Sarah
I arrived in Charleston during a thunderstorm. As the steamer groaned into
the harbor, lightning tore rifts in the sky and rain pelted sideways, and still,
I stepped out beneath the roof of the upper deck so I could watch the city
come into view. I hadn’t seen it in sixteen years.
We churned past Fort Sumter at the harbor’s mouth, which didn’t look
much further along in its construction than when I’d sailed away. The
peninsula loomed up like an old mirage rising from the water, the white
houses on the Battery blurred in the gray rain. For a moment I felt the quiet
hungering thing that comes inside when you return to the place of your
origins, and then the ache of mis-belonging. It was beautiful, this place, and
it was savage. It swallowed you and made you a part of itself, or if you
proved too inassimilable, it spit you out like the pit of a plum.
I’d left here of my own will, and yet it seemed the city had banished me
in much the same way I’d banished it. Seeing it now after so long, seeing
the marsh grass pitching wildly around the edges of the city, the rooftops
hunkered together with their ship watches and widow walks, and behind
them, the steeples of St. Philip’s and St. Michael’s lifted like dark fingers, I
was not sorry for loving Charleston or for leaving it. Geography had made
me who I was.
Wind swept my bonnet off the back of my head, the sash catching at my
neck, and turning to grab it, I saw the menacing couple through the window
of the salon. Traveling home after socializing in Newport, they’d
recognized me shortly after we’d left New York. I’d tried to keep aloof from
everyone, but the woman had stared at me with unrelenting curiosity.
“You’re the Grimké daughter, aren’t you?” she said. “The one who—” Her
husband took her arm and steered her away before she could finish. She’d
meant to say the one who betrayed us.
They glared at me now, at my wet skirt and fluttering bonnet, and I felt
certain the man would report my arrival to the authorities as soon as we
landed. Perhaps returning had been a terrible mistake after all. I moved
away from them to the bow of the boat as a crack of thunder broke
overhead, becoming lost in the noise of the engine. Charleston would
forgive its own many things, but not betrayal.
I found Handful within an hour of my arrival. She was sewing in the
upstairs alcove, of all places. When she saw me standing there, she leapt up,
stumbling a little with her infirm leg, dropping the slave shirt on the floor
along with the needle and thread. I reached to catch her as she righted
herself and found myself embracing her, feeling her embrace me back.
“I got your letter,” I told her, softly, in case there were listening ears
somewhere.
She shook her head. “But you didn’t come back cause of that, cause of
me.”
“Of course I did,” I said. I picked up the shirt and we sat down on the
cushioned window seat.
She was wearing her customary red scarf and seemed barely changed.
Her eyes were still large as bowls, the golden color darkened somewhat,
and she was tiny as ever. Not frail or insubstantial, but distilled,
concentrated.
There was a cane propped between us with a fanciful carving of a rabbit
on the handle. Moving it to the side, she said, “You didn’t come to try and
stop us, did you?”
“It’s dangerous, Handful . . . I’m afraid for you.”
“Well, that may be, but I’m more scared of bowing and scraping to your
mauma and your sister the rest of my days.”
Speaking barely above a whisper, I told her about my plan to try and
convince Mother to sell the two of them to me.
She laughed a bitter sound. “Uh huh.”
I hadn’t expected that. I looked past her, scanning the harbor, noticing
the steamer in the distance rinsed clean by the rain.
She shifted herself on the cushion and I heard the breath leave her. “I
just don’t see missus doing one thing favorable for me, that’s all. But here
you are, all this way—nobody else would’ve done that for me—so it’s
worth a try, and if she’s willing to sell us, I’ll pay you back everything I got,
four hundred dollars.”
“There would be no need—”
“Well, I ain’t doing it any other way.”
We stopped talking as Hector, the butler Mary had installed, came up
the stairs with my trunk, his gaze lingering longer than was comfortable. I
stood. “I should get settled.”
“You go on and talk to her then,” Handful whispered. “But don’t be
waiting too long.”
I waited four days. It seemed imprudent to make the request before that—I
wanted Mother to believe I’d returned solely to see her.
I broached the matter on Tuesday afternoon while we sat in the drawing
room, Mother, Mary, and I, swishing our fans at the vaporous heat. A
languid silence had fallen that none of us seemed willing to break. We’d
exhausted all the harmless subjects: the rainy weather, the spectacular
wonder of the railroad that ran from Charleston to Savannah, an expurgated
version of Nina’s wedding, news of my siblings, the nieces and nephews I’d
never met. If I had any chance at securing freedom for Handful and Sky, we
couldn’t speak of my scandalous adventures, which had been in all the
papers. Nor of abolition, slavery, the North, the South, religion, politics, or
the fact I’d been outlawed in the city the previous summer.
“People are talking, Sarah,” Mary said, breaking the lull. She exchanged
a look with Mother, and I glimpsed how in step they were with one another,
how alike. An echo of loneliness reverberated from my girlhood, and I felt
again like the odd-child-out. Even now. I heard Binah’s voice somewhere in
my memory, Poor Miss Sarah. These irrational childish feelings, where had
they come from suddenly?
“Rumors are running rampant that you’ve returned,” Mary was saying.
“It’s only a matter of time before the sheriff arrives to inquire about it, and
if you’re here, I’m not sure what you expect us to say. We can hardly hide
you like a fugitive.”
I turned to Mother, watching her eyes veer away toward the piazza. The
windows were open and the chocolaty smell of the oleander streamed in,
sickeningly thick.
“You wish me to leave?”
“It’s not a matter of what we wish,” Mother said. “If the authorities
come, I wouldn’t give you over to them, of course not. You’re my daughter.
You’re still a Grimké. We only suggest it would be easier all around if you
cut your visit short.”
To my surprise, her eyes filled. She was plump now with thinned white
hair and one of those ancient faces that’s deeply cobblestoned. She peered
at me as the tears started to spill, and I left my chair and went to her.
Bending down awkwardly, I put my arms about her.
She clung to me an instant, then straightened. Instead of returning to my
seat, I paced toward the window and back, gathering my bravery.
“I won’t put you at risk, I’ll leave on the next steamer, but before I go, I
have a request. I would like to purchase Hetty and her sister, Sky.”
“Purchase them?” Mary said. “But why? You hardly barter in slaves.”
“Mary, for heaven’s sake, she means to free them,” Mother said.
“I’ll offer you any amount.” I walked to Mother’s side. “Please. I would
consider it a great kindness to me.”
Mary rose and came to the other side of Mother’s chair. “We can’t
possibly do without Hetty,” she said. “There are few seamstresses in
Charleston to match her. She’s irreplaceable. The other one is expendable,
but not Hetty.”
Mother stared at her hands. Her shoulders moved up and down with her
breath, and I began to feel a prick of hope.
“There are laws that make it difficult,” she said. “Emancipating them
would require a special act of the legislature.”
“Difficult, but it could be done,” I responded.
Something inside of her seemed to bend, to arch toward me. Mary
sensed it, too. She placed her hand on our mother’s, linking the two of
them. She said, “We can’t do without Hetty. And we must think of her, as
well. Where will she go? Who will take care of her? She has a home here.”
“This is not her home, it’s her prison,” I said.
Mary stiffened. “We don’t need you to come here and lecture us about
slavery. I won’t stand here and defend it to you. It’s our way of life.”
Her words infuriated me. I wondered for a moment if holding my
tongue would help my cause with Mother. Was it ever right to sacrifice
one’s truth for expedience? Mother would do what she would do, wouldn’t
she? I wondered how it was possible I’d found my words out there in the
world, but could lose them in the house where I was born.
It gave way inside of me—years of being here, co-existing with the
untenable. “Your way of life! What does that justify? Slavery is a hellconcocted system, it cannot be defended!”
Small red wafers splotched along Mary’s neck. “God has ordained that
we take care of them,” she said, flustered now, spluttering.
I took a step toward her, my outrage breaking open. “You speak as if
God was white and Southern! As if we somehow owned his image. You
speak like a fool. The Negro is not some other kind of creature than we are.
Whiteness is not sacred, Mary! It can’t go on defining everything.”
I doubt anyone had ever spoken to her in such a manner, and she turned
away from me, taken aback.
I couldn’t explain that rising up, this coming fully to myself, the
audacity and authority my life had found. It took me aback, as well, and I
closed my eyes, and I blessed it. It was like arriving finally in the place I’d
left, and I felt then I would never be an exile again.
Mother lifted her hand. “This has tired me,” she said and struggled to
her feet with her old gold-tip cane. She walked to the door, then turned
back, leveling her eyes on mine. “I won’t sell Hetty or Sky to you, Sarah.
I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I will compromise.”
In the darkness of the cellar, the sound of my knocking seemed lost and
swallowed up. It was past midnight. I’d waited until now to find Handful,
slipping down here when the house was asleep, still wearing my sleeping
clothes. The lantern swayed in my hand, swiveling the shadows, as I rapped
again on Handful’s door. Come on, Handful, wake up.
“Who’s out there?” Her voice sounded alarmed and muffled behind the
door.
“It’s all right. It’s me, it’s Sarah.”
She made a slit in the door, then let me inside. She held a candle that
flickered beneath her chin. Her eyes appeared almost luminous.
“I’m sorry to wake you, but we must talk.”
Across the room, Sky was sitting up in her bed, her hair splayed out like
a great dark fan. I sat the lantern down and nodded at her. Soon after my
arrival, I’d seen her in the ornamental garden, down on her knees, digging
with a trowel. The garden had been turned into a kind of wonderland, a
cloister of colorful blooms, groomed shrubberies, and winding paths, and
I’d gone out there as if to take a stroll. Sky hadn’t waited for me to
approach her, but pushed to her feet and strode over to me, smelling of fresh
dirt and green plants. She didn’t look like Handful, or Charlotte either for
that matter. She was strapping. She looked feral and cunning to me. She
said, “You Sarah?” When I said I was, she grinned. “Handful said you the
best of the Grimkés.”
“I’m not sure that’s saying a great deal,” I answered, smiling at her.
“Maybe not,” she said, and I liked her instantly.
I glanced about the cellar room, a little more crowded now with two
beds. They’d shoved them together side by side beneath the window.
“What is it?” Handful said, but before I could speak, I saw it dawn on
her. “Your mauma won’t sell us, will she?”
“No, I’m sorry. She refused. But—”
“But what?”
“She did agree to free both of you upon her death. She said she would
have the paper drawn up and added to her will.”
Handful stood with the light puddling around her and stared at me. It
was not what any of us wanted, but it was something.
“She’s seventy-four,” I said.
“She’ll outlive the last cockroach,” Handful said. She looked at Sky.
“We’ll be leaving here day after tomorrow.”
I was relieved and terrified in the same moment. I studied the compact
defiance that made up so much of who she was. I said, “Tell me how I can
help.”
