The Invention of Wings: A Novel (36 page)

That night in my room, I found a little piece of cobweb in my hair. I took a towel and rubbed myself clean, then lay down on top of the story quilt, remembering the smile on Denmark’s face when I’d showed up and pulled a bullet mold from my basket. When I drew out the second one, he’d slapped his leg and said, “You might be the best lieutenant I got.”

I waited for sleep, but it didn’t come. After a while, I went and sat on the back porch steps. The yard was quiet. I eyed the room over the carriage house and wondered if Goodis had looked for me after supper. He would be asleep now. Denmark, too. I was the only one up, worrying about the bowl on the end of the bullet mold, the place they pour the lead. How many people would those musket balls kill? I might’ve passed one of them on the street today. I might pass one tomorrow. I might pass a hundred people who would die cause of me.

The moon was round and white, sitting small at the top of the sky. It seemed the right size to sit in the bowl on the bullet mold. That was what I wished. I wished for the moon instead of lead.

I
arrived in Charleston wearing my best Quaker frock, a plain gray dress with a flat white collar and matching bonnet, the picture of humility. Before leaving Philadelphia, I’d been officially accepted into the Quaker fold. My probation had ended. I was one of them.

Upon seeing me for the first time in over a year, Mother received my kiss on her cheek and said, “I see you’ve returned as a Quaker. Really, Sarah, how can you show your face in Charleston dressed like that?”

I didn’t like the garb either, but it was at least made from wool, free of slave labor. We Quakers boycotted Southern cotton.
We Quakers—
how strange that sounded to me.

I tried to smile and make light of Mother’s comment, not yet grasping the full reason for it. “… Is that my welcome home, then? Surely you’ve missed me.”

She was sitting in the same spot where I’d last seen her, in the fading gold brocade wingchair by the window, and wearing the same black dress, holding her infernal gold-tip cane across her lap. It was as if she’d been sitting there since I left. Everything about her seemed unchanged, except she appeared more dilapidated around the edges. The skin of her neck folded turtle-like onto her collar and the hair at her forehead was fraying like an edge of cloth.

“I’ve missed you, dear, of course. The entire household suffered because of your desertion, but you can’t go about dressed like that—you would be taken at once for a Quaker, and their anti-slavery views are well known here.”

I hadn’t thought of this. I ran my palms down the sides of my skirt, feeling suddenly fond of my drab outfit.

A voice came from the doorway. “If
that’s
what this hideous dress of yours means, I’ll have to get one myself.”

Nina.
She looked like a whole new creature. She was taller, standing inches above me with her sable hair swept back, her cheeks higher, her brows thick and her eyes black. My sister had become a darkly beautiful woman.

She threw her arms around me. “You are never to leave again.”

As we clung to each other, Mother muttered, as if to herself, “For once, the child and I agree on something.”

Nina and I laughed, and then astonishingly, Mother laughed, and the sound the three of us made together in the room created a silly joy inside of me.

“… Look at you,” I said, cupping Nina’s face in my hands.

Mother’s eyes flitted from my collar to my hem and back. “I’m quite serious about the dress, Sarah. One of the Quaker families here had their home pelted with eggs. It was reported yesterday in the
Mercury.
Tell her, Nina. Explain to your sister that Charlestonians are in no mood to see her parading around like this.”

Nina sighed. “There are rumors in the city of a slave revolt.”

“… A revolt?”

“It’s nothing but twaddle,” Mother said, “but people are overwrought about it.”

“If you believe the stories,” Nina said, “the slaves are going to converge on the streets, kill the entire white population, and burn the city.”

The skin on my arms prickled.

“After the killing and burning, supposedly they will plunder the state bank and then raid the horses in the city stable or else board ships in the harbor and sail off to Haiti.”

A small scoff escaped Mother’s throat. “Can you imagine them devising such an elaborate plan?”

I felt a sort of plummeting in my chest. I could, in fact, imagine it. Not the part about the slaughter—that, my mind couldn’t fathom. But there were more slaves living in Charleston than whites, why shouldn’t they conceive a plot to free themselves? It would have to be elaborate and bold in order to succeed. And it couldn’t help but be violent.

Reflexively, I pressed my palms together beneath my chin, as if praying. “… Dear God.”

“But you can’t take it seriously,” Nina said. “There was a similar situation in Edgefield, remember? The white families were certain they would be murdered in their beds. It was simple hysteria.”

“… What’s behind it? How did the rumor start?”

“It started with Colonel John Prioleau’s house slave. Apparently, he heard news of a revolt at the wharves and reported it to the colonel, who went to the authorities. The Guard tracked down the source—a slave named William Paul, who’s well known, apparently, for being a braggart. The poor man was arrested and is being held at the Work House.” Nina paused, shuddering. “I can’t bear to think what they’ve done to him.”

Mother rapped the floor with her cane. “The mayor-intendent has dismissed the matter. Governor Bennett has dismissed the matter. I want no further talk of it. Just take heed, Sarah, the climate is a tinderbox.”

I longed to dismiss the possibility of a revolt, too, but I felt it inside of me now like a tidal pull.

Seeking out Handful the next morning, I found her sitting on the kitchen house steps beside Goodis with a needle in her hand and a brass thimble on her pushing finger, hemming what looked like an apron. The two of them were snickering as I approached, giving each other affectionate little jabs. Seeing me, they ceased.

Goodis leapt to his feet and the top of his coveralls flopped down on one side. Seized by a sudden ripple of nerves over how Handful would respond to me, I pointed to where his button was missing. “… You’ll have to get Handful to repair that for you,” I said, and regretted it instantly. It sounded bossy and condescending. It was not how I’d wanted to reunite with her.

“Yessum,” he said, and with a glance at Handful, left us.

I bent over and embraced her, looping my arms about her shoulders. After a moment, she raised her arms and patted me on the sides of my ribs.

“Nina said you were coming back. You staying put now?”

“… I might.” I took a seat beside her. “… We’ll see.”

“Well, if I was you, I’d get back on the boat.”

I smiled at her. A strip of dark blue shade draped over us from the eave, darkening as we fell silent. I found myself staring at the distorted way her foot hooked inward, at the soughing rhythm of her hands, at her back curved over her work, and I felt the old guilt.

I plied her with questions: how she’d fared since I left, how Mother had treated her, how the other slaves had held up. I asked if perhaps she had a special friendship with Goodis. She showed me the scar on her forehead, calling it Mother’s handiwork. She said Aunt-Sister’s eyesight was failing and Phoebe did most of the cooking, that Sabe couldn’t hold a candle to Tomfry, and Minta was a good soul who took the brunt of “missus’ nastiness.” At the subject of Goodis, she merely grinned, which gave her away.

“… What do you know about rumors of a slave revolt?” I finally asked.

Her hand grew still for a moment. “Why don’t you tell me what
you
know about it?”

I repeated what Nina had said about the slave, William Paul, and his claims of an uprising. “… The officials are telling the public they’re untrue,” I added.

She laid the apron down. “They are? They don’t believe it’s true?” Her face was flooded with such relief I got the feeling the revolt was not only real, but that she knew a great deal about it.

“… Even if they believe such a plan exists, they would deny it,” I told her, wanting her to understand the danger. “I doubt they’d acknowledge it publicly. They wouldn’t want to cause a panic. Or tip their hand. If they’ve found the slightest evidence of a plot, believe me, they’ll respond.”

She picked up the needle and thread and the hush fell again, heavier this time. I watched her hand move up and down, making peaks and valleys, then the flash of her thimble, and I remembered us—little girls on the roof, her telling me about the true brass thimble. This same one, I imagined. I could see her lying against the roof tiles, squinting at the blur of sky and clouds, the teacup balanced on her tummy, her dress pocket stuffed with feathers, their ruffled ends poking out. We’d spilled all of our secrets to one another there. It was the closest thing to parity the two of us had ever found. I tried to hold the picture in my mind, to breathe it back to life, but it dissolved.

I didn’t expect her to confide in me anymore. She would keep her secrets now.

Nina and I set out by foot for the tiny Quaker meetinghouse on Sunday, an exceptionally long walk that took us to the other side of the city. We strolled arm in arm as she told me about the letters that had arrived at the house for weeks after my departure, inquiring about my health. I’d forgotten about the consumption story Mother had concocted to explain my absence, and Nina and I laughed about it all the way down Society Street.

A fierce summer rain had swept through overnight and the air was cool and fresh, flooded with the scent of tea olive. Pink bougainvillea petals floated on the rain puddles, and seeing them, having Nina beside me like this on such a glorious day, I felt I might re-find my sense of belonging.

The past ten days had passed in relative quiet. I’d spent the time trying to put the household back in order and having long talks with Nina, who asked endless questions about the North, about the Quakers, about Israel. I’d hoped to avoid all mention of him, but he slipped through the tiny fractures anyway. Handful had avoided me. Gratefully, nothing out of the ordinary had transpired in the city and reports of the slave insurrection had dwindled as folks returned to the business at hand. I’d begun to think I’d overreacted about it.

On this morning I was wearing my “abolition clothes,” as Mother insisted on calling them. As a Quaker, that was all I was permitted to wear, and heaven knows, I was nothing if not earnest. Earlier at breakfast, upon learning of my intention to attend the Quaker Meeting and take Nina with me, Mother had displayed a fit of temper so predictable we’d practically yawned through it. It was just as well she didn’t know we’d decided to walk.

Nearing the market, we began to hear the steady clomp of thunder in the distance, then shouting. As we turned the corner, two slave women broke past us, holding up their skirts and sprinting. Marching toward us were at least a hundred South Carolina militia with their sabers and pistols drawn. They were flanked by the City Guard, who carried muskets instead of their typical truncheons.

It was Market Sunday, a day when the slaves were heavily congregated on the streets. Standing frozen, Nina and I watched them flee in panic as hussars on horseback rushed at them, shouting at them to disperse.

“What’s happening?” Nina said.

I gazed at the pandemonium, oddly stunned. We’d come to a standstill before the Carolina Coffee House, and I thought at first we would duck inside, but it was locked. “We should go back,” I told her.

As we turned to leave, however, a street vendor, a slave girl no more than twelve, bolted toward us, and in her fright and panic, she stumbled, spilling her basket of vegetables across our path. Instinctively, Nina and I bent to help her retrieve the radishes and cabbages and rolling potatoes.

“Step away!” a man yelled. “You!”

Lifting my forehead, I glimpsed an officer trotting toward us on his horse. He was speaking to me and Nina. We straightened, while the girl went on crawling about in the dirt after her bruised wares.