The Invention of Wings(15)
There we were, fourteen of us, lined up while missus carried on about it. She said the silk was special, how it traveled from the other side of the world, how these worms in China had spun the threads. Back then, I’d never heard such craziness in my life.
Every one of us was sweating and twitching, running our hands in our britches pockets or up under our aprons. I could smell the odors off our bodies, which was nothing but fear.
Mauma knew everything happening out there over the wall—missus gave her passes to travel to the market by herself. She tried to keep the bad parts from me, but I knew about the torture house on Magazine Street. The white folks called it the Work House. Like the slaves were in there sewing clothes and making bricks and hammering horseshoes. I knew about it before I was eight, the dark hole they put you in and left you by yourself for weeks. I knew about the whippings. Twenty lashes was the limit you could get. A white man could buy a bout of floggings for half a dollar and use them whenever he needed to put some slave in the right frame of mind.
Far as I knew, not one Grimké slave had gone to the Work House, but that morning, every one of us in the dining room was wondering is this the day.
“One of you is guilty of thieving. If you return the bolt of cloth, which is what God would have you do, then I will be forgiving.”
Uh huh.
Missus didn’t think we had a grain of sense.
What were any of us gonna do with emerald silk?
The night after the cloth vanished, I slipped out. Walked straight out the door. I had to pass by Cindie outside missus’ door—she was no friend to mauma, and I had to be wary round her, but she was snoring away. I slid into bed next to mauma, only she wasn’t in bed this time, she was standing in the corner with her arms folded over her chest. She said, “What you think you doing?”
I never had heard that tone to her voice.
“Get up, we going back to the house right now. This the last time you sneaking out, the last time. This ain’t no game, Handful. There be misery to pay on this.”
She didn’t wait for me to move, but snatched me up like I was a stray piece of batting. Grabbed me under one arm, marched me down the carriage house steps, cross the work yard. My feet didn’t hardly touch the ground. She dragged me inside through the warming kitchen, the door nobody locked. Her finger rested against her lips, warning me to stay quiet, then she tugged me to the staircase and nodded her head toward the top. Go on now.
Those stair steps made a racket. I didn’t get ten steps when I heard a door open down below, and the air suck from mauma’s throat.
Master’s voice came out of the dark, saying, “Who is it? Who is there?”
Lamplight shot cross the walls. Mauma didn’t move.
“Charlotte?” he said, calm as could be. “What are you doing in here?”
Behind her back, mauma made a sign with her hand, waving at the floor, and I knew she meant me to crouch low on the steps. “Nothing, massa Grimké. Nothing, sir.”
“There must be some reason for your presence in the house at this hour. You should explain yourself now to avoid any trouble.” It was almost kind the way he said it.
Mauma stood there without a word. Master Grimké always did that to her. Say something. If it was missus standing there, mauma could’ve spit out three, four things already. Say Handful is sick and you’re going to see about her. Say Aunt-Sister sent you in here to get some remedy for Snow. Say you can’t sleep for worrying about their Easter clothes, how they gonna fit in the morning. Say you’re walking in your sleep. Just say something.
Mauma waited too long, cause here came missus out from her room. Peering over the step, I could see she had her sleeping cap on crooked.