The Invention of Wings(40)

            She stood, buttressed by her cane. At forty-six, her shoulders were already rounding into an old lady’s stoop. She’d been warning me of the travail of spinsterhood for a year now, elaborating on the sad, maiden life of her aunt Amelia Jane. She likened her to a shriveled flower pressed between the pages of a forgotten book, as if this might scare some poise and beauty into me. I feared that Mother was about to embark again on her aunt’s desiccated existence, but she asked, “Didn’t you wear this gown only two nights ago?”

            “I did, but—” I looked at my baby sister perched on the dresser stool, and gave her a smile. “Nina chose it.”

            “It’s imprudent to wear it again so soon.” Mother seemed to be speaking solely to herself, and I took the opportunity to ignore her.

            Her gaze fell on Angelina, her last child. She made a summoning gesture, her hand scooping at the air for several seconds before she spoke. “Come along, I will see you to the nursery.”

            Nina didn’t move. Her eyes turned to me, as if I were the higher authority and might override the command. It was not lost on Mother. “Angelina! I said come. Now!”

            If I’d been a thorn in Mother’s side, Angelina would be the whole briar patch. She shook her head, as well as her shoulders. Her entire frame oscillated defiantly on the stool, and knowing very well what she was doing, she announced, “I want to stay here with Mother!”

            I braced for Mother’s outburst, but it didn’t come. She pushed her fingers into her temples, moved them in a circle, and made a sound that was part groan, part sigh, part accusation. “I’ve been seized by a malicious headache,” she said. “Hetty, fetch Cindie to my chamber.”

            With a roll of her eyes, Handful obeyed, and Mother departed after her, the dull tap of her cane receding along the corridor.

            I knelt before Nina, sinking down into my skirt, which billowed out in such a way I must have appeared like a stamen in some monstrous red bloom. “How often have I told you? You mustn’t call me Mother unless we’re alone.”

            Nina’s chin trembled visibly. “But you’re my mother.” I let her cry into the velvet of my dress. “You are, you are, you are.”



            The upstairs drawing room in Mrs. Alston’s house on King Street was lit to an excessive brightness by a crystal chandelier that blazed like a small inferno from the ceiling. Beneath it, a sea of people danced the schottische, their laughter drowning out the violins.

            My dance program was bare except for Thomas, who’d written in his name for two sets of the quadrille. He’d been admitted to the bar the year before and opened a practice with Mr. Langdon Cheves, a man I couldn’t help but feel had taken my place, just as I’d taken Mother’s. Thomas had written to me from Yale, remorseful for ridiculing my ambition on the night of his farewell, but he wouldn’t budge from his position. We’d made peace, nevertheless, and in many ways he was still a demi-god to me. I looked about the room for him, knowing he would be attached to Sally Drayton, whom he was soon to marry. At their engagement party, Father had declared that a marriage between a Grimké and a Drayton would bring forth “a new Charleston dynasty.” It had irked Mary, who’d entered into a suitable engagement, herself, but one without any regal connotations.

            Madame Ruffin had suggested I use my fan to advantage, concealing my “strong jaw and ruddy cheeks,” and I did so obsessively out of self-consciousness. Positioning the fan over the lower half of my face, I peered over its scalloped edge. I knew many of the young women from Madame Ruffin’s classes, St. Philip’s, or the previous social season, but I couldn’t claim a friendship with any of them. They were polite enough to me, but I was never allowed into the warmth of their secrets and gossip. I think my stammer made them uneasy. That, and the awkwardness I seemed to feel in their presence. They were wearing a new style of head-turban the size of settee cushions made from heavy brocades and studded with pins, pearls, and little palettes on which the face of our new president, Mr. Madison, was painted, and their poor heads appeared to wobble on their necks. I thought they looked silly, but the beaux swarmed about them.