my eye on Gullah Jack. He had fat side whiskers and was bouncing on his short legs. When he finished the tune, he tucked the drum under his arm and headed down the street to Mr. Vesey’s. Me, following behind.
I could see smoke from the kitchen house, and went back there and knocked. Susan let me in, saying, “Well, I’m surprised it took you this long.” She said I could give her some help, the men were in the front room, meeting.
“Meeting about what?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t wanna know.”
I helped her chop cabbages and carrots for their supper, and when she carried a bottle of Madeira to them, I trailed her. I waited outside the door, while she poured their glasses, but I could see them at the table: Mr. Vesey, Gullah Jack, Peter Poyas, Monday Gell, plus two who belonged to the governor, Rolla Bennett and Ned Bennett. I knew every one of them from church. They were all slaves, except Mr. Vesey. Later on, he’d start calling them his lieutenants.
I slunk back into the hallway and let Susan go back to the kitchen house without me. Then I eased to the door, close as I could without getting seen.
It sounded like Mr. Vesey was divvying up all the slaves in the state. “I’ll take the French Negroes on the Santee, and Jack, you take the slaves on the Sea Islands. The ones that’ll be hard to enlist are the country slaves out on the plantations. Peter, you and Monday know them best. Rolla, I’m giving you the city slaves, and Ned, the ones on the Neck.”
His voice dropped and I crept a little closer. “Keep a list of everybody you draft. And keep that list safe on pain of death. Tell everybody, be patient, the day is coming.”
I don’t know where he came from, but Gullah Jack was on top of me before I could turn my head. He grabbed me from behind and threw me into the room, my rabbit cane flying. I bounced off the wall and landed flat.
He stuck his foot on my chest, pressing me to the floor. “Who’re you?”
“Take your nasty foot off me!” I spit at him and the spew fell back on my face.
He raised a hand like he was ready to strike, and from the edge of my eye, I saw Denmark Vesey pick him up by the collar and fling him half cross the room. Then he pulled me up. “You all right?”
My arms were trembling so bad I couldn’t hold them still.
“Everything you heard in here, you keep to yourself,” he told me.
I nodded again, and he put his arm round me to stop the shaking.
Turning to Gullah Jack and the rest of them, he said, “This is the daughter of my wife and the sister of my child. She’s family, and that means you don’t lay a hand on her.”
He told the men to go on back to his workshop. We waited while they scraped the chairs back and eased from the room.
So, he counted mauma one of his wives. I’m family.
He pulled a chair for me. “Here, sit down. What’re you doing here?”
“I came to find out the truth of what happened to mauma. I know you know.”
“Some things are better not to know,” he said.
“Well, that’s not what the Bible preaches. It says if you know the truth, it’ll set you free.”
He circled the table. “All right, then.” He closed the window so the truth would stay in the room and not float out for the world to hear.
“The day Charlotte got in trouble with the Guard, she came here. I was in the workshop and when I looked up, there she was. They’d chased her all the way to the rice mill pond, where she hid inside a sack in the millhouse. She had rice hulls all over her dress. I kept her here till dark, then I took her to the Neck, where the policing is light. I took her there to hide.”
The Neck was just north of the city and had lots of tenement houses for free blacks and slaves whose owners let them “live out.” Negro huts, they called them. I tried to picture one, picture mauma in it.
“I knew a free black there who had a room, and he took her in. She said when the Guard stopped searching for her, she’d go back to the Grimkés and throw herself on their mercy.” He’d been pacing, but now he