Handful
When dark fell, mauma started to shake. Her head lolled and her teeth
clattered. It wasn’t like Rosetta and her fits, where all her limbs jerked, it
was like mauma was cold inside her bones. I didn’t know what to do but pat
her arms and legs. After a while, she grew still. Her breathing drew heavy,
and before I knew it, I drifted off myself.
I started dreaming and in that dream I was sleeping. I slept under an
arbor of thick green. It was bent perfect over me. Vines hung round my
arms. Scuppernongs fell alongside my face. I was the girl sleeping, but at
the same time I could see myself, like I was part of the clouds floating by,
and then I looked down and saw the arbor wasn’t really an arbor, it was our
quilt frame covered in vines and leaves. I went on sleeping, watching
myself sleeping, and the clouds went on floating, and I saw inside the thick
green again. This time, it was mauma herself inside there.
I don’t know what woke me. The room was quiet, the light gone.
Mauma said, “You wake?” Those were the first words she’d said since
Tomfry strapped her.
“I’m awake.”
“Awright. I gon tell you a story. You listening, Handful?”
“I’m listening.”
My eyes had got used to the dark, and I saw the door still propped wide
to the hallway, and mauma beside me, frowning. She said, “Your grannymauma come from Africa when she was a girl. ’Bout same as you now.”
My heart started to beat hard. It filled up my ears.
“Soon as she got here, her mauma and daddy was taken from her, and
that same night the stars fell out the sky. You think stars don’t fall, but your
granny-mauma swore it.”
Mauma tarried, letting us picture how the sky might’ve looked.
“She say everything over here sound like jibber jabber to her. The food
taste like monkey meat. She ain’t got nothin’ but this little old scrap of quilt
her mauma made. In Africa, her mauma was a quilter, best there is. They
was Fon people and sewed appliqué, same like I do. They cut out fishes,
birds, lions, elephants, every beast they had, and sewed ’em on, but the quilt
your granny-mauma brought with her didn’t have no animals on it, just little
three-side-shapes, what you call a triangle. Same like I put on my quilts.
My mauma say they was blackbird wings.”
The floor creaked in the hallway and I heard somebody out there
breathing high and fast, the way Miss Sarah breathed. I eased up on my
elbow and craned my neck, and there she was—her shadow blotted on the
hall window. I lowered myself back to the mattress and mauma went on
telling her story with Miss Sarah listening in.
“Your granny-mauma got sold to some man for twenty dollars, and he
put her in the fields near Georgetown. They eat boiled black-eye peas in the
morning, and if you ain’t done eating in ten minutes time, you don’t get no
more that day. Your granny-mauma say she always eat too slow.
“I never did know my daddy. He was a white man named John Paul, not
the massa, but his brother. After I come, we got sold off. Mauma say I be
the fair side of brown, and everybody know what that mean.
“We got bought by a man near Camden. He kept mauma in the fields
and I stay out there with her, but nights she teach me everything she knows
’bout quilts. I tore up old pant legs and dress tails and pieced ’em. Mauma
say in Africa they sew charms in their quilts. I put pieces of my hair down
inside mine. When I got twelve, mauma start braggin’ to the Camden
missus, how I could sew anything, and the missus took me to the house to
learn from their seamstress. I got better ’n she was in a hurry.”
She broke off and shifted her legs on the bed. I was afraid that was all
she had to say. I never had heard this story. Listening to it was like watching
myself sleep, clouds floating, mauma bent over me. I forgot Miss Sarah was
out there.
I waited, and finally she started back telling. “Mauma birthed my
brother while I was sewing in the house. She never say who his daddy was.
My brother didn’t live out the year.
“After he die, your granny-mauma found us a spirit tree. It’s just a oak
tree, but she call it a Baybob like they have in Africa. She say Fon people
keep a spirit tree and it always be a Baybob. Your granny-mauma wrapped
the trunk with thread she begged and stole. She took me out there and say,
‘We gon put our spirits in the tree so they safe from harm.’ We kneel on her
quilt from Africa, nothing but a shred now, and we give our spirits to the
tree. She say our spirits live in the tree with the birds, learning to fly. She
told me, ‘If you leave this place, go get your spirit and take it with you.’ We
used to gather up leaves and twigs from round the tree and stick ’em in
pouches to wear at our necks.”
Her hand went to her throat like she was feeling for it.
She said, “Mauma died of a croup one winter. I was sixteen. I could sew
anything there was. ’Bout that time the massa got in money-debt and sold
off every one of us. I got bought by massa Grimké for his place in Union.
Night ’fore I left, I went and got my spirit from the tree and took it with me.
“I want you to know, your daddy was good as gold. His name was
Shanney. He work in massa Grimké’s fields. One day missus say I got to
come sew for her in Charleston. I say awright, but bring Shanney, he my
husband. She say Shanney a field slave, and maybe I see him sometime
when I back for a visit. You was already inside me, and nobody knew.
Shanney die from a cut on his leg ’fore you a year old. He never saw your
face.”
Mauma stopped talking. She was done. She went to sleep then and left
the story bent perfect over me.
Next morning when I eased out of bed headed for the privy, I bumped into a
basket sitting by the door. Inside it was a big bottle of liniment and some
medicine-tea.
That day I went back to tending Miss Sarah. I slipped into her room
while she was reading one of her books. She was shy to bring up what
happened to mauma, so I said, “We got your basket.”
Her face eased. “Tell your mother I’m sorry for her treatment, and I
hope she’ll feel better soon,” and it wasn’t any toil in her words.
“That mean a lot to us,” I said.
She laid the book down and came where I was standing by the chimney
place and put her arms round me. It was hard to know where things stood.
People say love gets fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn’t know for
sure whether Miss Sarah’s feelings came from love or guilt. I didn’t know
whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied
me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing. That day, our
hearts were pure as they ever would get.
