The Invention of Wings(33)
“She an old widow, she ain’t gon check. She just say, ‘Show me your badge.’
Mauma was proud of her badge and proud of herself.
“Missus Allen say she pay me by the garment, and her two daughters need clothes and coverings for they children.”
“How you gonna get all this extra work done?”
“I got you. I got all the hours of the night.”
Mauma burned so many candles working in the dark, she took to swiping them from whatever room she happened on. Her eyes grew down to squints and the skin round them wrinkled like drawing a straight stitch. She was tired and frayed but she seemed better off inside.
She brought home money and stuffed it inside the gunny sack, and I helped her sew day and night, anytime I didn’t have duties drawing Miss Sarah’s baths, cleaning her room, keeping up with her clothes and her privy pot. When we got the widow’s orders done, mauma would squirm out the window and carry the parcels to her door where she got more fabric for the next batch. Then she would wait till dark and sneak over the back gate. All this dangerous business got natural as the day was long.
One afternoon during a real warm spell in January, missus sent Cindie to the basement to fetch mauma, something about rosettes falling off her new empire waist dress, and course, mauma was gone over the wall. She didn’t lock the door while she was out cause she knew missus would have Prince saw the door off its hinges if she didn’t answer, and how was she gonna explain an empty room behind a locked door?
News of a missing slave flies like brush fire. When I heard the news, my heart dropped to my knees. Missus used her bell and gathered everybody in the yard, up near the back door. She laid her hands on top of her big pregnant belly and said, “If you know Charlotte’s whereabouts, you are duty bound to tell me.”
Not a peep from anybody. Missus cast her eyes on me. “Hetty? Where is your mother?”
I shrugged and acted stumped. “I don’t know, missus. Wish I did know.”
Missus told Tomfry to search the kitchen house, laundry, carriage house, stable, storage shed, privy, and slave rooms. She said comb every nook in the yard, look down the chute where Prince sent hay from the loft to the horses’ trough. If that didn’t turn up mauma, she said Tomfry would go through the house, the piazza, and the ornament garden, top to bottom.
She rang her bell, which meant go back to work. I hurried to mauma’s room to check the gunny sack. All her money was still at the bottom under the stuffing. Then I crept back outside and set the pail next to the cistern. The sun was coming down the sky, turning it the color of apricots.
While Tomfry did his searching high and low, I took up my spot in the front alcove on the second floor to wait. At the first shade of dark, lo-to-behold, I looked down through the window and there was mauma turning the corner. She marched straight to the front door and knocked.
I tore down the stairs and got to the door the same time as Tomfry.
When he opened it, mauma said, “I gon give you half of a dollar if you get me back in there safe. You owe me, Tomfry.”
He stepped out onto the landing, me beside him, and closed the door. I threw my arms round mauma. She said to him, “Quick now, what it gon be?”
“They ain’t nowhere to put you,” he said. “Missus had me search every corner.”
“Not the rooftop,” I said.
Tomfry made the coast clear, and I led mauma to the attic and showed her the ladder and the hatch. I said, “When they come, you say it was so warm you came out here to see the harbor and lay down and fell asleep.”
Meantime, Tomfry went and explained to missus how he forgot about the rooftop when he was searching, how he knew for a fact Charlotte had been up there one time before.