Handful
On the first good Saturday, when it looked like spring was staying put this
time, missus took Miss Sarah, Miss Mary, and Miss Anna off in the carriage
with the lanterns on it. Aunt-Sister said they were going to White Point to
promenade, said all the women and girls would be out with their parasols.
When Snow drove the carriage out the back gate, Miss Sarah waved,
and Sabe, who was dandied up in a green frock coat and livery vest, was
hanging off the back, grinning.
Aunt-Sister said to us, “What yawl looking at? Get to work cleaning, a
full spit and shine on their rooms. Make hay while the mice away.”
Up in Miss Sarah’s room, I spread the bed and scrubbed the gloom on
the looking glass that wouldn’t come off with any kind of ash-water. I swept
up dead moths fat from gnawing on the curtains, wiped down the privy pot,
and threw in a pinch of soda. I scrubbed the floors with lime soap from the
demijohn.
Wore out from all that, I did what we call shilly-shally. Poking round up
to no good. First, I looked to see was any slave in the passage way—some
of them would as soon tell on you as blink. I shut the door and opened Miss
Sarah’s books. I sat at her desk and turned one page after another, staring at
what looked like bits and pieces of black lace laid cross the paper. The
marks had a beauty to them, but I didn’t see how they could do anything but
confuddle a person.
I pulled out the desk drawer and rooted all through her things. I found a
piece of unfinished cross stitch with clumsy stitches, looked like a threeyear-old had done it. There was some fine, glossy threads in the drawer
wrapped on wood spools. Sealing wax. Tan paper. Little drawings with ink
smudges. A long brass key with a tassel on it.
I went through the wardrobe, touching the frocks mauma’d made. I
nosed through the dressing table drawer, pulling out jewelry, hair ribbons,
paper fans, bottles and brushes, and finally, a little box. It glistened dark
like my skin when it was wet. I pushed up the latch. Inside was a big silver

button. I touched it, then closed the lid the same slow way I’d closed her
wardrobe, her drawers, and her books—with my chest filling up. There was
so much in the world to be had and not had.
I went back and opened up the desk drawer one more time and stared at
the threads. What I did next was wrong, but I didn’t much care. I took the
plump spool of scarlet thread and dropped it in my dress pocket.

The Saturday before Easter we all got sent to the dining room. Tomfry said
things had gone missing in the house. I went in there thinking, Lord, help
me.
There wasn’t nothing worse for us than some little old piece of nonsense
disappearing. One dent-up tin cup in the pantry or a toast crumb off missus’
plate and the feathers flew. But this time it wasn’t a piece of nonsense, and
it wasn’t scarlet thread. It was missus’ brand new bolt of green silk cloth.
There we were, fourteen of us, lined up while missus carried on about it.
She said the silk was special, how it traveled from the other side of the
world, how these worms in China had spun the threads. Back then, I’d
never heard such craziness in my life.
Every one of us was sweating and twitching, running our hands in our
britches pockets or up under our aprons. I could smell the odors off our
bodies, which was nothing but fear.
Mauma knew everything happening out there over the wall—missus
gave her passes to travel to the market by herself. She tried to keep the bad
parts from me, but I knew about the torture house on Magazine Street. The
white folks called it the Work House. Like the slaves were in there sewing
clothes and making bricks and hammering horseshoes. I knew about it
before I was eight, the dark hole they put you in and left you by yourself for
weeks. I knew about the whippings. Twenty lashes was the limit you could
get. A white man could buy a bout of floggings for half a dollar and use
them whenever he needed to put some slave in the right frame of mind.
Far as I knew, not one Grimké slave had gone to the Work House, but
that morning, every one of us in the dining room was wondering is this the
day.
“One of you is guilty of thieving. If you return the bolt of cloth, which
is what God would have you do, then I will be forgiving.”

Uh huh.
Missus didn’t think we had a grain of sense.
What were any of us gonna do with emerald silk?

The night after the cloth vanished, I slipped out. Walked straight out the
door. I had to pass by Cindie outside missus’ door—she was no friend to
mauma, and I had to be wary round her, but she was snoring away. I slid
into bed next to mauma, only she wasn’t in bed this time, she was standing
in the corner with her arms folded over her chest. She said, “What you think
you doing?”
I never had heard that tone to her voice.
“Get up, we going back to the house right now. This the last time you
sneaking out, the last time. This ain’t no game, Handful. There be misery to
pay on this.”
She didn’t wait for me to move, but snatched me up like I was a stray
piece of batting. Grabbed me under one arm, marched me down the carriage
house steps, cross the work yard. My feet didn’t hardly touch the ground.
She dragged me inside through the warming kitchen, the door nobody
locked. Her finger rested against her lips, warning me to stay quiet, then she
tugged me to the staircase and nodded her head toward the top. Go on now.
Those stair steps made a racket. I didn’t get ten steps when I heard a
door open down below, and the air suck from mauma’s throat.
Master’s voice came out of the dark, saying, “Who is it? Who is there?”
Lamplight shot cross the walls. Mauma didn’t move.
“Charlotte?” he said, calm as could be. “What are you doing in here?”
Behind her back, mauma made a sign with her hand, waving at the
floor, and I knew she meant me to crouch low on the steps. “Nothing, massa
Grimké. Nothing, sir.”
“There must be some reason for your presence in the house at this hour.
You should explain yourself now to avoid any trouble.” It was almost kind
the way he said it.
Mauma stood there without a word. Master Grimké always did that to
her. Say something. If it was missus standing there, mauma could’ve spit
out three, four things already. Say Handful is sick and you’re going to see
about her. Say Aunt-Sister sent you in here to get some remedy for Snow.

Say you can’t sleep for worrying about their Easter clothes, how they gonna
fit in the morning. Say you’re walking in your sleep. Just say something.
Mauma waited too long, cause here came missus out from her room.
Peering over the step, I could see she had her sleeping cap on crooked.
I have knots in my years that I can’t undo, and this is one of the worst—
the night I did wrong and mauma got caught.
I could’ve showed myself. I could’ve given the rightful account, said it
was me, but what I did was ball up silent on the stair steps.
Missus said, “Are you the pilferer, Charlotte? Have you come back for
more? Is this how you do it, slipping in at night?”
Missus roused Cindie and told her to fetch Aunt-Sister and light two
lamps, they were going to search mauma’s room.
“Yessum, yessum,” said Cindie. Pleased as a planter punch.
Master Grimké groaned like he’d stepped in a dog pile, all this nasty
business with women and slaves. He took his light and went back to bed.
I followed after mauma and them from a distance, saying words a tenyear-old shouldn’t know, but I’d learned plenty of cuss at the stables
listening to Sabe sing to the horses. God damney, god damney, day and
night. God damney, god damney, all them whites. I was working myself up
to tell missus what’d happened. I left my place beside Miss Sarah’s door
and sneaked out to my old room. Mauma brought me back to the house.
When I peered round the door jam into our room, I saw the blankets
torn off the bed, the wash basin turned over, and our flannel gunny sack
dumped upside down, quilt-fillings everywhere. Aunt-Sister was working
the pulley to lower the quilt frame. It had a quilt-top on it with raw edges,
bright little threads fluttering.
Nobody looked at me standing in the doorway, just mauma whose eyes
always went to me. Her lids sank shut and she didn’t open them back.
The wheels on the pulley sang and the frame floated down to that
squeaky music. There on top of the unfinished quilt was a bolt of bright
green cloth.

I looked at the cloth and thought how pretty. Lamplight catching on every
wrinkle. Me, Aunt-Sister, and missus stared at it like it was something we’d
dreamed.

Missus gave us an earful then about how hard it was for her to visit
discipline on a slave she’d trusted, but what choice did she have?
She told mauma, “I will delay your punishment until Monday—
tomorrow is Easter and I do not want it marred by this. I will not send you
off for punishment, and you should be grateful for that, but I assure you
your penalty will match your crime.”
She hadn’t said Work House, she’d said off, but we knew what off
meant. Least mauma wasn’t going there.
When missus finally turned to me, she didn’t ask what was I doing out
here or send me back to Miss Sarah’s floorboards. She said, “You may stay
with your mother until her punishment on Monday. I wish her to have some
consolation until then. I am not an unfeeling woman.”
Long into that night, I slobbered out my sorrow and guilt to mauma. She
rubbed my shoulders and told me she wasn’t mad. She said I never
should’ve snuck out of the house, but she wasn’t mad.
I was about asleep when she said, “I should’ve sewed that green silk
inside a quilt and she never would’ve found it. I ain’t sorry for stealing it,
just for getting caught.”
“How come you took it?”
“Cause,” she said. “Cause I could.”
Those words stuck with me. Mauma didn’t want that cloth, she just
wanted to make some trouble. She couldn’t get free and she couldn’t pop
missus on the back of her head with a cane, but she could take her silk. You
do your rebellions any way you can.