The Invention of Wings(51)

            I squirmed past everyone, leaving even Nina behind, and broke for the house where I pillaged the calling cards on the desk, and there it was—the borrowed paper.

            3 May

            Burke Williams requests Sarah Grimké’s company on a (chaperoned) horseback outing at Sullivan’s Island, upon her return to Charleston.

            Yours, most truly.

            I let out an exhale, behemoth in nature, and ascended the stairs.

            I remember very clearly coming to a full halt on the second-floor landing and gazing curiously at the door to my room. It alone was shut, while the others stood open. I walked toward it uncertainly, with a vague sense of portent. I paused with my hand over the knob for a second and cocked my ear. Hearing nothing, I turned the knob. It was locked.

            I gave the knob a second determined try, and then a third and fourth, and that’s when I heard the tentative voice inside.

            “That you, mauma?”

            Handful? The thought of her inside my room with the door locked was so incongruent I could not immediately answer back.

            She called out, “Coming.” Her voice sounded exasperated, reluctant, breathy. There was the sound of water splashing, a key thrust into the lock. Click. Click.

            She stood in the doorway dripping wet, naked but for a white linen towel clutched around her waist. Her breasts were two small, purple plums protruding from her chest. I couldn’t help gazing at her wet, black skin, the small compact power of her torso. She’d unloosed her braids, and her hair was a wild corona around her head, shimmering with beaded water.

            She stepped backward and her mouth parted. Behind her, the wondrous copper tub sat in the middle of the room, filled with water. Vapor was lifting off the surface, turning the air rheumy. The audacity of what she’d done took my breath. If Mother discovered this, the consequences would be swift and dire.

            I moved quickly inside and closed the door, my instinct even now to protect her. She made no attempt to cover herself. I glimpsed defiance in her eyes, in the way she wrested back her chin as if to say, Yes, it’s me, bathing in your precious tub.

            The silence was terrible. If she thought my reserve was due to anger, she was right. I wanted to shake her. Her boldness seemed like more than a frolic in the tub, it seemed like an act of rebellion, of usurpation. What had possessed her? She’d violated not only the privacy of my room and the intimacy of our tub, she’d breached my trust.

            I didn’t recognize how my mother’s voice ranted inside me.

            Handful started to speak, and I was terrified of what she would say, fearful it would be hateful and justifying, yet oddly, I feared an expression of shame and apology just as much. I stopped her. “Please. Don’t say anything. At least do that for me, say nothing.”

            I turned my back while she dried herself and pulled on her dress. When I looked again, she was tying a kerchief around her hair. It was pale green, the same color as the tiny discolored patches on the copper. She bent to mop the puddles from the floor, and I saw the scarf darkening as it soaked the dampness.

            She said, “You want me to empty the water out now or wait?”

            “Let’s do it now. We can’t have Mother wander in and find it.”

            With effort, I helped her roll the sloshing tub through the jib door onto the piazza, close to the rail, hoping the family was inside now and wouldn’t hear the gush of water. Handful yanked open the vent and it spilled in a long, silver beak over the side. I seemed to taste it in my mouth, the tang of minerals.

            “I know you’re angry, Sarah, but I didn’t see any harm with me being in the tub, same as you.”