Read The Invention of Wings: With Notes for Free Online

if some pustule of guilt had disgorged.
    Her eyes flashed open, then narrowed into small burrs. They were honey colored, the same as Hetty’s.
    “. . . . . . I never meant to own her . . . I tried to free her, but . . . I wasn’t allowed.” I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
    Charlotte slid her hand into her apron pocket, and silence welled unbearably. She’d seen my guilt and she used it with cunning. “That’s awright,” she said. “Cause I know you gon make that up to her one these days.”
    The letter M clamped on to my tongue with its little jaws. “. . . . . . . . . M-m-make it up?”
    “I mean, I know you gon hep her any way you can to get free.”
    “. . . . . . Yes, I’ll try,” I said.
    “What I need is you swearing to it.”
    I nodded, hardly understanding that I’d been deftly guided into a covenant.
    “You keep your word,” she said. “I know you will.”
    Remembering why I’d approached her in the first place, I said, “. . . I’ve been unable to find—”
    “Handful gon be at your door ’fore you know it.”
    Walking back to the house, I felt the noose of that strange and intimate exchange pull into a knot.
    Hetty appeared in my room ten minutes later, her eyes dominating her small face, fierce as the little owl’s. Seated at my desk, I’d only just opened a book I’d borrowed from Father’s library,
The Adventures of Telemachus.
Telemachus, the son of Penelope and Odysseus, was setting out to Troy to find his father. Without questioning her earlier whereabouts, I began to read aloud. Hetty plopped onto the bed-steps that led to the mattress, rested her chin in the cup of her hands, and listened through the morning as Telemachus took on the hostilities of the ancient world.

    Wily Charlotte. As March passed, I thought obsessively about the promise she’d wrung from me. Why hadn’t I told her Hetty’s freedom was impossible? That the most I could ever offer her was kindness?
    When it came time to sew my Easter dress, I cringed to think of seeing her again, petrified she would bring up our conversation by the woodpile. I would rather have impaled myself with a needle than endured more of her scrutiny.
    “I don’t need a new dress this Easter,” I told Mother.
    A week later, I stood on the fitting box, wearing a half-sewn satin dress. On entering my room, Charlotte had hastened Hetty off on some contrivedmission before I could think of a way to override her. The dress was a light shade of cinnamon, remarkably similar to the tone of Charlotte’s skin, a likeness I noted as she stood before me with three straight pins wedged between her lips. When she spoke, I smelled coffee beans, and knew she’d been chewing them. Her words squeezed out around the pins in twisted curls of sounds. “You gon keep that word you gave me?”
    To my disgrace, I used my impediment to my advantage, struggling more than necessary to answer her, pretending the words fell back into the dark chute of my throat and disappeared.

Handful
    O n the first good Saturday, when it looked like spring was staying put this time, missus took Miss Sarah, Miss Mary, and Miss Anna off in the carriage with the lanterns on it. Aunt-Sister said they were going to White Point to promenade, said all the women and girls would be out with their parasols.
    When Snow drove the carriage out the back gate, Miss Sarah waved, and Sabe, who was dandied up in a green frock coat and livery vest, was hanging off the back, grinning.
    Aunt-Sister said to us, “What yawl looking at? Get to work cleaning, a full spit and shine on their rooms. Make hay while the mice away.”
    Up in Miss Sarah’s room, I spread the bed and scrubbed the gloom on the looking glass that wouldn’t come off with any kind of ash-water. I swept up dead moths fat from gnawing on the curtains, wiped down the privy pot, and threw in a pinch of soda. I scrubbed the floors with lime soap from the demijohn.
    Wore out from all that, I did what