The Invention of Wings(139)

            The four of us instinctively slid together on the bench.

            “I ask you to respect the sanctity and tradition of the meeting and remove yourselves from the pew,” Mr. Bettleman said.

            Mrs. Douglass began to breathe fast, and I was stabbed with fear that we’d put them in jeopardy. Belatedly, I recalled a free black woman who’d sat on a white pew at a wedding and had been forced to sweep the city streets. I gestured toward the two women. “. . . They’re not part of—” I’d almost said, part of our dissidence, but stopped myself. “. . . They’re not part of this.”

            “That’s not so,” Sarah Mapps said, glancing at her mother, then up at Mr. Bettleman. “We are fully part of it. We sit here together, do we not?”

            She slipped her hands into the folds of her skirt to hide the way they trembled, and I was filled with love and grief at the sight.

            He waited, and we didn’t move. “I’ll ask one final time,” he said. He looked incredulous, incensed, certain of his righteousness, but he could hardly remove us forcibly. Could he?

            Nina drew herself up, eyes blazing. “We shall not be moved, sir!”

            His face reddened. Turning to me, he spoke in a tightly coiled whisper. “Heed me, Miss Grimké. Rein in your sister, and yourself as well.”

            As he left, I peered at Sarah Mapps and her mother, the way they grabbed hands and squeezed in relief, and then at Nina, at the small exultation on her face. She was braver than I, she always had been. I cared too much for the opinion of others, she cared not a whit. I was cautious, she was brash. I was a thinker, she was a doer. I kindled fires, she spread them. And right then and ever after, I saw how cunning the Fates had been. Nina was one wing, I was the other.O



            Nina and I were summoned from our rooms by Catherine ringing the tea bell on what we thought was a restful September afternoon. She often rang the bell when a letter arrived for one of us, a meal was served, or she needed help with some household task. We plodded downstairs without a trace of wariness, and there they were, the elders sitting ramrod straight in the chairs in Catherine’s parlor, a few left to stand along the wall, Israel among them. Catherine, the only woman, was grandly installed on the frumpy velvet wingchair. We had stumbled into the Inquisition.

            Neither of us had bothered to tuck up our hair. Mine hung in limp red tassels to my waist, while Nina’s floated about her shoulders, all curls and corkscrews. It was improper for mixed company, but Catherine didn’t send us back. She pursed her lips into something sour that passed for a smile and gestured us into the room.

            Three weeks had passed since we’d first sat on the Negro bench and refused to get up, and except for Mr. Bettleman, no one had said an admonishing word to us. We’d returned to sit with Sarah Mapps and Grace the following week and then the next, and no effort had been made to stop us. I’d been lulled into thinking the elders had acquiesced to what we’d done. Apparently, I’d been wrong.

            We stood side by side waiting for someone to speak. The windowpanes burned with sunlight, baking the room to a kiln, and I felt a streak of cold sweat dart between my breasts. I tried to meet Israel’s gaze, but he leaned back into the shadow from the cornice. Turning then to Catherine, I saw the newspaper lying on her lap. The Liberator.

            My stomach caught.

            Holding one corner between her thumb and forefinger, she lifted the paper as if it were a dead mouse she’d found in a trap and held by the tip of its tail. “A letter on the front page of the most notorious anti-slavery paper in the country has come to our attention.” She adjusted her glasses—the lenses were thick as the bottom of a bottle. “Allow me to read aloud. 30 August, 1835, Respected Friend—”

            Nina gasped. “Oh Sarah, I didn’t know it would be published.”