I heard someone coming into the kitchen just then, and I put the bucket down and hurried to the doorway. “Hello!” I called.
A woman with uncombed hair in a worn housecoat and bedroom slippers shuffled toward me. “What do you want?” she demanded.
I stared in disbelief. “Miz Beal . . .” I breathed. She eyed me suspiciously.
“Ma’am, it’s me, Robert.”
Her eyes narrowed. “—Robert!”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
She pulled herself upright. “What do you want, Robert?”
“Please, Ma’am, I come back.”
“You come back?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” I fidgeted with my hands and tried to think of something more to say.
“Thomas tole me Master Beal be ailin,” I said at last.
“That’s right. He’s up in the bed ailin.”
“I’m hopin I kin see him.”
She looked confused and shuffled to the sink. “You wants to see him?”
“Yes, Ma’am. I needs to talk to Master Beal.”
She turned her back and said to the wall, “No, you may not!”
“Oh please, Ma’am, I won’t be no bother. I needs to tell him I come ba—”
“Yoll up to no good, Robert? You don’t fool me none. Yoll fixin to do evil, Robert. No, you ain’t seein Master Beal! Now you can just git off the place.”
“Ma’am, please?”
She paused for a moment, as though she were considering my request. Surveying me, she said, “Gawd, boy, you gained some weight. You is positively fat!”
“Yes, Ma’am,” I said. “I been eatin’ good.”
She gave a snicker. “I can see that, boy. I can see that. Yoll growed up since you run off.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I’ll soon be seventeen.”
“Uh-huh. Same as Thomas. . . .”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
She had seemed friendly for a flashing moment, but then a mix of anger and fear flew across her face. “Well, you can’t see Master Beal. He’s ailing, and I got a shotgun, so git off the place.”
I lowered my head. “Yes, Ma’am,” but before turning to leave, I made one more request. “Ma’am, how is Miss Anna?”
“Miss Anna be jes fine!” she said, squinting her eyes at me.
“Ma’am, could I see her?”
Outraged now, Mrs. Beal shouted, “Who you think you is? Comin in here givin orders like you some big shot! You may not see Miss Anna, and you may not see Master Beal! You want me to call the po-lice? Now get off this place before I get the shotgun!”
I walked back to Anderson with my grip, taking the same route I had taken almost four years ago. I was like hundreds of other blacks who had grown up under slavery. I was set free in a world I didn’t understand, and I didn’t know who I was or where to belong. I knew in my head that I belonged to the Lord and the Bible said He loved me, but when I thought of love I got a picture of hanging onto the coattails of Master Beal in the wagon on the way to the dentist in town, and a beautiful ebony face with a long silver scar from his forehead to chin, and pretty Pearl rocking me in her bruised arms. I remembered the smell of chitlins boiling in the quarter and the sweet taste of sucking the bones of chicken necks. If I studied on it hard enough I could hear my mama’s voice singing about heaven, and I could hear Miz Ceily praying for me. At seventeen years old I couldn’t read or write, I had no money and nowhere to go. I was no longer a slave—but I wasn’t free either. Everything I knew of the great big world I learned on the plantation.
25
I remembered my sister Janey lived in Anderson somewhere, and after walking the streets I found her house on Fant Street. She wasn’t all that happy to see me, but she let me move in with her. Margie was living there, too, with her two little boys. Her husband had left her after she had the second baby.
Margie was overjoyed to have me near her. In the first weeks she fussed over me more than her own children. She washed my clothes, cooked for me, sewed me things, and pomaded my hair with fancy Sweet Georgia Brown hair pomade. Janey didn’t like the special attention given me—it irritated her. She was already cold toward me, and Margie’s affection added to her annoyance.
“You fashionin that boy into a old lady, Margie.”
“I be carin for him, Janey, and I’ll do as I please.”
Janey’s house was anything but peaceful. She often had temper tantrums; she got drunk, brought boyfriends home who she fought with, and if it wasn’t the boyfriends she fought with, it would be Margie or me or the children. She thought nothing of whupping Margie’s boys, and this infuriated Margie. The oldest child, Alan, was four years old, and the baby, Walter, was about two and a half. The way Janey treated them put me in mind of how our stepmother, Rosie, had treated us. Seem like kin is hateful, too. I was glad when I got a job on a small farm outside of Anderson and was gone from the house most of the day and night.
I went to work at plowing time for a white farmer named Wheeks. He was a kind man, and he had a stout, friendly wife who was just as nice as he was. They often invited the hired hands to eat lunch with them, which scared me at first. If we be caught eating at the same table with whites it meant a whupping, or worse. Mrs. Wheeks would fix pig hocks, boiled cabbage, corn bread, custard, and fresh fruit pies. I never knew white folks so nice. Maybe there were some good white folk in the great big world after all.
Mr. Wheeks showed kindness in other ways, too. I had to walk two miles to and from work each day, and there were times when I showed up late. He would have my mule hitched up for me and ready to go by the time I got there, and he never said a word about my being late.
I made mistakes and did things to earn dozens of whuppings, but Mr. Wheeks never raised a hand to me, or to anybody else. I never heard him curse or call any man a bad name. I heard he even helped his Negro help to buy homes of their own, as well as send their children to school.
One day I heard him telling Mrs. Wheeks someone named Hoover was elected president. I didn’t know what president meant, and I sure never heard of elected.
At settling-up time I cleared a hundred dollars. This was more money than I had dared dream about. That was one Christmas there was plenty of food, pastries, and fresh fruit for everybody. After I bought a hat for myself and a suit of clothes like a dandy, I gave the rest of the money to Margie. When Janey found out I had given money to Margie and not to her, she threw us both out of her house. We were ungrateful and didn’t know nothing about appreciation. Margie found another place for us with the rest of the money, a small one-bedroom shanty on Johnston Street for $22.50 a month.
Janey eventually felt bad for throwing us out. Attempting to make amends, she decided to throw a party at her house for the brothers and sisters. She invited our brothers Johnny, Leroy, and Harvey, their wives and children, Margie, her children, me, and lastly, my father.
Who?
“I said our daddy, he comin to the party.”
I could hear the thump of my heart in my deaf ear, and my tongue became thick at the thought of seeing that man again. Deeply printed in my mind was my last sight of him—driving away in the buggy, money in his hand, leaving me in the dirt of Sam Beal’s driveway. I could still see Pearl jumping in the dirt, shouting at him, “You evil man! Selling you own chillren!” Oh Pearl, my Pearl—her miserable death when she was only fourteen. I tell you, my father was one person I never wanted to see again as long as I lived.
The day of the party arrived. Except for my brief meeting with Johnny, I didn’t know my brothers at all. They told me that we had another sister named Ada, who was the oldest, but she was working in Roanoke, Virginia. I was shocked to learn I was the tenth of eleven children my mama gave birth to.
When they brought my father in, I wouldn’t look at him. Janey took me by the arm and pulled me over to him. “Dad,” she said in a flat voice, “this here be your son Robert.”
“Who?”
“Your son Robert. You remember.”
He stared at
me for a few seconds and then said in a timid voice, “Hello, Robert.”
I cringed and couldn’t reply. He looked at the floor and said, “I wouldn’t a knowed ye.”
I couldn’t answer.
“Yup,” he said, “you growed up.”
The years had taken a heavy toll on him. He was bent, tired, grey, and much thinner than I remembered him. His blue-black skin was furrowed with deep lines, his tall body no longer proud.
I stared at him sitting there on the chair holding a glass of lemonade in his hand like he was having just another friendly chat with a stranger. The years of bitterness and despair in the life of a forsaken little boy hit me all at once. I prayed silently for the Lord to help me. I felt like I was five years old again.
He didn’t say anything, just sat there nodding his head and saying, “Yup.”
Finally I managed, “How’s Rosie?”
He set the glass of lemonade down. “We ain’t been together for the las ten years. She quit me.”
Did he expect a response from me? I turned away from him. I had nothing more to say.
“Robert,” he called after me, “I don’t blame ye for hating me. I been sorry for what I done since the day I done it.”
I didn’t think I heard him right. It was my deaf ear he spoke at.
Janey was all dressed up that day. She wore her hair pulled back and greased sleek. She had high cheekbones and enormous eyes, brightly painted lips, and a long, slender body wearing a shiny black satin dress. Margie was beautiful in a different way. She was plump with nappy hair, and the dress she wore was white and pink cotton. Her beauty was the kind that made you want to know her and be with her, and she made you feel warm and happy inside.
My brother Leroy, who owned a farm near the Beal Plantation, told me how Sam Beal had come to his house with his Ku Klux friends looking for me after I escaped.
“They come across the field when my beans was up about like that and my peas up like that. They come across the field at night, and they come up the road by day. They come a-lookin for yoll, Robert. I told him you wasn’t at my place, and I didn’t know where you was nohow. That Sam Beal always feared you’d run away, and he also feared that yor daddy would come and take yoll back. Thought you’d come running to my house, but I didn’t even know yoll.”
I listened with grave interest. “When did the plantation go down?” Leroy gnawed on a chicken neck, spitting out the small knots of bones as he talked. “He jes plain lost everything. Oh, that place is cursed, cursed, I’m tellin you. God is a just God!”
“But what happened to all the slaves? Where did they all go?”
“Oh, I see some of em around—right here in Anderson. You’ll find em shor nuff, they’s here and they’s there. . . .”
Big Mac never made it to freedom, I thought. But how about Miss Ceily? The Edwards family? Miss Harriet? Jed? Leroy said he thought they all were in Anderson except Jed. “Ah think he went up north.”
I noticed that my brothers and sisters didn’t have much to do with our father either. They hardly spoke to him or paid him any attention. He struggled to get out of his chair and nobody offered to help him, and when he spoke, nobody paid any particular attention. Margie was the only one who showed him any courtesy.
“They hates him for sellin his chillren as slaves,” Margie explained later.
“Well, you the one he sold, girl. How come you be the one who treats him so nice?”
Margie gave me a sad look. “He done paid for what he done, Robert. He’ll always be payin for it, and I don’t reckon I need to punish him anymore.”
“God is a just God,” I said. Margie smiled.
———
In the autumn of 1928 Margie’s baby, Walter, took sick. She called the doctor, but he didn’t give us much hope. Said there was some poison in his kidneys spreading through his little body. I remembered how Mother Shepherd prayed over people who were sick, and they would be healed. I did the same. I held little Walter in my arms and asked the Lord to heal him. In fact, as the days wore on, I begged the Lord to heal him. His face grew more and more sickly. Margie cried her heart out every day caring for him. It seemed the world just stopped during those days. We took turns sitting up nights with him, and even Janey came and helped out. He grew worse, and finally, around the first part of November, he died.
The weeks after little Walter died were heartbreaking and dark. Even though I knew the Lord had a good purpose for taking little Walter home to be with Him instead of healing him like we asked, we grieved over it.
I joined the Zion Temple Holiness Church located at the end of Fant Street in December and began going to the meetings regular. Margie never came along with me and told me right out, “I am not one of them who goes for religion, Robert.” So I began to pray for her. The meetings were just what I needed to ease my troubles. The job on Mr. Wheeks’s farm was over, little Walter was dead, Margie was stuck in sorrowfulness, and I didn’t have enough money for pastries and candy.
Finally one day Margie came with me to the little church, and as the people were praying and singing, Margie began to cry. She went up to the tarrying bench and gave her heart to the Lord that night and she never took it back.
One of the first prayers I heard her pray was “Lord, I jes want to say I’m not angry no more for you takin my baby home to heaven. I been actin selfish and mean, and I ain’t gonna act thataway no more.” And she meant what she said.
I finally got me a job in the winter of 1929 at the Calhoun Hotel in Anderson washing pots and pans in the kitchen. I bought the first raincoat I had ever owned when I received my first pay, and you’d think I’d just bought the hotel.
“Can’t get near yoll in that coat!” Margie laughed.
One night when I came home from working at the hotel, Margie met me outside on the dirt road. “Robert,” she said anxiously, “Dad is inside.”
“What you talkin about?”
“Dad. That’s what I’m saying. Dad. He’s inside and he’s—he’s come to live with us.”
“Girl, you lost yor mind?”
“No, I hasn’t. None of his children would take him, Robert. He don’t have no place else to go, ’cept here with us.”
A chill gripped me and spread through my chest. I looked at my sister, bewildered.
“I jes don’t think I can live with that man, Margie.” I felt Ella’s smooth cheek next to mine. We were huddled underneath the house clinging to each other as Father heaved a blow at Mama. I heard Mama fall to the floor, Ella wet herself, and I cried out loud.
“Robert,” Margie pleaded, “what else can we do?”
“I tries not to hate him,” I said lamely. “But I hates him.”
“God will have to help us, thas all, Robert. We ain’t got no choice. Only the Lord can give us love for the man.”
“Love—? Love? What you talkin about, girl? Love!”
My father moved in with us, and the first month was terrible for me. I avoided him as much as I could and never spoke to him. When I had to address him, I called him Jim.
“Don’t call me Jim, son,” he told me one morning as I was buttoning my raincoat, preparing to go to the hotel. “Don’t call me Jim no more. I is yor father.”
I whirled around. “You are not my father!” I snapped. “Sam Beal is my father!”
Stomping out of the little wooden shack and up the dirt road to the hotel, I grew more and more angry. I fussed all day over it. He had some nerve telling me to call him Father! By the time I got home, I had built myself up for a real storm.
He was sitting on the porch waiting for me. Before I could say a word, he said quietly, “Sam Beal is dead, son. He died three months ago.”
The words were like a blow to my stomach. I looked at the old man’s crumpled face. He was bent over in the wooden chair like a folded rag.
“I know it’s too late, Robert,” he said in a cracked voice, “but I’s sorry for what I done—I’s sorry for what I done—” His shoulders trembled, and won
der of wonders, I felt a tinge of compassion for him.
“How much did you get for me, Jim?” I asked in an unsteady voice.
“No,” protested the old man. “Don’t ask me that, Robert. Please—”
“I needs to know, Jim. Now you tell me. I’m going to tell folks my story one day, and I wants to know how much I was sold for.”
He began to cry. “Oh, Lor, have mercy!” he cried. “I sold my chillren for eighty-five dollar.”
———
In the summer of 1929 I began to get restless again. I was well liked at church, and I began to spend my hours after work in the church praying and teaching myself to play the piano. I had a big desire to go to school and learn reading and writing. I talked about it to Margie.
“Yes! I believe you should rightly go to school, Robert. I’ll help yoll.”
It was a great day in the morning when Margie took me to the Presbyterian elementary school to enroll me.
“How old are you?” the Negro principal asked.
“I is goin on nineteen, suh.”
“Nineteen years old? And you want to start school now? Why haven’t you attended any school?”
“I been a slave on a plantation outside town most my life, suh.”
“A slave! In this state?”
“Thas right, suh.”
“Robert, that is against the law! It’s—it’s not legal!”
“I know it’s against the law, suh, but I was a slave anyhow. I could take you to the place today.” The man looked like he was turning sick.
I told him of my escape and of my burning desire to go to school to learn how to read and write. He said very little more, but accepted me for fall enrollment. “Thank you, Jesus!” I shouted. I doubt if my feet touched the ground when I walked home that day. I stood on the steps of our unpainted shack on Johnston Street looking at the old man asleep in the chair on the porch. I took a breath and called out, “Dad! I is going to school!”
He stirred, opened one eye and said, “What you say, boy?”
“I said, I is going to school—Dad.”
The old man grinned from ear to ear. “Thas fine, son, thas fine.” The barrier was broken.
The Emancipation of Robert Sadler Page 17
