fall and there ain’t no wings sprouting off my shoulders.
In the front window of his house, a woman was ironing. Her back was to me, but I could see the shape of her, the lightness of her skin, the bright head scarf, her arm swinging over the cloth, and it caused a hitch in my chest.
When I got up on the porch, I heard her singing. Way down yonder in the middle of the field, see me working at the chariot wheel. Peering in the open window, I saw she had her hips swishing, too. Now let me fly, now let me fly, now let me fly way up high.
I knocked and the tune broke off. She opened the door still holding the iron, the smell of charcoal straggling behind her. Mauma always said he had mulatto wives all over the city, but the main one lived here in the house. She stuck out her chin, frowning, and I wondered did she think I was the new bride.
“Who’re you?”
“I’m Handful. I came to see Denmark Vesey.”
She glared at me, then down at my twisted foot. “Well, I’m Susan, his wife. What you want with him?”
I could feel the heat glowing off the iron. The woman had been hard done by and I couldn’t blame her not opening the door to stray women. “All I want is to talk to him. Is he here or not?”
“I’m here,” a voice said. He stood propped in the doorway behind her with his arms folded on his chest like he’s God watching the world go by. He told his wife to find something to do, and her eyes trimmed down to little slits. “Take that iron with you,” he said. “It’s smoking up the room.”
She left with it, while he eyed me. He’d lost some fat from his face. I could see the top rim of his cheek bones. He said, “You’re lucky you didn’t get rot in your foot and die.”
“I made out. Looks like you did, too.”
“You didn’t come to see about my health.”
He didn’t wanna beat the bushes. Fine with me. My foot hurt from trudging here. I took the bundle off my back and sat down in a chair. There wasn’t a frill in the room, just cane chairs and a table with a Bible on it.
I said, “I used to come here with my mauma. Her name was Charlotte.”
The sneer he always wore slid off his face. “I knew I knew you from somewhere. You have her eyes.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“You have her gumption, too.”
I squeezed the burlap bundle against my chest. “I wanna know what happened to her.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Coming on seven years.”
When he kept silent, I undid the burlap and spread mauma’s story quilt cross the table. The squares hung nearly to the floor, bright enough to set a fire in the dark room.
People say he never smiled, but when he saw the slaves flying in the air past the sun, he smiled. He gazed at granny-mauma and the falling stars, at mauma leaving my daddy behind in the field, me and her laying in cut-up pieces on the quilt frame. He studied the spirit trees and the one-legged punishment. Didn’t ask what anything meant. He knew it was her story.
I stole a look at the last square where mauma had sewed the man with the carpenter apron and the numbers 1884. I watched careful to see if he’d recognize himself.
“You think that’s me, don’t you?” he said.
“I know that’s you, but I don’t know about those numbers.”
He chuckled outright. “One, eight, eight, four. That was the number on my lottery ticket. The numbers that bought my freedom.”
The room was stifle hot. Sweat dribbled on my temples. So, that’s her last word, then. That’s what it came to—a chance for getting free. A fancy chance.
I folded up the quilt, wrapped it back in the burlap, and tied it on my back. I picked up my cane. I said, “She was pregnant, you know that? When she went missing, your baby went missing with her.”
He didn’t flinch, but I could tell he didn’t know.
I said, “Those numbers never did come up for her, did they?”
Sarah
The ship ride was harrowing. We plied up the coast for nearly two weeks, sickened by heaving waves off Virginia, before finally making our way along the Delaware to Penn Landing. Arriving there, I had an impulse to bend down and kiss the solid ground. With Father almost too