t be talking too much out there, all right?”

On the street, I showed her the alleys to duck in. I pointed out the guards, how to walk past and lower her eyes, how to step aside for the whites, how to survive in Charleston.

The market was busy—the men carrying wood slats piled with fish and the women walking round with vegetable baskets on their heads the size of laundry tubs. The little slave girls were out, too, selling peanut patties from their straw hats. By the time we passed by the butcher tables with the bloody calf heads lined up, Sky’s eyes were big as horse hooves. “Where all this stuff come from?” she said.