Up in the house missus and Nina were bickering. One minute it’s the way missus treats us slaves, next it’s Nina refusing to go back to society. Without Sarah here to separate them, they kept a fight going all day. Phoebe was in the kitchen house cooking a stew meat, getting more suggestions from Aunt-Sister than she needed. Minta was hiding out someplace, probably the laundry house, and Sabe, if I had to guess, was in the cellar, smoking master Grimké’s pipe. Now that the liquor was gone, I smelled pipe smoke all the time.
I slowed down by the vegetable garden to see if Goodis planted it for the winter. It was nothing but dirt clods. The ornament garden was in a shamble, too—the rose vines choking the oleander and the myrtle spurting in twenty wrong directions. Missus said Goodis gave shiftless a bad name, but the man wasn’t lazy, he was sick to the back teeth of forcing himself to care about her squashes and flowers.
While I was studying the dirt and worrying about him, I got the feeling somebody was watching me. I looked first at missus’ window, but it was empty. The stable door was open, but Goodis had his back to me, rubbing down the horse. Then, from the edge of my eye, I saw two figures at the back gate. They didn’t move when I looked their way, just stood there in the sharp light—an old slave woman and a slave girl. What’d they want? There was always a slave ready to sell you something, but I’d never seen one come peddling to the back gate. I hated to shoo them off. The old woman was bent and frail-looking. The girl was holding her by the arm.
I walked back there, stepping with my cane, my fingers round the rabbit head, feeling how it was smoothed to the grain from all the years of holding. The woman and the girl didn’t take their eyes off me. Coming closer, I noticed their head scarves were the same washed-out red. The woman had yellow-brown skin. All of a sudden, her eyes flared wide and her chin started to shake. She said, “Handful.”
I came to a stop, letting the sound flutter through the air and settle over me. Then I dropped the cane and broke into a run, the closest I could get to one. Seeing me come, the old woman sank to the ground. I didn’t have a key for the gate, just flew over it, like crossing the sky. Kneeling down, I scooped her in my arms.
I must’ve been shouting cause Goodis came running, then Minta, Phoebe, Aunt-Sister, and Sabe. I remember them peering over the gate at us. I remember the strange girl saying, “Is you Handful?” And me on the ground, rocking the woman like a newborn.
“Sweet Lord Jesus,” Aunt-Sister said. “It’s Charlotte.”
Goodis carried mauma to the cellar room and laid her on the bed. Everybody crowded in and stared at her like she was a specter. We were deer in the woods, froze to stillness, afraid to move. I felt hot, the breath gone from me. Mauma’s lids rolled back and I saw the white skins of her eyes had started to yellow like the rest of her. She looked thin as thread. Her face had turned to wrinkles and her hair had gone salt-white. She’d disappeared fourteen years ago, but she’d aged thirty.
The girl hunkered next to her on the bed with her eyes darting face to face, her skin dark as char. She was big-boned, big-handed, big-footed with a forehead like the full moon. She looked just like her daddy. Denmark’s girl.
I told Minta, get a wet rag. While I rubbed mauma’s face, she started to groan and twist her neck. Sabe hauled off running to fetch missus and Nina, and by the time they showed up, mauma’s eyes were starting to open to the right place.
The smell of unwashed bodies hung round the bed, making missus draw back and cover her nose. “Charlotte,” she said, standing back a ways. “Is that you? I never thought we would see you again. Where on earth have you been?”
Mauma opened her mouth, trying to speak, but her words scratched in the air without much sense.
“We’re glad you’re back, Charlotte,” Nina said. Mauma blinked at her like she didn’t have the first inkling who was saying it. Nina must’ve been six or seven when mauma disappeared.