I couldn’t move, not the tiniest muscle in my tongue.
Israel slid up on the pew as if he might stand and speak on my behalf, but he lingered there, balling his fist and pressing it into the palm of his hand. Catherine had put him in the same untenable position as me—he wanted to give no one a reason to question what went on in his house, especially the good people of Arch Street who were at the center of his life, who’d known and cherished Rebecca. I could understand this. Yet watching him hesitate now on the edge of his seat, I had the feeling his reluctance to speak out publicly for me stemmed from something even deeper, from some submerged, almost sovereign need to protect his love for his wife. I knew suddenly it was the same reason he hadn’t declared his feelings for me privately. He cast a tortuous look at me and eased back on the bench.
At the front of the room, the female minister sat on the “Facing bench” along with the other ministers, scrutinizing me, noticing the glimmers of distress I couldn’t hide. Gazing back at her, I imagined she saw down to the things in my heart, things I was just coming to know myself. He might never claim me.
She nodded at me suddenly and stood. “I’m in opposition. I see no reason for Miss Grimké to move out. It would be a great disruption for her and a hardship for all involved. Her conduct is not in question. We should not be so concerned with outward appearances.”
Taking her seat, she smiled at me, and I thought I might cry at the sight of it.
She was the only one to offer a dissent to Catherine. The Quakers decided I would depart Green Hill within the month and duly recorded it in the Minute Book.
After the meeting, Israel left quickly to bring the carriage around, but I went on sitting on the pew, trying to gather myself. I couldn’t think where I would go. Would I still teach the children? As Catherine steered them toward the door, Becky looked back at me, twisting against Catherine’s hands, which were fastened like a harness on her small back.
“Sarah? May I call you Sarah?” It was my defender.
I nodded. “. . . Thank you for speaking as you did . . . I’m grateful.”
She thrust a folded piece of paper at me. “Here’s my address. You are welcome to stay with me and my husband.” She started to go, then turned back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself, did I? My name is Lucretia Mott.”
Handful
In the workshop at Denmark’s house, the lieutenants were standing round the work table. They were always by Denmark’s side. He told them he’d set the date, two months from now, said there were six thousand names in the Book.
I was back in the corner, listening, crouched on a footstool, my usual spot. Nobody much noticed me there unless they needed something to drink. Handful, bring the hooch water, Handful, bring the ginger beer.
It was April and half the heat from hell had already showed up in Charleston. The men were dripping with it. “These last weeks, you need to play the part of the good slave better than ever,” Denmark said. “Tell everybody to grit their teeth and obey their owners. If somebody was to tell the white folks a slave revolt is coming, we need them to laugh and say, ‘Not our slaves, they’re like family. They’re the happiest people on earth.’”
While they talked, mauma came to my mind, and the picture I had of her was washed-out like the red on a quilt after it’s boiled too many times. It’d got sometimes where I couldn’t remember how her face looked, where the ridges had been on her fingers from working the needle, or what she smelled like at the end of the day. Whenever this happened, I’d go out to the spirit tree. That’s where I felt mauma the sharpest, in the leaves and bark and dropping acorns.
Sitting there, I shut my eyes and tried to get her back, worried she was leaving me for good. Aunt-Sister would’ve said, “Let her go, it’s past the time,” but I wanted the pain of mauma’s face and hands more than the peace of being without them.