Sarah
I couldn’t imagine why Nina and I had been summoned to the first-floor
drawing room—that was never a good thing. We entered to find the very
corpulent Reverend Gadsden seated on the yellow silk settee, and beside
him, Mother, squeezed way over to one side, gripping her cane as if she
might bore it into the floor. Glancing at Nina, who, at fourteen, was taller
than I was, I noticed her eyes flash beneath their thick, dark lashes. She
gave her chin a tiny defiant yank upward, and for a moment, I felt a passing
bit of pity for the reverend.
“Close the door behind you,” Mother said. Down the passageway,
Father was in his room, too ill now to work. Dr. Geddings had ordered
quiet, and for weeks, the slaves had padded about, speaking in whispers,
careful not to rattle a tray for fear of their lives. When one’s physician
prescribes quiet as a remedy, along with a syrup made from horseradish
root, he has clearly given up.
I took my seat on the twin settee beside Nina, facing the pair of them.
The accusation against me would be failing as Nina’s godmother. As usual.
This past Sunday, my sister had refused confirmation into St. Philip’s
Church, and it wasn’t even that as much as the way she’d done it. She’d
made a pageant of it. When the other youths left their chairs on the dais and
went to the altar rail for the bishop to lay his hands on their sweet heads,
Nina remained pointedly in her seat. Our entire family was there, except for
Father, and I watched with a confused mix of embarrassment and pride as
she sat with her arms crossed, her dark hair gleaming around her shoulders
and a tiny circle of red blazing on each of her cheeks.
The bishop walked over and spoke to her, and she shook her head.
Mother went stiff as a piece of wrought iron on the pew beside me, and I
felt the air in the church clotting around our heads. There was more coaxing
by the bishop, more obstinacy by Nina, until he gave up and continued the
service.

I’d had no inkling what she planned, though perhaps I should have—
this was Nina, after all. She was full of fiery opinions and mutinous acts.
Last winter, she’d scandalized her classroom by taking off her shoes
because the slave boy, who cleaned the slate boards, was barefooted. I’d
lost count of the letters of apology Mother had ordered her to write. Rather
than submit, she would sit before the blank paper for days until Mother
relented. On her eleventh birthday, Nina had refused her human present
with such vehemence, Mother had given up out of sheer weariness.
Even if I’d tried to prevent Nina’s display at church that day, she
would’ve pointed out that I, too, had spurned the Anglicans. Well, I had, but
I’d done so to embrace the Presbyterians, whereas Nina would’ve spurned
the Presbyterians, too, given half a chance. She hated them for what she
called their “gall and wormwood.”
If there was a wedge between my sister and me, it was religion.
Over the last several years, it seemed my entire life had been possessed
of swings between asceticism and indulgence. I’d banished society in the
aftermath of Burke Williams, yes, but I’d been a chronic backslider,
succumbing every season to some party or ball, which had left me empty
and sickened, which had then sent me crawling back to God. Nina had often
found me on my knees, weeping as I prayed, begging forgiveness, engaged
in one of my excruciating bouts of self-contempt. “Why must you be like
this?” she would shout.
Why, indeed.
Mr. Williams had been shaken from the lap of Charleston like a soiled
napkin. He was married now to his cousin, keeping shop in his uncle’s dry
goods store in Columbia. I’d put him behind me long ago, but I hadn’t been
able to make peace with living here in this house till the end of my days. I
had Nina, but not for much longer. As charismatic and beautiful as she was,
she would be wooed by a dozen men and leave me here with Mother. It was
the ubiquitous truth at the center of everything, and it had driven me to my
backsliding. But there could be no more of that—at twenty-six I would be
too old for the coming season. It was truly over, and I felt lost and
miserable, galled and wormwood-ed, and there was nothing to be done
about it.
Here in the drawing room, Reverend Gadsden looked reluctant and
uncomfortable. He kept pursing and unpursing his lips. Nina sat erect

beside me, as if to say, All right, let the castigation begin, but under the
cover of our skirts, she reached for my hand.
“I’m here today because your mother asked me to reason with you. You
gave us all a shock yesterday. It’s a grave thing to reject the church and her
sacraments and salvation . . .”
He went on with his jabber, while Nina’s hand sweated into mine.
She saw my private agonies, but I saw hers, too. There was a place
inside of her where it had all broken. The screams she’d heard coming from
the Work House still inhabited her, and she would wake some nights,
shouting into the dark. She put up an invincible show, but underneath I
knew her to be bruised and vulnerable. After Mother’s scathing reprimands,
she would vanish into her room for hours, emerging with her eyes
bloodshot from weeping.
The reverend’s kind but tedious speech had been floating in and out of
my awareness. “I must point out,” I heard him say, “that you are placing
your soul in jeopardy.”
Nina spoke for the first time. “Pardon me, Reverend Sir, but the threat
of hell will not move me.”
Mother sank her eyes closed. “Oh, Angelina, for the love of God.”
Nina had used the word hell. Even I was a little shocked by it. The
rector sat back with resignation. He was done.
Naturally, Mother was not. “Your father lies gravely ill. Surely you
know it’s his wish that you be confirmed into the church. It could well be
his last wish. Would you deny him that?”
Nina squeezed my hand, struggling to hold on to herself.
“. . . Should she deny her conscience or her father?” I said.
Mother drew back as if I’d slapped her. “Are you going to sit there and
encourage your sister’s disobedience?”
“I’m encouraging her to be true to her own scruples.”
“Her scruples?” The skin at Mother’s neck splotched like beetroot. She
turned to the reverend. “As you see, Angelina is completely under Sarah’s
sway. What Sarah thinks, Angelina thinks. What Sarah scruples, she
scruples. It’s my own fault—I chose Sarah to be her godmother, and to this
day, she leads the child astray.”
“Mother!” Nina exclaimed. “I think for myself.”
Mother shifted her calm, pitiless gaze from the reverend to Nina and
uttered the question that would always lie between us. “Just so I’m not

confused, when you said ‘Mother’ just now, were you referring to me, or to
Sarah?”
The rector squirmed on the settee and reached for his hat, but Mother
continued. “As I was saying, Reverend, I’m at a loss of how to undo the
damage. As long as the two of them are under the same roof, there’s small
hope for Angelina.”
As she escorted the reverend to the door, rain broke loose outside. I felt
Nina slump slightly against me, and I pulled her to her feet and we slipped
behind them up the stairs.

In my room, I turned back the bed sheet and Nina lay down. Her face
seemed stark and strange against the linen pillow. Rain was darkening the
window, and she stared at it with her eyes gleaming, her back rising and
falling beneath my hand.
“Do you think Mother will send me away?” she asked.
“I won’t allow it,” I told her, though I had no idea how to stop such a
thing if Mother took it in her head to banish my sister. A rebellious girl
could easily be sent off to a boarding school or deported to our uncle’s
plantation in North Carolina.