The Invention of Wings: With Notes Read Online Free PDF

showing me how to do it.”
    “Well, see that you learn.”
    As Phoebe rushed to stand outside the door, I tried to toss her a smile.
    “It’s nice of you to make an appearance,” Mother said. “You are recovered?”
    All eyes turned on me. Words collected in my mouth and lay there. At such moments, I used a technique in which I imagined my tongue like a slingshot. I drew it back, tighter, tighter. “. . . . . . I’m fine.” The words hurled across the table in a spray of saliva.
    Mary made a show of dabbing her face with a napkin.
    She’ll end up exactly like Mother,
I thought.
Running a house congested with children and slaves, while I—
    “I trust you found the remains of your folly?” Mother asked.
    Ah, there it was. She had confiscated my document, likely without Father knowing.
    “What folly?” Mary said.
    I gave Mother a pleading look.
    “Nothing you need concern yourself with, Mary,” she said, and tilted her head as if she wanted to mend the rift between us.
    I slumped in my chair and debated taking my cause to Father and presenting him with the torn manumission document. I could think of little else for the rest of the day, but by nightfall, I knew it would do no good. He deferred to Mother on all household matters, and he abhorred a tattler. My brothers never tattled, and I would do no less. Besides, I would’ve been an idiot to rile Mother further.
    I countered my disappointment by conducting vigorous talks with myself about the future.
Anything is possible, anything at all.
    Nightly, I opened the lava box and gazed upon the silver button.

Handful
    M issus said I was the worst waiting maid in Charleston. She said, “You are
abysmal
, Hetty,
abysmal
.”
    I asked Miss Sarah what
abysmal
means and she said, “Not quite up to standard.”
    Uh huh. I could tell from missus’ face, there’s bad, there’s worse, and after that comes abysmal.
    That first week, beside the smoke, I spilled lamp oil on the floor leaving a slick spot, broke one of those porcelain vases, and fried a piece of Miss Sarah’s red hair with a curling tong. Miss Sarah never tattled. She tugged the rug over to cover the oily place, hid the broke porcelain in a storeroom in the cellar, and cut off her singed hair with the snuffer we used to snip the candle wick.
    Only time Miss Sarah rang her bell for me was if missus was headed our way. Binah and her two girls, Lucy and Phoebe, always sang out, “The cane tapping. The cane tapping.” Miss Sarah’s warning bell gave me some extra lead on my rope, and I took it. I would rove down the hallway to the front alcove where I could see the water in the harbor float to the ocean and the ocean roll on till it sloshed against the sky. Nothing could hold a glorybound picture to it.
    First time I saw it, my feet hopped in place and I lifted my hand over my head and danced. That’s when I got true religion. I didn’t know to call it religion back then, didn’t know Amen from what-when, I just knew something came into me that made me feel the water belonged to me. I would say, that’s my water out there.
    I saw it turn every color. It was green one day, then brown, next day yellow as cider. Purple, black, blue. It stayed restless, never ceasing. Boats coming and going on top, fishes underneath.
    I would sing these little verses to it:
    Cross the water, cross the sea
    Let them fishes carry me.
    If that water take too long,
    Carry me on, Carry me on.
    After a month or two, I was doing more things right in the house, but even Miss Sarah didn’t know some nights I left my post by her door and watched the water all night long, the way it broke silver from the moon. The stars shining big as platters. I could see clean to Sullivan’s Island. I pined for mauma when it was dark. I missed our bed. I missed the quilt frame guarding over us. I pictured mauma sewing quilts by herself. I would think about the gunny sack stuffed with feathers, the red pouch with our pins and needles, my pure