The Invention of Wings: With Notes

by Sue Monk Kidd

  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.

  Sarah

  Seated on the platform, I watched the faces in the audience grow more rapt as Nina spoke, the air crackling about their heads as if something was effervescing in it. It was our inaugural lecture, and we weren’t tucked away in a parlor somewhere before twenty ladies with embroidery hoops on their laps like the AntiSlavery Society had first envisioned. We were here in a majestic hall in New York with carved balconies and red velvet chairs filled to overflowing.

  All week the newspapers had railed against the unwholesome novelty of two sisters holding forth like Fanny Wrights. The streets had been papered with handbills admonishing women to stay home, and even the AntiSlavery Society had grown nervous about moving the lecture to a public hall. They’d come close to canceling the whole thing and sending us back to the parlor.

  It was Theodore Weld who’d stood and castigated the Society for their cowardice. They called him the Lion of the Tribe of Abolition, and for good reason—he could be quite forceful when he needed to. “I defend these ladies’ right to speak against slavery anywhere and everywhere. It’s supremely ridiculous for you to bully them from this great moment!”

  He had saved us.

  Nina swept back and forth across the stage, lifting her hands and sending her voice soaring into the balconies. “We stand before you as Southern women, here to speak the terrible truth about slavery …” She’d splurged on a stylish, deep blue dress that set off her hair, and I couldn’t help wondering what Mr. Weld would think if he could see her.

  Even though he’d led the training sessions for Nina and me and the thirty-eight other agents, schooling us in the skills of oration, he’d never seemed sure how to advise the two of us. Should we stand motionless and speak softly as people expected of a woman or gesture and project like a man? “I leave it to you,” he’d told us.

  He’d taken what he called a brotherly interest in us, visiting us often at our lodgings. It was really Nina he’d taken an interest in, of course, and I doubted it was brotherly. She wouldn’t admit it, but she was drawn to him, too. Before arriving in New York, I’d pictured Mr. Weld as a stern old man, but as it turned out, he was a young man, and as kindly as he was stern. Thirty-three and unmarried, he was strikingly handsome, with thick brown curling hair and biting blue eyes, and he was color-blind to the point he wore all sorts of funny, mismatched shades. We thought it endearing. I was fairly sure, however, it wasn’t any of these qualities that attracted Nina. I suspected it was that saving speech of his. It was those five words, I leave it to you.

  “The female slaves are our sisters,” Nina exclaimed and stretched her arms from her sides as if we were encompassed by a great host of them. “We must not abandon them.” It was the final line of her speech, and it was followed by a thunderclap in the hall, the women coming to their feet.

  As the handclapping went on, heat washed up the sides of my neck. Now it was my turn. Having listened to me practice my speech, the Society men had decided Nina would go first and I would follow, fearing if the order was reversed, few would persevere through my talk to hear her. Getting to my feet, I wondered if the words I planned to say were already retreating

  When I stepped to the lectern, my legs felt squishy as a sponge. For a moment, I held on to the sides of the podium, overwhelmed by the realization that I, of all people, was standing here. I was gazing at a sea of waiting faces, and it occurred to me that after my tall, dazzling sister, I must’ve been a sight. Perhaps I was even a shock. I was short, middle-aged, and plain, with a tiny pair of spectacles on the end of my nose, and I still wore my old Quaker clothes. I was comfortable in them now. I’m who I am. The thought made me smile, and everywhere I looked, the women smiled back, and I imagined they understood what I was thinking.

  I opened my mouth and the words fell out. I spoke for several minutes before I looked at Nina as if to say, I’m not stammering! She nodded, her eyes wide and brimming.

  As a child, my stutter had come and gone mysteriously just like this, but it had been with me for so long now I’d thought it permanent. I talked on and on. I spoke quietly about the evils of slavery that I’d seen with my own eyes. I told them about Handful and her mother and her sister. I spared them nothing.

  Finally, I peered over my glasses and took them in for a moment. “We won’t be silent anymore. We women will declare ourselves for the slave, and we won’t be silent until they’re free.”

  I turned then and walked back to my chair while the women rose and filled the hall with their applause.

  We spoke before large gatherings in New York City for weeks before holding a campaign in New Jersey, and then traveling on to towns along the Hudson. The women came in throngs, proliferating like the loaves and fishes in the Bible. In a church in Poughkeepsie, the crowd was so great the balcony cracked and the church had to be evacuated, forcing us to deliver our speeches outside in the frost and gloom of February, and not one woman left. In every town we visited, we encouraged the women to form their own antislavery societies, and we set them collecting signatures on petitions. My stutter came and went, though it kindly stayed away for most of my speeches.

  We became modestly famous and extravagantly infamous. Throughout that winter and spring, news of our exploits was carried by practically every newspaper in the country. The antislavery papers published our speeches, and tens of thousands of our pamphlets were in print. Even our former president, John Quincy Adams, agreed to meet with us, promising he would deliver the petitions the women were collecting to Congress. In a few cities in the South, we were hung in effigy right along with Mr. Garrison, and our mother had sent word we could no longer set foot in Charleston without fear of imprisonment.

  Mr. Weld was our lifeline. He wrote us joint letters, praising our efforts. He called us brave and stalwart and dogged. Now and then, he added a postscript for Nina alone. Angelina, it’s widely said you keep your audiences in thrall. As director of your training, I wish I could take credit, but it’s all you.

  On a balmy afternoon in April, he appeared without prior notice at Gerrit Smith’s country house in Peterboro, New York, where Nina and I were spending several days during our latest round of lectures. He’d come, he said, to discuss Society finances with Mr. Smith, the organization’s largest benefactor, but one could hardly miss the coincidence. Each morning, he and Nina took a walk along the lane that led through the orchards. He’d invited me as well, but I’d taken one look at Nina’s face and declined. He accompanied us to our afternoon lectures, waiting outside the halls, and in the evenings, the three of us sat with Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the parlor, as we debated strategies for our cause and recounted our adventures. When Mrs. Smith suggested it was time for the women to say good night, Theodore and Nina would glance at one another reluctant to part, and he would say, “Well then. You must get your rest,” and Nina would leave the room with painful slowness.

  The day he departed, I watched from the window as the two of them returned from their walk. It had started to rain while they were out, one of those sudden downbursts during which the sun goes right on shining, and he was holding his coat over their heads, making a little tent for them. They walked without the least bit of hurry. I could see they were laughing.

  As they came onto the porch, shaking off the wetness, he bent and kissed my sister’s cheek.

  In June we arrived in Amesbury, Massachusetts, for a two-week respite at the clapboard cottage of a Mrs. Whittier. We were soon to begin a crusade of lectures in N
ew England that would last through the fall, but we were ragged with fatigue, in need of fresh, more seasonal clothes, and I had an airy little cough I couldn’t get rid of. Mrs. Whittier was cherry-cheeked and plump, and fed us rich soups, dosed us with cod liver oil, refused all visitors, and forced us to bed before the moon appeared.

  It was several days before we discovered she was the mother of John Greenleaf Whittier, Theodore’s close friend. We were sitting in the parlor, having tea, when she began to speak of her son and his long friendship with Theodore, and we understood now why she’d taken us in.

  “You must know Theodore well then,” Nina said.

  “Teddy? Oh, he’s like a son to me, and a brother to John.” She shook her head. “I suppose you’ve heard of that awful pledge they made.”

  “Pledge?” said Nina. “Why, no, we’ve heard nothing of it.”

  “Well, I don’t approve. I think it too extreme. A woman my age would like grandchildren, after all. But they’re men of principle, those two, there’s no reasoning with them.”

  Nina sat up on the edge of her chair, and I could see the brightness leave her. “What did they pledge?”

  “They vowed neither of them would marry until slavery was abolished. Honestly, it will hardly be in their lifetimes!”

  That night I was awakened by a knock on my door long after the moon set. Nina stood there with her face like a seawall, grim and braced. “I can’t bear it,” she said and fell against my shoulder.

  That summer of 1837, New Englanders came by the thousands to hear us speak, and for the first time men began to appear in the audiences. At first a handful, then fifty, then hundreds. That we spoke publicly to women was bad enough—that we spoke publicly to men turned the Puritan world on its head.

  “They’ll be lighting the pyres,” I said to Nina when the men first showed, trying to slough it off. We laughed, but it became not funny at all.

  I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. Was there ever a more galling verse in the Bible? It was preached that summer from every pulpit in New England with the Grimké sisters in mind. The Congregational churches passed a resolution of censure against us, urging a boycott of our lectures, and in its wake, a number of churches and public halls were closed to us. In Pepperell we were forced to deliver our message in a barn with the horses and cows. “As you see, there’s no room at the inn,” Nina told them. “But, still, the wise men have come.”

  We tried to be brave and stalwart and dogged, as Theodore had described us in his letter, and we began using portions of our lectures to defend our right to speak. “What we claim for ourselves we claim for every woman!” That was our rally cry in Lowell and Worcester and Duxbury, indeed everywhere we went. You should have seen the women, how they flocked to our side, and some, like the brave ladies of Andover, wrote public letters in our defense. My old friend Lucretia got a message to us all the way from Philadelphia. It contained four words: Press on, my sisters.

  Without intending to, we set the country in an uproar. The matter of women having certain rights was new and strange and pilloried, but it was suddenly debated all the way to Ohio. They renamed my sister Devilina. They christened us “female incendiaries.” Somehow we’d lit the fuse.

  The last week of August we returned to Mrs. Whittier’s cottage as if from battle. I felt tired and beleaguered, uncertain if I could continue with the fall lectures. The last teaspoon of fight had been scraped out of me. Our final meeting of the summer had ended with dozens of angered men standing on wagons outside the hall, shouting “Devilina!” and hurling rocks as we left. One had hit my mouth, transforming my lower lip into a fat, red sausage. I looked a sight. I wasn’t sure what Mrs. Whittier would say to all this, if she would even give us shelter—we were pariahs now—but when we arrived, she pulled us into her arms and kissed our foreheads.

  On the third day of refuge, I returned from a stroll along the banks of the Merrimack to find Nina canting sharply against the window as if she’d fallen asleep, her head pressed to the glass, her eyes closed, her arms dropped by her sides. She looked like a spinning top that had come to rest.

  Hearing my footsteps, she turned and pointed to the tea table where the Boston Morning Post lay open. Mrs. Whittier took care to hide the editorials, but Nina had found the paper in the bread box.

  August 25

  The Misses Grimké have made speeches, written pamphlets, and exhibited themselves in public in unwomanly ways for a while now, but they have not found husbands. Why are all the old hens abolitionists? Because not being able to obtain husbands, they think they may stand some chance for a Negro, if they can only make amalgamation fashionable …

  I couldn’t finish it.

  “If that’s not enough, Theodore will be arriving this afternoon along with Elizur Wright and Mrs. Whittier’s son, John. Their letter came while you were out. Mrs. Whittier is in there making mince pies.”

  She hadn’t spoken of Theodore all summer, but she was sick with longing for him, it was plain on her face.

  The men arrived at three o’clock. My lip was almost back to its normal size, and I could speak now without sounding as if my mouth was stuffed with food, but it was still sore and I remained quiet, waiting for them to come to their purpose, remembering the way Theodore defended us before—It is supremely ridiculous they should be bullied from this great moment.

  Today he was wearing two shades of green that made one wince. He walked to the mantel and picked up a piece of scrimshaw and inspected it. His eyes went to Nina. He said, “There has not been a contribution to the antislavery movement more impressive or tireless than that of the Grimké sisters.”

  “Hear, hear,” said dear Mrs. Whittier, but I saw her son lower his eyes, and I knew then why they had come.

  “We commend you for it,” Theodore went on. “And yet by encouraging men to join your audiences, you’ve mired us in a controversy that has taken the attention away from abolition. We’ve come, hoping to convince you—”

  Nina interrupted him. “Hoping to convince us to behave like good lapdogs and wait content beneath the table for whatever crumbs you toss to us? Is that what you hope?” Her rebuke was so swift and scathing I wondered if it was in reaction to his marriage pledge as much as anything.

  “Angelina, please, just hear us out,” he said. “We’re on your side, at heart we are. I of all people support your right to speak. It’s downright senseless to keep men away from your meetings.”

  “… Then why do you quibble?” I asked.

  “Because we sent you out there on behalf of abolition, not women.”

  He glanced at John, whose heavy brows and lean face made me feel the two could’ve been actual brothers, not just figurative ones.

  “He only means to say the slave is of greater urgency,” John added. “I support the cause of women, too, but surely you can’t lose sight of the slave because of a selfish crusade against some paltry grievance of your own?”

  “Paltry?” Nina cried. “Is our right to speak paltry?”

  “In comparison to the cause of abolition? Yes, I say it is.”

  Mrs. Whittier drew up in her chair. “Really, John! As a woman, I didn’t think I had a grievance until you began speaking!”

  “Why must it be one or the other?” Nina asked. “Sarah and I haven’t ceased to work for abolition. We’re speaking for slaves and women both. Don’t you see, we could do a hundred times more for the slave, if we weren’t so fettered?” She turned to Theodore, casting on him the most beautiful, imploring look. “Can’t you stand side by side with me? With us?”

  He drew a long breath and his face gave him away—it was twisted with love and distress—but he’d come on a mission, and as Mrs. Whittier had said, he was a man of principle, right or wrong. “Angelina, I think of you as my friend, the dearest of friends, and it tortures me to go against you, but now is the time to stand with the slave. The time will come for us to take up the woman question, but not yet.” />
  “The time to assert one’s right is when it’s denied!”

  “I’m sorry,” he told her.

  Outside, the wind swirled up, churning the leaves in the birch. The sound and smell of it loomed through the open window, and I had a sudden fleeting memory of playing beneath the oak in the work yard back home, forming words with my brother’s marbles, Sarah Go, and then the slave woman is dragged from the cow house and whipped. I don’t scream or make a sound. I say nothing at all.

  The older Mr. Wright had begun his piece, coming to the crux of it. “It saddens me, but your agitation for women harms our cause. It threatens to split the abolition movement in two. I can’t believe you want that. We’re only asking you to confine your audiences to women and refrain from further talk about women’s reform.”

  Hushing up the Grimké sisters—would it never stop? I looked at Mr. Wright, sitting there rubbing his arthritic fingers, and then at John and Theodore—these good men who wished to quash us, gently, of course, benignly, for the good of abolition, for our own good, for their good, for the greater good. It was all so familiar. Theirs was only a different kind of muzzle.

  I’d spoken but once since they’d gotten here, and it seemed to me now I’d spent my entire life trying to coax back the voice that left me that long-ago day under the tree. Nina, clearly furious, had stopped arguing. She looked at me, beseeching me to say something. I lifted my fingers to my mouth and touched the last bit of swollenness on my lip, feeling the uprush of indignation that had sustained me through the summer, and, I suppose, my whole life, but this time, it formed into hard round words. “How can you ask us to go back to our parlors?” I said, rising to my feet. “To turn our backs on ourselves and on our own sex? We don’t wish the movement to split, of course we don’t—it saddens me to think of it—but we can do little for the slave as long as we’re under the feet of men. Do what you have to do, censure us, withdraw your support, we’ll press on anyway. Now, sirs, kindly take your feet off our necks.”