Sarah
Two days after a September hurricane sent tidewater over East Bay all the
way to Meeting Street, Binah knocked on my door before breakfast, her
eyes filled with fear and consolation, and I knew some catastrophe had
fallen.
“Has someone died? Is Father—”
“No, ain’t nobody die. Your daddy, he want you in the library.”
I’d never been summoned like this and it caused an odd, plummeting
sensation in my legs, so much so I dipped a little at the knees while walking
back to the Hepplewhite to inspect the ivory ribbon I’d been tying in my
hair.
“What’s happened?” I asked, tugging the bow, smoothing my dress,
letting my hand rest for a moment across my jittery stomach.
I could see her reflection in the glass. She shook her head. “Miss Sarah,
I can’t say what he want, but it ain’t help to poke.”
Placing her hand at the small of my back, she nudged me from the
room, past Handful’s new quilt lying in the hallway, its mass of triangles
pinioned on the floor. We walked down the stairs, pausing outside the
library door. Abstaining from her Poor Miss Sarahs, Binah said instead,
“Listen to Binah now. Don’t be crying, and don’t be running away. Buck
yourself up now.”
Her words, meant to steady me, unnerved me further. As I tapped on the
door, the airy feeling returned to the back of my knees. He sat at his desk
with his hair oiled and combed back smooth and didn’t look up, intent on a
stack of documents.
When he lifted his face, his eyes were hardened. “You have
disappointed me, Sarah.”
I was too stunned to cry or run away, the two things Binah had warned
against. “I would never knowingly disappoint you, Father. I only care to—”
He thrust out his palm. “I have brought you here to listen. Do not
speak.”
My heart beat so ferociously my hands went to either side of my ribs to
keep them from unhinging.
“It has been brought to my attention that your slave girl has become
literate. Do not think to deny it, as she wrote a number of words on the
muddy ground in the yard and even took care to sign her name.”
Oh Handful, no! I looked away from his harsh, accusing eyes, trying to
arrange things into perspective. Handful had been careless. We’d been
found out. But my disbelieving mind could not accept that Father, of all
people, believed her ability to read was an unpardonable offense. He would
chastise me as he must, undoubtedly at Mother’s urging. Then he would
soften. In the depths of his conscience, he understood what I’d done.
“How do you suppose she acquired this ability?” he asked calmly. “Did
it descend upon her one day out of the blue? Was she born with it? Did she
teach her own ingenious self to read? Of course, we know how the girl
came to read—you taught her. You defied your mother, your father, the laws
of your state, even your rector, who expressly admonished you about it.”
He rose from his leather chair and walked toward me, stopping at arm’s
reach, and when he spoke again, some of the hostility had left his voice.
“I’ve asked myself how you are able to disobey with such ease and
disregard. I fear the answer is you are a coddled girl who does not
understand her place in the world, and that is partly my own fault. I’ve done
you no favors with my lenience. My indulgence has given you the idea you
can transgress a serious boundary such as this one.”
Feeling the chill of some new and different terror, I dared to speak, and
felt my throat clench in the familiar old way. I squeezed my eyes and forced
out my thought. “. . . . . . . . . I’m sorry, Father. . . . . . I meant no harm.”
“No harm?”
He hadn’t noticed the return of my stammer. He paced about the stuffy
room and lectured me, while Mr. Washington gazed serenely from the
mantel. “You think there’s no detriment in a slave learning to read? There
are sad truths in our world, and one is that slaves who read are a threat.
They would be abreast of news that would incite them in ways we could not
control. Yes, it’s unfair to deprive them, but there’s a greater good here that
must be protected.”
“. . . . . . . . . But Father, it’s wrong!” I cried.
“Are you so impudent as to challenge me even now? When you left the
document on my desk freeing your slave girl, I should have brought you to
your senses then and there, but I cosseted you. I thought by tearing the fool
thing in two and returning it to you, you would understand we Grimkés do
not subvert the institutions and laws by which we live, even if we don’t
agree with them.”
I felt confused and very stupid. Father had torn up my manumission
paper. Father.
“Do not mistake me, Sarah, I will protect our way of life. I will not
tolerate sedition in this family!”
When I’d espoused my anti-slavery views during those dinner table
debates, Father beaming and spurring me on, I’d thought he prized my
position. I’d thought he shared my position, but it hit me suddenly that I’d
been the collared monkey dancing to his master’s accordion. Father had
been amusing himself. Or perhaps he’d encouraged my dissenting opinion
only because it gave the rest of them a way to sharpen their own opposing
views. Perhaps he’d tolerated my notions because the debates had been a
pitying oral exercise to help a defective daughter speak?
Father crossed his arms over his white shirt and stared at me from
beneath the unclipped hedge of his brows. His eyes were clear and brown
and empty of compassion, and that’s when I first saw my father as he really
was—a man who valued principle over love.
“You have quite literally committed a crime,” he said and resumed his
pacing, making a wide, slow orbit around me. “I will not punish you
accordingly, but you must learn, Sarah.”
“From now on, you are denied entrance to this room. You shall not cross
this threshold at any time, day or night. You are denied all access to the
books here, and to any other books wherever they might be, except for
those Madame Ruffin has allotted for your studies.”
No books. God, please. My legs gave way then, and I went onto my
knees.
He kept circling. “You will study nothing but Madame’s approved
subjects. No more Latin sessions with Thomas. You will not write it, speak
it, or compose it in your head. Do you understand?”
I lifted my hands, palms up, as high as my head, molding myself into
the shape of a supplicant. “. . . . . . . . . Father, I beg you . . . P-please, don’t
take books from me . . . I can’t bear it.”
“You have no need of books, Sarah.”
“. . . . . . F-f-father!”
He strode back to his desk. “It causes me distress to see your misery,
Sarah, but it’s fait accompli. Try not to take it so hard.”
From the window came the rumble of drays and carriages, the cries of
slave vendors on the street—the old woman with the basket atop her head
who squawked, “Red ROSE to-may-TOES.” The din of commerce went on
without regard. Opening the library door, I saw Binah had waited. She took
my hand and led me up the stairs to the doorway of my room. “I get you
some breakfast and bring it up here on a tray,” she said.
After she left, I peered beneath the bed where I’d kept the slate board,
spellers, and primer. They were gone. The books on my desk were gone,
too. My room had been scoured.
It was not until Binah returned with the tray that I thought to ask,
“. . . . . . Where’s Handful?”
“Oh, Miss Sarah, that just it. She ’bout to get her own punishing out
back.”
I have no memory of my feet grazing the stairs.
“It just one lash,” Binah cried, racing behind me. “One lash, missus say.
That be all.”
I flung open the back door. My eyes swept the yard. Handful’s skinny
arms were tied to the porch rail of the kitchen house. Ten paces behind her,
Tomfry held a strap and stared at the ground. Charlotte stood in the wheel
ruts that cut from the carriage house to the back gate, while the rest of the
slaves clustered beneath the oak.
Tomfry raised his arm. “No!” I screamed. “Nooooo!” He turned toward
me, hesitating, and relief filled his face.
Then I heard Mother’s cane tap the glass on the upstairs window, and
Tomfry lifted his tired eyes toward the sound. He nodded and brought the
lash down across Handful’s back.
