Then Lucy ran full-tilt back toward the house. Drawing close, she yelled, “Handful! Handful! Missus say come out here right now.”
I went, full-knowing.
My words, straight from the speller, were baked in the clay. The smear-over of mud from my shoe had crackled and thinned away, leaving the deep crevice of the letters.
BABY BOY BLUE BLOW YOUR HORN HETTY.
Sarah
Two days after a September hurricane sent tidewater over East Bay all the way to Meeting Street, Binah knocked on my door before breakfast, her eyes filled with fear and consolation, and I knew some catastrophe had fallen.
“Has someone died? Is Father—”
“No, ain’t nobody die. Your daddy, he want you in the library.”
I’d never been summoned like this and it caused an odd, plummeting sensation in my legs, so much so I dipped a little at the knees while walking back to the Hepplewhite to inspect the ivory ribbon I’d been tying in my hair.
“What’s happened?” I asked, tugging the bow, smoothing my dress, letting my hand rest for a moment across my jittery stomach.
I could see her reflection in the glass. She shook her head. “Miss Sarah, I can’t say what he want, but it ain’t help to poke.”
Placing her hand at the small of my back, she nudged me from the room, past Handful’s new quilt lying in the hallway, its mass of triangles pinioned on the floor. We walked down the stairs, pausing outside the library door. Abstaining from her Poor Miss Sarahs, Binah said instead, “Listen to Binah now. Don’t be crying, and don’t be running away. Buck yourself up now.”
Her words, meant to steady me, unnerved me further. As I tapped on the door, the airy feeling returned to the back of my knees. He sat at his desk with his hair oiled and combed back smooth and didn’t look up, intent on a stack of documents.
When he lifted his face, his eyes were hardened. “You have disappointed me, Sarah.”
I was too stunned to cry or run away, the two things Binah had warned against. “I would never knowingly disappoint you, Father. I only care to—”
He thrust out his palm. “I have brought you here to listen. Do not speak.”
My heart beat so ferociously my hands went to either side of my ribs to keep them from unhinging.
“It has been brought to my attention that your slave girl has become literate. Do not think to deny it, as she wrote a number of words on the muddy ground in the yard and even took care to sign her name.”
Oh Handful, no! I looked away from his harsh, accusing eyes, trying to arrange things into perspective. Handful had been careless. We’d been found out. But my disbelieving mind could not accept that Father, of all people, believed her ability to read was an unpardonable offense. He would chastise me as he must, undoubtedly at Mother’s urging. Then he would soften. In the depths of his conscience, he understood what I’d done.
“How do you suppose she acquired this ability?” he asked calmly. “Did it descend upon her one day out of the blue? Was she born with it? Did she teach her own ingenious self to read? Of course, we know how the girl came to read—you taught her. You defied your mother, your father, the laws of your state, even your rector, who expressly admonished you about it.”
He rose from his leather chair and walked toward me, stopping at arm’s reach, and when he spoke again, some of the hostility had left his voice. “I’ve asked myself how you are able to disobey with such ease and disregard. I fear the answer is you are a coddled girl who does not understand her place in the world, and that is partly my own fault. I’ve done you no favors with my lenience. My indulgence has given you the idea you can transgress a serious boundary such as this one.”
Feeling the chill of some new and different terror, I dared to speak, and felt my throat clench in the familiar old way. I squeezed my eyes and forced out my thought. “. . . . . . . . . I’m sorry, Father. . . . . . I meant no harm.”
“No harm?”
He hadn’t noticed the return of my stammer. He paced about the stuffy room and lectured me, while Mr. Washington gazed serenely from the mantel. “You think there’s no detriment in a slave learning to read? There are sad truths in our world, and one is that