Read The Invention of Wings: With Notes for Free Online Page B

ain’t no game, Handful. There be misery to pay on this.”
    She didn’t wait for me to move, but snatched me up like I was a stray piece of batting. Grabbed me under one arm, marched me down the carriage house steps, cross the work yard. My feet didn’t hardly touch the ground. She dragged me inside through the warming kitchen, the door nobody locked. Her finger rested against her lips, warning me to stay quiet, then she tugged me to the staircase and nodded her head toward the top.
Go on now
.
    Those stair steps made a racket. I didn’t get ten steps when I heard a door open down below, and the air suck from mauma’s throat.
    Master’s voice came out of the dark, saying, “Who is it? Who is there?”
    Lamplight shot cross the walls. Mauma didn’t move.
    “Charlotte?” he said, calm as could be. “What are you doing in here?”
    Behind her back, mauma made a sign with her hand, waving at the floor, and I knew she meant me to crouch low on the steps. “Nothing, massa Grimké. Nothing, sir.”
    “There must be some reason for your presence in the house at this hour. You should explain yourself now to avoid any trouble.” It was almost kind the way he said it.
    Mauma stood there without a word. Master Grimké always did that to her.
Say something.
If it was missus standing there, mauma could’ve spit out three, four things already. Say Handful is sick and you’re going to see about her. Say Aunt-Sister sent you in here to get some remedy for Snow. Say you can’t sleep for worrying about their Easter clothes, how they gonna fit in the morning. Say you’re walking in your sleep. Just say
something
.
    Mauma waited too long, cause here came missus out from her room. Peering over the step, I could see she had her sleeping cap on crooked.
    I have knots in my years that I can’t undo, and this is one of the worst—the night I did wrong and mauma got caught.
    I could’ve showed myself. I could’ve given the rightful account, said it was me, but what I did was ball up silent on the stair steps.
    Missus said, “Are you the pilferer, Charlotte? Have you come back for more? Is this how you do it, slipping in at night?”
    Missus roused Cindie and told her to fetch Aunt-Sister and light two lamps, they were going to search mauma’s room.
    “Yessum, yessum,” said Cindie. Pleased as a planter punch.
    Master Grimké groaned like he’d stepped in a dog pile, all this nasty business with women and slaves. He took his light and went back to bed.
    I followed after mauma and them from a distance, saying words a ten-year-old shouldn’t know, but I’d learned plenty of cuss at the stables listening to Sabe sing to the horses.
God damney, god damney, day and night. God damney, god damney, all them whites.
I was working myself up to tell missus what’d happened.
I left my place beside Miss Sarah’s door and sneaked out to my old room. Mauma brought me back to the house.
    When I peered round the door jam into our room, I saw the blankets torn off the bed, the wash basin turned over, and our flannel gunny sack dumped upside down, quilt-fillings everywhere. Aunt-Sister was working the pulley to lower the quilt frame. It had a quilt-top on it with raw edges, bright little threads fluttering.
    Nobody looked at me standing in the doorway, just mauma whose eyes always went to me. Her lids sank shut and she didn’t open them back.
    The wheels on the pulley sang and the frame floated down to that squeaky music. There on top of the unfinished quilt was a bolt of bright green cloth.

    I looked at the cloth and thought how pretty. Lamplight catching on every wrinkle. Me, Aunt-Sister, and missus stared at it like it was something we’d dreamed.
    Missus gave us an earful then about how hard it was for her to visit discipline on a slave she’d trusted, but what choice did she have?
    She told mauma, “I will delay your punishment until Monday—tomorrow is Easter and I do not want it marred by this. I will not send you
off
for