so much of who she was. I said, “Tell me how I can help.”
Handful
The night before we were to take our leave, me and Sky scurried in the dark, collecting everything together. We stole out to the stable to get mauma’s quilt from the horse blankets, trekking cross the work yard with the stars pouring down. We climbed up to Sarah’s room from the cellar to the second floor, three trips, carrying quilts, black dresses, hats, veils, gloves, and hankies. Up and down, me and my lame foot, passing right by missus’ and little missus’ doors. We went in stocking feet, taking soft steps like the floor might sink.
On the last trip, Sarah locked the door behind us, and I had a tarnish memory of her screening the keyhole while she taught me to read, how we whispered by the lamplight like we were doing now. I hung our dresses in her wardrobe. They fit us tailor-made. The veils were pressed perfect, and I’d sprinkled the velvet and crepe with missus’ lavender water so they had a white lady scent. I’d sewed pockets on the inside of the dresses to hold our money, along with Sarah’s booklet, mauma’s red scarf, and the address in Philadelphia where we hoped to end up.
Sky said the rabbit was outfoxing the fox.
Sarah opened her steamer trunk and I rested mauma’s story quilt on the satin lining at the bottom. I’d brought the quilt with red squares and black triangles, hoping to pack it, too—the first blackbird wings I ever sewed—but now that I saw how little the trunk was, I felt bad for taking up the precious space. I said, “I can leave this behind.”
Sarah took it from me and laid it in the trunk. “I would rather leave my dresses—they’re not worth much.”
I knew the perils of what she was doing same as she did. I read the papers. Twenty years in prison for circulating publications of a seditious nature. Twenty years for assisting a slave to escape.
I watched her fold her few belongings on top of the quilts and thought, This ain’t the same Sarah who left here. She had a firm look in her eye and her voice didn’t dither and hesitate like it used to. She’d been boiled down to a good, strong broth.
Her hair was loose, dangling along the sides of her neck like silk vines, like the red threads I used to tie round the spirit tree, and I saw it then, the strange thing between us. Not love, is it? What is it? It was always there, a roundness in my chest, a pin cushion. It pricked and fastened. Those girls on the roof with the tea gone cold in the cup.
She brought the lid down on the trunk.
I told Sky, go on down to the cellar and rest and I’ll be there in a while—I had one task left to do by myself. Then I eased down the stairs, out the back door, and loped off with my cane to the spirit tree.
Under the branches, the moonlight splatted on me from the leaves. I felt the owls blink and the wind draw a breath. When I looked back at the house, there was mauma in the upstairs window looking down, waiting to throw me a taffy. She was standing out in the ruts of the carriageway with her leg hitched up behind her and the strap round her neck. She sat quiet against the tree trunk with sewing in her lap.
I bent down and gathered up a handful of clippings from the tree—acorns, twigs, a tired, dog-eared leaf—and stuffed them inside my neck pouch. Then I took my spirit.
Next morning, we acted same as always. Sky went to the vegetable garden with the picking basket and plucked the ripe tomatoes and lettuce tops. Missus had me rubbing her ivory fans with sandpaper to scrub off the yellow tint. I worked in the alcove with the scrape of the paper, eyeing the steamship. The water on the harbor was ruffling like dress flounces.
Sarah was down the hallway in the withdrawing room with missus having her last goodbye. She wouldn’t see her mauma again. She knew that, and missus knew that. The air in the house sounded like a long note on the harpsichord. Downstairs, Sarah’s trunk was locked and ready by the front door, everything inside—mauma’s story, the flock of blackbirds.
The chiming clock sang out, and I counted the notes, nine of them, and Sarah came