The Invention of Wings(141)

            Nina’s hand tightened on mine, squeezing to the point of pain.





Handful


            4 August

            Dear Sarah

            Mauma passed on last month. She fell into a sleep under the oak tree and never roused. She stayed asleep six days before she died in her bed, me beside her and Sky too. Your mauma paid for her to have a pine box.

            They put her in the slave burial ground on Pitt Street. Missus let Goodis carry me and Sky over there in the carriage to see her resting place and say goodbye. Sky has turned 22 now and stands tall as a man. When we stood by the grave, I didn’t come up to her shoulder. She sang the song the women on the plantation sing when they pound rice to leave on the graves. She said they put rice there to help the dead find their way back to Africa. Sky had a pocketful from the kitchen house and she spread it over mauma while she sang.

            What came to me was the old song I made up when I was a girl. Cross the water, cross the sea, let them fishes carry me, carry me home. I sang that, then I took the brass thimble, the one I loved from the time I was little, and I left it on top of her grave so she’d have that part of me.

            Well, I wanted you to know. I guess she’s at peace now.

            I hope this letter makes it to you. If you write me, take care cause your sister Mary watches everything. The black driver from her plantation named Hector is the butler now and he does her spying.

            Your friend

            Handful

            I wrote Sarah’s name and address on the front by the light of the candle, copying missus’ handwriting as close as I could manage. Missus’ penship had fallen off so bad I could’ve set down any kind of lettering and passed it off for hers. I closed the letter with a drop of wax and pressed it with missus’ seal-stamp. I’d stole the stamp from her room—let’s say, borrowed it. I planned to take it back before it was missed. The stationery, though, was just plain stolen.

            Cross the room, Sky was sleeping, thrashing in the heat. I watched her arms search the spot on the mattress where mauma used to lay, then I blew out the flame and watched the smoke tail away in the dark. Tomorrow I’d slip the letter in the batch going to the post and hope nobody took a hard look.

            Sky sang out in her sleep, sounded like Gullah, and I thought of the rice she’d sprinkled on mauma’s grave, trying to send her spirit to Africa.

            Africa. Wherever me and Sky were, that’s the only place mauma would be.





Sarah


            I woke each day to a sick, empty feeling. Catherine had given us until the first day of October to pack our things and leave, but we could find no one who’d take in two sisters expelled by the Quakers, and Lucretia’s house was packed with children now. The streets had been flooded with hand fliers—they were tacked on light posts and buildings and strewn on the ground—the headline screaming out in the salacious way these street rags did: OUTRAGE: An Abolitionist of the Most Revolting Character is Among You. Below that, Nina’s letter to The Liberator was printed in full. Even the lowliest boardinghouses wouldn’t open their doors to us.

            I’d reached the borders of despair when a letter came with no return name or address on the envelope.

            29 September 1835

            Dear Misses Grimké,

            If you are bold enough to sit with us on the Negro pew, perhaps you will find it in yourself to share our home until you find more suitable lodging. My mother and I have nothing to offer but a partially furnished attic, but it has a window and the chimney runs through the middle of it and keeps it warm. It is yours, if you would have it. We ask that you not speak of the arrangement to anyone, including your present landlord Catherine Morris. We await you at 5 Lancaster Row.

            Yours in Fellowship,