Chapter 42

The Invention of Wings

Handful
When they plan to sell you, the first thing they say is, go wash your teeth.
That’s what Aunt-Sister always told us. She said when the slaves got sold
on the streets, the white men checked their teeth before anything else. None
of us were thinking about teeth after master Grimké died, though. We
thought life would go on in the same old grudgeries.
The lawyer showed up to read the will two days after Sarah got back
from the North. We gathered in the dining room, every one of the Grimké
children and every slave. Seemed odd to me why missus wanted us slaves
here. We stood in a straight line in the back of the room, half-thinking we’re
part of the family.
Sarah was on one side of the table and Nina on the other. Sarah would
look over at her sister with a sad smile, and Nina would glance away. Those
two were in a miff.
Missus had on her nice black mourning dress. I wanted to tell her she
needed to take it off and let Mariah launder it cause it had gray armpit rings.
Seemed like she’d worn it every day since last August, but you couldn’t tell
her a thing. The woman got worse in her ways by the day.
The lawyer, his name was Mr. Huger, stood up with a handful of papers
and said it was the last will and testament of John Faucheraud Grimké,
drawn up last May. He read the wherefores, to wits, and hithermores. It was
worse than the Bible.
Missus didn’t get the house. That went to Henry, who wasn’t past
eighteen, but least she could stay in it till she died. “I leave her the
household furniture, plate, plated ware, a carriage and two of my horses, the
stock of liquors and provisions which shall be on hand at the time of my
death.” This went on and on. All the goods and chattels.
Then he read something that made the hairs on my arms raise. “She
shall receive any six of my Negroes whom she shall choose, and the rest she
will sell or disperse among my children, as she determines.”
Binah was standing next to me. I heard her whisper, “Lord, no.”

I looked down the row of slaves. There was just eleven of us now—
Rosetta had passed on in her sleep the year before.
She shall receive any six . . . the rest she will sell or disperse. Five of us
were leaving.
Minta started to sniffle. Aunt-Sister said, “Hush up,” but even her old
eyes darted round, looking scared. She’d trained Phoebe too good. Tomfry
was getting on with age, too, and Eli’s fingers were twisted like tree twigs.
Goodis and Sabe were still young, but you don’t need two slaves in the
stable for two horses. Prince was strong and worked the yard, but he had
glum spells now, sitting and staring and blowing his nose on his shirt.
Mariah was a good worker, and I figured she’d stay, but Binah, she moaned
under her breath cause she was the nursery mauma and there was no more
children to rear.
I said to myself, Missus will need a seamstress, but then I noticed the
black dress again. From here on out, all she’d need was a few of those to
wear, and she could hire somebody for that.
All of a sudden, Sarah said, “. . . Father couldn’t have meant that!”
Missus shot her a look of venom. “Your father wrote the words himself,
and we’ll honor his wishes. We have no choice. Please allow Mr. Huger to
continue.”
When he started back reading, Sarah looked at me with the same
sorrowful blue eyes she’d had the day she turned eleven years old and I was
standing before her with the lavender ribbon round my neck. The world was
a bashed-in place and she couldn’t fix it.

In December, everybody was on their last nerve waiting for missus to say
who’d go and who’d stay. If I was sold, how would mauma find me if she
came back?
Every night I put a hot brick in my bed to keep my feet warm and lay
there thinking how mauma was alive. Out there somewhere. I wondered if
the man who bought her was kind. I wondered if he’d put her in the fields.
Was she doing any sewing? Did she have my little brother or sister with
her? Was she still wearing the pouch round her neck? I knew she’d get back
here if she could. This was where her spirit was, in the tree. This was where
I was.

Don’t let me be the one that has to go.
Missus didn’t have Christmas that year, but she said go ahead and have
Jonkonnu if you want to. That was a custom that got started a few years
back brought by the Jamaica slaves. Tomfry would dress up in a shirt and
pants tattered with strips of bright cloth sewed on, and a stove pipe hat on
his head—what we called the Ragman. We’d traipse behind him, singing
and banging pots, winding to the back door. He’d knock and missus and
everybody would come out and watch him dance. Then missus would hand
out little gifts to us. Could be a coin or a new candle. Sometimes a scarf or a
cob pipe. This was supposed to keep us happy.
We didn’t expect to feel in the mood this year, but on Jonkonnu day,
here came Tomfry in the yard, wearing his shaggy outfit, and we made a lot
of clatter and forgot our troubles for a minute.
Missus stepped out from the back door in the black dress with a basket
of gifts, Sarah, Nina, Henry, and Charles behind her. They were trying to
smile at us. Even Henry, who took after his mauma, looked like a grinning
angel.
Tomfry did his jig. Twirled. Bounced. Wagged his arms. The ribbons
whirled out, and when he was done, they clapped, and he took off the tall
hat and rubbed the crust of gray on his scalp. Reaching in the basket, missus
gave the women these nice fans made with painted paper. The men got two
coins, not one.
The sky had been cast down all day, but now the sun broke free. Missus
leaned on her gold-tip cane and squinted at us. She called out Tomfry’s
name. Then Binah. Eli. Prince. Mariah. She said, “I have something extra
for you,” and handed each one a jar of gargling oil.
“You’ve served me well,” she told them. “Tomfry, you will go to John’s
household. Binah, you will go to Thomas. Eli, I’m sending you to Mary.”
Then she turned to Prince and Mariah. “I’m sorry to say you must be sold.
It’s not my wish, but it’s necessary.”
Nobody spoke. The quiet sat on us like a stone you couldn’t lift.
Mariah dropped down and walked on her knees to missus, crying for her
to change her mind.
Missus wiped her eyes. Then she turned and went in the house followed
by her sons, but Sarah and Nina stayed behind, their faces full of pity.
The axe didn’t fall on me. Didn’t my Lord deliver Handful? The axe
didn’t fall on Goodis either, and I felt surprise over the relief this caused

me. But there was no God in any of it. Nothing but the four of them
standing there, and Mariah, still on her knees. I couldn’t bear to look at
Tomfry with the hat squashed under his arm. Prince and Eli, studying the
ground. Binah, holding her paper fan, staring at Phoebe. A daughter she’d
never see again.

Missus doled out their jobs to the ones of us left. Sabe took over for Tomfry
as the butler. Goodis had the work yard, the stable, and drove the carriage.
Phoebe got the laundry, and Minta and I got Eli’s cleaning duties.
When the first of the year came, missus set me to work on the English
chandelier in the drawing room. She said Eli hadn’t shined it proper in ten
years. It had twenty-eight arms with crystal shades and teardrops of cutglass hanging down. Using the ladder and wearing white cotton gloves, I
took it apart and laid it out on the table and shined it with ammonia. Then, I
couldn’t figure out how to put the thing back together.
I found Sarah in her room, reading a leather book. “We’ll figure it out,”
she said. We hadn’t talked much since she got back—she seemed
woebegone all the time, always stuck in that same book.
After we finally got the chandelier back on the ceiling in one piece,
tears flared up in her eyes. I said, “You sad about your daddy?”
She answered me the strangest way, and I knew what she said was the
real hurt she’d brought back with her. “. . . I’m twenty-seven years old,
Handful, and this is my life now.” She looked round the room, up at the
chandelier, and back at me. “. . . This is my life. Right here for the rest of
my days.” Her voice broke and she covered her mouth with her hand.
She was trapped same as me, but she was trapped by her mind, by the
minds of the people round her, not by the law. At the African church, Mr.
Vesey used to say, Be careful, you can get enslaved twice, once in your body
and once in your mind.
I tried to tell her that. I said, “My body might be a slave, but not my
mind. For you, it’s the other way round.”
She blinked at me and the tears came again, shining like cut-glass.