follow a black ant traveling the far reaches beneath the tree—the mountainous roots and forested mosses, the endless perils—and in my head I say the words I fashioned earlier. Boy Run. Girl Jump. Sarah Go.
Thirteen. Fourteen . . . I bolt from the shadows, past the man who now coils his whip, job well done, past Rosetta hanging by her hands in a heap. As I bound up the back steps into the house, Mother calls to me, and Binah reaches to scoop me up, but I escape them, thrashing along the main passage, out the front door, where I break blindly for the wharves.
I don’t remember the rest with clarity, only that I find myself wandering across the gangplank of a sailing vessel, sobbing, stumbling over a turban of rope. A kind man with a beard and a dark cap asks what I want. I plead with him, Sarah Go.
Binah chases me, though I’m unaware of her until she pulls me into her arms and coos, “Poor Miss Sarah, poor Miss Sarah.” Like a decree, a proclamation, a prophecy.
When I arrive home, I am a muss of snot, tears, yard dirt, and harbor filth. Mother holds me against her, rears back and gives me an incensed shake, then clasps me again. “You must promise never to run away again. Promise me.”
I want to. I try to. The words are on my tongue—the rounded lumps of them, shining like the marbles beneath the tree.
“Sarah!” she demands.
Nothing comes. Not a sound.
I remained mute for a week. My words seemed sucked into the cleft between my collar bones. I rescued them by degrees, by praying, bullying and wooing. I came to speak again, but with an odd and mercurial form of stammer. I’d never been a fluid speaker, even my first spoken words had possessed a certain belligerent quality, but now there were ugly, halting gaps between my sentences, endless seconds when the words cowered against my lips and people averted their eyes. Eventually, these horrid pauses began to come and go according to their own mysterious whims. They might plague me for weeks and then remain away months, only to return again as abruptly as they left.
The day I moved from the nursery to commence a life of maturity in John’s staid old room, I wasn’t thinking of the cruelty that had taken place in the work yard when I was four or of the thin filaments that had kept me tethered to my voice ever since. Those concerns were the farthest thing from my mind. My speech impediment had been absent for some time now—four months and six days. I’d almost imagined myself cured.
So when Mother swept into the room all of a sudden—me, in a paroxysm of adjustment to my surroundings, and Binah, tucking my possessions here and there—and asked if my new quarters were to my liking, I was stunned by my inability to answer her. The door slammed in my throat, and the silence hung there. Mother looked at me and sighed.
When she left, I willed my eyes to remain dry and turned away from Binah. I couldn’t bear to hear one more Poor Miss Sarah.
Handful
Aunt-Sister took me to the warming kitchen where Binah and Cindie were fussing over silver trays, laying them full of ginger cake and apples with ground nuts. They had on their good long aprons with starch. Off in the drawing room, it sounded like bees buzzing.
Missus showed up and told Aunt-Sister to peel off my nasty coat and wash my face, then she said, “Hetty, this is Sarah’s eleventh birthday and we are having a party for her.”
She took a lavender ribbon from the top of the pie safe and circled it round my neck, tying a bow, while Aunt-Sister peeled the black off my cheeks with her rag. Missus wound more ribbon round my waist. When I tugged, she told me in a sharp way, “Stop that fidgeting, Hetty! Be still.”
Missus had done the ribbon too snug at my throat. It felt like I couldn’t swallow. I searched for Aunt-Sister’s eyes, but they were glued on the food trays. I wanted to tell her, Get me free of this, help me, I need the privy. I always had something smart to say, but my voice had run down my throat like a kitchen mouse.
I danced on one leg and the other. I thought what mauma had told me, “You be good coming up on Christmas cause that when they sell