Sarah
The morning after Easter, there was still no sign of Hetty. Between
breakfast and my departure for Madame Ruffin’s school on Legare Street,
Mother saw to it that I was shut in my room, copying a letter of apology to
Reverend Hall.
Dear Reverend Sir,
I apologize for failing in my duties as a teacher in the
Colored Sunday School of our dear St. Philip’s. I beg
forgiveness for my reckless disregard of the curriculum and
ask your forgiveness for my insolence toward you and your
holy office.
Your Remorseful and
Repentant Soul,
Sarah Grimké
No sooner had I signed my name than Mother whisked me to the front
door where Snow waited with the carriage, Mary already inside. Typically,
Mary and I met the carriage out back, while Snow tarried, making us late.
“Why has he come to collect us at the front?” I asked, to which Mother
replied I should be more like my sister and not ask tedious questions.
Snow turned and looked at me, and a kind of foreboding leaked from
him.
The whole day seemed strung upon a thin, vibrating wire. When I met
with Thomas that afternoon on the piazza for my studies—my real studies
—my unease had reached a peak.
Twice weekly, we delved into Father’s books, into points of law, Latin,
the history of the European world, and recently, the works of Voltaire.
Thomas insisted I was too young for Voltaire. “He’s over your head!” He
was, but naturally I’d flung myself into the Sea of Voltaire anyway and
emerged with nothing more than several aphorisms. “Every man is guilty of

all the good he didn’t do.” Such a notion made it virtually impossible to
enjoy life! And this, “If God did not exist, man would have to invent him.” I
didn’t know whether Reverend Hall had invented his God or I’d invented
mine, but such ideas tantalized and disturbed me.
I lived for these sessions with Thomas, but seated on the joggling board
that day with the Latin primer on my lap, I couldn’t concentrate. The day
was full of torpid warmth, of the smell of crabs being trolled from the
ginger waters of the Ashley River.
“Go on. Proceed,” said Thomas, leaning over to tap the book with his
finger. “Water, master, son—nominative case, singular and plural.”
“. . . . . . Aqua, aquae . . . Dominus, domini . . . Filius, filii. . . . . . Oh,
Thomas, something is wrong!” I was thinking of Hetty’s absence, Mother’s
behavior, Snow’s glumness. I’d sensed a moroseness in all of them—AuntSister, Phoebe, Tomfry, Binah. Thomas must’ve felt it, too.
“Sarah, you always know my mind,” he said. “I thought I’d concealed
it, I should’ve known.”
“. . . What is it?”
“I don’t want to be a lawyer.”
He’d misread my intent, but I didn’t say so—this was as riveting a
secret as he’d ever revealed to me.
“. . . Not a lawyer?”
“I’ve never wanted to be a lawyer. It goes against my nature.” He gave
me a tired smile. “You should be the lawyer. Father said you would be the
greatest in South Carolina, do you remember?”
I remembered the way one remembers the sun, the moon, and the stars
hanging in the sky. The world seemed to rush toward me, sheened and
beautiful. I looked at Thomas and felt confirmed in my destiny. I had an
ally. A true, unbending ally.
Running his hands through the waves of his hair, torrential like Father’s,
Thomas began to pace the length of the piazza. “I want to be a minister,” he
said. “I’m less than a year from following John to Yale, and I’m treated as if
I can’t think for myself. Father believes I don’t know my own mind, but I
do know.”
“He won’t allow you to study theology?”
“I begged for his blessing last evening and he refused. I said, ‘Don’t you
care that it’s God’s own call I wish to answer?’ And do you know what he
said to that? ‘Until God informs me of this call, you will study the law.’”

Thomas plopped into a chair, and I went and knelt before him, pressing
my cheek against the back of his hand. His knuckles were prickly with heat
bumps and hair. I said, “If I could, I would do anything to help you.”

As the sun lowered over the back lot, Hetty was still nowhere to be seen.
Unable to contain my fears any longer, I planted myself outside the window
of the kitchen house, where the female slaves always congregated after the
last meal of the day.
The kitchen house was their sanctum. Here, they told stories and
gossiped and carried on their secret life. At times, they would break into
song, their tunes sailing across the yard and slipping into the house. My
favorite was a chant that grew rowdier as it went:
Bread done broken.
Let my Jesus go.
Feet be tired.
Let my Jesus go.
Back be aching.
Let my Jesus go.
Teeth done fell out.
Let my Jesus go.
Rump be dragging.
Let my Jesus go.
Their laughter would ring out abruptly, a sound Mother welcomed. “Our
slaves are happy,” she would boast. It never occurred to her their gaiety
wasn’t contentment, but survival.
On this evening, though, the kitchen house was wrapped in a pall. Heat
and smoke from the oven glugged out the window, reddening my face and
neck. I caught glimpses of Aunt-Sister, Binah, Cindie, Mariah, Phoebe, and
Lucy in their calico dresses, but heard only the clunk of cast iron pots.
Finally, Binah’s voice carried to me. “You mean to say she ain’t eat all
day?”
“Not one thing,” Aunt-Sister said.

“Well, I ain’t eating neither if they strap me up like they done her,”
Phoebe said.
A cold swell began in my stomach. Strapped her up? Who? Not Hetty,
surely.
“What she think would happen if she pilfer like that?” I believed that
voice to be Cindie’s. “What’d she say for herself?”
Aunt-Sister spoke again. “She won’t talk. Handful up there in bed with
her, talking for both of ’em.”
“Poor Charlotte,” said Binah.
Charlotte! They’d strapped her up. What did that mean? Rosetta’s
melodic keening rose in my memory. I saw them bind her hands. I saw the
cowhide split her back and the blood-flowers open and die on her skin.
I don’t remember returning to the house, only that I was suddenly in the
warming kitchen, ransacking the locked cupboard where Mother kept her
curatives. Having unlocked it often to retrieve a bromide for Father, I easily
found the key and removed the blue bottle of liniment oil and a jar of sweet
balm tea. Into the tea, I dropped two grains of laudanum.
As I stuffed them into a basket, Mother entered the corridor. “What,
pray tell, are you doing?”
I threw the question back at her. “. . . . . . What did you do?”
“Young lady, hold your tongue!”
Hold my tongue? I’d held the poor, tortured thing the near whole of my
life.
“. . . . . . What did you do?” I said again, almost shouting.
She drew her lips tight and yanked the basket from my arm.
An unknown ferocity took me over. I wrenched the basket back from
her and strode toward the door.
“You will not set foot from this house!” she ordered. “I forbid it.”
I stepped through the back door into the soft gloom, into the terror and
thrill of defiance. The sky had gone cobalt. Wind was coursing in hard from
the harbor.
Mother followed me, shrieking, “I forbid it.” Her words flapped off on
the breezes, past the oak branches, over the brick fence.
Behind us, shoes scraped on the kitchen house porch, and turning, we
saw Aunt-Sister, Binah, Cindie, all of them shadowed in the billowy dark,
looking at us.
Mother stood white-faced on the porch steps.

“I’m going to see about Charlotte.” I said. The words slid effortlessly
over my lips like a cascade of water, and I knew instantly the nervous
affliction in my voice had gone back into hibernation, for that was how it
had happened in the past, the debility gradually weakening, until one day I
opened my mouth and there was no trace of it.
Mother noticed, too. She said nothing more, and I trod toward the
carriage house without looking back.