Handful
4 August
Dear Sarah
Mauma passed on last month. She fell into a sleep under
the oak tree and never roused. She stayed asleep six days
before she died in her bed, me beside her and Sky too. Your
mauma paid for her to have a pine box.
They put her in the slave burial ground on Pitt Street.
Missus let Goodis carry me and Sky over there in the
carriage to see her resting place and say goodbye. Sky has
turned 22 now and stands tall as a man. When we stood by
the grave, I didn’t come up to her shoulder. She sang the
song the women on the plantation sing when they pound rice
to leave on the graves. She said they put rice there to help
the dead find their way back to Africa. Sky had a pocketful
from the kitchen house and she spread it over mauma while
she sang.
What came to me was the old song I made up when I was
a girl. Cross the water, cross the sea, let them fishes carry
me, carry me home. I sang that, then I took the brass
thimble, the one I loved from the time I was little, and I left it
on top of her grave so she’d have that part of me.
Well, I wanted you to know. I guess she’s at peace now.
I hope this letter makes it to you. If you write me, take
care cause your sister Mary watches everything. The black
driver from her plantation named Hector is the butler now
and he does her spying.
Your friend
Handful
I wrote Sarah’s name and address on the front by the light of the candle,
copying missus’ handwriting as close as I could manage. Missus’ penship
had fallen off so bad I could’ve set down any kind of lettering and passed it
off for hers. I closed the letter with a drop of wax and pressed it with
missus’ seal-stamp. I’d stole the stamp from her room—let’s say, borrowed
it. I planned to take it back before it was missed. The stationery, though,
was just plain stolen.
Cross the room, Sky was sleeping, thrashing in the heat. I watched her
arms search the spot on the mattress where mauma used to lay, then I blew
out the flame and watched the smoke tail away in the dark. Tomorrow I’d
slip the letter in the batch going to the post and hope nobody took a hard
look.
Sky sang out in her sleep, sounded like Gullah, and I thought of the rice
she’d sprinkled on mauma’s grave, trying to send her spirit to Africa.
Africa. Wherever me and Sky were, that’s the only place mauma would
be.
