The Invention of Wings(46)
9 March
A month has passed, and I see now what transpired between Mr. Williams and my naïve self on the balcony was a farce. He has toyed with me shamelessly. I knew it even then! He is a fickle-hearted cad, and I would no sooner speak to him now than I would speak to the devil.
When I was not engaged in aerating my feelings, or caring for little Nina, or fending off Mother’s attempts to draw me into my dutiful female tasks, I was foraging among the invitations and calling cards left on the desk by the front door. When Nina napped in the afternoon, I had Handful wheel the copper bathtub into my room and fill it with buckets of blistering water from the laundry.
This copper tub was a modern wonder imported from France by way of Virginia, and it was the talk of Charleston. It sat on noisy little wheels and traveled room to room like a portable dipping cart. You sat in it. You did not stand over a basin and pat water on yourself—no, you were quite immersed! To top it off, one side of the tub possessed a vent that could be opened to release the used water. Mother instructed the slaves to trundle the tub onto the piazza near the rail and discharge the bathwater over the side. The waterfalls splattering into the garden alerted neighbors the hygienic Grimkés had been bathing again.
When a note with scratchy penmanship arrived at the house shortly before noon on the ides of March, I swooped upon it before Mother.
15 March
Burke Williams compliments Sarah Grimké, requesting the pleasure of her company tomorrow night. If he can serve her in any way in the meantime, he would be honored.
P.S. Please excuse the borrowed paper.
I stood still for several moments, then placed the note back on the pile, thinking, Why should anyone care if the paper is borrowed, and then the stupefaction wore off. Caught in a sudden swell of elation, I ascended the stairs to my room, where I danced about like some tipsy bird. I’d forgotten Handful and Nina were there. They’d spread the doll tea set on the floor beneath the window, and when I turned, I saw them staring at me, holding tiny cups of pretend-tea in the air.
“You must’ve heard from that boy,” Handful said. She was the only one who knew of his existence.
“What boy?” Nina asked, and I was forced to tell her about Mr. Williams, too. At this moment Mother would be dispatching an acceptance while singing Glory be to God in the Highest. She would be so jubilant with allelujahs, it would not occur to her to wonder at his credentials.
“Will you get married like Thomas?” Nina asked. His wedding was two and a half months away and a reference point for everything.
“I do believe I will,” I told her, and the idea seemed altogether plausible. I would not be a pressed flower in a book after all.
We’d expected Mr. Williams at 8:00 P.M., but at ten past, he was still absent. Mother’s neck was splotched red with patches of insult, and Father, who’d joined Mother and me in the drawing room, held his watch in his hand. The three of us sat as if waiting for a funeral procession to pass. I feared he wouldn’t appear at all, and if he did, that our visit would be cut short. By custom, the slave’s curfew—9:00 in the winter, 10:00 in the summer—cleared gentlemen callers from the drawing rooms. When the City Guard beat drums to summon the slaves off the streets, the suitors would rise on cue.
He rapped on the front door at a quarter past the appointed hour. When Tomfry ushered him into the room, I lifted my fan—an extravagant nosegay of hen feathers—and my parents rose with cool civility and offered him the Duncan Phyfe chair that flanked the right side of the fireplace. I’d been relegated to the chair on the left, which meant we were separated by the fire screen and forced to crane our necks for a glimpse of one another. A pity—he looked more handsome than I remembered. His face had bronzed with sun and his hair was longer, curling behind his ears. Detecting the scent of lime-soap drifting from his direction, my insides convulsed involuntarily—a full-blown paroxysm of carnality.