The Invention of Wings(158)
They glared at me now, at my wet skirt and fluttering bonnet, and I felt certain the man would report my arrival to the authorities as soon as we landed. Perhaps returning had been a terrible mistake after all. I moved away from them to the bow of the boat as a crack of thunder broke overhead, becoming lost in the noise of the engine. Charleston would forgive its own many things, but not betrayal.
I found Handful within an hour of my arrival. She was sewing in the upstairs alcove, of all places. When she saw me standing there, she leapt up, stumbling a little with her infirm leg, dropping the slave shirt on the floor along with the needle and thread. I reached to catch her as she righted herself and found myself embracing her, feeling her embrace me back.
“I got your letter,” I told her, softly, in case there were listening ears somewhere.
She shook her head. “But you didn’t come back cause of that, cause of me.”
“Of course I did,” I said. I picked up the shirt and we sat down on the cushioned window seat.
She was wearing her customary red scarf and seemed barely changed. Her eyes were still large as bowls, the golden color darkened somewhat, and she was tiny as ever. Not frail or insubstantial, but distilled, concentrated.
There was a cane propped between us with a fanciful carving of a rabbit on the handle. Moving it to the side, she said, “You didn’t come to try and stop us, did you?”
“It’s dangerous, Handful . . . I’m afraid for you.”
“Well, that may be, but I’m more scared of bowing and scraping to your mauma and your sister the rest of my days.”
Speaking barely above a whisper, I told her about my plan to try and convince Mother to sell the two of them to me.
She laughed a bitter sound. “Uh huh.”
I hadn’t expected that. I looked past her, scanning the harbor, noticing the steamer in the distance rinsed clean by the rain.
She shifted herself on the cushion and I heard the breath leave her. “I just don’t see missus doing one thing favorable for me, that’s all. But here you are, all this way—nobody else would’ve done that for me—so it’s worth a try, and if she’s willing to sell us, I’ll pay you back everything I got, four hundred dollars.”
“There would be no need—”
“Well, I ain’t doing it any other way.”
We stopped talking as Hector, the butler Mary had installed, came up the stairs with my trunk, his gaze lingering longer than was comfortable. I stood. “I should get settled.”
“You go on and talk to her then,” Handful whispered. “But don’t be waiting too long.”
I waited four days. It seemed imprudent to make the request before that—I wanted Mother to believe I’d returned solely to see her.
I broached the matter on Tuesday afternoon while we sat in the drawing room, Mother, Mary, and I, swishing our fans at the vaporous heat. A languid silence had fallen that none of us seemed willing to break. We’d exhausted all the harmless subjects: the rainy weather, the spectacular wonder of the railroad that ran from Charleston to Savannah, an expurgated version of Nina’s wedding, news of my siblings, the nieces and nephews I’d never met. If I had any chance at securing freedom for Handful and Sky, we couldn’t speak of my scandalous adventures, which had been in all the papers. Nor of abolition, slavery, the North, the South, religion, politics, or the fact I’d been outlawed in the city the previous summer.
“People are talking, Sarah,” Mary said, breaking the lull. She exchanged a look with Mother, and I glimpsed how in step they were with one another, how alike. An echo of loneliness reverberated from my girlhood, and I felt again like the odd-child-out. Even now. I heard Binah’s voice somewhere in my memory, Poor Miss Sarah. These irrational childish feelings, where had they come from suddenly?