She jumped and the feather between her fingers fluttered off on the sea wind. It flitted to the top of the high brick wall that enclosed the yard, snagging in the creeping fig.
“Miss Sarah!” she said. “You scared the jimminies out of me.” Her laugh was high-pitched and fragile with nerves. Her eyes darted toward the stable.
“. . . . . . I didn’t mean to startle you . . . I only wondered, do you know where—”
She cut me off, and pointed into the woodpile. “Look way down ’n there.”
Peering into a berth between two pieces of wood, I came face to face with a pointy-eared brown creature covered with fuzz. Only slightly bigger than a hen’s chick, it was an owl of some sort. I drew back as its yellow eyes blinked and bore into me.
Charlotte laughed again, this time more naturally. “It ain’t gon bite.”
“. . . . . . It’s a baby.”
“I came on it a few nights back. Poor thing on the ground, crying.”
“. . . . . . Was it . . . hurt?”
“Naw, just left behind is all. Its mauma’s a barn owl. Took up in a crow’s nest in the shed, but she left. I’m ’fraid something got her. I been feeding the baby scraps.”
My only liaisons with Charlotte had been dress fittings, but I’d always detected a keenness in her. Of all the slaves Father owned, she struck me as the most intelligent, and perhaps the most dangerous, which would turn out to be true enough.
“. . . . . . I’ll be kind to Hetty,” I said abruptly. The words—remorseful and lordly—came out as if some pustule of guilt had disgorged.
Her eyes flashed open, then narrowed into small burrs. They were honey colored, the same as Hetty’s.
“. . . . . . I never meant to own her . . . I tried to free her, but . . . I wasn’t allowed.” I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
Charlotte slid her hand into her apron pocket, and silence welled unbearably. She’d seen my guilt and she used it with cunning. “That’s awright,” she said. “Cause I know you gon make that up to her one these days.”
The letter M clamped on to my tongue with its little jaws. “. . . . . . . . . M-m-make it up?”
“I mean, I know you gon hep her any way you can to get free.”
“. . . . . . Yes, I’ll try,” I said.
“What I need is you swearing to it.”
I nodded, hardly understanding that I’d been deftly guided into a covenant.
“You keep your word,” she said. “I know you will.”
Remembering why I’d approached her in the first place, I said, “. . . I’ve been unable to find—”
“Handful gon be at your door ’fore you know it.”
Walking back to the house, I felt the noose of that strange and intimate exchange pull into a knot.
Hetty appeared in my room ten minutes later, her eyes dominating her small face, fierce as the little owl’s. Seated at my desk, I’d only just opened a book I’d borrowed from Father’s library, The Adventures of Telemachus. Telemachus, the son of Penelope and Odysseus, was setting out to Troy to find his father. Without questioning her earlier whereabouts, I began to read aloud. Hetty plopped onto the bed-steps that led to the mattress, rested her chin in the cup of her hands, and listened through the morning as Telemachus took on the hostilities of the ancient world.
Wily Charlotte. As March passed, I thought obsessively about the promise she’d wrung from me. Why hadn’t I told her Hetty’s freedom was impossible? That the most I could ever offer her was kindness?
When it came time to sew my Easter dress, I cringed to think of seeing her again, petrified she would bring up our conversation by the woodpile. I would rather have impaled myself with a needle than endured more of her scrutiny.
“I don’t need a new dress this Easter,” I told Mother.
A week later, I stood on the fitting box, wearing a half-sewn satin dress. On entering my room, Charlotte had hastened Hetty off on some contrived mission before I could think of a way to override her. The dress was a light shade of cinnamon, remarkably similar to the tone of Charlotte’s skin, a likeness I noted as she stood before me with three straight pins wedged between her lips. When she spoke, I smelled coffee beans, and