The Invention of Wings(11)

Sarah


            I took meals alone in my room for three full days as a protest against owning Hetty, though I don’t think anyone much noticed. On the fourth day, I swallowed my pride and arrived in the dining room for breakfast. Mother and I hadn’t spoken of the doomed manumission document. I suspected she was the one who’d torn it into two even pieces and deposited them outside my room, thereby having the Last Word without uttering a syllable.

            At the age of eleven, I owned a slave I couldn’t free.O

            The meal, the largest of the day, had long been under way—Father, Thomas, and Frederick had already left in pursuit of school and work, while Mother, Mary, Anna, and Eliza remained.

            “You are late, my dear,” Mother said. Not without a note of sympathy.

            Phoebe, who assisted Aunt-Sister and looked slightly older than myself, appeared at my elbow, emanating the fresh odors of the kitchen house—sweat, coal, smoke, and an acrid fishiness. Typically, she stood by the table and swished the fly brush, but today she slid a plate before me heaped with sausages, grit cake, salted shrimp, brown bread, and tapioca jelly.

            Attempting to lower a quivery cup of tea beside my plate, Phoebe deposited it on top my spoon, causing the contents to slosh onto the cloth. “Oh missus, I sorry,” she cried, whirling toward Mother.

            Mother blew out her breath as if all the mistakes of all the Negroes in the world rested personally upon her shoulders. “Where is Aunt-Sister? Why, for heaven’s sake, are you serving?”

            “She showing me how to do it.”

            “Well, see that you learn.”

            As Phoebe rushed to stand outside the door, I tried to toss her a smile.

            “It’s nice of you to make an appearance,” Mother said. “You are recovered?”

            All eyes turned on me. Words collected in my mouth and lay there. At such moments, I used a technique in which I imagined my tongue like a slingshot. I drew it back, tighter, tighter. “. . . . . . I’m fine.” The words hurled across the table in a spray of saliva.

            Mary made a show of dabbing her face with a napkin.

            She’ll end up exactly like Mother, I thought. Running a house congested with children and slaves, while I—

            “I trust you found the remains of your folly?” Mother asked.

            Ah, there it was. She had confiscated my document, likely without Father knowing.

            “What folly?” Mary said.

            I gave Mother a pleading look.

            “Nothing you need concern yourself with, Mary,” she said, and tilted her head as if she wanted to mend the rift between us.

            I slumped in my chair and debated taking my cause to Father and presenting him with the torn manumission document. I could think of little else for the rest of the day, but by nightfall, I knew it would do no good. He deferred to Mother on all household matters, and he abhorred a tattler. My brothers never tattled, and I would do no less. Besides, I would’ve been an idiot to rile Mother further.

            I countered my disappointment by conducting vigorous talks with myself about the future. Anything is possible, anything at all.

            Nightly, I opened the lava box and gazed upon the silver button.





Handful


            Missus said I was the worst waiting maid in Charleston. She said, “You are abysmal, Hetty, abysmal.”

            I asked Miss Sarah what abysmal means and she said, “Not quite up to standard.”

            Uh huh. I could tell from missus’ face, there’s bad, there’s worse, and after that comes abysmal.