Handful
I was down near Adgers Wharf on an errand when the steamboat left the
harbor and it was something in this world, the paddle thundering, the
smokestack blowing, and people lined up on the top deck waving
handkerchiefs. I watched it till the spume settled on the water and the boat
dropped over the last blue edge.
Little missus had sent me to get two bottles of import scotch, and I
hurried now not to be late. I was the one who did most of her bidding these
days. When she sent her plantation slaves to fetch something, they’d come
back with the basket empty or still holding the note they were supposed to
deliver. They didn’t know the Battery from Wragg Square, and she’d make
them go without supper if they were lucky, and if they weren’t, it was five
lashes from Hector.
Last week Sky made up a rhyme and sang it in the garden. Little missus
Mary, mean as a snake. Little missus Mary, hit her with the rake. I told her,
don’t sing that cause Hector has ears to hear, but Sky couldn’t get the song
off her tongue. She’d ended up with the iron muzzle latched on her mouth.
It was used for when a slave stole food, but it worked just as good for a
slave mouthing off. It took four men to hold Sky down, work the prongs
inside her mouth, and clamp the contraption at the back of her head. She
screamed so loud I bit the side of my cheek till blood seeped and the copper
taste filled my mouth. Sky couldn’t eat or talk for two days. She slept sitting
up so the iron wouldn’t cut her face, and when she woke groaning, I worked
a wet rag under the edge of the gag so she could suck the water.
Coming out from the scotch store, I was thinking about the torn places
on the sides of her mouth, how she hadn’t sung a tune since all that
happened. Then I heard shouts and smelled the smoke.
A black billow was rising over the Old Exchange. The first thing that
sprang in my head was Denmark, how the city was finally on fire like he
wanted. I hitched up my skirt and jabbed the rabbit cane into the
cobblestone, trying to make my leg go faster. The scotch bottles clanked in
the basket. Pain jarred to my hip.
At the corner of Broad Street, I stopped in my tracks. What I thought
was the city burning was a bonfire in front of the Exchange. A mob circled
round it and the man from the post office was up on the steps throwing
bundles of paper on the flames. Every time a packet landed, the cinders
flew and the crowd roared.
I didn’t know what they were so stirred up about, and the last thing you
want is to wade out in the middle of somebody else’s trouble, but I knew
little missus doled out whippings for being late the same as she did for
getting lost.
I was weaving my way, keeping my head down, when I saw one of the
papers they were trying to burn laying on the street trampled underfoot, and
I went over and picked it up.
It was singed along the bottom. An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern
States by Sarah M. Grimké.
I stood stock-still. Sarah. Sarah M. Grimké.
“Give that to me, nigger!” a man said. He was old and bald and smelled
sour in the summer heat. “Hand it over!”
I looked at his red, watering eyes and poked the booklet inside my
pocket. This was Sarah’s name and these were her words inside. They could
burn the rest of the papers, but they weren’t burning this one.
Come later this night, Sky and Goodis would come to my bed and say,
Handful, what was you thinking? You should’ve give that to him, but I did
what I did.
I didn’t pay any heed to what he said. I turned my back and started
walking off, getting away from his stink and his grabbing hand.
He caught hold of the handle on my basket and gave it a jerk. I yanked
back, and he held on, swaying on his feet, saying, “What you think? I’m
gonna let you walk off with that?” Then he looked down, that half-drunk
fool, and saw the bottles of scotch in the basket, the best scotch in
Charleston, and his gray tongue came out and wiped his lips.
I said, “Here, you take the liquor and I’ll take the booklet,” and I slid
the basket off my arm and left him holding it. I limped off, me and that sly
rabbit on the cane, disappearing in the crowd.
I kept going past Market Street. The sun was dripping orange on the
harbor, the green shadows falling off the garden walls. Up and down the
street, the horses were hightailing home.
I didn’t hurry. I knew what was waiting on me.
Near the Grimké house, I saw the steamboat landing and the whitewash
building with a sign over the door, Charleston Steamship Company. A man
holding a pocket watch was locking the front door. When he left, I
wandered down to the landing and sat hidden behind the wood crates,
watching the pelicans dive straight as blades. When I took the booklet from
my pocket, little charred flakes came off in my hand. I had to work hard at
some of the words. If one tripped me up, I stared at the letters, waiting for
the meaning to show itself, and it would come, too, like pictures taking
shape in the clouds.
Respected Friends,
I address you as a repentant slaveholder of the South,
one secure in the knowledge that the Negro is not chattel to
be owned, but a person under God . . .
Little missus had me whipped by the light of the moon.
When I showed up late at the gate without her import scotch or the
money she gave me to buy it, she told Hector to take care of me. It was dark
out, the black sky full of sharp-edge, tin-cut stars and the moon so full
Hector’s shadow lay perfect on the ground. He had the bullwhip wound up,
hanging off his belt.
I’d always taken my hope from mauma and she was gone.
He lashed my hands to a post on the kitchen house. The last time I was
whipped was for learning to read—one lash, a taste of sugar, they said—and
Tomfry had tied me to this same post.
This time, ten lashes. The price to read Sarah’s words.
I waited with my back to Hector. I could see Goodis crouched in the
shadows by the herb garden and Sky hidden up next to the warming
kitchen, the flash of her eyes like a small night animal.
I let my eyelids fall shut on the world. What was it for anyway? What
was any of this for?
The first strike came straight from the fire, a burning poker under my
skin. I heard the cotton on my dress rip and felt the skin split. It knocked the
legs from me.
I cried out cause I couldn’t help it, cause my body was small without
padding. I cried out to wake God from his slumber.
The words in Sarah’s book came fresh to me. A person under God.
In my head, I saw the steamboat. I saw the paddle turning.
Next day, I was measuring little missus for a dress, a walking costume made
of silk taffeta, just what everybody needs, and her pretending nothing
happened. Being obliging. Handful, what do you think about this gold color,
is it too pale? . . . Nobody sews like you do, Handful.
When I stretched the measure tape from her waist to her ankle, the toreup skin on my back pinched and pulled and a trickle ran between my
shoulders. Phoebe and Sky had laid brown paper soaked in molasses on my
back to keep the raw places clean, but it didn’t turn the pain sweet. Every
step I took hurt. I slid my feet on the floor without picking them up.
Little missus stood on the fitting box and turned a circle. It made me
think of the old globe in master Grimké’s study, the way it turned.
The clapper went off on the front door and we heard Hector’s shoes slap
down the hallway to the drawing room where missus was taking tea. He
called out, “Missus, the mayor’s here. He say for you to come to the door.”
Mary stepped off the fitting box and stuck her head out to see what she
could see. Missus was old now, her hair paper-white, but she got round. I
heard her cane fast-tapping and then her toady voice drifted into the room.
“Mr. Hayne! This is an honor. Please, come, join me for tea.” Like she’d
caught the big fly.
Little missus started scrambling to get her shoes on. She and missus
were always bragging on the mayor. Mr. Robert Hayne walked on
Charleston water. He was what they called a nullifier.
“I’m afraid this isn’t a social call, Mrs. Grimké. I’m here on official
business regarding your daughters, Sarah and Angelina.”
Little missus went still. She edged back to the doorway, one shoe on,
one shoe off, and I eased over there, too.
“I regret to inform you that Sarah and Angelina are no longer welcome
in the city. You should inform them if they return for a visit, they’ll be
arrested and imprisoned until another steamer can return them to the North.
It’s for their own welfare as much as the city’s—Charleston is so enraged
against them now they would undoubtedly meet with violence if they
showed their faces.”
It fell silent. The old bones of the house creaked round us.
“Do you understand, madame?” the mayor said.
“I understand perfectly, now you should understand me. My daughters
may hold unholy opinions, but they will not be treated with this sort of
insult and indignity.”
The front door banged, the cane tapped, then missus was standing in the
doorway with her lip trembling.
The measure tape slipped from my fingers. It curled on the floor by my
foot. I wasn’t likely to see Sarah ever again.
