Family

by J. California Cooper

  My babies would see that. They would have no more mother, worthless even as she was to them, they needed me for whatever I could do for em, if it wasn’t nothin but to steal food to fill their bellies. I built me a fire and boiled them poison weeds, made a kind of dinner. Then I went and got my children from all round where they were, most at poor old Miz Elliz’s. I kissed Miz Elliz, surprised her, cause she didn’t know what I was gettin ready to do. Kissed her good-by, but didn’t say it, cause she the only person I could think of almost like a piece of family. I took my children, my beautiful children, served their tinplates and fed them.

  It was a little bitter, yet I forced them to eat. I really meant for Always to die right beside me cause she was the oldest and I knew her hard times was right on her for soon. Then we all layed down. I knew we was dyin, they didn’t. But they lay down like I told them … and slept. Do you know what happened?! I died. But my children who I was tryin to save … lived. Some kind of way they only got sick. Oh very sick, but not dead! I died and left them children and Always in that terrible world, in these bitter times, all alone. Now, I was dead but I could feel my heart still grievin. My soul was not at rest! Was it cause my children was left behind me? Oh Lord!

  Now, I’m gonna tell you somethin I don’t understand, not even to this day and this is many, many years later. I know now when people die they lay down in their graves til the resurrection. But before I got to my grave, I grieved and cried and screamed, beggin for my children bein all alone. Beggin God to let me stay with them. But my body layin dead on that cornshuck bed never moved a lick. It was too late. I was dead. Somehow, I didn’t go nowhere. I saw them find my body, I heard what everybody said. I didn’t really have to listen cause it seemed I knew what all was in everybodies’ mind before they spoke out. I watched them dump my body in a tight little grave off in some dumpy ground in the slave cemetery. Watched them cover it up. Watched my babies cryin for their mama. Watched em bein slapped by old Mistress for makin all that noise. Watched em hold back their tears. I was watchin cause I wasn’t in with my body. I was at a distance, yet I was close.

  Now God didn’t say nothin to me. Wasn’t no angel sent down to tell me nothin bout what was happenin to me. The devil didn’t say nothin either, thank God. I was just left. Just out there in nothin, bein nothin. Some way tho, I knew why I was bein left out. I coulda cried for joy but I didn’t know how to, with my new self I had. I blive I was left out here so I could watch over my children, my blood, my Always … just for a little while. That is why I am able to tell you this now. “They” forgot about me for many years of Time. I have seen many, many things. Saw Times change, saw Times stay the same. I understood, at last, many things with a new kind of sense. I could almost read all minds. I did read many minds many times. Mankind is not so complex as he is foolish. That’s what makes things complicated for them.

  I found out if I had waited, lived, somehow, twenty more years I would have been set free at the end of that war. Times wasn’t much better from the ground up, but we was then free to suffer on our own … for our own, by our own, from our own, to our own. Free. I shoulda waited. Anyway … the most important thing was I was able to watch my children. But I mostly watched Always. First I must tell you somethin tho. This dead-but-not-gone thing was not like being a ghost, I don’t think. I seem to know all kinds of different knowledge floatin round in space. I couldn’t touch nothin, but I could think … and I could move.

  I have to be careful bout goin off to sleep tho, cause once I dozed off by side of a ocean, it was so peaceful, so beautiful, such a marvelous work of God, I just lay my soul down by a tree whose shape was all wild like the oceans. I fell asleep … and when I woke up it was sixty years later! It went by quick as a minute! Look what I musta missed! Time is different wherever I am, not like it is on earth. No wonder God moves in his own time … it’s not the same as we know it. I’ll tell you somethin else, too.

  The sky is round as the earth! Only bigger, larger, huge, ever so huge that it holds many planets and things. That’s why it is endless. It’s round.

  I HAD NAMED my children, Always, which you know, then came Sun. He was my son so I named him Sun. Then came Peach, then Plum. I don’t know what all they put in the books on my babies, but them was the names I gave em. The Young Mistress named her children, Loretta and Virginia. All my children were sad because I was gone, but Always took it the hardest. She had been closest to me with the time we spent together.

  My heart grieved for all of em. But they was young and they sure was kept busy as slaves. Always was twelve years old, Sun was eleven, Peach, ten, Plum, one year old. The big house kept Always busier than ever. At twelve years old she took up most of my jobs and kept all her own and when it came time for her to be restin, that Ole Mistress found somethin else for her to do and slapped, pinched, pulled her hair and, oh, did all them little nasty things cruel old folks can find to do to somebody helpless. Was always a bruise or two on my baby’s face and body.

  The Young Mistress didn’t want Always in the house cause she was too pretty. Prettier than her own children and looked as much as a girl can look like her father and still be pretty. But, Ole Mistress didn’t pay the young one no mind, so when one Mistress wasn’t slappin Always for one thing, the other Mistress slapped her for another. She got it both ways.

  Always didn’t know she was prgtty. It’s somethin you may not know, but most slaves that ain’t in the house in a regular job, never see a mirror. Never get to see what they look like. Ain’t that somethin? Can live all your life and never know what your own face looks like! Can look in water, but then your face be movin in waves, can’t see it good and clear.

  Always just pull her hair back and plait it, throw water on her face, and go to work in the dark part of the mornin. But, bein in that big house so much she got to see herself and it came to her that she was white. Most white as her mistresses. Always got mad and stayed mad from then on.

  I watched and wished I was there to talk to her, splain to her some parts bout life I knew, but I couldn’t. So her little mind just had to struggle and strain to try to understand this thing called life she was livin. Miz Elliz tried to mother my children for me to cover their loss. But she was old and tired too, and had nine or ten others to worry bout. Sides, slaves was used to someone dear and close that they loved bein taken away. Just natural.

  They always expected, feared it, even in the face of the Master’s promises that turned false mostly every time. She did teach them manners tho and tried to tell them ways to stay ’way from white folks trouble. See … my son was all time talkin bout runnin away, that scared the old woman cause she knew it might end the life of all my children whether he got way safe or not.

  Cause they would spect him to come back for em or that they would try to follow their brother. If they caught him … Lord, Lord. Ohhh, don’t most people in the world, even today, know what they did to a man tryin to run to freedom when they got their hands and guns, whips and knives and boards on him!? I prayed he would wait. He was so young, so weak in compare to them, so ignorant of the woods and rivers.

  There was more and more talk bout a war comin and freedom. The slaves didn’t get no straight-out clear information, but the words was in the air. Just couldn’t connect em to mean much to a life that didn’t know nothin else but what it had already seen and lived. I could see it acoming from where I was lookin, but I couldn’t tell nobody. Couldn’t tell my slave sisters and brothers. Couldn’t tell my son. To wait. Just a little longer.

  Sides, I didn’t have his exact feelins … and he was sufferin from that Young Mistress. She had done forgot that day in her house when she saw I was human as she was. Or maybe she didn’t forget, just had to keep provin it wasn’t true that we was human like her. Cause she found the hardest and dirtiest things for Sun to do. I could only watch. Oh, do you know a mother’s heart?

  I noticed while I was watchin tho, that the oldest daughter, Loretta, watched my son whenever she was near where h
e was. I knew her mind. I saw she was knowin he was her half-brother … and thank God, she was sorry for him.

  Isn’t it strange, how people can have hearts that look alike, but have all different things in em? I mean, they have said all people can love, and I’m not sure I blive that. Seems like some people have only a drop of love in their hearts and they even have a hard time lovin themselves cause that drop dries up with instructions from their mind or maybe just not usin it. Then some people have so much love in their hearts that they don’t have a hard time lovin people and things they don’t even know. Then you got all them that’s in the middle of them two. And some, I blive, with no love at all in em. The way they lives proves it!

  Loretta was kind in her heart. She was only bout twelve years old. One day she brought him some cake to the backyard where he was turnin the ground for the house garden. She sat down on a little bench out there, he didn’t look at her direct but he did know she was there. She sat a bit, then got up and laid the cake down by his tools, said, “This is for you.” He just kept on aworkin til he worked on over there where his tools and that cake was, then taken it up and worked with one hand hoein the weeds and eatin that cake, shovin it in his mouth fore somebody saw it. Mumblin “thankee.”

  She sat kickin the dirt neath her feet. Then she ask him, “What you think bout your life here?” Well, he didn’t know much about life, but he knew enough to say, “I wants a life like yours.” She say, “I don’t see as how you can get it cause they calls you a negro-nigger, cause your mammy was a nigger-woman.”

  Crumbs fallin down his chin, he say, “My mama wasn’t no mammy. She was my motha.” I smiled in my heart.

  She say, “Well everybody knows that’s what you call em, is mammy.”

  My Sun say, “No mam, that what white folks call em. We call our mother, mama … when she was livin.”

  She say, “Well, anyway, you ain’t really a white boy, all white boy. You got nigga blood in you.”

  He wiped his face with the sleeve of his raggedy little shirt, hit a hard lick with that hoe. “I knows it.”

  After she look around, she ask, “You think you gonna run away?” I got no need to breathe, but I gasped then.

  He got wary. “Naw … I don’t think so. Ain’t never thought on it.” I knew he thought of it everyday.

  Now this Loretta wasn’t smilin nor laughin through none of this talkin they was doin. She was a serious child. She asked him, “Cause you don’t know how?”

  Sun hit at a mosquito or two, kicked a small rock out the way with his bare foot, said, “I betta get on back to my work,” as he turned back to his job. They both looked thoughtful.

  Now Young Mistress had been watchin from the kitchen windows. She snatched the door open and hollered, “Boy! Get back to your work! You lazy!”

  Loretta looked at her mother with a mixture of annoyance and fear, then got up and walked slowly cross the yard and up the steps through the door her mother was holdin open for her.

  Somethin musta just been in that child that day cause she spoke in a low hard voice to her mama, “Don’t you dare call him nigger. He is our half-brother.” And the Young Mistress sent her flyin cross that room with a slap so hard I almost felt it!

  Young Mistress say, “No child what ain’t come from my body is no kin to you! That nigga-boy ain’t nothin to you! He ain’t nothin but a picaninny nigga is what he is! And all of em! You ain’t got no brother til I give you one! You heah?”

  And so that passed, but Sun wasn’t lowed to work that particular piece of land nomore, so close to the house. Howsomever, them children did find ways to talk again. Out back of one of the barns or near the new chicken house, wherever he was workin. Loretta always brought him some fruit or somethin, always had a gift in her hands for him. They just made small-talk mongst the manure and the weeds, with the cows lowin and hens just apeckin round.

  Then, one day, she asked him, “What kind of present would you like to have that you would keep forever?”

  He stop workin and leaned on the rake. He trusted her more now. After a moment he looked round carefully, lowered his voice, said, “I wants to read.”

  Her eyes got so big and round, “My daddy would even beat me to pieces if I helped you learn to read.”

  He lifted the rake and slowly went back to work. But he knew her now cause they been pretty close talkin for bout a year. Still, fore she left, she said, “You know it’s gainst the laws for niggers to learn to read!”

  He stopped workin again, looked at her a moment, said, “But you done tol me I ain’t no purdee nigga. And I ain’t! Look!” He held his arm out. “I am mos white as you. Your daddy is my pappy.”

  For some reason the little girl, Loretta, burst into tears and ran from the place. Too young and confused, if I guess right. It musta hurt her bout her daddy, too. She knew it, but nobody ever done said it.

  The day did come, soon, when she would take to doin her lessons in the shady backyard. Then, soon, she was wanderin off to the woods. In them days everybody had woods. Big, huge, tall shady trees, all kinds, but mostly pines. Sun would meet her out there and she would teach him bout readin and numbers and things. Three years passed like that. He would transfer his information, without a book, to Always and Peach, while Plum, too young, just set listenin.

  Them children had to be mighty careful and they knew it, was raised knowin it. Even round other slaves, cause even a slave would tell on another slave. Some folks will do somethin for somebody they know don’t like them no kinda way, for a moment’s empty attention, which doins only gets them known in the big house as a “good nigga” to the white folks. Yet, them white folks really didn’t respect you for tellin on your own kind. Thought you was nothin in their hearts. That’s why so many of em thought we was ignorant fools to the bone.

  Anyway, my children learned. They still had their own personal jar of pebbles for their age, but Sun showed em how to count to twenty, far as he could go and not get confused, then they didn’t need them pebbles nomore. In these things the pain of losin me and bein, in a way, alone, was forgotten.

  Peach was Sun’s favorite, cause Always seem to be mean and serious all the time. Peach was womanish, dainty and delicate. She envied Loretta her clothes and nice bedroom as she lay on her cornshucks and pulled her raggedy sackcloth shirtdress close round her little cold body. As she would fall asleep nights, she would lay there thinkin of ways to get into the big house to work, where them pretty things was and them mirrors.

  Peach finally got Sun to ask Loretta to let her be her personal slave to keep up her room. That took a couple of months cause Young Mistress did not want my children in her house that close and that clean, as Peach would have to be. That was too close to bein human. And, Virginia, who was a very plump girl, with acne, stringy hair and stingy ways, hated slaves. She hated slaves cause that was the only thing worse off than her, that she could be better than. And a pretty nigga-slave was a bomination to her. When Virginia said her prayers to God even, she prayed that Peach and every other pretty lookin slave would die. She fully expected God to mind her. And she wanted to be the one to whip some of them to death with that whip that hung in the storage shack which she liked to play with.

  Howsomever it went, Loretta was a strong one and she knew to ask her daddy more often than her mother, and Peach got her job-place in the house.

  Now Peach was not my hardest workin child. She was extra lazy. But because there was so much extra comin to her from this job; the touch of the clothes, the feel of a carpet neath her wide, bare feet, smells of the scents on dressers, the mirrors, Peach kept Loretta’s clothes neat, clean, washed, ironed, and hung up in the closet. The room was kept spic and span. The dresser dusted, oiled, shined, drawers lined. She never needed scoldin.

  Peach slept on the floor at the foot of the bed. Loretta let her, even with her kind heart. See … sometimes you can think you are bein too good and Loretta needed to know she was the Mistress. Needed Peach to remember it. Cause sometimes when they
played games together, Peach forgot and commanded Loretta to do things. There wasn’t nothin better that could get Loretta to remember Peach was, after all, a nigger, than to hear a command from Peach’s too full lips. Then too, Virginia might be round some corner or behind some curtain, watchin and listenin.

  I watched and I saw my Peach was learning things to help her in her future, I thought, I hoped. I could see, if freedom came in time, before they sold her out to one of them sick-minded white men who does cruel things to women … she could be alright.

  See … I could see some things in the future, but I could not see everything. God is the only One Who sees everything. I knew Sun would be alright in lookin out for hisself if he could just keep takin in knowledge without nobody findin out. I hoped that knowledge wouldn’t make him no fool to speak up out of turn and cause him to lose his life. And Peach’s life. And Plum’s life. And my Always.

  Now, it may seem as tho these children was doin alright and that bein slaves wasn’t hard to them cause they was makin some kind of way. But it is so hard to explain to anybody how each minute, each hour, each day had to be lived. Yes, you was fed, and clothed of a sort, you had a place to sleep. But count your own life and see, even with these important things taken care of, how much more there is to life. Would you exchange freedom for these small things given to you? No … not given … well paid for. If each minute could be your last even in this little measly way, if the next hour you could blong to somebody you ain’t never seen nor heard of … somebody more cruel, fierce, tricky, unfeelin, who really did think you was a animal and showed it with every move and word they did and said.

  Now … I will tell you what I have seen and noticed in life from where I am. There ain’t no two people, or very few, that you can put together and they be happy, even if they think each other is equals. Mothers, fathers, children, and every human bein on God’s earth have to work hard at gettin along with each other. Now just spose they didn’t feel like workin at it? Ain’t no two people who work a job together can get along more’n two days without one of them thinkin bad thoughts bout the other. Don’t care what color they are. People is human. You hear what I’m tellin you! Now put you on your job with your boss and give them all license to treat you just any way they want to … You see what I mean? The courts is full and will always be full of people and the grievances they put on each other til the end of our time.