Handful
I smelled the corn fritters half a block from Denmark Vesey’s house, the fry-oil in the air, the sweet corn fuss coming down the street. For two years, I’d been sneaking off to 20 Bull every time I found a hole in the week to squeeze through. Sabe was a shiftless lackey of a butler and didn’t watch us the way Tomfry had—we could thank missus for that much.
I’d tell Sabe we were out of thread, beeswax, buttons, or rat droppings, and he’d send me willy-nilly to the market. The rest of the time he didn’t care where I was. The only thought in his head was for slurping down master Grimké’s brandies and whiskeys in the cellar and messing round with Minta. They were always in the empty room over the carriage house doing just what you think they’re doing. Me, Aunt-Sister, Phoebe, and Goodis would hear them all the way from the kitchen house porch and Goodis would cock his eyebrow at me. Everybody knew he’d been sweet on me since the day he got here. He’d made the rabbit cane special for me, and he would give me the last yam off his plate. Once when Sabe yelled at me for going missing, Goodis stuck a fist in his face and Sabe backed right down. I never had a man touch me, never had wanted one, but sometimes when I was listening to Sabe and Minta up in the carriage house, Goodis didn’t seem so bad.
With Sarah gone, the whole place had gone to hell’s dredges. With the last of the boys in college, there wasn’t anybody left in the house but missus and Nina and us six slaves to keep it going. Missus stewed all the time about money. She had the lump sum master Grimké left, but she said it was a trifle of what she needed. Paint was flecking off the house and she’d sold the extra horse. She didn’t eat bird nest pudding anymore, and in the slave dining room, we lived on rice and more rice.
The day I smelled the fritters, it was two days before Christmas—I remember there was a cold pinch in the air and palm wreaths tacked on the doors of the piazzas, woven fancy like hair braids. This time Sabe had sent me to carry a note from missus to the solicitor’s office. Don’t think I didn’t read it before I handed it over.
Dear Mr. Huger,
I find that my allowance is inadequate to meet the demands of living well. I request that you alert my sons as to my needs. As you know, they are in possession of properties that could be sold in order to augment my care. Such a proposal would suit better coming from a man of your influence, who was a loyal friend to their father.
Yours Truly,
Mary Grimké
I had a jar of sorghum in my pocket that I’d swiped from the larder. I liked to bring Denmark a little something, and this would hit the spot with the fritters. He had a habit of telling whoever was hanging round his place that I was his daughter. He didn’t say I was like a daughter, but claimed out and out I was his. Susan grumbled about it, but she was good to me, too.
I found her in her kitchen house, shoveling the corn cakes from the skillet to the plate. She said, “Where you been? We haven’t seen you in over a week.”
“You can’t do with me and you can’t do without me.”
She laughed. “I can do with you all right. The one I can’t do with and do without is in his workshop.”
“Denmark? What’s he done now?”
She snorted. “You mean beside keep women all over the city?”
It struck me best to sidestep this since mauma had been one of them. “Yeah, beside that.”
A smile dipped cross her lips. She handed me the plate. “Here, take this to him. He’s in a mood, is all. It’s about that Monday Gell. He lost something that set Denmark off. Some sort of list. I thought Denmark was gonna kill the man.”
I headed back toward the workshop knowing Monday had lost the roll of draftees he’d been collecting for Denmark out on the Bulkley farm.