died a long time ago.” She didn’t see Phoebe’s broken face, just her kitchen apron. “I don’t know what time you serve the midday meal,” she said, “but from now on it will be at two.”
The slave quarters were busting seams. Every room taken, some sleeping on the floor. Aunt-Sister and Phoebe yowled about the mouths to feed, and little missus had me and mauma sewing new livery coats and house dresses for everybody. Welcome to the Grimkés’. She hadn’t brought a seamstress with her, but she’d brought everybody else and their second cousin. We had a new butler, a laundress, little missus’ personal chamber maid, a coachman, a footman, a groomsman, new help for the kitchen, the house, and the yard. Sabe got demoted back to the gardens with Sky, and Goodis, poor Goodis, he sat in the stable all day, whittling sticks. Me and him even lost the little room where we still went sometimes to love each other.
Now, here in the cellar room, mauma didn’t raise her head off the pillow. She didn’t have a use for little missus. She said, “What she want with me?”
“We got that big tea to put on today and she wants the ribbons sewed on the napkins. She acts like you’re the only one can do it. She’s got me fixing the tables.”
“Where’s Sky?”
“Sky’s washing the front steps.”
Mauma looked so tired. I knew the pains in her stomach had got worse cause she’d picked at her food all week. She pushed herself up slow, so thin her body looked like a stem growing up from the mattress.
“Mauma, you lay on back down. I’ll get those ribbons done.”
“You a good girl, Handful, you always was.”
The story quilt was folded on the foot of the bed where she liked to keep it close. She spread it open cross her legs. It was July, a hot, sticky day, and for one tick of the clock, I wondered if she was feeling that cold you get toward the end. But then she turned the quilt till she found the first square. “This is my granny-mauma when the stars fall and she gets sold away.”
I sat down next to her. She wasn’t cold, she just wanted to tell the story on the quilt again. She loved to tell the story.
She’d forgot about the ribbons, and there could be trouble for me lingering, but this was mauma, and this was the story. She went through the whole quilt, every square, taking her time on the ones she’d sewed since she was back. Her being taken away in the wagon by the Guard. Working the rice fields with a baby on her back. A man branding her shoulder with the left hand and hammering out her teeth with the right. Running away under the moon. Finally, she came to the last square, the fifteenth one—it was me, mauma, and Sky with our arms woven together like a loop stitch.
I got to my feet. “Go back to sleep now.”
“No, I’m coming. I be on up there in a while.”
Her eyes glowed like the paper lanterns we used to set out for the garden parties.
I stood in the dining room, facing the window, stuffing big crystal horns with fruit, everything in the larder that wasn’t rotten, when I spotted mauma shuffling toward the spirit tree at the back of the yard. She had the story quilt clutched round her shoulders.
My hands came still—the way she slid one foot, rested, then slid the other one. When she reached the tree, she steadied her hand on the trunk and lowered herself to the ground. My heart started to beat strange.
I didn’t look to see if little missus was near, I hurried out the back door. Fast as I could, fast as the earth would pass beneath me.
“Mauma?”
She lifted her face. The light had gone from her eyes. There was only the black wick now.
I eased down beside her. “Mauma?”
“It’s all right. I come to get my spirit to take with me.” Her voice sounded far off inside her. “I’m tired, Handful.”
I tried not to be scared. “I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry, we’ll get you some rest.”
She smiled the saddest smile, letting me know she’d get her rest, but not the kind I hoped. I took hold of her hands. They were ice cold. Little bird bones.
She said it again. “I’m tired.”
She wanted me to tell her it was all right, to get her spirit and go on, but I couldn’t