As I went on, my revelations turned grave. “I saw Rosetta being whipped one time,” I told her. “I was four. That was when the trouble with my speech began.”
“It seems like you’re talking all right now.”
“It comes and goes.”
“Was Rosetta hurt bad?”
“I think it was very bad.”
“What’d she do wrong?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask—I couldn’t speak afterward, not for weeks.”
We turned taciturn, leaning back and gazing at the crenulated clouds. Talk of Rosetta had sobered us more than I’d intended, far too much for a tea celebrating a hundred-word vocabulary.
Hoping to restore the mood, I said, “I’m going to be a lawyer like my father.” I was surprised to hear myself blurt this out, the crown jewel of secrets, and feeling suddenly exposed, I added, “But you can’t tell anyone.”
“I don’t have nobody to tell. Just mauma.”
“Well, you can’t even tell her. Promise me.”
She nodded.
Satisfied, I thought of the lava box and my silver button. “Do you know how an object can stand for something entirely different than its purpose?” She looked at me blankly, while I tried to think of a way to explain. “You know my mother’s cane, for instance—how it’s meant to help her walk, but we all know what it stands for.”
“Whacking heads.” After a pause, she added, “A triangle on a quilt stands for a blackbird wing.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. Well, I have a stone box in my dresser with a button inside. A button is meant for fastening clothes, but this one is beautiful, just plain uncommon, so I decided to let it stand for my desire to be a lawyer.”
“I know about the button. I didn’t touch it, I just opened the box and looked at it.”
“I don’t mind if you hold it,” I told her.
“I have a thimble and it stands for pushing a needle and keeping my fingertip from turning sore, but I could let that stand for something else.”
When I asked her what, she said, “I don’t know, ’cept I wanna sew like mauma.”
Hetty got into the spirit. She retold the entire story I’d overheard her mother tell that night about her grandmother coming from Africa, appliquéing quilts with the triangles. When Hetty talked about the spirit tree, her voice took on a reverential tone.
Before we went back down the hatch, Hetty said, “I took a spool of thread from your room. It was laying in your drawer no use to anybody. I’m sorry, I can bring it back.”
“Oh. Well, go ahead and keep it, but please Hetty, don’t steal anymore, even little things. You could land in terrible trouble.”
As we descended the ladder, she said, “My real name is Handful.”
Handful
Mauma came down with a limp. When she was in her room or in the kitchen house for meals, she didn’t have any trouble, but the minute she stepped in the yard, she dragged her leg like it was a dead log. Aunt-Sister and them watched her go lame and shook their heads. They didn’t like that kind of trick and didn’t mind saying it. Mauma told them, “After you get your one-legged punishment, you can say all you want. Till then, you best shut up.”
After that, they stayed clear of her. Stopped talking if she showed up, started back when she left. Mauma said it was a hateful shun.