The Emancipation of Robert Sadler

by Robert Sadler

  The creek was lonely and still. The water moved lazily along in the heat of the midmorning, the sun dancing off its surface making patterns and shiny shapes. After a few minutes of wading, I climbed the far bank and headed through the field toward Zeke’s shanty. When I arrived I knocked on the wooden door frame. Zeke’s wife called, “Yoll come in!” I entered the room and held out the little sack and grunted. I was afraid to try to talk, afraid it wouldn’t work.

  “What you want, boy?” Mrs. Zeke asked pleasantly.

  I took a breath and said, “Uh—uh—uh c-c-c-orn meal, Ma’am.” She smiled at me and I was delighted with myself. I had spoken again! I had formed good words! The sensation that my mouth was filled with sand was still there, but I had spoken, I had really spoken! I grinned broadly.

  I danced all the way through the field to the creek.

  “C-c-c-orn meal, Ma’am! Corn m-meal, Ma’am!” I sang.

  I stopped and looked for frogs along the creek banks, but I could find none. Finally, in the early afternoon I arrived back at our shanty. Only Rosie was at home. I looked around for Pearl. I searched the cabin, the yard, and then I saw that the buggy and the mule were gone. Fear crowded my head. I ran screaming inside to Rosie. My mouth wouldn’t form any recognizable sounds. “Peh! Peh! Ahhhhh! Ahhhhhh!” Rosie didn’t even look at me. Her face was cold and smug.

  Panicked, I ran as fast as I could up to the main road and looked in both directions. No sign of the wagon. “Pehhhhhh!!”

  Father did not return that night and neither did Pearl. I slept beside the door shivering and crying all night. When I awoke in the early grey morning it was raining. I heard the sound of the mule sloshing in the mud and I ran outside. The smell of whiskey was strong, and Father was alone in the wagon. “Peh! Peh!” I wailed.

  Father ignored me and slid down from the wagon into the mud. He walked right past me. I grabbed his trouser leg, wailing unintelligible sounds. He shook me off with a drunken snort and went inside the cabin. I didn’t dare go inside. My thin shirt was soon soaked through to my skin, and I shook with cold. I knew that Father had sold Pearl again, and the life and hope drained out of me like the rain as it dripped down my face and fell to the wet mud at my feet.

  My loneliness in the next days was as strong as my hunger. I was so hungry most of the time that I ate grass and once even tried eating dirt. Mostly, I lived on the peanuts my father was growing. He didn’t know that I was eating them, half-grown, still green and all.

  One day in early October Father called me.

  “Git into the wagon, boy!”

  My heart began to beat faster, but I knew it would be useless to ask him where we were going. The road was dry and dusty and we bumped along, not speaking. This time I rode on the seat next to him in the front of the wagon. I felt a slight tinge of excitement, but fear had become so much a part of me that I sat trembling on the edge of the seat.

  We entered Anderson and turned west on the main road. After about a half hour we came to a crossroad and turned south. The farms were large and I looked in wonder at the immense cotton fields. There were many Negroes working in the fields and around the big barns. I tried not to think about where we might be headed and why.

  Soon another farm came into view on the west side of the road. It made the Billings Plantation look small by comparison. We pulled into the curved driveway, and I was awed by the grandeur of the house. The sloping yard was well-kept and groomed. Flowers grew in artistic groupings and tall cottonwood trees lined the driveway. This was the Sam Beal Plantation, my prison and my home for the next eight years.

  Father whoa’ed the mule and sat silent, waiting. In a few minutes I heard a door slam and footsteps come running around the side of the house. Pearl! She stood barefoot, wearing the same dress she had on when I had last seen her. She wore a muslin apron over it. She was very angry.

  “You wicked man! You bringing this chile to this evil place? You is jes plain evil and wicked!”

  Father ignored her. He jerked his head, indicating for me to get out of the wagon. I did so quietly and stood beside it. But Pearl continued.

  “How can you sell my mama’s baby like this! He a dumb chile!”

  Father curled his lip. “Hush you mouth, Sister.”

  At that moment a short, stocky man with a pocked, swarthy face came toward us. He wore overalls and a dirty flannel shirt and thick, heavy boots. Father talked to him in a low voice. The man looked at me and then continued talking with Father. The white man gave him some money. Then my father drove the buggy out of the driveway without a glance back to his children. Useless as I was, I’d been sold once again.

  5

  I was so happy to see Pearl that I didn’t care about anything else. Mr. Beal hurled some orders at Pearl to take me to the slave quarter, and with a “Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh,” she took my hand and began running around a wooden walk alongside the house, past a kitchen door, then across the yard past a smokehouse, chicken coop, and barn, and down a dirt path to two rows of shacks like there was at the Billings Plantation.

  “Peh—Peh,” I pleaded. I had so many questions to ask her. Where were we? Would we stay together now? Was it really a wicked place? Would Father come back for us?

  Pearl knew exactly what was in my confused mind. She sat me down in some dirt next to one of the shacks. “This be the Sam Beal Plantation,” she told me. “Father done sold us again. This be home now.”

  I nodded.

  “We be together so you don’t be down in the mouth.” Again I nodded.

  “It be evil here, but you do what be told you, an yoll be jes fine. Come on, let me love you now. You got any love for me, chile?”

  With that I leaped into her lap hugging and wrestling, and we tumbled in the dirt together laughing just like always. Being sold as a slave boy didn’t bother me because Pearl and I were together again. I forgot Rosie and Father’s cruelty. I forgot Father’s drunkenness. I forgot the loneliness and the despair—Pearl was here.

  Later, Pearl stood me up and looked at me; then under her breath she said, “Pappy never done shoulda carried yoll here. Yoll jes a dumb lil old baby chile.”

  Pearl was staying in one of the shanties with a married couple named Buck and Corrie Moore. They were both field hands and they worked from sunup to sundown every day. Buck and Corrie had shown Pearl kindness in sharing their cabin and food with her, and now I was added to the family. They took to me right away and I felt at home with them. We had corn bread, molasses, greens, and corn tea for supper that night, and I ate like I hadn’t ate in an age.

  Corrie said quietly, “He plumb starvationed.”

  Pearl explained to me what life at the Big House was like. She told me that Mr. Beal was a hard and tough boss man and that we should stay away from him, especially when he was drinking. He was particularly evil then.

  Mrs. Beal, Pearl told me, was a kind enough lady, as far as white ladies come, but she didn’t trust her nohow.

  There were six children in the Beal family: John was eight years old and very mean; Thomas, six years old, just sort of mean; Juanita was five years old; Virginia, four; Ethel, three; and lastly, baby Anna, who was a year and a half.

  There were about five house slaves. There was Big Mac, who was the house man and hired hands’ cook; then there was Mary Webb, who was the family cook. Harriet was the housekeeper and she had two helpers, a girl named Daisy and my sister Pearl, who also were to tend the children.

  I was overjoyed when I was told that I would be working in the Big House, too. That meant I could be with Pearl all day.

  Pearl and I slept together on the floor of Buck and Corrie’s shanty on a pile of rags, and there was no blanket to pull over us. We were better off than we had been at the Billings Plantation and at Rosie’s.

  In the Big House it was Big Mac who gave me my duties. I liked him right off. He was a tall, lean man with very dark skin. He had a scar that ran from his forehead to his chin, just missing his eye and spreading out like a row of t
ulips on his cheek. He had a large, booming voice and hands the size of two big kettles.

  “Every morning before daybreak, yoll git some sticks and light this here fire in the cookstoves,” he ordered. Then he took me from fireplace to fireplace in the bedrooms, showing me how to light them. “You takes the sticks and places them like so for kindling, you lights from the rear, and then you blows on it like this, and you waits. Then you adds the logs, like this here. See?”

  “Yessuh.”

  “And you keep the woodboxes filled.” He showed me the woodpile outside, and he said, “You be a big boy now, hear?”

  “Yessuh Massah suh.”

  “I don’t be yo massah, Robert. You call me Mac. Big Mac.”

  “Yessuh Massuh Big Mac suh.”

  I was amazed as we passed from room to room in the Big House. Even though the Beals were not rich white folk, I was dazzled by the rooms. I saw carpets for the first time in my life, stuffed chairs with antimacassars draped over their arms and backs; I saw carved hutches and rows of china dishes sitting inside them. I saw polished tables and ornate kerosene lamps. I saw curtains and bedspreads. There were pictures hanging on wallpapered walls, and in some of the rooms, wonder of wonders, I saw painted wood toys. I saw dolls with real hair and fancy clothes. I saw toy trucks with real wheels. I had never dreamed of playing with a toy because I had never seen a real one.

  Big Mac caught me staring at a large stuffed bear. He laughed and said, “It ain’t real, boy.” I grunted, trying to ask him what it was for.

  Big Mac said, “Dem’s de white chillren’s, and they’s soon as cut off yor black fingers ’n let you tech it.”

  It was also my job to sweep the back porch, the wooden walk, and the yard. If I didn’t keep these clean, Big Mac warned, I would get whupped good until I learned how to do it right.

  I wanted to say, “Yes sir, Mister Mac, sir,” but it came out like, “yassahmassamasuh.” It almost sounded like talking. Big Mac didn’t even seem to notice. In fact, Big Mac never once made mention of my speech problem in all the years I was on the Beal Plantation. And he never once referred to me as “dumb.” I think he must have been a very great man.

  I had very little contact with the white folk, and although the white children were strangely interesting to me, I didn’t have to have anything to do with them. That is, not right away.

  When I finished my chores at the Big House, I would run back to the slave quarter and play with the other children whose parents were out in the fields. I was delighted to have some friends to play with. I learned new games and new sports, ones that my little sister Ella and I never knew about. There was a game called baseball, and we played with a stick and a stone. I loved it, although I couldn’t hit the stone with the stick at all, nor could I run and catch the stone very well when somebody else hit it.

  The enemy in all of our games was always the white man. The white man was both feared and hated in the quarter, and the children especially expressed their feelings in their games and sports. They had one game they played called “Kill Massah Thrasher,” where they beat rocks on a pile of dirt until it was flattened. I learned that Thrasher was the name of the chief overseer, the most hated and dreaded white man on the Beal Plantation. He was known to have whupped pickers until they fainted just because they stood up and stretched, breaking the bent-over posture of picking to talk to each other. Chatting wasn’t allowed except on breaks. What was allowed was singing.

  Every night after supper I’d go to the Big House to be with Pearl, and I’d stay there until she was through work. Sometimes she would be working until ten at night, and she would have to be back at four in the morning. I just liked being near her so I waited in the big kitchen for her or on the steps outside, being careful to stay away from the white folk. Then we’d walk to our shanty together and maybe we’d sing or maybe not say anything. It didn’t matter. It would seem like we’d just get to sleep when Pearl would nudge me to wake up, and I’d run to the Big House to light the fires while it was dark out and everyone was still asleep.

  The slaves’ children ate their noon meal from a large pot of boiled cornmeal that was brought down to the quarter by either Pearl or Daisy or one of the bigger slave boys. This was emptied into a large wooden trough and set on the ground. All of the children came running with pieces of shingle or cardboard or a tin can to scoop out what they could get. If you ate fast and got there first, you’d get the most. If you were like me, you got there last and never ate fast enough. Nobody was ever filled up though—no slave child ever had enough to eat.

  I usually ate breakfasts at the Big House. After I started the fires, Big Mac would give me a hunk of corn bread and some hot coffee. I’d crouch down by the cookstove and gulp it down. I was up long before the sound of the horn was heard in the quarter waking the slaves. One morning before the overseers came to eat, Big Mac gave me an apple and said, “Beat it, now, hear?” I ran out of the kitchen and stood breathless in the dark by the side of the smokehouse. I had never before eaten a whole apple. I ate the whole thing—core, seeds, and all.

  Mary Webb, the family cook, was a surly little woman with flashing black eyes and a thin, pointed nose that shot out from her face like a bullet. Her mother was a slave and her father was a white man. She was one of the many transferred slaves that came from another plantation. Often a slave’s family was torn up like Mary’s, leaving husband and children behind, and they would never know where their family was taken off to.

  Mary Webb was filled with nastiness—demonized, I think she was. She had a high-pitched, railing voice you could hear for two miles. “Git that skillet yonder!” she’d shriek at me, and if I didn’t jump with all my might to do as she said, she’d scream so loud my ears would ring. Or she’d throw something.

  One day while I was helping Pearl finish scrubbing the large griddle, Miss Mary screamed at me to take out the garbage. I didn’t move fast enough to please her, and a terrible rage came over her. I froze as I saw her spring for a large carving knife. She lunged at me just as Big Mac hollered, “Move, boy!” I jumped, grabbed the can of garbage, and flew out of the door.

  Another time when my response to Miss Mary’s command was not to her liking, she hit her target. She threw a heavy cast-iron biscuit pan at me and got me right on the forehead. I was knocked unconscious.

  “Robert, honey,” I heard Pearl call. She was stroking my cheek and holding a tin cup of yellow flower tea.

  “Robert, honey, you know what?”

  “Uh?”

  “Yoll be six years old now. You is a big boy!”

  “Ahz?”

  “You done become six June 27 las. Don’t you forgit that date now, hear? Some people jes don’t know zakly when they was born. But you do, hear? You is six years old June 27 las.”

  I didn’t feel any different being six than I had felt when I thought I was five, except for the large bump on my head, but Pearl seemed to think it was important I be six.

  Pearl was growing prettier all the time. She had high cheekbones like Mama, soft full lips, and small, even teeth. Her eyes were large and deep set, and she always looked as though she was studying in her thoughts. She was fourteen. Her good looks bothered Buck and Corrie. They said a black slave girl is better off ugly.

  I had some bad headaches after the blow Mary Webb gave me. Big Mac would get irritated if I talked about it, so I learned early not to complain of physical pain. Servants just don’t complain about pain.

  Sundays were my favorite day. The white folks usually went out on an outing after church, so Pearl could leave the Big House and we could go for walks around the plantation together, or go visiting some of the other families in the quarter.

  One autumn Sunday about five in the evening, Miss Harriet, the Beals’ housekeeper, came down to the quarter looking for Pearl.

  “Come on,” she called, “Massuh callin yoll.”

  Pearl’s eyes widened in fright. “What he want wi’ me?”

  “Mary Webb, she be drunk
and can’t cook nothing nohow. He want you to come cook up a meal for him and his friends.”

  Reluctantly, Pearl followed Miss Harriet up the path to the Big House. Buck’s face was solemn as he watched her go. I ran after her to go along, but Miss Harriet shooed me off.

  Pearl did not come back that night. In the morning before sunup I ran up the cold dirt path to the Big House to light the fires as usual. I picked up a load of wood from the woodpile first and carried it to the house. There was a small light flickering in the kitchen window. I entered the room and saw Big Mac hovering over something on the floor. It was Pearl.

  He saw me coming and put his hand up. “Go ’way, son. Ain’t nothin fuh yoll to see.”

  “Peh! Peh!” I screamed. Big Mac couldn’t keep me from her, and being afraid I’d wake the entire house, he didn’t hold me back.

  “The massuh an’ his friends . . .” Big Mac sobbed.

  They had raped and burned her with the poking iron.

  Something happened to me when I saw her lying there on the floor. A cold, icy, fingerlike vise grabbed my body, and with every ounce of strength I had, I hated the white man. Big Mac picked up the thin, broken form of my sister in his big arms and carried her outside, down the path, and to the quarter to Buck and Corrie’s. In his strong arms she looked no bigger than a child like myself.

  Corrie fixed up some ointments to lay on Pearl’s body and face. Some places she put leaves, other places lard, other places some grease gotten from the wagon wheels. Pearl was conscious and moaning in a low, agonized voice I never heard before. Big Mac had to leave right away to cook breakfast for the overseers. Some women field workers came and prayed over Pearl; some cried, but most of them just looked at her with hard, cold faces. They knew what had happened, and there wasn’t a court in the world that cared.

  It took several days, but finally Pearl began to get better. Soon she was off the bed and able to use her hands and feet. She didn’t go back to work in the Big House after that terrible night, though, and was sent to work in the fields. I was heartsick over it. She went to the fields before sunup and didn’t get back till sundown. The only time I could see her would be at the noon meal and at night. She was sullen and quiet now. There was a fury in her eyes that hadn’t been there before, and it seemed like to me it was anger that kept her going.