He picked up the knapsack and headed for the door. It wasn’t the last time I’d see him. But those words, I’ll be where I’ll be, were the last words he ever spoke to me.
I burned the list of names in the stove fire in the kitchen house. Then I waited for what would be.
Denmark was caught four days later in the house of a free mulatto woman. He had a trial with seven judges, and before it was over and done, every person in the city, white and black, knew his name. The hearsay from the trial flooded the streets and alleys and filled up the drawing rooms and the work yards. The slaves said Denmark Vesey was the black Jesus and even if they killed him, he would rise on the third day. The white folks said he was the Frozen Serpent that struck the bosom that sheltered him. They said he was a general who misled his own army, that he never had as many weapons as the slaves thought he did. The Guard found a few pikes and pistols and two bullet molds, but that was all. Maybe Gullah Jack, who managed to stay free till August, made the rest of the arms disappear, but I wondered if Denmark had pulled the truth like taffy the way they said. When I opened the quilt so I could burn the list, I counted two hundred eighty-three names on it, not six thousand like he’d said. Nowadays, I believe he just wanted to strike a flame, thinking if he did that, every able-body would join the fight.
On the day the verdict came, Sabe had me on my hands and knees rolling up carpets and scrubbing floors in the main passageway. The heat was so bad I could’ve washed the soap off the floor with the sweat pouring down my face. I told Sabe floor-scrubbing was winter work and he said, well good, you can do it next winter, too. I swear, I didn’t know what Minta saw in him.
I’d just slipped out to the piazza to catch a breeze when Sarah stepped out there and said, “. . . I thought you would want to know, Denmark Vesey’s trial is over.”
Course, there wasn’t a way in the world the man was getting free, but still, I reached back for the bannister, weak with hope. She came close to me and laid her hand on my soaked-through dress. “. . . They found him guilty.”
“What happens to him now?”
“. . . He’ll be put to death. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t let on anything inside me, the way sorrow was already singing again in the hollow of my bones.
It didn’t cross my mind yet to wonder why Sarah sought me out with the news. She and Nina both knew I left the premises sometimes for reasons of my own, but they didn’t know I went to his house. They didn’t know he called me daughter. They didn’t know he was anything special to me.
“. . . When they gave the verdict, they also issued an edict,” she said. “. . . A kind of order from the judges.”
I studied her face, her red freckles burning bright in the sun and worry gathered tight in her eyes, and I knew why she was out here on the piazza with me—it was about this edict.
“. . . Any black person, man or woman, who mourns Denmark Vesey in public will be arrested and whipped.”
I looked away from her into the ornament garden where Goodis had left the rake and hoe and the watering pot. Every green thing was bowed down thirsty. Everything withering.
“. . . Handful, please, listen to me now, according to the order, you cannot wear black on the streets, or cry, or say his name, or do anything to mark him. Do you understand?”
“No, I don’t understand. I won’t never understand,” I said, and went on back inside to the scrub brush.
On July 2 before the sun rose, I wriggled through the window in my room, braced my back against the house and my good leg against the wall, and shimmied up and over the fence the way I used to do. To hell with begging for a pass. White people signing their names so I could walk down the street. Hell with it.