I sank into Father’s chair. The clock in the main passage clicked, magnifying, and I felt the shadows gathering inside of me again, worse this time. Since returning, I’d slipped further into melancholy each day. It was the same trough of darkness I’d fallen into when I was twelve and the life had gone out of everything. Mother had summoned Dr. Geddings back then, and I feared she might do so again. Every day, I forced myself to come down for tea. I endured the visitations from her friends. I kept up my attendance at church, at Bible study, at alms meetings. I sat with Mother in the mornings, hoops of embroidery on our laps, willing the needle through the cloth. She’d given me the task of household records, and each week I sorted through the supplies, writing inventories and procurement lists. The house, the slaves, Charleston, Mother, the Presbyterians—they were the woof and warp of everything.
Nina had pulled away. She was angry at me for remaining in Philadelphia after Father died. “You don’t know what it was like alone here,” she’d cried. “Mother instructed me constantly in the error of my ways, everything from church to slavery to my rebellious nature. It was horrible!”
I’d been the buffer between her and Mother, and my remaining away for so long had left her exposed. “I’m sorry,” I told her.
“You only wrote to me once!” Her beautiful face was contorted with hurt and resentment. “Once.”
It was true. I’d been so enamored with my freedom up there, I hadn’t bothered. “I’m sorry,” I said again.
I knew in time she would forgive the selfish months I’d abandoned her, but I sensed the estrangement came from more than that. At fifteen, she needed to break away, to come out from my shadow, to understand who she was separate from me. My retreat to Philadelphia was only the excuse she needed to declare her independence.
As she fled to her room the day of our confrontation, she shouted, “Mother was right, I have no mind of my own. Only yours!”
We passed now like strangers. I let her be, but it added to my despair.
I stared at the trunks of books on the library floor, remembering the pangs I’d once had for a profession, for some purpose. The world had been such a beckoning place once.
Sabe still had not returned. I got up from my chair and rummaged nostalgically among the books, coming upon The Sacred Biography of Jeanne d’Arc of France. I couldn’t say how many times I’d read that wondrous little volume of Saint Joan’s bravery before Father had banned me from his library. Opening it now, I gazed at a sketch of her coat of arms—two fleurs de lis. I’d forgotten it was there, and it made sudden sense to me why I’d latched onto the fleur de lis button when I was eleven. I slipped the book beneath my shawl.
That night, unable to sleep, I heard the clock downstairs bong two, then three. The rain began soon after, beating without mercy against the piazza and the windows. I climbed from the covers and lit the lantern. I would write to Israel. I would tell him how melancholy swallowed me at times, how I almost felt the grave would be a refuge. I would write yet another letter I wouldn’t mail. Perhaps it would relieve me.
I pulled open the desk drawer and watched the light tumble inside it. There, as I’d left it, was my Bible and my Blackstone commentary, my stationery, ink, pen, ruler, and sealing wax, yet I didn’t see the bundle of letters. I drew the lamp closer and reached my hand into the empty corners. The black ribbon was there, curled like a malicious afterthought. My letters to Israel were gone.
I wanted to scream at her. The need took hold of me with blinding violence, and I flung open my door and rushed down the stairs, clinging to the rail as my feet seemed to sweep out from under me.
I battered her door with my fist, then rattled the knob. It was locked. “. . . How dare you take them!” I shrieked. “How dare you. Open the door. Open it!”
I couldn’t imagine what she’d thought on reading my intimate implorings to a stranger in the North. A Quaker. A man with a wife. Did she think I’d remained in Philadelphia for him?
Behind the door, I heard her call to Minta, who slept on the floor near her bed. I pounded again. “. . . Open it! You had no right!”
She didn’t respond, but Nina’s scared voice came from the stair landing. “Sister?”
Looking up, I saw her white gown glowing in the dark, Henry and Charles beside her, the three of them like wraiths.
“. . . Go to bed,” I said.
Their bare feet slapped the floor and I heard the doors to their rooms bang shut one by one. Turning back, I lifted my fist again, but my rage had begun to recede, flowing back into the terrible place it’d come from. Limp and exhausted, I leaned my head against the door sill, hating myself.
The next morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. I tried very hard, but it was as if something in me had dropped anchor. I rolled my face into the pillow. I no longer cared.
During the days that followed, Handful brought me trays of food, which I barely touched. I had no hunger for anything except sleep, and it eluded me. Some nights I wandered onto the piazza and stared over the rail at the garden, imagining myself falling.
Handful placed a gunny sack beside me on the bed one day. “Open it up,” she said. When I did, the smell of char wafted out. Inside, I found my letters, singed and blackened. She’d found Minta tossing them into the fire in the kitchen house, as Mother had ordered. Handful had rescued them with a poker.
When spring came and my state of mind didn’t improve, Dr. Geddings arrived. Mother seemed genuinely afraid for me. She visited my room with handfuls of drooping jonquils and spoke sweetly, saying I should come for a stroll with her on Gadsden Green, or that she’d asked Aunt-Sister to bake me a rice pudding. She brought me notes of concern from members of my church, who were under the impression I had pleurisy. I would gaze at her blankly, then look away toward the window.
Nina visited, too. “Was it me?” she asked. “Did I cause you to feel like this?”
“Oh, Nina,” I said. “. . . You must never think that . . . I can’t explain what’s wrong with me, but it’s not you.”
Then one day in May, Thomas appeared. He insisted we sit on the porch where the air was warm and weighed with the scent of lilacs. I listened as he went on heatedly about a recent compromise in Congress that had undone the ban on slavery in Missouri. “That damnable Henry Clay!” he said. “The Great Pacificator. He has started the cancer spreading again.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. To my surprise, though, I felt curious. Later, I would realize that was Thomas’ intention—creating a little pulley to try and tow me back.
“He’s a fool—he believes letting slavery into Missouri will placate the firebrands down here, but it’s only splitting the country further.” He reached for the newspaper he’d brought and spread it out for me. “Look at this.”
A letter had been printed on the front page of the Mercury, which called Clay’s compromise a fire bell in the night.
It has awakened and filled me with terror. I consider it the knell of the Union . . . The letter was signed, Thomas Jefferson.
It’d been so long since I’d cared what was happening out there. Some old wrath sparked in me. Hostility toward slavery must be finding some bold new footing! Why, it sounded as if my brother himself was hostile to it.
“. . . You are sided with the North?” I asked.
“I only know we can’t go on blind to the sin of putting people in chains. It must come to an end.”
“. . . Are you freeing your slaves, then, Thomas?” Asking it was vindictive. I knew he had no such intention.
“While you were away, I founded an American colonization chapter here in Charleston. We’re raising money.”
“. . . Please tell me you’re not still hoping to buy up all the slaves and send them back to Africa?” I hadn’t felt such fervor since my discussions with Israel during the voyage. My cheeks burned with it. “. . . That is your answer to the spreading cancer???
?
“It may be a poor answer, Sarah, but I can imagine no other.”
“. . . Must our imaginations be so feeble as that, Thomas? If the Union dies, as our old president says, it will be from lack of imagination . . . It will be from Southern hubris, and our love of wealth, and the brutality of our hearts!”
He stood and looked down at me. He smiled. “There she is,” he said. “There’s my sister.”
I cannot say I became my old self after that, but the melancholy gradually lifted, replaced with the jittery feeling of emerging, like a creature without a skin or a shell. I began to eat the rice puddings. I sipped tea steeped in St. John’s Wort, and sat in the sun, and reread the Quaker book. I thought often of the fire bell in the night.
At midsummer, without any forethought, I took out a sheet of stationery.
19 July 1820
Dear Mr. Morris,
Forgive my long delay in writing to you. The book you gave me last November aboard ship has been my faithful companion for all this time. The Quaker beliefs beckon to me, but I do not know if I have the courage to follow them. There would be a great and dreadful cost, of that I’m certain. I ask nothing, except your counsel.
Yours Most Truly,
Sarah Grimké
I gave the letter to Handful. “Guard it carefully,” I told her. “Post it yourself in the afternoon mail.”
When Israel’s letter arrived in return, I was in the warming kitchen, surveying the pantries and writing a list of foods needed at the market. Handful had waylaid it from Sabe when it arrived at the door. She handed it to me, and waited.
I took a butter knife from the drawer and ripped the seal. I read it twice, once to myself, then aloud to her.
10 September 1820
Dear Miss Grimké,
I was gratified to receive your letter and most especially to learn that you are swayed to the Quakers. God’s way is narrow and the cost is great. I remind you of the scripture: “He that finds his life shall lose it, and he that loses his life shall find it.” Do not fear to lose what needs to be lost.
I regret to say I have grave and sorrowful news to impart. My dear Rebecca passed away last January. She died of a malignant influenza soon after our return to Philadelphia. My sister, Catherine, has come to care for the children. They miss their mother, as do I, but we are comforted that our beloved wife and mother is with God.
Write to me. I am here to encourage you in your path.
Your Friend,
Israel Morris
I sat in my room at midday with my eyes closed and my fingers laced in my lap, listening for the Voice the Quakers seemed so sure was inside of us. I’d been indulging in this dubious activity since receiving Israel’s letter, though I doubted the Quakers would’ve called it an activity. For them, this listening was the ultimate inactivity, a kind of capitulation to the stillness of one’s private heart. I wanted to believe God would eventually show up, murmuring little commands and illuminations. As usual, I heard nothing.
I’d responded to Israel’s letter immediately, my hand shaking so badly the ink lines had appeared rickety on the paper. I’d poured out my sympathy, my prayers, all sorts of pious assurances. Every word seemed trite, like the prattle that went on at my Bible studies. I felt protected behind it.
He’d responded with another letter and our correspondence had finally begun, consisting mostly of earnest inquires on my part and bits of guidance on his. I asked him pointedly what the Inner Voice sounded like. How will I recognize it? “I cannot tell you,” he wrote. “But when you hear it, you will know.”
That day the silence felt unusually dull and heavy, like the weight of water. It clogged my ears and throbbed against my drums. Fidgety thoughts darted through my mind, reminding me of squirrels loose in their trees. Perhaps I was too Anglican, too Presbyterian, too Grimké for this. I lifted my eyes to the fireplace and saw the coals had gone out.
Just a few more minutes, I told myself, and when my lids sank closed again, I had no expectations, no hope, no endeavoring—I’d given up on the Voice—and it was then my mind stopped racing and I began to float on some quiet stream.
Go north.
The voice broke into my small oblivion, dropping like a dark, beautiful stone.
I caught my breath. It was not like a common thought—it was distinct, shimmering, and dense with God.
Go north.
I opened my eyes. My heart leapt so wildly I placed a hand across my breast and pressed.
It was unthinkable. Unmarried daughters didn’t go off to live unprotected on their own in a foreign place. They lived at home with their mothers, and when there was no mother, with their sisters, and when there were no sisters, with their brothers. They didn’t break with everything and everyone they knew and loved. They didn’t throw over their lives and their reputations and their family name. They didn’t create scandals.
I rose to my feet and paced before the window, saying to myself it wasn’t possible. Mother would rain down Armageddon. Voice or no Voice, she would put a swift end to it.
Father had left all his properties and the vast share of his wealth to his sons, but he hadn’t forgotten his daughters. He’d left us each ten thousand dollars, and if I were frugal, if I lived on the interest, it would provide for me the rest of my life.
Beyond the window, the sky loomed large, filled with broken light, and I remembered suddenly that day last winter in the drawing room when Handful cleaned the chandelier, the allegation she’d leveled at me: My body might be a slave, but not my mind. For you, it’s the other way round. I’d dismissed the words—what could she know of it? But I saw now how exact they were. My mind had been shackled.
I strode to my dresser and opened the drawer of my Hepplewhite, the one I never opened, the one that held the lava box. Inside it, I found the silver button Handful had returned to me some years ago. It was black with tarnish and long forgotten. I took it in my palm.
How does one know the voice is God’s? I believed the voice bidding me to go north belonged to him, though perhaps what I really heard that day was my own impulse to freedom. Perhaps it was my own voice. Does it matter?
PART FOUR
September 1821–July 1822
Sarah
The house was named Green Hill. When Israel wrote, inviting me to stay with his family in the countryside of Philadelphia, I’d imagined an airy, white-frame house with a big veranda and shutters the color of pine. It was a shock to arrive at the end of spring and find a small castle made entirely of stone. Green Hill was a megalithic arrangement of pale gray rocks, arched windows, balconies, and turrets. Gazing up at it for the first time, I felt like a proper exile.
Israel’s late wife Rebecca had at least made the inside of the house soft. She’d filled it with hooked rugs and floral pillows, with simple Shaker furniture and wall clocks from which little birds popped out all day and coo-cooed the hour. It was a very odd place, but I came to like living inside a quarry. I liked the way the stone façade glistened in the rain and silvered over when the moon was full. I liked how the children’s voices echoed in slow spirals through the rooms and how the air stayed dim and cool in the heat of the day. Mostly, I liked how impenetrable it felt.
I took up residence in a garret room on the third floor, following months of correspondence with Israel and endless skirmishes with Mother. My tactic had been to convince her the whole thing was God’s idea. She was a devout woman. If anything could trump her social obsessions, it was piety, but when I told her about the Inner Voice, she was horrified. In her mind, I’d gone the way of the lunatic female saints who’d gotten themselves boiled in oil and burned at the stake. When I finally confessed I meant to live under the roof of the man I’d written those scandalous, unsent letters to, she broke out in symptoms, cold sores to chest pain. The chest pains were real enough, as evidenced by her drawn, perspiring face, and I worrie
d my intentions might literally kill her.
“If there’s a shred of decency in you, you will not run off to live in the house of a Quaker widower,” she’d shouted during our final clash.
We were in her bedchamber at the time, and I stood with my back to the window, looking at her face streaked with anger.
“. . . Israel’s unmarried sister lives there, too,” I told her for the tenth time. “. . . I’m simply renting a room. I’ll help with the children, I’m to be in charge of the girls’ lessons . . . It’s all very respectable. Think of me as a tutor.”
“A tutor.” She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead as if warding off some heavenly debris. “This would kill your father, if he weren’t already dead.”
“. . . Don’t bring Father into this. He would want me to be happy.”
“I cannot—I will not bless this!”
“. . . Then I’ll go without your blessing.” I was dazed at my boldness.
She drew back in the chair, and I knew I’d stung her. She glared at me with taut, blistering eyes. “Then go! But keep this sordid business of hearing voices to yourself. You’re going north for your health, do you understand?”
“. . . And what exactly is my affliction?”
She looked toward the window and seemed to survey a piece of the saffron sky. Her silence went on for so long, I wondered if I’d been dismissed. “Coughing,” she said. “We fear you have consumption.”
That was the pact I made. Mother would tolerate my sojourn and refrain from severing me from the family, and I would pretend my lungs were threatened with consumption.
During the three months I’d been at Green Hill, I’d often felt dislocated and homesick. I missed Nina, and Handful was always at the edges of my mind. To my surprise, I missed Charleston, certainly not its slavery or its social castes, but the wash of light on the harbor, the salt brining the air, Birds of Paradise in the gardens with their orange heads raised, summer winds flapping the hurricane shutters on the piazzas. When I closed my eyes, I heard the bells on St Philip’s and sniffed the choking sweetness of the privet hedge that fell over the city.