Sarah
The following morning, despite my protests, Mother sent Nina off to spend
the day with one of the little Smith girls, whose family lived a block or so
from the Work House. During Nina’s last visit there, she’d heard screams
floating on the breezes and had leapt up in alarm, scattering jackstones
across the piazza. At the time, my sister knew nothing of Charleston’s
torture chamber—I’d tried to protect her from it—but the Smith boys had
no such scruples. They informed her that the cries she heard came from a
slave in the whipping room, describing it for her in lurid detail. Apparently
there was a crane with pulleys by which the slaves’ bound hands were
drawn over their heads, while their feet were chained to a plank. The boys
told her of other horrors, too, which she reported to me through sobs, stories
about the splitting of ears and the removal of teeth, about spiked collars and
some sort of birdcage contraption that was locked over a slave’s head.
I’d assured Nina she wouldn’t have to go back. But now, with Father’s
career in dire straits, Mother was not above using a seven-year-old to make
an inroad with the politically powerful Smiths.
The rain began to fall not long after Nina left, a torrent coming at the
peak of high tide, turning the streets into canals of mud. By early afternoon,
after the storm had blown out to sea, I could bear it no longer. I put on
Mary’s old black riding hat with the veils and slipped out the back door,
determined to collect my sister no matter the cost.
Sabe wasn’t in the stable, only Goodis, which seemed just as well as I
felt I could trust him more. “I just the footman, I ain’t meant to drive the
carriage,” he told me. It took some doing, but I convinced him it was an
errand of great urgency, and off we set in the new cabriolet.
The city was abuzz that day with talk of an astral event—a comet storm,
it was said. Even sensible people like Father and Thomas had been speaking
about the apocalypse, but I knew my scandal with Burke was being
discussed in parlors throughout Charleston with more fervor than the end of
the world. The cabriolet was new enough, however, to be unfamiliar on the

streets, and with its hood up and Mary’s hat on, I didn’t see how I could be
recognized. With any luck, Mother would never know I’d broken my
seclusion.
Feeling anxious about Nina, I closed my eyes and imagined scooping
her into my arms. Then there was a terrible jolt, and the carriage came to a
shuddering stop on Coming Street, the right wheel sunk into a mud hole.
Goodis coaxed the horse with the whip, then climbed down and tugged
at the bridle and collar. The mare, known for her keen spirit of revenge,
jerked her head and stepped backward, sinking the carriage further. I heard
Goodis quietly curse.
He went to the rear of the carriage and shoved, causing it to rock
forward a little, but nothing more. “Stay put where you is,” he told me. “I
gon get us some help.”
As he lumbered off, I surveyed the street. Despite the sogginess, there
were ladies out strolling, men huddled in conclaves, Negro hawkers
carrying troughs of shrimp and baskets of French coconut patties. I reached
up nervously and touched the veil at my face, and it was at that moment I
glimpsed Charlotte, walking toward Bull Street.
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.