The Invention of Wings: A Novel by Sue Monk Kidd Page A

fought to stand there, to hold on to what felt like some last dogged piece of myself. “… … You said I would be the greatest jurist—”
    “I said if you were a boy!”
    My eyes flitted to Anna and Eliza, who gazed up at me, and then to Mary, who would not meet them.
    I turned to Thomas. “… … Please … … do you remember … you said
I
should be the jurist?”
    “Sarah, I’m sorry, but Father is right.”
    His words finished me.
    Father made a gesture with his hand, dismissing the matter, and the band of them turned from me and resumed their conversation. I heard Mother say my name in a quiet way. She no longer reclined, but sat upright, her face bearing a commiserate look. “You may go to your room,” she said.
    I slinked away like some scraped-out soul. On the floor beside my door, Handful was coiled into her red squares and black triangles. She said, “I put on your lamp and stoked the fire. You need me to help with your dress?”
    “… No, stay where you are.” My words sounded flat with hurt.
    She studied me, uncertain. “What happened, Miss Sarah?”
    Unable to answer, I entered my room and closed the door. I sat on the dresser stool. I felt strange and hollow, unable to cry, unable to feel anything but an empty, extinguished place in the pit of my stomach.
    The knock at my door moments later was light, and thinking it was Handful, I gathered the last crumbs of my energy and called out, “… I have no need of you.”
    Mother entered, swaying with her weight. “I took no joy in seeing your hopes quashed,” she said. “Your father and brothers were cruel, but I believe their mockery was in equal portion to their astonishment. A lawyer, Sarah? The idea is so outlandish I feel I have failed you bitterly.”
    She placed her palm on the side of her belly and closed her eyes as if warding off the thrust of an elbow or foot. The gentleness in her voice, her very presence in my room revealed how distressed she was for me, and yet she seemed to suggest their unkindness was justified.
    “Your father believes you are an anomalous girl with your craving for books and your aspirations, but he’s wrong.”
    I looked at her with surprise. The hauteur had left her. There was a lament in her I’d never seen before. “Every girl comes into the world with varying degrees of ambition,” she said, “even if it’s only the hope of not belonging body and soul to her husband. I was a girl once, believe it or not.”
    She seemed a stranger, a woman without all the wounds and armature the years bring, but then she went on, and it was Mother again. “The truth,” she said, “is that every girl must have ambition knocked out of her for her own good. You are unusual only in your determination to fight what is inevitable. You resisted and so it came to this, to being broken like a horse.”
    She bent and put her arms around me. “Sarah darling, you’ve fought harder than I imagined, but you must give yourself over to your duty and your fate and make whatever happiness you can.”
    I felt the puffy skin of her cheek, and I wanted both to cling to her and shove her away. I watched her go, noticing she hadn’t closed the door when she’d entered. Handful would’ve heard everything. The thought comforted me. There’s no pain on earth that doesn’t crave a benevolent witness.
    As Handful appeared, regarding me with her large, soulful eyes, I took the lava box from my dresser, removed the silver button, and dropped it into the ash bin by the fire, where it disappeared beneath the gray and white soot.

    The following day, the withdrawing room was cleared for mother’s lying-in. She’d birthed her last six children there, surrounded by Binah, Aunt-Sister, Dr. Geddings, a hired wet nurse, and two female cousins. It seemed unlikely she would grant me a visit, but a week before her labor began, she allowed me in to see her.
    It was a frosty morning in February. The sky was bunched with winter clouds, and the