Sarah
I snapped open the crisp white table cloth, unfurling it upward, watching it
turn into a small ovoid cloud before it sank onto the pine needles.
“This isn’t the cloth we use for picnics,” Catherine said, crossing her
arms over her chest.
Her criticisms of me were similar to her prayers—sacred, daily, and
unsmiling. I was careful now. I taught the children, but I tried not to appear
mothering. I deferred to Catherine in all household matters—if she put salt
in the cake, she put salt in the cake. And Israel—I didn’t so much as look at
him when she was in the room.
“. . . I’m sorry,” I told her. “. . . I thought you said to get the white
cloth.”
“It will have to be bleached and clear starched. Let’s pray there’s no
pine sap on the ground.”
God, no pine sap. Please.
It was the first day of April, which also happened to be Becky’s seventh
birthday and the first day all year one could actually call warm. After my
first winter in the North, I had an entirely new appreciation for heat. I’d
never seen snow before arriving here, and when it’d come, the Pennsylvania
sky split open like a vast goose down comforter and the entire world turned
to feathers. The first time it happened, I slipped outside and wandered about
catching flakes in my hands and on my tongue, letting them settle into my
hair, which I’d left long and flowing down my back. Returning to the house,
I spotted Israel and several of the children watching me from the window,
looking quite astonished. My enchantment turned to slush about the same
time the snow did. We seemed stuck in a perpetual twilight. Color bled from
the world, recasting the landscape into gradations of black and white, and
no matter how ruthlessly the fireplaces roared, cold formed on my
Charleston bones like hoarfrost.
The picnic had been my idea. Quakers didn’t celebrate holidays—all
days were treated equally, meant to be lived with the same simplicity—but
Israel was known to hedge a bit on the children’s birthdays. He was home
working that day, shut in his study with invoices and ledgers and bills of
exchange. Having enough sense not to go to Catherine with my whim, I’d
interrupted him mid-morning.
“. . . Spring has come,” I’d said. “Let’s not squander it . . . A picnic will
do us all good, and you should see Becky, she’s so excited to be seven . . . A
little celebration wouldn’t hurt, would it?”
He set down the account book in his hand and gazed at me with a slow,
defenseless smile. It’d been months since he’d touched me. Back in the fall
he’d often held my hand or slid his arm about my waist as we walked back
up the hill from the pond, but then winter came, and the walks ceased as he
retreated, going off inside himself somewhere to hibernate. I didn’t know
what had happened until one morning in January when Catherine
announced it was the second anniversary of Rebecca’s death. She seemed to
take morose joy in explaining how deeply her brother was mourning, even
more so this winter than the one before.
“All right, have the picnic, but no birthday cake,” Israel said.
“. . . I wouldn’t dream of anything so decadent as cake,” I replied,
beaming, mocking him a little, and he laughed outright.
“You should come, too,” I added.
His eyes veered to the locket, lying on his desk, the one with the
daffodils and his wife’s name engraved on it.
“Perhaps,” he said. “I have a great deal of work to do here.”
“. . . Well, try and join us. The children would like that.” I left, wishing I
weren’t so dismayed by him at times, at how mercurial he could be,
embracing one day, stand-offish the next.
Now, as I gazed down at the white cloth spread on the lawn, it wasn’t
even disappointment I felt, it was anger. He hadn’t come.
Catherine and I laid out the contents of the basket, a dozen boiled eggs,
carrots, two loaves of bread, apple butter, and a kind of soft cheese
Catherine had made by boiling cream and drying it in a cloth. The children
had found a thatch of mint at the woods’ edge and were crushing the leaves
between their fingers. The air pulsed with the smell of it.
“Oh,” I heard Catherine say. She was gazing toward the house, at Israel
striding toward us through the brown grass.
We ate sitting on the ground with our faces turned to the bright crater of
sky. When we finished, Catherine pulled gingerbread from the basket and
stacked the slices in a pyramid. “The top slice is for you, Becky,” she said.
It was evident how much Catherine loved the child and all the rest of
them, and I felt a sudden remorse for all my ill thoughts of her. The children
grabbed the gingerbread and scattered, the boys toward the trees and the
two girls off to pluck the wild flowers beginning to poke through the sod,
and it was at this moment, as Catherine busied herself clearing things away,
that I made a terrible mistake.
I languished, leaning back on my elbows within an arm’s length of
Israel, feeling that he’d returned from his long hibernation and wanting to
bask in the thought of it. Catherine’s back was to us, and when I looked at
Israel, he had that yearning expression again, the sad, burning smile, and he
dared to slide his little finger across the cloth and hook it about mine. It was
a small thing, our fingers wrapped like vines, but the intimacy of it flooded
me, and I caught my breath.
The sound made Catherine turn her head and peer at us over her
shoulder. Israel snatched his finger from mine. Or did I snatch mine from
his?
She leveled her eyes on him. “So, it is as I suspected.”
“This is not your business,” he told her. Getting to his feet, he smiled
regretfully at me and walked back up the hill.
She didn’t speak immediately, but when I tried to assist her in packing
the basket, she said, “You must move out and find lodging elsewhere. It’s
unseemly for you to be here. I will speak to Israel about your leaving, but it
would be better if you left on your own without him having to intervene.”
“. . . He wouldn’t ask me to leave!”
“We must do what propriety calls for,” she said, and then surprised me
by placing her hand on mine. “I’m sorry, but it’s best this way.”
The eleven of us sat on a single pew in the Arch Street Meetinghouse—the
eight Morris children bookended by Israel on one side and by Catherine and
me on the other. I thought it unnecessary that we should all be here for what
was called “a meeting for worship with a concern for business.” It was a
business meeting, for heaven’s sake, plain and simple. They occurred
monthly, but I typically remained at home with the children, while Israel
and Catherine attended. This time, she’d insisted we all attend.
Catherine had wasted little time in approaching Israel after the picnic,
and he’d stood his ground—I would stay at Green Hill. If the locket
incident had cooled the air between Catherine and me, my refusal to leave
and Israel’s refusal to back her had turned it bitter. I only hoped in time she
would come around.
Inside the meeting room, a woman stood to convene the meeting by
reading a verse from the Bible. She was the only female minister among us.
She looked no more than my own age of twenty-nine, young for such an
achievement. The first time I’d heard her speak in Meeting, it had been with
a kind of awe. I thought of it now with a pang of jealousy. I’d made the
essence of the Quaker faith my own, but so far I’d refrained from making a
single utterance in Meeting.
As business began, the members brought forth a series of mind-dulling
matters. Two of Israel’s sons were quietly shoving at one another, and the
youngest had fallen asleep. How senseless of Catherine to drag us here, I
thought.
She rose, arranging her shawl about her small, brittle shoulders. “I’m
compelled by the Spirit to bring forth a matter of concern.”
I jerked my head upward, gazing at the set edge of her chin, and then at
Israel on the opposite end of the row, who appeared as surprised as I was.
“I ask that we come to unity on the necessity of finding a new home for
our beloved probationer, Sarah Grimké,” Catherine said. “Miss Grimké is
an outstanding teacher to Israel’s children and a help to me with housely
duties, and she is, of course, a Christian of the highest order, and it’s
important that no one inside or outside of our community be able to
question the decorum of an unmarried woman living in the home of a
widower. It pains us at Green Hill to see her leave, but it’s a sacrifice we’re
willing to make for the greater good. We ask that you assist us in her
relocation.”
I stared at the unvarnished wood floor and the hem of her dress, unable
almost to draw a breath.
I recall only a portion of what the members said in the aftermath of her
insidious speech. I remember being hailed for my scruples and my sacrifice.
I remember words like honorable, selfless, praiseworthy, imperative.
When the whir of voices finally faded, an elderly man said, “Are we in
unity on the matter? If you stand in opposition, please acknowledge
yourself.”
I stand in opposition. I, Sarah Grimké. The words strained against my
ribs and became lost. I wanted to refute what Catherine had said, but I
didn’t know where to begin. She’d ingeniously transformed me into an
exemplar of goodness and self-denial. Any rebuttal I made would seem to
contradict that and perhaps end my chances of being accepted into the
Quaker fold. The thought of that pained me. Despite their austerity, their
hair splitting, they’d put forth the first anti-slavery document in history.
They’d showed me a God of love and light and a faith centered on
individual conscience. I didn’t want to lose them, nor did I want to lose
Israel, which I would surely do, if my probation failed.
I couldn’t move, not the tiniest muscle in my tongue.
Israel slid up on the pew as if he might stand and speak on my behalf,
but he lingered there, balling his fist and pressing it into the palm of his
hand. Catherine had put him in the same untenable position as me—he
wanted to give no one a reason to question what went on in his house,
especially the good people of Arch Street who were at the center of his life,
who’d known and cherished Rebecca. I could understand this. Yet watching
him hesitate now on the edge of his seat, I had the feeling his reluctance to
speak out publicly for me stemmed from something even deeper, from some
submerged, almost sovereign need to protect his love for his wife. I knew
suddenly it was the same reason he hadn’t declared his feelings for me
privately. He cast a tortuous look at me and eased back on the bench.
At the front of the room, the female minister sat on the “Facing bench”
along with the other ministers, scrutinizing me, noticing the glimmers of
distress I couldn’t hide. Gazing back at her, I imagined she saw down to the
things in my heart, things I was just coming to know myself. He might
never claim me.
She nodded at me suddenly and stood. “I’m in opposition. I see no
reason for Miss Grimké to move out. It would be a great disruption for her
and a hardship for all involved. Her conduct is not in question. We should
not be so concerned with outward appearances.”
Taking her seat, she smiled at me, and I thought I might cry at the sight
of it.
She was the only one to offer a dissent to Catherine. The Quakers
decided I would depart Green Hill within the month and duly recorded it in
the Minute Book.
After the meeting, Israel left quickly to bring the carriage around, but I
went on sitting on the pew, trying to gather myself. I couldn’t think where I
would go. Would I still teach the children? As Catherine steered them
toward the door, Becky looked back at me, twisting against Catherine’s
hands, which were fastened like a harness on her small back.
“Sarah? May I call you Sarah?” It was my defender.
I nodded. “. . . Thank you for speaking as you did . . . I’m grateful.”
She thrust a folded piece of paper at me. “Here’s my address. You are
welcome to stay with me and my husband.” She started to go, then turned
back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself, did I? My name is Lucretia
Mott.”
