The Invention of Wings: A Novel

by Sue Monk Kidd

  I wasn’t against them learning natural history, however, and after a particularly grueling lesson on longitudes and latitudes, I opened John James Audubon’s Birds of America, a massive brown leather folio, weighing at least as much as Becky. Turning to the ruffed grouse, which was common in the woods nearby, I said, “Who can mimic its call?”

  There we were, a flock of ruffed grouses at the open window, trilling and whistling, when Catherine entered the classroom and demanded to know what sort of lesson I was conducting. She’d heard our chirping as she gathered the last cucumbers in the garden. “That was quite a bit of disturbance,” she said, the vegetable basket swinging on her arm, sifting crumbs of soil onto her ash-colored dress. Becky, ever alert to her aunt’s annoyance, spoke before I could push out my words. “We were calling the ruffed grouse.”

  “Were you? I see.” She looked at me. “It seemed unduly loud. Perhaps more quietly next time.”

  I smiled at her and she cocked her head and stepped closer, so close her dress hem brushed mine. Her eyes magnified behind the thickset lens of her glasses as she concentrated on the locket at my throat.

  “What is the meaning of this?” she said.

  “… The meaning of what?”

  “Take it off!”

  Becky wedged herself between us. “Auntie. Auntie.”

  Catherine ignored her. “Your intentions have been more than clear to me, Sarah, but I had not thought you would be so bold as to wear Rebecca’s locket!”

  “… Rebecca? … You mean, it belonged to …” My voice deserted me, my words adhering like barnacles at the back of my throat.

  “Israel’s wife,” she said, finishing my sentence.

  “Auntie?” Becky’s upturned face, drowning in the waves of our gray-green skirts, made her look like a castaway. “I gave it to her.”

  “You did what? Well, I don’t care who gave it to her, she shouldn’t have taken it.” She thrust out her palm, shoving it inches from my chin. I could hear air rasping in and out of her nostrils.

  “… … But I didn’t … know.”

  “Give me the locket, please.”

  “No,” Becky cried, sinking onto the rug.

  I stepped back, unclasping the necklace, and placed it in Catherine’s hand. As I bent to scoop Becky from the floor, her aunt pulled the child gently by her arm and maneuvered both girls from the room.

  I walked calmly, slowly out the door and down the escarpment toward the pond. Before stepping into the thicket of trees, I looked back at the house. The light was still citrus and bright, but Israel would be home soon, and Catherine would be waiting for him with the locket.

  Cloaked in the cedars, I pressed one hand to my stomach and one to my mouth and stood there several seconds, as if squeezing myself together. Then I straightened and followed the path to the water.

  I heard the pond before I saw it—the frogs deep in their hum, the violin whir of insects. On impulse, I walked along the edge until I reached the rowboat. Sunk in the mud, it took all my strength to flip it over. I lifted out the oar and inspected the bottom for holes and rotted wood. Seeing none, I gathered up my skirt, climbed in, and paddled to the middle of the pond, an untouchable place, far from everything. I tried to think what I would say to him, worried my voice would slink off again and leave me.

  I remained there a long while, lapping on the surface. Vapor curled on the water, dragonflies pricked the air, and I thought it all beautiful. I hoped Israel wouldn’t send me away. I hoped the Inner Voice would not show up now, saying, Go south.

  “Sarah!”

  I jerked, causing the boat to tilt, and reached for the sides to steady it.

  “What are you doing?” Israel called. He stood on the bank in his knee britches with the glinting buckles, hatless. He shaded his eyes and motioned me in with his hand.

  I pulled the paddle through the water, banging the wood against the hull and made an inept, zigzag path to shore.

  We sat on the bench while I did my best to explain that I’d thought the locket belonged to his daughter Rebecca, not his wife Rebecca. I told him about the evening Becky brought it to me, and while my voice clenched and spluttered, it didn’t fail me altogether.

  “… I would never try to take your wife’s place.”

  “No,” he said. “No one could.”

  “… I doubt Catherine would believe me, though … She’s very angry.”

  “She’s protective, that’s all. Our mother died young and Catherine took care of me. She never married, and Rebecca, the children, and I were her only family. Your presence, I’m afraid, has flustered her. I don’t think she really understands why I asked you here.”

  “… I don’t think I understand it either, Israel … Why am I here?”

  “You told me yourself—God told you to leave and come north.”

  “… But he didn’t say, ‘Go to Philadelphia, go to Israel’s house.’”

  He placed his hand on my arm, squeezing a little. “Do you remember the last words my Rebecca said to you on the ship? She said, ‘If you come north again, you must stay with us.’ I think she brought you here. For me, for the children. I think God brought you here.”

  I looked away from him toward the pond blotched with pollen and silt, the water bronzing in the shrinking light. When I looked back, he pulled me to him and held me against his chest, and I felt it was me he held, not his Rebecca.

  Handful

  I smelled the corn fritters half a block from Denmark Vesey’s house, the fry-oil in the air, the sweet corn fuss coming down the street. For two years, I’d been sneaking off to 20 Bull every time I found a hole in the week to squeeze through. Sabe was a shiftless lackey of a butler and didn’t watch us the way Tomfry had—we could thank missus for that much.

  I’d tell Sabe we were out of thread, beeswax, buttons, or rat droppings, and he’d send me willy-nilly to the market. The rest of the time he didn’t care where I was. The only thought in his head was for slurping down master Grimké’s brandies and whiskeys in the cellar and messing round with Minta. They were always in the empty room over the carriage house doing just what you think they’re doing. Me, Aunt-Sister, Phoebe, and Goodis would hear them all the way from the kitchen house porch and Goodis would cock his eyebrow at me. Everybody knew he’d been sweet on me since the day he got here. He’d made the rabbit cane special for me, and he would give me the last yam off his plate. Once when Sabe yelled at me for going missing, Goodis stuck a fist in his face and Sabe backed right down. I never had a man touch me, never had wanted one, but sometimes when I was listening to Sabe and Minta up in the carriage house, Goodis didn’t seem so bad.

  With Sarah gone, the whole place had gone to hell’s dredges. With the last of the boys in college, there wasn’t anybody left in the house but missus and Nina and us six slaves to keep it going. Missus stewed all the time about money. She had the lump sum master Grimké left, but she said it was a trifle of what she needed. Paint was flecking off the house and she’d sold the extra horse. She didn’t eat bird nest pudding anymore, and in the slave dining room, we lived on rice and more rice.

  The day I smelled the fritters, it was two days before Christmas—I remember there was a cold pinch in the air and palm wreaths tacked on the doors of the piazzas, woven fancy like hair braids. This time Sabe had sent me to carry a note from missus to the solicitor’s office. Don’t think I didn’t read it before I handed it over.

  Dear Mr. Huger,

  I find that my allowance is inadequate to meet the demands of living well. I request that you alert my sons as to my needs. As you know, they are in possession of properties that could be sold in order to augment my care. Such a proposal would suit better coming from a man of your influence, who was a loyal friend to their father.

  Yours Truly,

  Mary Grimké

  I had a jar of sorghum in my pocket that I’d swiped from the larder. I liked to bring Denmark a little something, and this would hit the spot with the fritters. He had a habit of t
elling whoever was hanging round his place that I was his daughter. He didn’t say I was like a daughter, but claimed out and out I was his. Susan grumbled about it, but she was good to me, too.

  I found her in her kitchen house, shoveling the corn cakes from the skillet to the plate. She said, “Where you been? We haven’t seen you in over a week.”

  “You can’t do with me and you can’t do without me.”

  She laughed. “I can do with you all right. The one I can’t do with and do without is in his workshop.”

  “Denmark? What’s he done now?”

  She snorted. “You mean beside keep women all over the city?”

  It struck me best to sidestep this since mauma had been one of them. “Yeah, beside that.”

  A smile dipped cross her lips. She handed me the plate. “Here, take this to him. He’s in a mood, is all. It’s about that Monday Gell. He lost something that set Denmark off. Some sort of list. I thought Denmark was gonna kill the man.”

  I headed back toward the workshop knowing Monday had lost the roll of draftees he’d been collecting for Denmark out on the Bulkley farm.

  For a long time now, Denmark and his lieutenants had been recruiting slaves, writing down their names in what he called the Book. Last I heard, there were more than two thousand pledged to take up arms when the time came. Denmark had let me sit there and listen while he talked about raising an army and getting us free, and the men got used to me being in there. They knew I’d keep it quiet.

  Denmark didn’t like the wind to blow unless he told it which way to go. He’d come up with the exact words he wanted Gullah Jack and them to say when they wooed the recruits. One day, he had me pretend like I was the slave he was courting.

  “Have you heard the news?” he said to me.

  “What news?” I answered. Like he told me to say.

  “We’re gonna be free.”

  “Free? Who says?”

  “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

  That was the way he wanted it said. Then, if a slave in the city was curious enough, the lieutenant was supposed to bring him to 20 Bull to meet Denmark. If the slaves were on the plantations, Denmark would go to them and hold a secret meeting.

  I’d been at the house when one of those curious slaves had showed up, and it was something I’d take to my grave. Denmark had sailed up from his chair like Elijah in his chariot. “The Lord has spoken to me,” he cried out. “He said, set my people free. When your name is written in the Book, you’re one of us and you’re one of God’s, and we’ll take our freedom when God says. Let not your heart be troubled. Neither let it be afraid. You believe in God, believe also in me.”

  When he spoke those words, a jolt traveled through me, the same one I used to get in the alcove when I was little and thought about the water taking me somewhere, or in church when we sang about the Jericho walls crumbling and the drumsticks in my legs beat the floor. My name wasn’t in the Book, just the men’s, but I would’ve put it in there if I could. I would’ve written it in blood.

  Today, Denmark was pegging the legs on a Scot pine table. When I stepped into the room with the fritters, he set down the claw hammer and grinned, and when I pulled out the sorghum to boot, he said, “If you aren’t Charlotte all over.”

  Leaning on the work table to take the heft off my leg, I watched him eat for a while, then I said, “Susan said Monday lost his list.”

  The door to the back alley was open to let the sawdust float out and he went over, peered both ways, and closed it. “Monday is a damn fool idiot. He kept his list inside an empty feed barrel in the harness shop on Bulkley farm, and yesterday the barrel was gone and nobody knows where.”

  “What would happen if somebody finds it?”

  He sat back on the stool and picked up the fork. “It depends. If the list rouses suspicion and gets turned over to the Guard, they’d go through the names with a whip till they found out what it was about.”

  That raised goose flesh on my arms. I said, “Where do you keep your names?”

  He stopped chewing. “Why do you want to know?”

  I was treading on the thin side of his temper, but I didn’t care. “Well, are they hidden good or not?”

  His eyes strayed to the leather satchel on the work table.

  “They’re in the satchel?” I said. “Right there for the taking?”

  I said it like he was a damn fool idiot, too, but instead of lashing out, he laughed. “That satchel doesn’t leave my sight.”

  “But if the Guard gets hold of Monday’s names and comes looking for you, they’ll find your list easy enough.”

  He got quiet and brushed the sugar dust off his mouth. He knew I was right, but didn’t want to say.

  The sun was stepping through the window, laying down four bright quilt squares on the floor. I stared at them while the silence hung, thinking how he’d said I was Charlotte all over, and it popped in my mind the way she’d put pieces of our hair and little charms down inside her quilts, and then I remembered the time she got caught red-handed with missus’ green silk. She’d told me then, “I should’ve sewed that silk inside a quilt and she never would’ve found it.”

  “I know what you need to do with the list,” I said.

  “You do, do you?”

  “You need to hide it inside a quilt. I can sew a secret pocket inside to hold it. Then you just lay the quilt on the bed in plain sight and nobody knows the difference.”

  He paced cross the workshop three, four times. Finally, he said, “What if I need to get to the list?”

  “That’s easy, I’ll leave an opening in the seam big enough for your hand to slip in and out.”

  He nodded. “See if Susan has a quilt somewhere. Get busy.”

  When the new year came, Nina scrounged up five girls and started the Female Prayer Society. They met in the drawing room Wednesday mornings. I served the tea and biscuits, tended the fire, and watched the door, and from what I could tell, the last thing going on was praying. Nina was in there doing her best to introduce them to the evils of slavery.

  That girl. She was like Sarah. Had the same notions, the same craving to be useful, but the two of them were different, too. Seventeen now, Nina turned every head that looked her way and she could talk the salt from the sea. Her beaux didn’t last long, though. Missus said she chased them off with her opinionating.

  I don’t know why she didn’t chase the girls off either.

  During the meetings, she made hot-blooded speeches that went on till one of the girls lost the point of it and turned the talk to something else—who danced with who or who wore what at the last social. Nina would give up then, but she seemed glad to speak her mind, and missus was happy, too, thinking Nina had finally found some religion.

  It was during a meeting in March that the Smith girl took umbrage. Nina was taking special care to let her know how bad her neighborhood was.

  “Would you come over here, Handful?” Nina called. She turned to the girls. “See her leg? See how she drags it behind her? That’s from the treadmill at the Work House. It’s an abomination, and it’s right under your nose, Henrietta!”

  The Smith girl bristled. “Well, what was she doing at the Work House in the first place? There must be some discipline, mustn’t there? What did she do?”

  “What did she do? Haven’t you heard anything I’ve been saying? God help us, how can you be so blind? If you want to know how Handful came to be at the Work House, she’s standing right here. She’s a person, ask her.”

  “I’d rather not,” the girl said and tucked her skirts in round her legs.

  Nina rose from her chair and came to stand beside me. “Why don’t you take your shoe off and show her the kind of brutality that takes place on the same street where she lives?”

  I should’ve minded doing it, but I always remembered that day Tomfry caught me in front of the house sneaking off to Denmark’s, how Nina came to my rescue. She’d never asked where I’d gone, and the fact was, I wanted the girls
to see what the Work House had done to me. I tugged off my shoe and bared the misshaped bone and the pinky-flesh scars wriggling cross my skin like earthworms. The girls pressed their fingers under their noses and blanched white as flour, but Henrietta Smith did one better. She fainted sideways in her chair.

  I got the smelling salts and brought her round, but not before missus heard the uproar.

  Later on that night in my cellar room, I heard a tap and opened the door to find Nina with her eyes puffed out.

  “Did Mother punish you?” she asked. “I have to know.”

  Since master Grimké died, missus hit Minta with the gold-tip cane so much you never saw her without black bruises on her brown arms. It was no wonder she went to the carriage house with Sabe to get salved. She struck me and Phoebe with the cane, too, and had even taken to swiping Aunt-Sister, which I never thought I’d live to see. Aunt-Sister didn’t take it laying down. I heard her tell missus, “Binah and the ones you sold, they the lucky ones.”

  Nina was saying, “I tried to tell her that I asked you to take off your shoe, that you didn’t just volunteer—”

  I stuck out my arm and showed her the welt.

  “The cane?” Nina asked.

  “One strike, but a good one. What’d she do to you?”

  “Mostly, a lot of scolding. The girls won’t be coming back for any more meetings.”

  “No, I didn’t think so,” I said. She looked so dismal I added, “Well, you tried.”

  Her eyes watered up and I handed her my clean head scarf. Taking it, she sank down in the rocker and buried her face in it. I didn’t know how much more her eyes could take, whether she was crying over her failure with the Female Prayer Society, or Sarah leaving, or the shortfalls of people.

  When she was all cried out, she went back to her room, and I lit a candle and sat in the wavy light, picturing the quilt on Denmark’s bed, and inside it, the hidden pocket, and inside that, the scroll of paper with all the names. People ready to lay their lives down to get free. The day I came up with the scheme of hiding the list, Susan didn’t have a single quilt in the house—she used plain wool blankets. I made a new quilt from scratch—red squares and black triangles, me and mauma’s favorite, the blackbirds flying away.