Part 22 (2/2)

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.

”. . . We're doing no harm by a.s.sisting her,” I said as he reined to a stop. His attention, though, was not on the turnip in my hand, but on my dress.

”Are you Quaker?”

He had a large, bony face with slightly bulging eyes that made him look more terrorizing perhaps than he truly was, but such logic was lost to me then. Fear and dread rushed up from my throat, and my tongue, feeble creature, lay in my mouth like a slug in its cleft.

”Did you hear me?” he said calmly. ”I asked if you're one of those religious pariahs who agitate against slavery.”

I moved my lips, yet nothing came, only this terrible, silent mouthing. Nina stepped close and interlocked her fingers in mine. I knew she wanted to speak for me, but she refrained, waiting. Closing my eyes, I heard the gulls from the harbor calling to each other. I pictured them gliding on currents of air and resting on swells of water.

”I am a Quaker,” I said, the words arriving without the jerk of hesitation that preceded most of my sentences. I heard Nina release her breath.

Sensing an altercation, two white men stopped to stare. Behind them, I saw the slave girl das.h.i.+ng away with her basket.

”What's your name?” the officer asked.

”I'm Sarah Grimke. Who, sir, are you?”

He didn't bother to answer. ”You aren't Judge Grimke's daughter-surely.”

”He was my father, yes. He has been dead almost three years.”

”Well, it's a good thing he didn't live to see you like this.”

”. . . I beg your pardon? I don't see that my beliefs are any of your concern.” I had the feeling of floating free from my moorings. What came to me was the memory of being adrift in the sea that day at Long Branch while Father lay ill. Floating far from the rope.

The columns of militia had finally reached us and were pa.s.sing behind the officer in a wave of noise and swagger. His horse began to bob its head nervously as he raised his voice over the din. ”Out of respect for the judge, I won't detain you.”

Nina broke in. ”What right do you have-”

I interrupted, wanting to keep her from wading into waters that were becoming increasingly treacherous. Strangely, I felt no such compunction for myself. ”. . . Detain me?” I said. ”On what grounds?”

By now, a horde of people had joined the two leering men. A man wearing a Sunday morning coat spit in my direction. Nina's hand tightened on mine.

”Your beliefs, even your appearance, undermine the order I'm trying to keep here,” the officer said. ”They disturb the peace of good citizens and give unwanted notions to the slaves. You're feeding the very kind of insurgency that's going on right now in our city.”

”. . . What insurgency?”

”Are you going to pretend you haven't heard the rumors? There was a plot among the slaves to ma.s.sacre their owners and escape. That would, I believe, include you and your sister here. It was to take place this night, but I a.s.sure you it has been thoroughly outwitted.”

Lifting the reins from the horn of his saddle, he glanced at the pa.s.sing militia, then turned back to me. ”Go home, Miss Grimke. Your presence on the street is unwanted and inflammatory.”

”Go home!” someone in the crowd shouted, and then they all took it up.

I drew myself up, glaring at their angry faces. ”. . . What would you have the slaves do?” I cried. ”. . . If we don't free them, they will free themselves by whatever means.”

”Sarah!” Nina cried in surprise.

As the crowd began to hurl vicious epithets at me, I took her by the arm and we hurried back the way we'd come, walking quickly. ”Don't look back,” I told her.

”Sarah,” she said, breathless, her voice overflowing with awe. ”You've become a public mutineer.”

The slave revolt didn't come that night, or any night. The city fathers had indeed ferreted out the plot through the cruel persuasions of the Work House. During the days that followed, news of the intended revolt ravaged Charleston like an epidemic, leaving it dazed and petrified. Arrests were made, and it was said there would be a great many more. I knew it was the beginning of what would become a monstrous backlash. Residents were already fortifying their fence tops with broken bottles until permanent iron spikes could be installed. The chevaux-de-frise would soon encircle the most elegant homes like ornamental armor.

In the months ahead, a harsh new order would be established. Ordinances would be enacted to control and restrict slaves further, and severer punishments would ensue. A Citadel would be built to protect the white populace. But that first week, we were all still gripped with shock.

My defiance on the street became common knowledge. Mother could barely look at me without blanching, and even Thomas showed up to warn me that the patronage of his firm would be harmed if I persisted in that kind of folly. Only Nina stood by me.

And Handful.

She was cleaning the mahogany staircase late one afternoon in the aftermath of the event when a rock flew through the front window of the drawing room, shattering the pane. Hearing the explosion of gla.s.s all the way on the second floor, I hurried down to find Handful with her back pressed against the wall beside the broken window, trying to peer out without being seen. She waved me back. ”Watch out, they could toss another one.”

A stone the size of a hen's egg lay on the rug in a nest of shards. Shouts drifted from the street. Slave lover. n.i.g.g.e.r lover. Abolitionist. Northern wh.o.r.e.

We stared at each other as the sounds melted away. The room turned quiet, serene. Light was pouring in, hitting the scattered gla.s.s, turning it into pieces of fire on the crimson rug. The sight bereaved me. Not because I was despised, but because of how powerless I felt, because it seemed I could do nothing. I was soon to be thirty, and I'd done nothing.

They say in extreme moments time will slow, returning to its unmoving core, and standing there, it seemed as if everything stopped. Within the stillness, I felt the old, irrepressible ache to know what my point in the world might be. I felt the longing more solemnly than anything I'd ever felt, even more than my old innate loneliness. What came to me was the fleur de lis b.u.t.ton in the box and the lost girl who'd put it there, how I'd twice carried it from Charleston to Philadelphia and back, carried it like a sad, decaying hope.

Across the room, Handful strode into the glowing debris on the rug, bent and picked up the stone. I watched as she turned it over in her hands, knowing I would leave this place yet again. I would return north to make what life I could.

Handful.

The day of retribution pa.s.sed without a musket ball getting fired, without a fuse being lit, without any of us getting free, but not one white person would look at us ever again and think we were harmless.

I didn't know who was arrested and who wasn't. I didn't know if Denmark was safe or sorry, or both. Sarah said it was best to stay off the streets, but by Wednesday, I couldn't wait anymore. I found Nina and told her I needed a pa.s.s to get some mola.s.ses. She wrote it out and said, ”Be careful.”

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