the moon instead of lead.
Sarah
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