She picked her way like a ropewalker, moving along a narrow shelf of grass that ran beside a brick wall. She wore her red bandana low on her forehead and carried a basket bulging with cloth, unaware of me or of the finely dressed woman with white skin who approached her on the same grassy ledge from the opposite direction. One of them would be forced to turn around and retrace her steps all the way back to where the brick wall began, or else yield way by stepping off into the muddy roadway. Face-offs of this sort played out on the streets so regularly a city ordinance had been passed requiring slaves to give deference. Had the slave been anyone other than Charlotte—had it been Binah, Aunt-Sister, Cindie, even Handful—I wouldn’t have worried so much, but Charlotte.
The two women stopped a few feet apart. The white woman lifted her parasol and tapped Charlotte’s arm. Move along now. Off with you.
I didn’t detect the slightest movement in Charlotte. She seemed to solidify as she stood there. The woman’s umbrella thumped at her again: Shoo. Shoo.
They exchanged words I didn’t understand, their voices rising, turning into jagged antlers over their heads. I looked around frantically for Goodis.
A man wearing a City Guard uniform reined his horse in the middle of the street. “Step aside, Negress,” he yelled. He climbed from his horse, handing the reins to a slave boy who’d wandered up pulling a dray.
Before the guard could reach the scene, Charlotte swung her basket. It moved in an arc, spilling what I realized were bonnets, then crashing against the woman’s arm, knocking her sideways. The mud in the street was like pudding, viscous and pale-brown as tapioca, and when the woman landed, perfectly seated, it made a little wave on either side of her.
I leapt from the carriage and ran toward them with no thought of what I might do. The guardsman had seized Charlotte by the arms, assisted by another man whom he’d enlisted. They dragged her down the street, while she spit and clawed.
I chased them all the way to Beaufain where the men commandeered a wagon and forced her into the back, pushing her flat onto her stomach. The guardsman sat atop her. The driver snapped the reins, the horses jerked, and I could only stand there spattered with the pudding from the street.
I swept back the veils on my hat and screamed her name. “Charlotte!”
Her eyes found me. She did not make a sound, but held my gaze as the wagon rolled away.
Handful
Mauma disappeared two days after we watched the stars fall.
We were standing in the work yard near the back gate. She had the red scarf on her head and wore her good dress, the one dyed indigo. Her apron was pressed to a crisp. She’d oiled her lips and borrowed Binah’s cowrie shell bracelets to dress up her wrists. In the sunlight her skin had a gold luster and her eyes shined like river rocks. That’s how I see her now in my dreams, with the look she had then. Almost happy.
She pinned on her slave badge, full of haste. She’d got permission to deliver her fresh-made bonnets, but I knew before the last one left the basket, she’d be obliging that man, Mr. Vesey.
I said, “Be sure your badge is on good.”
Mauma hated my pestering. “It on there, Handful. It ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
“What about your pouch?” I couldn’t see the bulge of it under her dress like usual. I kept both of our pouches fresh with scraps from our tree, and I meant for her to wear it, what with me going to all that trouble and her needing all the protection she could get. She fished it up from her bosom. Her fingers had faded smudges on them from the charcoal powder she’d used to trace designs on her bonnets.
I wanted to say more to her. Why’re you wearing the good dress with all that mud out there? When are you planning on telling me about the baby? Now we got to buy freedom for the three of us? But I shoved all this to the side for later.