Handful
Upstairs in the alcove, I peered out the window at the harbor, remembering
when I was ten years old seeing the water for the first time, how tireless and
far it traveled, making up that little song, prancing round, and now I was
coming on forty-five and my feet didn’t dance anymore. They just wanted
to be gone from here. Little missus hadn’t let me out since the whipping,
but every free chance I slipped up here. Sometimes like today, I brought my
hand sewing and spent the morning on the window seat with the needle.
Little missus didn’t care as long as I did my work, kept my tongue, bobbed
my head, said yessum, yessum, yessum.
Today, it was hot, the sun eyeing straight in. I opened the window and
the wind blew stiff, dredging up the smell of mudflats. From my perch, I
could see the steamboat landing down on East Bay. I’d learned plenty
watching the world come and go from that dock. A steamer came most
every week day. I’d watch the snag boat ply ahead of it, clearing the way,
then I’d hear the paddle on the steamer roar and the tug boats huff and the
dock slaves holler back and forth, making haste to grab the ropes and put
down the plank.
When it was time for it to leave again, I’d watch the carriages pull up at
the whitewash building with the Steamship Company sign, and people
would go inside and wait for a spell. Down on the landing, the slaves would
unload trunks and goods and bags of mail onto the ship. When ten o’clock
came, the passengers crossed the street and the slaves helped the ladies over
the gangplank. The boat never left till the Guard showed up. Always two of
them, sometimes three, they passed through the ship—first deck, second
deck, pilot house, bottom to top. One time they opened every humpback
trunk before it went onboard. That’s when I knew they were searching for
stowaways, for slaves.
The Thursday boat went all the way to New York, and then you got on
another one going to Philadelphia—I’d learned that from reading the
Charleston Post and Courier, which I’d swiped from the drawing room. It
printed all the schedules, said the tickets cost fifty-five dollars.
Today, the steamboat landing was empty, but I wasn’t up here in the
alcove to watch the boat, I was up here to figure a way to get on it. All these
weeks I’d been patient. Careful. Yessum, yessum. Now I sat here with the
palmettos clacking in the wind and thought of the girl who bathed in a
copper tub. I thought of the woman who stole a bullet mold. I loved that
girl, that woman.
I went over everything I’d seen out there on the harbor, everything I
knew. I sat with my hands still, my eyes closed, my mind flying with the
gulls, the world tilting like a birdwing.
When I stood up, every one of my limbs was shaking.
The next week when Hector was handing out duties for the day, he told
Minta, go strip the bedding in the house and take it out to the laundry house.
I thought quick and said, “Oh, I’ll do that, poor Minta’s back is hurting
her.” She looked at me curious, but didn’t argue. You take a rest whatever
way you can get it.
In the alcove that day, a picture had sprung in my head—dresses. I saw
the black dresses the missuses had worn to mourn their husbands. I saw
their spoon bonnets with the thick black veils and their black gloves. These
things came to me clear as the bright of day.
When I got to missus’ room, I tugged off the bed linens, listening for
footsteps on the stairs, for a cane poking its way, then I opened the last
drawer of her linen press. I’d folded away missus’ mourning dress, her
bonnet and gloves my own self all those years back. I’d packed them in
linen with camphor gum to keep out the moth eggs and laid them in the
bottom drawer. Reaching back there, I worried they were long gone, that
what warded off the moths had drawn the rats, but then my fingers brushed
against the linen.
I peeked inside the parcel. It was still the grandest dress I’d ever made
—black velvet stitched with hundreds of black glass beads. Some of them
had come loose and were scatter-rolling in the linen folds. The veil on the
bonnet had two spider tears that would have to be fixed, plus I’d forgot the
gloves were fingerless mitts. I’d have to sew fingers on them. I whisked
everything into the bed sheets, bundled it up, and tied a topknot. Leaving it
outside the door, I hurried into little missus’ room.
Her funeral outfit was stored nearly the same way in her bureau but with
cedar chips instead of camphor. I didn’t know how we’d air out all these
rowdy smells. When I got her dress, hat, and gloves rolled tight in the
sheets, I threw both of the bed bundles over my back and went down the
stairs with my cane, straight to the cellar room.
That night after me and Sky had dragged the bed over to block the door,
she tried on missus’ black velvet dress and stood there with the buttons
undone. Thick-waist as missus was, I’d still have to let the bodice out for
Sky, add six inches to the length and two to the sleeves. She was her
daddy’s girl, all right.
Little missus was normal size, but there was enough room inside her
dress for two of me.
The only thing we didn’t have was shoes, proper shoes. What we had
was slave shoes and that would have to do.
I started to work that night. Sky fetched threads and shears for me and
watched every stitch. She sang the Gullah song she liked best, If you don’t
know where you’re going, you should know where you come from.
I told her, “We know where we’re going now.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“We’ll be ready when the steamer leaves Thursday eight days from
now.”
She picked up her apron draped on the rocker and dug in the pocket,
pulling out two little bottles like the kind Aunt-Sister used for tinctures. “I
boiled us some white oleander tea.”
A quiver ran from my neck to my fingers. White oleander was the most
deadly plant in the world. A bush had caught fire on Hasell Street and a man
dropped dead just breathing the smoke. The brown liquid in Sky’s bottle
would curl us on the floor retching till the last breath, but it wouldn’t take
long.
“We leaving or die trying,” Sky said.
