Coming of Age in Mississippi

by Anne Moody

“Next year I won’t have to plow through all that shit,” Raymond said to Mama.

  “Shit, next year, Mr. Pickett will plant his own damn cotton out there,” Mama said.

  School wasn’t out yet and I was still working for Mrs. Claiborne. She was teaching me so much and she was so good to me that I didn’t want to stop working for her. But I knew as soon as school was over, I’d have to work in the field all day. I was scared to death. I never could take much sun without getting a headache, and I had heard that a lot of people had died in the field from sunstroke and different things.

  One evening I came in from work and saw Mama, Raymond, and all of them standing around out under the pecan tree. I walked up to them. The mule was stretched out on the ground with foam bubbling out of his mouth, and Raymond was cursing.

  “Why didn’t that mothafucka die next week! Bring some water, Junior! Get that hose pipe and hook it up! Put some water in that tub! Goddamn, hurry up! This son of a bitch! Just got one more week of good plowing and this fucka gonna die now! Shit!”

  “You’re workin’ him too hard, Ray. Why don’t you take it easy? You ain’t got but a little more plowing to do. You gotta give that mule some rest. You don’t plow no old mule that much! Besides, Jim them prob’ly worked the hell outta this mule before you got him!” Mama said as Junior filled the tub up full of water.

  “That damned cotton gotta be planted, though. That ground’s gotta be broke. Soon everybody else’s cotton gonna be comin’ up!” Raymond shouted, as he helped Junior drag the tub of water up to the mule. Then he grabbed the mule by the head and tried to make it drink from the tub, but its head was limp and its eyes were walling back. It looked like it didn’t know where it was. When Raymond couldn’t get it to drink any water, he slammed its head down on the ground some hard. I stood there feeling sorry for the poor old mule, but in the back of my mind I was saying, “I hope it die, I hope it die, I hope it die!” I went to bed that night praying that the mule would die, because I didn’t want to quit working for Mrs. Claiborne to go out and get a sunstroke. But when I got up the next morning, that damned mule was up kicking and ready to go back to the field again.

  Raymond finally finished his plowing and eventually got the cotton planted. It needed lots of rain to take root, so every day Mama and Raymond went around praying for rain. They prayed and prayed but the rain just didn’t come. Raymond walked around grumbling and cursing and acting like he was mad with the whole world. Every day he would go out to look at the cotton. When he came in he’d start shouting, “That ground so hard out there, the sun is crackin’ the ground up! Them damned cotton seed burnin’ up in the ground! Fuck this shit! A man can’t make a living, I don’t care how hard he try! Everythin’s against him, even the goddamn sun!”

  And every time I’d hear Raymond cursing, I’d think, “Please burn up in the ground! Oh, please burn up in the ground!”

  Mama would sit on the porch rocking all day, watching the sky. Every time a little cloud would get in the sky, she’d start hollering, “It’s comin’, it’s comin’! Look like we’re gonna get some rain tonight!”

  So then I started praying that it wouldn’t rain. Often I went to bed and had dreams that there were big floods and water was just gushing everywhere, washing away mountains and trees and all the cotton.

  But eventually it did rain and the cotton started to come up. Every other day or so, Raymond would take us out to see the cotton. He wouldn’t take us into the field when the cotton was just coming out of the ground because he was superstitious. He thought that we might interfere with “the works of Nature.” So instead he parked the car alongside the road and we all sat looking out at the cotton field.

  “Boy, looka there, Toosweet. It sure is growing,” Raymond said, grinning like a wild man.

  I thought he had lost his mind. I couldn’t see any cotton. All I saw was a big empty field.

  School ended and I sadly said good-bye to Mrs. Claiborne. Raymond had said that on Monday morning, my first week out of school, we would start chopping cotton. I was angry because I didn’t expect to quit Mrs. Claiborne until it was time to pick the cotton. I didn’t even know anything about chopping. All I thought you had to do to cotton once it was up was pick it.

  That weekend Mama and Raymond both prepared for the chopping. Mama went into town and bought a whole lot of food and a straw hat for each of us, and Raymond stocked up on hoes. All day Sunday he sat out under the pecan tree sharpening the hoes. He called me and Adline out and had us make believe we were hoeing so he could cut handles the right length for us. As I watched Adline pretend to hoe, I thought, “Lord have mercy! Little Adline hoeing!”

  That night as I went to bed, I thought of how hot it had been all day. I was sure the temperature was over a hundred degrees. I knew that it would be just as hot the next day and I could see myself standing out there sweating over a hoe. I fell asleep worrying about hoeing in that boiling hot sun, and I had a terrible dream.

  In my dream a whole group of us were out in the cotton field, up on the hill where there was only that one tree that Raymond had left for shade. We were hoeing slowly down the hill when the sun came up so big that it seemed to fill up the whole sky. It came so close to us, it looked like a big mouth about to swallow us. The whole sky and everything around us was red. I was getting terribly hot and great big drops of sweat were dripping all over me. I looked at that little tree that was up on the hill and it was drying, bending, wizzling up to nothing. I looked around in the far distance and the trees were on fire, the whole forest was burning, the trees were just flapping down. I looked around for everybody else in the cotton field, for Raymond and all of them, and they were all dead, lying between the rows. I was leaning on my hoe and I was rocking and the sun came down even closer. I was the last one standing and I knew it was coming for me. I quickly glanced at all the dead bodies evaporating around me. And I felt myself crumbling under the heat of the sun. And then I woke up.

  When I got out of bed that morning I was sweating and shaking like someone with palsy. I couldn’t touch my breakfast. Mama kept asking me what was wrong, but I was too scared to tell her about the dream, so I just mumbled that I wasn’t feeling well. I hoped that she would tell me to stay home but instead she handed me a couple of aspirins and sent me off to the cotton field with the rest.

  Raymond took along Adline, Alberta, and me for the chopping and Junior and James as waterboys. When Raymond stopped the car in front of Miss Pearl’s and Cherie and Darlene came running out in blue jeans, long-sleeved shirts, and straw hats, dressed just like we were, I was surprised. I didn’t think Raymond could talk Miss Pearl into letting precious little Darlene and Cherie hoe cotton. I guessed he must have told her that if he made it big from the cotton he’d do something nice for her.

  When Cherie and Darlene got into the car, I forgot my dream for a while. But as Raymond drove up the hill to the cotton field it all came back. I looked around at everybody in the car and thought to myself, “We’re all gonna die this morning.” It was about six-thirty and the sun was not up yet, but I could tell from the pink clouds and brightening sky that it was on its way. Raymond drove up to the gate and stopped the car. When Junior jumped out to open the gate, I felt like jumping out too and running away. I had a feeling that if I went through that gate, I’d be trapped in the cotton field forever. But I couldn’t move. It was just like the time Mama had killed a hog and we had eaten a whole lot of fresh hog meat. I had gone to sleep and awakened just before daylight. Then, too, I couldn’t move. I’d felt the need to call for help but I couldn’t even open my mouth. I was calling and calling but no words came out. I tried to wiggle my toe or move my arm but I couldn’t move anything. I couldn’t even bat an eye. After a while, it passed away. When I told Mama about it, she said that I had eaten too much hog meat and that “the witch was riding” me. “The witch” was the evil in the hog meat that had stopped my blood from running.

  As Raymond drove through the gate, I sat there screaming for hel
p. But I knew no sound came because nobody looked at me. When he parked the car under the little tree, right by the cotton field and everybody got out, I was still sitting there screaming. I could hear Raymond calling me but I couldn’t even answer. At last I saw him walking back to get me.

  “Gal, what’s wrong with you? You act like you’re losin’ your mind this morning!” Raymond shouted.

  I jumped out of the car and ran right past him toward Alberta them walking to the cotton field. For a moment as Raymond shouted at me, I forgot my dream. Then suddenly it struck me that we were about to start hoeing on that hill and the whole dream came back. I stopped short and waited for Raymond. As he came up, I said, “Why don’t we start hoeing in the bottom?”

  “You ain’t got a bit of sense, huh, gal? Don’t you know it’s harder to come up a hill than to go down it? Now why should we start hoeing at the bottom of the hill and hoe uphill?”

  “It’s cooler down there,” I said meekly, looking up at the sky.

  He shook his head as if I was crazy and walked away. I followed reluctantly.

  Raymond and Alberta were the only ones who knew how to chop cotton, so they walked up and down the rows and showed us how to do it. The cotton was heavily planted. We had to thin it out so it would have enough earth and air to grow freely. Darlene and I caught on fast and we were soon hoeing by ourselves. Raymond and Alberta lagged behind, helping Adline and Cherie. I got all wrapped up in trying to outhoe Darlene. I finished three or four rows quickly, way ahead of her. Every now and then I looked back to see how far she was behind me. When she was one whole row behind, I stopped to shake my arms out. I could feel the sweat running down under them.

  I was scared to look up at the sky because I knew the sun had come up. My heart began to beat like a loud drum. I shook all over. I could almost feel the sun rising in the sky. I stood there for a while, giving Darlene a chance to catch up with me. Then I hoed along slowly for a couple of hours pretending that the sun didn’t even exist. Every now and then James or Junior brought someone water. I didn’t want to look at them because I knew it was getting hotter and each trip they made reminded me of the sun.

  Along about ten-thirty or eleven I could feel my shirt clinging to my body, like a big, wet crab. I was soaked to my waist. I didn’t look up, but I knew that sun was up there just like it had been in my dream. Water was running down my face from under my hat. And big drops of sweat were dripping off my arms. It was getting harder and harder for me to hoe. Every time I reached out to chop some cotton, the row seemed to move away from me, like a big wiggling snake. I looked around at everybody else in the field and they were wiggling like the row in front of me. They looked like they were falling, just like in my dream. I didn’t want to look at them. I looked up at the sun and for a moment I was completely blinded. Then I knew the others were dead. I could see the sun again. My eyes got fixed on it. I felt myself reeling and rocking on my hoe.

  “Hey, Junior! Come over here, boy! Bring that water! This gal out here ’bout to faint or somethin’!” Raymond yelled.

  Next thing I knew I was sitting on the ground and Raymond was trying to force me to drink some water. Everybody else had stopped hoeing and now they were all standing around me.

  Raymond told me to rest awhile under the little tree. Thinking about how that tree shriveled up in the sun, I was afraid to go near it. I thought if I did, I would really die. When Raymond told me that we would be going home for lunch in about half an hour, I rested for a few minutes, picked up my hoe, and went back to hoeing with the rest of them. After eating lunch I felt much better, and when we went back to the field, the sun didn’t seem very hot.

  After a couple of days and didn’t anybody die, my dream began to fade. Soon I even began to like the work. I’d pull off my shoes and let the hot earth fall over my feet as I was hoeing. It sent a warm feeling over my whole body. Even the burning of the hot sun no longer frightened me, but seemed to give me energy. Then when I went home there were those good hot meals Mama made. During the first few days of chopping cotton, we ate better than we had in our whole life. Mama was doing everything she could to keep us going. That first day she made a feast. She cooked at least five chickens, two big pones of bread, lots of rice and string beans, and even a couple of big coconut cakes. When we came in from the field, we found the picnic table out under the pecan tree loaded down with food.

  I had never seen Raymond so happy as when he was sitting up at that table running over with food, surrounded by all his “workers,” laughing and eating and listening to Mama’s nasty jokes. While we sat at the table we didn’t even think about the field. And when we went back, we felt like we were just beginning the day. It went on like that for days, until all the money was gone from the little loan Raymond had made from the bank. After that we went back to our usual beans and bread.

  Finally we finished chopping the cotton for Raymond. Then Alberta, Darlene, and I took our hoes and went to chop cotton at two dollars a day for big-time farmers in the area, including some who were Raymond’s relatives. They were among the few Negroes who had worked over the years to build up successful farms. When it came time to scrape the cotton a couple of weeks later, we returned to our field. We had to remove the weeds that had grown up among the cotton stalks. Then the cotton could grow freely until picking time.

  In addition to the cotton for market, Raymond planted corn and potatoes for our own use. Within a couple of months I could really handle a hoe. When I wasn’t chopping or scraping cotton, I was chopping corn or helping Mama in the garden. I had learned a lot about farming, but the more I learned, the surer I was that I would never become a farmer. I couldn’t see myself becoming totally dependent upon the rain, sun, and earth like most farmers. I used to look at Raymond and Mama running around the house praying all the time and think that they were crazy. Farming was a fever they couldn’t get rid of. When they first planted the cotton they prayed for rain. Once the cotton came up they didn’t need rain anymore, so they prayed for sun, so the cotton bolls would open. Then after the bolls opened, they worried about the boll weevils, and spent a lot of money on poison to kill them. When the poison didn’t work, they started praying again. It was always something.

  Mama and Raymond had been hooked to the soil since they were children, and I got the feeling, especially from Mama, that they were now trying to hook me. Sometimes I’d help Mama hoe in the garden and she’d be telling me how she used to pick so much cotton and how she used to do this and used to do that. Then she’d be pitty pattin’ around in the soil, barefooted, bragging about her collard greens and how “old Mother Nature” took care of things. “Looka these mustard greens here! Gol-lee, wasn’t nothin’ but a seed a few weeks ago. Now they ready to eat.” She would kick her foot into the soil and say, “Boy, you c’n put any kinda seed in this garden—’fore you know it you got somethin’ to eat.” I saw how happy she was in her garden and most of what she said was true. She did have the most beautiful garden I’d ever seen. The whole thing fascinated me—planting seeds, growing your own food, using the rain and the sun and the earth, and even the idea of making a living from it. But it was the hardest way I knew of making a living.

  So whenever Mama started one of her long lectures on the pleasures of farming, I would drown her out with my thoughts of Mrs. Claiborne and all the traveling she had done and the people she had met. Mrs. Claiborne had told me how smart I was and how much I could do if I just had a chance. I knew if I got involved in farming, I’d be just like Mama and the rest of them, and that I would never have that chance.

  After the cotton season was over I was surer than ever that I would never be a farmer. Out of all that work we had put into the cotton, we didn’t even make enough money to buy school clothes. We had one good picking and that was it. The land was just no good. If Raymond hadn’t planted corn and sweet potatoes, and Mama’s garden hadn’t been so good, we would have starved to death that winter.

  Chapter

  SEVEN


  We started to school in our same old school clothes and broken-down shoes. I ran around looking for a job for a week or so but I couldn’t find anything. I went back to Mrs. Claiborne but she had someone else working for her. She said she’d ask her friends if any of them needed help. I checked every day, and none of them did. Then one day we came in from school and Mama had a stack of croker sacks out on the porch.

  As I walked into the house she said, “Essie Mae, y’all hurry up and eat. Shit, Mr. Wheeler came by here today. He want us to pick up pecans. He say that ground is just loaded with ’em. We could make enough money to buy all y’all school clothes.”

  As soon as we finished eating we grabbed the croker sacks and ran all the way to Mr. Wheeler’s house. He lived right on the other side of the project from us, in a big white house. He was a rancher and he owned lots of land in the area. Right down the hill from his house he had a big pecan orchard. As we walked up the gravel driveway, we could see him out in his backyard playing with his children.

  “I sure hope he ain’t let nobody else pick ’em up,” Mama said. “I told him we’d be up there as soon as y’all got outta school. He look like he don’t even know we’re comin’.”

  “Elmira, where you carryin’ that baby to? She’ll get fulla ticks out there in that grass,” Mr. Wheeler said as we approached.

  I was so excited about going to pick up pecans, I hadn’t even noticed that Mama was carrying Jennie Ann.

  “My little boy here gonna keep her while we pick up pecans. I didn’t want to leave her in the house by herself,” Mama answered.

  “Oh, I see you brought your own sacks too. Good! C’mon, I’ll drive y’all down in the bottom. I want y’all to pick them up next to the road first ’cause them little boys keep runnin’ in there pickin’ them up.” Mr. Wheeler put his two little boys in front of the pickup truck and we all piled into the back—Mama, me, Adline, Junior, James, and the baby. As Mr. Wheeler drove past his cattle, Mama said, “Boy, looka that milk in them cows’ titties. Shit, if I had all them cows, I would never get through eatin’ steaks and drinkin’ milk.” As he drove through the pecan orchard, we could see pecans piled on the ground about two inches thick. “Look at ’im how he’s drivin’ the truck through them pecans! He coulda let us walk down here,” Mama said, looking like she wanted to jump right out and get started. She was the first one off the truck when we got to the bottom.