The Invention of Wings Read online

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  I had the mind of an eleven-year-old, but I knew right off this blacksmith wasn’t just some nice man doing her a favor. Why was he putting himself in danger to make a fake badge for her?

  She said, “I gon be making bonnets and dresses and quilts for a lady on Queen Street. Missus Allen. I told her my name was Pearl, and I belong to massa Dupré on the corner of George and East Bay. She say to me, ‘You mean that French tailor?’ I say, ‘Yessum, he can’t fill my time no more with work, so he letting me out for hire.’”

  “What if she checks on your story?”

  “She an old widow, she ain’t gon check. She just say, ‘Show me your badge.’

  Mauma was proud of her badge and proud of herself.

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

  “How you gonna get all this extra work done?”

  “I got you. I got all the hours of the night.”

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

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

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

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

  Not a peep from anybody. Missus cast her eyes on me. “Hetty? Where is your mother?”

  I shrugged and acted stumped. “I don’t know, missus. Wish I did know.”

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

  She rang her bell, which meant go back to work. I hurried to mauma’s room to check the gunny sack. All her money was still at the bottom under the stuffing. Then I crept back outside and set the pail next to the cistern. The sun was coming down the sky, turning it the color of apricots.

  While Tomfry did his searching high and low, I took up my spot in the front alcove on the second floor to wait. At the first shade of dark, lo-to-behold, I looked down through the window and there was mauma turning the corner. She marched straight to the front door and knocked.

  I tore down the stairs and got to the door the same time as Tomfry.

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

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

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

  “Not the rooftop,” I said.

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

  Meantime, Tomfry went and explained to missus how he forgot about the rooftop when he was searching, how he knew for a fact Charlotte had been up there one time before.

  Missus waited at the foot of the attic steps with her cane, huffing from climbing the stairs, big as she was. I lurked behind her. I was trembling with nerves.

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

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

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

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

  Sarah

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

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

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

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

  Shortly after Christmas, I passed Thomas’ door and glimpsed his trunk open on the floor. I couldn’t bear his leaving, but it was worse knowing he was going off to New Haven to pursue a dream I myself had, but would never realize. Consumed with envy for his dazzling future, I fled to my room where I sobbed out my grief. It gushed from me in black waves, and as it did, my despondency seemed to reach its extremity, its farther limit, passing over into what I can only now call an anguished hope.

  All things pass in the end, even the worst melancholy. I opened my dresser and pulled out the lava box that held my button. My eyes glazed at the sight of it, and this time I felt my spirit rise up to meet my will. I would not give up. I would err on the side of audacity. That was what I’d always done.

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

  Mother reclined against the red velvet of her rosewood Récamier, which had been brought up from her bedroom. I’d observed five of Mother’s gestations, and clearly this was her most difficult. She’d enlarged to mammoth proportions. Even her poor face appeared bloated. Nevertheless, she’d created an elaborate fete. The room blazed with candles and lamplight, which reflected off mirrors and gilt surfaces, and the tables were laid with white linen cloths and gold brocade runners in keeping with the colors of the Epiphany. Tomfry, Snow, and Eli served, wearing their dark green livery, hauling in trays of crab pies, buttered shrimps, veal, fried whiting, and omelet soufflé.

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

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

  “Who will send Thomas off with a tribute?” Father said, scanning the faces of his sons. Firstborn John tugged on the hem of his vest, but it was I, the sixth-born child and second daughter, who leapt to my feet and made a speech.

  “. . . . . . 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.”