The Invention of Wings: A Novel

by Sue Monk Kidd

  Perhaps I would be home with Nina before September.

  The doctor had said Long Branch was small, but he’d exaggerated. It was not small, it was not even miniscule; it was barely existent. There were four farmhouses, one tiny clapboard Methodist church, and a dry goods store. Neither was the place “rather isolated”; it was woefully isolated. We traveled by private coach from Philadelphia for six days, the last one bumping over a foot trail. After stopping for toiletry supplies in the dry goods, we continued a ways further to Fish Tavern, the only hotel. It was perched atop a bluff overlooking the ocean—a large, sea-weathered edifice. When the clerk informed us that prayer meetings were held in the communal dining hall after dinner, I took it as a sign God had guided us.

  Father had come willingly, too willingly, it seemed. I’d felt sure he would insist on returning to South Carolina. I’d expected him to quip, “Do we not have sea-air in Charleston?” but when I’d broken the news to him there in Dr. Physick’s examination room, careful to use the word thalassotherapy, he’d only looked at me for a long, strange moment. A shadow passed over his face, what I took to be disappointment. He said, “Let’s go to New Jersey then. That’s what we’ll do.”

  That first afternoon before dusk, I brought cod soup to Father’s room. When he tried to eat it, his hand quivered so violently, spoonfuls splattered onto the bed sheets. He lay back against the bedstead and let me feed him. I chattered about the squalling ocean, about the serpentine steps that led from the hotel down to the shore, almost frantic to divert us from what was happening. His mouth opening and closing like a baby bird’s. Ladling in the colorless broth. The helplessness of it.

  While I fed him, the crush of waves filled the room. Through the window, I could see a swatch of water the color of pewter, whipped by the wind into frothing swells. Finally, he put up his hand to let me know he’d had enough of soup and babbling both.

  I placed the chamber pot on the floor nearby. “Good night, Father.”

  His eyes were already closed, but his hand fumbled for my forearm. “It’s all right, Sarah. We will let it be what it is.”

  17 July 1819

  Dear Nina,

  We are settled at Fish Tavern. Mother would call the place shabby, but it was once elegant and it has character. The rooms are nearly filled with boarders, but I’ve met only two. They are elderly widowed sisters from New York, who come to prayer meetings each evening in the dining room. I like the younger one quite a lot.

  Father commands all of my attention. We came for the sea air, but he hasn’t ventured from his room. I open the window, but the squawking gulls annoy him, and he orders the window closed by noon. I’m quite devious—I leave it open a crack and tell him it’s shut. It’s all the more reason I must go to the dining room and pray with the sisters.

  At fifteen, you are old enough that I may speak sister to sister. Father’s pain grows worse. He sleeps long, fitful hours from the laudanum, and when I insist he take some exercise around the room, he leans heavily against me. I must feed him most of his meals. Still, Nina, I know there’s hope! If faith moves mountains, God will rally Father soon. Each day, I sit by his bed and pray and read the Bible aloud for hours at a time. Don’t be angry at me for my piety. I am Presbyterian after all. As you know, we’re fond of our gall and wormwood.

  I trust you’re not provoking Mother too much. If possible, restrain yourself until my return. I pray Handful is well. Keep your eye out for her. If she needs protecting for any reason, do your best.

  I miss your company. Perhaps I’m a bit lonely, but I have God. You may tell Mother all is well.

  Your Devoted Sister,

  Sarah

  Every day at specified times, the hotel clerk raised and lowered red and white flags near the steps that led down to the beach. At nine o’clock sharp, the red flag went up, signaling the gentlemen to take possession of the shore. I would observe them thundering into the waves, racing beyond the breakers, and diving. Surfacing, they stood waist-deep, their hands on their hips, and surveyed the horizon. On the beach, they tussled or huddled together and smoked cigars. At eleven, the white flag went up, and the men climbed the stairs back to the hotel with woolen towels draped about their necks.

  Then the ladies appeared. Even if I was in the midst of prayer, I would mutter a hasty Amen and fly to the window to watch them descend the stairs in their bathing dresses and oilskin caps. I’d never seen ladies bathing. Back home, women didn’t go into the ocean in fanciful get-ups. There was a floating bathhouse in the harbor off East Battery with a private area for females, but Mother thought it was unseemly. Once, to my astonishment, I spotted the two elderly sisters I’d written about to Nina, moving gingerly down the steps with the others. The younger one, Althea, always took pains to inquire not only about Father, but about me. “How are you, dear? You look pallid. Are you getting outdoors enough?” When I’d glimpsed her among the bathers that day, she’d glanced back, and seeing me at the window, she’d motioned me to join them. I’d shaken my head, but nothing would’ve pleased me more.

  The women always entered the water differently than the men, holding on to heavy ropes anchored to the shore. At times there would be a dozen of them stretched into the water, clinging to a single line, squealing and turning their backs against the spray. If Father was sleeping, I would stay at the window and watch with a lump in my chest until the white flag came down.

  On the morning of August eighth, I was there at the windowsill, neglecting my prayers, when Father woke, crying my name. “Sarah!” Reaching his side, I realized he was still asleep. “Sarah!” he shouted again, tossing his head in agitation. I placed my hand on his chest to steady him, and he woke with his breath coming hard and fast.

  He gazed at me with the feverish look of someone stumbling back from a nightmare. It saddened me to think I’d been part of it. During these weeks at Long Branch, Father had been kind to me. How are you faring, Sarah? Are you eating enough? You seem weary. Put down the Bible, go for a walk. His tenderness had shocked me. Yet he’d remained aloof, never speaking of deeper things.

  I pressed a cool cloth to his forehead. “… Father, I know coming here has been a trial for you, and your progress has been … it has been slow.”

  He smiled without opening his eyes. “It’s time we spoke the truth. There has been no progress at all.”

  “… We mustn’t give up hope.”

  “Mustn’t we?” The skin on his cheeks was as thin and sheer as a veil. “I came here to die, you must know that.”

  “No! I certainly don’t know that.” I felt aghast, even angry. It was as if the bad dream had cracked his façade, and I suddenly wished for it back. “… If you believe you’re dying, then why didn’t you insist we go home?”

  “It will be hard for you to understand this, but the last few years at home have been difficult. It seemed a relief to be far away, to be here with you and go quietly. I felt like here I could detach more easily from the things I’ve known and loved my whole life.”

  My hand went to my mouth. I felt my eyes film over with tears.

  “Sarah. My dear girl. Let’s not indulge vain hopes. I don’t expect to recover, nor do I want to.”

  His face blazed intensely now. I took his hand and gradually his expression eased, and he drifted to sleep.

  He woke at three in the afternoon. The white flag had just been raised—I could see it framed in the window, snapping against the translucent sky. I held the water glass to his lips and helped him to drink. He said, “We’ve had our quarrels, haven’t we?”

  I knew what was coming and I wanted to spare him. To spare me. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “You’ve always had a strong, separate mind, perhaps even a radical mind, and I was harsh with you at times. You must forgive me.”

  I couldn’t imagine what it cost him to say these words. “I do,” I said. “And you must forgive me.”

  “Forgive you for what, Sarah? For following your conscience? Do you think I don’t
abhor slavery as you do? Do you think I don’t know it was greed that kept me from following my conscience as you have? The plantation, the house, our entire way of life depended on the slaves.” His face contorted and he clutched at his side a moment before going on. “Or should I forgive you for wanting to give natural expression to your intellect? You were smarter than even Thomas or John, but you’re female, another cruelty I was helpless to change.”

  “Father, please. I have no resentment of you.” It wasn’t completely true, but I said it.

  Giggles floated up from the beach below, tangled in the wind. “You should go outside and refresh your spirit,” he said.

  I protested, but he wouldn’t relent. “How will you take care of me, if you don’t take care of yourself? Do this for me. I’ll be fine.”

  I meant only to wade in the surf. I removed my shoes and placed them beside the portable changing house that had been wheeled out onto the sand. At that moment, the friendly sister, Althea, drew back the canvas and stepped out wearing a red-and-black-striped bathing gown with a peplum flounce and balloon sleeves. I wished Handful could’ve seen it.

  “How lovely. Are you finally bathing with us?” she said.

  “… Oh, no, I don’t have the attire for it.”

  She scrutinized my face, which must’ve radiated unhappiness in every direction, for she announced she’d suddenly lost the desire to bathe and it would please her enormously if I would don her dress and take a plunge. After my conversation with Father, I felt flayed open, all pulp and redness. I wanted to disappear somewhere alone, yet I looked at the rope-line of women jutting into the sea, and then beyond it at the green mountains of water, so limitless and untamed, and I accepted her offer.

  She smiled when I emerged from the changing room. She had no cap, and I’d unpinned my hair, which was flaming out in the wind. She said I looked like a mermaid.

  I took hold of one of the ropes and followed it into the waves, hand over fist, until I came to where the rest of the ladies stood. The water slapped our thighs, tossing us to and fro, a tiny game of Snap the Whip, and then without knowing what I was about to do, I turned loose and strode away from them. I pushed into the seething water, and when I was some distance, I dropped onto my back and floated. It was a shock to feel the water hold me. To lie in the sea while upstairs my father lay dying.

  9 August 1819

  Dear Mother,

  The Bible assures us that God shall wipe away every tear from our eyes …

  I lowered my pen. I didn’t know how to tell her. It seemed strange I should be the one informing her of such news. I’d imagined her gathering us, her children, into the drawing room and saying, Your father has gone to God. How was it possible this had fallen to me?

  Instead of the distinguished funeral he would’ve had in Charleston—the pomp of St. Philip’s, a stately procession along Meeting Street, his coffin mounted on a flowered carriage and half the city walking behind it—instead of all that, he would be buried anonymously in the overgrown cemetery behind the tiny Methodist church we’d passed on the way here. A farm wagon would pull his casket. I would walk behind it, alone.

  But I would tell Mother none of this. Nor would I tell her that at the hour of his death, I was floating free in the ocean, in a solitude I would remember all of my life, the gulls cawing over my head and the white flag flying at the top of the pole.

  Handful

  Missus’ eyes were swollen shut from crying. It was the middle of the morning and she was in bed with her sleeping clothes on. The mosquito net was drawn round her and the curtains were pulled on the windows, but I could see her lids puffed out. Minta, the new girl, was over in the corner trying to disappear.

  When missus tried to speak to me, she broke down crying. I felt for her. I knew what it was to lose a person. What I didn’t know was why she’d called me to her room. All I could do was stand there and wait for her to get hold of herself.

  After a few minutes, she yelled at Minta, “Are you or are you not going to bring me a hankie?”

  Minta went scrambling through a drawer in the linen press, and missus turned to me. “You should start on my dress immediately. I want black velvet. With beading of some kind. Mrs. Russell had jet beads on hers. I will need a spoon bonnet with a long crepe veil down the back. And black gloves, but make them fingerless mitts because of the heat. Are you remembering this?”

  “Yessum.”

  “It must be ready in two days. And it must be flawless, Hetty, do you understand? Flawless. Work through the night if you have to.”

  Seemed like she’d gotten hold of herself real tight.

  She wrote me a pass for the market and sent me in the carriage with Tomfry, who was going out to purchase the mourning cards. Said it would take too much time for me to hobble all that way and back. That’s how I got the first carriage ride of my life. Along the way, Tomfry said, “Wipe the grin off your face, we supposed to be grieving.”

  In the market, I was at the high-class stalls looking for the beads missus had to have when I came upon Mr. Vesey’s wife, Susan. I hadn’t seen her since the first of the summer when I’d gone to 20 Bull.

  “Look what the field cat dragged up,” she said. I guess she still had her dander up.

  I wondered what all she knew. Maybe she’d listened in that day I’d talked to Mr. Vesey. She could know about mauma, the baby, everything.

  I didn’t see any sense in keeping the feud going. “I don’t have a bicker with you. I won’t be bothering you anymore.”

  That took the nettle from her. Her shoulders dipped and her face turned soft. That’s when I noticed the scarf she was wearing. Red. Edges sewed with a perfect chain stitch. Little oil spots on the side. I said, “That’s my mauma’s head scarf.”

  Her lips opened like the stopper had popped from the bottle. I waited, but she stood there, with her mouth empty.

  “I know that scarf,” I said.

  She set down her basket of cottons and took it off her head. “Go on, take it.”

  I ran my finger along the stitched hem, cross the creases where her hair had been. I undid the scarf on my head and tied mauma’s on. Low on my forehead, the way she wore it.

  “How’d you get it?” I said.

  She shook her head. “I guess you ought to know. The night your mauma disappeared, she showed up at our door. Denmark said the Guard would be looking for a woman with a red scarf, so I took hers and gave her one of mine. A plain brown one that wouldn’t draw notice.”

  “You helped her? You helped her get away?”

  She didn’t give any kind of answer, she said, “I do what Denmark says do.” Then she sashayed off with her head stripped bare.

  I sewed through that day and night and all the next day and night, and the whole time I wore mauma’s scarf. The whole time I thought about her showing up at Mr. Vesey’s that night, how he knew more than he was saying.

  Every time I took the dress upstairs for fittings, the house would be in a tizzy getting ready for the mourners. Missus said half the city was coming. Aunt-Sister and Phoebe were baking funeral biscuits and seeing to the tea sets. Binah shrouded the paintings and mirrors with black swags and Eli was put to cleaning. Minta had the worst job, in there getting hankies and taking the brunt.

  Tomfry set up master Grimké’s portrait in the drawing room and fixed a table with tokens. Had his beaver top hat and stick pins and the books of law he wrote. Thomas brought over a cloth banner that said, Gone, But Not Forgotten, and Tomfry put that on the table, too, with a clock stopped to the hour of his death. Missus didn’t know the time exact. Sarah had written he passed in the late afternoon, so missus said, just make it 4:30.

  When she wasn’t crying, she was fuming that Sarah hadn’t had the sense to cut off a lock of master Grimké’s hair and put it in the letter. It left her without anything to go in her gold mourning brooch. Another thing she didn’t like was the notice that came out in the Mercury. It said he’d been laid to rest in the North without family or f
riends and this would surely be a travail to a great son of South Carolina.

  I don’t know how I got the dress done in time. It was the finest dress I ever made. I strung hundreds of black glass beads, then sewed the strands into a collar that looked like a spider web. I fitted it round the neck and let it drape to the bust. When missus saw it, she said the one and only kind thing I can’t forget. She said, “Why, Hetty, your mother would be proud.”

  I went through the window and over the wall on a Sunday after the callers had quit coming by to give their condolence. It was our day off and the servants were lolling round and missus was shut away in her room. I had a short walk past the front of the house before I could feel safe, and coming round the side of it, I saw Tomfry on the front steps, haggling with the slave boy who huckstered fish. They were bent over what looked like a fifty-pound basket of flounders. I put my head down and kept going.

  “Handful! Is that you?”

  When I looked up, Tomfry was staring at me from the top step. He was old now, with milk in his eyes, and it crossed my mind to say, No, I’m somebody else, but then, he could’ve seen the cane in my hand. You couldn’t misjudge that. I said, “Yeah, it’s me. I’m going to the market.”

  “Who said you could go?”

  I had Sarah’s pass in my pocket, but seemed like he’d question that—she was still up north, waiting to sail home. I stood on the sidewalk stuck to the spot.

  He said, “What you doing out here? Answer me.”

  Off in my head, I could hear the treadmill grind.

  A shape moved at the front window. Nina. Then the front door opened, and she said, “What is it, Tomfry?”

  “Handful out here. I’m trying to see what she’s doing.”

  “Oh. She’s doing an errand for me, that’s all. Please say nothing to Mother, I don’t want her bothered.” Then she called down to me, “Carry on.”