Sarah
Nina came up with the idea that my speech infirmity might be cured by
kneading my tongue, a process typically applied to dough. The child was
nothing if not pioneering. She’d listened to my tortured sentences
throughout the summer and into the fall and came to believe the ornery
protuberance in my mouth could be molded in a way that caused words to
plump and rise as effortless as yeast. She was six and a half.
Once Nina was seduced by a problem, she wouldn’t give up until she’d
improvised a solution and acted on it, and these solutions of hers could be
outlandish, but also wondrously imaginative. Not wishing to dampen this
fascinating proclivity of hers, I stuck out my tongue and allowed her to
grasp it with what I hoped to be a clean drying towel.
This experiment was being performed on the second-floor piazza—me,
sitting on the swing, neck craned, mouth open, eyes bulging—the vision of
a voracious baby bird awaiting her worm, though to any observer, I’m sure
it appeared the worm was being extracted rather than deposited.
An autumn sun was climbing over the harbor, spilling like yolk onto the
clouds. From the corner of my watering eye, I could see the sheen of it
angling sharply toward Sullivan’s Island. Mr. Williams and I had cantered
along that island’s shoreline on horseback in what had turned out to be a
sullen affair. Fearing my freshly returned stammer would cause him to
abandon the courtship, I’d barely opened my mouth. Nevertheless, he’d
continued to call—there’d been five occasions since I’d returned from
Belmont last June. I expected each one to be the last. The boundary of
feeling between Nina and me was permeable to a fault, and I believe my
fear had become Nina’s. She seemed uncommonly determined to cure me.
Grasping my tongue, she pressed and pulled. In return, it flailed like the
tentacle of an octopus.
She sighed. “Your tongue is being implacable.”
Implacable! Where did the little genius get these words? I was teaching
her to read, as I’d once taught Handful, but I was sure I’d never introduced
the word implacable.
“And you are holding your breath,” she added. “Let it out. Try to loosen
yourself.”
Very bossy she was, too. Already she possessed more authority and selfassurance than I. “. . . I’ll try,” I said, though perhaps what really happened
was an accidental not-trying. I closed my eyes and breathed, and in my
mind, I saw the bright water in the harbor and then the image of Handful’s
bathwater streaming over the side of the piazza like a falling ribbon, and I
felt my tongue unknot and grow tranquil beneath Nina’s fingers.
I don’t know how long she persisted with her efforts. I quite lost myself
in the flow of water. Finally she said, “Repeat after me: Wicked Willy
Wiggle.”
“Wicked Willy Wiggle,” I said, without a trace of stutter.
This odd interlude on the piazza brought me not a cure, but the nearest
thing to a cure I would ever find, and it had nothing to do with Nina’s
fanciful tongue kneading. It had somehow to do with breathing and repose
and the vision of water.
So it would be from now on—whenever my stints of stammering came,
I would close my eyes and breathe and watch Handful’s bathwater. I would
see it pouring down and down, and opening my eyes, I would often speak
with ease, sometimes for hours.
In November my nineteenth birthday came and went without
acknowledgement except Mother’s reminder at breakfast that I’d reached a
prime marriageable age. There were weekly dress fittings in preparation for
the winter season, providing practically the only contact I had with Handful.
She spent her days sewing in Charlotte’s room in the cellar or beneath the
oak when the weather was mild. Her forbidden bath all those months ago
still hung leaden between us, though Handful didn’t seem the least bit
shamed by my discovery of it. Rather the opposite, she was like someone
who’d risen to her full measure. During the fittings, Handful sang as she
pinned me into half-made dresses. Standing on the fitting box, turning slow
rotations, I wondered if she sang to avoid conversation. Whatever motivated
her, I was relieved.
Then, one day in January, I noticed my father and older brothers
huddled in the library with the door agape. The first icing of the winter had
come in the night and glazed the city, and Tomfry had set the fireplaces
ablaze. From where I stood in the main passage, I could see Father rubbing
his hands before the flames, while Thomas, John, and Frederick gestured
and flitted like moths in the light around his shoulders. Frederick, who’d
recently returned from Yale and followed Thomas to the bar, slammed his
fist into the palm of his hand. “How dare they, how dare they!”
“We’ll mount a defense,” Thomas said. “You mustn’t worry, Father, we
won’t be defeated, I promise you that.”
Someone had wronged Father? I drew as close to the door as I dared,
but I could make little sense of the discussion. They spoke of an outrage,
but didn’t name it. They vowed a defense, but against what? Through the
gap in the door, I watched them move to the desk, where they closed ranks
around a document. They pointed at various passages, jabbing it with their
fingers, debating in low, purposeful tones. The sight of them roused my
ravenous old hunger to take my place in the world, too, to have my part
matter. How many years had elapsed since I threw away the silver button?
I moved from the door, suddenly flush with anger. I was sorry for
Father. He’d been wronged in some way, but here they all were ready to
move heaven and earth to right it, and their wives, their mother, their sisters
had no rights, not even to their own children. We couldn’t vote or testify in
a court, or make a will—of course we couldn’t, we owned nothing to leave
behind! Why didn’t the Grimké men assemble in our defense?
My anger dissipated, but my ignorance went on for another week. During
those interminable days, Mother stayed in her chamber with a headache and
even Thomas refused my queries, saying it was Father’s matter to disclose,
not his. As it turned out, I would learn the news at a parlor concert held at
one of the plantations northwest of the city.
Mary and I arrived on the plantation as the afternoon turned gray with
twilight, our carriage met by a bevy of peacocks that strolled about the
grounds for no reason other than ornamentation. They created a beautiful
blue shimmer in the fading light, but I found them a sad spectacle, the way
they made little rushes at the air, going nowhere.
The concert was already under way when I reached the parlor door.
Burke slipped from his seat and greeted me with unusual warmth. He
looked dashing in his long cerise vest and silk suit. “I was worried you
weren’t coming,” he whispered and led me quickly to the empty chair
beside his. As I slipped off the emerald jacket that Handful had so
wondrously crafted, he placed a letter upon my lap. I raised my brows to
him as if to ask whether I should break the seal and read it while Miss
Parodi and the harpsichord vied for the room. “Later,” he mouthed.
It was unconventional to pass a note in this manner, and my mind
fretted throughout the program at what it might contain. When Mrs.
Drayton, Thomas’ mother-in-law, played the final piece on the harp, we
adjourned to the dining room where the table was spread with a Charlotte
Russe dessert and a selection of French wines, brandy, and Madeira, of
which I couldn’t partake for all my apprehension. Burke gulped a brandy,
then maneuvered me toward the front door.
“. . . Where are we going?” I asked, unsure of the propriety.
“Let’s take a stroll.”
We stepped onto the porch beneath the palladium fanlight and gazed at
the sky. It was purple, almost watery-looking. The moon was rising over the
tree line. I couldn’t, however, think of anything but the letter. I pulled it
from my purse and ripped the seal.
My Dearest Darling,
I beg the privilege of becoming your most attached and
devoted fiancé. My heart is yours.
I await your answer.
Burke
I read it once, then again, mildly disoriented, as if the letter he’d slipped
to me earlier had been swapped for this one that had nothing at all to do
with me. He seemed entertained by my confusion. He said, “Your parents
will want you to wait and give your answer after you’ve consulted with
them.”
“I accept your proposal,” I said, smiling at him, overwhelmed with a
queer mixture of jubilation and relief. I would be married! I would not end
up like Aunt Amelia Jane.
He was right, though, Mother would be horrified I’d answered without
her say-so, but I didn’t doubt my parents’ response. After swallowing their
disapproval, they would seize upon the miracle of Burke Williams’ proposal
like it was the cure for a dread disease.
We walked along the carriage way, my arm looped in his. A little tremor
was running rib to rib to rib inside of me. Abruptly, he steered me off the
path toward a camellia grove. We disappeared into the shadows that hung in
swaths between the huge, flowering bushes, and without preamble, he
kissed me full on the mouth. I reared back. “. . . Why . . . why, you surprise
me.”
“My Love, we’re engaged now, such liberties are allowed.”
He drew me to him and kissed me again. His fingers moved along the
edge of my décolletage, brushing my skin. I didn’t entirely surrender, but I
allowed Burke Williams a great amount of freedom during that small
peccadillo in the camellia grove. When I mustered myself finally, pulling
from his embrace, he said he hoped I didn’t hold his ardor against him. I did
not. I adjusted my dress. I tucked vagrant pieces of hair back into my
upswept coif. Such liberties are allowed now.
As we walked back to the house, I fixed my eyes on the path, how it
was riddled with peacock excrement and pebbles shining in the moon’s
light. This marriage, it would be life-enough, wouldn’t it? Surely. Burke
was speaking about the necessity of a long engagement. A year, he said.
As we drew near the porch, a horse whinnied, and then a man stepped
from the front door and lit his pipe. It was Mr. Drayton, Thomas’ father-inlaw.
“Sarah?” he said. “Is that you?” His eyes shifted to Burke and back to
me. A lock of my hair fluttered guiltily at my shoulder. “Where’ve you
been?” I heard the reproof, the alarm. “Are you all right?”
“. . . I am . . . we are engaged.” My parents weren’t yet informed, and
I’d heralded the news to Mr. Drayton, whom I barely knew, hoping it would
excuse whatever his mind imagined we were doing out there.
“We took a quick turn in the night air,” Burke said, trying, it seemed, to
bring some normalcy to the moment.
Mr. Drayton was no fool. He gazed at me, plain Sarah, returning from a
“turn in the night” with a startlingly handsome man, looking flushed and
slightly unkempt. “Well, then, congratulations. Your happiness must be a
welcome respite for your family given this recent trouble of your father’s.”
Was Father’s trouble common knowledge, then?
“Has some misfortune fallen upon Judge Grimké?” Burke asked.
“Sarah hasn’t told you?”
“. . . I suppose I’ve been too distressed to speak of it,” I said. “. . . But
please, sir, inform him on my behalf. It would be a service to me.”
Mr. Drayton took a draught from his pipe and blew the spicy smoke into
the night. “I regret to say the judge’s enemies seek to remove him from the
court. Impeachment charges have been brought.”
I let my breath out. I couldn’t imagine a greater humiliation for our
father.
“On what grounds?” Burke asked, properly outraged.
“They say he has grown biased and overly righteous in his judgments.”
He hesitated. “They charge incompetence. Ah, but it is all politics.” He
waved his hand dismissively, and I watched the bowl of his pipe flare in the
small wind.
Any flicker of gladness I might’ve hoped for from my family about my
engagement, any retribution I might’ve feared for accepting the proposal
without permission, was swallowed by Father’s trial. Mother’s reaction to
my announcement was simply, “Well done, Sarah,” as if reviewing one of
my embroidery samplers. Father did not respond at all.
Throughout the winter, he sequestered in the library day and night with
Thomas, Frederick, and Mr. Daniel Huger, a lawyer friend of Father’s who
was known for legally eviscerating his opponents. My hearing was almost
preternatural, cultivated by years of unsanctioned listening, and I caught
scraps of conversation while sitting at the card table in the main passage,
pretending to read.
John, you’ve received no money, no favors. You are accused of nothing
that rises to the level of high crimes.
Isn’t a charge of incompetence bad enough? They accuse me of being
biased! The streets and the papers are full of it. I’m ruined, regardless.
Father, you have friends in the legislative chamber!
Don’t be a fool, Thomas, what I have are enemies. Scheming bastards
from the upcountry, seeking the bench for themselves.
They cannot possibly get a two-thirds majority.
Make meat of them, Daniel, do you hear me? Feed them to the dogs.
When the trial was heard that spring in the House of Representatives in
Columbia, Mr. Huger assailed Father’s enemies with a vengeance, laying
bare their political conniving with such force Father was acquitted in a
single day, but the vote was ominously close, and he returned to Charleston,
vindicated, but dirtied.
At fifty-nine, Father was suddenly a very old man. His face had turned
haggard and his clothes baggy as if he’d wilted inside them. A tremor
appeared in his right hand.
As the months passed, Burke paid courting calls to me weekly in the
withdrawing room, where we were allowed unchaperoned visits. He filled
these rendezvous with the same fever and excess we’d shared in the
camellia grove, and I complied, drawing lines the best I could. I counted it
God’s miracle we weren’t discovered, though I’m sure our invisibility was
not due to God, but to the family’s distraction. Father continued to shuffle
and shrivel and tuck his hand in his pocket to hide its shake. He turned into
a recluse of a man. And I, I turned into a Jezebel of a woman.
