We plodded downstairs without a trace of wariness, and there they were, the elders sitting ramrod straight in the chairs in Catherine’s parlor, a few left to stand along the wall, Israel among them. Catherine, the only woman, was grandly installed on the frumpy velvet wingchair. We had stumbled into the Inquisition.
Neither of us had bothered to tuck up our hair. Mine hung in limp red tassels to my waist, while Nina’s floated about her shoulders, all curls and corkscrews. It was improper for mixed company, but Catherine didn’t send us back. She pursed her lips into something sour that passed for a smile and gestured us into the room.
Three weeks had passed since we’d first sat on the Negro bench and refused to get up, and except for Mr. Bettleman, no one had said an admonishing word to us. We’d returned to sit with Sarah Mapps and Grace the following week and then the next, and no effort had been made to stop us. I’d been lulled into thinking the elders had acquiesced to what we’d done. Apparently, I’d been wrong.
We stood side by side waiting for someone to speak. The windowpanes burned with sunlight, baking the room to a kiln, and I felt a streak of cold sweat dart between my breasts. I tried to meet Israel’s gaze, but he leaned back into the shadow from the cornice. Turning then to Catherine, I saw the newspaper lying on her lap. The Liberator.
My stomach caught.
Holding one corner between her thumb and forefinger, she lifted the paper as if it were a dead mouse she’d found in a trap and held by the tip of its tail. “A letter on the front page of the most notorious anti-slavery paper in the country has come to our attention.” She adjusted her glasses—the lenses were thick as the bottom of a bottle. “Allow me to read aloud. 30 August, 1835, Respected Friend—”
Nina gasped. “Oh Sarah, I didn’t know it would be published.”
I squinted at her frantic eyes, trying to comprehend what she was saying. As it dawned on me, I tried to speak, yet nothing came but a spew of air. I had to strip the words like wallpaper. “. . . . . . You . . . wrote to . . . Mr. Garrison?”
A chair scraped on the floor, and I saw Mr. Bettleman stride toward us. “You want us to believe that you, the daughter of a slaveholding family, penned a letter to an agitator like William Lloyd Garrison, thinking he wouldn’t publish it? It’s exactly the sort of inflammatory material he spreads.”
She was not remorseful, she was defiant. “Yes, perhaps I did think he would publish it!” she said. Then to me, “People are risking their lives for the cause of the slave, and we do nothing but sit on the Negro pew! I did what I had to do.”
It did feel, all of a sudden, that what she’d done was inevitable. Our lives would never go back to the way they’d been, she’d seen to it, and I both wanted to pull her into my arms and thank her, and to shake her.
Their faces were all the same, grim and accusing, frowning through the glaze of light, all but Israel’s. He stared at the floor as if he wished to be anywhere but here.
As Catherine resumed reading, Nina fixed her eyes on the far wall, on some high, removed place above their heads. The letter was long and eloquent, and yes, highly flammable.
“If persecution is the means by which we will accomplish emancipation, then I say, let it come, for it is my deep, solemn, deliberate conviction that this is a cause worth dying for. Angelina Grimké.” Catherine folded the paper and laid it on the floor.
News of her letter would reach Charleston, of course. Mother, Thomas, the entire family would read it with outrage and disgrace. She would never go home again—I wondered if she’d thought of that, how those words slammed shut whatever door was left there.
Just then Israel spoke from the back of the room, and I closed my eyes at the gentleness in his voice, the sudden kindness. “You are both our sisters. We love you as Christ loves you. We’ve come here only to bring you back into good standing with your Quaker brethren. You may still return to us in full repentance, as the prodigal son returned to his father—”
“You must recant the letter or be expelled,” Mr. Bettleman said, terse