Handful
Mauma came down with a limp. When she was in her room or in the
kitchen house for meals, she didn’t have any trouble, but the minute she
stepped in the yard, she dragged her leg like it was a dead log. Aunt-Sister
and them watched her go lame and shook their heads. They didn’t like that
kind of trick and didn’t mind saying it. Mauma told them, “After you get
your one-legged punishment, you can say all you want. Till then, you best
shut up.”
After that, they stayed clear of her. Stopped talking if she showed up,
started back when she left. Mauma said it was a hateful shun.
Her eyes burned with anger all the time now. Sometimes she turned her
blackened stare on me. Sometimes she turned it to cleverness. One day I
found her at the foot of the stairs, explaining to missus she had a hard time
climbing up to do her sewing, and for that matter, a hard time climbing the
carriage house steps to her room. She said, “But I gon make out somehow,
don’t worry.” Then while missus and me watched, she pulled on the
bannister and dragged herself to the top, calling on Jesus the whole way.
Next we know, missus had Prince clear out a big room in the cellar, on
the side of the house that backed up to the work yard wall. He moved
mauma’s bed in there and all her stuff. Took the quilt frame down from her
old ceiling and nailed it on the new one. Missus said mauma would do all
the sewing in her room from here out and had Prince bring down the
lacquer sewing table.
The cellar room was large as three slave rooms put together. It was
bright whitewash and had its own tiny window near the ceiling, but looking
through it, you didn’t see clouds in the sky, you saw bricks in the wall.
Mauma made it a calico curtain anyway. She got hold of some pictures of
sailing ships from a cast-off book and tacked them on the wall. A painted
rocking chair turned up in there, along with a beat-up toilet table she
covered with Ticklingburg cloth. On top, she set empty colored bottles, a
box of candles, a cake of tallow, and a tin dish piled with coffee beans for

her chewing pleasure. Where she got all this hoard, I don’t know. Along the
wall shelf, she laid out our sewing stuff: the patch box, the pouch with
needles and thread, the sack of quilt stuffing, pin cushion, shears, tracing
wheel, charcoal, stamping papers, measuring ribbons. Sitting off by
themselves was my brass thimble and the red thread I stole from Miss
Sarah’s drawer.
Once mauma got the place fixed like a palace, she asked Aunt-Sister
could they all come give a prayer for her “poor sorry room.” One evening
here came the lot of them all too glad to see how poor and sorry it was.
Mauma offered each of them a coffee bean. She let them look to their
hearts’ content, then showed them how the door locked with an iron slide
bolt, how she had her own privy pot under the bed, which it fell to me to
empty, considering how cripple she was. She made a lot over the wooden
cane missus had given her for getting round.
When Aunt-Sister left mauma’s party, she spit on the floor outside the
door, and Cindie came behind her and did the same thing.
Best thing was, I could get to the new room without leaving the house.
More nights than not, I crept down the two flights from Sarah’s room,
sidestepping the creaks. Mauma loved that lock on her door. If she was in
her room, you could be sure it was latched, and if she was sleeping, I had to
pound my knuckles sore till she roused.
Mauma didn’t care anymore about me leaving my post. She’d snatch
open her door, yank me in, and bolt it back. Under the covers, I’d ask her to
tell me about the spirit tree, wanting more detail of it, every leaf, branch,
and nest. When she thought I was sleeping, she got up and paced the room,
humming a quiet sound through her lips. Those nights, something dark and
heedless was loose in her.
By day, she sat in her new room and sewed. Miss Sarah let me go down
every afternoon and stay till suppertime. A little air might fuss round
mauma’s window, but it was like a smelter in there most of the time.
Mauma would say, “Get yoself busy.” I learned baste, gather, pleat, shire,
gore, and gusset. Every stitch there is. I learned to do a button hole and a
shank. Cut a pattern from scratch without stamping powder.
That summer, I turned eleven years, and mauma said the pallet I slept on
upstairs wasn’t fit for a dog. We were supposed to be working on the next
ration of slave clothes. Every year the men got two brown shirts and two
white, two pants, two vests. Women got three dresses, four aprons, and a

head scarf. Mauma said all that could wait. She showed me how to cut
black triangles each one big as the end of my thumb, then we appliquéd two
hundred or more on red squares, a color mauma called oxblood. We sewed
on tiny circles of yellow for sun splatter, then cranked down the quilt frame
and pieced everything together. I hemmed on the homespun backing
myself, and we filled the inside with all the batting and feathers we had. I
cut a plug of my hair and plug of mauma’s and put them inside for charms.
It took six afternoons.
Mauma had stopped stealing and taken up safer ways to do harm and
wreckage. She’d forget, so-call forget, that missus’ sleeves were basted
loose, and one of them would pop open at church or somewhere. Mauma
had me sew on buttons without knots, and they would fall off missus’
bosom on the first wear-round. Everybody with an ear could hear missus
shout at mauma for her laziness, and mauma cry out, “Oh, missus, pray for
me, I wants to do better.”
I can’t say what all mischief mauma did, just what I saw, and that was
plenty. She “accidently” broke whatever piece of china or table figurine was
sitting round. Flipped it over and kept walking. When she saw the tea trays
Aunt-Sister left in the warming kitchen for Cindie to take up, she would
drop whatever bit of nastiness she could into the teapot. Dirt off the floor,
lint off the rug, spit from her mouth. I told Miss Sarah, stay clear of the tea
trays.

Day before the storm came, a still feeling weighed on the air. You felt like
you were waiting, but you didn’t know what for. Tomfry said it was a
hurricane and batten down. Prince and Sabe closed the house shutters,
stored the work yard tools in the shed, and fastened up the animals. Inside,
we rolled up carpets on the first floor and moved the fragiles from near the
windows. Missus had us bring the food rations inside from the kitchen
house.
It came in the night while I was in bed with mauma. The wind screamed
and threw limbs against the house. So many palm trees rattled in the dark,
mauma and I had to shout to hear each other. We sat in the bed and watched
the rain pitch against the high window and pour in round the edges.

Floodwater washed under the door. I sang my songs loud as I could to take
my mind from it.
Cross the water, cross the sea,
Let them fishes carry me.
If that water take too long,
Carry me on, Carry me on.
When the storm finally passed, we swung our legs onto the floor and the
water cut circles above our ankles. Mauma’s so-call poor sorry room had
turned into a poor sorry room.
At low tide next day, the floodwater drew back and everyone got called
to the cellar to shovel out the mud. The work yard was a mess of sticks and
broken palm fans, water pails and horse feed, the door off the privy,
whatever the wind had grabbed and dropped. A piece of ship sail was hung
in the branches of the spreading tree.
Once we got mauma’s room cleaned up, I went out to see the sail in the
tree. It waved in the breeze, making a strange sight. Beneath the branches,
the ground was a wet slate of clay. Taking a stick, I wrote BABY BOY
BLUE BLOW YOUR HORN HETTY, digging the letters deep in the
starchy mud, pleased at my penmanship. When Aunt-Sister called me to the
kitchen house, I smeared over the words with the toe of my shoe.
The rest of the day, the sun shone down and dried out the world.
Next morning while me and mauma were in the dining room waiting for
devotions, Miss Mary came hurrying down the hallway with missus trotting
behind her. Headed for the back door.
Mauma leaned on her cane, said, “Where they tearing off to?”
Looking from the window, we saw Lucy, Miss Mary’s waiting maid,
under the tree and the sail still caught in the branches. We saw Miss Mary
lead missus cross the yard right to where Lucy stood looking at the ground,
and a hot feeling came up from my stomach and spread over my chest.
“What they looking at?” mauma said, watching how the three of them
tipped from their waists and studied the dirt.
Then Lucy ran full-tilt back toward the house. Drawing close, she
yelled, “Handful! Handful! Missus say come out here right now.”
I went, full-knowing.

My words, straight from the speller, were baked in the clay. The smearover of mud from my shoe had crackled and thinned away, leaving the deep
crevice of the letters.
BABY BOY BLUE BLOW YOUR HORN HETTY.