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