whisper, I told her about my plan to try and convince Mother to sell the two of them to me.
She laughed a bitter sound. “Uh huh.”
I hadn’t expected that. I looked past her, scanning the harbor, noticing the steamer in the distance rinsed clean by the rain.
She shifted herself on the cushion and I heard the breath leave her. “I just don’t see missus doing one thing favorable for me, that’s all. But here you are, all this way—nobody else would’ve done that for me—so it’s worth a try, and if she’s willing to sell us, I’ll pay you back everything I got, four hundred dollars.”
“There would be no need—”
“Well, I ain’t doing it any other way.”
We stopped talking as Hector, the butler Mary had installed, came up the stairs with my trunk, his gaze lingering longer than was comfortable. I stood. “I should get settled.”
“You go on and talk to her then,” Handful whispered. “But don’t be waiting too long.”
I waited four days. It seemed imprudent to make the request before that—I wanted Mother to believe I’d returned solely to see her.
I broached the matter on Tuesday afternoon while we sat in the drawing room, Mother, Mary, and I, swishing our fans at the vaporous heat. A languid silence had fallen that none of us seemed willing to break. We’d exhausted all the harmless subjects: the rainy weather, the spectacular wonder of the railroad that ran from Charleston to Savannah, an expurgated version of Nina’s wedding, news of my siblings, the nieces and nephews I’d never met. If I had any chance at securing freedom for Handful and Sky, we couldn’t speak of my scandalous adventures, which had been in all the papers. Nor of abolition, slavery, the North, the South, religion, politics, or the fact I’d been outlawed in the city the previous summer.
“People are talking, Sarah,” Mary said, breaking the lull. She exchanged a look with Mother, and I glimpsed how in step they were with one another, how alike. An echo of loneliness reverberated from my girlhood, and I felt again like the odd-child-out. Even now. I heard Binah’s voice somewhere in my memory, Poor Miss Sarah. These irrational childish feelings, where had they come from suddenly?
“Rumors are running rampant that you’ve returned,” Mary was saying. “It’s only a matter of time before the sheriff arrives to inquire about it, and if you’re here, I’m not sure what you expect us to say. We can hardly hide you like a fugitive.”
I turned to Mother, watching her eyes veer away toward the piazza. The windows were open and the chocolaty smell of the oleander streamed in, sickeningly thick.
“You wish me to leave?”
“It’s not a matter of what we wish,” Mother said. “If the authorities come, I wouldn’t give you over to them, of course not. You’re my daughter. You’re still a Grimké. We only suggest it would be easier all around if you cut your visit short.”
To my surprise, her eyes filled. She was plump now with thinned white hair and one of those ancient faces that’s deeply cobblestoned. She peered at me as the tears started to spill, and I left my chair and went to her. Bending down awkwardly, I put my arms about her.
She clung to me an instant, then straightened. Instead of returning to my seat, I paced toward the window and back, gathering my bravery.
“I won’t put you at risk, I’ll leave on the next steamer, but before I go, I have a request. I would like to purchase Hetty and her sister, Sky.”
“Purchase them?” Mary said. “But why? You hardly barter in slaves.”
“Mary, for heaven’s sake, she means to free them,” Mother said.
“I’ll offer you any amount.” I walked to Mother’s side. “Please. I would consider it a great kindness to me.”
Mary rose and came to the other side of Mother’s chair. “We can’t possibly do without Hetty,” she said. “There are few seamstresses in Charleston to match her. She’s irreplaceable. The other one is expendable, but not Hetty.”
Mother stared at her hands. Her shoulders moved up and down with her breath, and I began to feel a prick of hope.
“There are laws that make it difficult,” she said. “Emancipating them would require a special act of the legislature.”
“Difficult, but it could be done,” I responded.
Something inside of her seemed to bend, to arch toward me. Mary sensed it, too. She placed her hand on our mother’s, linking the two of them. She said, “We can’t do without Hetty. And we