The Invention of Wings(21)

            I remembered the way one remembers the sun, the moon, and the stars hanging in the sky. The world seemed to rush toward me, sheened and beautiful. I looked at Thomas and felt confirmed in my destiny. I had an ally. A true, unbending ally.

            Running his hands through the waves of his hair, torrential like Father’s, Thomas began to pace the length of the piazza. “I want to be a minister,” he said. “I’m less than a year from following John to Yale, and I’m treated as if I can’t think for myself. Father believes I don’t know my own mind, but I do know.”

            “He won’t allow you to study theology?”

            “I begged for his blessing last evening and he refused. I said, ‘Don’t you care that it’s God’s own call I wish to answer?’ And do you know what he said to that? ‘Until God informs me of this call, you will study the law.’”

            Thomas plopped into a chair, and I went and knelt before him, pressing my cheek against the back of his hand. His knuckles were prickly with heat bumps and hair. I said, “If I could, I would do anything to help you.”



            As the sun lowered over the back lot, Hetty was still nowhere to be seen. Unable to contain my fears any longer, I planted myself outside the window of the kitchen house, where the female slaves always congregated after the last meal of the day.

            The kitchen house was their sanctum. Here, they told stories and gossiped and carried on their secret life. At times, they would break into song, their tunes sailing across the yard and slipping into the house. My favorite was a chant that grew rowdier as it went:

            Bread done broken.

            Let my Jesus go.

            Feet be tired.

            Let my Jesus go.

            Back be aching.

            Let my Jesus go.

            Teeth done fell out.

            Let my Jesus go.

            Rump be dragging.

            Let my Jesus go.

            Their laughter would ring out abruptly, a sound Mother welcomed. “Our slaves are happy,” she would boast. It never occurred to her their gaiety wasn’t contentment, but survival.

            On this evening, though, the kitchen house was wrapped in a pall. Heat and smoke from the oven glugged out the window, reddening my face and neck. I caught glimpses of Aunt-Sister, Binah, Cindie, Mariah, Phoebe, and Lucy in their calico dresses, but heard only the clunk of cast iron pots.

            Finally, Binah’s voice carried to me. “You mean to say she ain’t eat all day?”

            “Not one thing,” Aunt-Sister said.

            “Well, I ain’t eating neither if they strap me up like they done her,” Phoebe said.

            A cold swell began in my stomach. Strapped her up? Who? Not Hetty, surely.

            “What she think would happen if she pilfer like that?” I believed that voice to be Cindie’s. “What’d she say for herself?”

            Aunt-Sister spoke again. “She won’t talk. Handful up there in bed with her, talking for both of ’em.”

            “Poor Charlotte,” said Binah.

            Charlotte! They’d strapped her up. What did that mean? Rosetta’s melodic keening rose in my memory. I saw them bind her hands. I saw the cowhide split her back and the blood-flowers open and die on her skin.

            I don’t remember returning to the house, only that I was suddenly in the warming kitchen, ransacking the locked cupboard where Mother kept her curatives. Having unlocked it often to retrieve a bromide for Father, I easily found the key and removed the blue bottle of liniment oil and a jar of sweet balm tea. Into the tea, I dropped two grains of laudanum.