The Invention of Wings(19)
Handful
What came next was a fast, bitter wind.
Monday, after we got done with devotions, Aunt-Sister took mauma aside. She said missus had a friend who didn’t like floggings and had come up with the one-legged punishment. Aunt-Sister went to a lot of trouble to draw us a picture of it. She said they wind a leather tie round the slave’s ankle, then pull that foot up behind him and hitch the tie round his neck. If he lets his ankle drop, the tie chokes his throat.
We knew what she was telling us. Mauma sat down on the kitchen house steps and laid her head flat against her knees.O
Tomfry was the one who came to strap her up. I could see he didn’t want any part of it, but he wasn’t saying so. Missus said, “One hour, Tomfry. That will do.” Then she went inside to her window perch.
He led mauma to the middle of the yard near the garden where tiny shoots had just broke through the dirt. All us were out there huddled under the spreading tree, except Snow who was off with the carriage. Rosetta started wailing. Eli patted her arm, trying to ease her. Lucy and Phoebe were arguing over a piece of cold ham left from breakfast, and Aunt-Sister went over there and smacked them both cross their faces.
Tomfry turned mauma so she was facing the tree with her back to the house. She didn’t fight. She stood there limp as the moss on the branches. The scent of low tide coming from the harbor was everywhere, a rotted smell.
Tomfry told mauma, “Hold on to me,” and she rested her hand on his shoulder while he bound her ankle with what looked like an old leather belt. He pulled it up behind her so she was standing on one leg, then he wound the other end of the strap round her throat and buckled it.
Mauma saw me hanging on to Binah, my lips and chin trembling, and she said, “You ain’t got to watch. Close your eyes.”
I couldn’t do it, though.
After he got her trussed up, Tomfry moved off so she couldn’t grab on to him, and she took a hard spill. Split the skin over her brow. When she hit the ground, the strap yanked tight and mauma started choking. She threw back her head and gulped for air. I ran to help her, but the tat-tat, tat-tat of missus’ cane landed on the window, and Tomfry pulled me away and got mauma to her feet.
I closed my eyes then, but what I saw in the dark was worse as the real thing. I cracked my eyes and watched her trying to keep her leg from dropping down and cutting off her air, fighting to stay upright. She set her eyes on top of the oak tree. Her standing leg quivered. Blood from her head-cut ran down her cheek. It clung to her jaw like rain on the roof eave.O
Don’t let her fall anymore. That’s the prayer I said. Missus told us God listened to everybody, even a slave got a piece of God’s ear. I carried a picture of God in my head, a white man, bearing a stick like missus or going round dodging slaves the way master Grimké did, acting like he’d sired a world where they don’t exist. I couldn’t see him lifting a finger to help.
Mauma didn’t fall again, though, and I reckoned God had lent me an ear, but maybe that ear wasn’t white, maybe the world had a colored God, too, or else it was mauma who kept her own self standing, who answered my prayer with the strength of her limbs and the grip of her heart. She never whimpered, never made a sound except some whisperings from her lips. Later on, I asked if her whispers were for God, and she said, “They was for your granny-mauma.”
When that hour passed and Tomfry loosed the strap off her neck, she fell down and curled up on the dirt. Tomfry and Aunt-Sister lifted her up by the arms and lugged her and her numb legs up the stairs of the carriage house to her room. I ran behind, trying to keep her ankles from bumping on the steps. They laid her on the bed like flopping down a sack of flour.
When we were left to our selves, I lay beside her and stared up at the quilt frame. From time to time, I said, “You want some water? Your legs hurting?”