Sky lumbered over to us, looking confused, while I grabbed the rope and brought it down, the pulley wheels begging for oil.
Mauma dug through the pile on the frame and found the quilt near the bottom. When she shook it out, the old quilt smell filled the room. She slit the backing and sent her hand rooting inside. Grinning, she pulled out a thin bundle, then five more, all wrapped in muslin and tied with string so rotted it came apart in her hands. “Well, look here,” she said.
“What you find?” Sky asked.
After we’d told her about the hiring-out mauma used to do, and we’d danced round and pored over the riches, we laid the money on the frame, and I winched it back to the ceiling.
Sky went on back to sleep, but me and mauma lay wide-eyed.
She said, “Tomorrow, first thing, you tie the money up fresh and sew it back inside the quilt.”
“It’s not enough to buy all three of us.”
“I know that, we just gon hold on to it for now.”
The night drew on, and I started to drift, floating to the edge. Just before I went over, I heard mauma say, “I don’t spec to get free. The only way I’m getting free is for you to get free.”
Sarah
13 April 1828
Dearest Nina,
Last month, Israel proposed marriage, declaring himself at long last. You’ll be surprised to learn I turned him down. He didn’t want me to go on with my plans for the ministry, at least not as his wife. How could I choose someone who would force me to give up my own small reach for meaning? I chose myself, and without consolation.
You should have seen him. He couldn’t accept that a faded-looking woman in middle age would choose aloneness over him. Respectable, handsome Israel. When I delivered my answer, he asked if I felt ill, if I was myself. He explained the gravity of my mistake. He said I should reconsider. He insisted I speak with the elders. As if those men could ever know my heart.
People at Arch Street can’t conceive of my refusal any more than Israel. They think I’m selfish and misguided. Am I, Nina? Am I a fool? As the weeks pass without his visits, and I feel inconsolable, I fear I’ve made the worst mistake of my life.
I want to tell you I’m strong and resolute, but in truth, I feel afraid and alone and uncertain. I feel as if he has died, and I suppose in some way it’s true. I’m left with nothing but this strange beating in my heart that tells me I’m meant to do something in this world. I cannot apologize for it, or for loving this small beating as much as him.
I think of you and your Reverend McDowell with hope and blessings.
Pray for your loving sister,
Sarah
I laid down the pen and sealed the letter. It was late, the Mott house asleep, the candle a nub, the night impervious on the window. For weeks, I’d resisted writing to Nina, but now it was done, and it seemed a turning point, an abdication of what I’d always been to her: mother, rescuer, exemplar. I didn’t want to be those things anymore. I wanted to be what I was, her fallible sister.
When Lucretia handed me Nina’s letter, I was in the kitchen making biscuits the way Aunt-Sister made them, with wheat flour, butter, cold water, and a spoonful of sugar. I wasn’t inclined toward baking, but I did try to be of help now and then. I opened the letter, standing over the bowl of flour.
1 June 1828
Dearest Sister,
Take Heart. Marriage is overvalued.
My own news, though not as dire as yours, is similar. Some weeks ago, I went before a meeting at church and requested the elders give up their slaves and publicly denounce slavery. It was not well-received. Everyone, including Mother, our brother Thomas, and even Reverend McDowell, behaved as if I’d committed a crime. I asked them to give up a sin, not Christ and the Bible!
Reverend McDowell agrees with me in spirit, but when I pressed him to preach publicly what he says to me in private, he refused. “Pray and wait,” he told me. “Pray and act,” I snapped. “Pray and speak!”
How could I marry someone who displays such cowardice?
I have no choice now but to leave his church. I’ve decided to follow in your steps and become a Quaker. I shudder to think