sat down next to me and finished up the truth quick as he could. “One night she went out to the privy in Radcliff Alley and there was a white man there, a slave poacher named Robert Martin. He was waiting for her.”
A noise filled my head, a wailing sound so loud I couldn’t hear. “A poacher, what’s a poacher?”
“Somebody that steals slaves. They’re worse than scum. We all knew this man—he had a wagon-trade in these parts. First, regular goods, then he started buying slaves, then he started stealing slaves. He hunted for them in the Neck. He’d keep his ear to the ground and go after the runaways. More than one person saw him take Charlotte.”
“He took her? He sold her off somewhere?”
I was on my feet, screaming over the noise in my skull. “Why didn’t you look for her?”
He took me by the shoulders and gave me a shake. His eyes were sparking like flint. He said, “Gullah Jack and I looked for two days. We looked everywhere, but she was gone.”
Sarah
I made the laborious journey back to Philadelphia, where I found lodging at the same house on Society Hill where Father and I had boarded earlier, expecting to stay only until the ship sailed, but on the appointed morning—my trunk packed and the carriage waiting—something strange and unknown inside of me balked.
Mrs. Todd, who rented the room to me, tapped at my door. “Miss Grimké, the carriage—it’s waiting. May I send the driver to collect the trunk?”
I didn’t answer immediately, but stood at the window and stared out at the leafy vine on the picket fence, at the cobble street lined with sycamore trees, the light falling in quiet, mottled patterns, and beneath my breath I whispered, “No.”
I turned to her, untying my bonnet. It was black with a small ruffle suitable for mourning. I’d purchased it on High Street the day before, maneuvering alone in the shops with no one to please but myself, then come back to this simple room where there were no servants or slaves, no immoderate furniture or filigree or gold leaf, no one summoning me to tea with visitors I didn’t care for, no expectations of any kind, just this little room where I took care of everything myself, even spreading my own bed and seeing to my laundry. I turned to Mrs. Todd. “. . . I would like to keep the room a bit longer, if I may.”
She looked confused. “You’re not leaving as planned?”
“No, I would like to stay a while. Only a while.”
I told myself it was because I wanted to grieve in private. Really, was that so implausible?
Mrs. Todd was the wife of a struggling law clerk and she clasped my hand. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you wish.”
I wrote a solicitous letter to Mother, explaining the unexplainable: Father had died and I wasn’t coming home straight away. I need to grieve alone.
Mother’s letter in response arrived in September. Her small, tight scrawl was thick with fury and ink. My behavior was shameful, selfish, cruel. “How could you abandon me in my darkest hour?” she wrote.
I burned her letter in the fireplace, but her words left contusions of guilt. There was truth in what she’d written. I was selfish. I’d abandoned my mother. Nina, as well. I anguished over it, but I didn’t pack my trunk.
I spent my days as a malingerer. I slept whenever I was tired, often in the middle of the day. Mrs. Todd gave up on my presence at appointed meals and reserved my food in the kitchen. I would take it to my room at odd hours, then wash my own dishes. There were few books to read, but I wrote in a little journal I’d bought, mostly about Father’s last days, and I practiced my scripture verses with a set of Bible flash cards. I walked up and down the streets beneath the sycamores as they turned blonde, then bronze, venturing further and further each day—to Washington Square, Philosophical Hall, Old St. Mary’s, and once, quite by accident, The Man Full of Trouble Tavern where I heard shouting and crockery breaking.
One Sunday when the air was crisp and razor-cut with light, I walked ankle-deep in fallen leaves all the way to Arch Street, where I came upon a Quaker meetinghouse of such size I paused to stare. In Charleston, we had one teeny Friends House, something of a dilapidation, to which, it was said, no one